Episodes

  • How ICE raids are testing police-community relationships

    How ICE raids are testing police-community relationships
    Dec 5 2025
    Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, discusses how local police departments are caught between following federal immigration directives and maintaining community trust.

    And, President Trump has been denigrating the community of more than 80,000 Somali migrants living in Minnesota. Khalid Omar, an organizer with the Minnesota interfaith group Isaiah, explains the impact on his community.

    Then, if raccoons are wild animals, why are they so darn cute? There may be a scientific reason: Urban raccoons are showing early signs of domestication. Raffaela Lesch, a researcher at the University of Arkansas, shares more.

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    21 mins
  • Fiona Hill on what Trump’s Caribbean boat strikes signal to Russia and China

    Fiona Hill on what Trump’s Caribbean boat strikes signal to Russia and China
    Dec 4 2025
    Efforts to end Russia's war in Ukraine have continued this week, but Russia expert Fiona Hill said she doesn’t see any big changes on the immediate horizon. Hill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served in the first Trump administration as a Russia expert, explains more and talks about why Russia and China are keeping an eye on President Trump’s boat strikes in the Caribbean.

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    17 mins
  • Trump's tirade against Somali immigrants

    Trump's tirade against Somali immigrants
    Dec 3 2025
    President Trump made inflammatory comments about Somali immigrants living in the U.S on Tuesday, calling them "garbage." His comments come amid reports that the administration is planning to launch an ICE operation in Minnesota to target primarily undocumented Somali migrants. The Minnesota Reformer's Madison McVan joins us. Then, a planned meeting between President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and a U.S. delegation led by Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner is off after talks in Russia earlier this week ended with no breakthrough. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley tells us more. And, Michael and Susan Dell announced on Wednesday that they'll give $250 to 25 million children, in investment accounts. Wailin Wong, host of Planet Money's the Indicator, explains.

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    21 mins
  • Why Elliott Abrams wants Trump to topple Maduro

    Why Elliott Abrams wants Trump to topple Maduro
    Dec 2 2025
    The White House is contradicting earlier reports that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave a verbal order to conduct a secondary strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean in September. The strike, which killed two remaining survivors from the first offense, has drawn scrutiny from both sides of the aisle. NPR's Tom Bowman joins us.

    Then, Elliott Abrams, a former special representative for Venezuela in the first Trump administration, talks about why he thinks regime change in Venezuela is “the only way forward.”

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    20 mins
  • Trump is targeting alleged drug boats. Why is he now pardoning a drug trafficker?

    Trump is targeting alleged drug boats. Why is he now pardoning a drug trafficker?
    Dec 1 2025
    President Trump wants to pardon former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted of trafficking drugs into the United States. At the same time, his administration is blowing up what they call drug boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Juan Sebastián González of the Georgetown Americas Institute explains more about Trump’s actions in Latin America.

    And, bipartisan support is growing for congressional review of those strikes after multiple reports have raised questions about whether at least one of the strikes amounts to a war crime. Franco Ordoñez, a White House correspondent for NPR, joins us.

    Then, for the first time since 1988, the United States will not commemorate World AIDS Day. Dr. Monica Gandhi of the University of California, San Francisco, explains what the move says about the Trump administration’s policy to fight HIV and AIDS.

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    17 mins
  • ‘The Grand Old Opry,’ a fixture in country music, turns 100

    ‘The Grand Old Opry,’ a fixture in country music, turns 100
    Nov 28 2025
    The famous country music venue and radio show “The Grand Ole Opry” turns 100 years old today. Grand Ole Opry host Charlie Mattos and country music star Mandy Barnett share some big moments from the institution’s long history.


    And, the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin reburied the remains of 67 ancestors that were excavated in the 1960s and held for decades by the Milwaukee Public Museum. The Association on American Indian’s Shannon O’Loughlin — also a member of the Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma — talks about the decades-long fight for Native American repatriation. David Grignon, a tribal elder and historic preservation officer with the Menominee Tribe of Wisconsin, also joins us.

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    24 mins
  • The story behind the WWI fighter plane that inspired Snoopy's Flying Ace

    The story behind the WWI fighter plane that inspired Snoopy's Flying Ace
    Nov 27 2025
    During World War I, fighter planes called Sopwith Camels downed 1,294 enemy aircraft, more than any other Allied fighter in WWI. For those familiar with the Peanuts comics, it's the name of the doghouse that Snoopy flies in his fantasy sequences as a Flying Ace, a brave WWI pilot battling the Red Barron. The Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. has one on view. Here & Now's Scott Tong visits the museum to check it out.

    And, Yomi Young, a friend of disability activist and author Alice Wong, tells us about Wong's legacy of building community. Wong died earlier this month at 51

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    22 mins
  • 'Give him a bloody nose': Venezuelans in Florida push Trump to topple Maduro

    'Give him a bloody nose': Venezuelans in Florida push Trump to topple Maduro
    Nov 26 2025
    Here & Now’s Scott Tong recently traveled to Doral, Florida, the U.S. city with the highest population of Venezuelans, to talk with people who support President Trump's pressure campaign against Venezuela's leader, Nicolas Maduro.

    And, even as they speak in support of the president's recent moves against Maduro, there is concern in the community after Trump ended Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan immigrants. Tong talks with residents about their loss of permission to live and work in the U.S. or buy health insurance, and the conflict between Venezuelans in Doral and Republican Mayor of Doral Christi Fraga over her unwavering support for Trump.

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    24 mins