NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-17-2025 8PM EST

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

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There's a battle playing out over who should control American universities. We're going to bankrupt these universities. In season one, we were guessing what was to come. Now we know. We want $500 million from Harvard. It's season two of The Harvard Plan. This time, it really is personal. Listen to On the Media, wherever you get your podcasts.

Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. President Trump says the U.S. plans to sell F-35 fighter jets to Saudi Arabia. NPR's Franco Ordonez reports the Saudi Crown Prince is expected to meet Trump at the White House tomorrow. President Trump and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman are expected to discuss the fighter jets as well as security and efforts to normalize relations with Israel. I am planning on it. You've got a solid ally. They've been a great ally. They've got to like us very much. Look at the Iran situation. What we did in terms of oblitering, you know, they're, we obliterated their nuclear capability. Yeah, I will say that we will be doing that. We'll be selling

F-35s. Experts say the sale of F-35s would change the military balance in the region while raising questions about Washington's long-held position of maintaining Israel's, quote, qualitative military edge, which was signed into a 2008 law. Franco, Ordonias. NPR News, the White House. The Trump administration says it is blowing up suspected drugs. in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific Ocean to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the U.S. The strikes are a big change from what the U.S. has done for decades, and as NPR's Ryan Lucas reports, current and former officials are questioning their legality. So I spoke with nine current and former officials for this story. They are all people who spent much of their careers

focused on transnational criminal organizations and drug trafficking. So they have a lot of experience. They are not fans of drug cartels. They all questioned the legality of the Trump administration military strikes. Many of them referred to the strikes as murder. And they point out that there's no due process here for the folks who are being killed. Now, the Trump administration, for its part, disagrees. It says these strikes are lawful and that the president is acting under his article two powers as commander in chief and in self-defense. The Justice Department said in a statement that the administration is committed to ending drug trafficking and said that these leaks are from disgruntled employees. NPR's Ryan Lucas reporting, an investment company owned by

billionaire Peter Thiel has sold its $100 million stake in chipmaker NVIDIA. As NPR's Bobby Allen reports, it's adding to investor fears that the artificial intelligence industry is in a financial bubble. Peter Thiel's hedge fund selling off a massive investment in NVIDIA came after SoftBank did the same last week. Together, the moves are stoking investor concern that the AI industry is in a speculative bubble that could soon pop. Tech firms are pouring billions into AI data centers and infrastructure. The payoff is uncertain. Wall Street trader Michael Burry has become a prominent voice in the AI bubble discourse. Burry made hundreds of millions of dollars by betting against the housing market before the subprime mortgage

crash and was a central figure in the book The Big Short. Burry recently revealed that his asset management company is betting against NVIDIA. He wrote on X, sometimes we see bubbles. Bobby Allen, NPR News. This is NPR News from Washington. A new report finds that more than 74,000 people enrolled in experiments have been affected by the national. Institutes of Health's funding cuts. According to JAMA Internal Medicine, funding lapsed for 383 studies that were testing treatments for conditions like cancer, heart disease, and brain disease earlier this year. Some studies were still in progress when the funding was axed, meaning that patients could

have lost access to medication or been left with an unmonitored device implant. One of the nation's largest owners of TV stations is making a bid to take over a competitor From Member Station WVXU in Cincinnati, Tana Weingartner reports Sinclair Broadcasting wants to acquire Cincinnati-based Scripps. In a filing, Baltimore-based Sinclair says it's bought an 8.2 percent stake in Scripps and that a merger could be done within a year. Cincinnati media reporter John Keystetter, however, notes Scripps issued a statement saying it would take steps to protect the company from the opportunistic actions of Sinclair or anyone else. Calling it an opportunistic action doesn't sound like scripts and Sinclair are all that close to coming to a deal, even though Sinclair is saying, you know, they've been talking for months about combining forces. The FCC is already mulling a multi-billion dollar deal by the nation's largest TV station owner Next Star to take over its competitor, Tegna. For NPR News, I'm Tanna-Wingartner in Cincinnati.

The Leonid meteor shower is taking place tonight. The shower should be especially visible because the moon will only be about 7% illuminated. It can produce up to 15 meteors per hour under dark skies. This is NPR News. 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 C's apply.