NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-20-2025 6AM EST

Episode Date: December 20, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Giles Snyder. The Justice Department's partial release of documents from the Epstein files is drawing criticism from members of Congress, including California House Democrat Roe Kana, who co-sponsored the legislation that required the release. He says what the Justice Department has provided is incomplete at best. So far, based on what we've seen, there are just excessive redactions. I mean, there's one document from the New York grand jury, which a federal judge, ordered, released, totally redacted, 119 pages, all redacted, and there are not the types of documents so far that we were looking for now.

We haven't done the whole review. The Justice Department faced a Friday deadline to release the files. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche acknowledged the release was incomplete, but that he expects a complete release by the end of the month. Conservative leader Charlie Kirk's widow was announcing her support for Vice President J.D. Vance for President in 28. Erica Kirk now leads the influential conservative group. Her husband founded. She announced her advance announcement during the kickoff for Turning Points Conference in Phoenix.

And PR Sarah McCammon reports. Vice President J.D. Vance has not declared his intention to run for president in 2028, though he is widely expected to seek the Republican nomination. At Turning Points America Fest conference in Phoenix, Erica Kirk pledged her support for Vance. We are going to get my husband's friend, J.D. Vans. elected for 48 and the most resounding way possible. After Charlie Kirk's murder on September 10th in Utah, Erica Kirk took over leadership of Turning Point USA, which her husband founded.

Sarah McCammon, NPR News. Groups that provide tax assistance for immigrants and advocate for them are asking a federal judge in Boston to stop immigration and customs enforcement from using sensitive data it has received from the IRS and the Social Security Administration. In PRJU, John Fee Block reports the Trump administration has been collecting data to aid deportation efforts. Last month, the federal judge in Washington, D.C., found it was likely unlawful when the IRS turned over the addresses of 47,000 non-citizens to ICE in response to a request. Now, a separate lawsuit in Boston federal court seeks to stop ICE from using the data it received. It also seeks to block the IRS and Social Security Administration from sharing more.

Plaintiffs argue it violates taxpayer-comfirm. confidentiality. Federal records show the Social Security Administration intended to share 50,000 people's records with ICE every month. The federal government has argued the data sharing is lawful. Jude Jaffe Block, NPR News. In addition to seeking IRS and social security data, the Trump administration wants states to hand over voter data. The Justice Department is now suing another four states for the records, bring the number of lawsuits to 22 and largely Democratic-led states. This is NPR. A motive in the Brown University shooting remains unclear, but authorities say the man suspected in the attack and the fatal shooting of an MIT professor had been dead for two days when he was found. Officials say the suspect and the MIT professor were classmates in their native Portugal 30 years ago. Heart attacks rose in Los Angeles after the wildfires last January. That's according to a new study, as NPR's Alejandro Verundo reports. Over the three months following the fires, the emergency room at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles saw lots of patients from the city's most affected areas. Now, researchers like cardiologist Joseph Ebbinger have dug into that data to understand the fire's impact on Angelino's health.

They didn't see any change in the total number of visits, but they saw big shifts in the health problems people showed up with. Some were expected, like a jump in lung issues. Others were more surprising, like a... 46% increase in the rate of people presenting for heart attacks during that time period. They also saw huge increases in abnormal blood tests. Ebbinger says that could be a sign of overall stress on people's bodies from the particularly toxic smoke and ash produced by the fires, which burned through toxic materials like home insulation, cars, and batteries.

Alejandro Burunda, NPR News. Blue Origin is expected to make some history today. The private space company plans to launch a crew of six, includes aerospace engineer Michaela Benthouse, making Benthouse a first wheelchair user to make it a suborbital space. The launch is scheduled to lift off in a few hours. I'm Jail Snyder, NPR News. This message comes from Wise, the app for using money around the globe. When you manage your money with Wise, you'll always get the mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees.

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