NPR News: 01-24-2026 9AM EST
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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. A massive winter storm is sweeping from the central U.S. down to Texas and eastward through New England, affecting an estimated 200 million Americans. More than a dozen governors have declared states of emergency. Travel is widely disrupted, with thousands of flights canceled.
What impact is the massive winter storm having across the U.S.?
NPR's Amy Held reports forecasters warn the ice, snow and record cold could stretch into next week.
The storm will last through Monday, but National Weather Service meteorologist Frank Pereira says it could go down in history as the biggest.
This may be the all-time both population impact and geographical scope.
with more than half the U.S. population hit by some combination of snow, topping a foot in parts, ice, up to an inch or more, and cold, deep cold. Officials say stay home, but for some people, that's outside.
It's brutal out there. It's so cold, it hurts. Like, it hurts. It's painful.
Whitney Slater was sleeping in his car, but moved to a warming center set up in Detroit. The cold will lock in the snowpack for days. In parts of the South, forecasters warn of catastrophic ice threatening the power system.
Amy Held, NPR News. President Trump this week said he had secured total and permanent U.S. access to Greenland in a deal with NATO. News of the framework came as Trump backed off terror threats against European allies and ruled taking the Danish territory by force. NPR's Ron Elving reports the agreement remains vague.
We don't have all the details yet, and there's a good deal yet to be learned. We expect to see more mining of strategic materials, such as the rare earths, essential to computers and other high-tech products. The deal would bolster the presence of NATO in general in the Arctic and restrict Russian and Chinese efforts to get mining rights for those rare earths in Greenland.
That's NPR's Ron Elving reporting. Russia launched hundreds of drones and missiles at Ukraine's two largest cities. As Ukrainian, Russian and American envoys held peace talks in the United Arab Emirates. NPR's Joanna Kikisis reports from Kyiv.
Attack drones flew over neighborhoods in Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, as air defense units tried to shoot them down. Russia has repeatedly struck Ukraine's energy grid during the coldest winter since the full-scale invasion nearly four years ago. Kyiv Mayor Vitaly Klitschko wrote on social media that half of the city's apartment buildings are once again without heat. Klitschko told NPR on Thursday that it's a challenge to repair the capital's massive heating system.
And to rebuild a new one right now and during the wartime is impossible. We need a lot of money and time for that.
He said Ukraine needs more air defense supplies to protect its energy grid. Joanna Kakissis, NPR News, Kyiv.
This is NPR News in Washington. A major sewer pipe rupture has sent millions of gallons of wastewater into the Potomac River northwest of Washington, D.C. Officials say the pipe collapsed late Monday, polluting the river ahead of a massive storm that's predicted to hit the D.C. area this weekend. TikTok's U.S. operation officially has new owners. NPR's Bobbi Allen reports there are still questions about how the app's algorithm could change.
If you ask social media engineers, they'll tell you algorithms are just linear algebra, a math equation deciding what you like and what you'll see more of. But algorithm questions are now dogging TikTok, since it's now run by President Trump ally Larry Ellison's tech firm Oracle and other investors. Will the app used by half of America now be more political, favor right-wing content, push more misinformation? It's too early to tell, but experts say TikTok's new owners will have the ability to reshape what the app amplifies, and China isn't going away altogether. TikTok's parent company ByteDance will retain a minority stake, and the new U.S. entity will license a version of the Chinese algorithm for American use.
Bobby Allen in PR News.
The city of Philadelphia has filed a federal lawsuit demanding the restoration of a slavery exhibit removed this week from Independence National Historical Park.
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