News From NPR

Fresh Air Weekend highlights some of the best interviews and reviews from past weeks, and new program elements specially paced for weekends. Our weekend show emphasizes interviews with writers, filmmakers, actors and musicians, and often includes excerpts from live in-studio concerts. This week:

House impeachment managers released their formal response to the summons sent by the Senate last week, a procedural part of the impeachment process ahead of the trial that begins on Tuesday.

"President Trump's conduct is the Framers' worst nightmare," they said in the brief released Saturday.

The White House released its formal response to the summons sent by the Senate last week, a procedural part of the impeachment process ahead of the trial that begins on Tuesday.

"The articles of impeachment submitted by House Democrats are a dangerous attack on the right of the American people to freely choose their president," the White House's response says. "This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election."

The White House's legal team has called the House impeachment process "highly partisan and reckless," in a forceful response to the summons issued last week by Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ahead of President Trump's Senate impeachment trial, which begins Tuesday.

Updated at 2:46 a.m. ET Sunday

On Friday, President Trump added former independent counsel Ken Starr to the legal team that will defend him in the Senate impeachment trial.

Starr is best known for leading an investigation into President Bill Clinton's affair with a White House intern during the 1990s.

The fourth annual Women's March descended on the streets of Washington on Saturday. But unlike the first demonstration that brought hundreds of thousands to the capital on the day after President Trump's inauguration, the march drew just a fraction of the original turnout as the movement has struggled with changes in leadership and questions about inclusivity.

The demonstration in Washington was the main march, but sister marches were also held in more than 200 cities around the world, including Los Angeles, Chicago and Brussels.

A quiet New England community west of Hartford, Conn. has found itself roped into the impeachment saga with the emergence of an improbable character in the ongoing Ukraine scandal: Robert Hyde.

Hyde is a 40-year-old congressional candidate and former landscaper in Simsbury, Conn., who is known for being brash, foul-mouthed and for hitching his candidacy on his fervent support for President Trump.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, known more commonly as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, are no longer working members of the British royal family and will stop receiving public funds for royal duties, Buckingham Palace announced Saturday.

The palace also said the couple will stop using their HRH titles — shorthand for His/Her Royal Highness — and they will be "required to step back from Royal duties, including official military appointments," according to the palace.

Looking out across a foggy harbor toward a peninsula jutting off the Norwegian coast, Rune Rafaelsen has a bold plan that could raise the profile of his remote Arctic town — with a little help, he hopes, from China.

He is the mayor of Sor-Varanger, a municipality in the far northeast corner of Norway, close to the Russian border. His office is in the small town Kirkenes — population a little over 3,500 — which overlooks the icy gray Barents Sea.

Just after sunrise, elk are grazing in a misty field in Washington's Skagit Valley, an hour and a half north of Seattle.

"It looks like there are roughly 40 animals there," says Scott Schuyler, a member of northwest Washington's Upper Skagit Tribe.

These elk are at the center of a conflict that's unfolding between Native Americans and farmers in northwest Washington. After being nearly wiped out in the late 1800s, the animals are making a comeback in Skagit Valley. Local tribes are thrilled, but the agricultural industry is not.

Usually Meals on Wheels means home delivery or lunch at a senior center. For more than 50 years, the federal government has been funding the program to make sure older Americans get the nutrition they need. Now, a project in Vancouver, Wash., is trying to use those funds for something new: a retro-hip diner, where seniors can get eggs, coffee, and community.

The "Phase 1" trade deal with China that President Trump signed this week is unlike any previous free trade agreement. From Trump's point of view, that's the whole point.

"We are righting the wrongs of the past," Trump said Wednesday during a White House signing ceremony, "and delivering a future of economic justice and security for American workers, farmers and families."

Sarah Edrie says she was about 33 when she started to occasionally get a sudden, hot, prickly feeling that radiated into her neck and face, leaving her flushed and breathless. "Sometimes I would sweat. And my heart would race," she says. The sensations subsided in a few moments and seemed to meet the criteria for a panic attack. But Edrie, who has no personal or family history of anxiety, was baffled.

A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit brought by nearly two dozen young people aimed at forcing the federal government to take bolder action on climate change, saying the courts were not the appropriate place to address the issue.

A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said Friday the young plaintiffs had "made a compelling case that action is needed," but they did not have legal standing to bring the case.

When President Trump's defense team delivers its opening statement in the Senate impeachment trial next week, famed defense attorney Alan Dershowitz will have a starring role.

But in an interview with NPR's Mary Louise Kelly on Friday, he sought to make clear that his involvement is limited to arguing that the two articles of impeachment do not satisfy the constitutional criteria for removing the president from office.

The Pentagon is updating the way it vets foreign military students in the wake of the deadly shooting at the Pensacola, Fla., Naval Air Station by a Saudi military officer last month, officials announced.

The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases challenging state attempts to penalize Electoral College delegates who fail to vote for the presidential candidate they were pledged to support.

Electoral College delegates are selected by each party, and under state laws, they are pledged to cast their ballots for the candidate who carries the popular vote. But from 1796 to 2016, over 20 presidential elections, 150 electors have not abided by that pledge, according to FairVote, a nonpartisan voting rights advocacy group.

The U.S. Supreme Court says it will consider whether employers should be allowed to opt out of providing contraceptive coverage to their workers because of moral or religious objections.