Six minutes of news from around the nation.

Trump officials at several agencies defy Musk's directive on summarizing accomplishments; CA children's advocates speak out against impending immigration raids; Environmental groups sue Trump administration over offshore drilling policy; NC organization applies COVID-era lessons to Helene relief.

Transcript

The Public News Service Daily Newscast, February 24, 2025.

I'm Mike Clifford.

Several Trump-appointed agency leaders urge federal workers not to comply with the Elon Musk order to summarize their accomplishments for the past week or be removed from their position, even as Musk doubled down on his demand over the weekend.

That's from The New York Times.

They report their instructions in effect countermanded the order of Musk across much of the government, challenging the broad authority President Trump has given to the world's richest man to make drastic changes to the federal bureaucracy.

The Times notes the standoff serves as one of the most significant tests of how far Elon Musk's power will extend.

Next to California, a state that is bracing for large-scale immigration raids, and groups that advocate for kids are speaking out against the climate of fear.

Recently an 11-year-old girl in Texas committed suicide after allegedly being bullied about her family's immigration status.

Mayra Alvarez, president of the Children's Partnership, says the sense of dread that a parent might be deported is extremely stressful and can lead to physical illness.

That day-to-day worrying, that leads to a host of health issues, everything from increased anxiety and depression to stomach aches to behaviors that aren't reflective of who they are.

Almost half of California's 9 million children have at least one immigrant parent.

One in 10 has an undocumented parent, and one in five lives in a mixed-status family.

California legislators passed Assembly Bill 699 to protect immigrant students, but schools cannot block immigration and customs enforcement from coming on campus if they have a court order.

I'm Suzanne Potter.

And a coalition of environmental groups has filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration challenging its revocations of President Joe Biden's protections for the 625 million acres of federal waters from offshore drilling.

The lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Alaska, argues the Trump administration's action is illegal and threatens coastal communities, ecosystems, and marine life.

Christian Wagley, a coastal organizer with Healthy Gulf, emphasizes the importance of protecting Florida's coastline from drilling.

The water is clean, our beaches are clean, and Florida's economy really depends on that.

That's kind of the quintessential experience in Florida is being able to go to the beach and have that clean white sand and that blue-green water.

And that would be directly threatened by expanded oil and gas drilling in the Gulf of Mexico.

In his final days in office, the legal challenge focuses on Biden's decision to withdraw vast areas of the outer continental shelf, including parts of the Atlantic, Pacific, Arctic, and Eastern Gulf of Mexico, from oil and gas leasing and drilling.

President Trump argues that boosting fossil fuel production is essential to meeting energy demand and maintaining U.S. leadership in global energy markets.

I'm Tramiel Gomes.

This is Public News Service.

Lessons learned during the COVID pandemic have proven crucial to one organization responding to Hurricane Helene.

Centro Unido, which serves the Spanish-speaking population in McDowell County, stepped up its services during the pandemic to provide testing, vaccine clinics, and easy-to-understand information.

It also offered financial assistance to help Western North Carolina families avoid evictions and utility disconnections.

Centro Unido's interim executive director, Laura Zapater, says they learned a lot during the COVID response that is useful today.

It was really helpful in the way that we could quickly organize after Hurricane Helene because we knew that our community was going to struggle more than other communities to receive the resources and the support needed.

Zapater says people in the community were lined up at their door as soon as Centro Unido had power again after the hurricane.

The group is still helping with hurricane relief, although she notes the change in presidential administrations has put new strains on their work.

I'm Eric Tegethoff reporting.

And the future of a teacher training program in rural Nebraska is in danger.

The program is known as RAICES, or ROOTS in English.

It's designed to recruit would-be teachers from rural Nebraska communities, train them, and place them in their hometown classrooms.

Ted Haman, a professor who helps oversee the program, says it connects the communities to their schools and the people teaching their kids.

Obviously, it has teach-to-read, teach-mathematics, academic content, but it's also the friendly face that welcomes teachers at a parent conference.

All of the features about making school as part of the infrastructure of a community being healthy.

RAICES program aims to create and retain teachers who better reflect and understand the student populations they serve.

But the recent federal cuts to diversity programs have placed it in jeopardy.

Haman says the cuts will mean a loss of funding for 16 student scholarships, about $450,000.

I'm Mark Moran.

And finally, it looks like at least some Indiana farmers will be getting the federal dollars they'd counted on for farm conservation and soil health.

More than 1,100 Indiana farms are part of those programs to help fight climate change.

On Friday, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced it would release funds for those farmers who already have contracts.

Russell Taylor is with a company that makes natural soil amendment products.

He says the funding freeze has forced the U.S. Senate to pivot on some big issues still to be resolved.

Some of these freezes for funding and those items are really causing things that should have been working or in the works to be halted, such as farm bill.

Some of these things are just going to be delayed a little bit further out in the year, but there should still be optimistic progress for things like getting a farm bill passed.

I'm Terry Dee reporting.

This is Mike Clifford.

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