NPR News Now - NPR News: 09-05-2025 10AM EDT

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington on Corvick-Holman, stocks opened higher this morning after a disappointing jobs report. NPR Scott Horsley reports the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose more than 70 points in early trading. U.S. employers added just 22,000 jobs last month and the unemployment rate inched up to 4.3%. The monthly report from the Labor Department shows widening cracks in the job market. Revised figures show the economy actually lost jobs in June for the first time since 2020. Hiring is slowed across the board. as the number of people looking for work now outpaces the number of job openings. Industries that cut jobs last month include manufacturing, construction, and oil drilling all sectors the Trump administration has been trying to encourage. Investors are betting the weaker job market will lead the Federal Reserve to lower its benchmark interest rate when policymakers meet in less than two weeks.

Scott Horsley, NPR News, Washington. The White House says President Trump will sign an executive order today renaming the Department of Defense to the Department of War. NPR's Danielle Kurtz-Laven reports. A White House official not authorized to discuss the order on the record confirmed to NPR that Trump will be signing the order and also provided a fact sheet. According to that sheet, the order will authorize the department name change

as a secondary title and will also allow defense department officials to substitute the word war into their titles. For example, the Secretary of Defense could use the title, Secretary of War. In addition, the order will instruct the secretary to recommend actions such as legislation to make the department's name change permanent. The Department of Defense was known as the Department of War until the 1940s. The White House explained that the new name will, quote,

signal to adversaries America's readiness to wage war to secure its interests. Danielle Kurtzleben and PR News. President Trump's Public Safety Emergency Declaration for Washington, D.C. will expire next Wednesday. He's used it to take over the city's police force, claiming, without evidence, crime is rampant. Congress needs to vote to extend Trump's 30. Day Emergency Order, it's not clear. Lawmakers will do that. But the takeover of the City's Police Department

is separate from Trump's deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C. It's not clear when those troops might be removed. The Trump administration is suing utility Southern California Edison. This is over the utility's role in the Los Angeles Area Eton Wildfire last

January. Nineteen people were killed. Steve Futterman has more. The lawsuit puts the blame directly on Southern California Edison for both the Eton Fire and a fire east of L.A. in 2022. The big message today is that Edison is responsible. The acting U.S. Attorney in Los Angeles, Billis Saley, says Edison failed to safely maintain its equipment. In the case of the Eaton fire, it's believed sparks from a transmitter triggered the blaze.

So far, Edison has acknowledged only that its equipment may have been involved. For NPR News, I'm Steve Futterman in Los Angeles. On Wall Street, the Dow's up, about 20 points now. This is NPR. A third large earthquake struck Afghanistan late yesterday. The big tremors earlier this week have left more than 2,200 people dead. Scientists say solar flares may be more than six times hotter than previously thought. NPR's NPR's now Greenfield voice has more on the findings of a new analysis.

Solar flares are bright bursts of light on the sun that happen when magnetic energy gets released and dumped into ions and electrons. Alexander Russell is with the University of St. Andrews. He says in the past, telescopes have measured the temperature of just the electrons. And we've kind of just assumed, well, the ion temperature would be the same as the electron temperature. But new research suggests that ions get heated up a lot more strongly. And when that's taken into account, their calculations in astrophysical journal letters show that solar flares could be as hot as 180 million degrees Fahrenheit. Better understanding of solar flares and related phenomena, could help protect satellites and even astronauts from harmful particles and radiation.

Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News. Civil rights activist Joseph McNeil has died, according to his family. He was 83. In 1960, McNeil and three fellow students at North Carolina A&T led the famous sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro. McNeil and his fellow activists were soon joined by hundreds of others. The Greensboro Lunch Counter was desegregated, six months later. McNeil later joined the Air Force. He flew combat missions in Vietnam. He retired from the service as a major general. I'm Corva Coleman, NPR News.