Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Winter Johnston.
The Trump administration is moving to strip some colleges and universities of their tax exempt status over diversity programs.
“The IRS as schools could soon face penalties for programs or scholarships aimed at black”
latino or first-generation students.
NPR's Adrian Florito reports. "Well, the administration is arguing that these sorts of programs are racially discriminatory. The Treasury Secretary Scott Bessett, who oversees the IRS, said in the statement that quote, "Racial Discrimination has no place in American education." This is a huge shift.
Historically, the IRS has not penalized tax exempt institutions for race-based programs, or considered them discriminatory as long as these programs are trying to advance racial equity or address the effects of societal discrimination." NPR's Adrian Florito reporting "Jourdes in the murder trial of Lindsey Clancy are entering their seventh day of deliberations.
The Massachusetts mother is accused of killing her three children in 2023. Priyanka Dale McCleskey from Member Station, W.B.U.R. reports, appears that one juror is alone "hold out."
“Clancy's Defense Attorney Kevin Ridington argued unsuccessfully to have one member of the jury dismissed.”
For he says, "Not following the judges' instructions on the standard for conviction." Judge William Sullivan called jurors into the courtroom for detailed instructions on the meaning of reasonable doubt. He's expected to address the whole out-jure issue on Friday. Clancy admitted to killing her children, but her lawyer argues she's not criminally responsible
because she was suffering from psychosis. There are returned to deliberations Friday morning, for NPR news, I'm Priyanka Dale McCleskey." Diesel prices have hit in all-time high. The national average is now $5.85 a gallon, and PR's Willar Rubin reports. Much of our supply chain runs on diesel, trucks, trains, tractors nearly 90% of school buses,
so when the price of diesel goes up, it hurts across the economy. The price has been going up for several reasons. One, the straight-of-formu's, not much oil is getting through.
“Two, countries around the world have scaled back their exports of diesel.”
Three, jet fuel. The war drove up the price, so refiner's made more of it, and we got less diesel.
Finally, reason four, Ukraine has been firing at Russian refineries, taking many offline.
It all adds up to a perfect storm, which could spill over into the price of food, the price of heating oil, and much of what kept shipped, which could mean an expensive few months to come. Willar Rubin and PR news. This is NPR news in Washington.
The Trump administration says excavation work could begin within two weeks on a massive memorial arch planned for Washington. The 250-foot structure would stand between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Interior Secretary Doug Bergum says the arch will become one of the country's great works
of architecture. Critics say it would disrupt historic views in the nation's capital, a lawsuit is challenging the project. Open AI has launched a new chat model.
Astra is its first new model since the tech giant announced that autonomous AI agents
in training went off script and colluded to hack into another company. NPR's John Ruitt's reports open AI says this new agent is "it's safest yet." The new model will be available at first only to partners in an early access program to make sure it's safe. But it says over the coming days, GPT-6 Astra, as its known, will be made more widely available
to the public. Open AI has caught heavy flags since July when AI agents in testing ignored instructions or secretly together to figure out how to get on the internet and then hacked into another company. That incident raised serious questions about human control of artificial intelligence.
The company says the new model is its best yet in terms of alignment with human values and causes fewer unintended outcomes than previous models. John Ruitt's NPR News Volkswagen says it's cutting around 50,000 jobs. It says it's part of a major cost-cutting plan to counter increasing competition from China
and rising U.S. tariffs. This is NPR News. This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, Democratic Socialists are having a moment. What's their goal? The goal being to eventually re-aligned the Democratic Party to perhaps someday develop
a independent party, but we recognize that in the United States there's just a two-party system. How Democratic Socialists are staking out political territory.
