Author: rpnadmin

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…

President Trump made racist comments about Somali immigrants and Somalia multiple times this week. It’s a common tactic used by the president to get attention from those who share his nativist views. MICHEL MARTIN, HOST: For two days in a row, the president has gone on racist tirades against the Somali community in Minnesota.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: The Somalians should be out of here. They’ve destroyed our country, and all they do is complain, complain, complain.STEVE INSKEEP, HOST: In a ramble that went on for several minutes on Wednesday, the president talked about Somalis as a group, including…

The Harry S. Truman Federal Building, headquarters of the U.S. Department of State, in a 2024 file photo. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images The State Department is instructing its staff to reject visa applications from people who worked on fact-checking, content moderation or other activities the Trump administration considers “censorship” of Americans’ speech. The directive, sent in an internal memo on Tuesday, is focused on applicants for H-1B visas for highly skilled workers, which are frequently used by tech companies, among other sectors. The memo was first reported by Reuters; NPR also obtained a copy.…

Texas Republican state Sen. Pete Flores looks over the state’s redrawn congressional map at the Texas Capitol in Austin in August. Eric Gay/AP hide caption toggle caption Eric Gay/AP The Supreme Court has cleared the way for Texas to use a new congressional map that could help Republicans win five more U.S. House seats in the 2026 midterm election. The decision released Thursday boosts the GOP’s chances of preserving its slim majority in the House of Representatives amid an unprecedented gerrymandering fight launched by President Trump, who has been pushing Texas and other GOP-led states to redraw their congressional districts…

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth looks on as President Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth faced scrutiny on two fronts Thursday, as lawmakers zeroed in on the legality of a Sept. 2 strike on survivors aboard an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, while separately a Pentagon watchdog faulted him for using Signal to discuss a U.S. attack on Yemen. Lawmakers in both chambers were shown video of the boat strike behind closed doors in briefings with Navy Admiral Frank…

Zohran Mamdani celebrates during an election night event at the Brooklyn Paramount Theater in Brooklyn, New York, on Nov. 4, as New Yorkers elected him their next mayor. Angelina Katsanis/AFP via Getty Images hide caption toggle caption Angelina Katsanis/AFP via Getty Images LONDON — When Zohran Mamdani swept to a historic win in New York City’s mayoral race, it made headlines well beyond the city and the United States. Newspapers across Europe ran analyses and commentaries about it, and left-wing politicians in Europe took heart from the success of the 34-year-old American democratic socialist. “Echoes of hope” beyond the U.S.…

Politics / December 4, 2025 A barrage of bad economic news has spurred Trump to unleash his hate-infested id on any nonwhite target that flits through his overtaxed brainpan. Ad Policy Donald Trump during a cabinet meeting at the White House, on December 2, 2025. (Yuri Gripas / CNP / Bloomberg via Getty Images( Remember “economic anxiety”? That was the central concept in an all-too-representative Democratic effort to explain away the mass movement aligning behind Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Back then, the liberal commentariat was mocking the notion that Trump’s supporters were motivated by questions of economic policy like…