NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-02-2025 3PM EDT

Episode Date: August 2, 2025

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There's a lot of news happening. You want to understand it better, but let's be honest, you don't want it to be your entire life either. Well, that's sort of like our show, Here and Now Anytime. Every weekday on our podcast, we talk to people all over the country about everything from political analysis to climate resilience, video games. We even talk about dumpster diving on this show. Check out Here and Now Anytime, a daily podcast from NPR and WBUR. Noor Rahm Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Noor Rahm. Jeffrey Epstein associate Glenn Maxwell has been transferred from a Florida prison to

a lower security facility in Texas. She's serving a 20-year sentence for helping Epstein sexually abuse children. No reason for the change has been given. It comes a week after she met twice with Deputy Attorney General Todd Glantz about the case. President Trump was asked this week if he plans to pardon her. NPR's Don Gagne has more. He answered with a cryptic, this is a quote, well I'm allowed to give her a pardon. Then he added that no one has approached him with it, and he continued, this part's a quote

too, right now it would be inappropriate to talk about it. So look, this is a story the White House just wishes would go away, even as such statements very much keep it alive. NPR's Don Gagne, U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, continues his trip in Israel. He visited a much criticized food distribution site in Gaza yesterday. Today in Tel Aviv, he met with the families of some of the remaining hostages still being held in Gaza. NPR's Emily Fang reports.

Previous ceasefire negotiations to bring back 10 of the approximately 20 living hostages stalled late last month. Now Witkoff says in a statement released by an organization representing hostages' families that the goal is to bring back all 50 hostages dead or alive. The issue of the hostages has divided Israeli society, with the hostages' families accusing Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of delaying a ceasefire that would bring their loved ones back. Vicky Cohen is the mother of Nimrod Cohen, an Israeli soldier kidnapped during the Hamas

lead attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. Many families praised Wyckoff and President Trump for their help, but Cohen says at the end of the day it is the government of Israel that is responsible for bringing the hostages home. Emily Fang, NPR News. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is barring several major medical groups from taking part in making vaccine recommendations. NPR's Ping Huang reports. For decades, the CDC's Vaccine Advisory Committee worked closely with medical groups like the American

Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association. Now, the CDC is kicking them out of the process. In the text of an email reviewed by NPR, the CDC accused professional medical groups of being biased in favor of their constituents and barred them from participating in behind-the-scenes meetings where data and policy get debated. The move happened days after the Senate confirmed Susan Manares as the CDC's new director, and weeks after Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. replaced the members of the committee with his own picks. In a statement, eight of these medical groups said they were disappointed, alarmed, and

worried that the move would further undermine trust in vaccines. Ping Huang, NPR News. This is NPR News. This is NPR News. A federal appeals court ruled last night that the Trump administration may not make immigration-related arrests in Los Angeles without probable cause. The three-judge panel upheld a lower court finding that agents were basing their stops on factors such as race, appearance, or occupation, in violation of the Constitution. The city of Twinsburg, Ohio is seeing double this weekend, as it hosts the world's largest annual gathering of twins.

From member station WKSU, Kabir Bhatia has more. It began in 1976 as a small parade of twins, part of Twinsburg marking the nation's bicentennial. Every August, it's like a human Noah's Ark in the city near Cleveland that was founded by twins in the early 1800s. Andy Miller has participated every year, often alongside his twin sister. He's now the festival's executive director. A lot of the twins in their normal day probably don't acknowledge their twin ship as much as they do on that weekend. They often say that this is the only place where I don't feel out of place or as an oddity.

In five decades more than 84,000 sets of twins, triplets and multiples have visited Twins Days. For NPR News, I'm Kabir Bhatia in Twinsburg, Ohio. A SpaceX Dragon capsule docked with the International Space Station early this morning, roughly 16 hours after it was launched with the International Space Station early this morning, roughly 16 hours after it was launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. It delivered a four-person crew, two NASA astronauts, a Japanese astronaut, and a Russian cosmonaut as part of a normal crew rotation. Their mission is to last about six months.

I'm Noor Rahm. NPR News in Washington. These days there's so much news it can be hard to keep up with what it all means for I'm Nora Rahm, NPR News in Washington.