NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-19-2025 5AM EST

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

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On the TED Radio Hour, for over two decades, Krista Tippett has been helping her listeners get through change. But she was going through her own life crisis when something unexpected happened. I fell in love at 64, and it's the greatest thing ever. Finding your bliss. Listen to the TED Radio Hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Louise Skiyvone. Police in Providence, Rhode Island, say the man suspected of killing two and wounding nine others during a shooting at Brown University, is 48-year-old Claudio Nevis Valenti, a former Brown student and a native of Portugal. He's been found dead from suicide in a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire. In Boston, meanwhile, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts, Leah Foley says Valenti is also believed to be the killer of MIT professor Nuno Lauriero in Massachusetts. Between December 13th and December 14th, Nees-Volente returned to Massachusetts. On December 15th, he murdered MIT professor Nuno Luriero at Luriero's home in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Fully says police connected the two crimes through a rental vehicle that Valenti was seen in in both places. A jury has found Milwaukee Judge Hanna Dugan guilty of obstructing immigration agents as they attempted to arrest an undocumented defendant. outside her courtroom last April. Mayon Silver from Member Station WUWM reports. 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 series of actions announced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. could essentially ban gender affirming care for youth all over the country. As NPR Selina Simmons-Duffin reports, proposed new regulations threatened to withhold federal funding from hospitals that provide gender affirming care to minors. The most significant actions are two proposed rules from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services led by Dr. Mehmet Oz. One rule says doctors and hospitals cannot get reimbursed by Medicaid for gender affirming care for youth. The other is

more sweeping. It says hospitals that provide the care would be cut off from all Medicare or Medicaid funding for everything. Because federal funding represents so much of hospital budgets, that rule could shut down gender-affirming care for youth at hospitals if finalized. The rules don't take effect right away. There's a 60-day comment period, and health officials acknowledged they would face legal challenges. Selina Simmons-Duffin, NPR News, Washington. This is NPR. In eastern Colorado yesterday, Hurricane Force winds took down power lines and intensified wildfires along the Colorado front range and onto the Great Plains, facing gusts of up to 100 miles an hour, XL energy cutoff power in the area to avert a downed line sparking additional blazes.

More than half of the power has been restored. The first round of the college football playoff kicks off tonight when two of the sports' most storied programs will face. off in Norman, Oklahoma. Three more games take place tomorrow, and PR's Becky Sullivan has details. The Alabama Crimson Tide are the only team in the playoff with three losses already this season. One came last month when the Oklahoma Sooners upset Alabama in a close game. Now the Sooners will hope to do it again this time in the playoff. The winner will go on to face the undefeated Indiana Hoosiers. On Saturday, Texas A&M will host Miami. That could be another close matchup. And then for the first time, the playoff includes two teams from outside

the sports biggest conferences. Tulane will take on Ole Miss and James Madison will face Oregon. Both of them are big underdogs. Indiana is the top overall seat in the playoff, but the favorite to win the championship game in January is actually number two Ohio State. It would be the second title in a row for the Buckeyes. Becky Sullivan and PR News. Retired NASCAR driver Greg Biffel has died in a small plane crash at a regional airport in Statesville, North Carolina, also dead in the crash. Biffel's wife and two children and crew members on the plane. The cause of Thursday's crash under investigation, he won more than 50 NASCAR races across three circuits. I'm Luis Skivoni and PR News. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money

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