NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-15-2025 3PM EDT

Episode Date: October 15, 2025

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When someone you love is diagnosed with cancer or another serious illness, all you want to do is help. But where do you start? On the Life Kit podcast, we have tips for you. Your agenda should be, I'm going to be with you and be totally present to whatever comes up. Listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts for different ways to offer support. Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. A federal judge is temporarily blocking the Trump administration from lay. off federal workers during the government shutdown. At a hearing today in California, Judge

Susan Ilston said the administration's actions, specifically affecting more than 4,000 federal employees, were hasty and illegal. President Trump has accused congressional Democrats of holding a passage of a short-term spending bill and has telegraphed plans to fire federal workers during the shutdown. The Supreme Court's conservative majority appears open to rolling back a longstanding protection against racial discrimination and redistricting. NPRs, Hansi Lo Wong is reporting on arguments surrounding the landmark Voting Rights Act. For decades, the Voting Rights Act has required certain places where voting is racially polarized to draw districts where racial minority voters have a realistic opportunity of electing their preferred candidates. During oral arguments

over their constitutionality, Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan asked the legal defense funds Jan Nelsohn about the possible ending of those requirements. What would the results on the ground be? I think the results would be pretty catastrophic. If we take Louisiana as one example, every congressional member who is black was elected from a VRA opportunity district. Depending on when the Supreme Court rules, it could allow Republicans to redraw up to 19 more House districts in their favor before next year's election. Anzi Luong, NPR News. Delaware's Supreme Court heard arguments today in a case over Elon Musk's compensation. NPR's Camila Dominovsky has more in a 2018 pay package.

worth more than $100 billion today. The pay package in question is the largest in history. A lower court in Delaware had thrown it out, saying Musk had too much influence over his own pay. Tesla appealed emphasizing that shareholders backed this pay package, which said Musk would only get paid if he met huge, seemingly unachievable, targets for growth. Here's Jeff Wall, a lawyer for Tesla, in his closing remarks. It'd be laughable if we didn't know with the benefit of hindsight that he'd done it. And 73% of stockholders said, I'll take that deal.

Some justices on the state's high court seem sympathetic to Tesla's arguments, with one justice raising the fact that Musk couldn't take back the work he did over many years. Camila Dominovsky, NPR News. Syria's new president is in Moscow where he met with Russian president of Vladimir Putin. Here's NPR's Jena Rao. Former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad was so close to Putin that he took refuge in Russia after being toppled last year. Syrian President Ahmad Ashara was expected to ask Putin to hand him over. There's no word on that, but Shara did tell Putin that Syria would honor all past deals between the two countries,

an indication that Russia will be able to keep its main military bases there. Shara told Putin that Syria was working on redefining relations with Russia, and Putin said they've already held useful talks on a new relationship with Syria. It's NPR. More than 30,000 nurses and other frontline medical personnel in the U.S. are on strike against Kaiser Permanente, one of the country's largest not-for-profit health networks. Unionized employees in California, Oregon, and Hawaii hit the picket lines yesterday to demand a 25% pay hike. Kaiser Permanente is proposing 21 and a half percent over four years. The company says during this week's strikes some elective surgeries and procedures and procedures.

will be reschedule. However, health clinics and hospitals will remain open. An unidentified hacking group recently stole source code from a company that makes popular hardware and software used by many U.S. government agencies. NPR's Jenna McLaughlin reports federal cyber experts are rushing to identify the scope of the problem. The Department of Homeland Security, Cybersecurity, and Infrastructure Security Agency has issued an emergency directive requiring federal civilian agencies to inventory their use of products made by technology company F5. The company says hackers stole sensitive internal data, information that would make it easier to target its customers. Nick Anderson is Sissa's assistant executive

director for the cybersecurity division. He said a nation state is responsible, though declined to be more specific. He says Sisa continues to work to respond to the emergency, despite the ongoing government shutdown, which he blamed on, quote, Democrat refusal to fund the government. Polls show Americans are blaming both parties for the funding disruption. Jenne McLaughlin, NPR News. U.S. stocks are trading higher this hour. It's NPR News. Hi, it's Terry Gross, host of Fresh Air. Hey, take a break from the 24-hour news cycle with us and listen to long-form interviews with your favorite authors, actors, actors, filmmakers, comedians, and musicians, the people making the art that nourishes us and speaks to our times.

So listen to the Fresh Air podcast from NPR and WHYY.