NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-18-2025 4AM EST

Episode Date: November 18, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, Nimeshaye Stevens. The House of Representatives is poised to vote today on a bill to release government records on late sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. President Trump says the bill should be passed and that he would sign it, but doubts that his detractors will be satisfied. Unfortunately, like with the Kennedy situation, with the Martin Luther King situation, not to put Jeffrey Epstein in the same category, but no matter what we give, it's never enough. You know, with Kennedy, we gave everything and it wasn't enough. With Martin Luther King, we gave everything and it's never enough.

We've already given, I believe the number is 50,000 pages. Meanwhile, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, says he's deeply embarrassed over his email exchanges with Epstein and that he's stepping away from his public duties. served in the Clinton and Obama administrations. A federal magistrate in Washington is criticizing the Justice Department's prosecution of former FBI Director James Comey. Judge William Fitzpatrick cites what he calls fundamental misstatements of the law by the prosecutor who took the case to a grand jury. Fitzpatrick also expressed concern about unexplained irregularities in the grand jury

transcripts. Comey has pleaded not guilty to obstruction and making a false statement to Congress. A new analysis finds the Trump administration's cuts and grants to the National Institutes of Health 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, NPR News. Over to economic data are expected this week. As NPR Scott Horsley reports, that includes late summer tallies of exports and imports and a snapshot of the job market. in early fall. Now that the federal shutdown is over, government statisticians will start to release those economic report cards we've been missing for the last six weeks. The Commerce Department says it will provide an update on the August trade deficit on Wednesday. The Labor Department will deliver the September jobs report the following day. Both of those reports were supposed to come out in early October. No word yet on when or even if we'll see data on inflation or

unemployment for last month, which could help to shape the Federal Reserve's decision on interest Straits in December. Scott Horsley, NPR, News, Washington. U.S. Futures are flat and after-hours trading on Wall Street. This is NPR. And New York authorities are searching for suspect in the shooting of New York Jets' cornerback, Chris Boyd. The special team standout remains hospitalized in critical condition following an attack Sunday in Manhattan. Boyd signed with New York as a free agent in March. He has not played the season due to a shoulder injury. The federal government is 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, the state

of Tennessee has not been able 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. When 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 Abrams in Nashville. Gunmen have kidnapped 25 teenage girls from a boarding school in northwestern Nigeria's Kethe State. No group has gained responsibility for the abductions, which are not uncommon in a region where security has been limited. On Asia market, shares are lower. This is NPR News.