NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-28-2025 3PM EDT

Episode Date: October 28, 2025

NPR News: 10-28-2025 3PM EDTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. A federal judge in San Francisco has ordered an indefinite halt to the Trump administration's mass layoffs of federal employees tied to the government shutdown. At a hearing today, U.S. District Judge Susan Ilson said she believed the federal employee unions that brought the lawsuit are likely to show that actions taken by the administration authorize the layoffs are unlawful. Her order applies to federal employees in programs or offices where the plaintiff unions have members. or bargaining units. Senate Republicans are meeting with Vice President J.D. Vance ahead of a series of votes to rein in President Trump's powers to set tariffs. NPRs, Claudi Grisales, reports the administration is pushing to block the measures,

which already don't have much chance of passage in the Republican-led House. A bipartisan group of senators will force votes to terminate an emergency provision that has allowed the president to set tariffs in Brazil, Canada, and other countries. Virginia Democrat Tim Kaine, who's among the co-sponsors with Kentucky Republican, and Rand Paul says the tariffs are hurting key sectors of farming and manufacturing. The president has invented an emergency to punish American consumers and to punish this ally in a way that is very, very destructive. So far, mostly Senate Democrats and a handful of Republicans, including Alaska Senator Lisa

Murkowski and Maine Senator Susan Collins, have signed on. The votes come ahead of arguments before the Supreme Court on the president's tariff powers. Claude Riesales, NPR News, the Capitol. We've been tracking a Category 5 hurricane pummeling Jamaica with maximum sustained winds of 165 miles per hour. NPR Zeta Peralta has a latest. Hurricane Melissa continued to strengthen up until the moment it made landfall near the town of New Hope.

And this is a monster of a storm that meteorologists say will be in the history books. Just before landfall, its pressure dropped to below 900 millibars. Only six other Atlantic storms have done that since record-keeping began. Now the western side of Jamaica is being pummeled by wind. The coastline is being flooded by a storm surge that could reach 13 feet. The National Hurricane Center says Jamaica should expect catastrophic damage.

Jamaican officials have expressed worry that too few of its citizens heated evacuation orders. At least three people died just in the buildup to the storm. That's Ada Peralta. The U.S. has carried out more deadly strikes on alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific. Here's NPR's Quill Lawrence. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced on social media, media that the U.S. military destroyed four boats in the Eastern Pacific. Hexeth released grainy videos of the boats exploding and said Mexican search and rescue teams had taken

aboard one survivor. He said American intelligence suggested the boats carried narcotics bound for the U.S. Some U.S. lawmakers from both parties have called these killings executions without trial and suggested the military is breaking U.S. and international law when it kills civilians. Quill-Lorence NPR News. From Washington, this is NPR. The U.S. House Oversight Committee is asking the Justice Department to investigate former President Joe Biden's executive actions. The Republican-led panel alleges Biden suffered advanced cognitive decline and may not have been aware of pardons and commutations that were signed by Autopenn in his name. Biden has pushed back. He says he made the decisions about pardons, executive orders, legislation, and proclamations, and that any suggestion.

he did not is, quote, ridiculous and false. Universities across the country have closed academic programs they shared with China under pressure from a House committee report that said those programs threatened U.S. national security. Michelle Mariscoe of member station KJZZE reports that includes two colleges in Arizona. Republican Congressman Eli Crane says Northern Arizona University ended its dual degree electrical engineering partnership program with Chong King University in China. After it appeared in a report co-authored by the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition between the U.S. and the Chinese Communist Party, the University of Arizona, shuttered four tech microcampuses in China after the committee noted its partnership, spokesman Mitch Zach. We've communicated directly with those affected and are working with enrolled students to help them continue their education.

The report states UC Berkeley, Georgia Tech, and at least six others have all shut down our Chinese partnership programs, but it said more than 50 others continue them. For NPR News, I'm Mitchell-Mariscoll in Flagstaff. The Dow is up 288 points. This is NPR News.