The News Roundup For February 27, 2026

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🗓️ 27 February 2026

⏱️ 89 minutes

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Summary

President Donald Trump delivered the first State of the Union address of his second term in office, lauding the strength of American economy. But even though wealthier Americans are benefiting financially from the positive economic trends, lower-income households are increasingly finding themselves left behind.

Meanwhile, Democrats are holding government firm over funding the Department of Homeland Security as they demand reforms to ICE.

And Vice President JD Vance announced that the Trump administration is going to withhold hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funding from Minnesota over fraud concerns.

And, in global news, Trump officials sat down with Iranian leaders in Geneva for a third round of indirect talks. They come as the U.S. military amasses in the Middle East ahead of a potential strike on Iran.

The Trump Administration is on damage control after U.S Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee says Israel is entitled to more land in the Middle East than it currently holds.

And Cuba announces its military has destroyed a boat that entered Cuban waters on Wednesday, killing four. Cuba’s country’s interior minister called the incident “a foiled armed infiltration.”

We cover the most important stories from around the world in the international hour of the News Roundup.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all on the web at theshmit.org.
0:14.5	Hey, everybody. It's Todd, your host for this edition of the News Roundup. Just a quick heads up before we start the show. As you know,
0:21.4	the news can change rapidly and something you hear in this episode might have new developments.
0:26.5	You can always stay up to date with all the latest by listening to your local NPR station
0:30.8	and by visiting npr.org.
0:45.8	I'm Todd's Willick, and you're listening to the 1A podcast, and it's time now for the weekly news roundup. The state of the union happens every year. And almost every time the
0:51.6	president says the state of the union is strong and that America is doing better than ever.
0:56.8	But what's the danger when a president uses this ritual of democracy to attack the foundation of that very democracy?
1:05.5	President Trump, suffering in the polls, used his national audience to attack the credibility of a 2026 election, Republicans
1:13.1	could well lose. He lied again about the integrity of U.S. elections and said cheating by
1:19.2	undocumented immigrants is rampant. It is not. Today, the context swirling around the president's
1:26.4	address, including an economic reality that's different from the one he described on Tuesday, plus new revelations that the Justice Department appears to be withholding dozens of pages of Epstein files, including one woman's allegations that Donald Trump abused her when she was a young girl in the 1980s.
1:45.7	We've got just the people to talk about all of this news and a lot more Taylor Popolars is here,
1:51.1	National Political Reporter for Spectrum News based at the White House. Good to see you, Taylor.
1:55.2	Great to be here.
1:56.3	Anita Kumar is in studio, head of standards and practices for Politico. Hi, Anita. Hi, thanks for having me
2:02.0	back. Great to have you. Megan Scully is here, Congress editor for Bloomberg News. Hi, Megan. Hi,
2:06.9	glad to be here. All right, again, let's start here, a throwaway comment in the State of the Union,
2:11.9	but one that had a lot of weight behind it. So in my first year of the second term,
2:20.0	should be my third term, but strange things happen.
2:26.3	Taylor, laughter and applause from the Republican side of the aisle at that little jokey remark.
2:32.7	I should have a third term, unconstitutional,
	...

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