NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-23-2025 10AM EDT

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Giles Snyder. The Republican-led Texas State Senate has given final approval to the state's controversial new congressional map. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick announced the result at the end of a late-night session. 18 eyes and 8 nays. And members, for the record, there were more than five seconds to the motion. The motion is adopted. Texas Governor Greg Abbott is. is expected to sign off on the new map requested by President Trump to boost Republican prospects

to retain control of the U.S. House and next year's midterm elections. Texas Democrats signaling there will be a legal fight, and the move has set off similar efforts in Democratic-led California and potentially other states. A federal judge in California has extended the preliminary injunction blocking the Trump administration from denying federal funding to dozens of cities and counties over policies that limit cooperation, with federal immigration authorities. The Trump administration says it has now arrested more than 700 people in Washington, D.C., as part of its mission to crack down on crime in the nation's capital.

But as NPR's Meg Anderson reports arrest data does not tell the whole story of public safety. Data from the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department indicate that arrests in D.C. have ramped up during Trump's crime initiative compared to previous years. But policing experts cautioned that more arrests do not necessarily translate to more public safety. John Roman is a researcher with Nork at the University of Chicago. You can imagine in situations where you send a lot of officers out into a very small area, they're told what the goals are for that day. And if they're told that, you know, we're making arrest today, they'll make that arrest. NPR has asked for the names of those arrested in D.C. and what they were arrested for, from both MPD and from the Trump administration. Neither has

provided it. Meg Anderson and PR News. President Trump says he could extend the deadline again for the Chinese-owned video app TikTok to be sold or shut down. Trump likes the platform and now thinks national security concerns are overrated. Here's him peers John Ruich. Congress passed a law last year that forces TikTok owner bite dance to sell the hugely popular platform to non-Chinese owners or face a ban in the United States. But Trump issued three executive orders giving the platform a reprieve. The latest one is due to expire on September 17. This week, the White House launched a TikTok account, and Trump was asked if that meant

he was no longer concerned about security around the app. I'm a fan of TikTok. My kids like TikTok, young people love TikTok, and we can keep it going good. Trump says he's going to, quote, watch the security concerns. As far as orchestrating the platform's sale, Trump says there are American buyers,

but he hasn't spoken to Chinese leader Xi Jinping about it yet. John Rewich, NPR News, Washington. This is NPR. News. Lyle Menendez has been denied parole. The decision in California came a day after his younger brother Eric was blocked from being freed. The two have spent more than 30 years in prison for murdering their parents in 1989. Both claimed abuse by their father. The Supreme Court's ruling Thursday allowing the National Institutes of Health to pause nearly $800 million in funding for hundreds of research grants seen as a setback for many in the research

community. From member station GBAH, Craig LaMult, reports that the high court also left in place a lower court ruling that the grants were improperly terminated. The grants have been terminated because they focused on topics like diversity, transgender issues, health equity, and other areas of research the Trump administration doesn't support. In June, a federal judge ordered the NIH to start paying those grants again. But the Supreme Court said Thursday that as an appeal moves forward, they can put those payments on pause. Jesse Rossman of the ACLU is representing the plaintiffs. We think that that decision is a setback for public health, but we will continue to pursue any and every option available to us to make sure that the unlawfully terminated grants

continue to be restored. The Supreme Court let stand the lower courts ruling that the Trump administration used an unlawful justification for terminating the grants. The case now goes back to the lower courts. For NPR News, I'm Craig Lamolt in Boston. In South Williams, Fort Pennsylvania, the right to play for the Little League World Series Championship is on the line today. winners of the U.S. and international brackets will play for the title tomorrow. The team from Fairfield, Connecticut, will play a team from Las Vegas today, and Chinese Taipei will play Aruba. I'm Jail Snyder. This is NPR News.