NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-18-2025 3PM EST

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Herbst. President Trump has signed an executive order to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. NPR's Franco-Ordonia's reports, the order effectively eases federal restrictions on its use, reclassifying marijuana from a Schedule 1 drug to a Schedule 3 drug. Speaking in the Oval Office, President Trump said the change would allow more research on medical uses and added that many friends have urged him to make the change. I promise to be the president of common sense, and that is exactly what we're doing. This is really something having to do with common sense. And it's something having to do with the fact that so many people that I respect ask me to the people that are having problems, big problems. The Schiff represents one of the most significant federal changes to marijuana policy in decades. And while it does not fully legalize the drug, the executive order equates the dangers of marijuana on par with more common prescription drugs.

Franco, Ordonez, NPR News, the White House. The Trump administration plans to withhold funding from hospitals that get Medicaid or Medicare funding if they provide gender-affirming care to those under the age of 18 with hormones and surgery. The majority of hospitals get that funding, so the reach on the proposed plan is wide. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. says the care hurts children. So-called gender-affirming care has inflicted lasting physical. and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. This is not medicine.

It is malpractice. 27 states already banned gender-affirming care for transgender youth, meaning if these rules go into effect, pediatric gender-affirming care would be nearly impossible to get in the other states. The Israeli military struck a residential area in Gaza yesterday, wounding at least 11 Palestinians. That's according to local health officials. The residential area was just over the ceasefire line.

And Piers Hadil Al-Shalchi has more. Palestinian first responders say the mortar exploded in the air and shrapnel hit the central Gaza city neighborhood of El Samar. Mahmoud Basal is the spokesman for the Gaza civil defense. If it had exploded on the ground, Basal said it would have been a catastrophe. The Israeli military said that the mortar fired had, quote, deviated from its target. It said it was investigating. the incident, which they said occurred in the area of the yellow line that divides the Israeli

held portions of Gaza from the rest of the territory. The ceasefire deal between Hamas and Israel was brokered in October. Israeli attacks since the deal have killed over 390 Palestinians according to Gaza health officials. Hadil al-Shalchi, NPR News, Tel Aviv. On Wall Street, the Tao is up 99 points, the NASDAQ up 296, the S&P 500 up 53. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. Defense attorneys for the man accused of killing a health insurance CEO on a Manhattan Street last year argue that much of the evidence in his case needs to be thrown out. As Walter Withman of Member Station WNYC reports, a New York judge will now rule on what can and can't be included at Luigi Mangione's trial.

Defense attorneys argue that police did not read Mangione his Miranda rights and did not have a proper warrant when they interrogated him in certain his backpack at a Pennsylvania McDonald's last December. Attorney Karen Friedman Ignifalo says prosecutors are now trying to cover their tracks. We want to thank everyone for coming and for sitting through a three-week mini-trial that should have been a half a day. Prosecutors say police did nothing wrong, and the evidence links Mangione to the shooting. The judge is expected to issue a decision in May. He has not yet set a trial date.

For NPR News, I'm Walter Wuthman in New York City. The federal government has admitted liability in a deadly air collision outside Washington, D.C. in January, they killed 67 people. In a 209-page document filed in a federal lawsuit brought by the family of one of the victims, the Justice Department says the accident between an Army Black Hawk helicopter and a passenger plane could have been avoided if the helicopter had been able to see and avoid the jet. The Justice Department says an air traffic controller didn't properly alert, both pilots that the aircraft were on a collision course. I'm Janine Herbst, and you're listening to NPR News from Washington.