NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-17-2025 9PM 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. Recent court filings show that hundreds of immigrants arrested in Chicago during President Trump's immigration crackdown have no criminal record. NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran has more. Out of the 614 people on the list, 598 do not have a criminal record. That's 97% of the immigrants arrested. So per this document, most of the people in this sample have not committed a crime. Only 16 or 2.6% have a criminal history.

Of those 16, four of them have criminal convictions. They range from domestic battery to the UI. to indecent exposure and kidnapping. DHS regularly says that it is taking murderers and rapists off the streets. However, none of the people on this list was convicted or arrested for murder or rape. NPR's Sergio Martinez Beltran reporting, The House is heading towards a vote on a bill to force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files. Lawmakers pushed through previous efforts by President Trump and Republican leaders to stop the effort.

But over the weekend, Trump changed his mind and urged Republicans to, release the files. The federal government has reopened, but not all government assistance programs are back up and running. As Cynthia Abrams of Member Station WPLN reports without word from the Department of Health and Human Services, Tennessee has been unable to re-up its utility assistance program. Typically, Tennessee receives around $72 million federal dollars each year to help residents pay their gas or electric bills. Like many programs, it was put on hold during the shutdown. But even though the government has now reopened, the state has not received any dollars, or even any notice of how much it can expect. In the meantime, Tennessee is taking applications for assistance,

like from Denise Simpson, a nursing student, and mother of two. I don't care what nobody says. You have to be super mom with assistance. It takes a village. Most of the 12,000 households who have applied in the last two weeks, including Simpson, have yet to receive any help. For NPR News, I'm Cynthia Brems in Nashville. Temporary flight reductions at major airports have been lifted as more air traffic controllers return to work. NPR's Joel Rose reports. The Department of Transportation and the Federal Aviation Administration say airlines can resume normal operations at dozens of major airports. The FAA said those restrictions had been necessary to keep the airspace safe as the agency grappled with widespread staffing shortages of air traffic controllers during the government shutdown.

But with the shutdown over, air traffic controllers have finally received some of the the back pay they earned. And regulators say staffing conditions are now back to what they were before the shutdown. Airlines say they're confident they can ramp up quickly and should be able to return to their full schedules before Thanksgiving holiday travel begins. Joel Rose, NPR News, Washington. The U.S. stock market fell today. The SMP 500 lost nearly a percentage point. This is NPR. Japan's economy contracted by 1.8% between July and September as President Trump's tariffs hurt exports. Tariffs have been a major blow to Japan's export-reliant economy led by automakers like

Toyota. Exports in Japan fell four and a half percent from a year earlier. Ant colonies can sometimes be tricked into murdering their own queens. As NPR's Nell Greenfield Boyce reports, the trickery comes from a female ant of another species that wants to take the queen's throne. It's hard for a young, would-be queen aunt to strike out on her own and try to establish a brand-new colony. So some ant species have evolved a way for female ants to basically take over existing colonies of another species. In the journal Current Biology, researchers in Japan describe how a female ant will sneak into a colony, creep up to its queen, and spray a chemical onto her. This chemical has a dramatic effect.

It makes the colony's worker ants suddenly turn on their queen, who is also their mother. The workers unwittingly betray her, attacking her until she's dead. Then the female intruder becomes the new queen and uses the workers to raise her own offspring. Nell Greenfield Boyce, NPR News. Alabama's Republican Governor K. Ivy is urging the board that oversees Alabama Public Television to delay a decision to sever ties with PBS. In a letter, she urged the Alabama Educational Television Commission to study Alabamians' opinions on the matter. This is NPR News from Washington. This message comes from WISE, the app for using money around the globe.

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