NPR News Now - NPR News: 09-05-2025 1AM EDT

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

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On Fridays, the 1A podcast is all about helping you cut through the info fog and get to what's important in the news. Close out the week with us on our Friday News Roundup. Here from reporters who've been embedded with the biggest news of the week. Join us every week for the Friday News Roundup. Listen to the 1A podcast from NPR and WAMU. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shay Stevens. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was grilled by members of the Senate Finance Committee Thursday amid calls for his resignation. Dr. Deborah Howry is one of four top officials who quit the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention after Kennedy fired the agency's director.

She says she was struck by Kennedy's lack of knowledge about COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. A few weeks ago, I was more on the fence and wanted to give him a chance. But after hearing him today, where he didn't know COVID data, he was taught. talking about firing all the CDC people who do work on chronic disease, and he didn't acknowledge the trauma. The staff have gone through after the shooting. I do think he should resign if he cannot follow his own principles of gold standard science, which he has not upheld. Howie says she offered to brief Kennedy multiple times, but that he never responded. The Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the president to fire a member

of the Federal Trade Commission. Lower courts have blocked Trump's attempt to replace FTC commissioner, Becca Slaughter, the Justice Department argues that the FTC and other executive agencies fall under the authority of the president. In Illinois, officials say they still don't know when federal agents and National Guard troops will be deployed to Chicago. But as Maui Iqbal from member station WBEZ reports, Illinois's governor is preparing a response. Governor J.B. Pritzker is vowing to sue President Trump as soon as the National Guard or other military forces entered the city. Piskker says he can't enact any state laws that would override Trump's plans, but he says the courts will be on his side. That's going to be our first line of defense is getting a court to issue a TRO or other injunction against that activity.

Prisker says he believes immigration and customs enforcement or ICE agents will likely hit the streets of Chicago by this weekend. Meanwhile, organizers of a popular two-day celebration of Mexican Independence Day are postponing the festival to November. For NPR news, I'm Mawa Iqbal in Springfield, Illinois. Ukraine has come up with a proposal for protecting its skies. President Volodymyr Zelensky and European leaders spoke with President Trump after a meeting on securing a post-war Ukraine. NPR's Polina Litvenova has more. President Zelensky wrote on X that the main topic of his conversation with President Trump was how to push the situation toward real peace.

Protection of Ukrainian skies in Zelensky's opinion is one of the key priorities. as our security guarantees. This summit of the Coalition of the Willing followed the meeting of European leaders Ukraine's president and President Trump in the White House in mid-August. Then Zelensky agreed to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin for direct talks, but it never happened.

Putin suggested Zelensky come to Moscow for the negotiations, but so far, the Ukrainian leader has declined. This is NPR. The chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisors says he will keep that post, if confirmed, to a seat on the Federal Reserve Board. President Trump has tapped Stephen Myron to fill an unexpired board seat, and Myron says the only way he would give up his White House job is that he's nominated for a longer term at the Fed. Solar flares may be more than six times hotter than scientists previously thought. And P.R. Snell-Greenfield Boyce has details on a new analysis of the phenomena. 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's voice, NPR News.

Argentine officials have recovered an 18th century painting believed to have been stolen by the Nazis. The so-called portrait of a lady by Italian painter Giuseppe Galandi. belonged to a Jewish collector until it disappeared during the Second World War. It resurfaced last month in an online listing by the daughter of a former Nazi officer who was accused of stealing it. This is NPR News. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise,

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