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Today’s top stories

The Trump administration has halted all programs funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development, which funds aid projects worldwide. USAID’s website went down sometime after 3 a.m. on Saturday. Within the past week, hundreds of employees and contractors have been laid off amid reports that President Trump is considering folding the agency into the State Department.

• 🎧 Democrats have warned that Trump cannot shut down USAID without going through Congress, NPR’s Franco Ordoñez tells Up First. Elon Musk says Trump is supportive of the Department of Government Efficiency’s current efforts to close USAID. Reportedly, the Trump administration put two USAID security officials on administrative leave after workers at DOGE were denied access to confidential documents at USAID.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in Washington, D.C. He was invited to speak with Trump about negotiations on the second phase of the ceasefire in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, which is currently holding in its third week. This will be Trump’s first meeting with a foreign leader in his second term in office.

• 🎧 Former President Joe Biden helped create the framework for the second phase of the deal, which is crucial in ending the war, NPR’s Kat Lonsdorf says. The possible deal could include the release of male Israeli soldiers who are being held hostage in Gaza in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Hamas has not released any male Israeli soldiers so far. Netanyahu is in a tricky political situation because far-right members of his government are threatening to leave if he doesn’t secure Hamas’ elimination as part of the deal.

Trump has started talks of retaking the Panama Canal as part of a new expansionist agenda that emerged after his election. Panama has controlled the U.S.-built canal for decades. Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino says this action is not up for discussion. However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio spent yesterday discussing it during a visit to the region.

• 🎧 Rubio delivered a message that Trump has made a preliminary determination that China has too much influence over the canal, which he says violates international treaties, according to NPR’s Ari Shapiro. Unless there are immediate changes, the administration has expressed that the U.S. will do what it has to to protect its rights. A company based in Hong Kong does operate ports at either end of the canal, but Panama runs the canal itself. Shapiro says the U.S. is not backing down and Panama is not caving either. With 40% of all U.S. container traffic coming through the canal, the stakes are significant.

Today’s listen

Ela Minus album cover for DÍA

Alvaro Arisó/Pitch Perfect PR

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Alvaro Arisó/Pitch Perfect PR

Colombian musician Ela Minus is trying to bring a more human touch to the largely electronic music scene, which can often be created without instruments. Minus tells Morning Edition she was very used to the sound of laptops and wanted to switch it up, so she found hardware synthesizers. A synthesizer is an instrument — separate from a computer — with piano keys. She used the synthesizers and inspiration from dance clubs to make the music on her new album DÍA. Listen to snippets of her album and learn why she chose to go this direction with her sound.

Picture show

Sabrina Carpenter

Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

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Kevin Mazur/Getty Images

Last night’s Grammy Awards celebrated music’s biggest stars with a remarkable sweep of awards, some surprising losses and a message of unity. The show partnered with MusiCares to raise money to support wildlife relief efforts and aid music professionals impacted by the Los Angeles wildfires. Before the show started, many artists walked the red carpet donned in some memorable looks. Check out photos of these looks.

• ➡️ Here’s the complete list of winners at the 67th Grammy Awards.
• ➡️ Before they were Grammy winners, they were Tiny Desk performers. Watch some of their shows here.

3 things to know before you go

Tenor Chauncey Packer and Soprano Taylor J. White and members of Opera Lafayette, OperaCreole and Louisiana Philarmonic Orchetra rehearse Edmond Dede’s opera “Morgiane” at St Louis Cathedral on Jan. 24.

Camille Farrah Lenain for NPR

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Camille Farrah Lenain for NPR

1. Composer Edmond Dédé completed possibly the oldest opera by a Black musician in 1887 but never got to perform it. Now, the nearly forgotten Morgiane is premiering in Washington, D.C.
2. In 2008, Cara Beth Rogers learned her brother died in a boating accident just weeks into her study abroad trip to Morocco. She soon found herself filled with overwhelming grief on a plane ride home. A stranger and unsung hero reached out to her midway through the flight in a way that made the journey a little more bearable.
3. Researchers have found that texture can be just as important as taste when it comes to food preferences for fruit fly maggots.

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.

Five years ago, in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the sweeping reckoning on racism it sparked, corporate America rushed to join in.

Big businesses started making big — and expensive — promises to fight racism and increase diversity. Walmart, the world’s largest company, spent $100 million on a new center on racial equity — and that was just one of many such investments.

All told, the country’s largest companies pledged almost $50 billion toward addressing racial inequality in the year after Floyd’s death, The Washington Post estimated in 2021. And their CEOs announced these promises with solemn rhetoric about their companies’ roles in fixing societal problems.

“We want to address systematic racism in society head-on and accelerate change,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said in June 2020.

But today, corporate America is rushing just as quickly in the other direction. Mounting political and legal attacks have turned DEI — “diversity, equity and inclusion” — from a corporate rallying cry to a politically-toxic football.

Many big companies had been backing away from their diversity promises even before President Trump was re-elected. After long criticizing DEI, Trump last month signed executive orders that will terminate what he calls “illegal” DEI programs and policies throughout the federal government. He called the programs “radical and wasteful” and discriminatory against non-minorities who, he says, are denied opportunities and recognition as a result.

Trump continued these criticisms last week, suggesting — apparently without evidence — that DEI programs at the Federal Aviation Administration were to blame for a deadly airliner crash.

It may seem that big companies are just adapting to political and legal pressure, but diversity experts also blame a more fundamental failure: Many businesses didn’t think through their pledges — or their costs — from the start, they say. So corporate America may have never gotten DEI right in the first place.

“What we’re seeing in the moment is the few companies who took it to heart … and the many who just wanted to sprinkle some DEI on top, especially after George Floyd,” says Portia Allen-Kyle, who runs the racial justice nonprofit Color of Change. “And that was never going to be a viable strategy.”

Allen-Kyle is pretty pessimistic these days about the future of DEI in corporate America, and the fallout for Black and other minority workers.

But some diversity experts see a silver lining from the scrutiny: They hope that companies that care about building fairer, more inclusive workplaces are rethinking their strategies — and may now finally have a chance to get it right.

How corporate America retreated from DEI

Conservative critics have long claimed that DEI is itself discriminatory. But these attacks picked up momentum in 2023, when the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action at colleges and universities, ending the consideration of race in college admissions.

President Trump signs an executive order in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 20.

Jim Watson/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

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Jim Watson/Pool/AFP via Getty Images

That ruling handed a powerful legal weapon to anti-DEI voices like Robby Starbuck, a social-media influencer who has successfully pressured several big companies to end diversity-focused programs. Starbuck has said he is focused on ending “wokeness” in corporate America, and has posted on X that his activism will give workers “a neutral workplace without feeling that divisive issues are being injected.”

Now President Trump’s efforts to end DEI in the federal government are expected to ripple into the private sector. Walmart, Meta, Amazon, and many others have already joined the retreat, ending many of their 2020-era pledges and programs. For example, Walmart in November said it won’t renew the funding for its racial equity center and that it will end some other diversity-focused programs.

“We remain committed to creating a culture where everyone can be successful, and ensuring we are a Walmart for everyone,” a company spokesperson tells NPR.

The other companies have said similar things. For example, in a note shared with NPR, Amazon executive Candi Castleberry told employees last year that “we remain dedicated to delivering inclusive experiences for customers, employees, and communities around the world.” (Meta did not respond to a request for comment.)

The “business case for diversity” is complicated

Under the political headlines, there’s a more subtle undercurrent at work.

When Floyd was murdered, many big companies were already promoting themselves as leaders in society, not just business. This widespread trend was known as “stakeholder capitalism”: Companies argued that they could do more to help workers, society, and the planet — while also making more money for investors.

But many experts saw this rhetoric as fundamentally flawed — and, it soon turned out, largely ineffective. Paying workers more inevitably costs money, and cuts into short-term profits; so does turning down business opportunities that could have a negative impact on the environment. Meanwhile, CEOs who take stands on social or environmental issues risk drawing the ire of politicians and customers who disagree.

“It is always going to be difficult, if you are a for-profit publicly traded company, to have your leader talk about anything other than maximizing profits,” says Sekou Bermiss, an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “That is, in the U.S., the way we are wired.”

But when Floyd was murdered, big companies had raised the expectations of employees and customers that they would take a stand. And Bermiss argues that many rushed into promises without thinking through the costs — or what made the most sense for each individual business. Instead, some companies relied too much on the prospect of financial rewards for DEI programs, or what became known as “the business case for diversity.”

“It was being pitched as, ‘Diversity is always going to help the bottom line,’ Bermiss says. “But no one [who studies this] would ever say that.”

Indeed, although some analysts have made the business case for diversity, Bermiss’s research has found that when companies increase the diversity of their executive teams, they generally don’t see a financial impact — good or bad.

The “ethical case for diversity” is stronger 

Still, Bermiss and others point out that DEI policies can have significant business impacts, even if they’re not apparent in short-term financial results. Having a more diverse team can help create products that appeal to more consumers, or help employees feel more satisfied with their jobs.

Costco, for example, recently told investors that its DEI efforts “help bring originality and creativity to our merchandise offerings” and “enhance our capacity to attract and retain employees who will help our business succeed,” among other benefits.

The massive retailer, which also calls DEI part of its “code of ethics,” successfully brushed off an anti-DEI shareholder proposal last month. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, who runs the nation’s largest bank, has called DEI “good for business; it’s morally right; we’re quite good at it; we’re successful.”

In an aerial view, the Costco logo is displayed on the exterior of a Costco store in Richmond, California. The massive retailer successfully brushed off an anti-DEI shareholder proposal last month.

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

It probably helps that both JPMorgan Chase and Costco are financial powerhouses, whose profits and share prices keep their investors happy. But both companies are also framing their DEI policies as a matter of morality or ethics, rather than just profits.

That’s exactly how more companies should be thinking about DEI, according to Bermiss — if (and only if) they see it as valuable. Bermiss acknowledges that not all companies will want to continue pursuing greater diversity, equity, and inclusion. But he argues that if business leaders decide that pursuing such workplace goals is morally right and aligned with a company’s values, then they’ll be better able to stand up to criticisms or attacks.

And, as he adds, that’s firmer ground than hoping that “if we get two more Latinos on the board, our stock price will go up.”

Some DEI work will continue — by any other name

Despite the ongoing pressures, Costco and JPMorgan aren’t the only employers still spending money on DEI. In fact, some companies are ramping up: Paradigm, a tech consultancy that advises employers on diversity and inclusion, says it saw a 12 percentage-point increase last year in how many of its customers had dedicated DEI budgets.

Paradigm CEO Joelle Emerson says that even companies that are ending DEI programs may rebrand the work rather than abandoning it altogether. Corporate America’s diversity results have been “a mixed bag,” she adds, “in part because companies often spent too much time and energy on initiatives that didn’t have a measurable impact.”

Now she’s hoping that employers are taking the time to create more thoughtful — and effective — programs to increase fairness.

“I see this less as a rollback of DEI and more as sort of an evolution to the next phase of this work,” Emerson says.

Many of the companies ending DEI programs are scrubbing the now-politically-toxic acronym from their websites and corporate statements. But their public statements insist that they still want to make everyone feel included.

That could be a tricky balance, especially as the Trump Administration continues ramping up attacks on DEI — including efforts to uncover rebranded diversity efforts inside of federal agencies.

And it remains to be seen whether corporate America can really be more effective while softening its language — and goals — around diversity, equity, and inclusion. But Emerson, at least, is bullish.

“I’m actually pretty optimistic about the future of this work,” she says. “I’m not optimistic about the acronym DEI — nor do I particularly care.”

Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire medical inventor, says it’s “cynical” to believe his support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or his decision to kill a planned endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris stem from ulterior motives.

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Evan Vucci/AP

Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a billionaire medical inventor, says it’s “cynical” to believe his support of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. or his decision to kill a planned endorsement of then-Vice President Kamala Harris stem from ulterior motives.

Evan Vucci/AP

With trust in the news media at deep lows, Los Angeles Times owner Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is calling for a more tempered approach to covering political matters at his newspaper — even in the opinion section.

On social media, however, Soon-Shiong has posted repeatedly in support of President Trump’s pick to oversee the Department of Health and Human Services. That would be Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a vaccine skeptic who has spread false claims about public health.

“I truly believe [Kennedy] has the American public’s best interests at heart,” Soon-Shiong tweeted Tuesday in a post he pinned to the top of his account on X, formerly Twitter, for much of last week. It was one of 18 messages promoting Kennedy that Soon-Shiong — a billionaire surgeon and medical inventor — posted over the course of four days, which included Kennedy’s confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill.

Soon-Shiong attacked Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., for “grandstanding,” writing that she was “why Americans are so tired about our politicians.” He echoed a characterization of Caroline Kennedy as “malicious” for criticizing her cousin.

Soon-Shiong dismissed accounts that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. worked to undermine support for vaccines in American Samoa right before a measles outbreak, calling them “misinformation.”

In 2019, under Soon-Shiong’s ownership, one of the paper’s columnists wrote that Kennedy had been “a walking health hazard” there.

The Los Angeles Times‘ current news coverage doesn’t reflect the tenor of Soon-Shiong’s posts, either, even though his X account identifies him as the paper’s executive chairman. It has no publisher.

On Friday, however, the author of an opinion piece on Kennedy said the L.A. Times had edited his draft in such a way that, when published, reflected favorably on Kennedy — something he did not intend.

The piece, featuring a photo of Kennedy, was entitled, “Trump’s healthcare disruption could pay off — if he pushes real reform.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., President Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services, testifies during his Senate Finance Committee confirmation hearing on Jan. 29 in Washington, D.C.

Win McNamee/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

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Win McNamee/Getty Images/Getty Images North America

The author, Eric Reinhart, had initially proposed a very different headline: “RFK Jr.’s Wrecking Ball Won’t Fix Public Health.”

The final version also did not include the concluding passage of Reinhart’s original draft, which argued that Kennedy’s “egomaniacal disregard for scientific evidence… seeks to use the law itself to inflict preventable death” on millions of Americans.

The L.A. Times’ opinion editors gutted his piece by removing his caustic assessment of the nominee, says Reinhart, a Chicago-based social psychologist and physician who has previously written for the New York Times and The Nation magazine among other publications.

He tells NPR he does not begrudge the editing process in general. The editors struck from the same passage a tendentious connection between Kennedy and the man accused of killing UnitedHealthcare’s CEO. (Reinhart had argued that they were both a response to corruption in the health care system.) Reinhart says that editorial choice was reasonable, but deleting the critique of Kennedy altogether was not.

“You do not change the author’s fundamental intent, the fundamental argument of the author,” Reinhart tells NPR. “I literally did not find out about it until after it went to press.”

A former editor notes Soon-Shiong retweeted false claims

As published, Reinhart says, the opinion piece “could easily be turned by the owner of the paper to suggest that it is an endorsement of RFK and of Trump’s health care plans, which it is not.”

Indeed, Soon-Shiong did tweet it out, adding that Kennedy “is our best chance” for “real reform.” The next day, the paper published an op-ed arguing that Kennedy’s Democratic critics were hypocrites.

In a statement given to NPR by a spokesperson, the L.A. Times said its opinion editors work with op-ed contributors to edit pieces for length, clarity and accuracy, among other things. “No op-ed pieces are published, as edited, without the permission of the author,” the spokesperson said. “That includes the op-ed written by Eric Reinhart.” Reinhart says that he did not see the piece in its final incarnation before it ran.

Writing last week in the Columbia Journalism Review, former L.A. Times editor of the editorial pages Jim Newton noted that Soon-Shiong had retweeted false claims debunked by the paper itself as he castigated Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass for her handling of the recent deadly wildfires there.

“He’s made himself into a joke,” Newton wrote. “Sadly, he risks dragging his paper down with him.”

Arrived as a financial savior of journalism

Soon-Shiong rescued the L.A. Times in 2018 from corporate owners who had cut it to the bone and invested money to revive it. The newsroom saw him then as a savior.

In recent months he has emerged with strong views that have been seen as a slap in the face by many of those who work for him. He has criticized how journalism works, how his own paper has operated and the media’s coverage of Trump.

“The nation is severely polarized,” Soon-Shiong told NPR in late December. “If you disagree with one side or the other, it is very aggressively discounted or ignored.”

There is a real opportunity for the L.A. Times to help heal the nation, he argued, by enabling “all voices to be heard, but to be heard in a sort of very factual, honest way.”

After leading the paper relatively quietly for over six years, Soon-Shiong set off sparks last fall with the decision to kill a presidential endorsement — already drafted — of then-Vice President Kamala Harris.

His editorials editor and several other opinion writers resigned. Nearly 20,000 people canceled their digital subscriptions in a matter of days — a record number for the paper, if a pittance compared to the 300,000 who canceled their Washington Post subscriptions when its owner, Jeff Bezos, made the same move.

Soon-Shiong openly and successfully campaigned for Trump-friendly CNN pundit Scott Jennings to join his editorial board and says others are in the works. Soon-Shiong also suggested an AI-generated “bias-o-meter” should appear next to every L.A. Times news article and opinion piece. (He appears now to be suggesting it will complement opinion pieces.)

Trump pressures the press

Both in and out of office, Trump has used the courts and the levers of government to pressure the media. ABC News agreed to pay his foundation $15 million to resolve one case that media law experts believed the network could win; Meta agreed to pay $25 million to settle another.

Meanwhile, CBS is giving the Federal Communications Commission the unedited transcript of a 60 Minutes interview after the chairman demanded it, while the network’s parent company is in talks to settle a Trump suit over the same interview, much to the dismay of journalists there. Legal observerssay the case is flimsy. The proposed acquisition of CBS parent Paramount comes before the FCC for review because it involves the transfer of the company’s local television stations.

Soon-Shiong made his fortunes as a medical innovator and has his own interests in front of federal regulators. He sought to play a role in advising Trump on health during the president’s first term and he has myriad patents up for review by government officials. He had patents approved in the waning days of the Biden administration and in the first days of Trump’s second term.

Soon-Shiong praised Trump’s response to the recent Southern California wildfires and affirmed Trump adviser and X owner Elon Musk’s laudatory tweets about Trump’s order of the release of water from California dams. The paper’s reporting suggested that was risky and harmful to the state’s farmers.

In his interview with NPR in December, Soon-Shiong dismissed the idea that he was trying to cozy up to Trump and the White House by making the decision to kill the endorsement or in his new approach to posting on social media, which included affirming comments about Trump and Kennedy.

“We have not, as a board, met with Kamala Harris”

“I got a call that we had a pre-packaged draft of endorsing Kamala Harris,” he recounted. “I said, ‘Well, that is surprising. We have not, as a board, met with Kamala Harris’…. I don’t think it is appropriate for us to make an endorsement as though we are an echo chamber for a candidate.” Soon-Shiong said he understood Trump’s outlook through conversations they had as he entered his first presidential term.

LA Times owner Patrick Soon-Shiong enters the clubhouse at Trump National Golf Club for a meeting with then-President-elect Donald Trump on November 19, 2016 in Bedminster, New Jersey.

DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images/AFP

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DON EMMERT/AFP via Getty Images/AFP

Soon-Shiong said, in order to be fair to both candidates, the paper should take two pages and, rather than make an endorsement, detail the “factual activities” of the two major nominees for readers to evaluate.

On social media posts, he has indicated the paper’s editorial support for Mayor Bass was a mistake.

Newspaper owners and publishers are typically involved in making or approving endorsements. Harris, however, was a known quantity to the Los Angeles Times and its readers; she had been previously elected to statewide office as California’s attorney general and as U.S. senator.

Even so, Soon-Shiong said it was of paramount importance to set out the dueling records — Harris in the Biden administration against Trump’s first term — and to meet face-to-face with candidates. In an earlier incarnation, the paper had been part of the state’s Republican establishment and had helped lift Richard Nixon to national prominence. In recent years, the paper’s editorial stance became more liberal.

Soon-Shiong conceded that the paper’s editorial board had not met with Biden before endorsing him in the 2020 race. He said he had been tied up in trying to combat Covid-19. At the paper, Soon-Shiong developed strong protocols urging masking, social distancing and vaccinations.

Trump was surrounded by tech titans during his inauguration, including Musk, Bezos, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Apple CEO Tim Cook and Google’s parent company chief Sundar Pichai. Soon-Shiong, who reportedly sought a top health position under Trump at the outset of his first term, tweeted a series of links to the paper’s live stream of the ceremony.

“The cynical argument assumes I have a bad relationship with President Trump and therefore I have to fix it,” Soon-Shiong said. “That’s the cynical view — exactly what I’m trying to stop.”