NPR News Now - 3pm ET, October 19 | The latest headlines from NPR

Episode Date: October 19, 2026

The latest headlines from NPR at the top of this hour. The stories you hear are written, reported and fact-checked by NPR journalists.  Learn more about the standards of our journalism at npr.org/ethics. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is NPR News Now. The latest headlines every hour. Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. President Trump returns tonight to the American heartland where farmers and Republican strongholds are grappling with record high diesel prices in the middle of harvest season. Trump is scheduled to campaign for Republican candidates tonight in Kansas, and later this week, Iowa, two states featuring increasingly competitive congressional races.

With the GOP's control of Congress at stake, the president has been on a campaign blitz across the country in the final weeks before the midterm elections. NPR Stephen Fowler says the 26 midterms are on track to become the most expensive on record with billions of dollars raised, two driving factors dominating fundraising, Democratic candidates, and Republican super PACs. There's a ton of Democratic nominees in House and Senate races that are receiving just gobsmacking amounts of donations. but the Democratic Party, capital D, capital P, is unpopular. You know who else is unpopular? Republicans right now, thanks to the war in Iran and rising gas prices, uncertainty about the economy. So you've got a few mega donors giving a few super PACs a lot of money to try and convince voters to elect Republicans anyway.

And Pierre Stephen Fowler. The Supreme Court has declined to hear the case of a National Labor Relations Board member fired by President Trump. Legal challenge is seen as a test of the reach of presidential pass. power. Here's NPR's Kristen Wright. Fired National Labor Relations Board member, Gwyn Wilcox, said President Trump didn't have the authority to remove her from the job. The Supreme Court's decision to not hear her appeal leaves in place a lower court ruling that said Trump's firing was a lawful exercise of executive authority. Trump's ouster of Wilcox and other officials has tested the independence of federal agencies to operate freely from presidential control.

The justice has overturned that 1935 precedent when the court backed Trump's firing of a Democratic member of the Federal Trade Commission in June. Wilcox was the first black woman to serve on the Labor Relations Board, created to protect the rights of workers in the private sector. Kristen Wright, NPR News, Washington. Yemen's government news agency says at least 53 recruits were killed and more than 200 wounded in missile attacks on a training camp. The latest from NPR's A Betrawi.

The attack on the Al-Alam training camp is the deadliest in years of war in Yemen, including since the recent escalation in vows. between the Iran-backed Houthis and Saudi-backed Yemeni-government forces. The government's Saba news agency quoted local authorities and the governorate of Shabwa, saying the Houthis attacked new recruits who'd come from different parts of Yemen as they were training to become internal security forces. Yemeni government forces say the Houthis fired three missiles at that training center. Most of the recent fighting has been concentrated in the southwestern governorate of Taz,

but this attack in Shabwa strikes at a central part of the country. And PIR News, Dubai. Quick check of Wall Street, the NASDAQ is up 328 points or more than 1%. It's NPR. A doomsday cult leader and 29 of his associates have been found guilty in Kenya of murdering 190 children and one adult. In a Mombasa courtroom today, the judge said Paul McKenzie ordered his followers to starve themselves to death in order to meet Jesus. It became known as the Shakahola Forest Massacre. In recent years, investigators have discovered the bodies of more than 400 people, children and adults, with victims showing signs of starvation, strangulation, or other forms of violence.

Christian leaders in Kenya strongly denounced McKenzie saying his teachings were antithetical to Christian doctrine. Teens who become addicted to social media are more likely to develop symptoms of depression. And teens with depression are also more likely to become addicted to social media. And Piers Reachery reports on a new study published in the journal, Pediatrics. The findings come from analyzing data on more than 11,000 teenagers. Researchers followed these teens over five years as part of the adolescent brain and cognitive development study. They assess the teenagers' mental health annually using standardized questionnaires on symptoms of anxiety and depression. And they assess them for symptoms of social media addiction.

Pediatrician Dr. Jason Nagata is at the University of California, San Francisco, and an author of the new study. Addictive social media use and depression can create a vicious cycle for some teenagers. where they kind of reinforce one another and can exacerbate each other's symptoms. The study did not find a similar relationship between social media addiction and anxiety. Ritu Chatterjee, NPR News. I'm Lakshmi Singh NPR News in Washington.