NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-08-2025 7PM EST

Episode Date: November 9, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Hurst. Around 1,400 flights were canceled today after the Trump administration ordered cuts to flights at 40 airports around the country on a phased-in basis as the FAA deals with staffing issues with air traffic controllers who are working without pay. MPIR's Amy Held has more. A stressed system is stressing out flyers. Total headache, disaster nightmare. Richard Alvario's Philadelphia to Florida flight was rebooked twice. Working unpaid, fewer air traffic control workers are showing up.

The Senate meantime showing up for its first Saturday session in the shutdown. Capping the week, it became the longest in history, surpassing the record 35 days under the first Trump administration. Mounting travel disruptions then pressured lawmakers and Trump to compromise. Now weeks before the Thanksgiving rush, with billions of dollars and millions of travelers on the line, Travel industry groups are imploring Congress to end this shutdown and divert what they say would be a crisis. Amy Held and P.R. News. The Senate adjourned their session today without any deal.

A federal judge ruled the Trump administration violated the First Amendment rights of Education Department employees when it replaced workers out-of-office messages during the shutdown. And Pierce Corey Turner reports. The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by a public employee union that represents Education Department workers. Soon after the shutdown began, the Trump administration replaced workers' out-of-office email notifications with partisan language, blaming Democrats for the government shutdown. The union sued, and Friday, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote in his decision that, quote, when government employees enter public service, they do not sign away their First Amendment rights,

and they certainly do not sign up to be a billboard for any given administration's partisan views. Cooper ordered the department to restore union members' personal out-of-office email notices, and the department did not respond to a request for comment. Corey Turner, NPR News. Ukraine is working to restore power after Russian drone attacks on energy infrastructure caused blackouts in many regions. Residential areas were also hit, killing at least six people. The BBC's James Landale has more.

A lot of the targets were energy. infrastructure. There's a clear attempt by Russia now to make living in Ukraine very, very hard. They want to make it very hard, particularly in the East, for people to get access to electricity and to get heating. And that's not just a question of trying to damage Ukrainian morale, but it's also trying to damage Ukraine's economy. They just want to make it very, very hard to do stuff in Ukraine simply because they think that is a long-term strategy that could put some political pressure on the government here in Kiev. The BBC's James Landale reporting.

You're listening to NPR News. Researchers say damage from Hurricane Melissa in Jamaica last month was made worse by climate change. As NPR's Alejandro Burunda reports, it was the strongest storm to ever hit the Caribbean island. Earth is about 1.3 degrees Celsius hotter now than it would be if humans had not caused global climate change by burning vast amounts of fossil fuels.

That extra heat has so far mostly ended up in the world's oceans, and a lot of the energy for storms like Melissa comes directly from the ocean. A hotter ocean leads to potentially stronger, wetter hurricanes. That's exactly what scientists at World Weather Attribution Think happened. Melissa had plenty of hot ocean water to feed on, so it got huge. In the end, its rainfall intensity was about 9% higher, with wind speeds roughly 7% higher than they would have been absent climate change. The storm caused more than 6% 60 deaths in the Caribbean, though that number may rise over time. Alejandro Burunda, NPR News.

FedEx and UPS, two of the world's largest cargo airlines say they temporarily grounded their MD-11 planes after one of them was involved in the deadly and fiery crash on Louisville Tuesday, leaving at least 14 people dead. The National Transportation Safety Board says the plane's left engine detached from the wing, killing all three on board and 11 on the ground. Both carriers say they made the decision on advice from the planes manufacturer, Boeing, and out of an abundance of caution. There are around 70 of those MD-11 planes in service.

I'm Janine Herbst, NPR News, in Washington. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fee. Join millions of customers and visit wise.com. T's and Cs apply.