NPR News

Though he insists he's not suspending his run, GOP presidential candidate Newt Gingrich announced he's cutting his staff and shifting his campaign strategy. NPR's Ken Rudin and veteran campaign manager Chip Saltsman discuss the decisions candidates face when a win seems unlikely.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

A scary incident, yesterday, on JetBlue Flight 191 when passengers saw a disturbed pilot locked out of the cockpit shouting about a bomb onboard and forcibly restrained by aircrew and passengers.

(SOUNDBITE OF NBC NEWS BROADCAST)

CLAYTON OSBOURNE: I'm so distraught. We've got Israel. We've got Iraq. We've got Israel. We've got Iraq. We're going to get doomed.

DAVID GONZALEZ: He kept pointing at me and said, you know, you need to pray. As soon as he pointed at me, I grabbed his arm, and I put him in a choke hold.

Transcript

NEAL CONAN, HOST:

This is TALK OF THE NATION. I'm Neal Conan in Washington. For years, employers have used credit checks and criminal histories to vet potential hires. With the growth of social media, hiring managers now turn to websites like Facebook, and some employers go so far as to ask applicants to turn over their passwords.

Facebook warns against this procedure. Two United States senators asked the Department of Justice to investigate whether these employers are violating federal law.

On the floor of the House this morning, Rep. Bobby Rush's effort to call attention to the death of Florida teenager Trayvon Martin turned into a contest of wills between the Illinois Democrat and the presiding officer because Rush donned a hoodie while speaking.

Transcript

JACKI LYDEN, HOST:

I'm Jacki Lyden and this is TELL ME MORE from NPR News. Michel Martin is away this week. Coming up, there are a number of people in the U.S. who continue to insist that President Obama is Muslim, despite his Christian faith. But that begs the question: what does it matter? So what if he were? We'll talk about it what it means to be a Muslim in America in just a bit.

Update at 12:08 p.m. ET. Everyone Had A Hard Go Of It Today:

NPR's legal correspondent Nina Totenberg tells Ari Shapiro that both sides had a tough go of it today.

During the final day of arguments, Supreme Court justices seemed split on the idea of striking the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, if its the "individual mandate" centerpiece was also found unconstitutional.

The Grinch returned all those stolen presents.

Now the family of Dr. Seuss (Theodore Geisel) is hoping that the person or persons who took a Lorax statue from the garden of the late, great author's home also has a change of heart.

A new method of obtaining organs for transplantation is raising a host of ethical questions, including whether the donors are technically "dead."

For decades, organ donation has been guided by something called the "dead donor rule."

"We have this idea that you must be dead first — so before your organs can be removed, we agree that you are dead," said Leslie Whetstine, a bioethicist at Walsh University in Ohio.