Transcript
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On the Throughline podcast from npr. Immigration enforcement might be more visible now, but this moment didn't begin with President Trump's second inauguration or even his first, a series from Throughline about how immigration became political and a cash cow. Listen to Throughline in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Live from NPR News. In Washington, I'm Kristen Wright. City officials in Memphis say the federal government's operation has started there and now the city is getting ready for the expected deployment of National Guard troops in the coming weeks. Memphis is one of the latest cities the Trump administration is targeting for federal crime intervention. Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X yesterday that authorities made a handful of arrests in Memphis and that the federal operation is just getting started. Votes to end the government shutdown failed today in Congress and there's no clear path toward a solution. Most Democrats are sticking sticking to their demands on health care. NPR's Tamara Keith reports.
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Democratic votes are needed to pass any spending bills. And Democrats want to restore Medicaid funding that was cut during the one big as part of the one big beautiful bill, President Trump's tax measure. And they want to extend federal health care subsidies for insurance that's bought on the Obamacare exchanges. They're using the little bit of leverage that they have, which is their votes, to try to force these policy changes.
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Hundreds of thousands of federal workers are furloughed. The White House today said some could get laid off. The Trump administration's government efficiency effort, called doge, has failed to deliver on its promises to cut costs and increase efficiency, according to an NPR analysis of federal data. NPR's Stephen Fowler reports.
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Agencies ordered by Doge to drastically slash their workforce over the last eight months are now hiring back hundreds of workers. Despite Doge's promise that cutting contracts and terminating leases would shrink the federal budget. Treasury data show spending has increased by hundreds of billions of dollars. When it first launched this year, Doge's savings and efficiency tracker was full of errors, overstatements and unverifiable claims. That remains true today. The White House declined to answer NPR's questions about these shortcomings, but said President Trump was given a clear mandate to reduce waste, fraud and abuse, and he is delivering on that commitment. Stephen Fowler, NPR News.
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Yemen's Houthi rebels say they have hit a Dutch flagged cargo ship in the Gulf of Aden. NPR's Kerry Khan reports. The attack early today wounded at least two members of the ship's crew and is the most significant assault by the Iranian backed rebels in months.