NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-20-2025 10PM EST

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

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Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all. On the web at theshmit.org. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has given U.S. Embassy's new instructions on how to write the annual human rights reports. It'll downplay the rights of minority groups and focus more on what the U.S. sees as infringements on free speech and allied countries in Europe, as NPR's Michelle Kellerman reports. Rubio State Department rewrote the Biden administration's country reports on human rights,

and now embassies have been given instructions on how to keep this year's report brief and focused. A senior State Department official says the department will focus on what the administration describes as natural rights of individuals rather than on marginalized groups. The new instructions encourage embassies to write about affirmative action policies, which the Trump administration opposes, as well as abortion. Rather than focusing on trans rights, the State Department will report on what it calls the chemical or surgical mutilation of children in operations that attempt to modify their sex.

Michelle Kellerman and PR News, the State Department. A federal judge has issued a blistering dissent after two other judges on the same panel blocked Texas's redistricting map from taking effect next year. The case has major ramifications for whether Republicans retained control of the House after the mid-term elections. From Houston Public Media, Andrew Schneider, reports. U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith lost in the 2-1 ruling. In a more than 100-page dissent, Smith wrote the big winners in the case are liberal activists

and politicians. At South Texas College of Law, Houston Professor Josh Blackman says Smith argues his fellow judges displayed their own judicial activism. It's unusual for a judge to talk about politics so much, but the basic claim is that this is about politics. And under the controlling precedent of the circuit, gerry manner is permissible for political reasons, even if not for racial reasons.

The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to weigh in. For NPR News, I'm Andrew Schneider in Houston. The Trump administration has revised a CDC website to contradict the scientific consensus that vaccines don't cause autism. The update has outraged. public health and autism experts. It's part of the Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s overhaul of

U.S. vaccine policy, as NPR's Ping Huang explains. As Health Secretary, Kennedy has been sowing doubts about vaccine safety. Earlier this year, during a big measles outbreak in Texas, which killed two children. Kennedy went on Fox News and said that the measles vaccines kills people every year, gives them the same symptoms you get from measles. That is not true. He's also been making changes to how vaccine policy gets made. So he stacked a CDC vaccine advisory committee with people known for their unorthodox views who have been raising unsupported conspiracy theories at public meetings, and they've already made some changes to policies for flu and COVID vaccines.

NPR's Ping Huang reporting, stocks fell after an early search today. This is NPR. Israel killed 33 people in strikes across Gaza. The attacks have been some of the deadliest since October 10th when the U.S. brokered ceasefire took effect. Hospital officials say strikes, targeted tents, sheltering displaced people. Israel says it was responding after soldiers came under fire in Khan Yunus. Hamas denied firing toward Israeli troops. Mexican artist Frida Kahlo broke a record tonight, as NPR's Annetta Ulaby reports,

one of her haunting self-portraits is now the most expensive work of art by a woman sold at auction. The painting is called El Sueno La Cama. That means the dream, the bed, and the 1940 work. shows the artist asleep in a bed, adrift in the sky with a grinning skeleton wrapped in dynamite on top of the canopy. The painting sold for $54.7 million. That outstrips the $44.4 million fetched by a Georgia O'Keefe flower painting back in 2014. But the art market has softened. The Kalo painting fell short of Sotheby's estimate of $60 million on the high end. An art by women still has a long way to go. A painting by the Austrian artist Gustav Klimt sold earlier this

week for $240 million. Netta Ulibe, NPR News. Colombian scientists have recovered a cannon, three coins, and a porcelain cup from the Caribbean Sea. The site is where the Spanish Galle in San Jose sank in 1708. The United States, Colombia, and Spain all claim rights to the sunken treasure. The wreckage lies 600 meters deep, but its exact location is a state secret. I'm Rylan Barton. 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 Cs apply.