NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-18-2024 6PM EST

Episode Date: December 18, 2024

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Hey everybody, it's time to join NPR's All Songs Considered as we celebrate a very tolerable Christmas with a mix of seasonal songs and special guests. Yeah, we're in for like the saddest Christmas ever, stuck with Robin, who is basically a lump of coal in the shape of a man. Hear new episodes of All Songs Considered every Tuesday, wherever you get podcasts. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Jack Spear. President-elect Donald Trump and VP-elect J.D. Vance are blasting a bipartisan measure aimed at preventing a government shutdown after midnight Friday ahead of the holiday. Trump basically telling House Speaker Mike Johnson to renegotiate. Entrepreneur of law and must co-head of Trump's newly created advisory group on government efficiency also blasted the measure Saying any member of the house or senator votes for this outrageous bill deserves to be voted out in two years

Measure to keep the government running through March included the first congressional pay raises since 2009 bringing house members annual salaries to 180 thousand six hundred dollars a year The Supreme Court is stepping into the TikTok debate as NPR's Bobby Allen explains the high court has agreed to review whether a law that could ban the app next month is constitutional. The Supreme Court has accepted TikTok's emergency motion to review a law President Biden signed in April.

The law bans TikTok nationwide, unless it is sold to a non-Chinese company. It is meant to address lawmakers' national security concerns over possible Chinese influence. Earlier this month, the Federal Appeals Court affirmed the ban law, saying it actually protects free speech by preventing an adversarial government from censoring content. But lawyers for TikTok say singling out an app for shutdown used by roughly half of America is an unprecedented violation of the First Amendment. The High Court will hear arguments on January 10th,

nine days before the law is set to take effect. Bobby Allen, NPR News. The Supreme Court today says it's agreed to consider South Carolina's move to cut off Medicaid funding to plan parenthood, the latest abortion-related case, since overturning it as a nationwide right. The court agreed to consider the legal question of whether Medicaid patients can sue

over the right to choose their own qualified provider. Lower courts block that order, but the state has appealed. South Carolina moved in 2018 to cut off Medicaid funding to Planned Parenthood, which uses the money for family planning and not for abortions. The Dow Jones Industrial Average filed by more than a thousand points today, posting its tenth consecutive session and longest losing streak in half a century. St. Piers Raffer, the Nom, reports the Federal Reserve cut interest rates as expected, but policymakers signaled fewer cuts next year. It was the Fed's third-rate cut since September,

but policymakers said they may lower rates only two more times next year. That was fewer than the four cuts it had projected three months ago. Inflation is a little more stubborn than expected and policies, as well as the health of the economy, could change after Donald Trump returns to the White House. So Fed Chair Jerome Powell said the caution was justified. The point about uncertainty is it's kind of common sense thinking that when the path is uncertain, you go a little bit slower. It's not unlike driving on a foggy night or walking into a dark room full of furniture."

Investors were disappointed. Along with the blue chip Dow, the S&P and the NASDAQ also slumped. Rafael Num, NPR News. The NASDAQ fell 716 points. This is NPR. A new study suggesting that after the Earth's moon formed, it went through a period when

a lot of the solid rock re-melted. As NPR's Nell Greenfield-Boyce reports, it could explain why most moon rocks are surprisingly young. Astronauts brought back moon rocks, and almost all date back to around 4.35 billion years ago. Trouble is, scientists think the moon got created much earlier than that, when an object the size of Mars slammed into the Earth. Now, in the journal Nature, researchers offer this explanation. As the moon moved away from Earth, at a certain point it underwent a temporary

period of remelting due to gravitational forces that heated it up. Francis Nimmo is with the University of California, Santa Cruz. I think it was mostly solid on the inside, but there was smelt being generated all the time and that was being erupted as volcanoes. Creating new rocks that appeared to be younger than the true age of the moon. Nell Greenfield Boyce, NPR News. Government officials now say it appears a couple of endangered whales have been found off the coast of Massachusetts. Officials

say one of the animals is likely to die as a result of its injuries. Currently, there are fewer than 400 of the North Atlantic right whales known to exist with the animals facing threats from everything from fishing gear to collisions with ships. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the whales were observed swimming about 50 miles southeast of Nantucket earlier this month. Crude oil futures prices settled modestly higher, oil up 50 cents a barrel today to end the session at 70.58 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. I'm Jack Spear, NPR News in Washington.