NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-18-2025 5PM EST

Episode Date: December 18, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is proposing new restrictions that would effectively ban gender affirming care for minors. So-called gender affirming care has inflicted lasting physical and psychological damage on vulnerable young people. This is not medicine. It is malpractice. The sweeping proposals contradict the recommendations of major medical groups. They include cutting off federal Medicaid and Medicare funding from, hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to children. The proposals must go through a lengthy rulemaking process and are likely to face legal challenges. States around the country are

looking at ways to keep health care costs low in the face of expiring health care subsidies. Chad Khalil of VPM News reports on where Virginia's incoming governor wants the support to be targeted. Abigail Spanberger ran on lowering the cost of living. On Thursday, she showcased over a dozen policy proposals to do that. Among them is a proposal to keep people in the health care marketplace. The idea is that if it's only higher risk people in the insurance pool, premiums go up for everyone. This program, with its targeted efforts to stabilize, at least here in Virginia, the ACA marketplace, given the chaos we're seeing out of Washington, is meant to counter those efforts. A health care bill passed through the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday,

but didn't include extensions of the subsidies. The affordability proposals Spamberger shared address energy and housing costs too. She faces the challenge of risks to Virginia's economy due to federal workforce cuts. For NPR News, I'm Jad Khalil in Richmond. Tensions are mounting between the Trump administration and South Africa over a U.S. program to resettle white Afrikaners in the United States. As NPR's Michelle Kellman reports, the U.S. is accusing South Africa of harassing and doxing one of its employees. Trump administration officials are fuming over a recent raid by South Africa on a processing center for Afrikaners applying to come to the U.S. The South Africans say they were enforcing their immigration laws and plan to deport some

of the Kenyans who were working at the center in Johannesburg with the U.S. without proper South African work visas. During the raid, two U.S. government officials were briefly detained and the passport of one of them was posted on social media. The U.S. calls that an unacceptable form of harassment and called on the South African in government to hold those responsible accountable or face, quote, severe consequences. Michelle Kellerman, NPR News, the State Department. President Trump signed an executive order to ease federal restrictions on marijuana but did not fully decriminalize it.

The move reclassifies marijuana from a Schedule 1 substance to Schedule 3, expanding research and medical use. But Trump says the order does not sanction marijuana as a recreational drug. U.S. stocks rose today. after an encouraging report on inflation. This is NPR News. Israel's parliament has passed a bill that would make it illegal to interfere with Jewish religious practice in public. Jerome Sokolovsky reports it threatens to deepen the rift between secular and religious Jews in Israel.

The Knesset voted in favor of the bill by a vote of 49 to 35 with support from right-wing parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's governing coalition. The bill still needs to pass through committee readings to become law, But if it does, it would become illegal to restrict Jewish prayer and practices in public, such as wrapping to fill in the leather straps and boxes with Torah verses that are worn during daily morning prayers. Opponents fear the bill favors Orthodox Judaism at the expense of progressive movements and infringes on the rights of secular Jews. In another development, police say 10 officers were injured in Jerusalem in a clash with ultra-Orthodox Jews protesting conscription into the Army. Jerome Sokolovsky, NPR News, Tel Aviv.

Pope Leo has named Bishop Ronald Hicks as the next Archbishop of New York. Hicks is from the Chicago suburb of South Holland. Leo is from Dalton. South Holland and Dalton might not mean anything to, but Dalton is where our Holy Father, Pope Leo the 14th, grew up and is from. And our houses are literally 14 blocks of way from each other. The New York Archdiocese is navigating relations with the Trump administration and its immigration policies. It recently finalized a $300 million fund to compensate sexual abuse victims. This is NPR News.