Measles is an extremely contagious disease. It's also extremely preventable. There's a vaccine. It's highly effective.

For decades it has made measles outbreaks in the U.S. relatively rare, and measles deaths rarer still. But the U.S. has now seen more than 700 measles cases this year, and 3 deaths so far with active outbreaks across six states.

The federal response is under scrutiny because Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. has made a career spreading false information about vaccines.

What are this administration's views on vaccines, and what do they mean for what is already one of the worst U.S. measles outbreaks this century.

Kennedy publicly promised he would support vaccines. Dr. Peter Marks, who was forced out as the nation's top vaccine regulator says his department isn't doing enough.

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The Trump administration admitted that it wrongfully deported a man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

It had also been arguing that courts cannot compel the U.S. government to return him to this country.

The U.S. Supreme Court has unanimously determined the government must "facilitate" his release from the El Salvador prison where he is being held, but the Department of Justice has so far only confirmed his presence at that prison.

If he is not returned to this country to face due process, people following this case point out a troubling implication: The government could potentially send anyone to a foreign prison ? regardless of citizenship ? with no legal recourse.

Harvard University emeritus professor of constitutional law Laurence Tribe explains his argument.

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For weeks, President Trump has been targeting certain law firms with executive orders. Some have fought back, but others have cut deals to avoid the damage.

For our weekly Reporter's Notebook series, we dive into this legal drama with NPR's Justice Correspondent Ryan Lucas, to see how this use of executive power is changing the landscape of the American legal system.

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During his second Presidential campaign, Donald Trump vowed to carry out the largest deportation program the U.S. has ever seen.

And true to his word ? Trump's administration is arresting, detaining and deporting immigrants without legal status.

But as part of the crackdown on illegal immigration, legal immigrants are getting caught up in the mix.

And then there's people like Amir Makled ? a U.S. Citizen and lawyer. Makled was detained by Border agents at a Detroit airport as he returned from a family vacation in the Caribbean.

How is the Trump administration's immigration policy changing who is getting arrested and detained?

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It's pretty rare for one person to do one thing that affects nearly every business in the United States. But that's the power of the presidency and the new tariffs that took effect this week.

Over the last few days, as the tariffs have gone up and down, NPR has been talking to Americans who run different kinds of businesses.

Even though their companies don't have much in common, all of them are doing the same thing right now: Trying to figure out what's going on and how to respond.

Trump's tariff plans affect nearly every company in America. We'll hear from a few business owners about what it means for them

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After a week of market turmoil, President Trump announced he would reset his most extreme tariffs to 10 percent across the board, with the exception of China ? which he boosted to a 125% tariff rate. Even at the reduced level, the tariff rates are the highest the nation has seen in many decades.

And higher tariffs translate to higher prices for American consumers. Martha Gimbel of the Budget Lab at Yale takes an imaginary walk through a big box store to look at how much more people might pay for t-shirts, rice, medication and other staples.

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It's been 25 years since measles was officially "eliminated" from the United States.

That's a technical term. In public health, it means measles has not had a steady twelve month spread.

Right now there are measles cases in several states The biggest number of cases are in West Texas where two kids have died.

A quarter of a century after measles was officially eliminated in the US, the disease is once again spreading in West Texas, New Mexico and there are cases in several other states. What can be done to get the virus under control?

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Billionaire Elon Musk told Fox News recently that falling birth rates keep him up at night. It's a drum he's been beating for years.

Musk is one of the world's most visible individuals to elevate this point of view. Vice President JD Vance also talks about wanting to increase birthrates in the U-S.

But it's not just them. There are discussions across the political spectrum about birth rate decline and what it means for the economy.

One response to this decline is a cause that's been taken up by the right, and it has a name ? Pronatalism. Many of its advocates met up recently in Austin, Texas, at "Natal Con."

Pronatalists think they have a friendly audience in the White House. How do they want to use it?

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Deportation is a complicated process ? with lots of layers. As the Trump administration expands the number and scope of deportations ? what does that mean in practice? NPR's Asma Khalid and Ximena Bustillo unpack how deportations are supposed to work ? and why so many lawsuits have been filed saying court process has been sidestepped in recent cases.

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The video game industry is huge. Last year alone it generated an estimated $187 billion dollars in revenue.

But it's also facing a host of serious issues: massive layoffs, the advent of A.I., games that take years to be released, and a schism between big and small developers.

This week's Reporter's Notebook takes us inside this evolving industry with NPR's Vincent Acovino, who recently covered the annual Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco.

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The country of Myanmar has been in crisis for years. A civil war has been going on since 2021.

And then, last Friday, a devastating earthquake hit, leaving at least 3,000 people dead. The tragedy only deepened the humanitarian crisis in the country.

One person watching the situation closely is Kim Aris. His mother is Aung San Suu Kyi, who was the country's de facto leader before the military ousted and imprisoned her after a coup four years ago.

When Aris spoke to NPR earlier this week, he wasn't even sure where his mother was, or whether she was safe.

The earthquake has brought more devastation to Myanmar raising questions about whether the country's military can stay in power ? and about the future of its ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

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Whatever you think of President Trump's tariffs, there's one point you have to concede: his interest in them is not a passing whim.

He noted that on Wednesday, in the Rose Garden, when he was announcing the latest, massive round of tariffs. "I've been talking about this for 40 years," he said.

The use of tariffs are a core belief for Donald Trump. Trade deficits are bad, other countries take advantage of the U.S. and tariffs are the way to fix this.

Since the Rose Garden announcement, markets have plunged, other countries have promised to retaliate, and members of his own party have spoken out against the tariffs.

Trump's tariff plan is designed to eliminate U.S. trade deficits. Are trade deficits actually bad?

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Eight-point-seven billion.

Four-hundred million.

One-hundred-seventy-five million.

These are just some examples of the money the federal government has withheld or is threatening to withhold from various colleges and universities, including the University of Pennsylvania, Columbia University and Harvard University.

That $8.7 billion figure was announced earlier this week by the Trump administration, which said that it's reviewing federal grants and contracts awarded to Harvard because Harvard has not done enough to curb antisemitism on campus.

Some educators say the administration's moves to cut funding at colleges and universities amounts to a war on higher education. But the loss of those funds will be felt far beyond the college campuses.

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In President Donald Trump's telling, tariffs are the political equivalent of duct tape: you can use them to fix anything.

For example, they're a negotiating tool ? he used the threat of tariffs to pressure Canada and Mexico to implement border policies he liked. He also sees tariffs as a revenue source that might help offset his proposed $4.5 trillion in tax cuts and as a shield to protect American manufacturing jobs from overseas competition.

With all of these potentially conflicting aims, and with another major round of tariffs expected to be announced on Wednesday, what is the strategy behind them?

Rana Foroohar, a Financial Times columnist and the author of Homecoming: The Path to Prosperity in a Post-Global World, says they're an "experiment" that could lead to a big change in the way the global economy works.

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Last week, South Korea's Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that Korean adoption agencies were responsible for widespread fraud, malpractice and even human rights violations.

More than 140,000 South Korean children were adopted by families living abroad in the decades after the Korean war. The report documented cases in which agencies fabricated records and others in which abandoned children were sent abroad after only perfunctory efforts to find living guardians.

Documentarian Deann Borshay Liem was an adult when she first learned the story she'd been told about her identity was a lie. She was adopted by an American family from California in 1966, when she was eight years old. Her adoption records said she was an orphan, but she eventually discovered her birth mother was alive, and she had a large extended family in South Korea.

She shares her adoption story, her reaction to the commission's report, and her thoughts on what justice looks like for adoptees.

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The AI boom has caused a huge surge in energy consumption, so how is the tech industry thinking about its environmental footprint as it invests in new AI models?

Emily Kwong, host and reporter for NPR's Short Wave podcast, finds out what solutions are being considered that might meet both consumer demand and address climate concerns.

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After reaching historic levels, fatal overdoses from opioids are dropping rapidly.

Today we bring you a reporter's notebook from NPR's national addiction correspondent Brian Mann. He tells host Scott Detrow what it's been like to cover America's addiction crisis and explains the significance of the recent decline in opioid deaths.

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Bezalel Smotrich's views were once fringe in Israel. He's an ultranationalist West Bank settler, who has repeatedly called for Israel to resettle the Gaza Strip.

Today, as finance minister, he's a key figure influencing the future of Israel's war against Hamas.

NPR's Hadeel Al-Shalchi has the story of Smotrich's rise to power in Israel politics.

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Six months ago, Southern Appalachia was devastated by Hurricane Helene.

Now, after a dry spell and a windy March ? the region faces wildfires that are feeding on the downed trees and vegetation that the hurricane knocked to the forest floor.

The North Carolina Forest Service has declared one of them "the highest priority fire in the U.S."

And due to climate change and population growth, the Carolinas must anticipate a future with more fire danger.

Experts and first responders explain the current situation ? and the way forward.

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In January of 1987, Michel Shehadeh, a Palestinian man who'd lawfully immigrated to the U.S. as a teenager, was taking care of his toddler son at home when federal agents arrived at his door and arrested him at gunpoint. Shehadeh soon learned he was one of eight immigrants arrested on charges relating to their pro-Palestinian activism.

Then, in March of 2025, federal agents arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a recent Columbia University graduate student, and Georgetown professor Badar Khan Suri. Both are in the U.S. legally, being threatened with deportation. And both are targets of the Trump administration's crackdown on what they describe as anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas speech on college campuses.

We hear from David Cole, who represented the Los Angeles Eight for insight into this moment, and what we can learn from their plight.

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In the 24 hours since a bombshell Atlantic article, senators have grilled Trump administration intelligence officials ? but there are no signs yet that anyone involved will face any repercussions. The article, by Jeffrey Goldberg, details how he was inadvertently added to a chat on Signal, the encrypted messaging app, where key administration figures were planning a U.S. bombing operation in Yemen.

NPR's Ryan Lucas followed a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, where CIA Director John Ratcliffe and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard testified that no classified information was discussed in the chat group. Democrats challenged that assertion.

And Willem Marx reports on reaction in European capitals. The Atlantic article included disparaging comments about European allies from Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

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For weeks, President Trump has been issuing executive orders and memos that levy or threaten sanctions on major law firms.

The moves suspend security clearances, cancel government contracts, bar employees from federal buildings ? and other actions that threaten their ability to represent their clients.

While Trump complains the law firms employed "very dishonest people," legal experts say Trump is retaliating against firms who have represented his political opponents or, in one case, rehired an attorney who had left his position to help prosecute a case against Trump.

We hear from Rachel Cohen, who publicly resigned from her law firm in protest.

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In Trump v. United States, the Supreme Court held that the president has "absolute immunity from criminal prosecution" for official acts.

To reach that conclusion, the High Court grappled with this question: how much power a president should have?

And some legal scholars say the ruling draws on the unitary executive theory ? which, in its most extreme interpretation, gives the president sole authority over the executive branch.

But did it pave the way for Trump's second term and the constitutional questions it's raised: From the dismantling of federal agencies established by Congress to the deportation migrants to third party countries without due process?

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Greenland is a lot more than an object of Donald Trump's territorial ambitions. It's a place whose small population is facing big questions ? about climate change, economic development, and identity.

Today we bring you a reporter's notebook, traveling with NPR's Juana Summers and her team through Greenland at a time of huge political uncertainty.

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Representatives from Russia and Ukraine will be in meetings to try to hammer out details of a ceasefire on Monday. But peace is still a long way off.

For starters it's only a partial ceasefire?no strikes on energy infrastructure. It's only for 30 days.

And the Ukrainians and Russians aren't even meeting with each other. The U.S. will be a go-between.

One of the biggest things working against a new agreement, is what happened after Ukraine's last agreement with Russia. And the ones before that.

Ukraine says it won't trust a promise from Russia. It needs security guarantees. To understand why, you've got to go back to the birth of independent Ukraine.

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Farmers already worry about things like crop prices, the cost of farm supplies and extreme weather.

Now, President Trump's signature tariffs ? and the federal government under the Trump administration ? pose more big question marks.

We hear from Ann Veneman, the Secretary of Agriculture under George W. Bush.

And Robert Smith and Wailin Wong from NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money report on what economic uncertainty means for one farmer.

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The argument for international aid is in part a moral one, but it's also been about U.S. interests. As then-senator Marco Rubio put it in 2017: "I promise you it's going to be a lot harder to recruit someone to anti-Americanism, anti-American terrorism if the United States of America was the reason why they're even alive today."

Now, as secretary of state, Rubio serves under a president who is deeply skeptical of the idea of international aid. "We're giving billions and billions of dollars to countries that hate us," President Trump said in a speech last month. His administration shuttered the U.S. Agency for International Development. A federal judge said this week that move violated the constitution. What's left of the agency has been folded into the State Department.

Trump has also moved to gut government-funded, editorially independent broadcasters like Voice of America, and attempted to effectively eliminate the congressionally-funded think tank the U.S. Institute of Peace.

This sort of soft power has been a pillar of American foreign policy. Is the Trump administration walking away from it?

We talk to former Democratic congressman and former secretary of agriculture, Dan Glickman, who sponsored the legislation that created the USIP.

And NPR's Emily Feng reports on the legacy of Voice of America in China.

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Measles continues to spread in West Texas and New Mexico. About 300 cases have been reported, since the outbreak began in January - but the actual number is likely higher.

The communities where measles continues to spread people are largely unvaccinated.

At the same time some isolated measles cases have been reported in a dozen other states - largely linked to international travel.

In most of the U.S., vaccination rates are still high enough to stop a major outbreak. But if they continue to fall, we could see long-term consequences of measles in the future.

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"Oopsie, too late. "That post on X from the President of El Salvador got retweeted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the weekend with a laugh-crying emoji over a headline about a judge's ruling.

The judge ordered the Trump Administration not to deport Venezuelans to El Salvador.

That came after a Brown University physician in the United States on an H1-B visa from Lebanon was sent back. Even though a federal judge issued an order that she appear at an in-person hearing on Monday.

In a court filing today, lawyers for the government said US Customs and Border Patrol officers said they didn't learn of the order until after the doctor was sent back.

The administration insists it is not defying court orders. Trump hasn't yet openly and explicitly defied the courts. Can he undermine them just by flirting with defiance?

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Nearly 40, 000.

That's the United Nations estimate for the number of children who have been killed or injured since Israel began its war with Hamas some 18 months ago.

Last year, NPR profiled one injured Gazan boy, Nimer Sadi al-Nimer, who was shot five times by the Israeli military while he and his father were gathering food dropped by parachute outside Gaza City.

This week, NPR Gaza producer Anas Baba tracked Nimer down to hear what the past year has been like.

NPR correspondent Rob Schmitz speaks with Baba about what he learned after reconnecting with Nimer.

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"A little disturbance," "a period of transition," "a detox period." These are all phrases that President Trump and his administration have used to describe the economy, as the stock market has plunged in response to one tariff announcement after another.

Trump is adamant that his tariffs will ultimately bring revenue, jobs and factories to the U.S.

But economist Matt Slaughter, dean of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, is skeptical. He thinks Trump's strategy is a recipe for long-term economic pain, and that a recession is getting more likely by the day.

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The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, has been trying to access the massive amounts of Americans' personal information held in databases throughout the federal government.

These databases hold information far more sensitive than name, address or even social security number. Diagnoses and medical data like treatment for mental health and addiction issues is also included in the trove of data.

Now, more than a dozen lawsuits are invoking a little known law from 1974 that was designed to safeguard exactly this kind of data from federal overreach.

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The Trump administration continues to fire, shut down or defund independent elements of the federal government that traditionally work as a check on presidential power.

Supporters of President Trump say: That's exactly the point.

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The deadliest phase of the U.S. fentanyl crisis appears to be over. That's according to new research showing fatal overdoses from fentanyl and other street drugs continue to plunge and have now dropped from their peak in all 50 states.

But with that good news comes with challenges including caring for a larger population of people, who are surviving, but may be deeply unwell.

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House Republicans have to get their spending bill passed by Friday to avoid a government shutdown. They can likely afford to lose just one vote.

And that's the easy part.

Then they'll have to get working on their plan to extend 4.5 trillion dollars in tax cuts passed under the Trump administration ? a plan that will require huge cuts in government spending.

Republicans are adamant that cuts to Medicaid are a non-starter. But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office released a report last week that said Republicans' budget likely would require cuts to Medicaid or Medicare.

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Many migrants in Mexico journey north to the U.S. border by riding on top of freight trains. It's a dangerous trip: migrants have been kidnapped by cartels or killed by falling onto the tracks. And now, with the Trump administration suspending asylum applications at the border, the chances of crossing into the U.S. are even smaller than they were a few months ago.

NPR's Eyder Peralta recently rode along with migrants through a frigid night to try to answer a simple question: why do so many still take the risk?

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It's been a little more than a week since Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office.

Vice President JD Vance was in the meeting too. And Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the nation's top diplomat, sat on an Oval Office couch, mostly silent, as Trump and Vance berated the Ukrainian leader.

Along the way, the president and vice president made it clear just how much of the established global order they are ready to upend. An order that for most of his career, Rubio has defended, and worked to help hold up.

So what changed ...and what do those changes mean?

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Like a lot of economists, Mark Zandi, with Moody's Analytics, thinks President Trump's across-the-board tariffs are a bad idea. Saying, "Tariffs, broad-based tariffs, are a real problem for the economy."

But Zandi says ? it's not just the tariffs themselves that are the problem, it's the uncertainty created by Trump's rollout.

Trump threatened 25% Tariffs on Canada and Mexico would start in February. They were paused at the 11th hour, only to eventually go into effect this week.

On Thursday Trump announced the new tariffs would be paused for most products, but potentially only until April 2.

Meanwhile tariffs on China snapped into place in February, and then doubled, to 20%.What happens next is anyone's guess.

Businesses have been optimistic about the economy under Trump. His chaotic tariff rollout threatens that.

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A hundred minutes ? that's how long President Trump had the floor ? literally ? last night.

A hundred minutes he used to lay out his agenda, his grievances and what he argued are the accomplishments of his first six weeks in office.

This all came during his "joint address" to Congress ? the State of the Union that's not a State of the Union.

Since Trump returned to office in January, there's been little room left for democrats to make their case to the American people.

Democratic moderates think they have an answer for Trump 2.0. What does their playbook look like?

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After the Trump-Zelenskyy blow-up on Friday, European leaders held emergency talks in London to put together a roadmap to peace.

Then, on Tuesday, European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen announced a proposal called ReArm Europe. The roughly $840 billion plan would quickly build up defense budgets in Europe.

Meanwhile, the U.S. seems to continue to align itself with Russia.

President Trump is upending the U.S.-led order that has dominated global politics for the better part of a century. What does that mean for Ukraine ? and for America?

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People who work for the federal court system don't have the same kinds of job protections that most other Americans do.

A nearly year-long NPR investigation has found problems with the way the courts police sexual harassment and bullying...and a pervasive culture of fear about blowing the whistle.

A warning to our listeners, this piece contains a description of sexual assault.

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Unlike any other religious leader around the world, the leader of the world's one billion Catholics is also the leader of a sovereign nation. And Pope Francis hasn't been shy about using that political power.

He's pushed for an end to the wars between Hamas and Israel, and Russia and Ukraine.

And he's repeatedly tried to point the world's attention to two ongoing challenges: immigration and climate change.

Much of the world has spent the last two weeks focused on Pope Francis' health. And the reason why has as much to do with the fact that he's a powerful geopolitical force as it does with the fact he's a key religious figure.

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On Tuesday, President Trump will address Congress and the nation in a major speech, where he'll sum up what he's accomplished in his first month. And while the Trump administration has already claimed success in curbing illegal immigration, many people affected by his policies have experienced chaos and panic.

Andrea Lino, a supervising attorney with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, shares stories about how Trump's actions have affected her clients and her work.

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On Tuesday, 21 DOGE employees resigned. NPR spoke to one of them who says she felt the new administration was causing "harm to the American people."

As Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency work to remake the federal government, some of the people tasked with executing his vision have serious concerns about what the changes will do.

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On Friday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is scheduled to meet President Donald Trump at the White House.

On the agenda ? a deal for Ukraine to share its rich natural resources. The Trump administration wants hundreds of billions of dollars of rare earth metals and other critical minerals. Details are thin on what exactly Ukraine would get in exchange.

The meeting comes as the world marks three years since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and as Trump promises to bring an end to the war.

But bringing an end to the war may not be so simple argues Alexander Vindman.

The Ukrainian-born Vindman was the White House staffer and active duty Army officer, who testified against Trump during his first impeachment trial in 2019.

Trump fired Vindman not long after.

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President Trump's calls for the U.S. to take over Greenland have sparked alarm and outrage.

Denmark, which is responsible for Greenland's security, recently announced that it would further boost its defense spending.

And a recent poll found 85 percent of Greenlanders are opposed to being part of the United States.

Parliamentary candidate Naaja Nathanielsen is one of them.

It isn't clear whether Trump's ambitions for Greenland will take. But some politicians in the territory are taking his calls for acquisition more seriously than ever before.

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On Friday, Donald Trump fired Chairman of the Joint Chief's of Staff CQ Brown, along with several other top Pentagon officials.

Now, Senator Jack Reed, a Democrat from Rhode Island, has a question for the man tapped to succeed him, Retired Air Force Lieutenant General Dan Caine.

Quote ? "will he have the ability to speak truth to power?"
Senator Reed is the top democrat on the Armed Services Committee.

The Trump administration says it wants a military built on meritocracy. Critics say it's building one governed by political loyalty.

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President Donald Trump's tariffs and comments about turning Canada into the 51st state have tested U.S. relations with the country. One example is the deterioration of longstanding bonds between Detroit, Michigan and its neighbor across the river, Windsor, Ontario.

NPR's Don Gonyea is a Detroit native and current resident of the city. He's had a front row view to changing attitudes between the two populations who have long enjoyed a very friendly, symbiotic relationship.

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"The Department of Education is a big con job."

That's just one of the things President Trump has said about one of the most high profile departments in federal government ? a department Trump says he wants to eliminate.

Trump says he wants to save money, and kill policies he doesn't like. Trump and Elon Musk's DOGE has already started cutting funding from the department.

The Trump administration wants the Department of Education gone. But can they get rid of it, and what could be lost in the process?

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Earlier this week, President Donald Trump accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia.

Three years ago Russian troops poured over Ukraine's border, and Russian missiles and drones continue to bombard Ukrainian cities.

Besides being untrue, the comments echoed a popular Kremlin talking point. And Trump's comments signaled a seismic shift in decades of U.S. foreign policy. Supporters of Ukraine and its allies, both here and abroad, were left shaken.

NPR's Joanna Kakissis and Greg Myre discuss Ukraine's future as Russia-U.S. relations thaw.

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