NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-08-2025 8PM EDT

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Hurst. President Trump will meet Russian President Putin next Friday in Alaska to talk about the war in Ukraine. It's the first time the leaders will meet face-to-face since 2019. And other than the United Nations, it'll be the first time a Russian president will be on U.S. soil since 2011, when Dimitri Medved met with President Obama. And here's Daniel Kurtzleben has more. This meeting will be very different than what Trump has. had initially seemed to hope for. Earlier this week, he suggested that he and Putin and Zelensky would meet together. Well, that, of course, isn't happening here. And there's been more back and

forth. Trump this week told reporters that Putin would not have to meet with Zelensky as a precondition of meeting with Trump. Now, that comment contradicted other recent reports that said Trump thought it should be a precondition. And Pierce Daniel Kurtzleben reporting. The Trump administration is replacing IRS Commissioner Billy Long just two months after the former Missouri Congressman took over at the agency. And Pierce Scott Horsley reports it's the latest in a string of IRS management shakeups.

A White House spokesman confirmed Billy Long's ouster without offering any explanation. The shakeup took IRS staffers by surprise. For the time being, Treasury Secretary Scott Besson will serve as acting commissioner of the tax collection agency. The IRS churned through four acting commissioners in the early months of the Trump administration before long was confirmed to the post in mid-June,

it's a tumultuous time at the agency, which has laid off thousands of staffers, including nearly a third of its auditors. The IRS is currently gearing up to implement the sweeping changes to tax law in the recently passed GOP budget bill. Scott Horsley, MPR News, Washington. California Governor Gavin Newsom is vowing to put a redistricting question to state voters in a special November election to change the state's congressional map to favor Democratic candidates. That's to counter efforts by Republicans in Texas to obey President Trump's call to give the GOP the edge in five more Texas districts by redrawing the map there. We are talking about emergency measures to respond to what's happening in Texas and we will nullify what happens in Texas. We will pick up

five seats with the consent of the people and that's the difference between the approach we're taking and the approach they're taking. States usually do redistricting at the start of each decade after the census of portions seats among the states. They can still do some of that in the middle of the decade, but unlike Texas, California created an independent commission to try to take partisan politics out of the process. In Montana, a man accused of shooting and killing four people at a bar and anaconda has been captured. Please say 45-year-old Michael Brown, an army vet is accused of killing a bartender and three patrons. says he suffered from mental health issues. You're listening to NPR news.

Cholera outbreaks are continuing to spread across parts of Africa. Within weeks, total cases this year are expected to exceed last year's total. As NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports, ongoing conflict and poor sanitation are largely to blame. So far this year, there have been over 214,000 cases of cholera across 23 African countries, according to a Thursday briefing from Africa-CD. More than 4,500 people have died from the disease, which is spread primarily through contaminated food and water. Areas affected by conflict are especially at risk. Fighting can damage water and sanitation systems, which can spark outbreaks. That partly explains why South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, both experiencing conflict, are especially hard hit. Over the past month,

the DRC has averaged about 2,000 new cases a week. Health officials are set to announce a continent-wide response plan within the next few weeks. Jonathan Lambert and PR News. Apollo 13 Commander James Lovell has died at the age of 97. He was among the first astronauts to leave Earth's orbit and the first to fly, two, and circle the moon. But Apollo 13 was harrowing. Lovell was supposed to be the fifth man to walk on the surface of the moon, but their capsules' oxygen tank exploded and they were stuck for days inside it.

He's the man who called mission control, saying the famous line, Houston, we have a problem. That story was made into the popular 1995 movie Apollo 13. I'm Janine Herbst, NPR News, in Washington. This message comes from NYU Langone. The NYU Langone Health app gives you access to your electronic health record. Keep track of your visits, lab results, and images all in one place. Better Health starts with a better health system.