Author: rpnadmin

Admiral Rachel L. Levine, pictured at HHS headquarters last year, led the Public Health Corps during the Biden administration. Her official portrait was changed during the government shutdown to her previous name. Maansi Srivastava for NPR hide caption toggle caption Maansi Srivastava for NPR As you walk down a particular hallway on the seventh floor of the Humphrey Building in Washington, D.C., you’ll find a line of photographic portraits of all the people from years past who have led the Public Health Corps at the federal Department of Health and Human Services. Only one of those portraits is of a…

It was a busy week in Washington, from foreign policy to Congressional redistricting and another special election. NPR’s Domenico Montanaro and Tamara Keith break down the big news of the week. JUANA SUMMERS, HOST: It was another busy week in politics. The Supreme Court approved controversial redistricting plans in Texas. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was in hot water in part because of strikes on alleged Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean. Oh, and also, there was another special election. So we’ve asked senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith and senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro to join us…

The U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 2. Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images There was yet another sign this week of a potential 2026 wave that could hand control of the House of Representatives to Democrats. Republicans won a special congressional election in Tennessee, but only by 9 points in a district the Republican candidate last year won by 22 points. That’s in line with the double-digit overperformances by Democrats in elections this year. On average, Democrats have done 14 points better than candidates in 2024 (including comparing the presidential…

Activism / StudentNation / December 5, 2025 While the University of California has often followed Trump’s demands, union organizers have made protecting immigrants a top priority during contract negotiations. Ad Policy University of California workers rallying at UC Berkeley in November 2025.(UAW 4811) This story was produced for StudentNation, a program of the Nation Fund for Independent Journalism, which is dedicated to highlighting the best of student journalism. For more StudentNation, check out our archive or learn more about the program here. StudentNation is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation. If you’re a student and you have an article idea, please…

An envelope sent from the U.S. Census Bureau contains information about the 2020 national head count. The Trump administration is reviewing the racial and ethnic categories approved for the 2030 census and other future federal surveys. Matt Rourke/AP hide caption toggle caption Matt Rourke/AP A Trump administration official on Friday signaled a potential rollback of the racial and ethnic categories approved for the 2030 census and other future federal government forms. Supporters of those categories fear that any last-minute modifications to the U.S. government’s standards for data about race and ethnicity could hurt the accuracy of census data and other…

It has been another week of unfettered moral depravity in the United States. Donald Trump held a Klan rally lightly disguised as a cabinet meeting where he railed against Somali immigrants. Pete Hegseth defended the cruel and illegal boat strikes that have murdered at least 83 civilians. Marco Rubio put forward a “peace plan” for Ukraine that amounts to giving Vladimir Putin everything he’s ever wished for. And saddest of all? Most people probably don’t even know any of it happened.One of the most disturbing stories I saw this disgusting week highlighted new research from Pew showing that news consumption…

Merit Systems Protection Board member Cathy Harris (left) and National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox (right) were fired by President Trump early this year. A panel of judges at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals says the firings were lawful. Mike Scarcella/Reuters; FM Archive / Alamy Stock Photo hide caption toggle caption Mike Scarcella/Reuters; FM Archive / Alamy Stock Photo The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-to-1 ruling that President Trump acted lawfully in firing two members of independent agencies, despite federal laws that hold they can only be fired for cause, because they wield significant…

Politics / December 5, 2025 Speaker Mike Johnson’s sexism is fueling an unexpected uprising within the GOP caucus. Ad Policy Marjorie Taylor Greene at a Capitol Hill press conference on November 18, 2025.(Sarah L. Voisin / The Washington Post via Getty Images) House Speaker Mike Johnson has strong opinions on the differences between men and women. On a recent podcast, Johnson’s wife, Kelly, noted that her husband likes to say, “Men and women are different in…that men can compartmentalize things.” Giving metaphorical expression to this idea, Kelly Johnson compared men’s brains to waffles and women’s to spaghetti. This strange foray…

A voter casts an in-person early ballot for the 2024 general election at the Northwest Activities Center on October 29, 2024 in Detroit, Michigan. Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images As we approach the end of 2025 and the one-year-mark of President Trump’s second term, NPR wants to hear from swing voters about how they’re feeling about politics. Do you think the country is going in the right or wrong direction? Are you happy with your vote last year or do you have any regrets? Or maybe you sat the election out?…

On November 4, in a rebuke to the GOP and the Trump administration, Democrats won races across the country. They won governor seats in Virginia and New Jersey, retained State Supreme Court justices in Pennsylvania, and even broke up the GOP supermajority in the Mississippi Senate. And in New York City, more than a million voters cast their ballots for 34-year-old democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, an anti-Zionist Muslim South Asian immigrant, whom Republicans, as well as corporate Democrats, had done their absolute best to vilify. To reflect on the implications of this moment, I spoke with Cori Bush and Kat…