U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) testifies during his Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearing at Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 15, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) testifies during his Senate Foreign Relations confirmation hearing at Dirksen Senate Office Building on January 15, 2025 in Washington, DC.

Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

Confirmation hearings for Trump’s cabinet picks are in full swing on Capitol Hill with a number of them appearing before the Senate this week.

Nominees including Pam Bondi, Trump’s pick to run the Justice Department, John Ratcliffe, his pick to run the CIA, and Florida Senator Marco Rubio Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State have all answered questions about what they’ll do and what they won’t do if confirmed.

Rubio and Ratcliffe will play key foreign policy roles under the 47th president.

Those are the people, but what do they tell us about the policy?

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org

Email us at considerthis@npr.org

This episode was produced by Connor Donevan.

It was edited by Courtney Dorning.

Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

Palestinians gathered in the garden of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza to celebrate after US President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement of hostage deal, on January 15, 2025 in Deir al-Balah, Gaza.

Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images

Palestinians gathered in the garden of Al-Ahli Baptist Hospital in Gaza to celebrate after US President-elect Donald Trump’s announcement of hostage deal, on January 15, 2025 in Deir al-Balah, Gaza.

Dawoud Abo Alkas/Anadolu via Getty Images

A ceasefire deal has been announced that would end more than 15 months of war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. We learn about the details, how the agreement was reached and hear reaction from Israelis and Palestinians. We also look at what the war has meant for both sides and for the Middle East region.

For more coverage of this conflict and the latest developments, please come back to this feed. You can also go to npr.org/mideastupdates

Sean Duffy, President-elect Trump’s pick for transportation secretary, testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday.

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Samuel Corum/Getty Images

We’re following the confirmation hearings for the incoming Trump administration. See our full politics coverage, and follow NPR’s Trump’s Terms podcast or sign up for our Politics newsletter to stay up to date.

Who: Sean Duffy

Nominated for: secretary of transportation

You might know him from: Fox News, where Duffy has been a contributor since 2020. He also spent more than 8 years in Congress as a GOP Representative from his native Wisconsin.

More about Duffy:

• Long record of public service, but his transportation resume is short 
• One of many Trump cabinet picks with ties to Fox News
• Starred on MTV’s “The Real World” before going into politics 

Position: The Secretary of Transportation leads a department with a budget of more than $100 billion that’s tasked with maintaining the nation’s aviation system, highways, railroads and ports.

WASHINGTON — When Republican Sean Duffy was in Congress, he worked with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to replace an 80-year-old bridge across the St. Croix River between his home state of Wisconsin and Minnesota.

More than a decade later, the St. Croix Crossing — and the relationships that the new bridge helped forge — came up several times Wednesday during Duffy’s confirmation hearing to lead the Department of Transportation.

“When I fly into Minneapolis and drive up to Hayward, where I was born and raised, I go across that bridge,” Duffy said during the hearing. “I’m proud every single time for the bipartisan work that we did together, and I would like to continue that kind of work should I be confirmed.”

That project required action by Congress to grant an exemption from the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act. Duffy’s work to make that happen helped endear him to several Democrats in the Senate, including Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin.

“Our efforts show that when we work together, we get important things done. And we haven’t always agreed,” Baldwin said in remarks introducing Duffy to the committee. “But at the end of the day, I am confident that Sean is the right person for this job in this upcoming administration.”

While some of President-elect Trump’s cabinet nominees faced sharp questioning from Democrats on Capitol Hill this week, Duffy received an overwhelmingly friendly welcome from Baldwin and other members of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Duffy has a long record in public service, representing a district in northern Wisconsin in the House of Representatives for more than eight years. But beyond the St. Croix Crossing, he has relatively little direct experience in transportation — or leading a large organization like the DOT, which has a budget of more than $100 billion.

At the confirmation hearing, Duffy committed to prioritizing safety on the roadways and in the air, and said he would “work to reduce the red tape that slows critical infrastructure projects, ensuring funds are spent efficiently.” He pledged to bring “tough love” to Boeing as regulators work to restore confidence in the struggling airplane maker. And Duffy said he would address the shortage of air traffic controllers, while hiring only “the best and the brightest” for those jobs.

After leaving Congress in 2019, Duffy worked as a lobbyist and as a contributor at Fox News. In announcing his pick, President-elect Trump praised Duffy as a “respected voice and communicator” in a post on Truth Social in November.

Trump has looked to the ranks of Fox News for many of his cabinet nominees. But few have as much experience on camera as Duffy, who starred on MTV’s “The Real World: Boston” in 1997. He met his future wife Rachel Campos-Duffy, a fellow Fox News contributor, when they both starred on another MTV reality show. Campos-Duffy was on hand at Wednesday’s hearing, along with eight of the couple’s nine children.

Duffy noted that roadway safety “hits close to home for me, because my wife survived a deadly head-on car crash, which has profoundly reshaped her life.”

The outgoing Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also had little direct experience in transportation before taking the reins. Under Buttigieg, the department has handed out billions of dollars from the bipartisan infrastructure law to build roads and bridges, dig tunnels, modernize airports and more.

Duffy was asked several times on Wednesday whether funding for those projects would continue to flow.

Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) asked specifically about funding for the Gateway Program, a multi-billion dollar project to replace a series of crumbling rail tunnels and bridges connecting northern New Jersey to Manhattan.

“I want to look at what funding has gone out,” Duffy said. “But I imagine those good projects that are underway, we would continue.”

The Department of Transportation includes the Federal Aviation Administration, which is in charge of the nation’s airspace, as well as agencies that regulate the nation’s railroads, and set safety standards for passenger cars, trucks and commercial vehicles.

There are several areas where the department’s broad mandate intersects with the business interests of Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, who poured more than a quarter of a billion dollars into President-elect Trump’s 2024 election campaign.

Now safety advocates worry that Musk may try to influence the federal agencies that regulate his businesses. His rocket company SpaceX has sometimes clashed with regulators at the FAA over its launch practices.

Federal regulators at the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, part of the DOT, are investigating crashes involving Tesla’s advanced driver-assistance systems. And safety advocates fear the Trump administration could move to end those investigations, along with a crash reporting requirement that Tesla opposes.

Senator Ed Markey (D-MA) pressed Duffy on whether he would allow traffic safety investigators to “follow the evidence and operate objectively as part of their investigations?”

“Yes, I commit to this committee and to you that I will let NHTSA do their investigation,” Duffy responded.

The nominee was asked several times about his level of commitment to Amtrak — not only by Democratic senators from New Jersey and Delaware, but also by Republicans from Kansas and Mississippi.

Duffy acknowledged voting against Amtrak funding when he was a member of Congress from rural Wisconsin. But he said “this committee has spoken loudly about Amtrak and rail in their home communities.”

If he’s confirmed, as appears likely, Duffy said his first trip as transportation secretary would be to the Appalachian mountain regions of Tennessee and North Carolina, where flooding from Hurricane Helene damaged major interstate highways along with countless smaller roads and bridges.

“This is an emergency,” Duffy said. “I’ll do everything in the power of the Department for Transportation to move the process forward as quickly as possible so these communities get access and roads that are functional again.”

The Lunar New Year falls on Jan. 29 this year. Those celebrating will welcome in the year of the snake.

Nhac Nguyen/AFP via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Nhac Nguyen/AFP via Getty Images

The Lunar New Year is one of the most important holidays in many Asian countries including Vietnam, China, Korea as well as the Asian diaspora.

This year’s celebrations begin Jan. 29. The holiday marks the beginning of the year, according to the lunisolar calendar, and it’s all about spending time with family, reflecting on your past year and setting intentions for a lucky year ahead.

Whether it’s celebrated in Asia or abroad, many people engage in specific rites and rituals to ensure they’ll have a lucky year. Some eat certain foods, like dumplings, which resemble bags of money. Actions like taking out the trash may be forbidden, so you don’t throw out your good fortune in the new year.

NPR wants to know what traditions — old or new — you and your loved ones observe in order to ensure a lucky new year. Your answers may appear in the Up First newsletter or on air on Morning Edition. Subscribe to the newsletter to see your answers and get the news you need to start your day.

In your responses, please tell us your first and last name, age and where you’re from. Please include a voice memo if you’d like to be featured on air.

We will accept responses until Jan. 22 at 12 p.m. ET.

Chinese social media app Xiaohongshu, called RedNote in English, is attracting scores of Americans ahead of TikTok’s potential shutdown in the U.S.

Andy Wong/AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Andy Wong/AP

With the clock ticking on a potential TikTok ban in the U.S., scores of Americans are flocking to a surprising alternative: a popular Chinese social media platform called Xiaohongshu, or RedNote in English.

The Supreme Court appears unlikely to block a law that requires TikTok to either be divested from its China-based parent company, ByteDance, or shut down in the U.S. on Jan. 19. The law stems from concerns about the Chinese government accessing Americans’ data.

That’s got many of the viral video app’s 170 million U.S.-based users preemptively looking for somewhere else to go. And RedNote seems to be the platform of choice.

The start of this week saw a dramatic uptick in Google searches and social media posts about RedNote, as well as its surge to the top spot of the “free apps” chart on Apple’s app store. The market intelligence firm Sensor Tower told NPR that its data indicates RedNote is also the top-ranked social app on the Google Play store on Wednesday — a big jump from #162, where it stood this time last year.

A person close to RedNote told Reuters that more than 700,000 new users joined in just two days. The New York Times reported that more than 100,000 people joined a live group chat hosted by a user named TikTok Refugee Club on Tuesday.

Many of these American newcomers are calling themselves TikTok refugees, a term that’s proliferating across the app in hashtags, comment sections and live chats. And the app’s Chinese users appear to be welcoming them with open arms, asking for cat photos and help with their English homework.

While RedNote — like all social media apps in China — is subject to government censorship, many users are cheering the opportunity for cross-cultural exchange, especially given the tense relationship between the U.S. and Chinese governments and the fact that major platforms like Google and Facebook are blocked in China.

“For so long we really haven’t been able to connect or talk with each other like this, but now we finally can, and it feels so special,” one Chinese user, who identified himself as Abe, said in a now-viral post. “This is such a real chance for us to get to know each other and maybe create something amazing together … You are not just welcome here, I really, really hope you will stay.”

The lifestyle app is China’s take on Instagram, favored by women

 The Chinese equivalent of TikTok is the ByteDance-owned platform Douyin.

RedNote is a different app altogether. It’s considered China’s answer to Instagram, with a layout similar to Pinterest (displaying multiple posts at the same time) and a focus on travel, makeup, fashion and shopping.

Users can post short videos, engage in live chats, call each other and even purchase products within the app.

It launched in 2013, originally named “Hong Kong Shopping Guide,” and Reuters reports that it aimed at Chinese tourists looking for local recommendations.

Over the years it grew steadily and took on the name Xiaohongshu, which translates to “Little Red Book.” That phrase traditionally refers to a collection of quotations from Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong.

RedNote boomed among younger consumers during the COVID-19 pandemic and is now valued at $17 billion. It currently boasts 300 million monthly active users, 79% of whom are women, according to TechCrunch.

The app has caught on quickly among American audiences since last week, according to Sensor Tower.

It says U.S. mobile downloads of the app increased more than 20 times over the seven-day period beginning Jan. 8, compared to the previous week, and are up more than 30 times compared to the same period last year.

More than a fifth of RedNote’s total app downloads so far this month have come from the U.S., the firm says, compared to just 2% during the same period in 2024.

American users navigate language barriers and censorship 

RedNote’s new American users are confronting the potentially taboo topics of privacy and censorship head-on. Users — from both countries — are joking about finally meeting their “Chinese spies” and willingly handing over data (including the aforementioned “cat tax“).

The New York Times reports that in a group chat this week viewed more than 30,000 times, “participants discussed censorship and shared tips in the comments on how to avoid being banned from the platform for bringing up politically sensitive topics.”

“Welcome, but do not say anything about LGBTQ+. Thank you!” wrote a user in Beijing, in one example reported by Newsweek. The Advocate reported that some American users have had their content removed or accounts suspended, including one woman who was banned for wearing a low-cut top in one video and mentioning “trans plight” in another.

In 2022, the China Digital Times — a California-based nonprofit that covers censorship in China — published a leaked trove of documents showing how the content moderation team at RedNote bans or limits posts about sensitive topics.

Those include some 546 derogatory nicknames for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, as well as discussion of events such as labor strikes, geographic discrimination, student suicides and criticism of the Chinese Communist Party.

Plus, since most of the app’s content is in Mandarin, subtitles are suddenly rampant — as are posts from Americans who want to learn the language, including by exchanging translations of popular slang phrases with Chinese commenters.

The irony that Americans are leaving TikTok for another Chinese-run app has not been lost on many users, some of whom see the move as an act of defiance against U.S. lawmakers’ efforts to ban it.

“Did the U.S. government forget our founding principles? We are a nation built on spite,” user @thesleepydm posted on TikTok, where they have over 200,000 followers. “We’re giving our information directly to the Chinese government now. The communists just have our information directly because of … what you did.”