NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-18-2025 1PM EST

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

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This holiday season on the StoryCorps podcast, a Christmas memory from the Cold War. I remember this red phone on his desk. If it rang, there was a national emergency. One time the red phone rang, he answered it, and there was a small voice that asked us to Santa Claus. Cozy up under the tree and listen to a special holiday edition of the StoryCorps podcast from NPR. Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Herbst. Health Secretary Robert F.T. Kennedy Jr. moved today to essentially ban gender-related care for minors, threatening to pull federal funding from any hospital that offers the treatments. So-called gender-affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people.

This is not medicine. It is malpractice. Kennedy says the ban takes the form of two new proposed rules from Medicaid and Medicare. The first would prohibit doctors and hospitals from receiving federal Medicaid reimbursement for gender affirming care for those under the age of 18. The second would block all Medicaid and Medicare funding for any services at hospitals that provide pediatric gender affirming care. Nearly every hospital in the country takes Medicare and relies on it so the rules would have a wide-ranging effect. Gender affirming care for minors is already banned in 27 states. These rules, which would go into effect after a common period,

would make the care nearly impossible to get in all the other states. A federal judge in San Francisco has again blocked attempts to fire more federal workers. In peers Andrew Hsu reports the order was issued in response to a lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's layoffs. In November, Congress passed and President Trump signed a continuing resolution to end the 43-day shutdown. That measure also prohibited federal agencies from initiating or carrying out any further layoffs through January 30th. Nevertheless, several federal employee unions told the court that civil servants at the Small Business Administration, the General Services Administration, and the State Department had gotten layoff notices. U.S. District Judge Susan Ilston ordered

the Trump administration to rescind those notices and to halt previously planned layoffs at the Departments of Education and State. The Trump administration contends the layoffs in question were initiated long before the shutdown. Andrew Hsu and PR News. China has condemned the U.S. for selling more than $11 billion worth of advanced weapons to Taiwan. Impairs Anthony Kuhn has more. The deal includes weapons such as tactical ballistic missiles, rocket artillery, and drones. The U.S. says they're not going to change the military balance of power, but will help Taiwan maintain a credible deterrent.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jia Klin told a press briefing that the deal harms China's sovereign. and will push the Taiwan straight closer to war. The U.S. attempt to aid Taiwan's independence with arms will only backfine, he added, and its attempt to use Taiwan to contain China will absolutely not succeed. President Trump says he plans to visit China next April. It's unclear whether the arm sale could affect that trip. Anthony Kuhn, NPR News, Seoul. Wall Street's trading higher at this hour.

You're listening to NPR News from Washington. Belgium wants an ironclad guarantee from European Union partners to protect them from Russian retaliation before backing a massive loan for Ukraine. EU leaders are deciding whether to use frozen Russian assets to underwrite a loan for Ukraine for the next two years. The EU wants to give 90 billion euros to Ukraine with other countries covering the shortfall. Belgium officials say they still support Ukraine, but they need strong safeguards. President Trump has installed plaques, beneath the White House portraits of past American presidents. As NPR's Tamara Keith reports, the messages underneath the plaques are unconventional.

The plaques mounted along the presidential walk of fame are packed with insults, including lines like, quote, Sleepy Joe Biden was by far the worst president in American history. And, quote, in 2016, President Clinton's wife, Hillary, lost the presidency to Donald J. Trump. And the biofer former President Reagan asserts that he was a fan of President Trump long before his historic run for the White House. In a statement, White House press secretary Caroline Levitt says, quote, The plaques are eloquently written descriptions of each president and the legacy they left behind. As a student of history, many were written directly by President Trump himself, end quote. Tamara Keith, NPR News.

On Wall Street, the Dow was up 152. points. The NASDAQ is up 376. The SMP 500 up 66. I'm Janine Herbst, NPR News, in Washington. This holiday season on the StoryCorps podcast, we're casting our eyes north. We have checked and rechecked our tracking screens. I hate to bring you and all your good listeners, the bad news, but it doesn't appear. Just a minute. We have a sighting. Santa is on his wave. Your tales of the fears, hopes, and joys of Christmas past on a special holiday edition of the StoryCorps podcast from NPR.