NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-12-2024 7PM EST

Episode Date: November 13, 2024

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. President-elect Donald Trump is wasting little time in filling some of the key positions of his upcoming administration. Trump announcing today is nominating former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe to head the CIA. Trump says he'll nominate former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel. NPR's Greg Meyry reports other picks include Senator Marco Rubio as secretary of state and retired Army Green Beret Mike Waltz as national security advisor.

Trump is widely expected to nominate Florida Senator Marco Rubio to serve as secretary of state, according to a source familiar with the selection process. Now, Trump and Rubio traded personal insults when both of them ran for the Republican presidential nomination back in 2016. They've since reconciled and in fact Rubio is considered a finalist to be Trump's vice president this year. Now when it comes to foreign policy Rubio made his name with strong criticism of autocratic regimes in Latin America including Cuba and Venezuela. Rubio's foreign policy

views are also considered to be a bit more hawkish than those of Trump, though both Rubio and Mike Walz have been more in line recently. NPR's Greg Meyry, president-elect Trump has vowed to, quote, drain the swamp and dismantle what he calls the deep state. With his imminent return to the White House, many federal workers are on edge, as we hear from NPR's Andrea Shue. Some two million civilians work for the federal government in all kinds of roles. National security, public health, protecting the environment. Trump insists among them are rogue actors whom he wants to replace.

Already a conservative group has published a watch list of what it calls subversive leftist bureaucrats who cannot be trusted to enforce immigration laws. Jason Breifel is policy director for the Senior Executives Association, which represents the highest ranking civil servants. The threat of politicizing the federal workforce threatens the ability of the government to serve everybody equally and fairly. Trump is expected to revisit a previous effort to eliminate protections for federal employees in policy-related positions. Andrea Hsu, NPR News.

The United Kingdom has set a new target at a global climate conference to slash greenhouse gas emissions. And bearers Michael Copley reports the country is using climate initiatives to try to boost economic development. The UK aims to cut heat trapping emissions by 81% in the next decade compared to levels in 1990. Prime Minister Keir Starmer made the announcement at United Nations climate negotiations in Azerbaijan.

Activists cheered the news, saying the UK is claiming a leadership role in global climate efforts. The UK government also announced incentives to build up domestic supply chains for the offshore wind industry. Starmer said the UK aims to be a leader in what he called the economy of tomorrow. Michael Copley, NPR News. Stocks gave back some of their gains today following a major post-election run-up. The Dow is down 382 points.

You're listening to NPR. Federal safety regulators are asking Tesla to be careful about social media posts promoting the company's semi-autonomous software. NPR's Kamila Domenosky reports new documents show the requests were published as part of an investigation into how well the systems work when there's low visibility. Federal regulators have long been frustrated with how Tesla markets its driver assistance software. That's a big part of why Tesla added supervised to the software's name.

Now, full self-driving supervised. To make it clear, you need to pay attention while using it. Newly released documents show regulators have complained to Tesla about some social media posts on X, or rather, reposts, where the company elevated the voices of drivers praising full self-driving supervised. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration called those posts lost opportunities to temper enthusiasm.

Tesla is selling the feature's abilities. Regulators would prefer more focus on its potential safety risks. Kamila Domenoski, NPR News. Canada's Labor Minister says he'll intervene to end lockouts at two of the country's largest ports after negotiations with workers appeared to have reached an impasse. Minister Stephen McKinnon saying he'll direct Canada's industrial relations board toward the resumption of all operations at the ports of Vancouver and Montreal. Port of Montreal workers were locked out over the

weekend while workers in Vancouver have been locked out since November 4th. McKinnon says Canadian citizens can only take quote, so much economic self-destruction. Critical futures prices remain at recent lows after declining by 5% over the past two sessions. Oil up just 8 cents a barrel at 68.12 a barrel. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.