NPR News Now - NPR News: 09-20-2025 2AM EDT

Episode Date: September 20, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, D.C., I'm Dale Wilman. The Pentagon is implementing new guidelines that will require journalists to agree to report only approved and officially released information, as NPR's Quill-Lorrence reports. Two U.S. officials who are not authorized to speak publicly confirmed to NPR that the Pentagon will drastically change how journalists have covered the largest department in the U.S. government for decades. Going forward, journalists must sign a pledge not to gather any information, including unclassified reports that hasn't been authorized for release. The Pentagon says those who fail to obey the new policy will lose their press credentials. On social media, defense secretary Pete Higseff posted that,

quote, the press does not run the Pentagon the people do. He wrote, the press is no longer allowed to roam the halls of a secure facility, wear a badge and follow the rules, or go home. Quill Lawrence and PR News. President Trump says he'll meet Chinese leader Xu Jing Ping this fall and travel to China early next year. That announcement comes as relations appear ready to break out of a rut. The two leaders had a call Friday that Trump says yielded progress on a range of thorny issues. And Piers John Ruich has more. Trump says the call with Xi was very productive, and Chinese state media call it pragmatic, positive, and constructive. It's unclear, though, how far the two got in negotiations over a pivotal issue, the fate of the short video app TikTok.

The Trump administration has been trying to broker a deal for U.S. companies to take control of the app from Beijing-based bite dance and prevent it from going dark in the U.S. in line with a law passed last year. Trump said on social media the talks yielded progress on, quote, the approval of the TikTok deal. An official Chinese readout of the meeting was ambiguous, though, as was a statement from bite dance that thanked Trump and Xi for their efforts to preserve the app in the U.S. John Rewich, NPR News. The Trump administration Friday asked the Supreme Court to reinstate its policy of requiring people to list their gender on the passports as their biological gender at birth.

The Trump executive order overturned to one degree or another, State Department regulations that for decades allowed trans and more recently non-binary individuals to self-identify their gender on their passports. NPR's Nina Totenberg has more on that story. Beginning in the early 1990s, the government allowed trans individuals to list their new gender on their passports. And in 2022, the Biden administration broadened the policy. to allow people to list their gender as male, female, or X.

The Trump executive order would allow only two designations on passports, male and female. The administration asked the Supreme Court to block a lower court order that until now has prevented the Trump policy from going into effect. Nina Totenberg, NPR News, Washington. Stocks were ups on Friday. The S&P 500 closed up 32 points. The Dow was up 172 points.

You're listening to NPR. News. A drone attack hit a mosque in the North Darfur region of Sudan on Friday. Aid workers say at least 70 people were killed in that attack, which is being blamed on the paramilitary group rapid support forces. The strike completely destroyed the mosque, and emergency teams say the death toll will likely go much higher as they work their way through the rubble. A federal judge says the University of Missouri violated the First Amendment rights of a pro-Palestinian student group when it tried to exclude them from a homecoming parade. From member station K-C-U-R, Solisa Colonkel, has our report.

The judge ruled that the Chancellor of the University denied Mizzou students for justice in Palestine because of their viewpoint, violating the group's freedom of speech. The Chancellor says he denied the group's homecoming application this year because of safety concerns, but the judge found that was not legitimate enough to exclude them. Ahmed Kaki, who represented the group in court, said the Constitution protects the group from having their speech restricted. And that's exactly what the University of Missouri attempted to do by preventing them from entering the 2025 homecoming parade. The University of Missouri declined to comment on the ruling. For NPR News, I'm Salisa Colloquial in Kansas City.

Noah Lyles won the 200-meter event at the World Track Championships underway in Tokyo this week. He beat Kenny Bednarik by six one-hundredths of a second. Lyles has now matched Usain Bolt with four titles at the World Championships. Minutes later, Melissa Jefferson Wooten won the 100-200 double. With the time of 21.68 seconds, she finished almost half a second ahead of Amy Hunt of Britain. I'm Dale Wilman, NPR News in Washington. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

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