NPR News: 03-26-2026 12AM EDT

0:00Live from NPR News, I'm Giles Snyder. I'm at uncertainty about talks between the U.S. and Iran that Trump administration is moving more troops to the Middle East. A contingent of Marines on the way to the region and paired troopers from the 82nd Airborne Division are preparing for deployment as impuers Tom Bowman reports. It looks like elements of the first brigade combat team known as the Devil Brigade will likely head out in the coming days and I'm hearing they'll first go to Kuwait and then the big question is, okay, where do they go from there? And again, everyone's talking about this carg island that's Iran's main oil facility at some 15 or so miles off the mainland. It has an airport, so the 82nd troops could grab that airfield and maybe wait for other troops to come. President Trump repeated Wednesday that Iran is interested in cutting a deal, but Iran has dismissed a ceasefire plan and Iranian foreign minister Abbas Arakshi said on state television that Iran has no intention of negotiating for now.

1:02To Capitol Hill Senate Democrats have blocked a Republican effort to fund the Department of Homeland Security that included more money for ice enforcement. And Pierre Sam Greenglass reports that negotiations end the 40-day long shutdown have stalled. The measure would have funded all of DHS, including ICE, except for the unit responsible for enforcement and removal operations. Most Democrats say they want to fund DHS agencies like TSA and FEMA, but are unwilling to give ICE more funding at all without policy changes to limit the tactics of its officers. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer says Republicans latest offer included none of the demands they made after federal officers killed two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis. Key Senate Republicans have called Democrats counter-unserious and say they're not sure where talks can go from here. Meanwhile, the acting TSA administrator says 480 officers have quits since the shutdown began. Sam Greenglass and Pierre News, Washington. The Justice Department is settling lawsuits that alleged the Biden administration pressured

2:04social media companies to suppress speech. And Pierre's Kerry Johnson reports that the cases had once reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The settlement would resolve allegations by Missouri and Louisiana that Biden-led agencies tried to shut down speech about the pandemic in the 2020 election. Conservatives argued they'd been de-platformed by major social media sites for taking unpopular views. The cases hinged on bitter divides over misinformation, disinformation, and censorship. The new agreement would bar the surge in general, the CDC, and the cybersecurity agency, from threatening social media companies to take down posts or face punishment. Attorney General Pam Bondy says the deals are, quote, key steps in undoing abuses of the First Amendment, especially against conservative media. The settlement still require judicial approval. Kerry Johnson and Pierre News, Washington. And you're listening to NPR News. Big tech has lost its second case over social media harm in two days.

3:06In Los Angeles, a jury Wednesday found meta and YouTube libel in a social media addiction trial and awarded a 20-year-old woman $6 million. The New Mexico on Tuesday, a jury imposed a $375 million civil penalty on meta, finding that meta knowingly harmed the mental health of children and concealed what it knew about child sexual exploitation. According to new research, drought could be increasing antibiotic resistance in soils. And Pierre Jonathan Lambert reports that resistance seems to be ending up in some hospitals. Antibiotic resistance is on the rise worldwide. There's typically point to human overuse as the main driver, but antibiotics and resistance to antibiotics ultimately trace back to bacteria in the soil. And soils around the world are becoming drier from climate change. To see if this might impact resistance levels, researchers analyzed soils from around the globe. They found that drier soils tended to have bacteria with more resistance genes.

4:08And some of these genes were exactly the same as those found in human infections at local hospitals. The study also found that hospitals in drier areas tended to have more resistant infections, a problem that could worsen with climate change. The research was published in the journal Nature Microbiology, Jonathan Lambert, and Pierre News. Following advances on Wall Street stocks, mostly lower in Asia, Japan's knee-k is given up initial gains in Thursday trading and is now trading lower. I'm Giles Snyder. This is MPR News. Listen to this podcast sponsor-free on Amazon Music with a prime membership or any podcast app by subscribing to NPR News Now Plus at plus.npr.org. That's plus.npr.org.