NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-22-2025 4PM EST

Episode Date: November 22, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Nora Rahm. American and Ukrainian officials are holding talks in Switzerland after yesterday's release of the U.S. drafted peace plan. Many Ukrainians see the proposal as capitulation. NPR's Elr-Bearsley reports. In the western city of Ternopeal, bulldozers sift through rubble looking for bodies at an apartment block hit by Russian missiles this week.

More than 30 people were killed, including several children, others are still missing. Since Russia's full-scale invasion, thousands of Ukrainian civilians have been killed. They're proposing some kind of peace for us, without us. Resident Inga Shkharupa says the U.S. peace plan is pro-Russian and done behind Ukraine's back. We're paying the price. People are dying. Cities are getting destroyed, and everybody's doing nothing towards Russia. Nothing.

Skarupa says people here feel betrayed by the U.S. Eleanor Beardsley, NPR News, Ternopeil, Ukraine. President Trump is reacting to one-time stalwart supporter Marjorie Taylor Green's decision to quit Congress. NPR's Amy Held reports. Not long after Green and Congressman Thomas Massey helped lead fellow Republicans to defy in a sweeping vote to release the Epstein files, she announced she's leaving Congress. President Trump spoke about it Saturday. She started backing perhaps the worst Republican congressman in our history, this stupid person named Massey.

And I said, go your own way. And once I left her, she resigned because she would never have survived a primary. But I think she's a nice person. Sworn into office just three days before the January 6th insurrection, Green is resigning from Congress five years later. A special election will be called to replace her. in Georgia's Conservative 14th District. Amy Held, NPR News. The U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily restored Texas Republicans' new congressional map.

The map had been blocked earlier this week by a lower federal court. The Texas newsrooms blaze gaining reports. The lower federal court had ruled challenges are likely to prove in a trial that the Texas map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymender. But Governor Greg Gabbitt and state attorneys appealed And on Friday night, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Lito responded by putting a temporary hold on the lower court ruling until Supreme Court justices can weigh in. Texas NWACP president and lawyer Gary Bledso represents plaintiffs seeking to strike down the new maps. The better and fairer practice has been to bring the whole court in on very important issues like this one.

A final decision from the Supreme Court may come as soon as Monday for the Texas News. room. I'm Blaise Ganey. This is NPR News in Washington. Every day an estimated 2,000 full garbage trucks worth of plastic is dumped into the world's oceans, balloons, grocery bags, candy wrappers. Scientists have long known plastic kills marine animals. NPR's Nate Rot reports a new study shows how little it takes. Two golf balls worth for a sea turtle, the equivalent of a soccer ball for a dolphin, three sugar cubes worth of eaten plastic to kill a puffin. What surprised me the most was how little it takes to become deadly. Britta Beckler is a co-author of the new study and the director of Ocean Plastics Research

at the Ocean Conservancy. The findings published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences are grim. What we found is one in five animals had swallowed plastic, and for sea turtles, it was almost one and two, so 50%. In one case, there was an albatross that had an entire plastic bottle in its digestive tract. To me, the authors of the new study, the solution is clear. Global, national, and local policies are needed, they say, to reduce the production of plastics and to clean up the ones that are already in the wild. Nate Roth, NPR News.

The UN wrapped up its global climate conference in Brazil today. 80 countries had been demanding negotiators agreed to a roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels, which caused global warming. They did not. They did agree to modest progress towards addressing climate change. The U.S. did not attend this year. It also declined to send a delegation to the G20 summit, which opened today in Johannesburg. President Trump says South Africa discriminates against white farmers. This is NPR News.