NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-15-2025 6AM EDT

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Christian Wright. President Trump heads to Anchorage. this morning for a high-stakes summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. As NPR's Tamara Keith reports from Alaska, the two leaders will meet one-on-one. President Trump is positioning himself as the key to ending Russia's war in Ukraine because of his relationship with Putin. But Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wasn't invited to this summit. And Trump says his aim today is to feel out whether Putin is serious about peace. I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. We're going to have a meeting with President

Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we'll bring some of the European leaders along, maybe not. Whether that second meeting happens depends on how today's summit goes. The White House says Trump and Putin will hold a joint press conference after they meet. Tamara Keith, NPR News, Anchorage, Alaska. The Trump administration has now named the head of the DEA as Washington, D.C's emergency police Commissioner in the federal takeover of the city's police department. Attorney General Pam Bondi issued the directive last night. She says she's giving Drug Enforcement Administration Commissioner Terry Cole the powers of the local police chief. Bondi says all directives must now get approval from him. Her order also rescinds local policies related to D.C.'s sanctuary city protections. Mayor Muriel

Bowser and D.C.'s Attorney General swiftly rejected Bondi's order, calling it unlawful. The local AG has told the police chief in a letter she isn't legally obligated to follow it. In a virtual meeting, former President Barack Obama rallied Texas Democratic state lawmakers who left the state to block Republican attempts to redraw congressional maps. The GOP is trying to win more seats, so Obama told the group it'll be a long battle. What we all recognize is we can't let a systematic assault on democracy just happen and stand by. The lawmakers announced they'll come back to Texas under certain conditions. The Supreme Court is allowing Mississippi's new social media age verification law to go into effect for now.

Mississippi Public Broadcasting's Will Stribling reports now. The Justice has denied an emergency request from Tech Industry Group Net Choice to block the law while its legal challenge plays out. Net Choice argues the state's age verification and parental consent law violates the First Amendment. And litigation co-director Paul Tasky says it's still on borrowed time. Justice Kavanaugh's concurrence makes clear that Net Choice will ultimately succeed in defending the First Amendment, not just in this case, but across all of Net Choices, ID for speech lawsuits. Kavanaugh wrote that Net Choice is likely to win its case on the merits, but hadn't proven that letting Mississippi's law stay in effect would cause more harm than pausing it.

For NPR News, I'm Will Stribling and Jackson. This is NPR News in Washington. South Korea's new president says he wants to work to restore trust and peace with North Korea. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports this represents a change from the previous South Korean administration, which emphasized military deterrence of the North. President E.J. Myeong spoke on the 80th anniversary of Korea's liberation for more than three decades of Japanese colonial rule. During his speech, E pledged to restore a 2018 agreement with North Korea to halt military activities along the border between them. He said that South Korea does not seek to reunify with the North by absorbing

it, but that a peaceful Korean peninsula must be free of nuclear weapons. North Korea has repeatedly rejected E's overtures and says it has no interest in dialogue with either Seoul or Washington. E plans to meet with Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba before heading to the U.S. for a summit with President Trump later this month. Anthony Kuhn in PR News, Tokyo. Today, Japan is marking 80 years since its surrender in World War II. During an annual ceremony, the Prime Minister told crowds, the remorse and lessons from that war should once again be engraved deeply in our hearts. Air Canada is starting to cancel flights ahead of a potential strike by flight attendants.

If they don't reach a contract agreement with the airline by midnight tonight, they could strike. The union represents 10,000 flight attendants. The airline's C-O says they expect to publish. all flights by tomorrow morning, and that by tomorrow night, the cancellations could affect more than 100,000 Air Canada customers. The flight attendants want higher pay. I'm Christian Wright, and this is NPR News from Washington. I'm Rachel Martin, host of Wildcard from NPR. I've spent years interviewing all kinds of people, and I've realized there are ideas that we all think about, but don't talk about very much. So I made a shortcut, a deck of cards, with questions.

Questions that anyone can answer, questions that go deep into the experiences that shape us. Listen to the Wild Card podcast only from NPR.