Pope Leo’s views; China and U.S. trade negotiations : NPR

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Today’s top stories

Cardinal Robert Prevost was elected pope yesterday, becoming the first pontiff from the United States. The 69-year-old chose the name Pope Leo XIV. When he appeared on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica to greet the masses, he said he wanted his message of peace to “enter your hearts, reach your families and all people, wherever they are.” From the moments before the white smoke signaled a newly elected pope to Pope Leo’s first speechNPR’s Ruth Sherlock was there, watching it all unfold.

• 🎧 Before Prevost was announced as the next pope, marching bands and chants of long live the pope filled the roads to the Vatican, Sherlock tells Up First. She says there was initially confusion after the announcement due to the echoey speakers. There were mixed reactions once people saw Pope Leo and he gave his speech. Around Sherlock, there was disappointment from people who hoped that one of the Italian cardinals would be chosen for the role. Among Americans, there was shock and jubilation. Max Gleason, a 21-year-old American college student studying in Rome, said that from the few moments the pope spoke, he looked “like someone who’s gonna crush it.”
• 🎧 Even with Pope Leo’s long resume of work, some are not pleased with everything he has done. Survivors of clergy sexual abuse say he didn’t do enough to address the issue, NPR’s Jason DeRose says. The question now is how he will handle victims going forward. He is also being criticized for comments he made about people in the LGBTQ+ community. He spoke out about Peru’s government’s plan to teach about gender in public schools and called the promotion of “gender ideology” confusing.
• ➡️ Here’s everything you need to know about Pope Leo, from where he grew up to where he spent a significant portion of his ministry.

This weekend, trade negotiators from the U.S. and China will meet in Switzerland for their first high-level face-to-face talks since President Trump returned to the White House. Goods from China currently face a tax of up to 245%. Trump’s 145% tariff is on top of some older tariffs. American goods going to China currently face a tariff of around 125%. This weekend’s meeting comes after Trump and British Prime Minister Kier Starmer reached a deal yesterday to lift some tariffs on British goods.

• 🎧 U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who will attend the talks in Switzerland, said that a trade deal should not be expected from the meeting. China says it wants to see the U.S. drop tariffs ahead of the meeting, which is something Trump has said won’t be happening. NPR’s Emily Feng says the two countries have very different negotiating styleswhich will be a challenge. Though the tariffs hurt China, Beijing has been preparing for an economic standoff with the U.S. for years.

GOP leaders in swing districts insist they will not support any proposal that strips Medicaid benefits. The division has become a hurdle for Trump’s “big, beautiful bill.” Restructuring Medicaid, the federal health care program for poor, elderly and disabled Americans, is one of the clearest ways conservatives can achieve their deep spending cut goals. To get the bill through Congress, House Republicans are working with a budget blueprint that requires them to find $1.5 trillion in cuts to help offset the cost of expanding the president’s 2017 tax cuts.

Deep dive

Gas prices have decreased significantly, primarily due to a nearly 25% drop in crude oil prices since the beginning of the year. West Texas Intermediate, the U.S. benchmark for crude oil, fell from a high of around $80 per barrel in mid-January to just under $60 this week. Prices have dropped to a point where, on average, U.S. producers find it unprofitable to drill new wells. Here’s a breakdown of what is impacting oil prices and what that means for the economy:

• ⛽ When the economy is booming, companies open factories and people travel, causing oil consumption to climb. When economies slump, oil demand does as well.
• ⛽ Analysts say the trade war extending through this year could halve the expected growth in Chinese oil demand. The tariff situation is so atypical that comparing this year to last year could be irrelevant.
• ⛽ On Monday, oil market prices touched four-year lows before recovering after the oil cartel OPEC and its allies announced they would unwind some of the previously volunteered cuts to production.
• ⛽ Gas prices typically go up in the spring. But they went down last month and could fall even further. Lower gas prices also lower the prices of goods in general.

Weekend picks

Check out what NPR is watching, reading and listening to this weekend:

🍿 Movies: Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick reunite for a wedding in Capri in Another Simple Favorwhich is filled with murder, deceit and fashionable looks.

📺 TV: NPR TV critic Eric Deggans shares his six favorite performances of 2025 so far. Will they persuade you to add these shows to your watch list?

📚 Books: In Katie Goh’s memoir, Foreign Fruit: A Personal History of the Orangeshe unravels the multitudes the citrus fruit contains in tandem with mythologies of colonialism, inheritance and identity. Here are four other notable books that hit bookstores this week.

🎵 Music: The legacy of the late Patsy Cline, who helped create the Nashville sound in the 1950s and 1960s, continues to grow with a new album, Imagine That: The Lost Recordings (1954-1963). (WBUR)

🎭 Theater: Sarah Snook, who played Shiv Roy on Successionhas been nominated for a Tony Award for playing 26 characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray on Broadway.

❓ Quiz: I scored an eight of 11, aka “Decent.” Think you can do better than me? Test your skills.

3 things to know before you go

1. NPR’s Bob Mondello and his sister recently unearthed a forgotten box of 43 letters from smitten servicemen who’d met their mom at Red Cross dances in Rome during the final months of World War II.
2. A new study that recruited Black and Latina women found that 53% of them used personal-care products containing formaldehyde and formaldehyde-releasing preservatives, which are toxins found to cause cancer in humans.
3. A rat named Ronin has set a Guinness World Record by detecting 109 landmines in Cambodia over the past four years. (via WBUR)

This newsletter was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.