NPR News Now - NPR News: 01-06-2026 2PM EST

Episode Date: January 6, 2026

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Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The Republican-led House majority is starting the year with a one-vote-vote Margin. NPR's Quoraigris-Alice reports this comes after the conference was hit with devastating news. Republicans were at a retreat with President Trump when many first learned that longtime California Republican, 65-year-old Doug Lamalfa, had died. They also found out another Republican Jim Baird of Indiana was high. hospitalized after a serious car crash. It's not clear when he'll return. The news means Republicans will be down to a one-seat majority. The timing will be a challenge for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

He's staring down a member revolt to force a vote addressing the expired subsidies for the Affordable Care Act program. Johnson is also facing a government shutdown deadline by months end. And he's hoping to garner enough bipartisan votes to pass another wave of of spending bills. Claude Riesales, NPR News. At today's GOP retreat, President Trump addressed the U.S. military operation over the weekend in Venezuela that resulted in the arrest of deposed President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Celia Flores. They were protected, and our guys weren't.

You know, our guys are jumping out of helicopters, and they're not protected, and they were. But it was so brilliant. The electricity for almost the entire country was, boom, turned off. That's when they knew there was a problem. There was no electricity. Yesterday, Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking weapons and other charges in a federal court in New York. Maduro's removal became a nearly half-million dollar payday for a trader on the app called Polymarket. NPR's Bobby Allen says the trade has raised new concerns about insider trading on popular prediction market sites. Hours before President Trump ordered the Maduro operation, an anonymous user on Polymark.

bet $32,000 the Venezuelan leader would be toppled. That turned into a $400,000 profit. As online sleuths tried to identify the trader, a debate is raging about insider trading on popular prediction markets like polymarket and Kalshi. The apps allow people to place bets on what politicians might say, what officials might do, and the outcome of elections. Legal experts say an insider trading case against a prediction market user would be more difficult than a case against a stock market trader. There are far fewer laws governing prediction markets, which the Trump administration is regulating not as a stock, but as a futures contract. Bobby Allen, NPR News. NPR has obtained a memo revealing that the Pentagon is mounting a six-month review of women in ground combat

jobs. The review is being conducted to determine the effectiveness of having several thousand female soldiers and Marines in infantry armor and artillery, 10 years after those positions were open to them. From Washington, this is NPR News. One of the first law enforcement officers to respond to the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvaldi, Texas, is standing trial. Opening statements began today now that a jury had been seated. Former Uvaldi Schools officer Adrian Gonzalez is facing 29 counts of child abandonment or endangerment. He is one of two officers facing criminal charges in this case, but an investigation found that nearly 400 officers from multiple agencies

were at the site of the school attack, waiting 77 minutes before they breached the classroom and killed the shooter. The gunman had killed 19 students and two teachers. The corporation for public broadcasting says it has voted to shut down the organization. The move coming months after Congress removed federal subsidies for public broadcasting. Here's NPR's David Fokinflik. The board voted December 10th. It was disclosed in court filings in CPB's lawsuit against President Trump over his executive order seeking to fire several CPB board members. CBB says its lawsuit is now irrelevant. CEO Patricia Harrison said CPB dissolved, quote, to protect the integrity of the public media system. Otherwise it would be, Harrison said, quote, vulnerable to additional attacks. In another executive order,

Trump sought to bar CPB from subsidizing NPR and PBS, which he accused of bias. The network's deny that. In a separate suit against the White House, NPR and three Colorado public radio stations allege the order is unconstitutional. That case remains in court. David Fulkenflick, NPR News. The Dow is up 490 points. It's NPR.