NPR News Now - NPR News: 05-16-2025 6AM EDT

Episode Date: May 16, 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 Korova Kuhlmann. Representatives from Ukraine and Russia are in Istanbul, Turkey. They're supposed to be holding direct negotiations about ending Russia's war in Ukraine. Expectations for success are low after Russian President Vladimir Putin did not attend.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was in Turkey, but he's not at these talks. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is there. And Piers Michelle Kellerman reports he's sounding pessimistic about the negotiations. Secretary Rubio says President Trump is impatient and wants the war to end. But the Kremlin balked at the idea of high-level talks with Ukraine. So now Rubio is talking about a one-on-one between Presidents Trump and Vladimir Putin. I think he's ready to have that engagement and determine once and for all if there's a path forward and what that path is. And it's my assessment that I don't think we're going to have a breakthrough here until the President and President Putin interact directly on this topic.

Rubio sounded disappointed that the Russians sent a low-level team to Turkey Turkey so he doesn't expect much to come out of the talks in Istanbul. Michelle Kellerman and PR News, the State Department. The US Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday on whether President Trump can use an executive order to overturn birthright citizenship for some Americans. It's a right guaranteed by the Constitution. But the justices also looked at how lower court district judges have blocked this executive order and other ones that Trump has signed. Some justices are concerned that these judicial blocks, called injunctions, may go too far. Amanda Frost is a law professor at the University of Virginia.

The nationwide injunction question is vital not just to the birthright citizenship litigation, but to a large number of this president and previous president's executive branch policies. There's now 40 nationwide injunctions in place against President Trump's executive branch policies and of course he's issued 150 executive orders. She spoke to NPR's all things considered. There's no public transit train service today. In New Jersey, the rail agency and a key labor union have failed to reach a new contract. Bruce Convisa reports the rail workers are now on strike.

More than 450 train engineers walked off the job demanding a larger pay increase. The train engineers earn an average gross salary of $135,000 per year, according to New Jersey Transit, but union officials dispute that figure. Exactly how large of a pay increase the engineers want is unclear, but union leaders say that engineers at other regional rail services get at least $10 more per hour. Those rail companies, as well as New Jersey Transit bus service, are not affected by the strike. The two sides actually shook hands on a deal back in March, but the union membership voted it down overwhelmingly in April. New Jersey Transit officials are urging its customers to work from home if at all possible.

For NPR News, I'm Bruce Convyser in New York. You're listening to NPR. New York. You're listening to NPR. As many as nine tornadoes crashed through Wisconsin and Minnesota yesterday, significant damage has been reported in the town of Juneau, Wisconsin, north of Milwaukee. The storms have cut power to the Great Lakes region. A tracking site says more than a quarter of a million customers in Michigan are without power. The WNBA season tips off tonight. The league is looking to build on last year's historic season. That's when ratings and attendance were

up. NBAers Becky Sullivan has this preview. The first game will include the debut of the hyped rookie Paige Becker's who just last month won the NCAA title with her UConn Huskies. She was just chosen first overall in the draft by the Dallas Wings. We will take on last year's league runner-up in the Minnesota Lynx and their MVP candidate, Nafisa Collier. On Saturday, there are two marquee games, first a heavyweight matchup between the New York Liberty, the defending champs, and the Las Vegas Aces, the great team they knocked out en route to their title last season. Then Caitlin Clark and the Indiana Fever will take on Angel Reese and the Chicago Sky.

The WNBA has extended the regular season from 40 to 44 games and the league has added a 13th team, the Golden State Valkyries, whose first game is Friday night. Becky Sullivan in PR News. The maker of the video game Fortnite says that big tech company Apple is blocking it from its app store. Epic Games now says that Fortnite will be offline on devices that use Apple's software system until Apple unblocks the game. This is the latest development in a five-year-long antitrust lawsuit that Epic Games brought against Apple. Epic Games has prevailed in much of the case, but Apple still controls access to its app store. This is an- On Fridays, the 1A Podcast is all about helping you cut through the info fog and get to what's important in the news.

Close out the week with us on our Friday News Roundup. Hear from reporters who've been embedded with the biggest news of the week. Join us every week for the Friday News Roundup. Listen to the 1A Podcast from NPR and WAMU.