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--:-- Host: Live from NPR News in Washington, I'm Rylan Barton.
--:-- Rylan Barton: The House of Representatives is poised to vote on a bill to end the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. Democrats railed against the measure during today's final floor debate for not further extending Affordable Care Act tax credits, which expire at the end of the year, and said Republican leaders gave lawmakers a paid vacation during the shutdown.
--:-- Representative Michelle Fischbach: We were doing the work we were elected to do. And the real story here is not about the absence. It is about the commitment. And for Republicans, we never wavered. If the Democrats cared so much about working, they would not have shut the government down.
--:-- Rylan Barton: The bill would temporarily fund the government through January with longer-term funding for a few key functions like SNAP food assistance. It would also reverse the firings of workers who were let go during the shutdown.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: If it passes the House, the measure would still need President Trump's signature to become law. Republicans on the House Oversight Committee have released more than 20 new pages of documents from the estate of the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
--:-- Rylan Barton: NPR Stephen Fowler reports this comes after Democrats on the committee highlighted three emails that relate to President Trump. An NPR review of the latest batch of Epstein files finds court documents, financial market outlooks, and many messages to and from Epstein about Trump.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: That includes one message from 2017 where Epstein wrote that, quote, I have met some very bad people, none as bad as Trump.
--:-- Rylan Barton: The Republican document dump comes as a counter to three emails released by Democrats that suggest there was more to Trump and Epstein's previous relationship than has been reported. Like a 2019 message in which Epstein said that Trump, quote, knew about the girls.
--:-- Stephen Fowler: Epstein died by suicide awaiting trial on charges of trafficking underage girls for sex.
--:-- Rylan Barton: As the Trump administration is ramping up its deportation efforts, Democratic members of Congress are warning governors that immigration officials are accessing state driver's license data.
--:-- Jude Jaffe Block: A group of 40 Democratic senators and representatives sent a letter Wednesday to 19 governors from their party urging them to block ICE access to their residents' driver license data and photos to stop the Trump administration from using them from what the lawmakers call quote unjustified politicized actions.
--:-- Rylan Barton: States share their residents' driver's license data with each other and law enforcement across the U.S. and Canada through a nonprofit called Endlets. The lawmakers say ICE and Homeland Security investigators have made hundreds of thousands of queries through Endlets in the past year.
--:-- Jude Jaffe Block: Five states had already blocked ICE's access. ICE did not return NPR's request for comment.
--:-- Rylan Barton: U.S. stocks closed mixed today. The S&P 500 added a tenth of a percent, nearing its all-time high set a couple weeks ago.
--:-- Rylan Barton: You're listening to NPR News from Washington.
--:-- Host: The South Carolina Supreme Court has ruled that state lawmakers improperly gave themselves a $1,500 monthly raise. The justices said the increase counts as a salary, which can't start until after the next election in 2026.
--:-- Host: The court said the raise should have been labeled as an expense fund, not compensation, to comply with constitutional requirements.
--:-- Host: The global rate of tuberculosis has declined for the first time since the COVID pandemic disrupted health services. Both the number of people falling ill with TB and dying from it are down.
--:-- Gabriela Emanuel: But as NPR's Gabriela Emanuel reports, TB remains the world's top infectious disease killer. TB claimed over 1 million lives last year. That's an improvement.
--:-- Host: Africa in particular has made progress with deaths down 46 percent in the past decade.
--:-- Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus: Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus heads the World Health Organization. He says there's other good news, too. For the first time in over a century, new effective TB vaccines for adolescents and adults are within reach.
--:-- Gabriela Emanuel: 18 TB vaccine candidates are in clinical development, but he warns that funding cuts to international aid threaten to reverse the hard-won gains.
--:-- Host: Actors Matthew McConaughey and Michael Cain are partnering with voice cloning company Eleven Labs.
--:-- Michael Cain: Cain says the technology celebrates humanity by amplifying voices, not replacing them.
--:-- Matthew McConaughey: McConaughey says he'll use the technology to voice his newsletter in Spanish.
--:-- Host: All right, all right, all right. This is NPR News from Washington.
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