NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-22-2025 1PM EDT

Episode Date: October 22, 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, I'm Lakshmi Singh. thousands of federal workers are spending a 22nd day in limbo with no sign of a political compromise that would end the government shutdown. Holding a narrow majority in the Senate, Republicans have been unable to overcome the Democrats' holdout for stronger health care protections. And PR Stephen Fowler reports on

President Trump's campaign to force the Democratic Party's hand. Trump has actually referred repeatedly to cutting explicitly Democrat programs, and there is no such thing. The two million or so civilian federal employees that do things like process social security payments, handle your taxes, and do other government services work in a non-partisan manner. But there are things championed by Democrats in former President Joe Biden's administration that the White House says are partisan, not necessary, and do not align with Trump's values. NPR's Stephen Fowler reporting. The Artificial Intelligence Company, OpenAI, has launched an AI-enabled web browser.

And BR's John Rue, which reports this opens a new front in OpenAI's competition with Google. The new browser is called Atlas, and the company says it's built with the chatbot chat GPT at its core. Part of what it'll be able to do is remember past searches and context from those searches. The company says that'll make it easier to, say, pull up previous results and work with them. It'll also be able to summarize and analyze content from websites. OpenAI launched the browser on Mac OS and says it'll be available on Windows, iOS, and Android, soon. Move takes the competition between so-called AI answer engines and traditional search to new levels. Traditional search is dominated by Google and its Chrome browser, which is the world's

most popular way to access the internet. But chat GPT has leapt in popularity as an information retrieval tool. Google's share price fell after the announcement. John Rewitch, NPR News. Meta, the parent company of such platforms like Facebook, says it's laying off about 600 employees who work on AI development. That's according to an internal announcement confirmed by NPR. Russia says efforts to schedule a new meeting between President Trump and Russian leader of Vladimir Putin to discuss efforts to end the war in Ukraine. Continue. Despite Trump's announcement yesterday, he was postponing the talks over a lack of progress and negotiations. Here's NPR's Charles Mainz.

Speaking to journalists, Kremlin spokesman, Dimitri Peskov, said Putin shared Trump's desire to not waste time on talks that go nowhere. That's why Peskov continued more time was needed to repair for the summit. it, adding there had been too much gossip and rumor in the media about the talk's demise. Yet Russia has openly rejected Trump's calls to freeze the war in Ukraine along existing battle lines, a plan since embraced by Ukraine and European allies. Instead, Russia is insisting it wants a long-term peace deal that addresses what it calls the root causes of the conflict. Critics say that's Kremlin shorthand for demands for Ukraine's capitulation and NATO's

pullback from eastern and central Europe. Charles Mainz reporting. It's NPR News. Nearly two-thirds of white evangelicals in the U.S. believe discrimination against Christians and white Americans has become as big a problem as discrimination against other groups. NPR's Jason DeRose reports on the findings of a new study from the Public Religion Research Institute, or PRRI. The percentage of white evangelicals who believe Christians face discrimination differs significantly. significantly from the general population. Still, PRRI found that nearly four in ten of all Americans agree discrimination against Christians and white Americans has become as big a problem as discrimination

against other groups. There's a marked difference in response based on political party affiliation. The study finds 62% of Republicans say discrimination against Christians is a problem, whereas just 20% of Democrats say that's the case. Jason DeRose, NPR News. Nearly one and a half million Ford vehicles are now being recalled because of a faulty rear-view camera system. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration posted the action last week. It warns that the devices on some cars and SUVs may malfunction and hinder the driver from avoiding a rear collision. Ford has said it is not aware of any reports, though, of accidents or injuries linked to the cameras in the latest recall. U.S. stocks are trading lower this hour. The Dow is now down nearly 250 points or roughly half a percent. This is NPR News.