NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-21-2025 5AM EDT

Episode Date: October 21, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled in favor of the Trump administration's efforts to deploy the National Guard to Portland. Oregon Public Broadcasting's Conrad Wilson has more. The decision overturns one of two temporary restraining orders issued by a lower court judge blocking the federalization and deployment of the National Guard to Oregon. Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School, says the majority of the appeals. Court found the president's authority shouldn't be questioned over concerns such as an inability to carry out federal law. Judges owe the president great deference in that area. And what a majority of the panel concluded is that the district court judge had essentially substituted her judgment

for the president's judgment in an inappropriate way. In a dissenting opinion, an appeals court judge warned the majority was eroding constitutional protections, such as the right to protest the government and state sovereignty. For NPR News, I'm Conrad Wilson in Portland. Florida is making some vaccines optional for children and some teachers have concerns. For member station WUSF, Kerry Sheridan has more. Mary Holmes is a public school teacher in Sarasota County, where vaccination rates for kids are below 80%. Her students have disabilities. Many have weakened immune systems, and it's not just them. We have a lot of teachers and staff members with cancer that people have no idea about.

She says parents should be able to choose whether to vaccinate their kids, but not if they send them to public school where they put others at risk. If a parent feels that strongly, I think they should go with their gut and then homeschool them. I don't think you can have both. By December, Florida will no longer require shots against four diseases, including hepatitis B and chicken pox. For NPR News, I'm Carrie Sheridan in Sarasota. The massive outage at Amazon's Web Services Division that disrupted websites and apps across the Internet yesterday is raising concerns about just how vulnerable our systems are.

And Pierce Jacqueline Diaz has more. Users of apps and sites as diverse as Venmo, Reddit, and Duolingo reported problems. They were traced back to a failure in Amazon's cloud computing service that arose in the early hours of Monday morning. Amazon, Microsoft, and Google are among the biggest cloud computing providers. And while there are some benefits for companies that rely on these huge providers, cybersecurity expert Betsy Cooper says this incident highlights vulnerabilities. Something goes wrong and then you really see just how dependent you are on a handful of those companies. And we should note, Amazon is a financial supporter of NPR

and it pays to distribute some of NPR's content. Jacqueline Diaz, NPR News. U.S. Futures contracts are trading lower at last check. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. The Trump administration has started tearing down part of the East Wing of the White House, the traditional base of operations for the First Lady, to build President Trump's new $250 million ballroom. This despite not getting approval for the construction from the federal agency that oversees these kinds of projects. The East Wing was built in 1902. Trump now says the ballroom will hold. hold 999 people. That's an increase from the 650 originally announced. The Toronto Blue Jays are headed to the World Series after winning game seven of the American League Championship Series against the

Seattle Mariners for runs to three. There they will take on the defending champs, the Los Angeles Dodgers. And Pierce Becky Sullivan has more. The Mariners took the Blue Jays to the brink in the ALCS. Seattle first took a two game lead. Then after Toronto battled back to force game seven, Seattle jumped out to a two-run lead. But the Blue Jays took the lead on a three-run home run from George Springer in the seventh inning. Now Toronto is headed back to the World Series for the first time since they won back-to-back titles in 1992 and 93. This time, they'll try to keep the Dodgers from going back to back. The star-studded Los Angeles lineup swept the Milwaukee Brewers in the NLCS.

Their pitchers combined to give up only one run per game. Shohei Otani hit three home runs and pitched six in a third shutout innings in the victory that clinched the series. Game on of the World Series will take place Friday in Los Angeles. Becky Sullivan, NPR News. Will financial markets, Asian markets higher by the close? The Niki and Japan up two-tenths of a percent. The Hang-Sang and Hong Kong up six-tenths. I'm Janine Herbst, NPR News, in Washington.