NPR News Now - NPR News: 06-04-2025 4AM EDT

Episode Date: June 4, 2025

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These days there is a lot of news. It could be hard to keep up with what it means for you, your family, and your community. Consider This from NPR is 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, the backstory, and analysis you need to understand our rapidly changing world. Listen to the Consider This podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News, I'm Giles Snyder. Elon Musk is blasting President Trump's signature spending bill as a disgusting abomination. The remarks follow Musk's departure as head of the White House's cost-cutting initiative. Here's NPR's Bobby Allen reporting.

In a post on X, Musk has escalated his attacks on President Trump's big, beautiful bill, which is awaiting a vote in the Senate. Musk writes the legislation is a, quote, massive, outrageous, pork-filled congressional spending bill, saying the House lawmakers who passed it should be ashamed. The bill would cut taxes, boost military and border security spending, and slashes funding to Medicaid and clean energy programs. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill would add more than $2 trillion to the deficit. In a White House briefing, Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt said Trump knows where Musk stood on the bill, and that does not change Trump's

opinion. Bobby Allen, NPR News. House Speaker Mike Johnson pledging to put a rescission package the White House sent to Congress to a vote next week. He issued a statement on social media last night. The Trump administration seeking to claw back more than eight billion dollars from foreign aid programs and more than a billion from public radio and television. Education Secretary Linda McMahon defending President Trump's latest budget proposal. NPR's Corey Turner reports on her appearance before a Senate subcommittee. Secretary McMahon told senators as she helps close the Department of Education her goal is clear.

Make education better, fairer, and more accountable by ending federal overreach and empowering families, schools, and states who best know the needs of their students. The problem for McMahon is that the department's budget proposal would cut funding by 15 percent, which means eliminating programs that enjoy bipartisan support. For example, Pell grants for low-income college students would face a steep cut. McMahon also got tough questions from Democrats and Republicans about ending the TRIO and GEAR UP programs, which help low-income and first-gen students access college. Corey Turner, NPR News.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says the wife and five children of Mohammed Zabri Suleiman, the man accused of throwing Molotov cocktails at demonstrators in Boulder, are in federal custody. Now Mohammed's despicable actions will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, but we're also investigating to what extent his family knew about this horrific attack, if they had any knowledge of it or if they provided support to it. The White House says Soleiman's family members could be quickly deported. He is an Egyptian national.

Authorities say he overstayed a tourist visa and an expired work permit. Soleiman faces federal hate crime and state attempted murder charges. Authorities in Arkansas have released a photo rendering of a convicted murderer and former small town police chief, Grant Hardin. Hardin is known as the devil in the Ozarks. The rendering shows what he may look like 10 days after he escaped from the Calico Rock prison. This is NPR News.

President Trump is making good on his announcement last week to double the tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. The White House says he signed an executive order Tuesday evening, setting the tariff rate at 50 percent to take effect today. Today is also the deadline the Trump administration set for U.S. trading partners to submit proposals that could help them avoid what the president calls his liberation day tariffs. They are set to take effect next month. The Democratic mayor of Newark is suing the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey and a Homeland Security official.

NPR's Ryan Lucas reports. Newark Mayor Ross Baraka filed his lawsuit against acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba and a Homeland Security Investigations official named Ricky Patel. Baraka accuses them both of false arrest and malicious prosecution. He also accuses Habba, who was Trump's personal attorney, of defamation. Federal authorities arrested Baraka outside the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility near Newark last month. Federal prosecutors charged him with misdemeanor trespass, but later dropped the charge. A judge admonished prosecutors over the case and questioned what he called the mayor's quote-unquote

hasty arrest. Now in his lawsuit, Baraka is seeking compensatory and punitive damages, but does not specify an amount. Ryan Lucas, NPR News, Washington. Two Americans are preparing to play against each other at the French Open Tennis Tournament. Former U.S. Open champion Coco Goff is set to play this year's Australian Open champion Madison Keys. There are quarterfinal matches to get underway in about an hour. I'm Jai Hill Snyder, NPR News. President Donald Trump is testing the power of the presidency in ways that are stressing I'm Jile Snyder, NPR News.