NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-16-2025 9PM EST

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

NPR News: 11-16-2025 9PM ESTLearn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Janine Herbst. The U.S. military says its latest strike on a boat it says was carrying drugs in the eastern Pacific has killed three people. This, as the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier is now in the Caribbean as tensions with Venezuela grow. Meanwhile, President Trump says talks with Venezuela are a possibility. Hundreds of National Guard troops will be leaving Portland and Chicago in the coming days amid court battles stalling the deployments. MPRs Julianna Kim reports. A defense official not authorized to speak publicly told NPR that 200 members of the Texas National Guard will be leaving Illinois.

Similarly, 200 members of the California National Guard will be leaving Oregon. The number of Oregon National Guard personnel in Portland will also be reduced by half, the official says. The Trump administration initially ordered the Guard to Illinois in Portland to protect ICE and other federal personnel, but troops have been repeatedly blocked by the courts from conducting any operations in the streets. On Friday, the military's Northern Command hinted that the size of deployments will change to, quote, ensure a constant enduring and long-term president.

in each city. Juliana Kim, NPR News. Disclosures show a former Fed official violated trading rules. And Pierre Scott Horsley reports the board member abruptly resigned from the central bank three months ago. Paperwork released by the Office of Government Ethics shows Adriana Kugler bought and sold individual stocks last year in violation of Fed policy. Some of the transactions took place during the so-called blackout periods around Fed meetings when trading is even more strictly regulated. The rules are designed to avoid the appearance that Fed officials are trading on inside information. Coogler says the trades were made by her husband without her knowledge. News of the stock trades may explain Coogler's decision to quit the Fed in August, almost six months before her term expired.

Her resignation gave President Trump an early opening to install White House economist Stephen Myron on the Fed board, where Myron has echoed the president's call for more aggressive interest rate cuts. Scott Horsley and Pierre News, Washington. The British government is set to announce sweeping. changes to its asylum policy tomorrow. Vicki Barker has more. Based in part on Denmark's tough policies, the new measures would, among other things, require people granted asylum in the UK to wait 20 years before they can apply to settle permanently. And those whose home countries are later deemed safe would be told to return. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmoud telling the BBC

that illegal migration was, quote, tearing the country apart. We have a system that is out of control, it's unfair, and it's putting huge pressure on communities. Only serious reform, she said, can restore public trust and rebuild national consensus on having any asylum system at all. For NPR News, I'm Vicki Barker in London. U.S. Futures Contracts are trading in mixed territory at this hour. You're listening to NPR News. The Federal Aviation Administration says the emergency order to reduce flights at 40 of the country's top airports implemented during the government shutdown is ending, and all airports can go back to normal starting at 6 a.m. Eastern tomorrow morning. The reductions forced flight delays

and cancellations amid staffing shortages of air traffic controllers. A new study finds an outbreak of the bird flu on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean has had devastating consequences for the island's wildlife. And Piers Nate Rod has more. South Georgia, a sub-Antarctic island, hundreds of miles east of the tip of Argentina, is home to the largest breeding population of elephant seals on the planet. In 2023, the bird fluke, H5N1 was first reported there, and an aerial survey the following year found that by then nearly half of the seals breeding females were gone. Marine ecologist Connor Bamford authored the new study in the journal Communications Biology.

The loss of breeding females and the loss of the population. pups that they would have produced over the few years that will really cause this sort of double dip in the population. He's hopeful the population will recover, but the amount of loss, he says, is jarring. Maid Rot, NPR News. The federal government is set to release the September monthly jobs report this Thursday. It was supposed to have come out October 3rd, but the government shutdown prevented that. The data should cheer investors on Wall Street, but it's not clear if a Monthly Jobs Report for October will be released. I'm Janine Herbst, 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. Join millions of customers and visit Wise.com. T's and Cs apply.