Consider This from NPR

Consider This from NPR

The hosts of NPR's All Things Considered help you make sense of a major news story and what it means for you, in 15 minutes. New episodes six days a week, Sunday through Friday. Support NPR and get your news sponsor-free with Consider This+. Learn more at plus.npr.org/considerthis

Episodes

May 9, 2025 9 mins
It's been more than two years since civil war exploded in Sudan.

By some estimates the conflict has killed as many as 150-thousand people, and displaced millions more.

In April, NPR International Correspondent Emmanuel Akinwotu gained rare access to the capital city, Khartoum, and reports how the once vibrant city of 6 million has been ravaged by war.

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The cardinals have elected a new pope: Robert Prevost, a cardinal born in Chicago. He has taken the name Leo XIV. He is the first American pope in the history of the Catholic Church.

NPR's Scott Detrow has been in Rome all week. He talks through what we might expect from Pope Leo XIV with NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose, and former, longtime NPR Rome correspondent Sylvia Poggioli.

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Newark Liberty International Airport has been a mess the past week, with hundreds of flights cancelled and hundreds more delayed. It was triggered in part by an incident on April 28, when air traffic controllers for the airport experienced a radar and communications blackout. They were unable to reach approaching planes.

There were no accidents, and Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy later told reporters that the outage ...
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On the eve of the conclave to elect a new pope, some of the biggest questions hanging in the air have to do with LGBTQ Catholics. Will the church continue the path of outreach charted by Pope Francis, softening its harsh positions? Will it allow LGBTQ Catholics to fully participate in the church?

The Rev. James Martin, an American Jesuit priest, has built a ministry aimed at making gay, lesbian and transgender people feel ...
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President Trump's rapid-fire spending cuts have affected communities all over the country–including strongholds of his supporters.

One of them is Rising Sun, Maryland. The town had won two FEMA grants designed to mitigate the effects of catastrophic flooding. And though the area voted overwhelmingly to support Trump's re-election, his administration has now cancelled the program that funded those grants.

Across ...
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Days before the beginning of the conclave to select the next pope, NPR's Scott Detrow is in Rome. He speaks with Sylvia Poggioli about the rituals and ceremonies involved in the upcoming election at the Vatican.

We also hear from Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the Archbishop of New York, about this moment for the Catholic Church, and what it's like being a seasoned veteran of the conclave process.

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Over the past few months, world leaders and diplomats have talked about grand plans for ending the war in Ukraine. But what about daily life there right now?

For our reporter's notebook series, we'll get on the ground with NPR correspondent Joanna Kakissis, who's been living and working in Ukraine for almost the entire war. We'll hear how everyday Ukrainians have adapted to a new normal. People go to work and kids go to...
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The U.S. has sent people it has detained — people it calls terrorists — to a prison overseas — indefinitely.

This is true in 2025, after the Trump administration deported at least 261 foreign nationals to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

And it was also true two decades ago, following the attacks of Sept. 11, after the U.S. government began to house captured Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the military p...
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Americans are rushing to car dealerships as they worry about what President Trump's tariffs will do to car prices in the coming months. New vehicle sales have been increasing steadily this year, and they jumped in March, according to market research firm Cox Automotive. That's the month when President Trump announced upcoming auto tariffs.

Shoppers are racing to buy cars this spring because they believe that prices are g...
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President Trump is pushing the boundaries of executive power in nearly every area of policy. From his trade war, to immigration, to education, to the reductions in the federal workforce.

Many of his actions are direct challenges to the Courts and to Congress. Those two branches of government are designed to act as checks on the president.

Trump has governed largely by unilateral executive action... and left lawm...
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An NPR investigation has been following President Trump's efforts to retaliate against his perceived enemies since he returned to the Oval Office in January.

NPR's Tom Dreisbach found that Trump's targets are already facing the consequences - including criminal investigations, attempted deportations, and firings.

Trump has used government power to target more than 100 people or institutions across American socie...
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About one in 31 children in the U.S. has been identified with autism spectrum disorder, according to CDC data released this month.

When Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. discussed these findings, he declared that autism is a rapidly growing "epidemic" in the U.S. and vowed to identify the "environmental toxin" he says is to blame.

Which of Kennedy's remarks rang true to those in the autism...
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U.S. President Donald Trump's trade war and threats to make Canada the 51st state have become some of the biggest issues facing Canadians as they head to the polls in their federal election on April 28th.

Scott Detrow speaks to Lloyd Axworthy, a member of the Liberal party, who served as Canada's top diplomat between 1996-2000, about the schism between the two longtime North American allies and how Canada's next prime min...
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Long before he was elected to run the Roman Catholic Church, Pope Francis was essentially exiled from his Argentinian Jesuit order. Francis often referred to this two-year period, which happened when he was in his 50s, as a "dark night" and a "crisis" in his life.

For our weekly Reporter's Notebook series, we talk with NPR religion editor Daniel Burke about what he learned by digging into this little known period of Franci...
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Whether a "chainsaw," per Elon Musk, or "scalpel," as President Trump has said — the Trump administration is making deep cuts to the federal government within its first 100 days.

And Trump has appointed personal allies with little experience in government to key cabinet positions.

For the civil servants working to enact the missions of these government agencies, that's often meant another word: "chaos."

N...
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When you think of a successful protest movement, most Americans probably think of the American Civil Rights movement, and the March on Washington in 1963.

Martin Luther King, Jr. standing behind a podium on the steps of the Lincoln memorial delivered his most famous speech and a line that would come to define the goals of the Civil Rights Movement.

President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act just nine mo...
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On March 23, the death toll in Gaza surpassed 50,000 people killed by Israeli fire in the war with Hamas.

This is the story of 15 people who were killed the same day.

There were airstrikes across the territory, and in the south Israeli troops opened fire on a crew of emergency workers in ambulances and a firetruck.

At first, the Israeli military said the vehicles were "advancing suspiciously" toward tro...
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What does it take to keep the economy stable?

That is a question that Jerome Powell considers every day in his role as Chair of the Federal Reserve. It's also a role that is meant to be done independent of politics.

However, Powell's name has been making headlines, following a series of comments made by President Trump attacking Powell, after he warned that the President's aggressive tariff policies could hurt t...
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On Monday morning in Rome Cardinal Kevin Farrell Camerlengo or Cardinal Chamberlain of the Holy Roman Church announced the death of Pope Francis I.

That was followed some 17 hours later by the rite of ascertainment. A formal acknowledgement of Francis' death...and the transfer of his body to his coffin.

And it's one a few of the many centuries-old rituals that will play out over the next several days as the churc...
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Viktor Orban is in his fourth consecutive term as Prime Minister of Hungary. In that time, he has dismantled democratic checks and balances, taken control of the country's media, civil society and universities, and consolidated power in him and his Fidesz party.

NPR's Rob Schmitz looks at how Orban's step-by-step dismantling of Hungary's democracy has become a point of fascination for political scientists around the world...
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