NPR News Now - NPR News: 06-02-2025 6PM EDT

Episode Date: June 2, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. The Supreme Court today declined to hear a major constitutional challenge to state laws in Maryland and Rhode Island that banned semi-automatic weapons like the AR-15. As NPR's Nneda Totenberg reports, the court was split on whether to hear the case. It takes the votes of four justices to grant review of a lower court decision and in today's case only the court's three most conservative justices to grant review of a lower court decision. And in today's case, only the court's three most conservative justices, Thomas Alito and Gorsuch, voted to hear the appeal. Justice Kavanaugh, who declined to provide the fourth vote needed

to hear the case next term, nonetheless filed a statement calling the lower court decision quote questionable. He gave no reason why he voted against hearing the case, except to say that there will be other similar cases before the court soon that, as he put it, should assist in making the ultimate decision on the AR-15. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington. Four additional victims have now been added to the list, bringing to 12 the number of people injured when a man firebombed a crowd marching in support of Israeli hostages. The suspect, an Egyptian national identified as 45-year-old Mohammed Sabri Soliman, faces charges of attempted murder along with federal hate crime charges. Soliman had apparently overstated Toursviz and, according to DHS, was in the U.S. illegally.

Meanwhile, Jewish groups are speaking out about Sunday's attack. NPR's Jason DeRose reports they're raising concerns about the rise in anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli attacks. Jason DeRose The attack on the March for Their Lives event on Sunday in Boulder, along with the killings at the Jewish Museum in D.C. last month, and the arson attack on the home of the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania have many American Jews on edge. Amy Spitalnik with the Jewish Public Affairs Council says there's a need for more than just the fortifying of synagogues and Jewish community centers. But investment in things like hate crimes prevention grants, in building the sort of inoculation to extremism in the first place that

prevents people from showing up and committing acts of violence like this one. up and committing acts of violence like this one. Spitalnik says the Boulder attack was clearly anti-Semitism, but she doesn't want to see it exploited by the Trump administration to undermine core democratic norms and the rule of law. Jason DeRose, NPR News. Healthy pregnant women and others are worried about changes the Trump administration is making to the COVID-19 vaccines. NPR's Rob Stein has the story.

The Trump administration is no longer recommending the shots for healthy pregnant women, healthy children or healthy adults younger than 65. That means it could be a lot harder for them to get protected against COVID. Lauren Capetti is 30 and lives in Cincinnati. She's about five months pregnant. Why? Why? That's absolutely terrifying. Competti and others will probably still be able to get vaccinated against COVID,

but they'll have to find a doctor willing to prescribe the vaccine and pay for the shot themselves. Rob Stein, NPR News. This is NPR. Your favorite childhood toy is probably still languishing in a landfill, but what if someone else could have borrowed that toy like a book from the library? Reporter Buffy Gorillaz more from Philadelphia. After becoming a mom, Crystal Cuniera started to think about ways to live more sustainably. And the biggest roadblock was the toy box. We had these higher end toys that I didn't want to just get rid of. So my group of friends, we started sharing toys and it just felt like there was something

more there. So it's a pretty simple concept. A toy library is just like a book library, but for toys. You borrow them and you bring them back and exchange them. But Cunhiara runs the Ruta Bega toy library like a business. Families pay up to $65 per month. And then they get to bar four toys at a time with unlimited exchanges. So they literally can come back every single day and exchange one or all of them.

For NPR News, I'm Buffy Gorilla in Philadelphia. Looks like that looming collision between our own Milky Way and the Andromeda galaxies may not be quite as likely as some astronomers had previously thought. The latest study puts the chance of a galactic collision at 50-50 within the next 10 billion years. That's essentially a coin flip of better odds and further out than had been previously put forth. In the past, astronomers had viewed a galaxy collision as likely, if not inevitable.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Astronomy. On Wall Street today the Dow is up 35 points to end the session at 42,305. The NASDAQ closed up 128 points. The S&P 500 rose 24 points. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.