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NPR News: 06-01-2026 5PM EDT

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"Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton.

The Justice Department says it will abide by a federal court order that temporarily

pauses the Trump administration's nearly $1.8 billion fund for people who claim they

were targets of politicized prosecutions. The fund has come under sharp criticism from Democrats as well as many Republicans and PR's Ryan Lucas reports." The so-called anti-weaponization fund has been on hold since a federal judge temporarily blocked it last week, and responds to a lawsuit challenging the fund's creation.

The order barred the Justice Department from taking any action to create the fund, transfer money into it, consider claims, or make payments out of it. The pause is necessary to give the court time to hear from both sides on the legal arguments. Now the Justice Department says in a statement that it strongly disagrees with the court order, but it says it will abide by it.

The Trump administration continues to face intense and even bipartisan blowback from lawmakers over the fund, including over the possibility that Capitol rioters who attacked police could receive payments from it. Ryan Lucas and PR News, Washington.

Former Colorado elections clerk in conspiracy theorist Tina Peters has been released from

prison. She served less than a quarter of her nine-year sentence for her role in a scheme to copy her county's election system. Democratic Governor Jared Pollis commuted her sentence saying she had to express regret about her actions.

Today, she appeared on right-wing podcast or Steve Bannon's program, repeating to "bunked conspiracy theories that voting machines cheated Trump out of reelection in 2020." Iran says it is suspending talks with the U.S. over Israeli military operations in Lebanon and Gaza. Israel has continued to bomb South Lebanon and the southern suburbs of Beirut considered

"hezbollah strongholds, even though a ceasefire was reached in April," and PR's "headed ill-shalty reports."

The semi-efficient Iranian news agency, Tuscanym, which is associated with the Islamic Revolutionary

Guard Corps, said that Tehran was demanding the end of what it called the aggressive and brutal Israeli army operations in Gaza and Lebanon. It also called for the complete withdrawal of Israeli military forces from Lebanon. Iran said that unless those conditions were filled, talks with the U.S. to end the war would halt.

There was no immediate confirmation from senior Iranian officials that messages, mostly relayed via Pakistan, between the war and parties, were being suspended. The U.S. and Iran said last week they were close to a tentative 60-day ceasefire extension, and framework to start talks to end the war, but the agreement is waiting on President Trump's approval.

He'd deal al-shalty and PR news. AI Company and Thropic is moving toward going public on Wall Street. The maker of chatbot Claude says it has submitted a confidential filing with the securities and exchange commission for a proposed initial public offering, and Thropic has risen

from a little-known research laboratory to one of the leading AI companies valued at $965 billion.

This is NPR News. Governments are pressing to find fertilizer alternatives like a Dung and Compost to reduce dependency on chemical fertilizers, as the Iran War drives up prices. The Gulf region produces 30% of globally traded chemical fertilizer, experts say the shift away from chemical fertilizer could benefit the environment.

The Trump administration is working to stop federal investment in behavioral sciences, like sociology and psychology, and PR's Katie Riddle reports. The funding that the administration is targeting comes through the national science foundation, though the money for this kind of research still exists, only a handful of awards have been made in 2026, scientists say the impacts of withholding this money are far-reaching into fields

like artificial intelligence. Tom Griffiths studies cognition and computer science at Princeton. There are fundamental questions that we want to answer about how human minds work, and

the answers to those questions are important, not just for understanding humans, but also

for building intelligent machines. The Trump administration defends these cuts arguing that this kind of science is ideologically driven, Katie Riddle and PR News. New York City mayors Iran Mumdoni signed an executive order tonight, allowing kids of all ages to stay up to watch the nicks take on the San Antonio spurs in the NBA finals.

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. Six times someone says, "Did you see that?" you can say, "Yeah, obviously."

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