NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-24-2024 12PM EST

Episode Date: November 24, 2024

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, it's Aisha Harris from Pop Culture Happy Hour. If you love NPR podcasts, you'll want the new NPR Plus podcast bundle. Enjoy an all-you-can-eat selection of NPR Plus podcasts with sponsor-free listening and bonus episodes. Plus, you'll be supporting public radio. Check it out at plus.npr.org. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Noor Ram. President-elect Trump has now announced all his choices for his cabinet in his second
Starting point is 00:00:29 administration. Some senators are weighing in today on some of the nominees. Democrat Tammy Duckworth from Illinois says Pete Hegseth, an Army veteran and Fox News anchor, should not be the secretary of the Department of Defense. He never commanded a unit. He never commanded a company, let alone battalions, brigades or whole armies. He was a platoon leader. He served at a very low level in the military.
Starting point is 00:00:54 And we're talking about an organization that is three million servicemen and women and civilians and a budget of over $900 billion. He does not have the experience to run an organization of that size. Republican Senator Mark Wayne Mullen of Oklahoma defended Hegseth and other choices made by the president-elect. Government has been working for a party not for the people and President Trump is putting people there that's going to make changes and unfortunately the establishment is trying to hold that back and trying to find every little piece of detail they can to say that this person disqualified. Both Duckworth and Mullen were interviewed on CNN. Turnout in this year's presidential election was very high historically, with Republicans
Starting point is 00:01:35 winning the House, the Senate, and the presidency. As NPR's Miles Parks reports, that contradicts conventional political wisdom. For years, it's been largely assumed that high turnout elections would favor Democrats. That's because low propensity voters tend to be poorer and less educated, and those groups have tended to vote Democratic. 2024 turned that upside down. It was the second highest turnout election since 1960, and the GOP won big. Charles Stewart, an election expert at MIT,
Starting point is 00:02:05 says it will be interesting now to see how that impacts the party's feelings about voting policy. Republicans are much less likely to favor election reforms that expand access. But it's an open question whether that will shift now that the party has succeeded in a high turnout environment. Miles Parks, NPR News, Washington.
Starting point is 00:02:26 NATO member countries are getting a new warning that they may be targeted by Russian cyber attacks. Vicki Barker reports from London. British national security official Pat McFadden says hackers aligned with the Russian state have already carried out at least nine separate cyber attacks against NATO countries, including assaults on critical national infrastructure. And he'll tell a NATO cybersecurity conference in London Monday that Russia is now prepared to launch a new wave of attacks capable of, in his words, turning the lights off for millions in Britain alone.
Starting point is 00:03:02 With Russia increasingly able to penetrate and disable national power grids, McFadden's message will be no one should underestimate the Russian cyber threat to NATO. For NPR News, I'm Vicki Barker in London. This is NPR News in Washington. Israeli officials say an Israeli rabbi who disappeared in the United Arab Emirates last week has been found murdered. The office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called his death an anti-Semitic terrorist act and promised Israel will bring those responsible to justice.
Starting point is 00:03:38 Zvi Kogan had worked for an Orthodox Jewish group in the Gulf Arab country and went missing on Thursday in Dubai. Many Americans are struggling with how to speak to each other in these divided times. NPR's Chloe Veltman visited a community chorus in western Colorado doing both the musical and political work to sing in harmony. The 40 or so members of the North Fork Community Choir in Paonia come from all over the political spectrum. Stephanie Hellickson is the group's artistic director. We're in a blue-leaning town in a red-leaning county in the red-leaning half of a blue state. Hellickson says in order to sing well together, they set their differences aside at their
Starting point is 00:04:17 weekly rehearsals. Yet the music itself sometimes draws the differences out. A recent concert featuring Broadway hits made some singers uncomfortable because it included a song with lyrics they said were culturally offensive. Others complained about lyrics in a different song that contradicted their religious views. The group dealt with these matters by issuing disclaimers and changing some lyrics. Chloe Valtman, NPR News. Weather forecasters are predicting another round of winter weather in the coming days, lyrics. Chloe Valtman, NPR News.

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