NPR News Now - NPR News: 05-21-2025 3PM EDT

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

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Look, we get it. When it comes to new music, there is a lot of it, and it all comes really fast. But on All Songs Considered, NPR's music recommendation podcast, we'll handpick what we think is the greatest music happening right now and give you your next great listen. So kick back, settle in, get those eardrums wide open, and get your dose of new music from All Songs Considered, only from NPR. dose of new music from all songs considered, only from NPR. Lyle from NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh. President Trump is attempting to pull together various Republican Party factions who've yet to fully endorse his budget bill. Among the most controversial points for some Republicans are deep cuts to Medicaid, food

assistance and other programs on which millions of lower-income Americans rely to help pay for an extension of Trump's 2017 tax cuts. Meanwhile, some fiscal hawks are holding out for deeper spending cuts to keep the deficit from spiraling higher. This hour, Trump's meeting with members of the House Freedom Caucus, including its chair, Representative Andy Harris of Maryland. We want to deliver the president's agenda. The bottom line is, he said, end waste, fraud, and abuse in Medicaid, which is a hugely popular issue with the American people. And he said,

end the green new scam. House Republicans are trying to meet a self-imposed Memorial Day deadline to get the bill to the Senate. President Trump hosted South African President Sarah Ramaphosa today. When remarks turned to a Q&A with reporters earlier, Trump was asked why he granted refugee status to a group of white South Africans while the U.S. revoked the protected status of Afghans, Venezuelans, and others. We have many people that feel they're being persecuted and they're coming to the United States.

So we take from many locations if we feel there's persecution or genocide going on. Meanwhile, a federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration violated a court order he issued last month against deporting migrants to countries other than their own without granting them due process. Today the judge was overseeing a hearing in Boston on an emergency motion that lawyers filed on behalf of clients who said they were deported after being told they were being sent to South Sudan.

Hospitals are seeing an influx of children suffering from malnutrition in the Middle East. Israel says it has allowed some aid into Gaza after more than three months of a total blockade. But as NPR's Hadil Al-Shalchi tells us, aid groups say it is wholly inadequate. In the patient friend's hospital's malnutrition department in Gaza City, babies scream from hunger.

NPR's Anas Baba was there. We can see that dozens of families, mothers, fathers, with children here are waiting. Most of the children here are pale. They didn't even being playful or joyful. 28-year-old mother Ilham Abdelhafid was in the waiting room with her one-year-old daughter. She said she has no milk to feed her baby and just gives her water. Israel said it allowed a quote minimal amount of aid

into Gaza this week. The UN said the aid hasn't reached those in need and that the denial of essential supplies to civilians risks breaching international law. Hadeel Al-Shalchi, NPR News, Tel Aviv. On Wall Street, US stocks are trading sharply lower this hour, with the Dow down 756 points or 1.7 percent. At 41,921, the S&P is down 1.4 percent.

Nasdaq is also down more than 1 percent. This is NPR News. Penn State is weighing a plan to shut down seven of its 19 campuses. Universities facing serious enrollment declines. More from NPR's Janaki Mehta. The Penn State Governing Board will soon decide the fate of the seven campuses and the future of the state school. The board's proposal to do so cited challenges including, quote, declining enrollment,

stagnant state funding, rising operational costs. The proposal also says Penn State is not alone. The problem facing universities comes from what's called the enrollment cliff. There are fewer high school graduates heading to college, both because of lower birth rates and because more students are opting for alternatives to college. In the coming years, many higher education institutions will face similar existential decisions. Penn State's governing board will vote on the potential closures Thursday evening. Janaki Mehta, NPR News. What gives us a certain sensation in our teeth, aching or zinging? NPR's Ari Daniels says it appears to come from ancient fish.

Scientists have been reasonably sure our teeth evolved from the bumpy armored exoskeletons of prehistoric fish. Yara Haridi is an evolutionary biologist at the University of Chicago. It becomes very advantageous to have pointy things around your mouth. But researchers didn't know whether there was more to the bumps than self-defense. Haridi and her colleagues have now shown, through experiments on both extinct and living animals that that armor likely allowed the ancient fish to sense the water around them. They lived in mucky, shallow bottomed seas.

They probably needed every inch of sensation they could get. Hundreds of millions of years later, our teeth, which originated from that armor, have inherited the ability to sense the water. Listen to this podcast, sponsor free on Amazon Music with a Prime membership or any podcast app by subscribing to NPR News Now Plus at plus dot NPR dot org. That's plus dot NPR dot org.