Consider This from NPR

Since the start of his second term, President Trump has been at odds with the federal courts. The protests in Los Angeles are just the latest series of events to raise huge questions about presidential power: in this case, whether the president can use military force to control protests. NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with J. Michael Luttig, a former federal judge who has a stark warning: that Trump's...

Kentucky is one of the poorest states and is likely to see billions of dollars cut from Medicaid and other government benefits if Trump's spending bill becomes law. For our weekly Reporter's Notebook series we hear from Kentucky Public Radio's Sylvia Goodman and Joe Sonka . The two reporters traveled through rural eastern Kentucky to gauge how cuts could impact people who rely on federal assistanc...

Early Friday local time, Israel finally did what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening to do for years: It launched a massive attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, killing top military commanders, nuclear scientists and — according to Iran — dozens of Iranian civilians. The attacks have once again plunged the volatile region into uncharted waters. NPR correspondent Hadeel al-Shalch...

Kilmar Abrego Garcia: a name that's become near-synonymous with the Trump Administration's immigration crackdown. Abrego Garcia was arrested by ICE agents on March 12th, as he was leaving his job in Baltimore. In the days and months that followed, the fate of the 29-year-old father of three was in the hands of the Trump administration and El Salvador's President. At the time of his arrest the admi...

The White House's message on what's happening in Los Angeles is simple: this is what President Trump was elected to do. It is true that polls have found people trust the Republican Party more to handle immigration. A CBS poll taken last week found that 54% approve of Trump's deportation policies. Trump is making a big bet on how far Americans want him to go. He mobilized National Guard and active-...

Fentanyl and other street drugs killed more than 230,000 people under the age of 35 in the U.S. over the last decade. But now new federal data shows drug deaths among young people are plummeting at an unprecedented rate – saving thousands of lives each year. What's driving the drop, and with federal funding cuts on the horizon, will it continue? For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up...

The last time a President deployed the National Guard over a governor's objections was more than 50 years ago. Over the weekend, President Trump did just that — in California. He ordered 2,000 National Guard members to Los Angeles, where people are protesting federal immigration raids. Today, governor Gavin Newsom said California is suing the Trump administration for what the governor called an un...

Citing a rarely used law, President Trump bypassed California's governor Gavin Newsom, and ordered two thousand national guard troops to Los Angeles for sixty days. It's the first time in 60 years a president has used federal power to deploy national guard troops without the agreement of the state's governor. NPR's Scott Detrow speaks with Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass and hears how people in the c...

In March, NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson reported on problems with the way federal courts police sexual harassment and bullying . A culture of secrecy made reporting the story particularly difficult. With few protections, many who alleged mistreatment were afraid to speak out. For our weekly Reporter's Notebook series, Johnson takes us inside her investigation – and speaks with Consider...

House Republicans' reconciliation bill, which includes a first-of-its-kind national private school voucher program, is now in the hands of the Senate. The proposal would use the federal tax code to offer vouchers that students could use to attend private secular or religious schools, even in states where voters have opposed such efforts. Debates about voucher programs have raged on throughout the...

President Trump has signed a new travel ban. Travelers from 12 countries will be barred from entering the US, and people from an additional seven countries will face partial travel restrictions. The proclamation goes into effect June 9 — and fulfills something Trump has long-promised: to bring back the travel ban from his first term. But that ban was the subject of many legal challenges. Some lega...

Whether it was her history making win in 2017. Or the history she made as only the second woman elected to lead a country to give birth while IN office. Or her decision to step away from power after leading New Zealand through crisis after crisis. Jacinda Ardern could never be described as a TYPICAL politician. But perhaps the most norm-busting feature of her time as Prime Minister was her rejecti...

Tuesday morning brought another shooting near a food distribution site in Gaza — the third in as many days. This time, more than two dozen people were killed as they tried to collect emergency food aid, according to Gaza health officials and the International Committee of the Red Cross. The Israeli military acknowledged firing warning shots at "several suspects" moving toward their position, and f...

In the past, most military parades in the U.S. were staged to signal the end of a war and welcome home of those who fought. The last major military parade in the nation's capitol was in 1991. It marked the end of the Gulf War. The capital has not seen a military parade like the one planned by President Trump for June 14th in decades - a parade estimated to cost $45 million. NPR's Ari Shapiro speak...

President Trump wants to make a deal with Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine. Putin says Russia wants to engage in peace talks, but Putin has also been ordering the most widespread and violent aerial attacks on Ukraine in years. This has led Trump to criticize Putin more and more in public — a step that's been rare over the course of Trump's two terms in office. Three years into his war on U...

The Trump administration has thrown so many curveballs at colleges and universities, it can be hard to keep track. But there's logic behind the many efforts, from cutting research grants to detaining international students involved in activism. NPR's Ari Shapiro talks with White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben and education correspondent Elissa Nadworny about what's at stake in the federal...

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced new COVID recommendations this week, it raised questions among clinicians and patients: Will those shots still be available to people who want them — and will insurance cover it? NPR's Ari Shapiro speaks with Dr. Peter Hotez, co-director of the Texas Children's Hospital Center for Vaccine Development, about the CDC's new guid...

When ISIS was at its height, its ranks included several hundred Americans. They were often young men radicalized online by savvy marketing that promised free housing and the chance to meet a wife. When the Islamic State collapsed, some of them ended up in huge detention camps in Syria, and the U.S. has been trying to bring them home. NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer reports on one American family coping with...

NPR and three public radio stations in Colorado sued President Trump on Tuesday over his executive order that seeks to end federal funding for NPR and PBS. NPR's media correspondent David Folkenflik breaks down the suit, and NPR CEO Katherine Maher answers Mary Louise Kelly's answers about the lawsuit, potential fall out, and future of NPR and public media. And a reminder about how NPR covers news...

It's a classic Washington power move — the late-on-Friday news dump. This past Friday, at 4:30pm, start of a long holiday weekend, about half the staff of the National Security Council got emails asking them to leave by 5pm. Dozens of people abruptly dismissed. The restructuring of the NSC as Secretary of State and National Security advisor Marco Rubio has characterized it — continues a trend in t...

President Trump's spreading of the false claim that South Africa is perpetrating a genocide against its white inhabitants is just the latest example of misinformation making its way from corners of the internet into presidential statements or even policy. This isn't the first time that a falsehood that began on the fringes of the right-wing made its way to the Trump White House. NPR's Scott Detrow...

The Supreme Court has become the focal point of the legal battle over President Donald Trump's executive authority – and presidential power more broadly. Few reporters are as prepared as NPR's Nina Totenberg to report on this unique moment. Over the last fifty years, Totenberg established herself as the preeminent Supreme Court reporter in America. She's broken countless stories – including allega...

Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem got a pop quiz at a senate hearing this week. The question came from Democratic Senator Maggie Hassan, of New Hampshire. Hassan asked Noem to to explain habeas corpus. For the record, habeas corpus is the legal principle, enshrined in the Constitution, that protects people from illegal detention. The reason that this bit of Latin is under discussion – is...

Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim worked for the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. This weekend, they were slated to go to Jerusalem — Milgrim was to meet Lischinsky's family for the first time. According to Israeli ambassador Yechiel Leiter, Lischinsky had bought a ring and was planning to propose. Instead, they were gunned down outside an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum on Wednesday night....

Federal regulators are now limiting the number of flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport. This comes after a harrowing month for the air traffic controllers who work the airspace around it. On April 28th, communications and radar systems went dark at the air traffic control facility in Philadelphia, where controllers manage the airspace around Newark. Since then there have been...