NPR News Now - NPR News: 10-30-2025 10AM EDT

Episode Date: October 30, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Corva Coleman. New proposals by the Department of Health and Human Services will dramatically restrict gender-affirming care for transgender youth. As NPR's Selena Simmons-Duffin exclusively reports, these rules are being prepared for release in early November. The two proposed rules use Medicaid to try to force hospitals and doctors not to provide gender-affirming care for young people. One of the rules prohibits them from getting reimbursed

for patients receiving this care who are covered by Medicaid. NPR obtained the draft text of this rule. The other rule is even more sweeping. It would make not providing gender affirming care for youth a condition for a hospital to get Medicare and Medicaid payments at all. The new rules would not go into effect immediately, but there has already been a chilling effect on access to the care. Gender affirming care, including puberty blockers, hormones, and rarely surgery is not against any federal law, but it has been banned in 27 states in recent years. Selina Simmons-Duffin, NPR News, Washington. Stocks open mixed this morning after President Trump's much-hyped meeting with Chinese

President Xi Jinping. NPR Scott Horsley reports the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose about 180 points in early trading. This was President Trump's first face-to-face meeting with his Chinese counterpart since returning to office, and it seems to have produced at least a partial thaw in trade 10 between the world's two biggest economies. Trump says China's agreed to end its boycott of U.S. soybeans and ease export restrictions on rare earth minerals. For his part, Trump's lowering the tariff on imports from China, although Chinese goods will still be taxed at an average rate of nearly 50%. Stocks were lower overnight in both Shanghai and Hong Kong. Stocks rose slightly in

Tokyo as the Bank of Japan held interest rate steady. Here in the U.S., the Federal Reserve lowered its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point, but raised doubt that about an additional cut at the next Fed meeting in December. Scott Horsley-Npair News, Washington. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth says the U.S. military has destroyed another boat in the Eastern Pacific. He says four people were killed in the latest attack, as NPR's Quill Lawrence reports. Hegsteth posted a video on social media showing a small motorboat exploding.

He said the boat, like more than a dozen others destroyed in recent weeks, was smuggling narcotics toward the United States. The Trump administration has labeled drug cartels terrorists, and claims that makes it legal for the U.S. military to destroy the boats and kill the people on board, even if they're unarmed. Critics in Congress from both parties say this is execution without trial and goes against the U.S. Code of Military Justice. Senate Democrats have demanded that the Department of Justice make public any rulings it is issued that allow summarily killing criminal suspects. Quill Lawrence NPR News. On Wall Street, the Dow's up 170 points.

This is NPR. Authorities in Brazil say 121 people were killed two days ago in a brutal police raid in Rio de Janeiro. Police in Rio say they were fighting gangs, but Rio residents recovered some 70 bodies from a ravine near their besieged neighborhood. Some residents say some of the victims had been executed. Critics are raising questions about what the Rio police were doing

and why the ravine was not cordoned. off as a crime scene. Sudan's paramilitary group has killed more than 460 patients and their companions at a hospital, according to the World Health Organization. Kate Barla reports humanitarian workers are trying to help thousands of desperate people fleeing the Sudanese civil war. The WHO said it was appalled by the killings at the Saudi Maternity Hospital in Al-Fashah and called for patients and health workers to be protected under international law. The city in Darfur was captured by the paramilitary rapid support forces on Sunday after more than a year's siege. The armed forces against whom they've been fighting a civil war for more than two years have withdrawn from the city.

The UN's migration organisation said more than 26,000 people have fled alfasha. Mothers with babies, malnourished children and the elderly are all arriving at the village of Tawila, where aid workers are facing what the UN calls extraordinary danger to assist them. Those unable to escape alfasher face great risk. Videos posted by the RSF show them carrying out executions. For NPR News, I'm Kate Bartlett in Johannesburg. And I'm Corva Coleman, NPR News, from Washington.