NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-21-2025 7PM EDT

Episode Date: August 21, 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.

Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Hurst. A New York Appeals Court throughout a... massive civil fraud penalty against President Trump overturning an order from early 2024. And Pierce-Kat-Lonsdorf reports it would have cost Trump hundreds of millions of dollars. In February 2024, a New York judge found Trump had engaged in fraudulent business practices, exaggerating his wealth and patting his financial statements for lenders and insurers. Trump was ordered to pay $355 million in penalties, now around half a billion with interest, a sum that threatened to wipe out his cash reserves.

But a divided five-judge panel in New York's mid-level appellate division court ruled that penalty was, quote, excessive and eliminated it while declining to overturn the case, meaning Trump can appeal it yet again to New York's highest court. The case was one of several lawsuits against Trump working their way through the courts during the 2024 presidential campaign, including a criminal case in which he was convicted and has also appealed. Kat Lonsdorf, Empire News. California's full legislature has passed a new voting map.

that could give Democrats five additional seats in Congress. It now goes to Gavin Newsom, the governor, for his signature, and will then appear on the ballot for voters to decide in November. Leaders in California say it's in response to Texas's redistricting effort, which aims to secure five more seats for Republicans in the U.S. House. The competition between the country's two biggest states was prompted by President Trump calling for Texas to redistrict ahead of the 2026 midterms.

The Texas Senate could approve the new map in the next several hours as Houston Public Media's Andrew Schneider reports. The map passed the Texas House Wednesday evening and a GOP-dominated Senate committee took it up this morning without hearing any public testimony. Republican State Senator Phil King was clear that he was sponsoring the bill to help the GOP maintain its congressional majority. And I'm very concerned that if the Republicans lost the majority in the U.S. House, that the two years following the midterm, could be very harmful to Texas and to the United States. The committee passed the map on a party-line vote. The full Senate could vote on it as early as tonight. For NPR news, I'm Andrew Schneider in Houston.

Sales of existing homes were up 2% last month from June, and that was higher than economists were expecting. But it's still tough for most people to afford a home, as NPR's Laurel Wamsley reports. Mortgage rates remain pretty high, averaging about 6.6% for a 30-year mortgage. And then home prices have risen a lot. nearly 50 percent in the last five years. That means that many people who want to buy a home

simply can't afford to. The one thing we're seeing now is that prices are softening in some areas. Home values are increasing at their slowest pace in two years. That's largely because there's more inventory. NPR's Laurel Wamsley reporting. Wall Street lower by the closing bell, the Dowdown 152 points. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. The Supreme Court today, in a five to four order, overturned a lower court order, deciding at least temporarily that the National Institutes of Health doesn't need to continue paying out more than $780 million in research grants to projects that the Institute has since stopped funding. But the court also left in place a lower court ruling, the voided NIH memos that enforced the administration's policies. This matter now plays out in the lower court. Light pollution means a longer day for many birds.

And Piersnell Greenfield Voice reports, on average, artificially bright skies extend the birds' daily activities by about an hour. Researchers took advantage of some new devices that can record bird calls and automatically identify hundreds of species. Bird lovers around the world have installed these devices at thousands of sites, creating a growing database of information on bird activity. Brent Pease with Southern Illinois University worked with a colleague to combine this data with satellite information on light pollution, as well as sunrise and sunset times. He says artificial light had a widespread effect. Birds under the brightest skies at night were vocalizing on average for about an additional 50 minutes a day. A report on the findings in the journal Science notes that it's not clear if a longer day is good, bad, or neutral for the birds.

Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News. U.S. Futures contracts are trading higher at this hour. I'm Janine Herbst, and you're listening to NPR News from Washington.