NPR News: 04-29-2026 6PM EDT
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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth appeared before Congress today for the first time since the Iran war began. The hearing focused on the Trump administration's $1.5 trillion military budget proposal for 2027. Democrats like Pennsylvania Democrat Chrissy Houlihan used the opportunity to grill Hegseth on the Iran war's costs, President Trump's shifting justifications for the war, and the huge drawdown of critical munitions.
How many more months, just order of magnitude, do you think that you're going to need to be able to conclude operations successfully? And how many more billions of dollars do you think you're going to ask this body for?
As you know, and as the president has stated, you would never tell your adversary. Lawmakers from both parties also have raised concerns about excess firing of top generals and other military leaders. The House of Representatives has voted to reauthorize a key U.S. spy tool ahead of a Thursday night deadline. Forty-two Democrats joined Republicans to pass the legislation. But the measure still has to clear the Senate, where Republican leadership has signaled the bill will be rewritten. NPR's Eric McDaniel has this report.
The tool is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, also known as FISA. U.S. intelligence agencies use it to scoop up the communications of more than 300,000 foreign nationals located outside of the U.S. each year. The government says the intelligence collected under FISA 702 underpins a huge share of the president's daily intelligence briefings. But reformers in both parties have long been concerned about the government reviewing Americans' private information gathered as part of the surveillance and unsuccessfully pushed for law enforcement to need a warrant before agents could do targeted reviews of the communications of U.S. citizens in the database. The measure now heads to the Senate, which must act by Thursday night to avoid a potential legal morass if the law expires.
Eric McDaniel, NPR News, the Capitol.
The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that could void a second majority black congressional district in Louisiana. Mel Bridges with member station WWNO reports on the local reaction.
U.S. Congressman Cleo Fields, who represents the district at the heart of the case, called the decision, quote, a grave setback to voting rights and to the promise of equal political representation for all Americans. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrell, however, says she agrees with the court's decision that the redraw map relied too heavily on race.
I think this takes us back where we always have been and should be, and that is with legislatures following traditional redistricting principles, all within the boundaries of the federal and state constitution.
State leaders may not have enough time to redraw the maps before early voting opens on Saturday. The ACLU said they'll take legal action if the state tries. For NPR News, I'm Mel Bridges in New Orleans.
The Federal Reserve is keeping interest rates on hold. There were some divisions amidst the uncertainty created by the war in Iran, but with one Fed board member voting to cut rates while three others voted to keep the rates on hold. This is NPR. Elon Musk took the stand for the second day in the landmark trial that pits the world's richest man against Sam Altman, a fellow OpenAI co-founder that Musk accuses of betraying promises to keep the company as a nonprofit dedicated to humanity's benefit. The trial centers on the 2015 birth of the chat GPT maker as a nonprofit startup primarily funded by Musk before evolving into a capitalistic venture called now valued at $852 billion. Most states require gubernatorial candidates to be at least 30 years old, but Vermont has no age requirement.
NPR's Ava Pukach introduces us to a 14-year-old running for governor.
Dean Roy is the first candidate for governor under 18 to make it onto Vermont's general election ballot. To do so, he created a third party, the Freedom and Unity Party, and collected 500 signatures from registered voters in the state.
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