NPR News Now - NPR News: 05-15-2025 4AM EDT

Episode Date: May 15, 2025

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These days, there's a lot of news. It can be hard to keep up with what it means for you, your family, and your community. Consider this from NPR as a podcast that helps you make sense of the news. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a story and provide the context, backstory, and analysis you need to understand our rapidly changing world. Listen to the Consider This Podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shae Stevens. President Trump is facing growing criticism for accepting a $400 million luxury jet

from Qatar's royal family. Some of that criticism is coming from Republicans, including Texas U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who addressed the matter on CNBC. I'm not a fan of Qatar. I think they have a really disturbing pattern of funding theocratic lunatics who want to murder us, funding Hamas and Hezbollah. And that's a real problem.

I also think the plane poses significant espionage and surveillance problems. So we'll see how this issue plays out, but I certainly have concerns. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy says an upcoming vote on U.S. arms sales to Qatar will give fellow Democrats a chance to make Republicans go on record about the plane. President Trump says the luxury jet is being gifted to the Defense Department and not to him personally. At the U.S. Supreme Court today, the justices will hear historic arguments over the Constitution's guarantee of automatic citizenship to all

babies born in the U.S. More from NPR's Nina Totenberg. The 14th Amendment to the Constitution enacted after the Civil War says, quote, all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States. But President Trump has long claimed that there's no such birthright citizenship guarantee in the Constitution, and on his first day in office this year, he issued an executive order barring citizenship for any child born in the U.S. whose parents entered the country illegally or with a temporary visa. Every court who have reviewed Trump's order has struck it down as unconstitutional and

barred its enforcement everywhere in the country. But at the Supreme Court today, Trump's lawyers will argue that district court judges should not have the power to issue such nationwide court orders. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington. Danielle Pletka Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was in the hot seat at a House hearing on concerns over failing infrastructure at Newark International Airport. NPR's Windsor Johnston has more. Lawmakers say outdated radar systems, delays, and safety concerns reflect a broader break in the country's aviation infrastructure. Testifying before a House committee, Secretary Sean Duffy said the administration is working urgently to address delays at Newark.

We're working at lightning speed and pace to get this resolved in Newark. Again, today we're having, the FAA is having a conversation about how all the airlines can come together to reduce the flights at Newark. So if you book your flight, you know, what's gonna fly the hearing comes amid a series of near misses and growing public Frustration over the safety and reliability of the nation's air travel system Windsor-Johnston NPR news, Washington US futures are lower in after hours trading on Wall Street. This is NPR Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. defended the changes to his agency during a congressional hearing Wednesday,

saying that he will create more efficiency. In back-to-back hearings, a bipartisan group of congressional lawmakers grilled Kennedy on his policies on vaccine and cancer research, as well as the staffing cuts and funding freezes at HHS. The proceedings became heated at times when Kennedy did not provide more details about the changes, he says, were made by Elon Musk. A federal judge in West Virginia is blocking the Trump administration's attempts to cut a health monitoring program for coal workers.

As Curtis Tate of West Virginia Public Broadcasting reports, the program focuses on an incurable deadly lung disease. U.S. District Judge Irene Berger issued a preliminary injunction against the Department of Health and Human Services. HHS had issued termination notices to the staff of the Coalworker Health Surveillance Program based in Morgantown, West Virginia, and place them on administrative leave. Berger said in a 31-page decision that shutting down the program would cause irreparable harm

to coal miners facing black lung disease. The Health Surveillance Program screens coal miners for the disease and approves their applications for job transfers that can protect their health. A West Virginia coal miner who was diagnosed with early-stage black lung brought the lawsuit against HHS last month. For NPR News, I'm Curtis Tate in Charleston, West Virginia. The CDC says U.S. deaths from drug overdoses were down 27 percent last year. That compares

to 2023. This is NPR News. Does the idea of listening to political news freak you out? Well, don't sweat it. The is NPR News.