The Headlines - A $7 Billion Opioid Reckoning, and Trump’s Defense of the Saudi Crown Prince

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

Plus, young men are flocking to the Orthodox Church. Here’s what we’re covering:Congress Overwhelmingly Approves Releasing Epstein Files by Annie KarniTrump Lauds Saudi Prince in Lavish Visit, Brushing Off Journalist’s Killing by Katie RogersDemocratic Lawmakers Tell Military to Refuse Illegal Orders by Greg JaffeJudge to Approve Purdue Pharma Bankruptcy, Releasing Billions for Opioid Plaintiffs by Jan HoffmanRecycling Lead for U.S. Car Batteries Is Poisoning People by Peter S. Goodman, Will Fitzgibbon and Samuel GranadosOrthodox Church Pews Are Overflowing With Converts by Ruth GrahamTune in every weekday morning, and tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Wednesday, November 19th. Here's what we're covering. First, three quick updates from Washington. On this vote, the yeas are 427. The nays are won. In the House of Representatives yesterday, lawmakers almost unanimously approved a bill directing the Justice Department to release. the Epstein files. Hours later, the Senate cleared the way for its vote on the measure, meaning it could soon go to President Trump, who has said he will sign it. These women have fought the most horrific fight, and they did it by banding together and never

giving up. And that's what we did by fighting so hard against the most powerful people in the world, even the president of the United States. In a news conference outside the Capitol, some of Epstein's victims appeared alongside Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, one of the handful of Republicans who spent months defying Trump's efforts to derail the measure. Trump ultimately dropped his opposition when it became clear that it would pass overwhelmingly, as more and more GOP lawmakers worried that not supporting it made it look like there was something to hide. The real test will be, will the Department of Justice release the files, or will it all remain tied up in investigations?

In terms of what happens next, the release of all the government's files is not guaranteed, even with the bill's passage. The Justice Department, which has said it has more than 100,000 pages of materials related to Epstein, can limit what it makes public based on things like whether the documents could identify a victim or undermine an active investigation. Also, we have an extremely respected man in the Oval Office today and a friend of mine for a long time, a very good friend of mine. President Trump heaped praise on the crown prince of Saudi Arabia yesterday,

as he welcomed Muhammad bin Salman to the White House with a flyover of F-35 jets and military officers on horseback, carrying Saudi and American flags. Your royal highness, the U.S. intelligence concluded that you orchestrated the brutal murder of a journalist. During the visit, bin Salman faced sharp questions about the 2018 killing of a Washington Post columnist by Saudi agents. But Trump rushed to defend the prince. A lot of people didn't like that gentleman that you're talking about.

Whether you like him or didn't like him, things happened. But he knew nothing about it. And we can leave it at that. You don't have to embarrass our guests by asking a question like that. At stake with the visit is as much as a trillion dollars in potential Saudi investment in the U.S., from defense to energy to technology. Later today, the two leaders are expected to participate in a U.S.-S.-S.-Saudi investment conference at the Kennedy Center. And right now, the threats to our Constitution aren't just coming from abroad, but from right here at home.

A group of Democratic lawmakers have released a stark video message, reminding members of the military and the intelligence community that they are obligated to refuse illegal orders. Now, more than ever. The American people need you. We need you to stand up for our laws. Our Constitution and who we are as Americans. All six lawmakers either served in the military or. in U.S. intelligence themselves. And while they didn't name any specific order or scenario, some of them have previously raised concerns

about the legality of the administration's ongoing boat strikes against alleged drug traffickers and Trump's deployment of troops to American cities. Trump administration officials quickly condemned the video, saying it was encouraging the military to rebel against the commander-in-chief. Yesterday, a bankruptcy judge signed off on a deal that will dissolve Purdue Pharma, the maker of the notorious painkiller OxyContin, that's long been blamed for helping fuel the nation's opioid crisis. For years, Purdue aggressively marketed the drug and promoted it as largely non-addictive,

even as opioid use ballooned and overdose deaths surged. The deal is the largest settlement with a single pharmaceutical company in U.S. history, As part of it, members of the Sackler family, which owns Purdue, will have to pay up to $7 billion to states, tribes, hospitals, school districts, and around 150,000 individual victims and families who made claims against the company. Purdue itself will be reformed into what's known as a public benefit company that will produce overdose reversal medications and a limited quantity of painkillers. All profits from that will go to programs addressing the harm caused by opioids. The deal was years in the making. The Sackler family originally said they'd only agree to a settlement that gave them total immunity from future lawsuits,

but ultimately had to drop that demand. Payments from the settlement could start being distributed as soon as March. In a town near the capital city of Nigeria, there's noxious clouds just about everywhere, depending upon which way the wind blows. People complain that, black soot. It's filtering down on their laundry. I visited with a man who is visibly shaking whose walls were black from the smoke. The Times has found that the frenzied global demand

for lead, which is essential for car batteries, has spawned a supply chain that is poisoning people. My colleague Peter Goodman was one of the reporters on the investigation. He says because of the high cost of mining the metal, a lot of companies have turned to recycling it instead. That can be done cleanly and safely, but it requires millions of dollars in technology and equipment. In Nigeria, which has become one of the fastest growing sources of recycled lead for U.S. companies, the process looks very different. Over the last year, I've taken two trips to Nigeria, and what I saw was just disturbing. I mean, a lay person can tell that something's really a ride.

People are using their hands to take lead that they've extracted. from spent car batteries they've cracked open, often with machetes, and they take this lead, they put it in these big furnaces, and they cook it down so they can put into shipping containers and send around the world. And the result of this is lead dust, smoke, fumes, noxious-looking clouds, like pretty much everywhere in these villages that are right next to these smelters. I mean, people are living right in the midst of these factories. We wanted to understand what the public health effects were. So we commissioned a team of local scientists to find volunteers and conduct blood tests.

We tested about 70 people. And what we discovered was that roughly seven out of ten of them had levels of lead in their blood that were a cause for real medical concern. Every single worker we tested. These are workers at these smelters have very high levels. levels of lead in their blood, and the levels were particularly concerning for children. There are lots of kids living around these smelters. There are schools right alongside. And the kids showed high blood levels, and we're talking about potentially irreversible

neurological damage as a result of that. Peter says that because the supply chain is complex and opaque, car companies and battery makers are unlikely to know exactly where the recycled lead they use comes from. But the Times found that lead from Nigeria has gone to companies that make batteries for Ford, General Motors, Tesla, and others. Earlier this fall, after the Times started testing lead levels in Nigeria, officials there closed five smelters, including one of the plants that Peter visited. But days later, they were running again. And finally, historically, the pews in Orthodox churches across the U.S. been filled with immigrants from Ukraine, Greece, and other countries with big Orthodox populations.

But lately, priests in the small branch of Christianity have been swapping stories about a surge of new converts, conservative young American men. There's been such an influx of young people, one priest told the times, in the whole history of the Orthodox Church in America, this has never been seen. In terms of what's behind it, a lot of the new adherents have been introduced to it by podcasts from the so-called manosphere. All of it's ancient and all of its liturgical and musical, and there's no propaganda, and it's such a relief. Or hard-edge online influencers who talk about what they describe as the threats of feminism

and homosexuality. It's led to the online shorthand, ortho bros. Some of the converts say that they like how the Orthodox Church affirms their masculinity. Orthodox priests usually sport big beards. They're allowed to marry. and they often have big families. And converts say they also like that the church makes demands of them. The weekly worship service is an hours-long affair

in which people typically stand the whole time, and there's strict fasting, too. Some of the online rhetoric around the Orthodox Church, though, goes beyond conservative ideas into openly racist and anti-Semitic messages. In recent years, several far-right figures have converted. But parish priests tell the times it's their job to show new, converts that isn't actually representative of their religion. The boost for the Orthodox Church

speaks to a bigger shift that seems to be happening in the U.S. For decades, each generation has been less religious than the last, but a major survey recently found that Christianity is no longer declining in the country. Instead, it has stabilized, thanks in large part, to young people. Those are the headlines. Today on the the Daily. More about the Republican rebellion that forced President Trump's hand on the Epstein files. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.