NPR News Now - NPR News: 09-08-2025 6PM EDT

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. The Trump administration is starting its long-promised deportation campaign in Chicago. Alex Degman from member station WBEZ reports the Department of Homeland Security announced Operation Midway Blitz today. The effort is targeting Chicago, some of its suburbs and Illinois at large, over policies that protect residents without legal status. Daniel Biss is the mayor of Evanston, a sanctuary city that borders Chicago. Biss says local police officers will be clearly identified, and he's urging residents to trust them. In this moment when people are understandably and appropriately frightened, they need to know that Evanston Police Department is not going to be participating, and Evanson Police officers can be trusted. DHS says the deportation effort honors 20-year-old Katie Abraham, who was killed

by a Guatemalan immigrant without legal status in a hit-and-run car crash earlier this year. For NPR News, I'm Alex Dagman in Springfield, Illinois. Court is allowing federal agents to resume broad immigration stops in Los Angeles. The justices lifted a lower court order that limited arrest targeting people based on race, language, or location. The case stems from U.S. citizens caught up in immigration raids by mistake. Florida is seeking to lift school mandates for a handful of childhood vaccines in the next 90 days. Kerry Sheridan from Member Station WUSF reports on which ones are on the list. The Florida Department of Health says it can make a rule change so that vaccines to prevent hepatitis B

and chickenpox are no longer required by December. Others on the list for quick removal are homophilus influenza type B or hip and pneumococcal disease. Both are caused by bacteria and can lead to pneumonia, meningitis, or bloodstream infections. It would take legislation at the state level to lift mandates for vaccines that prevent polio, measles, diphtheria, mumps, and tetanus. Florida's legislative session starts in January. For NPR news, I'm Carrie Sheridan in Tampa. The French Prime Minister has lost a vote of confidence in his plans to cut the country's huge budget deficit. French media report he will hand in his resignation Tuesday morning. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley has more.

The Speaker of the French National Assembly read out the vote on Prime Minister Francois-Bairou's deficit-cutting plans. 194-4-364 against. Bayroux said he called the risky vote of confidence because he wanted the parliament behind him and he wanted to alert the French to the gravity of the deficit, which is 114% of GDP. Beiru was President Emmanuel Macron's fourth prime minister in less than two years. None has been able to enact his centrist agenda. The far left and far right who have the biggest blocks in parliament are now demanding that a new prime minister come from their camps.

Bernard Beardsley, NPR News, Paris. This is NPR. Radio host, Howard Stern, prank listeners this morning in a publicity stunt after years of declining ratings. NPR's Netta Ulibe report, Stern had spent weeks teasing the idea. He might leave Sirius XM. In the stunt, designed for media attention, TV personality, Andy Cohen pretended to take over Stern's job on Stern's show. Later in the show, Stern revealed that nothing has actually done. changed, at least not yet.

I've been thinking about retiring. Now I can't, because then they'll say I got pushed out. Here's the truth. Sirius XM and my team have been talking about how we go forward in the future. That's from a clip Sirius XM released on social media. Stern was once a huge cultural force with more than 200 million daily listeners. But that number has dropped. Fewer than 200,000 people now regularly tune in.

His page views are dramatically down. Howard Stearn's latest deal is currently up for renewal. Nata Ulibe, NPR News. Rick Davies, co-founder and lead singer of the British rock band Super Tramp, has died at the age of 81 from cancer. The band rose to fame in the 1970s with hits like Goodbye Stranger and The Logical Song. Their 1979 album, Breakfast in America, top the charts in the U.S. in Canada, won two Grammys and sold more than 18 million copies. I'm Windsor Johnston, NPR News, in Washington.