The News Roundup For February 6, 2026

This message comes from IXL, providing an online learning environment intended to keep student skills sharp over summer vacation. The platform covers core subjects and adapts to each child's pace. Receive 20% off at IXL.com slash NPR. Hey, it's Naila. I'm your host for this edition of the News Roundup. Just a quick heads up before we start the show. The news is rapidly changing and things may have changed by the time you hear this episode. Stay up to date with news by listening to your local NPR member station and visiting npr.org for all the latest. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show. You're listening to the 1A podcast. I'm Naila Boodoo, and this is the news roundup. Maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch, but you still have to be tough. President Trump, with a sort of admission, if we want to call it that, that immigration enforcement went too far in Minnesota. Two American citizens were shot to death by federal officers there last month. He was answering a question from ABC News there on Wednesday. This week, we also heard from the brothers of Renee Macklin Good, who was killed by ICE agents on January 7th. In the last few weeks, our family took some consolation, thinking that perhaps Ney's death would bring about change in our country. And it is not. Today, as we round up the news, we'll ask what's actually changing in Minnesota. Also today, an Epstein's filed debacle, massive layoffs at the Washington Post, and a win for Democrats ahead of the midterms. Our panel is here with me in studio in D.C. to talk through it all. Steve Clemens, editor at large at the national interest. Hi, Steve. Great to be with you, Nala. Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for Huff Post. Hi, Arthur. Welcome back. Hi, great to be here. And Margaret Tolliv, senior contributor for Axios and Director of Syracuse University's Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship. Margaret, great to see you. Thanks, Gila. And hi, guys. Now you guys have to say hi. Hi. Hi. Let's start with Bordersar, Tom Homan. He spoke this week about the changes coming to Minnesota. More cooperation we get, the less rhetoric and hate we see, and the less attacks means we can... draw down even more quicker. Steve, Holman's announcement leaves 2,000 or so federal immigration officials still in the state. What else do we know about the Trump, the changes of Trump administration says it's making? We know that Kristi Noem has been sidelined in terms of the management of what's going on in Minneapolis. That's the bottom line. Bringing Tom Homan in has immediately sent. you know, what the administration is trying to achieve, a softer message, immediate withdrawal of 700 officers, and that's about 25% of those deployed out there. And they're trying to basically show that this is going to be the kinder, gentler version of ice pickups of, you know, people that they're targeting. And so we'll have to see how this unfolds. They're also saying there's unprecedented cooperation at all levels of, you know, the state, dealing with the governor. That's the story they're putting out there.

to the folks that just, you know, called in and sent in messages, there's still a lot, an edge to this that people on the ground in Minneapolis are feeling and sensing every day. I think home industry. And also, to be honest, the president himself, despite saying, hey, we may have gone too far, also said he wasn't going to draw down any forces at the beginning. So there's been a wobbliness in the president's message himself. I was texting yesterday with a pastor in Minneapolis and asking her about this, and she was saying it seems like not that much different. But let me ask about some other news. This week, several children were released from ICE detention in Texas, including five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos, allowed to return home to Minnesota. Arthur, how did these release? of these children come about? Well, the boy you just mentioned was ordered released by a judge who said, you did this out of a ham-handed effort to meet Stephen Miller's insane deportation quotas. The others, including a girl who has been in detention in this Texas facility for a month, came back to Minneapolis just this week, and they don't even know why. So it's, I think, though, that it shows the... There's been a big shift in the politics of this. And even if it doesn't seem that significant on the ground in Minneapolis, it's a very big deal here in Washington. The Trump administration is reeling from the backlash to what they've done and the fact that they've killed two American citizens. Their poll numbers are going down. They don't like it. And Trump is trying to get out of it, even as Stephen Miller has tried to, you know, escalate and send in those extra DHS agents. Those are the ones that are taking. out now. So it's a setback for this whole Stephen Miller attack mindset. And let's talk about elsewhere changes in D.C. and Congress lawmakers are trying to agree on a spending bill that will keep DHS funded past next week. Democrats have a clear message about what they want before they'll sign on. D. Dramatic changes are necessary. It's got to rain in ice in very serious ways and end the violence. Margaret, what specific restrictions are Democrats holding out for here? Nyla, there's actually a lot. There's like literally a laundry list. I mean, let's start with no face masks, with wearing body cameras, with restricting the use of force, saying ICE agents are throwing around their physicality too much. They're using force too aggressively. It needs to be restrained. To the notion of more judicial review, like I think we all. Most people would assume or would assume before this begin unraveling in Minneapolis that, you know, any federal agent or any law enforcement officer needs a search warrant, okay, to or an award to arrest someone. No, not ICE officers. They've been operating under a different set of rules and Democrats are saying there should be more judicial review. And also.

There is a desire from some Democrats to ensure that local or state officials have the ability both to push back on and to investigate the federal government or federal agents if they believe their actions have been inappropriate. So another key thing here is that this is happening in Congress because Republicans are going along with it because Trump told them too because he doesn't like how things are going for his administration. It would have been unthinkable that Democrats could say we demand reforms to ICE. And then Republicans would just say, okay, we'll separate DHS funding from the rest of our appropriations. But that's what happened because Trump gave them his blessing to do it. Now, whether a deal comes together, it seems like a toughie. But ICE funding, I mean, not ICE funding, but DHS funding is going to be up in the air, potentially for a long time. Right. What were the lapse in DHS funding mean for ongoing immigration operations? Nothing, really. They already gave billions of dollars to ICE in their big tax cut bill that was paid for with those Medicaid cuts. But other important things at DHS, such as FEMA and TSA would be affected. And, you know, FEMA is really important in lots of places. And that's politically risky. And we don't know how. Democrats haven't decided how they're going to handle that. They have a deadline at the end of next week to pass a bill to fund DHS, and that's their leverage. Steve Margaret mentioned body cameras. Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary, said all immigration officers in Minneapolis will now wear body cameras. How significant a shift is that? Well, look, I think it's significant because the body cams, the officers have to turn those body cams on under order for any at-large arrests or searches or, you know, ex- executing search warrants and whatnot. The problem is it's not for all ICE officers. Right. It's just for Minneapolis. Right. So it is significant and it's one of the items is it, those critics. Look, it's not just Democrats who want this. You also have a break among Republicans who saw the death of two U.S. citizens and said, this is ridiculous. Many gun rights owners are furious. The administration was facing major, major pushback. from many of their in their own base looking at this thing. How did this happen? And when you kind of look at the videos that are out there, many, many folks are saying this can't continue to happen. So the body cam element is an important one. I think it's part of the softer touch that the administration is trying to bring this. It's important to recognize it is not system-wide. They have not made that commitment yet, but that's one of the calls that Democrats are requiring to get back to DHS funding. Earlier we mentioned polling. There's a new NPR, PBS News, Maris poll that shows a jump in disapproval for Trump's handling of immigration. Two-thirds of Americans now say ICE has gone, quote, ICE has, quote, gone too far. That's an 11-point increase from last summer. Margaret, is that all driven by Republican voters? No, watch the numbers. Watch the ball here. You're right. This is a really interesting poll. That number, 65 percent of Americans saying ICE has gone too far. But look at the numbers.

The Republican base has largely stayed with President Trump. You do have now 27% of Republicans saying they think ICE is going too far, but independents are the number to watch. That shift in independence, seven out of ten independents now saying they think ICE has gone too far. And why are independents important? Independents are important, of course, because at least in theory, they are... potential swing voters. And you've got hugely consequential midterms where it may be viewed as a referendum on President Trump. If you see some of those independents who voted for Trump in 2024 because they wanted him to get, you know, tougher on the border, but they don't like this. If you see them either staying home or backing Democrats. that will be the trend to watch in this poll. Yeah, that's how you lose in an election. And how closely do you think in Congress people are watching that polling right now in this midterm year? You know, Congress was always worried, Republicans in Congress were always worried about potentially losing the House. But in the last few days, we're seeing new data points that suggest potentially a greater concern about losing the Senate. I think that's tougher for Democrats to pull off. but now seems possible because of President Trump and these policies. We're rounding up the week's news. You're hearing the music of Bad Bunny there, one of a number of artists at the Grammys on Sunday who spoke up against ICE and immigration operations. Bad Bunny is also set to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show this weekend when the Seattle Seahawks go up against the New England Patriots in California. We talked about Bad Bunny on the 1A record club this week. That conversation is on our website at the 1A.org. I will say I for want. have been invited to more Bad Bunny watch parties this year than the Super Bowl game. But Margaret, I know you're going to be watching the actual game. Yeah, my husband's a Seahawks fan. If Washington's not in it, I'm with the Seahawks. We'll be back with more on immigration. Lots of other news in a moment. Stay with us. The News Roundup is just getting started.

Support for this podcast and for Planet Money Summer School comes from Capital One. I'm sorry, NPR voice of sponsorship. Did you say Planet Money Summer School? Because that's our show. A fun summer romp through the principles of economics told in Planet Money's approachable style. It's called Summer School because it's an easy way to learn economics while you're on the beach and enjoying the sun. This season, Planet Money is traveling the world to find the most fascinating lessons about money. We'll hit all seven continents and find that often our most vexing problems have been solved someplace else. Take a semester abroad at Planet Money Summer School. In the Planet Money Feed until Labor Day. Support for Planet Money Summer School comes from Capital One. Capital One offers checking accounts with no fees or minimums. What's in your wallet? Terms apply. See Capital One.com slash Bank Guy for details. Capital One N.A. Member FDIC. We heard a few minutes ago the emotional voices of the brothers of Renee Macklin Good. They spoke at a Department of Homeland Security Use of Force forum this week. Arthur, we were talking about the idea of investigating these deaths. The DHS Inspector General is investigating the use of force by ICE. Congressional Democrats have urged them to move quickly. But what does a watchtob investigation like this entail? Well, I think they... basically get the facts and they and uh and some agency watchdogs have the power for criminal investigation um and this would basically be a later fallout of something that we all already saw on video so i don't know uh how much it would reverberate when when it eventually reaches a conclusion this is a watchdog uh that has been um accused of misconduct in a claim that was substantiated during the Biden administration. He opted not to remove him, but he's not one of the more recent Trump lackeys. So it could wind up being a very authoritative report. But I think the fact that... These excessive use of force were so thoroughly documented from multiple angles that we've already seen. We know what happened in these incidents. We have an email from Allen, Massachusetts, who's asking, how can we push Congress to make it possible to sue federal agents for violations of civil rights and property damage? Arthur, what kind of lawsuits are options here? Well, you already can file an administrative claim with DHS, like with the Justice Department, and then you can sue if they deny it. But Democrats had actually had this on their early... lists of demands when I was speaking to certain lawmakers such as Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut increasing liability for immigration agents. And then they left that off of the written list that they produced on Wednesday evenings. So apparently they're not gunning for that right now. Steve.

As we talk about investigations, Democrats in Colorado are asking for an independent probe into recent actions by ICE and Eagle County. Agents allegedly left so-called death cards, customized Ace of Spades playing cards at the scenes where they had detained immigrants. This practice has its roots in the Vietnam War. Can you explain a little bit? So this is a hackles on the back of the neck. weird story where as you know during the vietnam war after our forces joint forces we had a combined force with allies in vietnam after viet con were killed they would leave an ace of spades on the doorstep of the of the person who was killed indicating that family that would have happened and what's happened in colorado and we have photos of these ace of spades cards with the denver field office address uh for those people who've been taken and detained by ice and left in their cards so it's it's an incredibly eerie gesture, and you've had both senators of Colorado House members come in and send a note to Christine Oams. He's absolutely unacceptable to use this historic means of intimidation of Latino community. Well, and also what was used during war against... An enemy. A foreign enemy. Yes. Connoting death. And we killed them. Yes. Connoting death. Right. It speaks to the G.I. Joe mindset that apparently exists in the heads of a lot of these immigration enforcement agents. But it's not just a mindset of people are printing out cards and placing them that also speaks to a culture that's some, I don't know what, you know. It's exactly the sort of like lack of professionalism that Democrats wants to reign with a uniform. It's not only lack of professionalism, Arthur. It is a pursuit of a kind of milieu where this kind of action was celebrated. It's kind of part of the esprit of core of targeting and sending a signal. But during war also, I just want to say, right. It's extremely threatening. And I would say we were talking earlier in the show about the Democrats list of demands. I would add the. Ace of Spades card to the list of demands most likely. This is kind of tactic. It is in there. They want a uniform code of conduct. They want uniforms. They don't want them running around with the guns like they're doing. And yes, unprofessional is perhaps the overly polite way of describing it. We also saw this week a federal judge stopping President Trump's attempt to end temporary protected status for Haitians. This would have affected about 350,000 people living here legally who sought refuge from their home country. The Trump administration says it may appeal this ruling all the way to the Supreme Court. Let's just talk first about why the administration has targeted this group in particular.

Because they're black. You remember during the campaign when they were saying the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating the cats, eating the dogs. It's just that carried forward into the administration. A judge said, you did this for no other reason than hostility to non-white immigrants. And I think that's pretty obviously the case. Margaret, are Haitians still at risk of being deported in the near term? I think given the... history and record intention of the administration that if you're a Haitian in this country on temporary status, you're not going to be resting comfortably. The administration's position has been that the Haitian program has become a de facto asylum program and that it shouldn't have been and wasn't intended to be. But given some of the presidents. sort of long-standing comments about what he's described as asshole countries or his view on certain populations in certain cities. It does, you know, you have to take that context into consideration, I think. Steve, can you put this in legal context for us? Where else are we seeing courts step in to reign the Trump administration's immigration action? There's been quite a lot of court action. trying to block or blocking some of these removal of temporary protected status. They've done this successfully so far with Venezuelans under temporary protected state, but one and a half million Venezuelans in the country, but also from Sudan, Nicaragua, Nepal, Salvador, Honduras, and Cuba are part of that dimension. And there's so been a, you know, we kind of look at it, there's a court battle going on between the administration over a lot of these issues. But I think the other dimension, which I think is there is really, a reversal and we don't know what the status is on this but you know the asylum seeking process has not been completely suspended at the border, and judges have ruled that that can't be there. I'm not familiar with who gets to make those claims and who doesn't. I think it's very murky. Which was suspended after the National Guard troops, troop member was killed. Margaret, when we look back at Minnesota and we think about the flood of immigration cases putting enormous pressure on prosecutors and judges there, how is the judicial system handling all of this? You know, it's remarkable. We saw it like a glit. glimpse of this this week. There were reports about a prosecutor in St. Paul just having a total meltdown to a judge and saying, this job sucks. I don't know what you want me to do. I'm paraphrasing, but this is the justice if the system's broken. That's a vibe. I can't fix. I can't. There's only so much I can do within the system. And part of this is just too many cases, not enough prosecutors, but part of it also is the federal government, the Justice Department's own. conduct, and these two feed each other. You're seeing, I think the number is like 14 or 15 now. You've seen this flood of lawyers and staff at the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minneapolis quitting since around the beginning of the year and most recently, even just a few days ago. And part of this is frustration that the Justice Department is not holding.

these ice killings, these actions by officials sufficiently accountable or investigating or being willing to prosecute. And so the more attorneys leave. the more it feeds the gap, which is causing the strain on the ones who stay. Can I just add on Margaret's point? It's really important. That's with the ICE detentions. You know, people like Farah Stockman and others at the New York Times have written extensively on how broken the legal system is when it comes to processing asylum claims. It's so many years backed up. And candidly, the Biden administration did not move to figure out ways to resource that function. And so you have an ongoing building. So it's adding enormous stress to an already stressed out legal system regarding any kind of immigration but also asylum applications. Let's wrap up the immigration conversation with one more email from Reid who says, forget about administrative charges. The killing of Alex Preti was obviously murder. When will we learn the names of the killers? When will they be criminally charged? Someone must be held accountable. ProPublica did report the names of the officers involved in that. I don't remember them off the top of my head, but the names are out there. Accountability, I don't know. Let's go to the latest with voting in elections. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said California can use its new congressional maps in the upcoming midterm elections. The maps give Democrats a competitive edge paving the way for the party to pick up as many as... five seats. The court denied an emergency request from the California Republican Party to block the maps. A reminder, the voters in California approved these new boundaries last year following Texas's adoption of a Republican-friendly redistricting plan. Arthur, so what's the significance of this move from the court? Does it set a broader precedent for redistricting challenges? I believe it says that states can go ahead with brazenly partisan gerrymandering to advantage the ruling party uh whenever they want. You know, you don't need to wait for the census or anything. Am I overstating it? I think that's what we're talking about here. Okay. Can we talk about Texas where Democrats flipped a seat in the state Senate and a special election runoff on Saturday? It was a surprising victory ahead of the midterms in November. Democrat Taylor Romet beat Republican-Wamgoss in a district that favored Trump by 17 points in 2024. Steve, what do we know about how Democrats flipped the seat? Texas is a red state. It's a red state.

But it's more than a red state. This district has not changed, and I think over three decades. I think it's 34 years. And the numbers are staggering. 57%. There are about 100,000 people voted 57% went for Remit. 43% went for the other candidate. And this was a case where the governor of Texas, Governor Greg Abbott, and Donald Trump weighed in very strongly before the election, trying to turn this around. So it's not just a casual election. Oh, you know. a Democrat popped up and reversed a trend. They threw a lot of themselves, the president and the governor in this, and they lost it. And this has given hope to a lot of Democrats about the upcoming election. It sent chills down the spine of many Republicans looking at the midterms coming. I was in Texas last weekend. I will tell you the commercials are kind of bonkers in terms of election commercials already running on the airwaves, on the radio, on YouTube. Margaret. What advantage does this win give Democrats in the midterms? Yeah, well, don't forget, Texas's primaries in the U.S. Senate race are upcoming. So. Look, what does a state runoff race do? It sort of depends. It certainly could juice democratic enthusiasm and turnout. It could also give a roadmap if the key is turning out Latino and suburban voters who are unhappy with Donald Trump. The real question is, can Democrats win the U.S. Senate race in Texas? If they could, it could flip control of the Senate and create a whole dynamic of momentum. And Texas has been such an important ally for President Trump in so many ways on border policies. A win like that in Texas could begin to blunter chip away at some of that support for the president. We have a number of listeners asking about the potential for midterms to happen at all. Helen and North Carolina asks, do you think we will actually have midterm elections or will it just be performative elections with troops guarding blue districts? Susan notes in an email, the executive branch acts as if there will be no more elections. We did hear President Trump talk about the idea of nationalizing elections. Margaret, can you explain a little bit more about that? Well, legal experts and many Republicans themselves say that can't be done because the Constitution gives that power to the states and Congress. But one of the big political questions has been, will the president try anyway and by what means? And one of the concerns that I think you're maybe getting from your listeners in... Is the idea of ice, like, could ICE agents or other federal agents be deployed around polling locations? Would that intimidate or block people from voting? So even if, like, what does, what does national— Right, we heard Karoline Leavitt say on Thursday, the White House, quote, can't guarantee an ICE agent won't be around polling locations, end quote.

Right. So obviously, that would be an intimidating and perhaps violent factor depending on what happened. So the question is even if you, even if there's no mechanism by which to formally nationalize an election, what federal assets could you put toward elections in a way that would shape the outcome? Would that be legal or not? Who would challenge it? Who would prosecute it? Would it matter? What happens next? A lot of unanswered questions at this time. Let's hear actually just the... president talking about this from an interview with NBC News on Wednesday. If we need to put in federal controls as opposed to state controls, remember this. They're really an agent. They're really accumulating the votes for who wins an election. If they can't do it honestly and it can't be done properly and timely, then something else has to happen. I think he'll definitely. do weird stuff. He's saying it. He did it in 2020. But it was in some ways a little silly. They were laughed out of courts and the ability to execute his plans, like with immigration, will be, I think, a reason for some optimism. But obviously, we'll have to be vigilant. I mean, he's saying, I mean, he says what he wants and we know what he wants. But also that said, you've got to understand. And I spend a lot of time talking to Republican members of Congress and the Senate, et cetera. And there is no appetite for this. He will find that they will bite him back if he proceeds. The biggest advocates for state's rights in this area, frankly or candidly, or more Republicans in my view. And so I think that's going to be a real challenge for the White House. Right. Like with the 2020 scheme to steal the election, only the least competent people were willing to do that. And everyone else at the Justice Department said, we'll all quit. This is a stupid and illegal plan. And I think that's a similar dynamic that we can count on. And the least competent people have not proven successful so far this year or last year. Margaret, we do see a bleak reality among election officials since 2020, around 50% of talk election officials in at least 11 states left their roles amid increasingly violent threats and harassment. What do you think the consequences of that will be? Well, the consequences could certainly be that the people who replace them could be less adherent to the rules and norms in a way that transcends partisanship. And it's deeply concerning for election officials around the country. we're going to head to a quick break. We'll be back with more of the News Roundup in just a moment. Stay with us.

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Over the weekend, the Justice Department released more than 3 million pages and thousands of photos and videos related to the investigation and to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The documents in reference to the president, other powerful figures like Elon Musk, Bill Clinton, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. What new details emerged from this latest release, Steve? Well, I would say that from a criminal perspective, I think there are allegations by young women that were not followed through, which is remarkable. Some of them that were not investigated involved President Trump and mentioned President Trump were not investigated. But. If you kind of remove those for a moment, what we see is salacious commentary and actions from a lot of name brand people, including the current Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, Petra Attia, who's one of the celebrities that Bari Weiss has committed to bring on as a commentator at CBS News, who I won't repeat what he said in these comments, but pretty graphically. awful comments from people, and CBS has not taken steps to actually discontinue that relationship with Petratia. So we see a lot more color and basically a web of connections, an extraordinary web of connections among the power, powerful, but nothing by which criminal action. And then on top of that, lots of unredacted stuff of innocent women, it's remarkable that they've essentially crowdsourced redaction to... America and the world who are then complaining about photos. So not just photos. Bank information. Private bank information of victims, names, faces very slopporily, not at all or not all redacted. The DOJ said on Monday it had withdrawn thousands of these documents. They also say they dropped the ball here, Margaret. How could this happen? Well, by the DOJ's account, this was an oversight. It was a mistake. A big mistake. It was a big mistake. And the massive volume of documents they had to go through is how they're explaining a few slipped through. I think the sort of credibility gap, the issue that has not satisfied people about this explanation, especially the victims, is that there are many, many documents that appear still to have been redacted that involve communications. with Attorney General Pam Bondi or FBI Director Kash Patel or other administration officials. And so I think one of the questions is, did these slip through the cracks because they were actually more focused on protections and redactions for federal officials? And so... As opposed to the victims. That's right. And, you know, we did see, you saw a judge schedule hearing over this and then cancel it because... There was an agreement already reached with the government saying we will deal with these thousands of pages of errors. We will take them down. But the damage is already done to some extent. And this is after they already gave themselves an extra month to put out the material contrary to the law, which they broke. And it's another example of the incompetence of the administration when they're doing anything except like blowing up a boat. Right. And more harm done to...

these victims. Former President Bill Clinton, former Secretary of State Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, agreed Monday to testify in front of the House in relation to the Amsteen files. It marks the first time a former president has been compelled to testify to Congress under subpoena. Why else is this moment remarkable for Congress's oversight power, Arthur? Well, you can't defy a congressional subpoena. And if you do it when the other party controls the administration, you could go to jail. This happened to two former officials of the first Trump administration. And so the Clintons faced a real threat of contempt of Congress and going to prison for a year. So that threat was magnified by the fact that Democrats on the committee voted for the subpoena. and voted for a contempt resolution. So they just didn't have a leg to stand on, and they've been very aggressive fighting against James Comer, and it just didn't work. They don't have this sway with the younger Democrats who are in Congress now. So, Steve, can you just explain a little bit about how Kentucky Republican Representative James Comer, the chairman of the Oversight Committee, his actions led to this moment? Well, I think James Comer has been on a... track for a long time to try to leverage the power in the moment. to put his, you know, mark on the wall that he was able to heal and bring to heal a former President of the United States. And he is, you know, through a lot of steps that he has taken, has moved very methodically. And from their viewpoint, it's been in response for what Democrats did with Peter Navarro, as Arthur just talked about, others that were held in compend and sent to jail. But, you know, I happen to see President Clinton every once in a while, and he's been joking for the last year that they were going to try. and send him to jail and that they would hope that they would send him somewhere in the where it's warm uh and so there's been this ongoing knowing tension of both sides and comer's using his power of this moment to heal a former president but it's opening a door that many people are looking at. If you've now, bro, you've opened the Pandora's box of bringing that. What lies in the future for those people around President Trump and even President Trump himself? And the Clintons, all they have to do is talk and they're good at that. And they're even bragging that make it public. Right. So the Hillary Clinton set to testify February 26th. Bill Clinton's schedule for the next day. What do we know about the details of that? Those will be private depositions that will be transcribed and videotaping. And we'll get the transcript in the video sometime after. That's totally typical. And then, so now they're saying, well, we want a public hearing. I talked to James Comer this week. He said he'd love that.

And he would. I'm surprised. I think the Clintons are using that to try to throw sand in his face and that they would not really want a public hearing because this is embarrassing. But it's also important to remember that Comer succeeded in getting Democrats on board for this. And the reason that they're doing that is because they have an appetite for the for the future. I spoke to a senior Democrat on this committee, Stephen Lynch, and said, well, there's, you know, Bill Clinton's in pictures with this guy. And part of the whole Epstein scandal is his... leveraging relationships to appear legit at all times. That's why he wanted people like Bill Clinton and Bill Gates around him so that people would forget he's a convicted sex offender. I think though Clintons have managed to find a little bit of weird silver lining in... the way comers play this because the coverage of, especially Bill Clinton, has been so bad in recent weeks around this. And both of the Clintons in trying to refuse to testify. And the storyline emerging at the end of the week is Clinton's champion testimony before cameras. They want, you know, full disclosure in sunlight. And it... But, you know, we'll see what happens. On Wednesday, weeks of anxiety about impending cuts at the Washington Post culminated in many's worst fears. The paper laid off about a third of its staff, including more than 300 from the newsroom. Jada Yuen, who wrote arts and culture features, was among those who lost their jobs. She posted an emotional video on Instagram. I have colleagues who are in Ukraine, who are going to have to come back, colleagues who are in Jerusalem. We had a foreign editor quit because so much of his staff was decimated. And for our section, basically arts coverage that doesn't involve Trump has been eliminated. Ruth Marcus, who spent more than four decades at The Post as a reporter, editor, and columnist wrote in The New Yorker, quote, When Jeff Bezos purchased the Post, his net worth was about $25 billion. It's now an estimated $250 billion. Why not 1% of that for the Post enough to sustain the paper indefinitely? A pipe dream, I know, but this arrangement would make Jeff Bezos a savior of the Post, not the man who presided over his demise, end quote. I heard a lot of that sentiment yesterday at a rally I went to outside the Post's building on Thursday in D.C. These layoffs are shameful.

That was John Chloy, the president of the News Guild, which operates the Post Union. Let's just talk about reaction to what unfolded at the Post this week. Arthur, you want to start? These are the most demoralizing mass media layoffs that I've ever seen. And I was to say, in the history of my, I've had a lot of demoralized. I've been around a lot of demoralizing newspaper layoffs, I have been personally, my company's done layoffs a bunch of times, and it's incredibly frightening and upsetting, and somehow. this institution just impaling itself. They were so well positioned after the first Trump administration. They had such good leadership, and they made these insane decisions to basically insult their core readers when they spiked the Kamala Harris endorsement, which nobody would, you know, who would have even blinked? Oh, they endorsed Kamala Harris. That's what they do on the editorial page. It seemed so unnecessary. Even with all the challenges facing media and the decline of ad revenue, this was a pillar of journalism, one of the most famous institutions in the country's history, and it's just a terrible and unnecessary seeming outcome. Margaret, can you put on your hat as former president of the White House Correspondents Association, just sort of a sense of what this means? Well, this is, you know, one of the most important newspapers in terms of Watergate coverage and so much of the post reputation in the decade since has been built on that robust coverage of American politics, of local news, of international news. I'm going to put on my other hat as director of an institute that studies the relationship between the media ecosystem and the strength of democratic governance of our democracy. And say that I think... As Arthur mentioned, there are a lot of trends hurting the ability of news organizations to survive. We haven't even talked about AI yet, but just subscriptions and the way people consume news. Problem for credibility when it comes to Jeff Bezos is he's also a billionaire who owns a bunch of other companies or is the founder of a bunch of other companies that are worth a lot more of his net worth than the Washington Post. And the more robust the post coverage is, the harder it is for him to continue making money on those other businesses. And Amazon MGM was in the news quite recently for spending $75 million to acquire and market this Melania movie that... Melania Trump that will never make back a fraction of the $75 million spent. So if you're at the Washington Post, you're thinking how much of this is really about profit margins or business? It's a credibility problem and it is exposed the... real risk in news organizations on relying on billionaires as owners? We're facing a real problem, not only in media being owned by billionaires and people looking for the benevolent billionaire who's going to come save this public good, but we're seeing battles with Netflix and Time Warner and all of these other things. I think the notion that whether it's an entertainment or communications or news media.

Right now, the billionaire class, which Donald Trump has decided to favor some and not favor others based on... on what his interaction with them has created not only even the Washington Post crisis, but a crisis in a lot of other areas. So this is a deep structural problem in the United States. Right now, it takes us back to the robber barons in my view early on and whether or not they're going to be brought around. And as we see the kind of decimation of support of tax dollar support for a lot of national media, we have a problem with media writ large. And unfortunately, I have to say it's going to get worse before it gets better. Jeff Bezos was with Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary this week. He wasn't putting his face on these layoffs. He was with the Trump administration where he's got... big-time contracts for his rocket company. Let's do one final story. On Sunday, President Trump announced he plans to shut down the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center for the Performing Arts for two years for renovation starting in July. The announcement raised major unanswered questions about funding, congressional approval, and what happens to the employees, artists, and resident organizations like the National Symphony Orchestra? Steve, what do we understand about why President Trump is doing this? Well, President Trump said he got $257 million appropriated for reconstruction. So everything's on set to do that. What we also know is that major artists, Lynn Manuel Miranda, others have pulled their... projects and presence from the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center after he put his name on the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center in protest of it. So you have declining subscriptions, declining donations. The Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center itself has to raise about $80 million in addition to other sources it comes. And that has been just falling precipitously. So people suspect, this is suspect that's different than what Trump says, that it's because they can't make the place work or operate, so they're going to close it for two years and who knows who will do it. And the president sees him. himself, you know, to give them a moment as one of the great builder presidents of all time. They've got the ballroom. They want to have the, you know, arc of triumph out there, and now they have the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Center, a redone. Speaking of the arts, let's just end the show honoring the beloved actress Catherine O'Hara, who passed away last Friday at 71 years old. Her breakout role was on the 70s and 80s Canadian sketch comedy Second City Television. She met her husband of 30-plus years on the set of the cult classic Beetlejuice. If you don't let me gut out this house and make it my own, I will go and stay and I will take you with me. O'Hara played a forgetful mom on Home Alone.

And another mom in a role that earned her an Emmy, Moira Rose in the hit series Schitts Creek. It is all but impossible to explain why things happen the way they do. Our lives are like little baby crows carried upon a curious wind. Here's to one of the greats. Catherine O'Hara, thank you for making us laugh. And a big thanks to our guests. Steve Clemens, editor at large at the national interest, Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for Huff Post, and Margaret Tolliv, senior contributor for Axios, and director of Syracuse University's Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship. We're going to head to a quick break. We'll be back with more of the news roundup in just a moment. Stay with us. One year after Congress eliminated federal funding for public media, NPR remains committed to informing the public. But a free press doesn't just happen. It's something we must protect. Without federal funding, we're relying on your support now. Please show your support today at plus.npr.org. It's the international edition of the 1A News Roundup. Our expert panel is here with me in studio, Jack Datch, a defense reporter at Politico. Hi, Jack. Hi, Nana. James Kittfield, Senior Fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Congress. James, welcome back. Good to be with you. And on the line, Nick Schifrin, Foreign Affairs and Defense correspondent for PBS News, and host of the new show, Compass Points from PBS News. Thanks for being here, Nick. Thanks so much for having me. After a week of will they or won't they, Iran and the U.S. came together for historic talks on Friday. These are the first negotiations between Washington and Tehran since last June when Israel launched an attack on Iran. That attack triggered 12 days of military confrontation. The meeting also follows a massive U.S. military buildup in the region, an Iranian drone being shot down, escalating rhetoric between the leaders of both countries. Here's the president speaking to NBC and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatolli Khomeini addressing the nation earlier this week. Should the Supreme Leader in Iran be worried right now? I would say he should be very worried, yeah, he should be. This gentleman regularly says he brought warships. The Iranian nation will deliver a firm blow to anyone who attacks or harasses it. The Americans know that if they start a war, this time it will be a regional war. That tone was tempered down in comments made by the Iranian foreign minister after talks wrapped in Oman on Friday. There are a sort of agreement amongst us to continue the talks and negotiations. And, inshallah, we will determine the time and the place of the second round of talks during the coming days. The atmosphere was positive and it was a good start.

Nick, let's start with that good start. What was on the agenda there for the talks mediated by Oman's foreign minister? What do we know about how discussions went? The agenda is topped by the nuclear program, which, of course, the president has said was decimated in the U.S. attack on the three sites in Iran last year, but that is still an issue. Obviously, that includes enrichment, whether Iran is allowed to domestically enrich, something that it insists on doing. But that's D. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, who were... the lead negotiators today insist that Iran has to stop. Beyond that, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and a U.S. official who I talked to the other day say that they also want to discuss Iran's ballistic missiles. They also want to discuss Iran's support for proxies around the region. And they also want to discuss the highly enriched uranium, the HEU, that Iran says was buried during that U.S. strike. So there are four issues on the table. The president really has only been mentioning the first one, so that gives you a sense of the priority. But U.S. officials do say that, no, we want to talk about all four. That is a deal if indeed the U.S. behind closed doors is insisting. on movement on all four of those things. That is a deal that most Iran watchers, most experts believe, is impossible for Iran to agree to, especially its ballistic missiles. Already, U.S., Israeli, and regional officials have been worried about war starting again in 2026 over those ballistic missiles. Iran has made it very clear that it wants to reconstitute what was destroyed in terms of the ballistic missile production last summer and that it needs to maintain missiles in order to defend itself. So we don't know exactly what was discussed. If we just look at the president's words, though, certainly nuclear, and certainly that threat, you know, the fact that he says the Supreme Leader needs to worry, you know, U.S. officials tell me the military threat's still on the table, but the president has certainly made it clear he wants a deal with Iran, and so Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are there, and if Iranchi is the latest sound, which we've got. It suggests that, you know, this round was fine and will continue, even if they didn't make a lot of progress today. Jack, can you just remind us about the stockpile of ballistic missiles that Iran has? Yeah, you're looking at about 1,500 to 2,000 ballistic missiles that the Iranians have. That's like one of the biggest in the Middle East. It is the biggest in the Middle East. You have short and medium range.

range up to about 2,000 kilometers, so about 1,200 miles around the region, quite significant in terms of the range that they can reach. They've been developing that further. The bottleneck for the Iranians has been the number of launchers that they actually possess. We saw when they were going tit for tat with the Israelis, they did not have... a large number of launchers to launch some of these ballistic missiles off. That could be a bottleneck for them in the future as well. But they also have those major stockpiles of the Shahed drones as well. They've been giving to the Russians. And the Russians have industrialized as well. So they might be able to get some industrial support if the tensions in the region kicked to a higher gear. James, I was actually just reading something you wrote about the Donro doctrine hitting some snags. Basically, the idea that the president hasn't been able to turn the Iran situation into his art of the deal. How does Iran fit into and the president's national security strategy? Well, it just shows you how myopic that strategy is. It's, you know, the Don Roe doctrine goes back to the, you know, and they reference this in the strategy, the Monroe Doctrine, which is a spheres of influence neocolonial doctrine that this country adopted, you know, two centuries ago. basically saying that no other major power can mess in our backyard. And implied in that is that we get to throw our weight around in our backyard. And things like the decapitation of the regime in Venezuela and the threats against Greenland and the threats against the Panama. And we take the Panama Canal and the threats against Mexico to maybe strike against cartels on Mexican soil. These all fit into sort of the Don Road doctrine. Back when that doctrine was assumed as the American sort of worldview, you know, we were a much smaller and less powerful country. The Iran deal makes clear that we have... vital interests in the Middle East and close allies. We have vital interests and close allies in Europe, and we have vital allies and close interest in Indo-Pacific. So it's kind of a, it's a throwback, and it doesn't really work for a global superpower, which we still are. And the interest they have and sending a Ramada to the Middle East right now shows just how vital our interests are in that region. You can join the conversation with questions or comments to 1A at wamu.org. Hadi in Indiana asks, last June after the bombings in Iran, President Trump claimed Iran's nuclear program and material was completely and utterly destroyed. Why is Trump now negotiating with Iran to quit their nuclear program eight months later? You're nodding, James. Well, I mean, I, I, and they have used, first it was the protest. And they, and, you know, Trump threatened the Iranians that if you keep killing the protesters, you know, we're going to, we're going to strike you militarily, likely. And they killed thousands of protesters after that. So that didn't, that reason didn't make much progress. Then it was, yeah, it was the nuclear program, but also the missile program and also its support for these access of resistance, you know.

Hamas and Hezbollah sort of resistance groups, militias. And so now it's narrowed down to the nuclear. So, you know, just not sure exactly what they expected to get out of these talks. And that's not sure from the discussion so far that much was accomplished other than agreeing to meet again. Let's talk about neighbors. Earlier in the week, Iran scholar Nagar Mortezavi had this to say about Iran's neighbors. Nobody wants this kind of chaos in the region. I think the neighbors, more than anyone, understand that this is not going to be bound to Iran's borders. It's going to spill over. It's going to damage their security, stability. Arab countries across the Persian Gulf are worried. Iraqis are worried. Turkey's worried. Egypt. It's essentially all hands on deck and everyone is trying to help and mediate and bring diplomacy. Iran's allies in the region, Nick, I'm thinking of Hezbollah's leadership, the Houthis in Yemen, Hamas and Gaza, greatly weakened. Can we just talk about what the neighborhood looks right now? How much are Iran's regional allies a factor right now? We haven't talked about Israel as well. The regional allies, if you call them that, the proxy groups, which of course are dubbed by the United States as terrorist groups, those are diminished. And so while Hezbollah has threatened Israel, while the Houthis have threatened to shut down shipments, you know, those are not seen as really as significant as they would have been before the conflicts over the last few years in the Middle East. The question about the region, I think, is actually more about, you know, the Saudis, the Emirates, they were in Oman today before we get to Israel, is how much of these Gulf Sunni states, which have worked on their relationships with Shia Iran over the last few years, certainly. the tensions between Iran and especially Saudi Arabia have been diminished. And so how far are Saudi officials going, how far are Emirati officials going and trying to convince Trump not to strike? I think the Saudi and Emirati and regional officials that I talk to, you know, they do definitely want diplomacy. They definitely want to see. some kind of deal, or at least not a huge military strike, but I believe that their interests is much more about stability, right? They don't want to see a regional conflict, and that's where the Iranian threats come in. because U.S. officials for months, even before the last few weeks, have known that any conflict in Iran this year would not look like 2025 because they believe they assess that Iran would do a lot more damage in response to a U.S. attack. And so that's the dynamic that Trump's dealing with from the Gulf allies. Israel, of course, much more interested in a much more robust attack on Iran to set back its missile program.

We heard President Trump tell NBC news that Iran's supreme leader should be very worried. Here's what Vice President JD Vance said to conservative podcaster Megyn Kelly about Iran this week. So what the president has said is Iran's not going to get a nuclear weapon. We're going to work with China and Russia in any country, whether they're a friend or whether we're a little more competitive, to try to draw down the amount of nuclear weapons that exist in the world. I think that's the most important thing you could do for peace and stability. And the question is, what do you do to enforce that red line? Okay, Iran can't have a nuclear weapon. That is the stated policy goal of the President of the United States. It's so funny. Sometimes you have people who are saying, well, the President's too belligerent. And then sometimes you have people who say, well, the President, he's talking about diplomacy and he's talking about negotiating with the Iranians. We should negotiate. We should just bomb them. What the President's going to do is he's going to... Keep his options open. He's going to talk to everybody. He's going to try to accomplish what he can through non-military means. And if he feels like the military is the only option, then he's ultimately going to choose that option. Jack, the American leader is under a lot of pressure domestically. There are people who have supported regime change in Iran, pointing out Iran is at its weakest point in more than four decades. The president's also under pressure from factions of the MAGA movement to stay away from another war. How much is this part of his administration's calculus here? It's been surprising, Naila, because Trump 2 is a lot more interventionist than Trump 1. You just look at Venezuela, the first Iran strikes. And from what we can tell, the MAGA base has been following along, Politico did a poll recently back in January, showing that 65% of MAGA voters, people who describe themselves as MAGA, would support the president greenlighting more military operations. So places like Iran, Greenland, Cuba, Colombia, even Mexico. 50% of Trump voters backed more military intervention in Iran at rose to 61% among MAGA Republicans. So they may not be on board with protracted wars, but Trump has perhaps succeeded in tamping down criticism among his base at least that, okay, we can do these smash and grabs, these things like going and hitting the Iran nuclear. program going and doing a smash and grab to take Maduro. Of course, that's become a protracted perhaps parent-teacher conference between the Venezuelans and the Americans about how to run that country. But now you're in a situation where what's really playing on Trump's decision is how much he can do with these strikes or with whatever military operations can take. Can he change the regime with these attacks? And what seems like the debate going on in the White House is, is no, he can't actually change the regime potentially with the military.

the U.S. is bringing to bear. Right, which I just want to wrap up by just asking about the issue of protester deaths and where that fits into these talks. At one point, the president said the U.S. military was, quote, locked and loaded to support them, Nick. What's happened to that? It's a very good question. I mean, I went through that list with a U.S. official a couple days ago, oh, you know, nuclear missiles, proxies, HEU, you know, high-enrich uranium. And the officials said, oh, don't forget the protests. I was like, okay. I mean, look, these protests ended a month ago. And as Jack just said, the president said, you know, the U.S. was locked and loaded. He encouraged them, you know, to takeover buildings. And, you know, the U.S. basically... helped Starlink, you know, into Iran and get some free Starlink subscriptions, which were then blocked by Iranian authorities. So, you know, countless Iranian democracy advocates have told me and told everyone, you know, that this was a real moral abandonment of their cause. But, look, you know, as we've been discussing, the military threat still on the table, the negotiations are still ongoing. So, you know, we're early. I will say this. Those regional officials who we talked about earlier, are telling Iran do not dismiss the military threat that President Trump is putting on the table. They believe it's real. And in fact, some of those regional officials are saying if he doesn't follow through with the threat, that will weaken U.S. credibility. This week, high-level talks between Ukraine and Russia in Abu Dhabi concluded without a breakthrough. The trilateral talks are aimed at ending Europe's most deadly conflicts since the Second World War. And the meetings marked the most substantive engagement between senior delegations from Kiev and Moscow and Mons as well and the revival of diplomatic efforts were nearly four years into the war. So far, almost 1.8 million troops are believed to be dead, wounded, or missing. On Thursday, the two sides agreed to a reciprocal exchange of a 157 prisoners of war each, offering a rare concrete outcome from the discussions. Washington remains optimistic. We think we've made real progress. If you look at the checklist of open items that existed at this time last year and the checklist of open items that remain now in terms of reaching a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, that list has been substantially diminished. That's the good news. The bad news is that the items that remain are the most difficult ones. James, let's start with those difficult items as Secretary of State Marco Rubio was just talking about the biggest gaps between Kiev and Moscow. Oh, list the way. It's territory number one. Russia is demanding territory that is to be surrendered that it has not been able to take on the battlefield. And that's kind of a non-starter for Volodymyr Zelensky. They are also demanding that in any security guarantees, there'll be no Western troops on Ukraine soil. That is also pretty much a non-starter. There might be a finesse to that. I haven't seen it yet. But obviously, for obvious reasons, Ukraine's going to be very insistent on.

pretty steadfast security guarantees. And those are the really big sticking points. It's hard to see right now how they bridge that gap. I will say that the Trump administration, I think, gets credit for convincing India, apparently, to reduce its purchase of Russian oil. The Europeans are starting to talk about this shadow fleet and not letting them sail in European waters. So Russia's economy is really starting to stagger. And so there might be— What do you think that would lead to any attempt by Vladimir Putin? compromise? Well, yeah, I think that's the only way. The only way, really, the problem here is we really have had, the Trump administration has not been willing to use any sticks vis-a-vis Vladimir Putin and Russia, but that seems to be changing. And really, the weakness of this is their economy. I mean, they are on a wartime economy, vast amounts of money being spent on their defense industrial base. Their energy revenues have fallen by half in the last five years. A lot of people don't think they can do that forever. This week, Russian drones and missiles battered energy facilities across Kiev as temperatures dropped to minus 7 degrees Fahrenheit, some of the coldest days on record. President Volodymyr Zelensky said it was the first Russian attack on Kyiv's energy infrastructure since January 29th. When President Trump claimed Vladimir Putin had agreed to pause strikes on Ukrainian cities for a week. Nick, Volodymyr Zelensky has called these attacks on the energy grid terrorism on Russia's part. What effect have these attacks had on the talks? Well, the attacks have made it much more difficult for Ukraine to survive the winter. I mean, everybody thinks it will. But, you know, I think it just shows in Ukraine what it sees as the cynical approach of the Russian Federation, which is... you know, again, from Ukraine's perspective, pretend to do these talks, performative, I think is what a couple of Vladimir Putin watchers have told me recently, while trying to erode the will of the Ukrainian people to support their government and their fight. You know, there's no sign that there's a direct impact on the talks other than, you know, Volodymyr Zelensky. you know, saying, look, hey, Trump, you know, this is what Vladimir Putin's doing. And the president has, you know, raised the idea of a ceasefire, which lasted about a day and a half as far as we can tell. But, you know, There are critics who say that these talks are performative, but I also talk to people who have seen the drafts of the documents that they're producing, and they're very serious. And, you know, as James was saying, there's a lot of issues, obviously. But we are down to two major sticking points, which is the Fayyodonetsk, that part of...

Eastern Ukraine that Russia has not been able to seize despite 11, 12 years of war now. You know, there are more Ukrainians today who are willing to trade that away in exchange for a security guarantee from the United States than there have ever been, and certainly were about a year or two ago. And then the second part, sorry, is the Zaporisia nuclear power plant. Yeah, I was just going to ask if you can remind us what international law says about energy attacks. Well, you know, international law is pretty clear. You know, you have to distinguish as the belligerent between military and civilian targets. And that's why you hear Moscow saying, oh, we think this is a military target. But, you know, I've been to these places. A lot of us have been to these places. There is no evidence that these power plants or these generators or facilities are being used directly by the military. And so that is against international law because these are civilian targets, not military targets. Let's talk about the last nuclear arms control agreement between the U.S. and Russia was set to expire on Thursday. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty known as New Start put limits on the nuclear arsenals of the former Cold War superpowers. On Thursday, Axios reported the U.S. and Russia are closing in on a deal to continue to observe New Start. James, can you just remind us quickly about New Start's history here? especially what the state of U.S. Russia relations was at that time when this first came about? In a sentence, much better at the time. New START was reached in 2010 under the Obama administration. It was basically a continuation of the Cold War START treaty, which back then limited both sides to 6,000 warheads. New START in 2010 limited both sides to 1,500 deployed warheads apiece. And, you know, we should say that, It's the last nuclear arms control treaty. So right now, there is absolutely no guardrails on what is increasingly looking like a proliferation breakout between Russia, China, and the United States. We're modernizing our arsenal. The Russians have deployed a number of very exotic delivery systems in recent years. The Chinese are in a massive buildup of their nuclear arsenal. They had all was kept a small. a small arsenal, and now trying to, I think, reach parity, going to have a thousand warheads by probably the end of the decade. So there's no guardrails now. So the fact that there's reports that they are going to abide by the limits here is encouraging, but it would have been a lot nicer if they had had some negotiations so you could actually extend basically the new start parameters. Jack, how concerned should we be about a new possible nuclear arms race, as James is talking about between the U.S. Russia, maybe now China. Do we need to add this to our list of 2026 worries? Where does this go? Well, it's exactly what arms control experts are worried about. Russia has the largest nuclear arsenal in the world. They've tried to develop six new novel nuclear programs. That includes the world's heaviest. ICBM intercontinental ballistic missile, an underwater drone that might be nuclear capable. The U.S. isn't far behind it. And the feeling among the arms control community was if you let this deal lapse without a meaningful replacement, Newstart could not be extended under the terms of the treaty because the Biden administration already did it. You'd begin to see right away Russia and the U.S. begin uploading more warheads on their missiles as soon as they could.

But the Trump administration has really been living in this post-newstart world for months. They didn't really respond meaningfully to Russia's call to extend the limits by a year, as James said, which would not have included inspections. So there were some serious caveats there. Trump, of course, has been talking about resuming nuclear testing for the first time in 30 years. So now we have this question mark over whether they're going to observe the limits, whether they're not. But, of course, the big question among the arms control community is, why didn't you start negotiating this when you had the chance the administration had a full year to do it? Can we just stay with Russia for a moment? Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping held a video call on Wednesday to discuss the burgeoning economic cooperation between Moscow and Beijing and their relations with the U.S. The Kremlin leader also accepted an invitation to visit China twice this year. Nick, how are traditional U.S. allies watching the strengthening relationship between Beijing and Moscow? Look, it's not only Beijing and Moscow, you know, the Prime Minister of Canada flew to Beijing to make a deal on EVs. You know, the Europeans are talking about trade deals with China. You know, to quote Mark Carney, there is a rupture in the international system. And it is reflected by all of these trade deals that Europe and Canada are doing over and above the United States. And so the level of doubt. about the U.S., I think, extends far beyond how far Beijing and Moscow are able and willing to go in their partnership. Obviously, the big concern on a day-to-day basis between Beijing and Moscow is, you know, Beijing's support for the defense industrial base in Ukraine. sorry, in Russia, so that it could keep fighting in Ukraine. And that really does suggest that, you know, Moscow's not going to run out of drones or ability to wage war in Ukraine anytime soon. But beyond that, you know, what we've been talking about, right? You know, if China is heading toward parity at 1550 deployed warheads on bombers, subs and land. You know, it's a very different world and what is the arms control there. If China and Russia were to team up, you know, as China launches a war in Taiwan, for example, that's a very different world that the United States has to confront. And so there's huge long-term strategic concerns here. Day-to-day, it's about Ukraine, I think. But again, you know, it's not really only about China and Moscow. It's about why European and Canadian leaders are also flying to Beijing as well. Yeah, one thing that's been really interesting to watch is not just the reaction among the superpowers, right? It's been the allied reaction in the past few weeks. And, I mean, what we've seen since there was so much fracas at Davos a few weeks ago, I mean, Mark Carney basically invoking Vaclav Havel's power of the powerlessness against Trump, essentially. I mean, we've seen basically a reaction across the international community now where...

Britain and France are talking with Sweden, Germany potentially in the mix, about how to build a nuclear deterrent on the European continent that might not include the United States. So this is advanced well further than anyone expected. You know, if you treat your allies like in a transactional discussion that you're just trying to squeeze them as hard as they can before they scream, whether it's with tariffs or threats against allies like Denmark and taking Greenland, at some point they're going to react. And what we've seen is they've started to react. And of course, the place to go if you, if you're worried about the United States, you know, from an economic point of view and its tariffs, is to go to China. It's the second biggest economy in the world. And I've never thought I would say this, but Xi Jinping is now defending the rules-based order because it's been very good for China. He also likes the sort of sphere of influence doctrine himself when it comes to Taiwan. But we're really seeing a rupture. I mean, this is a rupture. The NATO, you know, has been the most successful alliance in the history of the world. And right now, there is very serious doubt about whether the United States could be relied on to fulfill its Article 5 commitments to come to the... defense of any NATO countries. So if you're attacking NATO country like Denmark, how can they trust that you'll come to them in their hour of need? So it is a rupture. The Trump administration hosted a summit in the Capitol on Wednesday for the Critical Minerals Ministerial. It's a new effort to build an alliance to counter China's control over the critical minerals market. 54 countries and the EU sent representatives to the talks. China mines 70% of the world's annual supply of critical minerals and refines 90% of them. On Monday ahead of the summit, President Trump announced an initiative called Project Vault, a $12 billion initiative using private capital and a U.S. government loan to buy and stockpile critical minerals. The president likened it to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the U.S. maintains. Nick, if you take those two together, the Project Vault and this critical minerals alliance, what... Does this say about the administration's strategy when it comes to critical minerals in China? It means it's an enormous priority. for the administration. And not just in the last few days, Project Vault, obviously, you know, a major initiative that costs a lot of money, you know, $12 billion, as you said, $10 billion loan to the import-export bank. You know, the effort that Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance led at the State Department this week had, you know, more than 50 countries there. So the U.S. has definitely prioritized this. So whether it's about Ukraine or Abraham Accords, right? I mean, some of that, you know, about through a critical minerals deal in Central Asia. Dealing with Africa have involved deals with critical minerals. What the U.S. has identified is a couple of things. One, this priority, which China identified decades ago, and so the U.S. is trying to catch up. And two, a vulnerability. You know, China for basically over a weekend.

blocked what are known as heavy rare earth magnets. These are the magnets that go into everything from F-35s to electric vehicles to our smartphones. And that led to an auto plant in the Midwest having to pause. The vulnerability that the U.S. had was instant and it was visible and it was shocking. And I think all the efforts before that were... moving toward, I would say, a kind of realization that, wow, critical minerals is a real vulnerability because of China's near monopoly on this. But that moment really stepped into high gear. And so all over the world, you see a prioritization by the Trump administration on this. And but again, you know, they are really catching up. You know, China made these decisions. Right. That was going to be my question, Nick. And James, actually, let me ask you. How long is it going to take the U.S. to catch up here? Years, many, many years. As Nick saying, China's been doing this for decades. Right, and these mines are very, very difficult, especially if you have any kind of decent environmental protection laws. These mines are very difficult to get up and running. You know, if you'll just go back for a second, this started when the Trump administration was issuing all these various tariffs and it threatened China with 145 percent tariffs. And China, as Nick... pointed out, you know, within a weekend was able to get the Trump administration to back off because it, you know, restricted these rare earth and these magnets. You know, and credit to the Trump administration, this is a strategic move that you cannot afford. If China is your chief competitor, it's an autocratic country, it's got its aims on an ally in Taiwan. You can't live with that kind of vulnerability. So my hat's off on this. This seems very strategic to me. Makes perfect sense. And we saw, you know, China wants to cut the spigot and it can do so in a couple of days and all of a sudden manufacturing lines start to shut down in America. You can't live with that kind of vulnerability. Jack, just before the break, we were talking about this new world order, European allies working together. Is there a sign that U.S. allies in Europe and Asia are on board with working with the U.S. on this critical mineral alliance? It's still up in the air because you have on one level Beijing applying enormous... pressure when it comes to their rare earths. They've taken the rare earths that they have themselves. They've gone to the lithium belt in Africa. They have the second largest reserve in the world of that, too. They've gone to take cobalt in the Congo, which has 70% of the world's cobalt. That's a monopoly on all of the things you need to create electric car batteries, which is going to be a key thing that rare earths are going to be building. They've tried to strangle people with this export control regime. And what it seems like the U.S. has come up with in response is very much a Trumpian approach of trying to lean on allies, use their leverage to try and extract critical minerals. So you see a lot of consternation in Europe among the Canadians about this kind of approach that essentially this is perhaps a continuation of what we've seen from the administration when it comes to Venezuela, Greenland, that resources are at the center of the focus.

but they're really just turning the screws on some of their allies. Before we get to Venezuela, Nick, can I just ask you? President Trump spoke with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Wednesday for two hours. Both governments published readouts of the call, which Trump called Long and Thoreau. As you parsed through those statements, what did you see Beijing emphasized versus Washington? Taiwan. So Beijing emphasized Taiwan. I think Xi Jinping, I think there was a sentence in there that said something like, Taiwan remains and will remain the number one issue between the United States and China. And there was a warning about more armed sales to Taiwan. The Trump administration was criticized by Taiwanese for waiting some, I think, 10 months. before announcing the first arm sale of Taiwan, but they have since announced some of the largest sales ever. And there's officials who are saying another one was on the way. So Xi Jinping made it very clear that he was unhappy with that. And it's a reminder, right, that... You know, there's a lot in the U.S.-China relationship, including some points of cooperation, even for a Trump administration. You know, but there's trade and tariffs, there's technology, all sorts of things. But when it comes down to it, you know, Taiwan is still the thing that could set off, you know, war, frankly, between the United States and Beijing. What I will say is this. The Trump administration... The first Trump administration created momentum for what they call great power competition, created the momentum that still exists for export controls or a real technology battle. That language from the Trump administration has fallen off. And clearly the president is indicating his real interest and priority in making a deal with Xi Jinping and some of the architects of Trump won. their policy toward Beijing are very worried that the president is emphasizing a deal over national security. But the national security strategy, the president himself, says, look, of course he had a deal with China. You know, they're the second biggest in everything, basically, other than the United States. And so he's clearly wanting to make that deal, and we'll head to China in April to try and keep going on that. And that summit will be watched very closely by the Taiwanese who are very, very nervous about Trump, like we mentioned, is so transactional. And his devotion to our traditional alliances is so transactional that there's a huge concern that he'll basically make some sort of a deal. And Taiwan suffers for that. I mean, Xi Jinping has said he wants his military by... 27, which is only next year, to be capable of taking Taiwan by force if necessary. This is very much a legacy issue for Xi Jinping. This will put him in the history books for good if he can somehow subsume Taiwan. It would be a huge disaster for us for many reasons, but in part, one reason being if we can't come to the support of Taiwan, what does South Korea think about our alliance commitments? What does Japan think?

huge amount of stake in the Taiwan issue and it seems like it's not it can't be sort of shoved to the background as it has been for decades it seems to be coming to a point Let's turn now to Venezuela. It's been more than a month since the U.S. captured Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Celia Flores, who was a member of parliament. President Trump says the U.S. may run the country for years. So far, Delsey Rodriguez, the vice president has been recognized as the acting interim president. The U.S. Navy has also installed a blockade in the Caribbean to monitor Venezuela's oil exports a substantial blockade that doesn't seem to be moving anytime soon. After the capture of Maduro, President Trump said that opposition leader Maria Corina Machado did not have enough support to run Venezuela. Maria Corina Machado did meet with Trump last month to present her Nobel Peace Prize to him. On Thursday, Maria Corina Machado told Politico that Venezuela could hold Democratic elections in less than a year. Jack, what did you make of that statement? What do we know about Maria Corina Machado's relationship with Trump right now? Well, it seems like a good relationship every time Trump opens his mouth to talk about Maria Corina Machado. He says she's a nice lady. I think that's the direct quote. He's used several times. Since she gave him the Nobel Prize. But, yes, still, despite giving him the Nobel Prize, seems to not be on board with the idea that Maria Corina Machado's ready to run the country. So this is certainly something, I guess, that might surprise U.S. officials. when they've gotten kind of comfortable with this program that they have in place, which is basically keeping Delci Rodriguez Maduro's successor on a performance improvement program with the Navy bearing down on Venezuela as well, that that huge armada that's still in place, an aircraft carrier, plus a number of attached destroyers. So it would be surprising to see... elections come about in that period of time. But clearly, Maria Corina Machado trying to at least put momentum behind herself as the leader of Venezuela, especially, of course, after her and Edmundo Gonzalez, you know, believe they have a mandate from the election that it seems very clear that Maduro stole in the last time around. With the U.S. largely controlling Venezuela oil, Trump is now pressuring allies to buy it. This week, Trump offered a deal to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, stop buying Russian oil, and he would significantly drop tariff rates on Indian goods. James, if India drops Russian oil, it could hinder Russia's ability to finance its war against Ukraine. What's the likelihood that Narendra Modi's going to agree to Trump's deal? It's a really good question because there have been indications that India has reduced its purchase of Russian oil, but it has not said, Trump has said basically it agreed to not buy Russian oil. India has not confirmed that. Russia has said they haven't heard anything from India to that regard. And it would be pretty surprising in the sense that.

For decades of the Cold War and since, India's had a close relationship with Russia, has bought almost all of its military arsenal from Russian defense companies, so that it would cut ties totally in a way that would make Vladimir Putin extremely angry. Color me suspicious, but there seems to have been some movement on that and then at least reducing their oil purchases. And that has put pressure along with our sanctions and Western sanctions on the Russian economy, which is a good thing if you want them to come to the table seriously about ending the war in Ukraine. Let's move to this week's White House visit from Colombian President Gustavo Petro. For months, Petro and Trump traded barbs. With Trump saying in October, Petro was the worst president the country has ever had. The tone was very different on Monday. Here's Petro after the meeting. He gave me a red cap that said, make America great again. I wrote with a pen and put an S and said, make America's great. And that can only be done on the basis of mutual respect. Nick, there were concerns that with both of these leaders, neither known for their restraint, that things could blow up. Can you tell us, though, this mean both of the men held their cool through the meeting? What changed? I mean, it's remarkable. Probably not the hat, I'm guessing. Probably not the hat. No, it is remarkable. And, you know, not only remarkable because we have Trump and Petro, who themselves have traded insults over the last year. I mean, I think President Trump called him all sorts of names and then threatened a military operation. Petro compared, you know, ICE and Trump's kind of some moves domestically to Nazis. So, you know, they were not on great speaking terms. And yet, here we go, right? is a former guerrilla fighter who for decades, decades, has made his name criticizing America as imperialist, coming to the United States seat of power, which of course is the visual that the president wanted. Now, substantively, you know, that's the question, right? You know, is there going to be more cooperation over drugs? Will there be certain... interdictions that Petro allows, you know, extraditions that Petro has stopped. But look, the Colombian system, the defense, the deep state, if you will, in Colombia, has always worked very closely and very possibly with the United States. And despite... Petro and Trump's political battles, the mill-mill, the intel cooperation was working, according to officials on both sides, who I've talked to. So what I think you're going to see is a little bit more cooperation on drugs, some steps that Petro took on extradition to be lifted. But we're also going to see cooperation in Venezuela. Ironically, even though Petro has been a huge fan of and friend of Maduro for years and Delci Rodriguez, who's now the president, there's overlapping...

goals there. And that is a secure Venezuela that is open to international investment. And so I think you're going to see a lot of cooperation on there. And as for Petro's press comments, look, the hat line was classic Petro and did reveal that he's not completely going to say what Trump wants him to say. He's still demanding respect, but he's obviously going to be pretty playful with it and has successfully diffused, or at least some detente with the U.S. president that, you know, again, up until last month was threatening military. military intervention. One final headline before we go. The start of the 26 Winter Olympics in Italy is just hours away. The torch relay is complete. Some of the top athletes are already making headlines. There's 16 sports in all, including some never seen before. 116 gold medals are waiting to be awarded. All the action kicks off later Friday in Milan's Sancero Stadium for the opening ceremony, which is usually the most viewed moment of the games. Mariah Carey, Andrea Bocelli, will be among the... stars performing. You can be sure to check out NPR's special coverage at NPR.org. A big thank you to our panelists today. Jack Datch, defense reporter at Politico, James Kittfield, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Presidency and Congress, and Nick Schifrin, Foreign Affairs and Defense correspondent for PBS News Hour, and host of the new show Compass Points from PBS News, which airs Sunday night at 6 Eastern on PBS stations. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Kistano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. And Alexandra Boti is our senior supervising producer. Aileen Humphreys is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand, and Barb Ungiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson for additional podcast and on-demand support this week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Naila Boodoo. Let's talk more soon. This is OneA.

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