NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-17-2025 5PM EST

Episode Date: November 17, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. President Trump is now telling House Republicans they should vote to release the Epstein files. NPR's Sage Miller reports. Trump took to truth social to say even though he considers it a Democratic hoax, Republicans should vote to release the files because there's nothing to hide. The House is set to vote on the petition this week. There is a possibility that dozens of Republicans vote in favor to release the files collected during an investigation by the Department of Justice.

The administration has released thousands of private files to the House Oversight Committee, but the Justice Department still has documents that have not been made public, including witness interviews. If the measure passes the House, it would still need to be approved by the Senate and signed by the President. Sage Miller, NPR News. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince is heading to Washington for a meeting at the White House tomorrow with President Trump. NPR's Aibatrowi reports the meeting's agenda is expected to cover a lot of ground from investment deals to a U.S. defense pact. The last time Prince Mohammed bin Salman visited Washington was seven years ago, just before his aides killed Saudi critic and Washington post-columnist Jamal Khashoggi, sparking international outcry. But the heir to the Saudi throne returns to Washington as a partner, not a pariah.

The prince, known also for major social and economic reforms that have changed life in Saudi Arabia, has vowed hundreds of billions of dollars in investments in the U.S. under Trump. He's expected to ask for F-35 fighter jets, advanced AI chips, nuclear technology, and a defense pack that wouldn't require congressional approval. Underpinning those talks are personal ties between Trump and Prince Mohammed. That was on display in May when the president chose Saudi Arabia again as his first overseas trip, and those personal ties mixed with business as billions from the Gulf flow into Trump's family ventures. Aipotrawi, NPR News, Dubai. A new analysis finds the Trump administration's cuts to national institutes of health grants affected hundreds of clinical trials and thousands of patients.

NPR's Rob Stein reports on the findings published in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine. Since returning to office, the Trump administration has terminated hundreds of grants from the NIH for medical research. Researchers at Harvard analyzed clinical trials funded by the NIH between the end of February and the middle of August. They found 383 clinical trials involving at least 74,000 participants were affected. Studies involving infectious diseases, heart disease, and respiratory diseases were hit hardest. One out of every 37 NIH cancer trials was affected. Rob Stein and PR News. A new analysis shows that more people are falling behind on their utility bills.

Past due balances jumped 9.7% in the second quarter over the same period last year. According to the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank. The Foundation says nearly 6 million households have utility debt, so severe that will soon be reported to collection agencies. This is NPR News from Washington. Bangladesh's ousted Prime Minister, Sheikh Hasina, has been sentenced to death for her role in a deadly crackdown on a student uprising last year. The International Crimes Tribunal in Dhaka passed the sentence today. Hasina fled to India after the uprising and was sentenced in absentia.

India has declined to extradite her. The uprising began over a controversial jobs quota system and resulted, in more than 800 deaths. South Korea has proposed holding military-to-military talks with North Korea for the first time in seven years. NPR's Anthony Kuhn reports that the immediate goal is to prevent military clashes along the demilitarized zone, or DMZ, dividing the two Koreas. South Korea says North Korean troops have crossed the military demarcation line or MDL at the center of the DMZ more than 10 times this year, while building roads and fences and laying mines, sometimes forcing the South to fire warning.

shots. The MDL was marked with signposts at the end of the Korean War, but that was more than 70 years ago, and most of the signs are now illegible, disintegrated, or covered by vegetation. Seoul says the bigger goal of the talks is to lower tensions and restore trust between the two Koreas. But North Korea has ignored the South's efforts at outreach, cut all channels of communication, and abandoned its goal of eventual reunification with the South. Anthony Kuhn in PR News, Seoul. Triple A is projecting that 81.8 million people will travel at least 50 miles from home over the Thanksgiving holiday. That's an additional 1.6 million travelers compared to last Thanksgiving, potentially a new overall record.

This is NPR News from Washington.