NPR Topics: Politics

Trump’s tariffs are (still) coming

    Trump’s tariffs are (still) coming

    Thursday night, President Trump announced new tariff rates, and a new deadline. For weeks, the administration said that new, tougher tariffs would go into effect August 1 — instead, most countries won’t see the new rates kick in for at least a week.

    Meanwhile, new numbers from the Labor Department show job growth slowed sharply this spring, as President Trump’s earlier, worldwide tariffs started to bite. Shortly after their release, Trump said he was firing the head of the government agency that produced that report.

    White House correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben and economic correspondent Scott Horsley discuss the consequences of Trump’s tariffs so far and going forward.

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    A fact checker hangs up his Pinocchios

      A fact checker hangs up his Pinocchios

      “In an era where false claims are the norm, it’s much easier to ignore the fact-checkers.” Those are the final words of the final column of Glenn Kessler, who has been The Fact Checker at the Washington Post these last 14 years.

      Kessler is one of many journalists making high-profile exits from the Post, some of whom cite the new direction the paper’s leadership is taking as the reason they’re leaving.

      In an interview, Kessler reflects on the arc of the project, why he’s leaving, and the value of fact checkers — even if politicians ignore them.

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      How firing hundreds of employees this year has transformed the Justice Department

        How firing hundreds of employees this year has transformed the Justice Department

        This year, hundreds of employees at the Justice Department have been fired, sometimes over clashes with the Trump administration, and other times for unknown reasons.

        Those departures are spreading fear across the workforce and transforming the Justice Department.

        NPR Justice correspondent Carrie Johnson spoke with a few of the career civil servants who have lost their job for reasons they say are illegal or improper.

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        Facing persistent scrutiny over Epstein, the Trump administration rehashes 2016 probe

          Facing persistent scrutiny over Epstein, the Trump administration rehashes 2016 probe

          President Trump traveled to Scotland to talk trade with the EU and play golf. But as soon as he landed he was asked about Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender.

          The pressure on the Trump administration has continued to intensify over its handling of the Epstein files, and who-knew-what-when. Pressure that’s also coming from within his party.

          And as those calls have ramped up, so has messaging from the administration about a range of other issues, including a rehashing of the 2016 election, and Russia’s involvement in it. Trump has lobbed serious claims, like treason, at former President Obama.

          To get at why these two complicated and dated stories are intersecting and to understand what we can learn from it about the president’s governing style, NPR’s Scott Detrow speaks with NPR senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro and cybersecurity correspondent Jenna McLaughlin.

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          How have RFK Jr.’s vaccine policies impacted America’s public health?

            How have RFK Jr.’s vaccine policies impacted America’s public health?

            Before he entered politics, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. made a career out of stoking doubt about vaccines, promoting theories contradicted by mountains of scientific evidence on common vaccines which have been studied for decades and safely administered to hundreds of millions of people.

            Now, six months in as head of Health and Human Services, he has instituted a number of policy changes on access to vaccines for both children and adults.

            NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly and health correspondents Rob Stein and Pien Huang talk through how these changes could impact public health and the public’s wallets.

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