"Live from NPR news in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton.
on fumes and insists the midterm elections won't make him rush into a deal to end the war.
“He continues to say a deal is near over the weekend. He even declared that Tehran had”
largely negotiated his settlement, but the negotiations are clearly still in flux. Democrats are looking for a path to winning in rural areas, but the party's brand is in terrible shape in many of those places. At the same time, a new poll shows some rural voters angry about Tehran's high gas prices and groceries. Some Democratic leaders are pushing the party to fight harder for what it's already supposed to stand for as NPR's marginalized and explains.
According to Dee Davis, the president of the Center for rural strategies, the group that commissioned this poll, Democrats have no one but themselves to blame for the whole they're in.
If they hadn't abandoned rural America and put the resources somewhere else,
they might be in better shape right now. Davis says Democrats believed they could win without rural votes. "I don't think it's worked out the way they expected."
“For Davis, there's no downside to trying to woo rural voters. After all, college educated urban”
voters also care about health care, gas prices and jobs. "NPR's marginalized and reporting President Trump has proposed pausing the federal gas tax for six months, but NPR's Steven Bassaha reports those funds are used to protect drivers from another expense, bad roads." Potholes cost drivers billions of dollars in repairs each year. Patrick Marshall knows what that's like after hitting a dip in New Orleans. "The entire wheel
almost fell off the truck completely. It cost him $2,500." "Absolutely, yeah. And it's a tough hit to take when it's an unexpected expense." "What the federal gas tax brings in is not enough to pay for all road repairs. But Robbot with lending trees says anytime you cut highway maintenance funding "that you're running the risk of the roads getting worse and not better." State gas taxes are usually higher. Some states like Georgia have pauses theirs. That means
“more savings are drivers, but less money for road repairs. Steven Bassaha and PR news.”
NPR laid off 10 journalists today, including some veteran reporters and an attempt to save money and reorganize the newsroom, NPR's at David Folk and Flick has the story. "In addition to layoffs, NPR is also buying out at least 18 new staffers who voluntarily accepted offers to leave, according to three people with direct knowledge. The network says it intends to leave at empty positions unfilled to add to the savings. The moves are part of NPR's
planned to grapple with the economic consequences of Congress's vote last summer that eliminate federal subsidies for public media. While NPR relied directly on federal funds for about 1% of its budgets, the cuts deeply hurt public radio stations that pan PR for the radio flagship programs like Morning Edition and all things considered. David Folk and Flick and PR news." "This is NPR News."
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is asking the U.S. for more air defense ammunition. It comes as Russian missile attacks escalate. Zelensky also warned that U.S. stock piles are being drained due to the attacks in the Iran War. Meanwhile, Russian lawmakers want to train bank staff to install jamming systems to help intercept Ukrainian drones. The U.K. intelligence reports that nearly 500,000 Russian troops have been killed since the
conflict began. With the Tony Awards set to be handed down on June 7, the theater trade organization says ticket sales are up, but the number of audience members is slightly down as Jeff London reports. "From the perspective of box office grosses, it appears that Broadway has
recovered from the pandemic. The 2025-26 season brought in $1.91 billion in ticket sales, the most ever,
and 90.8% of available seats were filled with over 14.5 million people. But that represented slightly fewer audience members than the previous season. In all 35 productions opened over the year, these statistics don't address profitability, however, with production costs rising only one out of 10 commercial Broadway shows breaks even or makes a profit. For NPR News, I'm Jeff London, in New York." A new study says the size and damage from hail will increase in a warming
world, simulation show that hail size will increase between 38% and 47% globally by the year 2100, it's due to increased energy and moisture in storms. This is NPR News shows new music, new movies, keeping up with pop culture sometimes feels like a full-time job. Thankfully, over at pop culture happy-hour, it's literally our job. We break down what's actually worth watching, listening to, and pretending you already knew about. So the next time someone says, "Did you see that?"
You can say, yeah, obviously, follow NPR's pop culture happy-hour wherever you get your podcasts.
