NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-07-2025 5PM EST

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. Senate Republicans are preparing a bipartisan package, rather, of spending bills they hope will win new Democratic votes and end the government shutdown. But President Trump is calling on Republicans to get rid of the filibuster, which requires 60% of the Senate to proceed with voting on a bill. I am totally in favor of terminating the filibuster, and we would be back to work within 10 minutes after that vote took place. lots of other good things would happen. And it doesn't make any sense that a Republican would not want to do that. Democrats are proposing to extend expiring health care subsidies for a year and to create a bipartisan committee to address Republican demands for changes to the Affordable Care Act. Otherwise, many Democrats say they'll continue to hold out until Trump and Republican leaders

negotiate. The Trump administration began scaling flights back today because of the government shutdown. Airports in Chicago, Atlanta, and Denver had the most disruptive. so far. The FAA is trying to reduce flights by 10% by next weekend. From member station GBAH in Boston, Jeremy Siegel reports the move is intended to ease the burden on air traffic controllers who've been working without pay during the shutdown. Patricia Andawegg was supposed to fly from Boston to Australia to celebrate her 90th birthday with family this week. But thanks to a series of delays and now the shutdown induced cancellations, she missed her connecting flight. Andawegg says, at this point, it's not worth a trip.

I'm missing my birthday, but on the other hand, I met so many helpful people right, left, and center. I call it the journey to nowhere. Airlines are phasing in the 10% reduction in flights, so cancellations are expected to become more widespread in the days ahead. For NPR News, I'm Jeremy Siegel at Logan Airport in Boston. Pressure on food banks has increased after the Trump administration upended SNAP benefits during the shutdown. As Alina Neil Sacks from Member Station K-A-Z-U reports, this coincides with local farm contracts ending for some food banks.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture ended a popular program that gave food banks money to buy fresh local produce. Sam Thorpe co-owns the farm's spade and plow in Morgan Hill, California, where weekly food deliveries to a local food bank are about to stop. He says the timing is bad for everyone involved. His farm, the smaller producers he works with and people who rely on the food bank. The lost revenue might force Thorpe to reduce worker hours, which could mean less food growing in the ground. That might mean not necessarily like rotting vegetables in the field, but it could mean things that never even got to that point. The pause on SNAP benefits has also meant fewer sales at farmers markets that accept

them. For NPR news, I'm Elena Neal Sachs. Major stock indexes were mixed on Wall Street today. The S&P 500 edged up a tenth of a percent. This is NPR News. Scientist James Watson, who shared a Nobel Prize for helping discover the double helix shape of DNA has died. He was 97. His discovery, along with Francis Crick, was significantly based on the X-ray diffraction data produced by Rosalind Franklin, which was shown to them without her knowledge. The Trump administration plans to auction offshore drilling rights across about a half of the Gulf of Mexico. The sales were written into President Trump's tax and spending bill, as NPR's Alejandra Barunda reports.

The auction will make about 80 million acres available in the Gulf of Mexico, which President Trump has renamed the Gulf of America. The Interior Department's Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, which manages drilling in the region, says the auction price would be set as low as possible to encourage producers to bid. The lease sale will be the first of 30 scheduled for the region in coming years. Parts of the ocean off Alaska's coast will also become available for oil and gas development. The announcement comes right before countries gather at COP 30, the annual climate negotiations that aim to lower global levels of climate pollution. Burning fossil fuels is the primary driver of climate change. Alejandro Burunda, NPR News.

The NFL's Atlanta Falcons coach Rahim Morris is planning to show his players a video of Jesse Owens victories at the 1936 Berlin Olympics ahead of the team's game. game in Berlin this Sunday. The Falcons will face off against the Indianapolis Colts in the same stadium where Owens, who is black, won four gold medals in front of Adolf Hitler, thwarting Nazi claims of white racial supremacy. I'm Ryland Barton. You're listening to NPR News from Washington.