NPR News Now - NPR News: 12-23-2025 7AM EST

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Windsor Johnston. President Trump says the U.S. will begin producing battleships for the first time since World War II. The announcement was made at the President's Resort in Florida yesterday. Steve Walsh from member station, WHRO, has more on the newest warships in the pipeline. The new ships would be larger than the current generation of destroyers and cruisers. They would be armed with everything from sea-based, nuclear weapons and lasers to the 16-inch guns used by battleships of the Second World War. These are the best in the world. They'll be the fastest, the biggest, and by far 100 times more

powerful than any battleship ever built. A Navy official says the vessel is in the design phase and could be under construction by the early 2030s. Battleships were supplanted by aircraft carriers. The last one appeared in combat during the first Gulf War in 19. For NPR News, I'm Steve Walsh. The U.S. says it's carried out another strike on a suspected drug smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific, killing one person. Southern Command says the vessel was traveling along known trafficking routes and appeared to be involved in narco operations. It's been a year since former President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of 37 men convicted of murder that spared the men from execution under President Trump. But an NPR investigation finds the administration has punished the men in ways that violate long-standing federal rules.

NPR's Kiera Eisner reports. Ten of the 37 prisoners have been moved to ADX Florence, a high-security prison in Colorado where every prisoner is kept in extreme isolation. And DOJ has confirmed that most of the others will soon follow. Only healthier men whose behavior indicates they can't be kept elsewhere are supposed to be sent to ADX. But NPR found some of the 37 prisoners had no disciplinary record and discovered that officials changed some of the prisoners' medical records to make their health conditions appear less complex. One of the men who hasn't yet been moved attempted suicide in July, in interviews with prisoners indicate at least two others are considering suicide. A DOJ spokesperson says sending the prisoners to ADX is, quote, consistent with the egregiousness of their crimes. Kiarre Eisner, NPR News.

The Justice Department has released another batch of documents linked to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Notable public figures, including former President Bill Clinton and President Trump have appeared in previously release files. The DOJ did not include any context for the newly released images. The Department had been under a legal deadline to publish all materials by the end of last Friday. This is NPR News in Washington. An activist group says it has scraped millions of music files and data from Spotify, the world's largest streaming service. NPR's Isabella Gomez Sarmiento reports the group is planning to release the files online. The open source engine Anna's archive says it extracted metadata for 256 million tracks from Spotify, all of which is now available online.

Metadata typically includes information like a song's artist, title, genre producers, and other identifying information. The activist group also said it scraped 86 million music audio files, which it plans to release at a future date. The group says its goal is to create the largest publicly available music archive. In a statement to NPR, Spotify says the company has identified and disabled the accounts engaged in unlawful scraping, and that it is implementing safeguards to prevent piracy and copyright infringement. Isabella Gomez-Tarmiento and PR News. Instacard is pulling the plug on its controversial AI pricing tool, Eversight, after backlash over inconsistent prices.

Eversight allowed retailers to run tests that led to shoppers seeing different prices for the same items from the same store. In a blog post, Instacart admitted the pricing model, missed the mark. Consumer reports found the AI-driven price swings could add up to more than $1,000 a year for some shoppers. Stocks across Asia close mixed today on Wall Street, Dow Futures are trading higher at this hour. This is 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. Join

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