NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-19-2025 2PM EST

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

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Live from NPR News, I'm Janine Hurst. The Deputy Attorney General says they will release hundreds of thousands of files on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. But Todd Blanche tells Fox News, not all of them, as mandated by law by President Trump, which he signed last month. Blanche says they need time to redact information that could identify victims. The deadline to release the files on Epstein and convicted sex trafficker, Gieland Maxwell, from Trump's law, is by the end of the day, but there are no apparent. penalties for not releasing them. Federal authorities say the person responsible for the shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island last weekend was found dead last night in New Hampshire.

They say he died by suicide. Two people were killed, nine others wounded in that attack, and prosecutors have also linked the shooter to the Boston area killing last Monday of a professor at MIT. From Ocean State Media in Providence, Ben Burke has more. Investigators say they found Claudio Nevis Valenti's body in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire, after a Reddit post led to a breakthrough in the case. A witness described seeing the suspect near a rental car in the neighborhood next to Brown, which helped authorities identify Valenti and track his movements.

The U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, Leah Foley, says Valente is also responsible for the murder of an MIT professor, two days later in Brookline, Massachusetts. There is a video footage of him entering an apartment building in the location of the professor's apartment. Officials say they believe Valenti acted alone. For NPR news, I'm Ben Burke in Providence. Russian President Vladimir Putin says he wants peace in Ukraine, but only once Russia meets its political and military objectives there. This says the White House continues to pursue a peace deal to end the war that Russia started nearly four years ago. And Pierce Charles Mainz has more. Putin's remarks came during an annual press conference during which he fielded questions from

both reporters and the Russian public for several hours. The The Kremlin leader boasted of recent battlefield gains and said peace would come once Ukraine had accepted Russian demands that include seeding territory and a formal ban on joining NATO. Putin also thanked President Trump for his efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict and said he'd receive certain signals that Kiev was ready to engage in some kind of dialogue. The Kremlin has said it's still waiting to hear details on the Trump administration's latest peace proposals following talks with Ukrainian and European officials this week. Charles Mainz, NPR News. housing sales rose slightly last month as fewer homes hit the market. The National Association of Realtors says home sales rose a half percent in November from the month before for a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.13 million homes. Housing inventory, which had been rising for most of the year, dropped 5.9% in November from October, and the median price of a home was higher at 409,200. That's a hike of 1.2% year over year. You're listening to NPR News from Washington. The jury in Wisconsin has found Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugent guilty of obstructing immigration agents. They were attempting to arrest an undocumented defendant outside her courtroom last April.

From member station WUWM, Mayan Silver has more. Prosecutors argued it was a quote, Roundup, when Dugan sent five federal agents to talk to her chief judge after they had staked out a hallway to arrest Eduardo Flores-Ruiz. Flores Ruiz was appearing in her courtroom on misdemeanor battery charges, and agents had an administrative warrant to arrest him for being in the country unlawfully. Prosecutors then said Dugan created a, quote, escape route when she sent Flores Ruiz out a private jury door in her courtroom into a restricted hallway. Dugan's attorneys argued she was trying to follow unsettled courthouse policy on ICE arrests, and that she never actually concealed Flores Ruiz. The case reflects tension over President Donald Trump's mass deportation efforts, spilling over into courthouses.

For NPR News, I'm Ayon Silver in Milwaukee. A stray comment is doing a flyby of Earth today. Discovered over the summer, the 3-Ey Atlas comet is only the third node one to have passed through Earth's neighborhood. In its closest approach, the comet will come within roughly 167 miles of Earth. NASA says it poses no danger to Earth or any other planet in the solar system. But it will give astronomers the chance to study dust and gases released from the ice center of the comet as it's warmed by the sun. I'm Janine Herbst, and you're listening to NPR News from Washington.