NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-12-2025 4PM EST

Episode Date: November 12, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh. The longest government shutdown in U.S. history is a step closer to coming to an end. The U.S. House of Representatives holds a final vote on a spending measure tonight to reopen agencies. NPR's Claudia Grisales reports Republican leaders are confident. They have the votes to approve a bill that many Democrats still oppose. They secured a promise for a vote in December on health care and a commitment to nouguble. a plan to address those subsidies. Those who broke with the party and the Senate said they got the best deal possible, and that includes those full year appropriations plans, which were

negotiated between the parties over several months. Meanwhile, other Senate Democrats who voted know argued they weren't making good to reopen the government in exchange for addressing these expiring Affordable Care Act subsidies. NPR's Claudia Grisales reporting. President Trump is accusing U.S. House Democrats of bringing up the Jeffrey Epstein controversy again to try and hurt him. NPR's Frank Ordonez reports on how Trump is defending himself against accusations that he spent hours with one of the late financiers alleged sex trafficking victims. President Trump accuses Democrats of bringing up the quote Epstein hoax to try to deflect negative attention from the shutdown fight. At the White House, Press Secretary Caroline Levitt said the only thing

the emails prove is that Trump did nothing wrong. And what President Trump has always said is that he was from Palm Beach and so was Jeffrey Epstein. Jeffrey Epstein was a member at Maralago until President Trump kicked him out because Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile and he was a creep. Leavitt says the unnamed victim in the emails is the late Virginia Guffrey. An Epstein victim who Levitt noted had repeatedly said President Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing. The identity of the unnamed victim has not been independently verified. Franco, Ordonias. NPR News, the White House. NPR confirms the United Kingdom is denying certain intelligence sharing requests the U.S. made in light of concern about the U.S. military's action in the Caribbean.

The International Energy Agency's release its closely watch World Energy Outlook, a data-driven look at the planet's future energy use. Here's NPR's Kamila Dominovsky. The World Energy Outlook is not a forecast. It lays out several scenarios. But Director Fatibiril says one thing is clear. We can comfortably say that the age of electricity has arrived. Electricity demand booms in all scenarios, thanks to electric vehicles, AI, and air conditioning. Natural gas grows while oil either grows or levels off, based mostly on how quickly electric vehicles take off. The varying scenarios see different degrees of global warming, but in all of them, the world exceeds the globally agreed target of keeping warming to 1.5%.

degrees Celsius. That's Camilla Dominovsky. It's NPR. The U.S. bids a formal farewell to the penny today. At President Trump's order, the U.S. men in Philadelphia, produced the very last one-cent coin because its value is much less in the cost to make it. But there are still billions of pennies still in circulation and changing hands. The northern lights were seen over much of the country last night, extending as far south as to. Texas. NPR's Nell Greenfield-Boyse reports more colorful light shows are expected this evening as some dramatic space weather continues. The sun's at about the maximum phase of its 11-year activity cycle, belching out bursts of plasma and magnetic fields that can affect the Earth. And while strong geomagnetic

storms can be a potential problem for, say, satellites or the electrical grid, for sky gazers, it's an opportunity to see the northern lights in places that usually. go bereft. Space weather forecasters are expecting more strong activity, though exactly how strong and how far south the northern lights will be seen is hard to predict. The best bet is finding a spot with dark skies and consider taking photos with a camera, which can register subtle colors as more vivid compared to the naked eye. Nell Greenfield Boyce, NPR News. U.S. stocks have ended the day mix. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, up 326

points or more than half a percent to settle at 48,254. The S&P gained four points. The NASDA closed down 61. I'm Lakshmi Singh. NPR News.