NPR News: 09-04-2026 7AM EDT

0:00This message comes from Thumbtack. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between Matt, Paint, Finish, and Satin, or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app. Download today. Live from NPR News and Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. The Trump Administration is moving to strip some colleges and universities other tax exempt status over diversity programs. The IRS as schools could soon face penalties for programs or scholarships aimed at black Latino or first generation students. NPR's Adrian Floreedo reports. Well, the administration is arguing that these sorts of programs are racially discriminatory. Treasury Secretary Scott Besett, who oversees the IRS, said in a statement that, quote,

1:00racial discrimination has no place in American education. This is a huge shift. Historically, the IRS has not penalized tax exempt institutions for race-based programs or considered them discriminatory as long as these programs are trying to advance racial equity or address the effects of societal discrimination. At NPR's Adrian Floreedo reporting. Jorers in the murder trial of Lindsay Clancy are entering their seventh day of deliberations. The Massachusetts mother is accused of killing her three children in 2023. Priyanka Dayal, McCluskey from Member Station, WBUR reports it appears that one Jor is alone, hold out. Clancy's defense attorney, Kevin Rennington, argued unsuccessfully to have one member of the jury dismissed. For, he says, not following the judges' instructions on the standard for a conviction, Judge William Sullivan called Jorers into the courtroom for detailed instructions on the meaning of reasonable doubt. He's expected to address the holdout

2:01Jor issue on Friday. Clancy admitted to killing her children, but her lawyer argues she's not criminally responsible because she was suffering from psychosis. Jorers return to deliberations Friday morning. For NPR news, I'm Priyanka Dayal, McCluskey. Diesel prices have hit an all-time high. The national average is now $5.85 a gallon. NPR's Willa Rubin reports. Much of our supply chain runs on diesel. Trucks, trains, tractors, nearly 90% of school buses. So when the price of diesel goes up, it hurts across the economy. And the price has been going up for several reasons. One, the straight of hormones. Not much oil is getting through. Two, countries around the world have scaled back their exports of diesel. Three, jet fuel. The war drove up the price, so refiner's made more of it. And we got less diesel.

3:02Finally, reason four, Ukraine has been firing at Russian refineries, taking many offline. It all adds up to a perfect storm, which could spill over into the price of food, the price of heating oil, and much of what gets shipped, which could mean an expensive few months to come. Willa Rubin and P.R. News. This is NPR News in Washington. The Trump administration says excavation work could begin within two weeks on a massive memorial arch planned for Washington. The 250-foot structure would stand between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery. Interior Secretary Doug Burgham says the arch will become one of the country's great works of architecture. Critics say it would disrupt historic views in the nation's capital. A lawsuit is challenging the project. Open AI has launched a new chat model. Astra is its first new model since the tech giant announced that autonomous AI agents in training

4:03went off script and colluded to hack into another company. NPR's John Ruich reports open AI says this new agent is its safest yet. The new model will be available at first only to partners in an early access program to make sure it's safe. But it says over the coming days, GPT-6 Astra, as it's known, will be made more widely available to the public. Open AI has caught heavy flags since July when AI agents in testing ignored instructions, worked secretly together to figure out how to get on the internet and then hacked into another company. That incident raised serious questions about human control of artificial intelligence. The company says the new model is its best yet in terms of alignment with human values and causes fewer unintended outcomes than previous models. John Ruich and PR News. Volkswagen says it's cutting around 50,000 jobs. It says it's part of a major cost-cutting plan to counter increasing competition from China and rising US tariffs. This is NPR News.

5:06This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, Democratic Socialists are having a moment. What's their goal? The goal being to eventually realign the Democratic Party to perhaps someday develop an independent party, but we recognize that in the United States, there just is a two-party system. How Democratic Socialists are staking out political territory. This week on the NPR Politics Podcast.