NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-23-2025 7PM EDT

Episode Date: August 23, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Hurst. Texas is a signature away from having its newly drawn congressional maps in effect. State lawmakers passed the bill early this morning. The map gives Republicans an edge in five districts held by Democrats. The Texas newsrooms, Blaise Ganey, has more. Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signled that he will sign the new maps into law. It comes after President Trump called on the state to redistrict last month. But state Democrats say the maps are illegal.

Senator Boris Miles of Houston says they racially gerrymander in the ethnically diverse city of Houston, where he said some communities have been bunched together with others broken apart to dilute their voting power. He says he doesn't accept Republican denials that race was not a factor. I want you to know I thoroughly disagree with you because Senate District 18 is more than packed. Senator's new districts are likely to be highlighted during a potential court challenge. For the Texas Newsroom, I'm Blaise Ganey in Austin. Delivering products from Europe to the U.S. is about to get a bit trickier. Many parcel companies and national postal services in Europe

are temporarily pausing business shipments to the U.S. As Empir's Kamila Dominovsky reports, it's all because of a new tariff-related rule. There's a long-standing exception, some call it a loophole, called the de minimis rule. An imported package worth less than $800 can carry no tariff at all. The Trump administration has already eliminated that rule for goods from China and Hong Kong, and starting this coming Friday, it's going away for goods from all countries. Deutsche Post in Germany, La Post in France, Correos in Spain, and other European postal services say they have unanswered questions and need time to make new systems.

So for now, they are pausing U.S.-bound parcels of goods. Letters and gifts worth less than 100 bucks are not affected. Camila Dominozki, NPR News. Trump administration has halted construction of a nearly complete wind farm off the southern coast of New England. Connecticut and Rhode Island were counting on the project to help them transition to renewable energy sources. From member station, the public's radio, Ben Berkey reports. Construction on the Revolution Wind Project ground to a halt Friday afternoon when the developer Orsted got a letter from the Federal Bureau of Ocean Energy Management,

ordering an immediate work stoppage. The letter cited national security concerns, which were left unspecified. Orsted says it's complying with the work stoppage while it evaluates its options, including legal action. Leaders in Rhode Island and Connecticut are also considering lawsuits. The state's had agreements to buy enough electricity from Revolution Wind to power 350,000 homes. Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee says the stoppage also threatens hundreds of American jobs. The company has also built a factory in Providence to manufacture turbine foundations. For NPR News, I'm Ben Burke in Providence.

You're listening to NPR News from Washington. A new report says the Antarctic ice sheet is at risk of collapse from rising sea levels. Scott Mayman reports floating glaciers in the southern ocean are melting faster than expected. In a report for the nature publication, the changes have been witnessed by a variety of experts. One of them is Professor Jan Struggnall from Australia's James Cook University, who says hundreds of of millions of people in coastal communities will be impacted. Globally, this includes around 750 million people live in low elevation coastal zones. Other more conservative estimates put that number closer to 200 million.

But still, Professor Struggnell says melting Antarctic ice can trigger worldwide events. And what happens in Antarctica really doesn't stay there. She says global action is needed now to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. For NPR News, I'm Scott Mayman in Canberra, Australia. Hawaii's Kilauea volcano is erupting once again for the 31st time just since December, shooting an arc of lava high into the air and across the section of its crater floor on Friday. It's one of the world's most active volcanoes. Scientists say it's the fourth time in some 200 years that Kilauea shot lava fountains in the air

in repeated episodes. Park officials say they're expecting a lot of visitors to witness this, and they're warning them to stay on marked trails and overlooks because of possibly unstable cliff edges and cracks in the earth. You're listening to NPR News from Washington.