NPR News: 09-05-2026 11PM EDT

0:00Live from NPR News, I'm Dale Wilman. The U.S. military says it's disabled or destroyed several Iranian ships. The attacks follow an Iranian attack on U.S. forces. The U.S. military says Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps or the IRGC launch ballistic missiles toward two U.S. naval vessels. It was an aircraft carrier and a guided missile destroyer. Senkamp says both ships were able to evade those attacks and in retaliation, the U.S. struck three Iranian oil tankers destroying all of them. That's NPR's Kerry Con reporting from the Middle East. The U.S. says the Iranian tankers were part of that country's shadow fleet, which sells oil to help fund Iran's Revolutionary Guard forces. The Trump administration has a new officials to oversee U.S. foreign assistance. It's a department that's seen one of the biggest shifts in policy during President Trump's second term as NPR's Fatmah Tennis reports. The State Department has appointed Andrew Vaprek as its new undersecretary for foreign

1:00assistance, humanitarian affairs, and religious freedom. Vaprek is a career officer in the U.S. foreign service who had postings in Cameroon, Canada, Iraq, and Thailand. His most recent position was leading the State Department's population refugees in migration department. He's been critical of a more generous foreign aid approach, particularly to United Nations agencies and has pushed for more restrictions on immigration. In recent months, the administration has been spending more money to fund humanitarian response around the world, though not nearly as much as the U.S. did before Trump took office in 2025. Fatmah Tennis and NPR News Flock cameras are facing intense backlash over privacy concerns. The license plate readers are used by police across the country. Flock recently changed some of its features to prevent most abuse, but as NPR's Meg Anderson reports, the fight against those cameras is largely bipartisan and unlikely to go away anytime soon. In the span of just over a week, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, said he'd

2:03welcome a state ban on the cameras. Texas Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican froze state spending for them, and Florida Governor Rod Santos, also a Republican, said his state is revoking permits for them on highways. J Stanley is a policy analyst at the ACLU. We're seeing opposition from the left, from MAGA Republicans, mainstream Republicans, Centris. The reasons people oppose Flock are different. Some liberals warn the technology has been used to track immigrants. Some conservatives say it could be used to create a national gun registry. But regardless of political party, recent polling shows more Americans now disapprove of the cameras than approve of that. Meg Anderson and PR News A Kennedy Center spokesperson says decades of neglect is responsible for causing part of the ceiling to collapse Friday night in the center's Grand Foray. No one was hurt by the collapse. This is NPR News. More than 700 hospitals nationwide have closed their labor and delivery units since 2010

3:07that's according to a new data from the University of Minnesota. As Molly Castlework from Minnesota Public Radio reports, the loss of birthing centers, especially in rural areas, increases health risks for people who are pregnant. The report from UMN's World Health Research Center finds that as of 2024, nearly 60% of rural hospitals don't offer labor and delivery services. Study co-author Katie Kozy-Mannell says the reason largely comes down to finances. The number of babies born at rural hospitals is falling, generating less revenue. Yet there are fixed costs, like 24-7 staffing and equipment. And the cost of providing all of that needs to be paid every single day, regardless of whether or not there's a birth or how many births there are. Kozy-Mannell says that the US urgently needs to rethink its health care system and how it's paid for to keep more birthing centers from closing. For NPR News, I'm Molly Castlework in Rochester, Minnesota. In college football, Jeremiah Smith had eight receptions for 150 yards.

4:0751 yards, as the top ranked the Ohio State Buck Eys rolled over ball states Saturday, 56-3. Number two Oregon struggled in its first game of the season, slipping past Boise State, 30-4-27. Dante more through for 388 yards and three touchdowns in that win. Number three, Georgia had an easy time with Tennessee State, winning that by 63-3. Number five, Texas rolled past Texas State by a score of 59-7. In number seven, Miami dominated Stanford and Tarleton State beat bowling green 20-13. I'm Dale Wilman, NPR News. As the political landscape shifts beneath our feet, we're all vulnerable to a well-funded distraction economy determined to take our eye off the ball. Our weekly politics series, if you can keep it, is here to help where our focus is not the force race, but the state. We tackle the big political stories of the day and why they matter for our democracy. Meet Todd Zwollett and me Jen White on the 1A Podcast from WAMU and NPR.