NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-23-2024 2AM EST

Episode Date: November 23, 2024

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Support for this podcast and the following message come from Autograph Collection Hotels, with over 300 independent hotels around the world, each exactly like nothing else. Autograph Collection is part of the Marriott Bonvoy portfolio of hotel brands. Find the unforgettable at autographcollection.com. Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Willman. Flash demonstrations by white supremacist groups are on the rise across the nation. NPR's Windsor Johnston reports that experts are calling these displays a trend that's linked to changing demographics and deep political divisions.

The flash demonstrations are usually small groups made up of mostly masked men who show up in communities waving offensive banners, white power flags and chanting hateful rhetoric. R.N. Segal is with the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism. He says these groups then use videos of the displays to recruit or inspire others on social media. Marches that we've seen over the past couple of years, they really hit every part of the country.

If there is a divisive debate, that often can influence where they will show up. The Anti-Defamation League says more than 750 flash demonstrations have taken place in the U.S. since 2020, with more than half of them occurring within the last 18 months. Windsor-Johnston NPR News. President-elect Donald Trump is bringing back Russell Vogt to head the Office of Management and Budget. NPR's Stephen Fowler has more. Vogt held the same role in Trump's first term in office. The OMB runs the president's budget and supervises executive branch agencies. So Vogt will play a key role in shaping Trump's second term vision for how the government operates. That likely includes

plans Vogt wrote for the conservative policy playbook, Project 2025. In that document, Vote wrote that quote, it is the president's agenda that should matter to the departments and agencies and not their own. Stephen Fowler, NPR News, Atlanta. President-elect Donald Trump also announced several more picks for members of his administration Friday. Among them is Scott Besant, who Trump wants to serve as his Treasury Secretary. Empire's Scott Horsley says if confirmed, Besant will be tasked with pushing major parts of Trump's agenda, including any tax cuts and tariffs. He's one of the President-elect's biggest cheerleaders in the financial world. He runs

a hedge fund, the Key Square Group. He also works for billionaire Democratic donor George Soros, which generated suspicion of him in some Trump quarters, but he's a longtime friend of Vice President-elect J.D. Vance. In a social media post this evening, Trump described Besson as widely respected as one of the world's foremost international investors and geopolitical and economic strategists. That's NPR's Scott Horsley reporting. Matt Gaetz says he will not return to Congress. The Florida Republican withdrew this week as President-elect Donald Trump's nominee as Attorney General. He dropped out of the running following growing fallout

from allegations against him of sexual misconduct. He had resigned from Congress after Trump announced his intention to appoint Gaetz to his cabinet. cabinet Friday he said he had no intention of serving another term in the house. It was a good day on Wall Street on Friday the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 426 points the NASDAQ up 31 and the S&P 500 closed up 20 points. This is NPR News. The pop star and artist Bjork has created a new art installation in Paris that features the sounds of endangered and extinct animals. In Paris, Chloe Veltman reports that Nature Manifesto aims to highlight the effects of human-caused climate change on the Earth's shrinking biodiversity. Visitors can hear Bjork's immersive, otherworldly soundscape over the next few weeks as they climb the long glass escalator that hugs the side of the Pompidou Centre in Paris. In a pioneering sound strata of mutant peacocks, bees and lemurs.

There are orangutan, beluga whale and mosquito sounds among others. Also in the mix are the sounds of extinct creatures like the Hawaiian crow which can no longer be found in the wild. The creative team manipulated many of the samples using artificial intelligence. Björk is a long-time climate activist. She advocates for ecological issues including her ongoing fight against intensive fish farming in her native Iceland. Chloe Valtman, NPR News.

Police in Brazil Friday formally accused former president Jair Bolsonaro and 36 other people of attempting a coup to keep the right-wing leader in power after losing the 2022 elections there. The country's prosecutor general will now decide whether to charge Bolsonaro or to end that investigation. A United Nations human rights investigator said Friday the junta controlling Myanmar is using beheadings, gang rape and torture in an attempt to control some of that country's villages. And Thomas Andrews says children and the elderly are among its victims. The military rulers of the country have been facing major opposition to its control over

that Southeast Asian country. I'm Dale Willman, NPR News. Know that fizzy feeling you get when you read something really good, watch the movie everyone's been talking about, or catch the show that the internet can't get over. At the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast, we chase that feeling four times a week. We'll serve you recommendations and commentary on the buzziest movies, TV, music, and more. From low brow to high brow to the stuff in between, catch the Pop Culture Happy Hour podcast from NPR.