NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-18-2025 10AM EST

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Corva Coleman. Several women who have accused late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse have gathered on Capitol Hill. They're speaking out ahead of a plan vote by the House that requires that the Justice Department release all files linked to Epstein. President Trump had tried to block the measure, but did an about face this week. He told Republican lawmakers in the House and the Senate to support it. The effort in the House is co-sponsored by Republican Congressman Thomas Massey. He says if Republican senators want to change the Senate, the House bill in any way, they need to focus on releasing the information.

If you want to add some additional protections for these survivors, go for it. But if you do anything that prevents any disclosure, you are not for the people and you are not part of this effort. Do not muck it up in the Senate. The women say they are forming a group to demand action to protect women and children against sexual abuse. The House is set to vote today on a bipartisan and bill to restore collective bargaining rights for most federal workers. And Pierre's Andrea Shue reports a majority of House lawmakers signed a petition to force a vote. The bill was first introduced by Democratic Congressman Jared Golden of Maine in April after President Trump issued an executive order terminating collective bargaining rights for roughly 1 million federal

workers, citing national security concerns. The bill called the Protect America's Workforce Act would nullify that executive order. On Monday, two Republicans, Republicans signed on to a discharge petition, reaching the necessary threshold to force a vote. One of them, Congressman Mike Loller of New York, said in a statement, Every American deserves the right to have a voice in the workplace. Despite multiple lawsuits challenging Trump's executive order, some federal agencies have already canceled collective bargaining agreements while others are simply ignoring them.

Andrea Shue and PR News. The one big beautiful bill passed by Congress included a provision designed to defund planned parenthood. This was done by cutting it out of Medicaid. As NPR's Selina Simmons-Duffin reports, the law also affects a network of sexual health clinics in Maine, where abortion is legal. Medicaid already does not pay for abortions in Maine or anywhere else in the country. Now, Maine Family Planning's network of 18 clinics cannot bill Medicaid for any services, including fertility treatment, birth control, sexually transmitted infection treatment, primary care, and more. Vanessa Shields-Hoss, the nurse practitioner at the Thomaston Clinic, says half of Maine Family Planning's patients are on Medicaid.

We've been seeing all of those patients for free. We haven't been turning them away. That has meant a 20% cut to Maine Family Planning's annual budget, and three clinics have had to end their primary care services. Salina Simmons-Duffin, NPR News, Thomaston, Maine. On Wall Street, the Dow is down more than 500 points or down more than 1%. The NASDAQ is down nearly 2%. This is NPR. An infrastructure provider for Internet services says it's resolved problems. Cloudflare reported that it detected an unusual spike in traffic today.

The problem led to service interruptions with online platforms such as Spotify, chat GPT, and others. Cloudflare says it's watching now to make sure everything gets back to normal. A federal judge has decided not to sentence a former Alaska Airlines pilot to prison. Joseph Emerson had pleaded guilty to trying to turn off the engines of a passenger jet in flight over Oregon. The plane landed safely. Emerson says he wanted to take responsibility for his actions. There's new research into ant colonies and why some ants can kill their queen. And Piersnell Greenfield voice explains. 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.

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