Consider This from NPR

Baseball was once known for breaking racial barriers in the U.S. But now, Black representation in the major leagues is at its lowest level in decades. This year, MLB did something to try and change that, by staging the first annual HBCU Swingman Classic. It's an opportunity for players from historically Black colleges and universities to play in front of scouts and executives on a national stage....

Since the war began, military aid from the US to Ukraine has largely received bipartisan report. But a new planned 800 million dollar package has split Democrats and also riled up Human Rights Groups because of one weapon included in the package — cluster bombs. More than a hundred countries, including allies of the US, have banned use of the weapon, which releases a large number of bomblets over...

The U.S. has the worst maternal mortality rate of high-income countries globally, and the numbers have only grown. According to a new study published in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association – maternal death rates remain the highest among Black women, and those high rates have more than doubled over the last twenty years. When compared to white women, Black women are more than twic...

Humphrey Bogart, Cary Grant, Bettie Davis, Clark Gable. During Hollywood's Golden Age, which existed roughly from the 1910s and 20's into the early 1960s, these actors weren't just stars... They were in the words of NPR's movie critic Bob Mondello "American royalty". But in an age of Disney and Marvel, the movie star appears to have been eclipsed by the franchises in which they appear. NPR critics...

The police killing in France of a 17-year old of North African descent sparked protests and violence across the country as well as a national conversation about racism and police brutality. Rebecca Rosman reports from the Paris suburb of Nanterre where the police killing took place. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports from Marseille, the scene of some of the worst violence. And Ari Shapiro interviews...

On Wednesday Israel said it concluded a two-day military operation in the Jenin refugee camp meant to root out armed militants. The raid on the camp in the occupied West Bank - complete with airstrikes – was the most intense military operation Israel has carried out in more than 15 years. At least 12 Palestinians were killed and scores wounded. One Israeli soldier was killed. Israel claimed the at...

It's been more than a decade since 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' was repealed. Introduced in 1993, the law remained in effect until 2011. During that time an estimated 114,000 troops were forced out of the military because of their sexual orientation. Veterans who received an "other than honorable" discharge from the military under "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" were ineligible for veterans' benefits. That mea...

There's nothing obviously patriotic about scarfing down as many hot dogs as you can in ten minutes. So how did competitive eating become so synonymous with the holiday celebrating the Fourth of July? To find out, host Scott Detrow visits a hot dog eating contest in Washington, D.C. And producer Matt Ozug unpacks the evolution of eating as a sport, from a 17th century farmer to today's televised co...

The Supreme Court ended its term this week with three rulings that will have far reaching consequences in the lives of millions of Americans. The court struck down President Biden's student debt relief program. It also sided with a Colorado website designer who wants to refuse business to a same-sex couple, and it effectively killed affirmative action in college admissions. All three rulings were...

A week on from an aborted uprising, Vladimir Putin is still standing. But for how long? The brief rebellion, launched by the leader of the mercenary Wagner Group Yevgeny Prigozhin, marked the greatest challenge to Putin's rule since he came to power, 23 years ago. The mercenary leader is now in exile in Belarus and no charges are being filed against him or his followers. So where does that leave P...

The Supreme Court effectively killed race-conscious admissions in higher education on Thursday. In two cases, the court decided that the admissions policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina - both of which consider race - are unconstitutional, ruling the policies violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. The decisions reversed decades of precedent upheld over the y...

A punishing heat wave has left more than a dozen people dead across Texas. In recent days temperatures have climbed above 100 degrees in many parts of the state. Now the extreme heat is heading east, putting people's health at risk across the Mississippi Valley and the Central Gulf Coast. NPR's Lauren Sommer reports on how climate change and the El Niño climate pattern are increasing the intensity...

When it comes to American politics, Florida regularly finds its way to the center of the conversation. Often important, if not pivotal in presidential elections, Florida is home to former President Trump and his strongest opponent in the Republican presidential primary for 2024, Governor Ron DeSantis. As he campaigns for the nomination Gov. DeSantis has taken center stage in some of the most conte...

Russian President Vladimir Putin faced a direct challenge to his authority over the weekend. Mercenary fighters with the Wagner group took over a military headquarters and launched a march toward Moscow. The group's leader, Yevgeny Prigozhin, eventually called off the uprising. He's apparently accepted a deal to live in exile, and claims the weekend's events were a protest, not an attempt to overt...

The Bipartisan Infrastructure Act is a $1.2 trillion law meant to spur a massive infrastructure renewal and rebuilding program complete with new bridges, railroads and highways. It also allocates $65 million to expand internet access to all. Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, is the man Biden tapped to make sure the massive job gets done. We speak with Landrieu about the Affordable C...

Last June, when the Supreme Court reversed the Roe v. Wade decision, which had stood for nearly 50 years, the constitutional right to abortion ceased to exist. While reproductive health providers had been fearing, and preparing for the possible reversal for years, it still left millions of people seeking reproductive health care in flux. A year on, state controlled access to abortion continues to...

There has been no shortage of confrontations between the U.S. and China this year. This week, shortly after a trip by Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Beijing, intended to thaw relations with China, President Biden likened Chinese President Xi Jinping to a "dictator" in off the cuff remarks. A spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry called that "an open political provocation." Before tha...

As climate change gets worse, California is seeing larger and more dangerous wildfires. And in response some insurers are leaving the state behind, finding the growing risk too high to pay. Host Ailsa Chang talks with Michael Wara, who directs a climate and energy policy program at Stanford, about the financial calculus insurers are making as the threat of climate-fueled disasters grows. See pcm.a...

Time is running out to locate the submersible vessel that went missing Sunday, on a voyage to visit the wreckage of the Titanic. The U.S. Coast Guard estimates the five people aboard the vessel, known as the Titan, could run out of air by Thursday morning. CBS Sunday Morning correspondent David Pogue was aboard the same vessel to take the same voyage last year. He says its interior is the size of...

While Black people in this country have been celebrating Juneteenth for decades, what is sometimes referred to as Emancipation Day or America's "second Independence Day" is only being celebrated as a national holiday this year for the third time. June 19th marks the date in 1865 when the last enslaved people in the U.S. learned they were free. on that day, Major General Gordon Granger of the Union...

Made in America. It may be a catchy political slogan, but it's a lot more complicated than it sounds. So many things we use everyday come from China. In 2018 - former President Donald Trump launched a trade war with the country, eventually slapping tariffs on more than 300 billion dollars worth of Chinese imports. Two and half years into the Biden presidency – those taxes are still here. To unders...

It depends on when, and where you grew up, but you can probably name a few of your favorite sit-com dads - from Mike Brady and his "bunch", to Homer Simpson, to Andre Johnson from Blackish. There is no single, universal way to be a father. There are as many ways to be a dad as there are dads. This year, for Father's Day, we asked a variety of different dads to tell us their stories about what fath...

A deadly and addictive chemical normally used as a horse tranquilizer is being mixed into illegal drugs. Xylazine has been around for a while, but over the last year authorities have been seeing it turn up in higher quantities all over the country. In recent weeks, U.S. Drug Czar Rahul Gupta has been sounding the alarm, even acknowledging public health experts and police are mostly in the dark abo...

When Kim Hyun-woo stepped into the NPR studios in Washington, he was doing something that in his past life would have gotten him killed - speaking frankly with an American journalist. That's because Mr. Kim spent 17 years working for North Korean intelligence at the Ministry of State Security. He defected in 2014 and lives today in South Korea. In a rare glimpse behind the curtain of one of the mo...

On Tuesday, former president Donald Trump appeared in a federal courthouse in Miami where he pleaded not guilty to 37 criminal charges, including obstruction and unlawful retention of classified documents at his Florida home and private resort Mar-a-Lago. He is the first former U.S. president to face federal criminal charges. Trump and many of his supporters have called the indictment politically...