Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Dave Mattingly.
Chapter 2: What are the latest developments regarding the government shutdown?
Congress is running out of time to avoid a partial government shutdown. The deadline is tomorrow night. Senate Democrats say they're unwilling to support a bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security until reforms are made to how DHS enforces immigration laws. This follows the fatal shootings of two people in Minnesota by federal officers during separate enforcement actions in Minneapolis.
Approval of a funding bill in the Senate would require support from some Democrats, with 60 votes needed for passage. The FBI has removed hundreds of boxes of ballots from an elections warehouse in Fulton County, Georgia. As Amanda Andrews with Georgia Public Broadcasting reports, the ballots are from the state's 2020 presidential election won by Joe Biden.
Three white trucks were filled with archived ballots from Fulton, the most populated county in Georgia. President Trump has routinely alleged widespread voter fraud took place in Fulton in 2020. Multiple audits have validated the votes and the county's election results. Fulton County Chairman Rob Pitts says he's not sure what will happen to the ballots now that they've been moved.
I can no longer, as chair of this board, satisfy not only the citizens of Atlanta, but the citizens of the world, that those ballots are still secure. So that is a major concern that I have right now.
Fulton County leaders are not sure where the ballots are headed. For NPR News, I'm Amanda Andrews.
From Texas to New England, power is slowly being restored to homes and businesses affected by last weekend's winter storm. The number of outages is now less than 300,000. On Monday, that total topped 800,000. Tennessee, Mississippi and Louisiana remain the top three states where crews are busiest.
The storm dumped lots of ice in those states, leading to broken tree limbs that took down power lines. Much of the U.S. has been experiencing bitterly cold temperatures since that storm hit. NPR's Debbie Elliott says forecasters are warning of another blast of Arctic air before the weekend.
The National Weather Service says the next blast of Arctic air could result in the longest duration of bitter cold in several decades. A freeze warning will dip down into Florida. Mississippi Governor Tate Reeves says that complicates recovery efforts. It's going to be brutally cold again. in the state of Mississippi.
And so that creates a large number of other challenges, particularly for those who have not yet gotten power back, particularly for those whose water systems are not back operating and functioning exactly the way they need to. The University of Mississippi says its campus in Oxford will remain closed for a second week. Debbie Elliott, NPR News.
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Chapter 3: How are the Georgia ballots from the 2020 election being handled?
This is the second round of job cuts announced by Amazon since October when it said it was laying off 14,000 employees. Previously, Amazon has said it will turn to artificial intelligence to reduce its corporate workforce. Amazon is a financial supporter of NPR. Tesla is reporting a sharp drop in earnings for 2025. The electric vehicle maker says profits were off 46 percent amid a drop in sales.
As NPR's Kamila Dominovsky reports, Tesla's CEO Elon Musk has also announced plans to end production of two EV models.
Last year, Tesla lost its crown as the world's top EV maker. The Chinese company BYD sold more all-electric vehicles, and it wasn't even close. But Tesla has long maintained its pivoting toward fully autonomous vehicles with no pedals or steering wheel and robots. That's why the company is discontinuing its higher-end vehicles. Here's CEO Elon Musk.
We're going to take the Model S and X production space in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory.
Optimus is Tesla's humanoid robot, which Musk says will enter production this year, although Tesla's timelines are often optimistic. Camilla Dominovsky, NPR News.
The Federal Reserve is leaving interest rates unchanged, with inflation in the U.S. economy still above the Fed's annual 2 percent target. It follows three rate cuts late last year. I'm Dave Mattingly in Washington.
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