--:-- Shea Stevens: This message comes from Total Wine and More. November is all about gathering. Total Wine and More has wines, beers, and spirits for special moments. Find what you love and love what you find. Spirits not sold in Virginia and North Carolina. Drink responsibly. Be 21.
--:-- Shea Stevens: Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Shea Stevens. President Trump has signed a stopgap bill to reopen the government hours after the Measure 1 final passage in the U.S. House.
--:-- Sam Greenglass: After 43 days, the federal government is on track to reopen for the first time since September 30th. The record-long shutdown has resulted in federal employees going without pay, airport delays, and pauses to food assistance.
--:-- Sam Greenglass: The package, passed Monday by the Senate, will temporarily fund most of the government through January and some specific agencies through next September. It also includes a provision that would ensure federal employees get back pay and rehire those who were laid off during the shutdown.
--:-- Sam Greenglass: Most House Democrats voted against the measure because it does not extend the expiring health insurance subsidies they have been pushing to preserve.
--:-- Shea Stevens: Sam Greenglass, NPR News, Washington.
--:-- Shea Stevens: Meanwhile, Senate Majority Leader John Thune says he will hold a vote to extend Affordable Care Act subsidies in December.
--:-- Shea Stevens: Arizona Democrat Adelita Grijalva has finally been seated as the newest member of the U House. Grijalva's first official act was signing a bipartisan petition demanding the release of government files on Jeffrey Epstein.
--:-- Claudia Grisalas: Congresswoman Grijalva provided the final signature needed to force a December vote to release the files tied to the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender.
--:-- Claudia Grisalas: Just this morning, House Democrats released more emails showing that Trump knew more about Epstein's abuses than he previously acknowledged.
--:-- Claudia Grisalas: Four Republicans joined House Democrats weeks ago to sign on to the petition, which has been led by Kentucky Republican Thomas Massey and House Democrat Ro Khanna.
--:-- Claudia Grisalas: Now, President Trump is working to flip one or more of those Republicans to prevent the release from happening.
--:-- Shea Stevens: Claudia Grisalas, NPR News.
--:-- Shea Stevens: The Food and Drug Administration is creating a new way for approving cutting-edge treatments for rare diseases.
--:-- Rob Stein: In a paper published in the New England Journal of medicine, two top FDA officials describe what they call a new "plausible mechanism pathway" for approving treatments.
--:-- Rob Stein: Instead of requiring complicated and expensive studies testing and experimental treatment on patients, the FDA says some therapies could be approved based on other criteria.
--:-- Rob Stein: That could include evidence that the treatment can help patients by fixing the underlying cause of the disease, like a genetic defect.
--:-- Rob Stein: The approach is aimed at making it more practical to use cutting-edge technologies like gene editing to treat patients suffering from rare diseases.
--:-- Shea Stevens: Rob Stein, NPR News.
--:-- Shea Stevens: U.S. futures are lower in after-hours trading.
--:-- Shea Stevens: This is NPR News.
--:-- Shea Stevens: House Speaker Mike Johnson says he will hold a vote on a resolution to release government files on late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
--:-- Shea Stevens: In a 2011 email, Epstein tells his confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell, that Trump spent hours with a sex trafficking victim.
--:-- Shea Stevens: In another email sent to a journalist in 2019, Epstein says that Trump, quote, "knew about the girls," but it's not clear what he meant.
--:-- Shea Stevens: The White House is accusing Democrats of leaking selective emails to smear the president.
--:-- Shea Stevens: The Northern Lights may be visible over much of the U tonight and possibly as far south as Alabama.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: NPR now reports that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration issued an alert for a severe geomagnetic storm.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center has been tracking the impact of an eruption of solar material and magnetic fields.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: It's the kind of space weather that can potentially mess with electrical grids or satellites, but fans of the Aurora Borealis are hoping for a repeat of Tuesday night when sky watchers saw ghostly reds and greens as far south as Texas and Florida.
--:-- Nell Greenfield-Boyce: If you want to try to catch them, go to a dark spot, and a digital camera can be more sensitive to light than your naked eye, so you might want to try snapping some images of the sky.
--:-- Shea Stevens: Nell Greenfield-Boyce, NPR News.
--:-- Shea Stevens: The U.S. Mint in Philadelphia has produced its last penny.
--:-- Shea Stevens: The one-cent coin has been a part of U.S. culture for over 230 years, but few consumers use it today.
--:-- Shea Stevens: It remains legal tender. The government has stopped minting it because pennies cost four cents to make.
--:-- Shea Stevens: This is NPR News.
