NPR News Now - NPR News: 11-21-2025 2AM EST

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

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Fall in love with new music every Friday at All Songs Considered. That's NPR's Music Recommendation podcast. Fridays are where we spend our whole show sharing all the greatest new releases of the week. Make the hunt for new music a part of your life again. Tap into New Music Friday from All Songs Considered, available wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shay Stevens. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the months long National Guard deployment in Washington, D.C. NPR's Juliana Kim has details. U.S. District Judge Giacob ruled that by sending thousands of National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., President Trump undermined the city's autonomy and presented harms to the nation's capital.

She issued a temporary block on the deployment, but it won't take effect until next month in order to give the Trump administration time to appeal. As of Wednesday, there were over 2100 guard forces in D.C. that includes troops from several states. In a state, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson asserted that Trump was well within his authority to send the guard to D.C. in order to, quote, protect federal assets and assist law enforcement. Giuliana Kim, NPR News. The federal immigration crackdown in Charlotte, North Carolina is winding down, according to law enforcement officials there. A social media post by Charlotte Mecklenburg Police says Border Patrol officers

involved in the operation have left the area. But a Homeland Security official is saying the opposite. The federal government is shifting its policy on vaccines. The CDC's website now states that there might be a link between vaccines and autism. As NPR's Ping Wong reports, there is no evidence to support the change in messaging, but it is in keeping with Health Secretary Robert Kennedy's long-held skepticism of vaccines. 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's 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. And peers, Ping Wong. A federal judge has issued a blistering dissent after two other judges on the same panel blocked the Texas redistricting map. The case has some major ramifications for Republicans who hope to retain their control of the House after the 2026 midterms. Houston Public Media's Andrew Schneider has more. U.S. Circuit Judge Jerry E. Smith lost in the two-to-one 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 this is about politics. And under the controlling precedent of the circuit, Jerry Manor 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. This is NPR. Former presidents and vice presidents gathered at the Washington National Cathedral Thursday

to pay final respects to Dick Cheney, who died earlier this month at the age of 84. President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance were not invited to the memorial. Grammy-winning rapper Pras Michelle has been sentenced to 14 years in prison over his ties to illegal contributions to the 2012 Obama re-election campaign. 52-year-old Michelle was convicted in April 2023 of conspiracy and acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government. Defense attorneys sought a three-year prison term while the Justice Department recommended the death penalty. A self-portrait of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo is now the most expensive work of art by a woman ever to be sold at auction. NPR's Netta Ullubi has the story.

The painting is called El Sueno La Cama. 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 callow 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 Ullaby reporting, this is NPR. 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.