NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-24-2025 3AM EDT

Episode Date: October 24, 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 Shea Stevens. More than one million federal workers will soon miss another paycheck due to the government shutdown.

As NPR's Andrea Shoe reports, community organizations are being flooded with requests for help. The Community Services Agency of the Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO, created its Federal Workers Solidarity Fund earlier this year to help federal employees who lost their jobs in mass layoffs. Now, with tens of thousands of federal workers in the region going without paychecks during the shutdown, applications for emergency assistance have soared. Sig Males is the group's director. It's folks asking for food assistance, it's rent, mortgages, its utility bills, and car payments. Elsewhere in the country, credit unions have seen a surge in applications for short-term interest-free loans,

which they're providing to help their federal employee members bridge the gap until the shutdown ends. Andrea Shue and PR News. President Trump's plan to import more beef from Argentina has angered some of U.S. ranchers who supported him in the last election. Frank Morris of Member Station KCUR reports from Kansas City, Missouri. Domestic cattle are scarce. The U.S. herd has shrunk to its smallest size since the 1950s because for decades it was hard to make a living raising cattle. Now beef prices are soaring and President Trump wants to import more meat from Argentina to bring consumer costs down. Kansas rancher Mike Calligrate says Trump's plan would undermine a recent push to rebuild the domestic

cattle industry. I just think it's a bad deal. And just when we're getting our ranchers back on their feet again, you know, we're going to pull the rug out from under him. Trump's plan to import beef from Argentina comes on the heels of his $20 billion bailout of Argentina's economy. That angered U.S. soybean farmers who are losing export sales to their Argentine competitors. From NPR News, I'm Frank Morris. San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie says a dispute over the threat to deploy troops to his city has been resolved. Lurie says President Trump pulled back on the idea after they spoke by phone yesterday. We have work to do, and we would welcome the continued partnership with FBI, DEA, ATF, and

U.S. attorneys to get drugs and drug dealers off of our streets. But having the military and militarized immigration enforcement in our city will hinder our recovery. Lurie says that violent crime in San Francisco is currently at the lowest level, since the 1950s. The Trump administration has finalized his plan for expanded oil and gas drilling on one and a half million acres in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The plan calls for at least four lease sales over the next decade. Environmentalists consider Alaska's pristine wilderness,

the crown jewel of the U.S. public land system. This is NPR. The founder of cryptocurrency exchange Binance has been pardoned by President Trump. Under a 2023 plea deal, Changping Zhao agreed to step down from his company and pay a multi-billion dollar fine. He served four months in prison last year. White House press Secretary Caroline Levitt told reporters on Thursday that Zhao had been unfairly prosecuted during what she called the Biden administration's war on cryptocurrency. A new peer-reviewed analysis out of Yale University finds that kids who get help building social and emotional skills in

school also do better academically. The tales from NPR's Corey Turner. Social and emotional learning known as SEL includes helping students build a few really important life skills, like how to manage your big feelings, how to understand and communicate with others, and how to make meaningful relationships. This new analysis gathered up 40 previous studies of SEL and found that kids who got regular social emotional learning in school saw improvement in both test scores and grades, in literacy, and in math. What's more, the researchers found, when kids were in an SEL program for an entire school year, their overall academic achievement improved by around eight percentile points, or nearly a full grade. Corey Turner, NPR News. President Trump says that a

private individual is donating $130 million to help the U.S. military during the government shutdown. Trump says that the unidentified individual is a friend. U.S. futures are flat and after hours trading on Wall Street. This is NPR News. On Fridays, the 1A podcast is all about helping you cut through the info fog and get to what's important in the news. Close out the week with us on our Friday News Roundup. We're from reporters who've been embedded with the biggest news of the week. Join us every week for the Friday News Roundup. Listen to the 1A podcast from NPR and WAMU.