NPR News: 07-21-2026 2PM EDT
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What immediate developments are introduced in the 2PM NPR News bulletin?
Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. This afternoon, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will go before members of Congress who are considering a defense budget request. The White House is seeking more than $87 billion, this in the wake of more U.S. military losses since Friday in Jordan and in northern Iraq, where there was a drone attack at a U.S. base.
What is the White House defense funding request and why is it being sought?
NPR's Quill Lawrence has more on the U.S. war with Iran.
I spoke with three former U.S. military officials about this new and rapidly evolving reality of drone warfare. One of them was General Joseph Votel who formerly led CENTCOM. He said the U.S. had built up power in the region by building these bases.
Our strengths for the last several decades has been our forward deployment and our positioning across the Gulf. Now we are seeing that that same advantage has turned into a little bit of a disadvantage.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, the enemy had no real range or air power. But now in the age of drone warfare, Iran doesn't even really need an air force because its drones can travel a thousand miles and hit U.S. bases all over the region.
NPR's Quill Lawrence. The bulk of the White House's nearly $90 billion request would be used in the war, but the remainder would be allocated for farm aid, relief from the Ebola outbreak in Central Africa, as well as restoration and construction projects in the Washington, D.C. area. In a move that threatens to deepen an energy crisis stemming from the conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, Yemen's Iranian-backed Houthi rebels are threatening a blockade on a key maritime route in the Red Sea. NPR's Emily Fang reports the Houthis are targeting Saudi Arabia.
In a video statement, the Houthis called Saudi Arabia criminals. and said the blockade of Bab al-Mandab was retaliation. Saudi Arabia intervened in a Yemeni civil war against the Houthis, and this month the Houthis accused the kingdom of bombing a major airport in Yemen, though Saudi Arabia has never acknowledged the attack. Saudi Arabia uses the Bab al-Mandab to its west to export oil, now that another key waterway, the Strait of Hormuz to its east, is off limits. Bab al-Mandab is one of the key waterways connecting Europe to Asia.
How are drones changing U.S. military strategy in the region, according to former officials?
From one end, the strait leads to the Suez Canal in the Mediterranean and to the south, ultimately to the Indian Ocean. Emily Fang, NPR News.
The FDA says Taylor Farms is still a focus of its probe into the cyclospora outbreak. More from NPR's Yuki Noguchi.
Cyclospora parasites are hard to test for and trace. The tested sample might not reflect the entire crop, for example. Plus, Rutgers microbiologist Donald Schaffner says there are often unrelated cases that crop up every summer.
Just because you're sick with cyclospora right now doesn't mean that you're part of this cluster of cases that have an epicenter in Michigan and Ohio. Sometimes we can figure out what's causing it, and sometimes we can't.
You can aguchi with that story. It's NPR. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops is weighing in on recent killings during immigration enforcement actions in Texas and Maine that involve traffic stops. NPR's Jason DeRose reports they say the government has the right to enforce the law, but that it needs to act within the limits of what the bishops call moral law.
U.S. bishops have released a statement saying acts that diminish or disregard the dignity of any person should never be normalized. They go on to say racial profiling in particular violates God-given dignity and inflicts, quote, profound harm on individuals, families, and communities. Last November, Catholic bishops passed a resolution highlighting how disturbed they were to see within their flocks what they called a climate of fear and anxiety. The new bishop's statement also chastises the vilification of law enforcement. The Trump administration says it plans to continue immigration actions involving traffic stops as a tool to enforce immigration laws. Jason DeRose, NPR News.
A spokesperson for former President Joe Biden is criticizing an appeals court decision to decline Biden's request to block the release of recordings of his interviews with a memoir, Ghostwriter, saying the Democrats' conversations for a book 10 years ago discussing his late son were private and provided to the Justice Department on condition they remain confidential.
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