NPR’s editor-in-chief and acting chief content officer, Edith Chapin, told colleagues Tuesday morning that she has decided to step down.

The veteran news leader’s announcement comes just days after the Republican-led Congress, driven largely by President Trump’s claims of liberal bias at NPR, voted to strip public broadcasting of all federal funding.

Chapin says the choice was hers and not driven by the action in Congress. In a brief interview, she says she surprised NPR CEO Katherine Maher with her decision two weeks ago.

“I have had two big executive jobs for two years, and I want to take a break. I want to make sure my performance is always top-notch for the company,” Chapin says. She says she expects to stay at NPR until September or October.

In a note to staff, Maher thanked Chapin for her work. “Edith has been an indispensable partner during my first year at NPR, a steady leader for a large part of this organization, and a fantastic collaborator as a member of the executive team,” she wrote. She did not offer any details about transition planning and interim leadership, saying she would share more once she had it.

Chapin joined NPR from CNN in 2012 as chief international editor and rose in the ranks of newsroom leadership. She was promoted to lead the newsroom on a day-to-day basis and was subsequently elevated to senior vice president of news and editor-in-chief over the entire division.

In 2023, then-NPR CEO John Lansing united reporting, shows and podcasts. He named Chapin to temporarily hold the new role of chief content officer overseeing the new division. She turned the content job down on a permanent basis, saying that someone with a different skill set needed to chart NPR’s strategy for what material to present to audiences and how to fulfill its mission.

Nearly two years later, Chapin still holds that role on an acting basis.

“It’s not a good time to do it, but it’s never a good time,” Chapin says of her choice to leave. “I needed to pick a date and share my decision.”

The ramifications of the congressional vote could have consequences for years to come for public broadcasting, which aims to serve the entire U.S. population. This week, in interviews with the Status media newsletter’s Oliver Darcy and with Texas Public Radio, Maher said that NPR would reduce its operating budget by $8 million in the year ahead to pass that along as fee relief to the most affected stations.

NPR typically receives less than 2% of its funds from federal sources. But federal funding makes up a greater share of member stations’ revenue — on average about 8% to 10%. Some stations, particularly those serving rural or tribal audiences, receive more than half of their funds from the U.S. government. PBS and its member stations receive, on average, about 15% of revenues from U.S. taxpayers.

That is to stop on Oct. 1, the beginning of the next fiscal year.

In an interview last week on NPR’s Morning Edition with hosts Michel Martin and Steve Inskeep, Maher said she had not given up hope that public broadcasting could ultimately convince lawmakers on Capitol Hill to restore some federal funding.

Periodic accusations of bias, especially from conservatives, erupted last year when a veteran NPR business editor wrote an essay in The Free Press asserting that the network had embraced a progressive outlook.

Chapin led the effort to hire a new team of senior editors to review broadcast segments, digital stories and podcasts before their release — to ensure both that the stories were fair and accurate, and also that the balance of stories was proportionate to the news of the day.

“The best thing we can do is do the best work possible every day,” Chapin says now about the debate over bias. “We need to hear from all kinds of people — and that is our job. And we need to be as clear and transparent as we possibly can, and our audiences can decide how useful we are for them.”

That venture was subsidized by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the nonprofit through which federal funding has been funneled to stations and the networks for decades.

Under Chapin, NPR has helped foster the creation of seven regional newsrooms — each distinct in its focus — in which the network’s editors have helped oversee collaborative reporting with stations. One of those efforts, The Texas Newsroom, has broken several stories and offered intensive coverage during the deadly floods in Texas.

“One of the things that was attractive when I came here was this philosophy of all things considered,” Chapin says, playing off the name of NPR’s signature evening newsmagazine. “There is room for so much here in a way there is not in so many places. In offering that fulsome package of things, some people are going to find things they don’t find of interest or agree with — and that’s OK. I think we have to continue with that philosophy of all things considered.”

Disclosure: This story was reported and written by NPR correspondent David Folkenflik. It was edited by Deputy Business Editor Emily Kopp and Managing Editors Gerry Holmes and Vickie Walton-James. Under NPR’s protocol for reporting on itself, no NPR corporate official or news executive reviewed this story before it was posted publicly.

Copyright 2025 NPR

In a quarterly earnings call with investors, the chief financial officer of General Motors said Tuesday morning that tariffs cost the company approximately $1.1 billion over three months, bringing the company’s profit margin from 9% down to 6.1% — that is, from meeting their target profitability to falling several percentage points short.

CFO Paul Jacobson said that so far, the company has only been able to reduce the blow to profits by a minimal amount. But they’re hoping that will change.

“We’re still tracking to offset at least 30% of the $4 to $5 billion full-year 2025 tariff impact,” he said, through a combination of changes in manufacturing, “targeted cost initiatives,” and the prices that consumers pay.

U.S. tariff policy has been unpredictable and rapidly changing over the last few months , and GM executives acknowledged that’s likely to continue. For example, the possibility of bilateral deals between the U.S. and other countries suggests that some of those costs might be avoided entirely.

For now, despite a tariff of 25%, GM is still importing vehicles it makes in Korea, including some of its most affordable models. “They’re very much in demand,” CEO Mary Barra told investors.

GM stock dropped 6% after it revealed its earnings, signaling Wall Street’s displeasure with the company’s strategy so far of absorbing tariffs as a hit to profits.

“To put full year targets in reach,” analysts Daniel Roska and Christopher Gray of research and brokerage firm Bernstein wrote in a note, “GM needs to start mitigating tariff cost.”

Meanwhile, Stellantis, the automaker that owns the Chrysler, Jeep, Dodge and Ram brands, reported this week that it paid about $387 million in tariffs over the last quarter, and that production pauses — a strategy to avoid paying tariffs — contributed to a 6% year-over-year decline in the number of vehicles the company shipped to dealers.

Industry-wide data has suggested that, at least so far, car manufacturers have mostly absorbed higher tariffs as a hit to their profits, rather than passing them along to customers (many of whom are already balking at new car prices that average nearly $49,000 .)

The most recent data from Kelley Blue Book showed the average price that car buyers paid for new vehicles in June was up 1.2% year over year, well below the 10-year average annual increase.

“The modest increase in transaction prices suggests the businesses are absorbing more of the burden and not passing the added costs to consumers — something that will impact profitability if the trend persists,” Erin Keating, executive analyst at Cox Automotive, wrote in a post accompanying the data.

Copyright 2025 NPR

If today feels like it’s flying by, you can blame it on our spinning planet: A group of scientists tracking Earth’s rotation predicts that the day will be a fraction of a second shorter than normal.

The International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, which measures the Earth’s rotation and forecasts the length of the day, has predicted that July 22 could come out about a millisecond short of a standard 24-hour spin.

Variations in the Earth’s rotation are not uncommon: On July 9, for example, the Earth’s quick spin shortened the day by nearly 1.4 milliseconds. But recent headlines from all over the world have been hyping “freakishly short” days in July and August.

Scientific experts who constantly monitor the Earth’s rotation seem a bit baffled and amused that a few slightly more-speedy-than-normal spins this summer have captured the public’s imagination.

“We’ve known about the rotation of the Earth being variable for about a hundred years,” says Dennis McCarthy, the former director of time at the U.S. Naval Observatory. “This is just one of those little variations that comes along.”

McCarthy, who’s literally written the book on time and Earth’s rotation, says the speed of the planet’s spin gets influenced by all kinds of factors: the gravitational influence of the moon, the effect of winds and the atmosphere, plus the movements of the Earth’s liquid core.

Round and round

Good data on the Earth’s rotation goes back thousands of years, thanks to observations of solar eclipses in China. These days, researchers around the world track the spinning of the globe by pointing radio telescopes at quasars, incredibly luminous cores of distant galaxies that are so far away, they act as fixed points in space.

That kind of data, plus information from GPS systems, all gets sent to the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service, which uses it to forecast the day length. Predictions are also made by others, such as the U.S. Naval Observatory.

Generally speaking, over millions of years, the Earth’s rotation has been slowing down, a trend that’s expected to continue into the future, says McCarthy. The main reason is the moon. The moon’s gravitational pull on the Earth creates ocean tides, and a process called “tidal braking” gradually slows the Earth’s spin.

“We know it’s slowing down, because we have a real good idea of the effect of the moon,” says McCarthy. “Although that slowing down is continuing, there are departures from that general pattern.”

Specifically, over the last decade or so, there’s been a bumper crop of days that are somewhat short.

Last year’s shortest day, July 5, 2024, was 1.65 milliseconds shorter than the usual 86,400 seconds, says Thomas Herring, a geophysicist with MIT.

He says that was the shortest day since the 1950s, which is when researchers started comparing the rotation of the Earth to the very accurate time standard provided by atomic clocks that measure the regular oscillations of atoms.

In the past, the world’s timekeepers have occasionally resorted to adding in some “leap seconds” — these extra seconds keep atomic time in sync with Earth’s rotation as it slows. The last time an extra second was added to the clock was in 2016.

The recent speedy spins of the Earth, however, raise the possibility of instituting “negative leap seconds,” or basically taking away a second rather than adding one, which is something that’s never been done before.

“I think it will be unlikely that a negative leap second will be invoked,” says Herring, given that regular old leap seconds seem to be falling out of favor.

While he and others say that the recent short-duration days are of little significance in and of themselves, understanding and being able to predict the precise rotation of the Earth is important for all kinds of applications—everything from launching missiles to navigation to high-tech farming.

At the equator, in one second, the Earth will rotate the length of four football fields, says Nick Stamatakos, head of the Earth orientation department at the U.S. Naval Observatory. “The Earth’s moving pretty fast,” he says. “So any little variations will accumulate, and it’s an issue.”

By looking at the recent rotation history along with information about weather systems and long-term patterns, researchers can make predictions about how the Earth will spin on any given day. These predictions generally get less accurate the farther out they go.

Climate changes the day

While the moon has long been the major player in controlling the speed of the Earth’s rotation, one study found that humans are playing a role.

Climate change is melting ice at the poles and sending water down to the equator, slowing the rotation down. The researchers believe that this effect is already lengthening the days.

Some have calculated that in a worst-case scenario, climate change could eventually redistribute water in a way that would make the days milliseconds longer. That would make humans, rather than the moon, the dominant driver of changes to day length.

“We can really become the dominant drivers of Earth’s rotation, due to human-induced climate change,” says lead researcher Benedikt Soja of ETH Zürich, a university in Switzerland. “That was really surprising, and really an interesting revelation to us.”

Copyright 2025 NPR

Updated July 22, 2025 at 12:41 PM PDT

Coke drinkers who want to avoid corn syrup sometimes opt for Mexican Coke, which is made with cane sugar. But the drink’s U.S. fans will have a new option later this year.

“We’re going to be bringing a Coke sweetened with U.S. cane sugar into the market this fall,” Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO James Quincey said on a conference call with analysts Tuesday.

The company announced the change in the quarterly earnings report it released Tuesday, describing the new drink as an expansion of its product line.

Quincey said the new offering would “complement” Coca-Cola’s core portfolio of drinks, suggesting it could arrive as an alternative, rather than a replacement, for its flagship Coke product.

Trump floated plan a week earlier

Coca-Cola’s move comes a week after the White House issued a statement by President Trump saying he had been talking to the soft drink giant about using cane sugar rather than high-fructose corn syrup in its signature drink.

“I’d like to thank all of those in authority at Coca-Cola. This will be a very good move by them — You’ll see. It’s just better!” Trump said.

Trump is a noted fan of Diet Coke, a product line that is mainly sweetened with the artificial sweetener aspartame.

The president’s involvement in the recipe of a popular drink was noted in Tuesday’s call, but officials did not go into detail about what, if any, communications they had with the White House.

“As you may have seen last week, we appreciate the president’s enthusiasm for our Coca-Cola brand,” Quincey said.

When asked whether he and Trump had discussed the idea of using cane sugar in Coke, the CEO replied in part, “engagement with government is a piece of what goes on.”

The White House did not respond to NPR’s request for comment on whether the Trump administration had contacted the company about cane sugar.

The use of domestic sugar aligns with Trump’s economic priorities, as he has imposed steep tariffs on dozens of foreign nations. The source of the sugar could also affect the drink’s cost: The U.S. sugar industry enjoys substantial market protections against foreign rivals.

“The U.S. has high trade barriers against imported sugar,” as NPR’s Scott Horsley has reported. “As a result, the price of sugar in this country is usually about twice what it is on the world market.”

While some U.S. consumers see Mexican Coke as a unique Coca-Cola product that uses cane sugar, Quincey noted that the company already uses the sweetener in several drinks.

“Actually, we use cane sugar in a number of our other brands in the U.S. portfolio, from lemonade to teas, some of the coffee stuff, some of the Vitamin Water drinks,” he said.

But, he added, Coca-Cola wants to explore new options to suit consumer preferences.

Trump’s push for cane sugar over corn syrup has not gone over well with the U.S. corn industry.

Corn Refiners Association President and CEO John Bode predicts that an increase in using U.S. cane sugar will lead to a rise in foreign cane sugar imports.

Bode said in a statement to NPR, “Replacing high fructose corn syrup with cane sugar would cost thousands of American food manufacturing jobs, depress farm income, and expand the trade deficit.”

What RFK Jr. and the research say about cane sugar

While President Trump famously adores Diet Coke, cane sugar has emerged as a popular issue for Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a key proponent of the administration’s Make America Healthy Again, or MAHA, movement.

“MAHA is winning,” Kennedy tweeted last month, applauding the Steak ‘n Shake restaurant chain’s move to “offer Coca-Cola with real cane sugar in glass bottles.”

But just three months ago, Kennedy said that in the U.S., sugar “is poisoning us.” And in March, Kennedy hailed West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey for seeking “a SNAP waiver to get sodas and other sugar drinks off of food stamps.”

While he has spoken out against sugar, Kennedy has acknowledged that the government isn’t likely to be able to remove it from Americans’ diets. He has also condemned the use of additives such as high-fructose corn syrup, artificial dyes and artificial flavors in food.

High-fructose corn syrup has been a regular target of health experts for years, thanks to its ubiquity in sweet drinks and processed foods.

“In 2004, a widely read report suggested high fructose corn syrup was a major cause of the obesity epidemic, and documentaries such as Fast Food Nation and King Corn piled on,” as NPR reported in 2012, noting that despite the report being recanted by its authors, the idea took hold.

But whether sugar or syrup are used to sweeten food and drinks, the potential health risks for American consumers are virtually the same, according to David M. Klurfeld, an adjunct professor in the Department of Applied Health Science at the Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington.

“There is overwhelming evidence that cane or beet sugar have almost no difference from HFCS [high fructose corn syrup] in composition and no difference in any health effects,” Klurfeld tells NPR.

High-fructose corn syrup and table sugar have fairly similar proportions of glucose and fructose, he says, adding that when sugar is added to soft drinks with acidic pH levels, their chemical compositions become even more alike.

“The data linking HFCS with obesity or any adverse health effect are observational epidemiology,” Klurfeld says. “This cannot prove cause and effect because of confounding variables — people who drink the most soda are heavier, exercise less, have different diets, etc.”

But, he adds, “Randomized controlled studies comparing sugar and HFCS for effects on blood glucose, lipids, or weight loss have all show no differences.”

NPR’s Scott Neuman contributed to this report.

Copyright 2025 NPR

Updated July 22, 2025 at 3:18 PM CDT

The Justice Department on Tuesday said it is in touch with an attorney for Ghislaine Maxwell, a longtime associate of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, to try to arrange a meeting with her in the coming days. President Trump said he thought the development “sounds appropriate,” though he also claimed to know nothing about it.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche announced the plan on social media, saying that the department is seeking any information from Maxwell — who is serving time for sex trafficking — as part of its quest to uncover “all credible evidence” in the Epstein case.

Trump, who was once friends with Epstein, is facing a backlash from supporters who want more information released about the disgraced financier’s crimes and his 2019 death by suicide in prison.

Trump has dismissed the uproar as a politically driven “witch hunt” distracting from his agenda. Asked about the newest development on Tuesday, he told reporters, “I don’t really follow that too much.”

His comments to reporters came while he was meeting with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines on trade issues. After the meeting, Trump announced on social media that importers of goods from the Philippines will face a 19% tariff, while U.S. exports to the country will face no tariffs.

Trump spent most of his time in the Oval Office question-and-answer session railing against former President Barack Obama and other Democratic figures. Trump’s spy chief, Tulsi Gabbard, recently published materials that she claims show that Obama officials “manufactured and politicized intelligence” about Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“It’s the most unbelievable thing I think I’ve ever read. So you ought to take a look at that and stop talking about nonsense,” Trump told reporters — the “nonsense” referring to the Epstein controversy.

Trump said it was “time to go after people” in connection to his allegations about the 2016 election.

Obama’s office issued a rare response, calling Trump’s statements “outrageous” and noting that conclusions about Russian interference in the 2016 election had been widely accepted. “These bizarre allegations are ridiculous and a weak attempt at distraction,” Obama spokesperson Patrick Rodenbush said in the statement.

Republicans in Congress have also been grappling with the Epstein issue. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced Tuesday that the House would finish work a day early, canceling votes scheduled for later in the week.

That means members will leave town for an annual August recess without a fresh confrontation over Epstein. The schedule change was announced after repeated clashes among Republicans about the files, including a deadlock in the powerful House Rules Committee over an effort by Democrats to force additional votes on the Epstein matter.

NPR congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales contributed to this report.

Copyright 2025 NPR