Today's Top Stories from NBC News

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2025

In today's newsletter: Trump focuses on the economy while attacking his opponents in an address to the nation. The confrontation between the Department of Health and Human Services and the American Academy of Pediatrics escalates. And, aspiring parents and the women carrying their babies face a nightmare situation after a surrogacy agency shutters overnight.

Here's what to know today.

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▼ The Lead

Trump tries to ease economic anxiety in national address

(Doug Mills / Getty Images)

President Donald Trump addressed the nation from the White House last night, where he attempted to ease Americans' anxieties over the economy while taking the opportunity to criticize former President Joe Biden, migrants and transgender people.

Trump insisted that the country is doing better than ever and attributed much of his administration's perceived success this year to his tariffs. The speech was largely a list of what the president sees as his accomplishments on the economy, with little nod to a wave of recent polls showing Americans distressed by the cost of living.

Trump's upbeat account of a nation making dramatic economic strides omitted a few inconvenient warning signs. The unemployment rate rose to 4.6% in November, the highest it's been in the last five years.

Fact checks by NBC News reporters and editors found Trump overstated some claims, including the prices of some items during the Biden administration and the impact of his tariffs. Trump claimed he "secured a record-breaking $18 trillion of investment into the United States," while experts say the real figure is much lower. The White House itself lists a figure of $9.6 trillion on its website.

The president offered no new proposals apart from what he called a $1,776 "warrior dividend" that will go to nearly 1.5 million military service members in honor of the nation's founding almost 250 years ago.

Read the full story.

More politics news:

One of the sponsors of the law requiring the release of the investigative files relating to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein said he's giving the Justice Department the "benefit of the doubt" that it will make them public by tomorrow — warning that there would be repercussions if it doesn't.

More than 117,000 immigrants face potential deportation after the Trump administration pushed to reopen cases previously paused by an immigration judge, an NBC News analysis showed.

Former special counsel Jack Smith told a congressional committee that his team found "proof beyond a reasonable doubt" that Trump engaged in a "criminal scheme" to overturn the results of the 2020 election, according to parts of his opening statement obtained by NBC News.

The White House installed plaques on the exterior of the building bashing Trump's predecessors and promoting disinformation about their administrations.

Billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman was confirmed by the Senate to be the new head of NASA, marking the end to a saga that began more than a year ago.

The Department of Health and Human Services terminated seven grants to the American Academy of Pediatrics totaling millions of dollars, escalating its confrontation with the group, which is suing Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over his vaccine policy.

The grants supported initiatives targeted at reducing sudden infant deaths, improving teen and young adult health, preventing birth defects and identifying autism early, according to an academy spokesperson.

In an emailed statement, an HHS spokesperson said the grants "were canceled along with a number of other grants to other organizations because they no longer align with the Department's mission or priorities."

Read the full story.

More health news:

As measles continues to spread in the U.S., it's likely that the outbreaks that broke records in 2025 will continue into the new year.

As of Dec. 6, the CDC had logged 26,632 cases of whooping cough in 2025. The last time the U.S. saw so many cases was more than a decade ago.

A Kansas school has decided to start its holiday break early after illnesses wreaked havoc on its students and staff, with more than 40 calling out sick in one day.

Centrist Republicans sign petition to force vote on Obamacare funding

Four House Republicans rebelled against their leaders and signed onto a "discharge petition," giving Democrats the 218 signatures needed to force a vote on a three-year extension of the Obamacare subsidies that are set to expire for millions of people on Dec. 31. The ACA funding bill is not expected to come to the floor before the deadline.

If the enhanced premium tax credits expire, as is expected, insurance costs are projected to double, on average, for about 22 million people who get their coverage through Obamacare. The discharge petition, led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., has all 214 Democrats on board.

The four Republicans who signed were Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., and Ryan Mackenzie, R-Pa. All four represent competitive districts that could make or break the GOP's narrow House majority in November, as our From the Politics Desk analysis explains.

Fitzpatrick said his hand was forced by the refusal of Republican leadership to "compromise" after he attempted "for months" to offer ideas and amendments.

Read the full story.

U.S. admits to errors in deadly midair collision near D.C.

The U.S. government admitted in court documents to failures that led to the January midair collision between a passenger jet and a military helicopter that killed 67 people.

The crash happened on Jan. 29 between an American Eagle Flight 5342, which was on approach to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and an Army Black Hawk helicopter.

The government said the pilots flying the Black Hawk "failed to maintain vigilance so as to see and avoid other aircraft and their failure was a cause-in-fact and proximate cause of the accident." It also said an air traffic controller did not comply with a Federal Aviation Administration order about visual separation of aircraft.

The admission of liability was filed in response to lawsuits from families of those killed. The master complaint in the case was filed against American Airlines and PSA Airlines, which operated American Eagle Flight 5342, as well as the U.S. government.

Read the full story.

▼ Read All About It

Two of Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner's children asked for "respect and privacy" after their brother appeared in an L.A. courthouse in connection with their parents' murders.

Ghislaine Maxwell is seeking to "vacate, set aside, or correct her conviction and sentence" on federal sex trafficking charges, according to a petition filing.

Authorities are renewing their push for more information from the public to help to find the killer of two students at Brown University.

The families of two teenage boys who died by suicide filed a lawsuit against Meta, alleging that the tech company has ignored the rising danger of sexual blackmail schemes targeting teens on Instagram.

Joe Campbell, a Pentecostal preacher who for half a century ministered to thousands of children across four states, was arrested on child sex abuse charges.

The Academy Awards are moving to YouTube starting in 2029, marking a new era for Hollywood's leading awards show and a mainstay of network television for decades.

Peter Arnett, the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter who spent decades dodging bullets and bombs to bring the world eyewitness accounts of war from the rice paddies of Vietnam to the deserts of Iraq, has died. He was 91.

▼ Staff Pick

Surrogacy scandal

When we heard that the owner of a prominent U.S. surrogacy agency stopped taking calls, deleted her social media accounts, and abruptly shuttered her business — with potentially millions of dollars of would-be parents' funds unaccounted for — we were intrigued.

The fertility industry is booming globally: hopeful parents around the world are putting billions of dollars towards having babies. We've been covering this industry and its growth for a while, and we've known that surrogacy itself has become a huge part of the reproductive business in the United States. But the world of surrogacy is largely unregulated, and before the developments at the now-defunct surrogacy agency Surro Connections, at least four other scandals have rocked the industry in recent years, where money ostensibly kept in escrow for surrogate expenses was stolen by people entrusted to manage those accounts.

Employees, intended parents, and current and former surrogates of Surro Connections described a common feeling of utter shock, as the once successful agency unthinkably imploded in early December. Their accounts and public records helped us piece together what went wrong.

— Kenzi Abou-Sabe and Alexandra Chaidez, reporters

▼ NBC Select: Online Shopping, Simplified

The NBC Select team updated their guide to the best Kindle alternatives for cozy winter reading and pulled highlights from Pinterest's new trend report for early inspiration. Plus, Ulta's holiday beauty sale is packed with editor picks, and the best indoor antennas.