The Brief

There is broad scientific consensus that pollution from human society is driving long-term changes in our climate. Those changes are already happening — more frequent and hotter heat waves, longer and drier droughts, more intense wildfires, among other extreme weather events.

But President-elect Donald Trump has called climate change “a hoax” and many Republicans increasingly downplay the threat it poses to human health and nature. The partisan divide on climate action has only grown wider over the last decade, according to the Pew Research Center.

Most Americans actually agree that global heating is a problem and that it’s going to worsen within their lifetimes without more action from governments, corporations, and society in general.

A brief history of Republicans and the environment

Environmental protection wasn’t always so politically divisive.

“The environmental movement historically is very much a Republican movement,” said Francisca Martinez, deputy chief of staff at the University of Southern California’s Schwarzenegger Institute.

Ronald Reagan

She pointed to how former Gov. Ronald Reagan established the California Air Resources Board, which regulates air pollution, in 1967.

“This was long, long before much of the country was really thinking about regulating air pollution and emissions,” Martinez said.

President Richard Nixon signed the federal Clean Air Act into law in 1970 and was instrumental in establishing the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger helped California become a leader in rooftop solar by signing the Million Solar Roofs Initiative into law in 2006. That same year, Schwarzenegger also signed into law California’s landmark Global Warming Solutions Act.

Former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signs the Global Warming Solutions Act in 2006. The landmark legislation set goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions while growing the economy.

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These are just a few examples, but there’s a long history of bipartisan support for environmental protection, Martinez said.

“It's not a new thing for a Republican leader to come in and lead on climate, and I think that's been lost throughout the years,” Martinez said.

Still it's something happening under the radar. For example, during Trump's last administration, nearly a third of some 400 state-level bills to reduce carbon pollution passed through Republican-controlled legislatures. And some Congressional Republicans are leading efforts to talk about climate action more.

What changed? 

Under his previous administration, Trump rolled back more than 100 environmental protection rules and attempted to repeal dozens of others. He’s said he will gut the EPA, which is in charge of enforcing clean air, water and pollution regulations, among other things.

Martinez said a big reason for the increasing partisan divide on climate action has been disinformation and lobbying from the oil and gas industry influencing politics over decades — something that is now well-documented.

But Martinez said there's a broader communication problem too.

“If you are having issues paying your groceries, paying for gas, you're not going to be prioritizing something like climate change,” she said. “I come from first-generation everything. I come from an immigrant family that struggled to make ends meet in my childhood, so I can relate to that.”

But in reality, there’s a lot of common ground no matter people’s political beliefs or lived experiences.

“When you talk about [climate change] through the lens of air pollution…Nobody wants to breathe dirty air,” Martinez said. “When you talk about access to clean water, that's different. I think that resonates with more people.”

Finding common ground

Craig Preston would agree. The Costa Mesa resident is a lifelong Republican and chair of the Conservative Outreach Action Team for the nonpartisan, volunteer-run Citizens' Climate Lobby chapter in Orange County.

“If we think more long term, then I think we're more aware of how an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and so we're willing to put some money and effort into preventing harms,” Preston said.

Craig Preston, left, at a Citizens Climate Lobby event about the cost effectiveness of solar and battery storage, electric vehicles, heat pumps, induction stoves, and more.

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“But if we're more short-term focused, if I'm living paycheck to paycheck, then people are just not able to really think long term because they're just trying to feed their kids today,” Preston continued. “So then the discussion is more focused on the economics and even the short term benefits of moving to a clean energy economy.”

For example, he said how solar panels or highly-efficient appliances, such as heat pumps and induction stoves can help people save money. He talks about how solar and wind power has gotten cheaper than fossil fuel power.

“I often bring an induction stovetop to my meetings, do a demonstration on how to boil water in 30 seconds, and then say, who wants to take it home and try it out for two weeks?” Preston said. “Just make it fun for people to move to an electrification economy.”

A banner at a Citizens' Climate Lobby event that Craig Preston helped lead.

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He said he also emphasizes the resilience of cleaner technologies to cross partisan divides.

For example, he shared an anecdote of two friends who recently experienced the devastating flooding in Asheville, North Carolina, due to Hurricane Helene. Attribution studies found the rainfall was 10% heavier as a result of human-caused climate change.

One friend had a diesel backup generator and was stranded for 11 days, during which the generator ran out of fuel. The other friend had solar and battery storage and was able to support neighbors since their power stayed on.

“Just an example of the resiliency we need, because climate change is here,” Preston said. “We recognize market forces and clean energy are something people aren't opposed to, and so going into a clean energy future is good for their grandchildren, good for their children, good for themselves.”

Trusting the science 

Buena Park resident Dominic Bendinelli grew up in a Republican household and led his college’s Republican student group. But since Trump’s first election in 2016, he said he feels like “a Republican in exile.”

“I feel like the party has moved away from me, rather than me moving from the party,” he said.

He’d grown up spending time outdoors and has long had a love of nature, but he didn’t learn much about climate change until a biology course in college.

This graph compares atmospheric samples in ice cores as well as more recent direct measurements, showing how atmospheric carbon dioxide has increased dramatically since the Industrial Revolution.

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He said the science denial that has taken over the mainstream Republican party has been “devastating” — and a reason for that feeling of exile. His work at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has only solidified that feeling.

“Scientists are not this giant organized group of people who are all driven to do one thing,” Bendinelli said. “They're my co-workers, they don't have hidden agendas, they don't care about politics really at all, generally. A lot of scientists tend to just focus on their own work, really passionate and smart people who dedicate their lives to studying things. And I hope that we as a country can get back to trusting those kinds of people.”

Particularly as a young person — he’s 29 — Bendinelli said addressing climate change feels more personal.

Dominic Bendinelli on a recent trip to Vienna, Austria.

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“I absolutely feel like my life will be greatly impacted by climate change and that's not even to mention the life of any future children I may have,” he said. “I think we somehow need to build that coalition of leaders from both sides to really start seeing some strong movement in this country.”

Bendinelli said he’s not hopeful for that to happen under a Trump administration. He’s especially concerned about Trump’s proposals to dismantle the EPA and repeal much of the Inflation Reduction Act, which has primarily benefited clean energy projects in red states and generated hundreds of thousands of jobs.

“When you can really get down to people's concerns…that's when we can come together because we tend to have the same concerns…we just maybe don't have the same solutions,” Bendinelli said.

He said those concerns include things like the economy and quality of life and that climate action can be a part of addressing those concerns, for example, by helping people save on electric bills through efficient appliances, bringing good-paying jobs, and protecting the natural spaces we all love.

“People across the country,” he said, “if given a very clear choice of ‘would you like to protect the environment around you, or would you like to destroy it’... that would be a really easy decision.”

Pollution isn’t partisan

Elizabeth Fenner grew up in Westchester in Los Angeles in the 1970s and 80s, when smog pollution was at some of its worst.

She remembers playing in an AYSO soccer game one day and afterwards she and her teammates all came off the field coughing.

“We just didn't know the damage that smog was doing to us,” Fenner said. “I grew up with stinging eyes…there was that thick blanket of smog that we all just lived in.”

Fenner, who now lives in West Adams and works as a library aide, identifies as conservative and a climate advocate. She doesn’t support Trump, but is a registered Republican.

Elizabeth Fenner, a conservative climate advocate in Los Angeles.

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“I grew up in a liberal environment with conservative parents,” Fenner said. “So I just had this thing of, what's the real story here? It's something in between.”

She said she hopes Democrats and Republicans can find some common ground when it comes to climate action, but she doesn’t think it’ll happen anytime soon.

“The two parties have been at each other's throats for decades now — ‘If you're going to do one thing, I'm going to do the absolute opposite,’” Fenner said. “But one thing I think is that a Democratic supermajority does not create heaven on Earth here in California.”

She said that’s why she hopes people with different political views can approach each other with “humility and curiosity.”

“The impasse is that anyone that doesn't know me well and finds out I'm conservative and registered Republican believes I'm a Trump-voting conservative, and that I want to ban books, and that I am against transgender rights, that I'm ‘drill baby drill,’” Fenner said.

“I'm not OK with that,” Fenner added, “but my values are towards incremental change, small government, jobs, and the economy. I think we can work with that….but let's work together towards solutions.”

A ping pong hustler for the ages, a Neil Diamond interpreter for the '80s, choral music both comic and spiritual, plus tormented teens, twisted families, and a giant snake on the loose. It's quite the jolly holiday at your local cineplex.

They join a new Avatar sequel, a Bradley Cooper-directed drama, and more in theaters.

Marty Supreme

In theaters Thursday

I feel as if I should tell you to speed-read this review, preferably with Fats Domino's "The Fat Man" blaring in your ear. Josh Safdie's adrenaline-fueled, screwball comedy about a table tennis hustler who dreams of world domination — in a sport that hasn't registered yet with the American public — is a mesmerizing cinematic tour de force. Timothée Chalamet plays Marty Mauser (loosely based on real-life 1940s and '50s U.S. ping pong champ and petty criminal Marty Reisman), graduating from determined kid-with-a-passion to aggrieved also-ran-in-full-melt-down mode, attracting and then alienating everyone he comes across. We meet him as a New York shoe salesman having storeroom trysts with his married childhood sweetheart (Odessa A'zion) and prepping for a bout in England for which he can't even afford plane fare.

Marty establishes with a series of heists and scams that he's got no problem cheating or stealing to get there, then regales the press with a pugnacious racist routine that lands him on front pages before his first serve. Chalamet's live-wire approach is neatly countered by a serenely sensual turn by Gwyneth Paltrow as an aging movie star who finds Marty amusing and alarming in about equal measure. And the film's just getting started at that point, careening towards a championship in Japan with the propulsive, harrowing, rush-to-judgment feel of Safdie's Uncut Gems mixed up with dizzying comedy. It's a thrill ride, pure and simple. — Bob Mondello

Song Sung Blue

In theaters Thursday

Mike and Claire Sardina, the real-life, blue-collar Milwaukee couple who formed a Neil Diamond tribute act in the 1980s, get the sequin-and-spangle treatment in this Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson love-fest. Writer and director Craig Brewer keeps the music central and the sentiment tolerable as the couple meets cute, bonds quick, and forms a musical act known professionally as Lightning and Thunder. The stars are well-matched and appealing — Hudson does a winning Patsy Cline impersonation, and Jackman completely nails Neil Diamond's sound and bearing. The couple's story, which has more downs than ups, doesn't quite match the mood of a movie determined to be ever-and-always-up. Still, the stars are engaging, the supporting cast great fun, and the music rousing. — Bob Mondello

Anaconda

In theaters Thursday

The original Anaconda movie came out almost 30 years ago, sending an assortment of '90s movie stars down the Amazon, where they were menaced and occasionally crushed and/or devoured by giant deadly snakes. That film, starring Jennifer Lopez and Ice Cube, was a hit that spawned a handful of lightly regarded sequels.

Heavy on meta references to the original film, the new Anaconda is not quite a reboot, it's not quite a sequel, and it's played for laughs. Jack Black and Paul Rudd star as lifelong friends who grew up wanting to be filmmakers. But they've followed different career paths — Paul Rudd's character is a struggling actor whose biggest role was a bit part on the TV show S.W.A.T., while Jack Black's character makes wedding videos while yearning to shoot something more creative. They gather their old friends and collaborators — played by Thandiwe Newton and Steve Zahn — and head to the Amazon to shoot a meta reimagining of Anaconda. As you can imagine, this proves harder than it sounds. — Stephen Thompson

The Plague

In limited theaters Wednesday

The first image is an eerie, underwater shot — sun-dappled blues, greens, and greys — its peace suddenly exploded as bodies plunge into the pool. Middle school boys, limbs all akimbo, almost literally at sea, as they struggle for equilibrium. It's an apt beginning for the story of a youngster trying to figure out where he fits in among the cliques at a summer water polo camp. Ben (Everett Blunck) is the camp newbie, Jake (Kayo Martin) its smirking cool kid who picks up on his fellow campers' idiosyncrasies and exploits them.

He tells Ben that Eli (Kenny Rasmussen), a withdrawn boy with a rash, has the "plague" and must be avoided. Ben, seeing the obvious pain the outcast is in, can't square that with his own sense of decency, but also doesn't want to be ostracized, and his attempt to split the difference leads the film into Lord of the Flies territory. Charlie Polinger's directorial debut looks breathtaking, feels unnerving, and traffics cleverly in body-horror tropes as it basically establishes that 12-year-old boys are savages who should never be without adult supervision. — Bob Mondello

Father Mother Sister Brother

In limited theaters Wednesday

You might expect Jim Jarmusch to look at family relationships with a certain eccentricity, but not necessarily in the elegantly framed way he does in this triptych about adult children and the parents they don't begin to understand. The Father segment casts Adam Driver and Mayim Bialik as siblings who are stiff with each other, and even less comfortable with their garrulous con man of a dad (Tom Waits). Driver's come with provisions and cash, Bialik's come armed with an arched eyebrow, and Waits is ready for them both.

The second part, Mother, finds a sublimely chilly Charlotte Rampling hosting an awkward once-a-year tea for her daughters, one primly nervous (Cate Blanchett), the other pink-haired and boisterous (Vicky Krieps). And the final third, Sister Brother, finds Indya Moore and Luka Sabbat bonding in their recently deceased parents' now-empty Paris apartment. This segment seems less about estrangement, until you realize how little they actually know about their dear departed folks. There are running jokes about Rolexes, the expression "Bob's your uncle," and toasts to tie things together, along with a sweet, reflective tone that makes this one of the year's most compassionate films. — Bob Mondello

The Choral

In limited theaters Thursday

Director Nicholas Hytner and screenwriter Alan Bennett, who previously teamed up on The Madness of King George, The History Boys, and The Lady in the Van, are plumbing shallower depths in this gentle dramedy about an amateur chorus in 1916. When their choirmaster leaves to fight in World War I, grieving mill owner Roger Allam, who funds the chorus, reluctantly hires Dr. Guthrie (Ralph Fiennes), a gifted choirmaster but a divisive choice in this intensely nationalistic moment — because he's spent the last few years in Germany. He also exhibits "peculiarities" (code for being gay) but this seems less important to the locals.

Fiennes is briskly dismissive of local traditions, snippy about English appreciation for the arts, and celebrated enough in music circles to persuade composer Edward Elgar (Simon Russell Beale) to let them perform his oratorio "The Dream of Gerontius." Elgar is less thrilled when he discovers the chorus is turning the oratorio into a story about the war, casting its elderly hero as a young soldier and generally making it what later generations would call "relevant." It's all sweet and sentimental, and though it's being released during awards seasons, feels as if it really wants to be considered for best picture of 1933. — Bob Mondello

No Other Choice

In select theaters Thursday

"I've got it all," says paper factory supervisor Man-su as he hugs his family at a barbecue in the backyard of his elegant Korean home. He's grilling some eels given to him by the paper company's new American owners, secure in the knowledge that this must mean they value him. This being a social satire by director Park Chan-wook, it's reasonable to expect he will shortly be dealt a blow, and one day later, he's been axed. (The film is based on Donald E. Westlake's 1997 horror-thriller novel The Ax). He's distraught but can't express, or even really understand, that he feels he has lost his manhood, his mojo, and his reason for being.

On top of that, his industry is consolidating, so finding another job before his severance pay runs out and he loses his house (his childhood home) will be tricky. Asked if he'd consider a job outside the paper industry, Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) says that for him there is "no other choice," echoing the words his American bosses uttered about bringing down costs as they did layoffs. But with the end of severance payments looming, he hatches a plan to knock off his job market competition one by one. Isn't this mass murder? Well, he has "no other choice."

At first it seems as if we're in serial-killer comedy territory, but the filmmaker widens the frame to include narrative side trips — a stepson who's stealing cellphones, a daughter who's a cello prodigy, a wife who's working for a dentist that Man-su suspects has designs on her. Oh, and pig-farm trauma from his youth, and a passion for greenhouse gardening. Director Park has a lot going on, and a final paper-plant-mechanization sequence suggests that all these stabs at human agency may just have been humanity's last gasp. — Bob Mondello

The Testament of Ann Lee

In limited theaters Thursday

Ambitious, stylized, intense, and thoroughly unorthodox, Mona Fastvold's religious biopic tells the story of Shakers founder Ann Lee (a wild-eyed, fiercely committed Amanda Seyfried) as a full-scale musical drama. That's not to say there are finger-snapping tunes. The score adapts 18th century Shaker spirituals, and the choreography involves the thrusting limbs and clawing fingers of the seizure-like dancing that earned this puritan sect of "Shaking" Quakers their nickname.

We meet Ann as a pious youngster more interested in spiritual matters than matters of the flesh. Marriage to a man who enjoys inflicting pain during sex, and the deaths of her four children in infancy lead Ann to the conclusion that lifelong celibacy is among the keys to salvation. With the help of her younger brother (Lewis Pullman), she finds adherents to a religious philosophy that also emphasizes gender equality and simple living, and leads them to found a utopian, crafts-based community in America. Director Fastvold and her co-writer Brady Corbet (the couple flipped roles from last year's The Brutalist) serve up Ann's spiritual journey in ecstatically musical terms, which is at once distancing and … well, ecstatic, though it pales a bit over the course of two-and-a-quarter hours. — Bob Mondello 

Copyright 2025 NPR

In the 1940s and '50s, New York City table tennis was a gritty subculture full of misfits, gamblers, doctors, actors, students and more. They competed, bet on the game or both at all-night spots like Lawrence's, a table tennis parlor in midtown Manhattan. A talented player could rake in hundreds in cash in one night. In this world, a handsome, bespectacled Jewish teenager named Marty Reisman was a star.

His game was electric. "Marty had a trigger in his thumb. He hit bullets. You could lose your eyebrows playing with him," someone identified only as "the shirt king" told author Jerome Charyn for his book Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins: Ping-Pong and the Art of Staying Alive.

The new movie Marty Supreme recreates this world. Timothée Chalamet's character, table tennis whiz Marty Mauser, is loosely inspired by Reisman.

Nicknamed "The Needle" for his slender physique, Reisman represented the U.S. in tournaments around the world and won more than 20 major titles, including the 1949 English Open and two U.S. Opens.

Like Chalamet's Marty Mauser, Reisman was obsessed with the game. In his 1974 memoir The Money Player: The Confessions of America's Greatest Table Tennis Champion and Hustler, Reisman wrote that he was drawn to table tennis because it "involved anatomy and chemistry and physics."

One of the game's "bad boys"

Reisman was a daring, relentless showman, always dressed to the nines in elegant suits and hats. "His personality made him legendary," said Khaleel Asgarali, a professional player who owns Washington, D.C. Table Tennis. Asgarali would often see Reisman at tournaments. "The way he carried himself, his charisma, his flair, the clothing, the style … Marty was a sharp dresser, man."

He was also one of the game's "bad boys," just like the fictional Marty Mauser. In 1949 at the English Open, he and fellow American star Dick Miles moved from their modest London hotel into one that was much fancier. They ran up a tab on room service, dry cleaning and the like and then charged it all to the English Table Tennis Association. When the English officials refused to cover their costs, the players said they wouldn't show up for exhibition matches they knew were already sold out. The officials capitulated — but later fined the players $200 and suspended them "indefinitely from sanctioned table tennis" worldwide for breaking the sport's "courtesy code."

Marty Reisman demonstrates an under-the-leg trick shot in 1955.

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Ping pong offered quick cash — and an outlet 

Reisman grew up on Manhattan's Lower East Side. His dad was a taxi driver and serious gambler. "It was feast or famine at our house, usually famine," Reisman wrote. His parents split when he was 10. His mother, who had emigrated from the Soviet Union, worked as a waitress and then in a garment factory. When he was 14, Marty went to live with his father at the Broadway Central Hotel.

Hustling was "just baked into his DNA," said Leo Leigh, director of a documentary about Reisman called Fact or Fiction: The Life and Times of a Ping Pong Hustler.

"I remember [Reisman] telling me that when he wanted to eat, he would wait until there was a wedding in the hotel, put on his best suit and just slip in and just sit and eat these massive, amazing meals," said Leigh, "And then he'd be ready for the night to go and hustle table tennis."

Reisman suffered panic attacks as early as nine years old. Playing ping pong helped with his anxiety. "The game so engrossed me, so filled my days, that I did not have time to worry," he wrote.

"Finding this game of table tennis — and finding that he had this amazing ability — became almost like an escape, a meditation," said Leigh.

Marty Reisman shows a behind-the-back trick shot in 1955.

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"Einstein, Hemingway, and Louis wrapped into one"

Reisman wanted to be the best ping pong player in the world. "To be an Einstein in your field, or a Hemingway, or a Joe Louis — there could be nothing, I imagined, more noble," Reisman wrote. "And table tennis champions were to me Einstein, Hemingway, and Louis wrapped into one."

The game was respected throughout Europe and Asia, turning ping pong stars into big names: In Marty Supreme, one who was imprisoned at Auschwitz tells the story of being spared by Nazi guards who recognize him. (Reisman's memoir tells a similar true story of the Polish table tennis champion Alojzy "Alex" Ehrlich.)

But in the U.S., ping pong was considered a pastime people played in their basements. New York City was an exception: "Large sums of money were bet on a sport that had no standing at all in this country," wrote Reisman.

Reisman dazzled spectators with his flair on the table.

"If you look at footage of Marty in the '50s and '60s, you could almost compare it to the footage of Houdini," said Leigh. "He would blow the ball into the air and then he would, you know, knock it under his leg or just do some acrobats. It was almost like putting on a show."

One of his gimmick shots was breaking a cigarette in two with a slam.

Marty Reisman after winning the final men's singles game at the English Open in 1949.

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Chasing a dream "that no one respected"

Marty Supreme co-writer and director Josh Safdie grew up playing ping pong with his dad in New York City. "I had ADHD and found it to be quite helpful," he told NPR. "It's a sport that requires an intense amount of focus and an intense amount of precision." Safdie said his great uncle played at Lawrence's and used to tell him about the different characters he met there, including Reisman's friend and competitor Dick Miles.

It was Safdie's wife who found Reisman's book in a thrift store and gave it to him. When he read it, Safdie was finishing a dream project that was years in the making, the 2019 movie Uncut Gems starring Adam Sandler. "Every step of the way, there was either a hurdle or a stop gap or a laugh in my face," said Safdie, "And very few believers in that project."

Safdie likened the experience to Reisman's obsession with becoming a table tennis champion "who believed in this thing and had a dream that no one respected."

A new racket changes the game

In 1952, Japanese player Hiroji Satoh stunned the table tennis world by winning the Men's Singles at the World Championships playing with a new type of racket that had thick foam rubber. Unlike the traditional hardbat, the sponge rubber silenced the pock of the ball hitting the racket. Reisman wrote that the new surface caused the ball "to take eerie flights … Sometimes it floated like a knuckleball, a dead ball with no spin whatsoever. On other occasions the spin was overpowering."

"Marty really liked the sound of the old hardbat," said Asgarali, "When the sponge racquet came out, Marty wasn't competitive anymore. He totally fell out of the game."

Leigh said Reisman would tell just about anyone who would listen how Hiroji Satoh destroyed his game.

He was "constantly analyzing and reanalyzing his personality, who he is, where he's going," said Leigh. He would "sit with all these academics and these writers and these almost philosophers and just talk for hours" about how the rubber bat "completely" ruined his game. "He was always searching for something."

In 1958, Reisman bought the Riverside Table Tennis Club on Manhattan's Upper West Side, a popular spot frequented by celebrities including Matthew Broderick and Dustin Hoffman. In 1997, at age 67, he won the United States Hardbat Championship.

Marty Reisman died in 2012 at age 82. A The New York Times profile of him less than a year prior started with the headline, "A Throwback Player, With a Wardrobe to Match."

Copyright 2025 NPR

As journalists, we measure success not just in clicks or conversions, but in what happens after a story makes its way into the world. Impact isn't always immediate or easily quantified. It can surface quietly — in an email from a listener, a shift in public understanding, or a decision made differently because someone finally has the information they need. In a nonprofit newsroom, those moments matter as much as any headline.

Over the past year, NPR's reporting has met audiences where they are, reflecting the realities they're living every day. Coverage of tariffs, affordability and the cost of living connected sprawling economic policy to household grocery receipts and credit card balances. Investigations explained how decisions made in Washington ripple outward — to farmers, veterans, federal workers and families struggling to stay afloat.

For many listeners and readers, the impact was practical and validating: tools to manage debt, clarity about a confusing economy, or simply the feeling of being seen.

Other stories carried consequences far beyond the personal. Reporting helped reinstate sidelined CDC scientists, prompted congressional investigations and new legislation, restored lifesaving grants, and pushed companies and institutions toward greater transparency and accountability. From the ethics of AI-generated music to secretive government data practices, NPR journalists illuminated systems often hidden from public view — and those stories didn't stop at awareness; they led to action.

And in places where the human cost is hardest to capture, NPR stayed present. From Gaza to Zambia, from immigration courts to National Guard group chats, our reporting centered the lived experiences behind policy and power. In response, listeners told us they donated, spoke up, reconsidered long-held assumptions, or felt less alone.

What follows is just a sampling of the stories NPR staff believe made some of the deepest ripples this year — reminders of what rigorous, compassionate journalism can do, and why the work remains as urgent as ever.

— Thomas Evans, editor in chief of NPR

Extensive coverage of tariffs, the cost of living and affordability reflects NPR audience's reality

"The tariffs story highlighted how big, macroeconomic stories like tariffs were impacting individual Americans, bringing home why politics matters — and telling stories in the way NPR does best," says reporter Emily Feng.

NPR reporters stayed on top of this coverage, from asking Americans to send in their receipts to show tariffs in effect to polling Americans about how they're feeling about the economy. NPR journalists also kept a tracker of Trump's tariff threats and trade deals, as well as continued coverage of the cost of living crisis many Americans are feeling.

Life Kit also created a month-long newsletter series (that you can still sign up for!) about how to pay down credit card debt. More than 100 people emailed us saying how much they appreciated the newsletter and how it helped validate the measures they were taking to pay off their credit card debt. "With helpful newsletters like this, I'm confident I can start and stay on the right path," one subscriber said.

An investigation contributes to CDC lab scientists getting reinstated

When all 27 scientists in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Viral Hepatitis were put on administrative leave in April, they were in the middle of investigations in several states. No other lab in the world has the capacity to genetically trace hepatitis outbreaks — which can be spread in food or by sharing needles — to their source.

NPR exclusively interviewed five scientists at the CDC about the lab's closure and explained the nature of the work the lab does in an investigation. In June, all 27 of the lab's scientists were told they could come back to work at the CDC, along with more than 400 other workers whose layoffs were revoked. "People who worked at the lab attributed getting their jobs back in part to NPR's early reporting on their predicament," reporter Chiara Eisner says.

Reporting on DOGE leads to an independent investigation and new legislation

Jenna McLaughlin's exclusive reporting on how DOGE may have taken sensitive labor data quickly led to outcry from more than 50 lawmakers demanding an independent investigation into DOGE's activities at the National Labor Relations Board, the Inspector General for the NLRB launching an investigation, and congressional demands that Microsoft provide information about DOGE's use of code to remove sensitive data.

NPR's exclusive reporting on a DOGE staffer's high-level access to an internal farm loan database also prompted immediate reaction on Capitol Hill, demands for answers from lawmakers, and even spurred lawmakers to pen new legislation in response. "The story illuminated the impact of DOGE's secret activities on Americans outside of Washington, particularly farmers who rely on government subsidies and have already been struggling under the collective weight of tariffs, climate change, agricultural consolidation, and other challenges," McLaughlin says.

An exploration of the ethics of labeling AI-generated music helps lead to more transparency

"After an AI project posing as a group of human musicians blew up on Spotify over the summer, I wanted to understand how streaming platforms are responding to the rise of generative AI," reporter Isabella Gomez Sarmiento says. She spoke with a professor of digital forensics, the research team behind an AI detection tool, and a journalist/author who investigated Spotify's business practices. They all emphasized that transparency about generative AI usage is key to empowering both musicians and music fans. "A month later — and after I asked Spotify directly if they had considered implementing an AI tagging system — the company announced it would roll out a new AI spam filter on the platform," Gomez Sarmiento says.

Reporting helps reinstate a grant that could save kids' lives

Elissa Nadworny reported on a 4-year-old named Caleb who has a failing heart, and how a university researcher's federal grant, which could help kids like him, was canceled. That story helped Cornell University make a deal with the White House, reinstating the doctor's grant. "Calling Caleb's mom Nora and telling her the good news was certainly a career highlight," Nadworny says.

Caleb had a question after learning his story might help families like his. "Did I change the whole world?" he asked. Yes, Caleb. You might just have.

"Then, on Thanksgiving, I got more great news: Our story had led to changes in a clinical trial, which meant Caleb was able to switch to a different driver for his artificial heart," Nadworny says. Instead of just 30 minutes running on battery, his new one can be unplugged for up to 8 hours.

An investigation leads to Congress calling for a crackdown on companies charging disabled vets

A group of 43 members of Congress have called for action against unaccredited companies that charge veterans for help filing for disability benefits with the Department of Veterans Affairs.

The move came in response to reporting from NPR that showed the claims consulting industry is using aggressive tactics to make millions off veterans, despite warnings from the VA's lawyers that doing so may be in violation of federal law.

In an encrypted group chat, a group of National Guard members expressed worry over Trump's deployments. NPR sat down with them to hear more

"During a year of President Trump's extraordinary deployments of the National Guard to several cities around the country, this was one of the first times we heard in depth from several guard members about how they're feeling and what they're thinking about," reporter Kat Lonsdorf says.

Telling their stories helped people with HIV get life-saving medication

A few months after President Trump abruptly dismantled USAID, a reporting team went to Zambia to investigate the impact. They found people with HIV whose U.S.-funded clinics, which had provided their daily medication to suppress the virus, had shut their doors without warning. Without the pills, people were getting sick and showing signs of HIV developing to AIDS.

After our stories ran, the Zambian government doubted our reporting — until they did their own investigation. They then worked with a local pastor we'd profiled to help people in the community get their life-saving medication.

We tracked the loss of thousands of jobs as corporate America moves away from DEI

NPR financial correspondent Maria Aspan was first to report on several parts of corporate America's retreat from diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. Her in-depth reporting about one veteran DEI executive told the wider story of the emotional and personal toll this corporate rollback has taken on people working in this once-red-hot field.

Aspan's reporting resonated deeply with NPR's audiences. "As someone who has dedicated over two decades to DEI work, I felt every word of this," one reader wrote in response.

Reporting on missing children in Syria who were likely being trafficked leads to arrests and other action

"This reporting has had a cascading impact," senior producer Liana Simstrom says. It helped trigger the arrests of several senior orphanage workers that NPR had interviewed and photographed, including one who was widely suspected of trafficking the children. It also helped lead to the creation of a high-level government committee to trace the missing children. Our story also led to the SOS Children's Village acknowledging that they did not know the full extent of the trafficking of children that happened under their watch.

A steady stream of stories from Gaza kept a spotlight on the conflict

An NPR exclusive dove deeply into how U.S. policy on Israel's war in Gaza led to a declaration of famine in the enclave after nearly two years of war. In interviews with more than two dozen former senior U.S. officials, NPR reporters found that many people who were directly involved in shaping U.S. policy were now asking: Did we do enough to prevent this? "We were struck by just how many former U.S. officials wanted to talk. The conversations were emotional and raw, and offered a look into the incredibly difficult and complicated relationship between the U.S. and Israel as the conflict progressed," reporter Kat Lonsdorf says.

It has been difficult to chronicle the enormous losses to Palestinian families during Israel's offensive in Gaza, one of the most destructive in recent history. An Israeli strike on a Gaza apartment building -- one of the deadliest of the Israel-Hamas war -- killed 132 members of one family last year. The few survivors documented the dead. Working with journalists in Gaza, we reconstructed what happened to this large family in a single moment.

NPR reporter in Gaza Anas Baba reported on the quest for food in the territory. He wrote: "I faced Israeli military fire, private U.S. contractors pointing laser beams at my forehead, crowds with knives fighting for rations and masked thieves — to get food from a group supported by the U.S. and Israel called the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation." The foundation has since stopped operations.

Many people wrote in response to Planet Money's reporting on money falling apart in Gaza, saying that it represented the human day-to-day experience of life in Gaza and of being connected and wanting to help someone in the enclave. "Many listeners also tell us they donated to the characters in the piece as a result," executive producer Alex Goldmark says.

We told stories of the chaos of the Trump administration's cuts to the federal workforce and the people impacted

Throughout all the twists and turns, labor and workplace reporter Andrea Hsu was there every step of the way covering developments to the federal workforce and speaking to people directly impacted. "We stayed on top of the story and reported on what ultimately happened in these cases, and the impact it had on people's lives," Hsu says.

Early on during the chaos of the first "fork in the road" buyout offer and the purge of probationary employees — mostly more recent hires — multiple lawsuits against the Trump administration cited news stories, including from NPR. "There was so little official information coming out at the time that the lawyers were relying on media reports," Hsu says, including NPR's reporting.

Hsu shared stories from some of the 317,000 workers who are now out of the federal government throughout the year, interviewing military veterans who were summarily fired from their civilian jobs and dedicated civil servants who chose to walk away, among many others.

Reporting on a Trump administration citizenship tool finds U.S. citizens removed from voting rolls

For much of the year, NPR's Jude Joffe-Block and Miles Parks have reported on the DOGE-aided expansion of a federal data system known as SAVE and how it's been turned into a de facto tool to verify U.S. citizenship. Trump and his allies have long falsely claimed that U.S. elections are rife with noncitizens voting.

Joffe-Block and Parks broke the first story about how the administration overhauled SAVE in June and have been on the story aggressively ever since, reporting on how states were being encouraged to run their entire voter lists through it and how close to 50 million registered voters have been scrutinized.

More recently, Joffe-Block found that U.S. citizens are being flagged by the tool, and told the story of one U.S. citizen who was removed from the rolls as a result. Their reporting has been cited in multiple lawsuits around the system.

From ICE to immigration judges, NPR continued to report on immigration issues

NPR was the first to highlight the administration's practice of firing immigration judges and tracked multiple rounds of dismissals over the course of the year. Ximena Bustillo's reporting on understaffed immigration courts, for example, showed the human cost of the layoffs, as well as the cost to due process. She also worked with intern Anusha Mathur to show that judges with a background in immigrant defense were more likely to lose their jobs. The reporting helped uncover a lesser-known facet of the administration's crackdown and set the bar for coverage for other outlets.

"My story explicitly calling out DHS for calling on DACA recipients to self-deport definitely caused a stir," Bustillo says. "It's in the vein of exclusive reporting on how other people who had some immigration process or deportation protection have seen that pulled away and the impact that has had on the ground."

After NPR's reporting, legislation was introduced to ensure judges who retire or resign can't avoid some investigations into misconduct

Following NPR's reporting, the top Democratic lawmaker on the House Judiciary Committee introduced legislation that would ensure judges who retire or resign are not able to avoid or short-circuit investigations into allegations of misconduct. The Judicial Conference of the United States — the policymaking body for the federal courts — proposed new rules that would cover attorneys' fees for clerks and other employees who file meritorious workplace complaints and that would guarantee that judges who preside over complaints would not work in the same district as the alleged wrongdoers.

Federal court employees told NPR reporter Carrie Johnson that some individual judges have discussed the story with their clerks. She also heard that at a recent training session in Washington, D.C., attendees asked questions about the limitations of the judiciary's current system for assessing claims of misconduct by citing the NPR stories.
Copyright 2025 NPR

A Powerball player in Arkansas won a $1.817 billion jackpot in Wednesday's Christmas Eve drawing, ending the lottery game's three-month stretch without a top-prize winner.

The winning numbers were 04, 25, 31, 52 and 59, with the Powerball number being 19.

Final ticket sales pushed the jackpot higher than previous expected, making it the second-largest in U.S. history and the largest Powerball prize of 2025, according to www.powerball.com. The jackpot had a lump sum cash payment option of $834.9 million.

"Congratulations to the newest Powerball jackpot winner! This is truly an extraordinary, life-changing prize," Matt Strawn, Powerball Product Group Chair and Iowa Lottery CEO, was quoted as saying by the website. "We also want to thank all the players who joined in this jackpot streak — every ticket purchased helps support public programs and services across the country."

The prize followed 46 consecutive drawings in which no one matched all six numbers.

The last drawing with a jackpot winner was Sept. 6, when players in Missouri and Texas won $1.787 billion.

Organizers said it is the second time the Powerball jackpot has been won by a ticket sold in Arkansas. It first happened in 2010.

The last time someone won a Powerball jackpot on Christmas Eve was in 2011, Powerball said. The company added that the sweepstakes also has been won on Christmas Day four times, most recently in 2013.

Powerball's odds of 1 in 292.2 million are designed to generate big jackpots, with prizes growing as they roll over when no one wins. Lottery officials note that the odds are far better for the game's many smaller prizes.

"With the prize so high, I just bought one kind of impulsively. Why not?" Indianapolis glass artist Chris Winters said Wednesday.

Tickets cost $2, and the game is offered in 45 states plus Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Copyright 2025 NPR