NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-03-2025 9PM EDT

Episode Date: October 4, 2025

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In the U.S., national security news can feel far away from daily life. Distant wars, murky conflicts, diplomacy behind closed doors on our new show, Sources and Methods. NPR reporters on the ground bring you stories of real people, helping you understand why distant events matter here at home. Listen to sources and methods on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. Hamas says it's accepted some elements. of Trump's 20-point plan to end Israel's war in Gaza, including giving up power and releasing all remaining hostages, but that other details require further discussion. As NPR's Aobitrawe explains,

questions still need to be answered about the deal. Example would be troop withdrawal. When would Israel withdraw its troops? The disarmament of Hamas, would Hamas be storing its weapons, giving up its weapons? How and when would that happen? How about the deployment of Arab forces into Gaza? Egypt says it's ready to do that, to help with that, but they need a clear mandate for those and they need a U.N. Security Council resolution. There's also a board that would be governing Gaza that would essentially be chaired by President Trump himself, but what role would Palestinians have in actually, you know, implementing their own governance in Gaza?

So all of these are questions that are still going to have to be negotiated, and Hamas wants to be at the table for that. NPR's Aibatrowi reporting. President Trump and his budget director Russell Votes say the government shut down has given them an opportunity to cut programs they don't like and order mass layoffs. Some federal workers point out the administration's already doing that. NPR's Andrea Shoe reports. Even before the shutdown, the National Institutes of Health had gone through mass layoffs and seen the cancellation of hundreds of research grants. Those moves have been challenged in court, but for now, the Supreme Court has allowed them to stand.

Mark Heistead, a brain scientist with NIH, is part of a coalition of civil servants who say the president is overstepping his power. Highstead spoke in his personal capacity. Trump, with Russell, vote, has been taking this power, seizing this power from Congress and ignoring the Constitution. The White House argues the Constitution gives the president the power to run the executive branch as he sees fit. So far, the conservative majority on the Supreme Court largely appears to back that view. Andrea Shue and PR News. Hip-hop mogul Sean Diddy Combs has been sentenced to 50 months in prison.

Combs was convicted in July on two counts of transportation for Prospertu. prostitution, as NPR's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento reports. Federal judge Arunza Bermanian sentenced Sean Combs to over four years in prison, citing his history of physical and emotional abuse. Earlier this summer, a federal jury acquitted Sean Combs of sex trafficking and racketeering, the most serious charges that he faced. But he was found guilty of transporting two of his ex-girlfriends across state lines to engage in prostitution with male escorts.

Much of the trial centered on how Combs used power, violence, and manipulation to coerced the women into those acts. While delivering his sentence, Judge Subramanian told Combs that the harm he caused those women cannot simply be washed away and there must be meaningful accountability for the abuse. Isabella Gomez-Armiento, NPR News. A Spanish-language journalist in a Georgia immigration detention center since June was deported to El Salvador today.

Mario Guevaro was covering a protest outside Atlanta when police arrested him. This is NPR News from Washington. North Carolina's Democratic governor has signed a bill into law in response to the stabbing death of a Ukrainian refugee on a Charlotte commuter train. The bill passed by the state's Republican-controlled legislature, bars cashless bail for violent crimes and for many repeat offenders. It also seeks to restart the death penalty in the state. The last execution in North Carolina took place in 2006. After more than four decades in prison, a Pennsylvania man's murder conviction was vacated over the summer. This week he was finally released and immediately detained by ICE, as Sidney Roach of Member Station WPSU reports.

Subramanium Vedam, or Subu, as he's known in his community in state college, had been in state prison for 44 years, convicted of the 1980 murder of Tom Kinzer. Vatum has maintained his innocence. In August, a county judge found that state prosecutors had suppressed evidence in the case and overturned the first-degree murder conviction. Prosecutors opted not to retry the case. Now, Vatum is being held in the Mishanan Valley Processing Center in Clearfield County. Mishanan has been the center of protests and lawsuits accusing the facility of human rights violations. Vatim's family says he is a legal resident and that ICE arrested him on a detainer from 1988. They plan to dispute his detention in immigration court.

For NPR news, I'm Ciddy Roach in State College, Pennsylvania. A stretch of a waterfront trail in Clearwater, Florida is being renamed after wrestling star Hulk Hogan, who called the city home, Tourists will be able to get some reps in at workout stations decked out in Hogan's signature red and yellow. I'm Rylan Barton. This is NPR News from Washington. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Limelson Foundation. Working to harness the power of invention and innovation to accelerate climate action and improve lives around the world. Learn more atlimson.org.