NPR News Now - NPR News: 05-20-2025 5AM EDT

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

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Conductor Robert Franz says a good melody captures our attention. And then it moves you through time. Music is architecture in time. If you engage in the moment with what you're listening to, you do lose a sense of the time around you. How we experience time. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dave Mattingly. President Trump says he remains confident a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine will soon be reached. Trump was speaking to reporters in the Oval Office yesterday following a two-hour phone

call with Russian President Vladimir Putin, a conversation Trump described as having gone very well. Speaking in Sochi, Russia, Putin said he's willing to work on a memorandum on a possible peace agreement. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appears before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee today. As NPR's Michelle Kellerman reports, Rubio is expected to face tough questions from Democratic lawmakers. The last time Rubio sat before his former committee was in January for his confirmation hearing and he was approved unanimously.

But this time around Democrats are expected to raise objections about the way he's dismantled the U.S. Agency for International Development. In her prepared remarks, Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire says the Trump administration has, quote, eviscerated six decades of American foreign policy investments undercutting the nation's ability to compete with countries like China. She says while Rubio cut most U.S. foreign assistance, China has increased its diplomatic budget

and is trying to present itself around the world as a more reliable partner than the U.S. Michelle Kelliman, NPR News, Washington. The U.S. Supreme Court is allowing the Trump administration to strip legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans who are in the U.S. while litigation surrounding them continues in lower courts. The high court is putting on hold

the ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place temporary legal status for the Venezuelans. The Supreme Court's ruling potentially exposes them to deportation. The Trump administration is allowing the restart of a major wind farm project off the coast of New York. As NPR's Ava Puchach reports, the Interior Department lifted the stop work order after pressure from New York's governor. New York Governor Kathy Hochul says she pressed the federal government for weeks to lift the stop work order on Empire Wind 1, developed by Norwegian energy company Equinor. When completed, the project is expected to deliver

enough electricity to power 500,000 homes and create more than 1,000 jobs. In a statement, Hokel thanked President Trump for getting the project back on track, saying more than 1,000 union jobs were on the line. Trump is a long-time critic of wind power. The administration had paused construction on the project, claiming the approval process had been rushed.

New York State has a goal of developing 9,000 megawatts in offshore wind energy by 2035. Ava Pugac, NPR News. This is NPR News from Washington. Tornado and flood watches are in effect across most of Kentucky this morning, days after tornadoes killed more than two dozen people in Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia. Most of those who died were in southeastern Laurel County, Kentucky. The National Weather Service says more rain and thunderstorms are likely today across the state.

Tornadoes were reported late yesterday in areas of Oklahoma and Nebraska. For the second time in 15 years, the state of Indiana has executed a death row inmate. 45-year-old Benjamin Ritchie was put to death by lethal injection early this morning. He was convicted of killing a police officer 25 years ago. Indiana resumed executions last December. French authorities say they've located the bust of the late Doors singer Jim Morrison. It was stolen from his grave site in Paris 37 years ago. The BBC's Patti McGuire has more. Ten years after his sudden death in the French capital in 1971, a

white marble sculpture of the doors front man was placed on Morrison's headstone at Père Lachaise Cemetery. It quickly became a focal point for the legions of nostalgic rock fans who flocked there to tell the charismatic singer, hello I love you. Quickly it became covered in graffiti and then in 1988 it disappeared. Nearly 40 years later the bust has turned up in Paris, discovered by chance during a search by French police investigating a fraud case, slightly greyer but still covered in adoring graffiti.

That's the BBC's Paddy Maguire reporting. I'm Dave Mattingly, NPR News in Washington. Tariffs, recessions, how Colombian drug cartels gave us blueberries all year long, that's the kind of thing the Planet Money podcast explains. I'm Sarah Gonzalez, and on Planet Money, we help you understand the economy and how things all around you came to be the way they are. Para que sepas. So you know. Listen to the Planet Money podcast from NPR.