NPR News: 07-02-2026 7PM EDT

Ryland Barton· Host0:00

Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton. US employers pulled back on hiring last month and added only fifty-seven thousand jobs, less than half the previous month's total, and assigned companies still have a cautious economic outlook. NPR's Scott Horsley has more.

Scott Horsley0:15

It looks like a lot of would-be workers are getting discouraged. You know, more than twenty-seven percent of the people who are out of work have been unemployed for more than six months, and with so little turnover, it's hard for folks to get a foot in the door. Uh, now, some of the drop is also what you'd expect to see in an aging population. You know, thousands of baby boomers are retiring every day. But we're also seeing dropouts among people in their prime working years, so that's not a good sign.

Ryland Barton· Host0:39

NPR's Scott Horsley reporting. President Trump is launch-launching Trump accounts on July 4th. Parents and open-- parents can open these accounts for children, receiving a thousand dollars from the government and potentially more from billionaires who've pledged to provide money. Children can access the money at age 18 for specific purposes like education or home buying. mRNA vaccines are safe, effective, and promising for a wide variety of ailments, according to new research in The Lancet. As NPR's Jonathan Lambert reports, the study comes as some Trump administration officials vilify the shots.

Jonathan Lambert1:12

Over a billion mRNA vaccines have been given since the COVID shots were first approved. mRNA technology has been hailed as revolutionary, both for its ability to be developed quickly and its effectiveness. Researchers think mRNA vaccines could someday be used to create individualized cancer therapies or prevent