NPR News Now - NPR News: 09-27-2026 3AM EDT

Episode Date: September 27, 2026

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Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Wilman. After three days of meetings between President Trump and China's president, one of the few concrete outcomes is a reduction of tariff rates on a small fraction of goods the two countries trade with each other. And Pierre's Emily Fang has more. After Trump visited Beijing in May, the two countries have been working to find $30 billion of non-sensitive goods each to reduce tariffs on. But that's a small slice of the more than $400 billion volume of U.S. China annual trade. And two ongoing trade investigations into China on potentially unfair trading practices will likely raise overall U.S. tariff rates on China again in the coming weeks. Following Xi's visit to the U.S., the two countries have also agreed to start an AI dialogue starting in November. The U.S. and China held high-level AI dialogues during the Biden administration, where both Biden and Xi Jinping agreed AI should remain under human control.

She repeated the need for humans to control AI in its opening remarks while visiting Washington on Thursday. Emily Fang and Pier News, Washington. CNN is getting a new owner. Paramount is taking over CNN parent Warner Brothers Discovery, and David Ellison controls Paramount. Ellison's family is also a supporter of President Trump. Media observers are now looking at what that will mean for CNN's news coverage. MPR's David Fulkenflick has more. You're probably going to see appointed within CNN. Somebody who's willing to do business with the Ellison doesn't mean necessarily compromise their

journalistic integrity, but understand what kind of coverage the Ellison's might be interested in. You know, you saw at two major publications taken over by Rupert Murdoch, the media magnate, at the Times of London in the 80s, the Wall Street Journal, in the late aughts around 2007. There were such boards created, and after sort of raising a question here and there, he just kind of ignored and then overrode them. That's NPR's Davin Fokin-Folkinflik with our report. A nor'easter is coming to bring, continuing to bring powerful winds, local floods, and canceled events from the Mid-Atlantic to New England.

And Perez Ava Berger reports. In Atlantic City, New Jersey, Talia Manosar a car totaled from flooding on her street. She said she hadn't seen so much water since Hurricane Sandy. The water was just, like, you can literally see waves on my steps. You can see waves on the steps. That's how much water was there. Jessica Lisboa was out on an Atlantic Ocean cruise as the storm grew. It felt honestly like a roller coaster.

And Olga Ostravetsky had planned to tie the knot on a beautiful fall day in September. Instead, her small New York wedding continued, just with a lot more wind. But it's kind of fitting, to be honest, because my fiance and I met, and it was a torrential downpour. So we met in a day like this, and we're also getting married on a day like this. Coastal flooding, heavy rain, and high winds are expected to continue to pummel the East Coast. Several states have made emergency declarations. Eva Berger and PR News. And this is NPR News.

President Trump Saturday rejected a proposal from Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran said it would agree to the opening and resumed talks on its nuclear program in seven days if the U.S. ended. Its naval blockade of the country, waived sanctions on Iranian oil sales, and began a ceasefire that included Lebanon. Trump said Iran wanted a deal because it's losing so badly. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are all refusing to run advertisements for an upcoming documentary on billionaire Elon Musk and as Bobby Allen reports. The documentary is called Musk. It's by Oscar-winning director Alex Gibney,

and it's set for release next month. The film is a scathing look at the tech mogul's life from his childhood in South Africa, his rise in Silicon Valley, including his takeover of the site formerly known as Twitter, along with his time in the White House. Gibney asks, how did one man become so powerful?

It's a message deemed too political by meta, YouTube, and TikTok, all of which have refused to carry ads about the film, that's according to a person close to the production who wasn't authorized to speak publicly. Earlier this month, lawyers for Musk threatened to file a defamation lawsuit over the film. Musk would not sit for an interview with Gibney. Instead, he used an AI-generated avatar of Musk as a stand-in.

Bobby Allen, NPR News. In college football, top-ranked Texas needed a full four quarters to hold off number 14 Tennessee Saturday, 20 to 17. In Ann Arbor, Iowa drove 91 yards and scored a touchdown as time ran out to slip past Michigan 20 to 19. Jeremiah Smith tied an Ohio State record with four touchdown catches as the Buckeyes. beat Illinois, 42 to 19, number 21 Florida, pounded Old Miss, 52 to 28, and Hendricks beat Austin, 44 to 6. I'm Dale Wilman, NPR News.