NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-22-2025 10AM EDT

Episode Date: August 22, 2025

NPR News: 08-22-2025 10AM EDTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Live from NPR News, I'm Corva Coleman. Stocks open higher this morning as investors listen to what Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has to say. NPR Scott Horsley reports Powell is speaking at this hour to a conference in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. Investors first want to know what the central bank might do about interest rates when policymakers meet in three and a half weeks. Markets are betting the Fed will lower its benchmark rate by a quarter percentage point, but we'll get two more key pieces of information before that decision. a readout on both the job market and inflation for the month of August. Powell will also discuss the Fed's long-term strategy for trying to balance its twin goals

of promoting stable prices and maximum employment. The Central Bank's just finished updating that strategy for the first time in five years. This is Powell's last address to the Jackson Hole Conference as Fed Chair. He and his central bank colleagues have been under intense pressure from President Trump to lower interest rates. Scott Horsley, MPR News, Washington. The FBI says it has conducted activity authorized. by a court at the home of Ambassador John Bolton. The search is outside Washington, D.C. Bolton was the national security advisor to President Trump in his first term.

Bolton is now a fierce Trump critic, who has spoken out repeatedly. Trump polled Bolton's security clearance and his protective detail, even though Bolton has been threatened by Iran's government. The Texas State Senate is poised to pass a congressional map today. It redraws state congressional districts, and it aims to flip five. Texas Democratic seats in the U.S. House of Representatives to Republican control. California state officials are responding. They'll put a measure to voters this fall that aims to flip five Republican seats to Democratic control.

U.S. Congressman Pete Aguilar believes California voters will approve the measure. Symbolically, this is incredibly important. Just as Texas takes five seats because Donald Trump says so, California will match that. Officials in several other states are also considering redistricting. A federal judge in Miami is ordering the shutdown of an immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades. President Trump and state officials call it alligator alcatraz. NPR's Greg Allen reports environmental groups sued to block the facility. Environmental groups filed a lawsuit saying that the hasty construction of the detention center without public input or an environmental impact statement violated federal law.

Florida and the Trump administration argued that because it was built by the state, federal law didn't apply. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams disagreed, noting that the camp was built at the request of the administration and that all immigration enforcement activities at the camp are under federal control. Quoting an earlier court decision, she said, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and looks like a duck, then it's a duck. Williams ordered all activities at the site to shut down within 60 days. Florida says it's appealing her decision. Greg Allen, NPR News, Miami. On Wall Street, the Dow's up 650 points.

This is NPR. The World Authority on Food Insecurity has declared famine now exists in northern Gaza. The group of experts says over half a million Palestinians could die of starvation. Israel rejects the findings of the panel and says it overlooked Israeli data on aid deliveries. The findings come after nearly two years of war and Israeli restrictions on aid entering Gaza. Almost 20 years ago, Hurricane Katrina stunned the country, since this disaster scientists have made great strides in forecasting and understanding hurricanes. NPR's Alejandra Burunda reports on their progress and how it might stall. After Katrina, the federal government decided it wanted

to make better hurricane forecasts. So it developed a program called the Hurricane Forecast Improvement Project. Efforts focused on making better computer models and getting better observations of the storms themselves. And it worked really well. Gabe Becky is a scientist at Princeton University. That was one of those investments in research that paid off. Forecasts are so much better now, they save the country about $2 billion per hurricane by helping people plan better for the disaster. That's according to the National Bureau of Economic Research. But the Trump administration has cut funding and support for many of the entities involved. And now scientists worry progress could stall. Alejandro Burundah, NPR News. Meanwhile, Hurricane Aaron continues to pull away from North

America. It never made landfall, but the storm is so gigantic it's causing dangerous rip currents or warnings posted from Florida up to the Canadian border. This is NPR.