NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-08-2025 5PM EDT

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

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Before Gwendolyn Christie was cast as Breanne of Tarth on Game of Thrones, she had a hard time finding a good role. The feedback she'd always get was the same, and it wasn't particularly helpful. Because you're too tall and you're too unconventional looking. And I just thought, gosh, I'm limited. Gwendolyn Christie from Game of Thrones, Severance, and more on Bullseye for Maximumfund.org and NPR. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. An appeals court is allowing President Trump to federalize Oregon's National Guard for now,

but a lower court order that blocked Trump from deploying guard troops to Portland remains in effect. The rulings come from the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. President Trump says Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson should be arrested for, quote, failing to protect ICE agents. NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran reports. Trump's comments on social media came after Mayor Johnson signed an executive order prohibiting immigration and customs enforcement from using city-owned space to conduct operations. Mayor Johnson says this is Trump's mode of operating. This is not the first time Trump has accused or insisted on a black man being arrested.

Hundreds of National Guard troops have been deployed to Chicago at Trump's behest, who has called the city a war zone, despite its homicide rates reaching their lowest levels since the 1960s. Johnson says he will fight what he calls Trump's attacks on his city, via policy in the courts and in the streets. Sergio Martinez Beltran, NPR News, Chicago. There's still no insight to the government shutdown. Federal worker union leaders are pushing Congress to do its job. Military troops are preparing to go without paychecks

and flight delays are happening nationwide. Republicans like House Speaker Mike Johnson are pushing to temporarily reopen the government. We just need a stopgap measure to give us a little more time to get the job of Congress done. They refuse to do it because they're playing politics. and real Americans are paying the price for it. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries says Republicans could reopen the government if they just agree to fund health insurance subsidies. These extremists don't even want to show up to work

when they're requiring hardworking federal employees to show up to work without pay because of the Republican shutdown. Democratic and Republican-backed plans to fund the government both failed again today. The Federal Reserve's decision to cut interest rates last month was not quite the slam dunk that the voting tally might have suggested. NPR's Scott Horsley reports on newly released minutes from the Fed's September meeting. All 12 voting members of the Fed's rate setting committee voted to lower the Fed's benchmark interest rate last month. 11 voted for a quarter-point cut, which carried the day. The newest member of the committee, White House

economist Stephen Myron, voted for a bigger half-point cut. Minutes reveal that a few Fed policymakers wanted to hold interest rate steady, or at least would have supported that position, out of concern over stubborn inflation. The central bank's walking a tightrope as it tries to both tamp down prices and prop up the sagging job market. Fed policymakers cast another vote on interest rates in three weeks, and thanks to the government shutdown, they may have to do so without the benefit of updated information on the job market or inflation. Scott Horsley, MPR News, Washington. Wall Street got back to rising today. The S&P 500 climbed six-tenths of a percent a day after snapping a seven-day winning streak. This is NPR.

The U.S. Marshals say the last inmate who is still on the run after breaking out of a New Orleans jail in May has been caught. Ten men escaped from the jail after squeezing through a hole behind a toilet and scaling a barbed wire fence. The Nobel Prize for Chemistry has gone to three scientists who created new materials that can store energy and scrubbed toxins from air or water. NPR's John Hamilton has more. In 1989, Richard Robson of the University of Melbourne, Australia, showed how to make molecular structures that resemble porous diamonds. But these structures, called metal-organic frameworks, tended to collapse until two other scientists found better assembly methods. One of these scientists is Omar Yagi of the University of California, Berkeley. The other is Susumu Kittagawa of Kyoto University in Japan. Kittagawa told

reporters that these new molecular structures could improve the heavy metal cylinders used to transport liquefied natural gas. We can make this cylinder lighter and righter, and easy to deliver The porous structures can also capture the carbon dioxide coming from power plants. John Hamilton, NPR News. Joan Kennedy has died at age 89. She was the first wife of the late Senator Edward Kennedy, or Ted Kennedy. She endured the assassinations of her two brothers-in-law and stood by her husband through the scandals, as well as his failed 1980 run for president.

The couple divorced in 1982. She worked for the mentally challenged and other causes, but also struggled with mental health issues and alcoholism herself for much of her life. This is NPR News from Washington. Across the country, states and counties are rushing to change their voting rules. Stacey Abrams says these attacks on voting rights are part of the authoritarian playbook. You may not be into politics, but politics is into you and it is a stalker. Listen to Code Switch in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcast.

Thank you.