Consider This from NPR
Episodes
It's not your imagination. Hurricanes are getting more severe.
21 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In August of 2005, Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, leaving more than 1300 people dead and becoming the most expensive hurricane in histor...
What's Trump doing in DC?
20 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump says the administration’s takeover of DC is making life safer. But many of the city’s residents and business owners are questionin...
How hundreds of babies and children ended up in a mass grave in Ireland
19 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Anna Corrigan grew up in Dublin, Ireland. She thought she was an only child, until she was in her 50s and discovered a family secret. Corrigan found d...
Trump and Zelenskyy meet again
18 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In the last few days, President Trump has met separately with the presidents of Russia and Ukraine, in an attempt to break the deadlock and end the wa...
What we know about President Trump's nominee to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics
17 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump turned to the Heritage Foundation help pick his appointee to lead a traditionally non-partisan agency. NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks wit...
Covering climate change in the city of love
16 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Paris has increasingly found itself on the frontline of the climate crisis and covering the city and the rest of France now means regularly reporting ...
What Bad Bunny means to Puerto Ricans
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This summer, the island of Puerto Rico has been under the thrall of Bad Bunny.His 30-concert residency at a stadium in San Juan is a homecoming for th...
Can Trump get Putin to make a deal?
14 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
American Presidents have been trying to manage Russian President Vladimir Putin since the beginning of this century.There was George W. Bush, who met ...
President Trump is upending global trade as we know it. What comes next?
13 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
”The global trading system as we have known it is dead.”Those are the words of former US Trade Representative Michael Froman.He’s now President ...
Trump and Putin are set to meet. Do they want the same thing?
12 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Two minutes — that’s how long President Trump says it will take him to figure out whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about findin...
Trump takes over D.C. police. Will other cities be next?
11 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump said he’s taking over Washington and announced he’s deploying the National Guard to the city.And he made another big promise: that...
Deep-sea mining is unregulated. Some want to forge ahead anyway
10 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Trump administration announced this past week that it has entered talks with the Cook Islands to research and develop seabed mineral resources. Th...
Investigating the Russia investigations. What's left to learn?
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The question of whether Russian interference in the 2016 election was a decisive reason Donald Trump won the presidency is one that has dogged Trump f...
How some online networks target and radicalize kids
07 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The FBI is investigating at least 250 people who may be tied to online networks that target children.These networks encourage kids to hurt themselves,...
Hurricane Katrina helped change New Orleans' public defender system
06 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2006, Ari Shapiro reported on how Hurricane Katrina made an already broken public defender system in New Orleans worse. The court system collapsed ...
How gerrymandering became a blood sport
05 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Fights over Congressional maps never used to be this intense. On Tuesday, Texas Republicans voted to issue civil arrest warrants for Democrats who fle...
What happens to the internet if no one clicks search links?
04 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Google's AI Overviews feature can deliver an answer to your question before you click a single link. But it spells bad news for the publishers that wr...
Is climate change a reason not to have kids?
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Some young people are hesitant to start a family because they are worried about the impact it will have on the environment. But some experts argue, th...
A tricky reporting assignment: covering your own workplace
03 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The job of a media reporter is to examine the role the press plays in our democracy, and the choices the large corporations operating newsrooms are ma...
Trump's tariffs are (still) coming
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Thursday night, President Trump announced new tariff rates, and a new deadline. For weeks, the administration said that new, tougher tariffs would go ...
A fact checker hangs up his Pinocchios
31 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
"In an era where false claims are the norm, it's much easier to ignore the fact-checkers." Those are the final words of the final column of Glenn Kess...
How firing hundreds of employees this year has transformed the Justice Department
30 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This year, hundreds of employees at the Justice Department have been fired, sometimes over clashes with the Trump administration, and other times for ...
A new executive order tackles causes of homelessness. Why are some advocates worried?
29 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Donald Trump is aiming to fundamentally shift how the country manages homelessness with a new executive order he signed last week. It calls ...
What reporting in Gaza shows amid Trump's break from Netanyahu on starvation
28 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
New light has emerged between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Donald Trump, with the latter disputing Israel's claim that ther...
Facing persistent scrutiny over Epstein, the Trump administration rehashes 2016 probe
27 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump traveled to Scotland to talk trade with the EU and play golf. But as soon as he landed he was asked about Jeffrey Epstein, the convict...
Texas floods: how to talk to people on the worst day of their lives
26 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
At least 135 people died earlier this month when floods swept through the Texas Hill Country. As in any other natural disasters, journalists from arou...
How have RFK Jr.'s vaccine policies impacted America's public health?
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Before he entered politics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a career out of stoking doubt about vaccines, promoting theories contradicted by mountains of s...
Six months in, how Trump has changed the Education Department.
24 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Federal education policy has seen a lot of changes since President Trump's inauguration. For example, the Department of Education itself, which Trump ...
Six months of 'shock and awe' on immigration enforcement
23 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Since returning to office, President Trump has moved swiftly to upend decades of federal policy—from education to healthcare to vaccines...but nowhe...
A civil rights organization declares a 'state of emergency' in the U.S.
22 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As a candidate in 2024, President Trump promised – often – to end what he and other conservatives describe as "woke" policies.On his first day in ...
Is Emil Bove the face of a new MAGA judiciary?
21 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump helped reshape the federal courts during his first term in office. And he relied heavily on the Federalist Society in that effort, whi...
With plea deals canceled, what happens next with the Guantanamo 9/11 trials?
20 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Plea deals with the 9/11 defendants, including for the alleged ringleader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, have been canceled. Families of those who died on S...
Florida: The front line of Trump's immigration crackdown
19 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
NPR correspondent Jasmine Garsd has taken several reporting trips to Florida recently, a state seeing some of the most aggressive immigration enforcem...
Trump says no one cares about Epstein. Why won't his base let it go?
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
One of the narratives at the heart of President Trump's political movement is this: American society is dominated by a shadowy group of elites, and th...
Congress has voted to eliminate government funding for public media
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Act now to ensure public media remains free and accessible to all. Your donation will help this essential American service survive and thrive. Visit d...
Will air traffic control's $12.5 billion update fix employee morale?
17 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this week, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy testified on Capitol Hill, where he thanked Congress for recently approving $12.5 billion dolla...
Tariffs are a tax. Are you already paying it?
16 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's been over three months since President Trump announced very big across-the-board tariffs on imports from nearly every territory on Earth–includ...
Climate change is fueling brutal rainstorms. Here's how to stay safe
15 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's not just Texas. In the past couple of weeks, communities all around the country have been hit with torrential rains and deadly flash flooding. Ex...
Trump threatens Russia over Ukraine. Will it make a difference?
14 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump has made some big shifts in U.S. policy on Russia's war with Ukraine lately. In the course of two weeks, Trump halted and reinstated w...
What do we know about what's driving political violence?
13 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's been a year since the assassination attempt on President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania and the motivations of the shooter are still unclear.The U...
Inside the Diddy trial: why it felt like a watch party at the courthouse
12 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On July 2nd, Sean Combs was acquitted of the most serious charges he faced: racketeering and sex trafficking. He was found guilty on two counts of tra...
When old oil wells become 'orphans,' that's a problem
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
All across the U.S., there are aging oil and natural gas wells no longer in use.A lot of them don't have anyone on the hook to seal them up. Some esti...
A harrowing journey to find food in Gaza
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Israel bans international journalists from independent access to Gaza. But NPR's Anas Baba is from Gaza, and in the 21 months he has been reporting on...
After devastating floods a Central Texas community comes together
10 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's been nearly a week since devastating flooding tore through Kerr County, Texas killing more than a hundred people.Now, after unimaginable tragedy,...
The U.S. birth rate is falling fast. Why? It's complicated
08 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The total fertility rate is a small number with big consequences.It measures how many babies, on average, each woman will have over her lifetime. And ...
Flooding is common in Texas Hill Country. This was different
07 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Imagine standing in water shallow enough to just barely hit the soles of your feet. And then it rises so fast that in just about ten minutes, it's up ...
When it comes to vaccines, how are pediatricians restoring trust?
06 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
If you're a parent, decisions about vaccines have gotten a lot more confusing recently. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s health department is walking back lon...
The songs that define America
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Independence Day means different things to each of us. On this 249th birthday for America, we spend some time looking at different definitions of Amer...
The Trump domestic policy megabill is set to become law
03 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump put essentially his entire domestic agenda in one bill.It would significantly cut clean energy incentives, Medicaid and food assistanc...
Saving history one story at a time
02 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
This summer marks 80 years since the end of World War II when Allied forces liberated Nazi-occupied Europe, and also began to discover the horrific sc...
House Speaker may have to make a lot of promises to get bill to Trump's desk
01 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The massive tax and spending bill central to President Trump's agenda is one step closer to reality.After weeks of negotiations and 49 consecutive vot...
Why a GOP senator says the budget bill breaks Trump's promise
30 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The massive budget bill that Senate Republicans are debating pays for some of its tax cuts by slashing hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicaid spe...
What this term says about where the Supreme Court is headed
29 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
A number of Supreme Court decisions handed down this term have expanded the power of the president while limiting the power of the courts. How has thi...
Iran's nuclear sites got bombed. North Korea? It's another story
28 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Although President Trump launched air strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, the administration has chosen a different path when dealing with Kim ...
The Supreme Court just lifted a key check on presidential power
27 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Three different federal judges have issued nationwide blocks to President Trump's executive order to deny U.S. citizenship to some babies born to immi...
Autism rates have exploded. Could the definition be partly to blame?
26 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has spent years spreading doubt about the safety of vaccines and linking them to autism....
We're not built for this heat
25 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Tens of millions of people across the US are currently under a heat advisory. And the extreme heat isn't just affecting people. You may have seen vide...
Medical views on self-managed abortion shifting since overturn of Roe
24 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Three years ago, the Supreme Court ended the constitutional right to an abortion in the United States.As the legal landscape shifted, the medical land...
Iran launches missiles at U.S. base in Qatar
23 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On Monday, Iran struck back against the United States, firing missiles at a U.S. base in Qatar. The retaliatory strikes come two days after the U.S. a...
What are the wider repercussions of the U.S. bombing of Iran's nuclear sites?
22 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. joined Israel's war on Iran and over the weekend bombed three of the country's nuclear sites, including Fordo, located deep inside a mountain...
Covering the military parade and a No Kings rally on the same day
21 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Frank Langfitt has covered the world. Now he reports for NPR as a roving correspondent, focusing on stories that help us understand a changing America...
How Gabby Giffords is grappling with the rise in political violence
20 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last weekend, Minnesota state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a Democrat, and her husband, Mark, were shot and killed at their home by a man impersonating a pol...
Afghans in the US have lost protected status. What happens now?
19 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Many Afghans who helped the US military or who were persecuted by the Taliban for other reasons found refuge in the United States. They were granted T...
Lessons from Iraq, as Trump teases attacks on Iran
18 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In 2003, the U.S. launched a war in Iraq based on what turned out to be bad intelligence about weapons programs, then spent years mired in a conflict ...
What's at stake in the conflict between Israel and Iran?
17 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The United States has worked for decades to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon. Now Israel says it is attacking Iran to remove that threat. W...
The big SCOTUS decisions looming
16 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Around this time every year, the U.S. Supreme Court ends its term with a bang. The Justices typically save their biggest rulings for June.Outstanding ...
Is this the end of the rule of law in America?
15 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
The spending cuts one state could face if Trump's massive bill becomes law
14 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 bil...
Israel struck Iran. What's next?
13 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Early Friday local time, Israel finally did what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been threatening to do for years: It launched a massive attack ...
What's next in the case that symbolizes Trump's immigration crackdown?
12 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Kilmar Abrego Garcia: a name that's become near-synonymous with the Trump Administration's immigration crackdown.Abrego Garcia was arrested by ICE age...
Is Trump's immigration bet working?
11 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 foun...
Fentanyl deaths among the young are dropping. Can the trend continue?
10 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 d...
The Insurrection Act is back on the table
09 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ju...
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass reacts to federalized National Guard troops in her city
08 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Citing a rarely used law, President Trump bypassed California's governor Gavin Newsom, and ordered two thousand national guard troops to Los Angeles f...
Reporting on abuse by federal judges means cracking open a culture of fear
07 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
In March, NPR Justice Correspondent Carrie Johnson reported on problems with the way federal courts police sexual harassment and bullying. A culture ...
Do private school voucher programs work?
06 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
House Republicans' reconciliation bill, which includes a first-of-its-kind national private school voucher program, is now in the hands of the Senate....
A new travel ban is coming. Will it hold up in court?
05 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 coun...
How New Zealand's Jacinda Ardern broke the political mold
04 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
What's going wrong with aid in Gaza?
03 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 we...
What's the message behind Trump's military parade?
02 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 pa...
Three years into his war on Ukraine, what does Putin really want?
01 Jun 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 al...
What's behind Trump's crackdown on universities — and why it matters
30 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 e...
The CDC changed its COVID vaccine guidance. What does that mean for you?
29 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced new COVID recommendations this week, it raised questions among clinicians and...
Children of ISIS fighter find new life in Minnesota
28 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
When ISIS was at its height, its ranks included several hundred Americans. They were often young men radicalized online by savvy marketing that promis...
NPR takes Trump to court
27 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
What Trump's cuts to intelligence could mean for national security
26 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 st...
Misinformation channels to the Oval Office
25 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump's spreading of the false claim that South Africa is perpetrating a genocide against its white inhabitants is just the latest example o...
The Supreme Court's Trump Dilemma
24 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The Supreme Court has become the focal point of the legal battle over President Donald Trump's executive authority – and presidential power more bro...
Can Trump suspend habeas corpus?
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 N...
Two Israeli embassy staffers killed amid a rise in antisemitism
22 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
A Newark air traffic controller on the moment systems went dark
21 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Federal regulators are now limiting the number of flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport. This comes after a harrowing month for t...
Advice for navigating a volatile economy
20 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
The U.S. economy is in flux. And for millions of Americans, a new line item in their budget includes repaying federal student loans.Making ends meet i...
New book alleges Biden aides hid his decline
19 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Joe Biden has stage four metastatic prostate cancer.The former president made that announcement Sunday afternoon. It came just days before the publica...
Over tea, a deal with Damascus and a possible turning point for Middle East diplomacy
18 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
On the first major foreign trip of his second term, President Trump met with leaders in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. His arrival was greeted with...
The whiplash of covering the trade war from inside China
17 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Earlier this week, the White House announced that the U.S. and China had agreed to lower the reciprocal tariffs they had put in place in April – but...
Connecting the dots on DOGE
16 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
It's been six months since President Trump first announced the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which has dramatically ...
Birthright citizenship goes to the Supreme Court
15 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
President Trump's order that would end automatic citizenship for the children of many categories of immigrants has been blocked from going into effect...
Palestinians are counting lentils, as Gaza food crisis worsens
14 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Nearly half a million people in Gaza now face starvation, according to a new report from the IPC, the international panel of famine experts who advise...
Poland's plan to resist a Russian attack
13 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
As a neighbor of Ukraine's and host to more than 2 million of its war refugees, Poland has seen, heard and felt what Russia is capable of, and it's no...
Why Bill Gates is giving away his money faster
12 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Last week, the Gates Foundation announced it would spend more than $200 billion over the next 20 years — including nearly all the personal wealth of...