NPR News Now - NPR News: 08-29-2025 12PM EDT

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. FBI director Kash Patel says the mass shooting at a Catholic church in school in Minnesota this week was, quote, an act of domestic terrorism motivated by a hate-filled ideology. As NPR's Odette Yousef reports some extremism analysts say materials believed to be connected to the shooter paint another picture. YouTube videos believed to be connected with the shooter show extensive writings and weaponry with inscriptions scrawled on them. They reveal an obsession with other mass shooters. Cody Zossach of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue says it aligns with a category of mass shooters who seek notoriety through violence. We found no evidence that this individual was driven by desire for political or social change, that they were influenced by any ideology. Authorities in Minnesota said the shooter was not on law enforcement.

radar. Odette Yusuf, NPR News. The Israeli military is advancing further into Gaza City as part of a plan to occupy the entire territory and push the population south. NPR's Aibatrawi reports. The military says it is ending a partial pause on bombing the city, declaring it a combat zone. Israel's military has declared Gaza City a dangerous combat zone and says a unilateral daytime pause on airstrikes announced weeks ago under international pressure is officially being lifted. and that the city's total evacuation is inevitable. Palestinians say that pause was never truly in effect in the city. Gaza City is home to just under a million Palestinians, many of them surviving in makeshift tents.

Its population, which is living through what UN-backed experts on hunger say is a famine, are being ordered by Israel's military to move to areas of southern Gaza. But those areas are also being bombed. Local health officials say a family, comprised of a mother, father, and two young boys were killed in an Israeli air strike in southern Gaza this week. week after they'd heated orders and fled Gaza City. A.L. Betrawi, NPR News, Dubai. Low-value shipments from all over the world will now face U.S. tariffs.

NPR's Tamara Keith reports President Trump's executive order on de minimis shipments is now in effect. President Trump did away with the de minimis treatment for shipments from China and Hong Kong earlier this year. Now, the same rules apply to packages from everywhere else. Previously, packages valued at under $800 could come into the U.S. duty-free. Now they face tariffs and inspection. The White House says this eliminates a loophole that made it easier for foreign entities to avoid tariffs

and funnel counterfeit goods and elicit drugs into the U.S. It's not clear what this will ultimately mean for U.S. consumers, but a White House official said this policy is here to stay and there are no exceptions. Tamara Keith, NPR News, the White House. From Washington, this is NPR News. The Trump administration's canceling former Vice President Kamala Harris's Secret Service detail. The decision to revoke protections raising concerns about Harris's safety moving forward, she's preparing for a book tour to more than a dozen cities that begins in a few weeks.

It's been 20 years since Hurricane Katrina's catastrophic impact on Gulf Coast communities. In the year since, a transformation in New Orleans, schools led to a major college push. As Sarah Carr reports, many more of the city's mostly black lower-income students went to college, but they didn't necessarily stay there. Geraldine Stewart attended a charter school that prioritized college, and she went, but she left during her freshman year after struggling to juggle work in school. Now Stewart has student debt and no degree. Financially, I'm not where I want to be, and it bothers me because I know I could have been somewhere, you know, in a different situation. Before Katrina, one in six New Orleans students didn't make it past their first semester.

And in 2016, that figure had barely changed, according to one study from Tulane University. Today, polls show New Orleans families want more access to career-oriented education, and the schools are starting to respond. For NPR News, I'm Sarah Carr. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 164 points at 45,472. I'm Lakshmi Singh, NPR News.