NPR News: 09-05-2025 9PM EDT

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NPR News Now 4 min 5 speakers 5 chapters transcribed 23 days ago

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How will new SNAP work requirements affect millions of recipients?

Janine Herbst 0:00

Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Herbst. The Department of Agriculture has started to issue guidance on how states should implement new work requirements for people who get food assistance through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. As NPR's Maria Godoy reports, estimates suggest the new rules could result in some 2.4 million

Maria Godoy 0:22

people losing benefits each month. The changes to SNAP were included in the massive spending and tax bill President Trump signed into law this summer. Under the new rules, most able-bodied adults without dependents must now prove they work, volunteer, or take part in a training program for at least 80 hours a month in order to keep their SNAP benefits. The changes removed previous exemptions for many parents of teens, veterans, people experiencing homelessness, foster youth, and adults between the ages of 55 and 65. The USDA says states have a 120-day period to implement the changes. Maria Godoy, NPR News.

What changes allow USCIS agents to make arrests and carry firearms?

Janine Herbst 1:03

The Trump administration says the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Agency, or USCIS, will now have its own law enforcement agents who can make arrests and carry firearms. NPR's Jasmine Garza reports it's a shift for the agency, which reviews applications for immigrants to become naturalized citizens and issues green

Jasmine Garsd 1:25

cards. USCIS has, up until now, been kept separate from making immigration arrests and enforcing deportations. Under the new rule, the agency will be able to add special agents who can carry firearms and execute search and arrest warrants. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security called it the dawn of a new era and said the rule will allow USCIS to, quote, "...thoroughly fulfill its national security, fraud detection, and public safety missions." The rule will go into effect after 30 days. Jasmine Garst, NPR News, Washington.

How did weak job growth influence expectations for Fed interest‑rate cuts?

Jasmine Garsd 2:00

Employers added

Janine Herbst 2:01

far fewer jobs than expected last month. The Bureau of Labor Statistics says employers added 22,000 jobs in August, down from the nearly 80,000 jobs that economists were expecting to have been created. NPR's Scott Horsley has more on what that means for possible rate cuts.

Scott Horsley 2:21

Forecasters were already betting that Fed policymakers would cut interest rates by at least a quarter percentage point at their next meeting, which is in less than two weeks, to prop up the job market. After today's report, some investors think the Fed could even go further and order a supersized half-point rate cut. The reason the Fed has been keeping interest rates this high for this long is to fight inflation. And so long as the job market was holding up, you know, policymakers felt like they could take their time before making a change. Now, with these cracks appearing in the job market, the Fed is being pulled in two different directions, and that's not a comfortable place for the central bank to be.

What bipartisan bill aims to fund local emergency‑alert training and testing?

Janine Herbst 2:57

And Pierre Scott Horsley, this is NPR. There's newly proposed legislation that aims to boost training, testing, and public education for the nation's emergency alert systems. Rachel Miro of member station KQED has more.

Rachel Myro 3:14

San Francisco Bay Area Congressman Kevin Mullen, a Democrat, co-authored a bipartisan bill that would authorize $30 million annually through 2035 for local emergency officials. Speaking outside a fire station inside of the Bay Bridge, he said,

Unknown 3:31

As our climate changes, we face increasing risks. Extreme weather is expected to worsen, and across the country, more and more people are living in areas in harm's way.

Rachel Myro 3:41

But the bill faces significant headwinds. The Trump administration has stripped away funding and gutted staffing for FEMA, the National Weather Service, and other emergency preparedness programs.

Why is Anthropic paying $1.5 billion to settle AI copyright lawsuits?

Rachel Myro 3:53

For NPR News, I'm Rachel Miro in San Francisco.

Janine Herbst 3:57

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic will pay a landmark $1.5 billion to settle a class action suit from authors and publishers. It allows Anthropic to avoid going to trial over copyright claims for downloading millions of books without permission and storing digital copies of them to train the company's chatbot. Under the agreement, Anthropic will pay around $3,000 a book and about a half million books are eligible for that money.