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SCOTUS lifts limits on LA raids. And, Nation's Report Card shows drops in scores
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Today’s top stories
The Supreme Court lifted a temporary restraining order that barred federal immigration agents from conducting “roving patrols” and racially profiling people in the Los Angeles area. The decision, issued Monday, cleared the way for ICE and Border Patrol agents to restart aggressive immigration sweeps that began in June, sparking protests and leading President Trump to send National Guard troops into the city. The raids halted after the ACLU sued, saying that agents were targeting people based on skin color, accents or the type of work they did.
An officer speaks to a protester during an anti-ICE rally outside the Metro Detention Center in Los Angeles on Aug. 8. The protest draws attention to controversial immigration enforcement policies and calls for the abolition of ICE.
Benjamin Hanson/Middle East Images via AFP/Getty Images
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Benjamin Hanson/Middle East Images via AFP/Getty Images
- 🎧 The brief, unsigned order from the Supreme Court didn’t give any legal reasoning for the decision, NPR’s Adrian Florido tells Up First. In a concurrence, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that demographic realities in LA and factors like race and work sites could be relevant to whether someone is residing in the country illegally. Florido says this emergency ruling is not the final word on the underlying lawsuit challenging racial profiling in ICE arrests. A court hearing is scheduled in LA later this month, and the case could eventually find its way back up to the high court.
- ➡️ Meanwhile, the Department of Homeland Security announced it’s launching an immigration enforcement operation in Illinois. It’s the latest escalation of federal action on Democrat-led U.S. cities and states.
The House Oversight Committee has released some documents given to it by Jeffrey Epstein’s estate. The records include more than 200 pages from a book made for the late convicted sex offender’s 50th birthday. The pages include a lewd drawing and letter that appears to be signed by Trump.
- 🎧 There’s been very little daylight between Republican stances and Trump’s often-changing views on many topics — including Epstein, NPR’s Stephen Fowler says. Vice President Vance once agreed with Trump that the files must be released, then agreed with the president that there were no files, then agreed that the letter didn’t exist, and now agrees with Trump’s claim that it’s a hoax from Democrats. Trump campaigned in 2024 on releasing the files and exposing powerful people who hide the truth from the public. Many voters now see him as one of those powerful people and feel he’s broken his promise. Fowler says this topic is one of the few places where Democrats have leverage against Trump’s “otherwise complete control of the narrative in Washington.”
New scores from the National Assessment of Education Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, show a drop in 8th-grade science scores since 2019 and 12th-grade math and reading scores in the same time period. Matthew Soldner, the acting director of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), said scores from the “lowest performing students are at historic lows — continued declines that began more than a decade ago.” The IES is charged with measuring student achievement. These latest scores are from tests administered between January and March 2024, before Trump was elected president. Since then, the Trump administration has made cuts to the U.S. Education Department, including laying off more than half of the employees at the IES. Here’s what these test scores mean for students.
Today’s listen
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer’s badge and weapon are seen as ICE conducts a vehicle checkpoint on Georgia Ave. on August 30 in Washington, D.C.
Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North America
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Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images North America
When Trump sent the National Guard and federal agents into Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., some critics warned that racial profiling would lead to U.S. citizens getting caught up in the efforts to ramp up deportations. NPR spoke with a naturalized citizen in Washington who claims it happened to her just over a week ago. Chilo, who asked to go by her nickname because she fears repercussions for speaking out, moved to the U.S. after she was adopted from Nicaragua at 9 years old. She’s now 53, married and has a high school-aged daughter. She says two men in camouflaged masks stopped her and told her she did not “look like a citizen.” Cheelo says she believes this happened to her because she has brown skin and black hair. She tells Morning Edition’s Michel Martin that the experience left her scared that she would be taken away and feeling like she doesn’t “belong here.” Listen to their conversation here.
Picture show
Pastor Billiance Chondwe has known 9-year-old Diana Lungu since she was born. He helped her mother through a rough pregnancy and during Diana’s early years. Diana’s mother died of AIDS when Diana was nearing her third birthday.
Ben de la Cruz/NPR
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Ben de la Cruz/NPR
In April, NPR asked 12 HIV-positive Zambians to share their stories following the Trump administration’s cuts to foreign aid. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued the memo calling for stop-work orders on all existing foreign aid awards, Pastor Billiance Chondwe — affectionately known as Pastor Billy — watched with horror and hopelessness as many U.S.-funded HIV clinics shut their doors. Today, he says that actions from the Zambian government have filled him with more determination and hope, despite a future that is far from certain. Check in with the people NPR spoke with in April, and see photos of how they’re doing now.
3 things to know before you go
- For its seventh year, NPR’s Student Podcast Challenge received more than 2,000 entries from 45 states and the District of Columbia. Before we reveal the winner, check out the 11 middle school and 10 high school finalists, as well as the honorable mentions.
- Since June, a slew of musicians — many of them independent — have pulled their music from Spotify to protest the CEO’s ties to Helsing, an artificial intelligence defense company. Some artists are now moving to a music ownership model that can balance their principles with making money, but it’s not an easy task.
- Media titan Rupert Murdoch and his son and intended heir, Lachlan, have struck a deal to buy out the shares of Lachlan’s three eldest siblings. The move will ensure that the 94-year-old’s vast corporate empire, which includes Fox News, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post, will retain its conservative identity after his death.
This newsletter was edited by Obed Manuel.
The maker of Canvas, the software used by thousands of schools and universities around the world, said on Monday that it had reached a deal with the hackers that recently breached its systems for the return of stolen data and the destruction of any copies.
ShinyHunters, a hacking group, had claimed responsibility for the attack on Instructure, the Salt Lake City-based company that provides Canvas to about half of all colleges and universities in North America.
The hackers said they had accessed the data of more than 275 million users at nearly 9,000 schools worldwide, including private conversations between students and teachers as well as personal identifying information such as names and email addresses. Canvas was shut down for hours after the cyberattack on Thursday.
The agreement, Instructure said in a statement, involved the return of the stolen data and confirmation that the data had been destroyed at the hackers’ end. Instructure added that it had been informed that none of its customers would face extortion as a result of the theft.
“While there is never complete certainty when dealing with cybercriminals, we believe it was important to take every step within our control to give customers additional peace of mind, to the extent possible,” the company said.
Instructure did not say what it had given the hackers in exchange for the return of the data. The company did not immediately respond to questions about the deal.
Canvas has more than 30 million active users around the world, according to Instructure. The platform is used by teachers and students for coursework management and communications. Instructure said the data compromised in the hack included usernames, email addresses, course names, enrollment information and messages.
ShinyHunters on Thursday claimed the attack in a message that appeared on students’ Canvas pages and was obtained by The New York Times. The group warned that it would leak an unspecified amount of data on May 12 if it did not receive a response from Instructure. In its May 3 ransom note, the group had threatened to leak “several billions of private messages among students and teachers.”
Not much is known about ShinyHunters, which is believed to have been formed around 2020. Its goal appears to be to obtain personal records and sell them. One of its high-profile attacks was against Ticketmaster in 2024, when the hackers said they had stolen the user information of more than 500 million customers.
Instructure said it first detected unauthorized activity in Canvas on Apr. 29, and again on May 7. The company said it took Canvas offline to investigate the breach, and also informed the F.B.I., the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and other international law enforcement partners.
Instructure did not immediately respond to questions about whether any law enforcement agencies were involved in its dealings with the hackers. The F.B.I. advises against paying ransom to hackers, saying it does not guarantee data security and encourages attackers to target more victims.
The National Quarantine Center is located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.
Nebraska Medicine
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Nebraska Medicine
Sixteen of the 18 passengers transferred to the U.S. from a cruise ship where there was an outbreak of hantavirus arrived in Omaha, Neb., on Monday for evaluation after disembarking the vessel in Spain’s Canary Islands over the weekend.
Of the 15 U.S. citizens and one dual U.S.-British citizen who arrived in Nebraska, all but one are currently being housed in the National Quarantine Unit. That patient tested positive for the virus and was being housed in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, officials said at a Monday news conference. The 15 people in the quarantine unit will continue to be monitored for signs of the illness.
Passengers carry their belongings in plastic bags after being evacuated from the MV Hondius after docking in the Granadilla Port on Sunday in Tenerife, part of the Canary Islands, Spain.
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Chris McGrath/Getty Images
Nebraska may seem an unlikely location to process these individuals, but it is home to the National Quarantine Unit — the only federally funded quarantine unit in the U.S. — and the separate Nebraska Biocontainment Unit. They are highly specialized facilities located at the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC) and widely considered among the best in the world.
The $1 million, five-room biocontainment unit was dedicated in 2005. It was a joint project with Nebraska Health and Human Services and the UNMC. It is set up to safely provide medical care for patients with highly hazardous and infectious diseases and was used in 2014 to treat two doctors infected with Ebola. The National Quarantine Unit was completed in late 2019. It cost nearly $20 million, according to the Associated Press. Both facilities were used during the COVID-19 epidemic.
“We are prepared for situations exactly like this,” Dr. Michael Ash, CEO of Nebraska Medicine, said in a statement. “Our teams have trained for decades alongside federal and state partners to make sure we can safely provide care while protecting our staff and the broader community. We are proud to support this national effort.”
Two additional U.S. passengers on the cruise ship — a couple, with one showing symptoms of hantavirus — were transferred for monitoring to Emory University Hospital, where another advanced biocontainment facility is located.
When the biocontainment unit was first dedicated more than 20 years ago, the biggest concerns were anthrax attacks and severe acute respiratory syndrome, more commonly known as SARS, Dr. Phil Smith, who spearheaded the efforts at Nebraska Medical Center to create the biocontainment unit, told the AP in 2020. Smith died last year.
A hallway leading to rooms at the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.
Nebraska Medicine
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Nebraska Medicine
The quarantine unit features 20 negative-pressure rooms designed to keep potentially harmful particles from escaping by maintaining lower air pressure inside than outside the rooms. The single-occupancy rooms provide patients with attached bathrooms, exercise equipment and Wi-Fi, according to the medical center.
“We have protocols in the quarantine unit that provide for safe care of these of these persons, including just all the activities of daily living so that they can … have a comfortable stay but also have it in an area that’s protected and limits spread of the pathogen,” Dr. Michael Wadman, the medical director of the National Quarantine Unit, said at a Friday news conference.
The biocontainment unit, by contrast, is a patient-care space where people are able to receive medical treatment, Dr. Angela Hewlett, medical director of the biocontainment unit, told reporters Monday.
She emphasized that the facility — which has a 10-bed capacity — operates independently from the quarantine unit and has its own dedicated air-handling system. “We don’t share [it] with any of the rest of the facility,” she said, noting that the unit uses rooftop HEPA filtration and is designed “very differently” from what most people typically imagine in a hospital setting.
One of the rooms in the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit.
Nebraska Medicine
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Nebraska Medicine
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen, speaking at Monday’s news conference, welcomed the recently arrived patients, who are among nearly 150 people from 23 different countries who were aboard the MV Hondius when the illness most commonly transmitted to humans through contact with infected rodents broke out. As of Monday, the World Health Organization has reported at least nine cases of hantavirus, including three deaths.
“We’re glad that you’re here,” Pillen said. “We’re going to ensure that you have the best world-class care possible.”
Pillen also sought to reassure Nebraskans that the facilities are safe and secure: “We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time,” he said. “No one poses a risk to public health, just walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha.”
The hantavirus outbreak on the cruise ship has been identified as the Andes strain of the illness, one that can be spread, though rarely, from person-to-person, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It can cause severe respiratory disease, with early flu-like symptoms.
“The Andes variant of this virus does not spread easily, and it requires prolonged, close contact with someone who is already symptomatic,” according to Adm. Brian Christine, the assistant secretary for health at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, who spoke at Monday’s news conference. “Even so, we have taken this situation very seriously from the very start.”
“The risk of hantavirus to the general public remains very, very low,” he said.
The full quarantine period for hantavirus is 42 days, Christine said, but he added that the patients would be allowed to go home if they remained asymptomatic.
“Right now, the passengers that are all in the assessment phase — they’re going to be here for at least a few days while we do assessments and the coordination on what happens next,” he said, adding that they had the option to remain in the quarantine facility for the full period, for “the safest and most effective option for them.”
new video loaded: Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
transcript
transcript
Americans Exposed to Hantavirus on Cruise Ship Arrive in United States
Eighteen passengers who were aboard the MV Hondius, a cruise ship with a deadly hantavirus outbreak, landed in Omaha on a U.S. government medical flight. The passengers were being monitored at medical facilities in Nebraska and Georgia.
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We’re working diligently to ensure no one leaves the security in an unsecured way at an inappropriate time. No one who poses a risk to public health is walking out the front door of the streets of Omaha or beyond.
By Axel Boada
May 11, 2026
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