NPR News Now - NPR News: 05-05-2025 3AM EDT

Episode Date: May 5, 2025

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This is Ira Glass, the host of This American Life. So much is changing so rapidly right now with President Trump in office. It feels good to pause for a moment sometimes and look around at what's what. To try and do that, we've been finding these incredible stories about right now that are funny and have feeling and you get to see people everywhere making sense of this new America that we find ourselves in. This American Life, wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Willman. President Trump, when asked during an interview Sunday

whether he believes that he needs to uphold the Constitution, responded, quote, I don't know. He made his comments in an interview aired by NBC. He did say though that he would follow whatever the Supreme Court says. Trump's tariff plans meanwhile continued to affect the nation's economy, as NPR's Osma Khalid tells us. There is certainly economic anxiety.

You see that in the polling. New figures from the Commerce Department last week also showed that the US economy shrank during the first three months of this year. Broadly, I will say, President Trump believes that economists were wrong about the negative consequences of tariffs in his first term And so he's trying to sort of cast doubt and I've heard this from the White House about

Some of the foreboding messages from economists now But to be clear Trump's tariffs now this time around are much steeper than what he put in place in 2018 That's NPR's Asma Khalid Police in Brazil say they foiled a bomb attack that had been planned for an Open Air Lady Gaga concert held Saturday night in Rio de Janeiro. Julia Carniero reports. According to Rio's police and the Ministry of Justice, the plan was being orchestrated on social media. A group was recruiting participants to carry out attacks at the concert with improvised explosives, aimed especially at LGBTQ fans. They set, quote, a collective challenge to gain notoriety online.

Police say they managed to neutralize the plot, avoiding any panic or impact. They arrested two people and carried out 15 search warrants. Rio's free open air concert on Copacabana Beach was bigger than Madonna's last year and historic for Lady Gaga. On social media, she said seeing the crowd of more than 2 million people, her biggest ever, took her breath away. For NPR News, I'm Julia Carneiro in Rio. Flyers are filing a number of complaints after United Airlines announced over the weekend

that it's getting rid of some three dozen daily flights at one of the busiest U.S. airports. The move follows major air traffic control problems there. And as NPR's Amy Held reports, it also comes because of a long-time staffing shortage. United announced the cancellation of 35 round-trip flights every day from New York Airport because the technology air traffic controllers rely on has, quote, failed. In a statement, CEO Scott Kirby says it's clear the airport cannot handle the planes scheduled to operate there. This weekend at Newark, Odette Fortier planned to join her tour group but got stuck on the tarmac.

We're going on a tour that we're meeting the group in Athens. We can't go another day. It's not just Newark. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy says unless a whole new air traffic control system is built, people will lose lives. The current system relies in part on floppy disks and World War II-era radar. Upgrade funding is under consideration by Congress. Amy Held, NPR News.

And you're listening to NPR News. Police in Glendale, Arizona say at least nine people were injured when shots were fired at a city restaurant Sunday night. A number of people are being held for questioning, but so far there have been no arrests. Police say there were likely multiple shooters involved, but little else is known about what happened. The incident took place at the El Camrón Gigante, which is a steakhouse near Grande Avenue. Thunderbolts, Marvel's latest team-building exercise, he is off to a decent start at box

offices worldwide, and PR's Bob Mandello has our details. For a film about decidedly minor Marvel characters, Thunderbolts did just fine. You feel fulfilled? Yeah, so fulfilled. By the end of the weekend, it will have taken in about $76 million in North America and another $86 million overseas, for a total of $162 million in three days. That's hardly huge for a Marvel movie, but Thunderbolts wasn't hugely expensive to produce. It's expected to play well for much of the summer.

Also performing well, the third weekend of the blues-inflected vampire film Sinners. In three weeks, Sinners has now collected almost $180 million just in North America. Bob Mandelo, NPR News. Despite ongoing ceasefire discussions, the fighting is continuing in Ukraine. Officials in Ukraine say a drone attack by Russia overnight on the capital city of Kyiv injured 11 people, and that includes two children. In Russia, meanwhile, that country's defense ministry says its air defenses shot down 13 Ukrainian drones. I'm Dale Willman, NPR News.

You may have heard that President Trump has issued an executive order seeking to block cranium drones. I'm Dale Willman, NPR News.