NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-18-2025 1PM EDT

Episode Date: August 18, 2025

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These days, there's so much news. It can be hard to keep up with what it all means for you, your family, and your community. The Consider This Podcast from NPR features our award-winning journalism. Six days a week, we bring you a deep dive on a news story and provide the context and analysis that helps you make sense of the news. We get behind the headlines. We get to the truth. Listen to the Consider This podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi-Seng. European and NATO leaders are joining Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House this hour. NPR's Greg Myrie reports on the high stakes meeting President Trump's hosting in a bit to end the Russia-Ukraine war. Zelensky will have quite the entourage, many top political figures in Europe, the leaders of Britain, France, Germany, and Italy, the head of NATO, the president of the European Commission.

Pretty remarkable that all these leaders cleared their schedules and agreed to go to Washington after the Trump Zelensky meeting was announced. Saturday. This is a major effort to show European unity and solidarity with Ukraine, where at this crucial moment is Trump makes this concentrated effort to find a solution to the war. NPR's Greg Miery, after Zelensky was excluded from last Friday summit between the U.S. and Russia, European leaders want to weigh in on Trump's suggestions of a land swap, which Zelensky opposes, and security guarantees that Russia will not invade again. President Trump has posted on social media that he plans to sign an executive order to eliminate mail-in voting and voting machines ahead of next year's midterms. Election experts, however, say this is not something that a president

has a power to do. Here's NPR's Ashley Lopez. Trump said in a statement that states are merely an agent for the federal government when it comes to tabulating votes. He also said states must run their elections, however the federal government tells them to. But Tammy Patrick with the Election Center, which is the National Association of Election Officials, says that's actually not how this works. There's no foundation in any sort of federal law that would provide a president the opportunity or authority to, in fact, dictate how states conduct their elections. She said that includes deciding what methods of voting states can use as well as how those votes are counted. Ashley Lopez, NPR News. Yesterday, Israeli staged one of their biggest protests in

nearly two years of war. Organizers say hundreds of thousands of people rallied to and the Gaza war and reach a hostage deal with Hamas? And peers Daniel Lestrian reports from Tel Aviv. Protest organizers released aerial footage of masses, filling downtown Tel Aviv at the end of Sunday's day of demonstrations. They said hundreds of thousands of people rallied, shutting down roads across Israel, and protesting outside the homes of government ministers.

Many businesses closed, too. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said calls to end the war now before Hamas has defeated, only strengthened Hamas. Negotiations for a ceasefire broke down weeks ago. Now Qatar and Egypt are working on a new proposal. Israel is demanding the release of all of the hostages Hamas is holding. The previous proposal spoke of releasing only half the hostages for a temporary ceasefire. Daniel Estrin, NPR News, Tel Aviv.

From Washington, this is NPR News. To a lot of people, rats are nuisances. They can carry disease and wreck property. Now city officials near Boston are trying a different approach to shrink the rat population in their region. Ari Daniel reports are trying a method of birth control. Rats outwit are traps and attempts at poisoning can backfire. So the cities of Somerville and Cambridge are introducing bait that contains an anti-fertility chemical that targets female rats. So it basically stops the pregnancy before it starts. Sam Lipson is the senior director of environmental health in Cambridge, and he's overseeing a field trial of the chemical. The birth

control doesn't lead to permanent infertility. The goal is not total eradication. Danine Williams is a community volunteer with the trial. I have no illusion that we can actually outsmart the rats, but if we could just reduce them, that would be good. If it works, the cities will likely adopt the approach as part of their broader rat control strategy. For NPR news, I'm Ari Daniel. Words like Skibidi and Alulu can make the next game of Scrabble. Now, they're among more than 6,000 new words the Cambridge Dictionary, has added. Colin McIntosh, the lexical program manager for the world's largest online dictionary, says, internet culture is changing the English language. Enter Skibidi, a nonsensical slang coined by the creator of an animated YouTube series that can mean bad or cool.

This is NPR News.