NPR News: 12-11-2025 6PM EST
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Ryland Barton.
What recent actions did Homeland Security take regarding drug trafficking?
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem is linking the seizure of an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela to the Trump administration's counter-drug efforts. During a House Homeland Security Committee, Nome lauded the unusual move to take control of a merchant ship.
It was a successful operation directed by the president to ensure that we're pushing back on a regime that is systematically covering and flooding our country with deadly drugs and killing our next generation of Americans.
President Trump told reporters yesterday the tanker was seized for a very good reason. Venezuela's government has called the seizure an act of international piracy. Affordable Care Act tax credits expanded during the pandemic are on track to expire at the end of the month. NPR's Deirdre Walsh reports competing plans from both parties to address health care costs failed to advance in the Senate.
Senate Democrats proposed extending existing health care subsidies for three years. Four Republicans backed that bill, but it failed to get the 60 votes to advance. A Republican bill to give consumers up to $1,500 to use in health savings accounts also failed to advance. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer blamed the GOP for blocking action weeks before people will face spikes in health care costs.
Now Republicans have all but guaranteed that tens of millions of people will see their premiums double or triple or more next year.
House Speaker Mike Johnson is vowing the House will vote on some health care bill, but there is no agreement on the details. Swing District House Republicans are working to force a vote to extend the ACA subsidies for one or two years. Deirdre Walsh, NPR News, the Capitol.
At least 20 rivers in western Washington state are flooding. In Skagit County, about an hour north of Seattle, 100,000 people have evacuated their homes. From KUOW, Joshua McNichols spoke to people at a shelter in the town of Mount Vernon.
Leslie Schlusner says her trailer park home is usually safe, but police told her she was in danger.
I didn't want to leave our home. I just don't want to lose everything we have in there. But we had no choice.
Red Cross volunteer Carol Jensen faced challenges finding food for people.
We ordered pizza to be delivered, thought it was going to come, and they couldn't get here because of the flooded roads.
Most grocery stores closed early, but volunteers found one open to feed the crowd. The National Weather Service expects the Skagit River to crest Friday morning. They say it should beat the previous record set in 1990 by two feet. For NPR News, I'm Joshua McNichols.
A winter storm has hit Gaza and worsened the humanitarian crisis there. Heavy rains flooded tent camps and have left Palestinians in dire conditions. Aid groups say Israel hasn't met its ceasefire agreement to allow 600 trucks of aid into Gaza daily. The U.N. Agency for Palestinian Refugees warns that cold, overcrowded and unsanitary conditions increase illness risks. This is NPR News. A Maryland federal judge has granted Kilmar Obrego-Garcia's request to be released from ICE custody. The El Salvador native and Maryland resident has become a symbol of the Trump administration's mass deportations after he was mistakenly sent to a prison in El Salvador. The administration is appealing. Some ancient species of plants attract pollinating insects by producing heat that makes the plants glow with infrared light.
And as NPR's Nell Greenfield-Boyce reports, These heat-producing plants have been doing this for hundreds of millions of years.
How are health care costs being addressed in the Senate?
The palm-like plants, called cycads, live in the tropics. They make pollen and seeds in long, pinecone-like structures, and the plant can heat these cones up. In the journal Science, researchers report that the nocturnal beetles that pollinate these plants... have antennae that are specially designed to sense heat. And experiments with a fake cone that heated up showed that the beetles would home in on the source of the infrared radiation.
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