NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-16-2025 5AM EST

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Luis Skiyavoni. President Trump has signed an executive order classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. NPR's Franco Ordonez reports that Trump has called the opioid crisis a public health emergency. President Trump said there's no doubt that adversaries are trafficking fentanyl into the U.S. in order to kill Americans. Speaking in the Oval Office, he said the drug kills more Americans than any war. No bomb does what this is dying. 200 to 300,000 people die every year that we know of. So we're formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction. According to the CDC, the U.S. has roughly 100,000 drug overdose deaths in a year. Fentanyl has been blamed for tens of thousands of those. Trump also

said his administration is considering reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 3. drug, which he said would allow more research to be conducted. Franco, Ordonez, NPR News, the White House. 32-year-old Nick Reiner is being held without bail in connection with the fatal stabbing of his parents. Famous filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer Michelle Singer-Riner, were found mortally wounded in their Los Angeles home Sunday. Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonald has confirmed to NPR that Nick Reiner

has been booked for murder. have our robbery homicide division handling the investigation. They work throughout the night on this case and were able to take into custody Nick Reiner, a suspect in this case. Los Angeles police say they will present a case today to prosecutors for potential charges. There's no arrest yet in the case of a shooting at Brown University this weekend where two people died, nine others were wounded. The FBI and Providence Rhode Island police have released grainy video footage of a person of interest. Ford is discontinuing its F-150 Lightning electric truck, citing low demand. The automaker is shifting its focus to hybrids, smaller EVs, and batteries. We get more from NPR's Kamila Dominovsky.

The F-150 Lightning won awards and outsold other electric pickups, but Ford lost money on everyone that it sold. Andrew Frick is the president of Ford Model E. Ford is following the customer. We are looking at the market as it is today. And today's market includes lower than expected sales and President Trump's stripping away support for EVs. Ford will make an extended range F-150, a form of plug-in hybrid, which can run on gas, as well as a smaller all-electric pickup in the works. That leaves Ford with more battery factories than it needs for its trucks, so it'll use them to supply batteries for the electric grid and data centers instead. Camila Dominovsky, NPR News.

This is NPR. South of Seattle, parts of three suburbs have been evacuated after a small section of the swollen green river levee failed. More than a thousand homes and businesses are affected. Tarrantial rainstorms have left parts of the state of Washington with acute flood damage. The maker of Rumba robot vacuums has declared bankruptcy. NPR's Alina Selyuk report.

I-Robot was founded in 1990 by researchers from MIT, and its devices have been used by the military and scientists tracking oil spills, but its claim to fame is the Roomba, the smart floor vacuum. In recent years, the home robot market got very competitive with lots of foreign rivals, often at cheaper prices. Last year, regulatory scrutiny killed iRobot's merger with Amazon. Now it faces new tariffs for products. They tend to come from Vietnam, and iRobot has been losing. money, it owes nearly $100 million to its main supplier based in Shenzhen, and that firm has

agreed to take over iRobat, assuring that devices will keep operating as normal. Alina Seluk, NPR News. Starting next season, there will be an extreme heat rule for men's professional tennis. An allowance has been in place for women's tennis for 30 years. Amid increased heat waves, climate stress has been a growing problem in October during the Shanghai Masters' defending champion Yannick Center stopped playing due to severe leg cramps. The new rules based on acute heat, humidity, and other factors will allow for 10-minute breaks during Best of Three Sets' singles matches. I'm Louise Skiyvone and PR News, Washington.

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