Top 5 US news stories
December 19 2025
Reddit Tip Breaks Open Brown/MIT Murder Cases, Leading Police to Body of Suspect in New Hampshire Storage Unit
Trump Suspends Green Card Lottery After Revealing Brown Shooter Entered US Through System
Trump Downgrades Marijuana Classification to Schedule III, Easing Research Restrictions Without Fully Legalizing Drug
ByteDance Sells TikTok’s US Operations to Oracle-Led Group, Averting Nationwide Ban
Legislative Stalemate Triggers Healthcare Cost Hikes as Lawmakers Depart for Recess Without Renewing Federal Aid
BREAKING…inflation rose by 2.7% from the year before in November, significantly below 3% in September and expectations of 3.1%…
Reddit Tip Breaks Open Brown/MIT Murder Cases, Leading Police to Body of Suspect in New Hampshire Storage Unit
A. The body of a man suspected in the killing of two students at Brown University and a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor was found in a storage unit in New Hampshire on Thursday night, law enforcement officials said. The authorities had swarmed the storage facility, in Salem, N.H., earlier in the evening in pursuit of a man wanted in connection with the two deadly attacks, which had stunned New England and set off days of frustrated searching. Federal investigators obtained a warrant for a unit that they believed was linked to the person they were seeking, according to one official with knowledge of the situation who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing matter. Col. Oscar Perez, the police chief in Providence, R.I., where Brown’s campus is, said the suspect had died by suicide. Colonel Perez identified the person as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente. He said the man was a 48-year-old former Brown student whose last known address was in Miami, and that the motive was not clear for the attack at Brown or the shooting Monday night of the M.I.T. professor in Brookline, Mass. But Christina H. Paxson, Brown’s president, said it was “safe to assume” that the suspect had, during a brief stint as a graduate student in the early 2000s, spent considerable time in the campus building where the Brown attack unfolded.
B. Three days after the deadly shooting at Brown University, officers received an anonymous tip that stuck out from a flood of information. It directed the authorities to a post on Reddit. “I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental,” the Reddit user posted, according to an affidavit filed by the police in Providence. R.I. That tip would later lead to a breakthrough in not only the search for the campus attacker but also the suspect in the murder of a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It also ended the dayslong manhunt that had put both the Brown and M.I.T. communities on edge. A day after the Reddit post was made, the writer approached law enforcement officials and told them about his encounter with a suspicious man in Brown University’s Barus and Holley building. The information “blew this case right open,” Attorney General Peter F. Neronha of Rhode Island said in a news conference Thursday. The tipster, whom the police referred to only as John, said that he had encountered the suspect inside a bathroom on the ground floor of the building between 1:45 p.m. and 2 p.m., around two hours before the first shots were reported. John said the suspect’s clothing was inappropriate for the weather and that they had made eye contact. John told the police that he followed the man after he left the building to a Nissan vehicle with a Florida plate. But instead of entering the vehicle, the suspect started walking around the block, with John behind him. John said it was like “a game of cat and mouse.” At one point, the two men spoke. According to the affidavit, John asked the suspect, “Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?” To which the suspect responded, “Why are you harassing me?” John went his own way soon after that. When the police showed John images of the suspect’s car from safety cameras, he said: “That might be it.”
NYT
Trump Suspends Green Card Lottery After Revealing Brown Shooter Entered US Through System
WASHINGTON — The Trump administration on Friday paused the U.S. green card lottery after authorities said the suspect in shootings at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor was granted permanent residency through the program, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a post on X. Noem said she asked U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to halt the Diversity Immigrant Visa program as investigators identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a 48-year-old Portuguese national and former Brown student who, she said, received a green card through the lottery in 2017. The lottery, created by Congress in 1990 and effective in fiscal 1995, makes up to 50,000 visas available each year — about 5.7% of green cards issued in fiscal 2023, compared with roughly 64.6% issued through family sponsorship — and the move is the latest step by President Donald Trump to tighten immigration policy after violent episodes his administration has blamed on lax screening.
Citizen Journal
Trump Downgrades Marijuana Classification to Schedule III, Easing Research Restrictions Without Fully Legalizing Drug
President Trump signed an executive order on Thursday to downgrade cannabis from the most restrictive category of drugs, easing some limitations and allowing for more research. The move, which does not decriminalize marijuana, also authorizes a pilot program to reimburse Medicare patients for products made with CBD, a popular compound of cannabis that is not psychoactive. Mr. Trump’s order would move marijuana from a Schedule I drug, the same category as heroin, to a Schedule III drug, the same category as ketamine. But it does not legalize the drug, as some states have done, and would not affect law enforcement’s approach to making arrests connected to marijuana, according to senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the order.
NYT
ByteDance Sells TikTok’s US Operations to Oracle-Led Group, Averting Nationwide Ban
WASHINGTON/HONG KONG, Dec 19 (Reuters) - TikTok's Chinese owner, ByteDance, on Thursday signed binding agreements to hand control of the short video app's U.S. operations to a group of investors, including Oracle (ORCL.N) , opens new tab , in a big step toward avoiding a U.S. ban and ending years of uncertainty. The deal is a milestone for the short video app used regularly by more than 170 million Americans after years of battles that began in August 2020, when President Donald Trump first tried unsuccessfully to ban the app over U.S. national security concerns. details of the deal are in line with those outlined in September, when Trump delayed until January 20 enforcement of the law that bans the app unless its Chinese owners sell it amid efforts to extract TikTok's U.S. assets from the global platform. He also declared the deal met the terms of the divestiture requirements under a 2024 law. The new U.S. company will be valued at around $14 billion, Vice President JD Vance said in September. That was below analysts' estimates and the final figure was not made public on Thursday. Under the agreement, American and global investors including cloud computing giant Oracle, private equity group Silver Lake and Abu Dhabi-based MGX will hold an 80.1% stake in the new TikTok USDS Joint Venture LLC, while ByteDance will retain 19.9%. Oracle shares rose nearly 6% in premarket trading on Friday.
Reuters
Legislative Stalemate Triggers Healthcare Cost Hikes as Lawmakers Depart for Recess Without Renewing Federal Aid
WASHINGTON—Millions of Americans are facing higher healthcare premiums and lingering uncertainty about whether help might still arrive, with Congress set to break for the rest of the year without renewing enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies. Supporters of the subsidies insist the fight isn’t over. But prospects of a bipartisan deal remain slim, even as some lawmakers and people close to the Trump administration signaled that voter pressure could lead to a retroactive fix when Congress reconvenes in the new year. “I’m not ruling anything out,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R., S.D.) told reporters Thursday. Lawmakers have been grappling for months with the fate of the enhanced subsidies, which benefit roughly 20 million Americans and were at the heart of this fall’s record-long government shutdown. Democrats, along with some Republicans, have pushed various proposals to keep the subsidies in place. Most Republicans oppose any extension. Hopes of a breakthrough emerged on Wednesday, as four vulnerable House Republicans broke ranks and joined Democrats in backing a petition that would force a vote on a three-year extension of the enhanced subsidies when Congress returns in January. Republican leaders warned that the measure would be effectively dead on arrival in the GOP-controlled Senate, although some acknowledged that it would intensify pressure on party leaders to find a compromise. For ACA enrollees, Dec. 15 was the deadline to sign up for coverage that starts Jan. 1 via the federal insurance marketplace and many state exchanges.
WSJ
December 19, 1776: Thomas Paine publishes “The American Crisis”
Amid one of the bleakest moments of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine published The American Crisis, opening with the famous line, “These are the times that try men’s souls,” to rally a collapsing Patriot cause. Washington’s army, encamped along the Delaware River after a string of defeats and the loss of New York City, was rapidly shrinking as thousands of volunteers went home and enlistments neared expiration, threatening the rebellion’s survival. Building on the revolutionary impact of Common Sense, Paine’s new essay was read aloud to Washington’s dispirited troops, helping revive morale at a critical moment. The renewed resolve contributed directly to Washington’s daring crossing of the icy Delaware, the surprise victory over Hessian forces at Trenton on Christmas night, and the subsequent defeat of British General Earl Cornwallis at Princeton—turning the tide of the war and restoring hope to the revolutionary cause.
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