NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-25-2025 10PM EDT

Episode Date: August 26, 2025

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Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. Coffman.org Live from NPR News, I'm Giles Snyder. President Trump says he's firing Lisa Cook, the first black woman to serve as a Federal Reserve governor. NPR Scott Horsley reported.

on this latest escalation in Trump's effort to exert more control over the central bank. In a social media post, Trump says he's firing Cook after one of his allies accused the Fed governor of mortgage fraud. Under federal law, designed to insulate the central bank from political pressure, Fed officials can only be removed for cause. While the fraud allegation is so far unproven, Trump says it amounts to cause for dismissal. Cook's accused of taking out two home loans weeks apart in two different states and saying each property would be her primary residents. After the allegations were made public last week, Cook said she would not be bullied. Trump has been waging a high-pressure campaign to get the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates.

A survey of business economists found widespread concern about presidential meddling with the independent central bank. Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker was in Chicago today where he slammed President Trump's threat to make the city the next target and his crackdown on crime. Today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city? Instead, I say, Mr. President, do not come to Chicago. This morning, Chicago's Democratic mayor, Brandon Johnson, told NPR that his city is not calling for American troops to occupy American cities.

At the White House today, Trump signed a series of executive orders. including one to create a specialized National Guard unit that could be deployed to assist local law enforcement. And the White House said today that the deployment of guard troops and federal law enforcement in Washington, D.C. has led to more than 1,000 arrests and more than 100 firearms seized. SpaceX tried again this evening to launch its massive new starship rocket on a test flight number 10. But NPR's now Greenfield-Boyce reports that the weather would not cooperate. SpaceX had tried to send up the approximately 400-foot-tall two-stage rocket on Sunday night, but a line that fed oxygen into the rocket was leaking and had to be fixed.

On their second opportunity to launch from the SpaceX facility in South Texas, they fueled up Starship and the count went all the way down to T-minus 40 seconds. This time, though, the trouble was anvil clouds. These thunderstorm clouds were too close to the launch pad, so the attempt had to be canceled. SpaceX will keep trying. On this 10th flight, they're hoping to break a streak of mishaps this year, three flights in a row with the upper stage lost instead of returning to Earth in a controlled way. Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.

And you're listening to NPR News. The man who was mistakenly deported to the notorious Seacot Prison in his home country of El Salvador is back in federal custody. Kilmar Garcia-Abrego was detained this morning, just days after being freed from a detention facility in Tennessee to await trial on human smuggling charges. A federal judge said today she is likely to halt his deportation until at least Friday, citing concerns about the government's plan to send Abrago-Garcia to Uganda. The U.S. has confirmed its first human case of New World Screw Wharf. It's a flesh-eating parasite most often found in livestock, as NPR's racial treatment reports.

Federal health authorities confirmed the case earlier this month in a person who had returned from El Salvador. The parasite is typically found in South America. The U.S. eradicated New World screw worm in the 1960s using sterilized flies. The Department of Health and Human Services says the risk to public health in the U.S. is low. Experts say the bigger threat is to the U.S. cattle industry, especially as more infestations are reported in Mexico. The USDA paused live cattle shipments across the southern border earlier this year

and said earlier this month it will build a new fly sterilization facility in Texas. Rachel Treisman, NPR News. Venus Williams has lost her first Grand Slam tennis match in two years. She was eliminated from the U.S. Open and three sets this evening by Carolina Mojova. The match was Williams' fourth singles match since she returned to the tour last month after 16 months away from competitive tennis. At 45 years old, she was the oldest singles player, Flushing Meadows, since 1981.

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