The News for 11/29/25
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We’ll get back to the music on 120 Minutes in just a moment, but first, it’s 12:30 and it’s time to check the news, for this week, November 29th.
There’s some late-breaking news in the world of higher education tonight. The Daily Northwestern newspaper reports late Friday night in a developing story that Northwestern University in Illinois, just outside of Chicago, has agreed to a deal with the Trump administration to pay the federal government $75 million in order to restore federal funding for the university’s research programs.
The agreement also requires Northwestern to provide housing & sports facilities based on assigned sex at birth, as well as end trans health care for minors at Northwestern’s medical arm, and reverse a policy Northwestern instituted last year in the wake of protests against the genocide in Gaza to be more transparent in its financial dealings. However, there are no limits imposed on what can and cannot be taught academically, the Daily Northwestern reported.
The Northwestern University Board of Trustees made the controversial decision to capitulate to the Trump administration despite Northwestern faculty voting earlier this month 595-4 to implore the university not to cave to Trump. This news also comes at a time when a new Gallup poll just released Friday shows that Trump’s approval rating nationwide has dropped 5 percentage points since last month’s poll to just 36% approval, with fully 60% disapproving of Trump and his administration, according to Gallup News.
Reaction to the Northwestern news in Illinois has been coming in swift online, with Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion, which is based in Chicago, commenting just before 10:00 tonight that Northwestern’s move was, “an insanely stupid and short-sighted choice. I didn’t even know they were still trying to run this racket. You put more universities in danger with this, you idiots!”
This is an ongoing story as we come on the air tonight. We were planning to have a holiday break from the news this week but then this post-Thanksgiving Friday night news dump happened, so we’ll have a full report on this and other stories on next week’s show.
And that’s… the news.