NPR News Now - NPR News: 09-13-2025 2PM EDT

Episode Date: September 13, 2025

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I'm Peter Sagle. NPR is very serious, mostly. It treats newsmakers with all due respect, almost all the time. It brings you the most important information about the issues that really matter, usually, and it never asks famous people about things they don't know anything about, except once in a while. Join us for the great exception. Listen to Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me, the news quiz from NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Nora Rahm. The 22-year-old man accused of killing Charlie Kirk is being held without bail in Utah. As Steve Butterman reports, Kirk's widow made her first public comments hours after escorting his body home to Arizona. Erica Kirk blamed what she called evil-doers for the death of her husband. The movement my husband built will not die. It won't. I refuse to let that happen. Since Tuesday's killing, there have been vitriolic debates in public and on social media between supporters and opponents of Charlie Kirk. The governor of Utah Spencer Cox Friday urged people to take a break from social media.

The tone he said must calm down. This is our moment. Do we escalate or do we find an off-ramp? It's a choice. Investigators are still trying to determine if some specific thing triggered Tyler Robinson. He will be formally charged next week. For NPR News, I'm Steve Futterman in Orem, Utah. President Trump said yesterday that Memphis, Tennessee, will be the next city to receive federal action to combat crime, and that he'll send National Guard troops.

Trump told Fox News that both the city's mayor and the state's governor support his decision. The mayor, Democrat Paul Young, was asked about that. That was an overstatement. I am focused on the resources. FBI, DEA, ATF, those are the things that I believe will truly help us be able to support law enforcement and reduce filing crime. I do not support the National Guard. Young spoke to WATN TV. Trump has also said it'd like to send federal personnel to New Orleans, like Memphis, a Democratic-leading city in a Republican state.

Trump has also threatened to send the National Guard into Baltimore. Maryland Governor Westmore says he'll send state police into Baltimore to patrol high-risk areas in the city. Some residents are uneasy about the idea. Scott Mascioni from member station W-Y-P-R has more on the story from Baltimore. Baltimore is experiencing record low crime levels and is on track for the lowest homicide rate in half a century. However, residents will soon see state police patrolling streets and possible checkpoints set up in neighborhoods. Here's Donald Gresham, a community leader. You feel like you're on a plantation.

That's what you're going to feel like, because you walk around don't know when they're going to pull you up. They say they're there to protect us, but they never have been there to protect us. In the community, it's going to be a place where they're going to really feel like it's not home. Some residents fear the focus will be on unnecessary arrests rather than directing resources toward health care and education. For NPR News, I'm Scott Masseoni in Baltimore. You're listening to NPR News in Washington.

President Trump is urging NATO countries to stop buying oil from Russia and to place tariffs on China of at least 50% for its oil purchases. In a social media post today, Trump said he believed such actions would end Russia's war against Ukraine. A controversial far-right activist in the U.K. is using the assassination nation of Charlie Kirk to mobilize support for what's expected to be Britain's largest far-right demonstration in decades. Vigy Barker reports. Ahead of Saturday's March and rally in central London, the anti-immigrant anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson posted a photo of Charlie Kirk, superimposed above the U.S. and UK flags.

Speakers at his Unite the Kingdom event include former Trump advisor Steve Bannon, as well as far-right politicians from Germany and Poland. A counter-demonstration by the group Stand Up to Racism was taking place a few hundred yards away. More than 1,600 police officers have been assigned to keep the groups apart, and Scotland Yard has reassured Muslim Londoners that officers would be on hand to make sure they feel safe. For NPR News, I'm Vicki Barker in London. A ceremony was held today in Nagasaki, Japan. At the site of a World War II prison camp, dozens of people came from the Netherlands,

relatives of Dutch prisoners, who had suffered abuse and starvation there during the war. Their names have been engraved on a stone monument erected 10 years ago as a symbol of reconciliation and peace. I'm Nora Rahm. NPR News in Washington.