NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-20-2025 5AM EST

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington. I'm Dave Mattingly. The Justice Department now has 30 days to release its unclassified records on the late sex offender, Jeffrey Epstein. President Trump has signed the bill passed by Congress that compels the DOJ to act. The measure does allow Attorney General Pam Bondi to redact or withhold information that might jeopardize a federal investigation. Daniel Benske is an Epstein survivor. just really hoping that there aren't any new cases that would stall getting every single part of that file released. She was speaking to ABC News. Writing on Truth Social, President Trump was critical of Democrats in Congress who pushed for the release of the files, calling the effort a democratic distraction, noting the Epstein files were not released during the Biden administration. Later this morning, the Labor Department is due to report the U.S. employment numbers for September. NPR Scott Horsleap says the release of the data was held up by the recent government shutdown. The report details employment and unemployment for the month of September.

And even though the numbers are a little stale by now, having gathered dust during the six-week government shutdown, analysts will be looking closely for any clues about the strength or weakness of the job market heading in to the final months of the year. This is the last jobs report the Federal Reserve will get before its next decision on interest rates in about three weeks. Labor Department says jobs numbers for October and November will be released together in mid-December after the Fed meeting. Some of the usual October data, including the unemployment rate, won't be released at all because it wasn't collected while government number crunchers were furloughed. Scott Horsley, MPR News, Washington.

Stocks in Asia were up sharply today after chipmaker Invidia reported strong sales and earnings numbers for the third quarter. The company says it made another $32 billion in the latest period. And NPR's Maria Aspen has more. NVIDIA is the most valuable company in the world. It sells the semiconductors that are powering the AI boom, and it's making gobs of money. But for all the billions of dollars that tech companies are investing in AI, they're not seeing a lot of payoff yet. Now, more top investors and CEOs are warning that the AI bubble is due to burst. That's a problem for the stock market, which has been hitting record highs thanks to tech stocks.

Despite lots of other economic uncertainty, tariffs are cutting into company profits, consumer prices are rising, and the jobs market is weakening. Investors will get a delayed government update on employment, but in the meantime, they celebrated NVIDIA's Blockbuster Report Card. Maria Aspen, NPR News, New York. Wall Street futures are higher this morning. Dow futures are up 188 points. NASDAQ futures, the tech-heavy NASDAQ is up 336. This is NPR News. President Trump says he plans to meet with New York City's incoming mayors O' Ron Mamdani at the White House tomorrow. A spokesperson for the Democratic Socialists says the president

and Mamdani will discuss affordability, economic security, and public safety. Mamdani won New York's mayoral race earlier this month. Novelist Robbie Alamandine is this year's winner of the National Book Award for Fiction. NPR's Andrew Limbaugh, says the award is one of the most prestigious in American literature and was given out at a ceremony in New York last night. During his acceptance speech, Alamedine took the time to thank his agent, his editor, and a few other people, including his psychiatrist, his drug dealers, and... Thank all gastrointestinal doctors. I guarantee you that I wouldn't have been able to write

a single word in the last 10 years without their help. There would have been no movement. in Medine's novel, the true, true story of Roger the gullible and his mother is a funny and sad novel about a philosophy teacher who lives with his aging mother. In nonfiction, Omar Al-Aqad won for his book, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This, and in poetry, Patricia Smith, won for her collection The Intentions of Thunder. Andrew Limbong, NPR News. Officials in Colorado say they've arrested nearly a dozen people and seized more than a half ton of methamphetamine as the result of an investigation into drug trafficking. trafficking. Federal prosecutors say the investigation covered two years and was focused on an operation based in Mexico. I'm Dave Mattingly, NPR News in Washington.