Year: 2025

Panama has been looking for solutions to a long-term problem. Every time a ship passes through the Panama Canal, more than 50 million gallons of fresh water from Lake Gatun pour out into the ocean.

Nobody ever thought Panama could run out of water. It is one of the rainiest countries in the world. But a couple years ago, a drought got so bad that the canal had to reduce traffic by more than a third – which had a huge impact on global shipping.

The Panama Canal needs more water. Authorities have decided to get it by building a dam in a spot that would displace more than 2,000 people along the Rio Indio.

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The Gaza Strip – ground zero of Israel’s war with Hamas – is only about twice the size of Washington, DC. It has about 25 miles of coastline along the Mediterranean Sea, with a population of about 2 million people.

Last week, President Trump proposed relocating those people to other countries in the region, like Egypt and Jordan.

Trump has said the Palestinians would not be allowed to return: UN officials and others say Trump’s plan would amount to ethnic cleansing. Despite domestic and international concerns that the U.S. is empire building, Trump continues to double down on his plans for the U.S. to “own” Gaza.

Trump says the U.S. is going to take over Gaza, though he offers few specifics. What could the proposal mean for Palestinians and the broader Middle East?

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President Trump’s blizzard of executive orders has run into a snowplow of legal challenges. There are dozens of cases challenging the White House’s actions. Judges all over the country have found that the White House acted illegally.

The challenges, and the rulings, continue to pour in.

But Trump’s team is punching back. After a judge blocked Elon Musk’s DOGE team from accessing personal data and other Treasury department systems, Musk referred to him as “a corrupt judge protecting corruption” and called for his impeachment.

Vice President JD Vance made the controversial claim on Sunday that quote, “judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

Comments like these suggest Trump’s circle may be willing to ignore court orders and defy judicial authority.

So what happens if the executive branch ignores the judicial branch? Is that a constitutional crisis? Is the United States already in one?

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Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is quickly expanding its reach through the federal government.

It recently accessed systems at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Musk and his team now are looking at key payment and contracting systems for Medicare and Medicaid.

That was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

On X, Musk said he believes quote “big money fraud is happening.”

Medicare insures older people. Medicaid offers insurance to low income people and those with disabilities.

These two health insurance programs serve tens of millions of people, and they consume a huge part of federal and state budgets. So how could DOGE impact these services?

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Project 2025, is a 900-plus page blueprint for a conservative President. It was unveiled in the spring of 2023, well before Donald Trump had won the republican presidential nomination.

It outlined a suite of very conservative policies that would, for example, outlaw the mailing of abortion pills and abolish the department of education. It even suggests a return to the gold standard.

It became a democratic talking point, so much so that Trump repeatedly distanced himself from the plan and the authors.

But now that Trump is in office, releasing his own detailed plans. A lot of them are strikingly similar to the ones laid out in Project 2025. And one of its chief architects is now the head of the critical Office of Management and Budget.

Trump disavowed Project 2025 during the campaign. Now, as President, is he using it as a playbook?

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For centuries, scholars only had one version of the life of Margery Kempe, an English mystic who lived in the 14th and 15th centuries — until a ping pong match revealed her story in her own words.

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A lot of labels have been applied to Trump’s foreign policy approach. America First, Isolationist, transactional, imperialist, protectionist. “I’m a nationalist and a globalist” he told the Wall Street Journal during his first term.

In his inaugural address last month, Trump made comments suggesting his foreign policy will be characterized by restraint, saying, in part, success should be defined by the “wars we never get into.”

Yet in the same address, he also said, the United States will take back the Panama Canal.

In his first campaign, Trump ran on the idea that the cycle of the United States intervening in the Middle East should come to an end.

And on Tuesday of this week, he said that the U.S. will “take over” the Gaza Strip, after relocating the Palestinians, who live there.

Trump has promised a new approach to American foreign policy. Is there a Trump Doctrine? And what is it?

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As President Trump dismantles Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) practices at the federal level, organizations across the country are also shifting their approach to diversity. For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [email protected].

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President Trump floated two stunning ideas about Gaza on Tuesday. The first is he said the U.S. would take over the territory, which has been devastated by the recent war.

And, he said the entire population of Gaza would be relocated to other countries. Trump offered no specifics for his plans sending Palestinians and Israelis scrambling to understand what he means.

President Trump’s vague plan to “Make Gaza Beautiful Again” could signal the largest shift in US-Middle East policy in decades and could upend widespread hope for a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

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In Washington these days, Elon Musk seems to be everywhere.

In the 15 days Donald Trump has been back in the White House, Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency have been moving to change every corner of the federal government.

The billionaire entrepreneur and his team have gained access to a sensitive government payment system in the Treasury Department.

They’re pushing to drastically reduce the number of federal employees. How did the world’s richest man come to have such a big role in the federal government?

And why does he want it?

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