Chapter 1: What recent Supreme Court case could change presidential powers over independent agencies?
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Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shea Stephens. The U.S. Supreme Court appears open to overturning a 90-year tradition that has kept presidents from firing members of independent agencies. A ruling in the Trump administration's favor would upend the balance of power in Washington.
NPR's Andrea Hsu reports that the court's conservative majority has largely endorsed Trump's claim that he should be able to fire people at will.
Now, the Supreme Court, through its emergency docket, already signaled that it might create a special carve-out for the Fed. And it will hear arguments on that in January. But in today's case, conservative justices dismissed the idea that granting the president more powers would destabilize the government.
Instead, they raise their own hypotheticals of what could happen if the court continues to insulate independent agencies from the president's control. What if Congress decided to give members 20-year terms? Why couldn't Congress just convert traditional cabinet agencies to multi-member commissions?
NPR's Andrea Hsu reporting. Congress has only a few weeks left before existing Affordable Care Act tax credits expire at the end of the year and prices go up for millions of Americans.
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Chapter 2: How are Democrats and Republicans approaching the Affordable Care Act tax credits?
A proposal from Democrats would extend the subsidies. But NPR's Elena Moore reports that Republican lawmakers are still debating how to move forward.
The Senate is expected to vote on the Democrats' proposal later this week, which would extend these COVID-era health care subsidies for three more years. That plan doesn't have Republican buy-in. And though several GOP lawmakers are working on counter-proposals that include things like income caps to qualify, the party hasn't united around one plan.
Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley says it needs to. What signal will it send if Republicans say, we're going to say no to the Democrats' plan, but we're not going to offer anything? The message that we'll send is, good luck to the American people. We don't really care. The existing tax credits currently benefit more than 20 million people across the country.
Elena Moore, NPR News, the Capitol.
China has released customs data showing its 2025 exports were strong. More from NPR's Emily Fang.
For the first time ever, China's trade surplus topped $1 trillion this year, meaning it exported that much more in goods than it bought from other countries. This record-breaking milestone comes despite a year of double, sometimes triple-digit tariffs from the U.S.
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Chapter 3: What recent trade data reveals about China's export performance?
So far, shipments from China to the U.S. have dipped by about a fifth because of those customs levies. Instead, China has turned to Europe and Southeast Asia to export. China now sells more than twice what it buys from the European Union. Overall, exports from China had dipped in October, but they rallied in November, leading to a trade surplus of more than $111 billion for that month alone.
Emily Fang reporting. This is NPR. Paramount Global has launched a hostile $108 billion bid to acquire Warner Brothers Discovery. The move comes a week after Netflix announced a deal to buy Warner Brothers and HBO. President Trump has applauded the changes that Paramount owner Larry Ellison has made since he acquired CBS and says he'll be reviewing any deal to acquire Warner Brothers.
A new study finds that this is a golden era for discovering the variety of life existing on Earth. More from NPR's Nate Rott.
There are 2.5 million unique species on Earth that we humans have discovered and categorized, but that number is constantly growing. A new study published in the journal Science Advances looks at the history of species discovery and how it's changing, and it finds that on average, humans are now discovering 17,000 new species every year.
Estimates range widely about how much unique life there is on Earth, from the low hundreds of millions of different species to the trillions.
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Chapter 4: How does the current media landscape reflect corporate acquisitions?
The new study's authors say our ability to find new life will only increase with technological advancements like DNA analysis. But for now, they say Earth continues to be a poorly known planet. Nate Rott, NPR News.
A court in Beijing has ordered Malaysia Airlines to pay $410,000 in damages each to the families of eight passengers missing from the 2014 crash of Flight 370. The plane was carrying 239 passengers and crew when it crashed shortly after takeoff from Kuala Lumpur. Malaysia recently announced that it would resume its search for missing crash victims.
Chapter 5: What does the latest study say about discovering new species on Earth?
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