The News Roundup For November 14, 2025

This message comes from Data IQ. AI is everywhere, but companies struggle to prove results. For that, they need people, orchestration, and governance working as one. Data IQ is the platform for AI success, built to bring it all together. Visit D-A-T-A-I-U.com slash NPR. Hi, it's Nyla, 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. You can always stay up to date with all the latest by listening to your local NPR member station and visiting npr.org. I'm Naila Boodoo, and you're listening to the News Roundup on the 1A podcast. The federal government's wheels are turning once more. At least they're starting to. The longest ever federal government shutdown has finally ended for now. President Trump on Wednesday night signed a bill funding the government through January and reversing the layoffs of thousands of federal employees. But as delayed food assistance starts to make its way to those in need and airports get canceled flights back on board, we are still feeling the impact. Republicans in Washington are blaming Democrats and vice versa. House Democrats reiterate our strong opposition to the spending bill because it fails to address the Republican health care crisis. This was an easy extension, but they didn't want to do it the easy way. They had to do it the hard way. And they looked very bad the Democrats do. The White House is especially interested in casting blame right now after new emails released on the Jeffrey Epstein case appear to show some of the clearest links yet between President Trump and Epstein sex trafficking. And we could be days away from getting a whole lot more information about that case as well. We're going to talk about all of that, plus lots more from this week with our panel here in studio with me in Washington is Neftali Ben David, senior national political correspondent for the Washington Post. Hi, Neftali. Hi, thanks for having me. Wendy Benjaminson also. Also with us, Washington Senior Editor for Bloomberg News. Hi, Wendy. Hi, thanks for having me. And David Smith, Washington Bureau Chief for The Guardian. Thanks for joining us, David. Hi. Great to be here. Let's start with the government shutdown, which formally ended Wednesday after President Trump signed a bill funding the government. This victory for the GOP came from Republicans holding firm and being joined by seven Democrats, including Senators Tim Kaine, Dick Durbin, and John Fetterman, along with independent Angus King who caucuses with them. Here's Dick Durbin from Illinois. During the historic roll call last night, I walked across the aisle and met with Senator John Thune, the Republican leader. I told him that I was counting on him to keep his word on this agreement. He assured me he would. Neftali, before we get to what's in and what isn't in this agreement, in the bill that was passed, what agreement is Senator Dick Durbin referring to? Well, the agreement had to do with holding a vote on enhanced premium subsidies under Obamacare. The central demand of the Democrats, which they failed to get, was that there be an extension of these enhanced premiums under the ACA.

But what the Republicans did promise is that they would hold a vote on those things and that they would hold good faith negotiations on doing that and that the vote would be held by mid-December. For most Democrats, that was very thin gruel and was not in any way persuasive. The vote honestly is likely to fail. These subsidies are unlikely to be enhanced, in my view. But for a handful of Senate Democrats, that was enough in Senator Dick Durbin, who is facing the opposition of most of his party. it was important to emphasize that. What's in what's not out of this? Well, I mean, as I just said, the biggest... The sticking point was the subsidies. Yeah, and that is, it's just not in there. I mean, there's no way around it. It is true that John Thune agreed to a vote. But again, the House did not agree to a vote. You know, even if somehow it passed, President Trump would have to sign it. The Democrats lost the policy battle on this for sure. They did win a few smaller victories. Four thousand or so federal workers who are fired are going to be reinstated. No further layoffs are supposed to happen for the duration of the agreement. But, you know, it's a short agreement. It's only to the end of January. This is an extraordinarily long shutdown for an extraordinarily short extension. And we could be doing all this again in two and a half months. And so the whole thing is very tentative and rickety. But it shows you the urgency that some people felt to bring this longstanding thing to an end. Wendy, Neftali was talking about the opposition, certainly from Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, opposed this agreement. Why did those seven Democrats and Angus King, what did they say for why they decided to vote with Republicans on this? Well, first, I don't envy the decision they had to make here, right? Because it was pretty clear, as Neftali said, that even if they get this vote on the subsidies, the chance of it passing is... infinitesimal. And the chance, even if it did pass the Trump would sign it, even smaller. So what they decided, apparently, was that there had been enough pain that air traffic was... was messed up with Thanksgiving approaching. There was, you know, the food stamps were not getting out. And people were going hungry. And rather than stand firm and say, it is the Republicans who are making people go hungry, it is the Republicans who are doing this, they decided, let's just end this now because we're not going to win. And let's move it forward. They did fund for a full year, the Agriculture Department, which gives out food stamps. They did fund for a full year of Veterans Affairs Benefits or the Veterans Affairs Department and, of course, their own branch of government. So that takes off in January snap benefits, any danger of that being in jeopardy.

We just got this email from Jim in Maryland who said, I was disappointed in the Democrats that voted for the continuing resolution. But critics of their decisions, such as Ro Khanna, have been evading the question of how much longer Democrats should have held out. Neither GOP senators nor progressive Democrats were willing to be the first to blink. Progressives are so sure that victory was just around the corner that they avoid admitting they would have kept the government closed until midterms if that's what it took. The senators who caved were the only adults. in the room. Wendy, do you want to comment? I so want to comment. I don't think, at least on the progressive left, the Democrats, that they really saw victory was around the corner. From what I'm seeing online, particularly from younger voters, is that what they were thinking was, we cannot give in. It is time for America to feel some. pain so that they will see in their mind how bad the Trump administration is. And so they were thinking just keep holding out, keep holding out at some point the Republicans would break. It felt like a convergence of Thanksgiving being imminent. Nobody wanted to... Thanksgiving travel. Indeed. Nobody wanted to ruin that. And I think the moment airports shut down, flights are cancelled, then you hear from the noisy middle class and upper middle class. And that was going to apply more political pressure, sadly than working class people running out of food benefits. But... Unfortunately, at first glance, at least, this does look like Democrats snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. I mean, it's only one week after those storming election results from Democrats and everyone said, hey, the party is back. And that momentum was there. The momentum was there. And now suddenly they're engulfed in a civil war and there's lots of calls for Chuck Schumer to step down. And, yeah, suddenly it's not looking so rosy for them. And, you know, it feeds into this framing that we've seen. fighters versus folders, people really wanted fighters. And it was notable how that spread across both the centre and the left. You had people like Chris Murphy and people like Bernie Sanders saying, you know, maintain this shutdown. But the moderates compromised. However, all of that said, there are those theories out there. And I know the New York Times and Washington Post both wrote this that. In the long term, Democrats will still win this because they have now focused attention on health care, especially. People are no longer talking about crime in cities and those Trump talking points. Instead, you know, Democrats can win this debate. So let's talk about health care because as we've been talking about one major issue, the bill doesn't resolve is the Affordable Care Act subsidies that were set to expire. Here's House Speaker Mike Johnson talking about what Democrats have been asking for at a press conference on Wednesday. They want to subsidize it further. They want to subsidize insurance companies. They want the COVID-era extension.

That was created by the Democrats themselves. They created the subsidy. They are the ones that put the expiration date of December 31 of 2025 on that. They knew it. It wasn't going to be permanent because it was a boondoggle. And now they're trying to claim it's Republicans' fault. So what happens with these subsidies now? What does this mean for premium costs? Well, it means in the short term that during this open enrollment period that people are into to re-up for their Obamacare subsidies, that the prices, their premiums are going up. I spoke to a friend this week who is on Obamacare and her premiums will now be $2,200 a month. And, you know, Luckily, for her, this is an uncomfortable inconvenience, but for many people, adding a $2,000 a month bill to your budget is impossible. And so if this vote fails in mid-December, which it probably will. I guess it will come up again in January, which will be another reason for the shutdown. Or, you know, the Republicans are continually talking as they have been almost for a decade now about repealing and replacing Obamacare with something else. And yet we have yet to see what that might be. Neftali, I'm sure we'll get more into this. We just have a minute or two before the break. But as we think about this conversation, as you've said, alluding ahead to January. How is the table set for how Congress deals with health care for down the road? Well, I do think that Republicans realize that this is not a great subject for them politically and that while they may have won the policy battle, they may ultimately have lost the political fight because they've helped cement potentially the Democrats as the party that cares about your health care. And I think they're going to be eager to do something to either have a vote or to come up with some policy to show that they, too, care about people's health care, whether that's in the form of... extended subsidies, but much smaller ones, or whether that's in the form of something like health care savings accounts. You know, we don't know, but I don't think this debate is going away. We've got this email from Sarah on health care asking, why are there no plans from either side? We talk about that and more right after the break.

This message comes from BetterHelp. People talk about mental health more openly now, but asking for help can still feel hard. BetterHelp's 26th State of Stigma report surveyed 2,000 Americans and found that 85% believe getting support is wise, yet 74% say society discourages people from doing so. Don't let stigma stand in the way of support. Start therapy with BetterHelp. Visit betterhelp.com slash NPR. We've just marked one year since Congress voted to eliminate federal funding for public media. NPR remains committed to informing the public, but a free press doesn't just happen. It's something we need to protect. Without federal funding, we are relying on your support now. Please make your gift before the end of the month at donate.npr.org. All right, so we have been talking about the government shutdown being over. We also mentioned food benefits. On Thursday, state officials said they were scrambling to get full snap food benefits to the millions who rely on them, but it could take up to a week. David, maybe perhaps an obvious question, but why doesn't the money just start to get set through and then people have their benefits? I think it's like an engine when you switch it off. It takes a while to rev it back up again. And in this instance, The program is from the federal government, but it's actually states that are administering it. So as in other domains, that can mean 50 different ways of doing it. And that takes time. I think an additional complication is the shutdown. finished mid-month, whereas a lot of the admin is often, and the payment is done at the beginning of the month. So it's going to sort of take, just take time to work through the system. And, of course, in addition, you had certain states trying to do their own benefits or pay partial benefits. So it's a very sort of complex tapestry that will take time. And that, of course, is just going to pile on frustration and pain for the American people who rely on this. program and I just think worth noting throughout this, it's such a vivid contrast with what's been going on at the White House with Donald Trump promoting a 300 million dollar ballroom and then going to Maralago and throwing a great Gatsby party. I mean, if you were the Democrats, you could hardly make up a more sort of dramatic political piece of messaging there in terms of the wealth gap. Well, I totally agree with David that the optics and the politics of this seem mind-boggling. But... We have to examine for a moment how effective it was. They cut off food stamps and Democrats who generally people who tend to be Democrats don't want to see people suffer and need to get the economic message back, that caused them to break. And so it was like holding a hostage that you love and saying, you know, this is something bad's going to happen to this if you don't cave and they cave. So as...

awful politics as it might be, it also worked. We got this email from Gary in North Carolina. Here in North Carolina, food banks, diaper banks, and state SNAP funds are barely repasing a tenth of funding loss so far. Nursing mothers are going hungry and out of diapers. A local NPR report interviewed a single mom with kids on the autism spectrum who did not understand why they had nothing to eat and were having severe mental health issues. Democrats won back pay, but that doesn't cover credit card interest, late fees, family emergencies like repairing. the car that broke down or buying medicine now for unpaid federal workers. Gary, thanks for that email. You know, as we're talking about how long it takes for things to get back to full working order, that also includes flights. More than 1,000 U.S. flights were canceled on Thursday. More than 2,470 were delayed. 415 flights that were scheduled to take off today have been canceled. FAA officials warn that travelers should still expect delays and even cancellations throughout the weekend. Wendy, as we talk about how much longer and will also take flights to get back to normal, How do you think this fits into the broader problems and complications around our transportation infrastructure? Well, it highlights just how. you know, what in bad shape they are. The president was talking the other day about how they're going to install this world-class system that, you know, he said Biden couldn't do, and that that will make all air traffic controllers happy. There are still not enough air traffic controllers. Yes, they are working with worn-out equipment. And when you, but in the short term, for the... When you slow down a system as complex as air traffic in the United States at a time like this and cancel, as you said, thousands of flights delay others, You can't just turn a switch and get that schedule back up. You have to physically move planes. Yeah, and the planes that were delayed have to take off. And then these scheduled planes can take off. And so there's just going to be, I mean, they have basically two weeks before the Thanksgiving travel starts to try to smooth this out, or people will have a tough time. Can I make a broader point about the impact of the shutdown?

I mean, what bigger failure is there on the part of a government than that its parties are so at odds that they can't provide basic services for weeks on end? And, you know, we're at a point where shutdowns are not maybe routine, but they're certainly not unheard of. You know, when it first happened, it was shocking. Now people understand that every few years, the parties may be unable to get it together to actually run the government on an ongoing basis. Government already was held in relatively low esteem, but I think this shutdown is just going to play even more into that, and it's kind of an unfortunate development. We just got this email from Jamie in New Hampshire. Interesting point from your guest about the middle and upper middle class. It is disheartening that disrupting Thanksgiving travel ends up being the breaking point while lower classes running out of food did not promote nearly the same level of concern. Shame on all of us for that. I do want to get back to air traffic controllers for a minute and just talk about that travel, though, because I want to ask about air traffic control workers in general. On Monday, the president of the National Air Traffic Controllers Association, Nick Daniels, talked about the effects of the shutdown on his workers in particular. It benchmarks the first time in history that air traffic controllers and other aviation safety professionals we represent have now received two. Zero dollar paychecks, 41 days without pay. Controllers continue to show up and step up, despite working full time during the shutdown and in many cases, mandatory overtime. Neftali. President Trump has threatened to dock the pay of air traffic controllers who took time off during the shutdown, like those who called in sick. He's also sitting wants to pay $10,000 bonuses to those who didn't take time off. Can he do either of those things? And where would the money from this come from? Well, it's not at all clear that he can do either of those things. In fact, he was asked by a television interviewer the other day, where would the money come from for these $10,000 bonuses? And he said, I don't know. Now, he hasn't hesitated in the past to do things that ordinarily a president would be seen not to be. authorized to do, to move around spending funds and so on and so forth. But it would not surprise me if this never really comes to pass. I think that President Trump was frustrated because flights were delayed. There was chaos at airports, and it was being blamed on the shutdown. And then he heard that some controllers weren't coming in. And so he went on this whole riff about how, you know, the ones that do come in should get bonuses and the ones that don't should get their pay dock. But this was even at odds, actually, with Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who was expressing a lot of sympathy for these guys that have to come into work, work really long hours. very high-stress job, weren't getting paid. Some of them were like working DoorDash or Uber on their off-times to make money. Right. And so to the extent that some weren't coming in, it was so that they could work other gigs so that they could feed their families. So it was a pretty hard-hitting statement by the president. It's not clear he has the authority to do it, and it's not clear to me that it's really going to happen.

The funny thing about that is I have a suspicion about the timing of when Donald Trump decided to yell at the air traffic controllers, because private jets were having trouble landing at airports. And I just, this is pure imagination, but I just imagine a friend of Donald Trump's calling and saying, my private jet couldn't land, what the heck is going on? And all of a sudden, because the Bloomberg Terminal moved a story about it. around the same time that Donald Trump was yelling at the air traffic controllers. David, can I just ask you also what more we should be talking about in terms of the mood of all federal workers right now as well? I mean, we've been talking about air traffic controllers, but obviously there are thousands of federal workers across the system that have been affected. I mean, just to go back to the broader point on air traffic control, I went to a, you know, show with South African comedian Trevor Noah recently, who was just sending up the absurdity of if you tried to tell South African air traffic controllers, sorry, you've got to come in and there's no pay, your check is zero, the kind of reaction you would get. And indeed, I think the rest of the world is... Watching this thing, what, your government shuts down. People are expected to work for nothing. But during the recent election campaign, I went to an Abigail Spanberger campaign event in Virginia. She was running for governor and spoke to some federal government workers there. And the reaction is kind of what you would expect. They were extremely high. off by everything that's happening, furious with Donald Trump in particular, looking for someone to fight for them. Obviously, I think that was at least one factor in the result in Virginia, where Democrats did very, very well. There's a lot of bleakness. I spoke to people who are really struggling to make ends meet, having to borrow money from... a friend just to put food on the table, desperately looking for some relief here. We got this email from Riley. As one of the folks that is living meal to meal, not paycheck to paycheck, I'm so angry that the Democrats appear to be caving because it means the hunger and stress I've held and lived with during the shutdown was for nothing. Riley, thank you for sharing that. Wendy, as we think about the broader economic implications here, I'm thinking in particular people like Riley. We know that the economy is continuing to grapple with high inflation. There's a stagnant labor market. What long-term effects are we thinking this shutdown may have on the economy? Well, it already did have an impact. The GDP growth for this quarter was down by 1.5 percentage points, which is not what the numbers that this White House would definitely want to see.

Federal services were disrupted. Contracts were delayed. Businesses were disrupted by the flights. You know, consumer spending is going to be light of that woman who wrote in. So, sadly, is living meal to meal. She's not doing her Christmas shopping. You know, and the blindness with which the government is now operating in terms of the economy. I mean, we have the, we may not get data coming up. And the two. ones that we're most likely not to get, which is the consumer price index and the unemployment rate, are ones that Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary said this week may never come out. And yet those are the two indicators. Even though those haven't passed shutdowns, they've made it back up later. Absolutely, they have. But this White House is saying, we might just skip those, which is bad for the Fed meeting in December where they may have. cut interest rates another quarter point. But if they don't know the state of inflation, if they don't know the state of the jobless rate, they can't, in any sort of responsible way, cut interest rates. So it has a tremendous impact on the economy. Neftali, I hate to ask this, but is it likely that we will see another shutdown in January? I have this feeling, and I can't make predictions, but I have this feeling that both parties are going to be so desperate to avoid a shutdown in an election year with the midterms on the horizon that they may find a way to avoid that. They hope to pass some more spending bills before that happens. But that said, you know, there are... There's a big faction on both sides that's spoiling for a fight. No question about it. And if there's one thing we've learned about recent politics, it's that it's a turbulent, unpredictable situation. So I think there are forces pushing in both directions and we'll have to see what the climate is in January. Let's turn now to Jeffrey Epstein. This week we saw some big developments in the story of the Epstein files, starting with new emails released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, which appeared to put President Trump right in the heart of Epstein's world of abuse. David, what specifically did we learn from these emails? Well, what got most attention was a few emails released by the House Democrats that raised new questions really about. How closely involved was Donald Trump with Jeffrey Epstein? One of those had Epstein saying that, you know, he, Trump knew about the girls. Another talked about Trump spending. several hours with one of the victims later named by the White House as Virginia Dufre, who's been involved in, who has obviously recently published a book and has particularly been connected to Prince Andrew in recent weeks. It was a tantalizing glimpse again of the Trump-Ebstein relationship.

did not necessarily contain a so-called smoking gun about particularly wrongdoing by Trump. But I think it has piled on political pressure. We also have this vote coming up in Congress. We have a press conference next week with certain members of Congress and the victims. And it forced the White House into full damage control mode. So on Wednesday, the House got the final signature it needs to move forward with a discharge petition. That petition is to force a House vote releasing the full Epstein files. Wendy, that's because of Representative Adelita Grejava of Arizona being sworn in? Yes. She was to be, and her father would have been, the 218th vote. But when she was called in a special election to replace him, when she won that special election to replace him and was ready to come to Washington and sign the petition, Mike Johnson said that the shutdown prevented him from swearing her in and allowing her to sign that petition. And then the House went home for... 40 days. So, you know, Mike Johnson dragged it out as long as he could. But once she was there, she signed the petition. The vote had to come to the floor. And he has relented and said it will be on Wednesday. All right. Well, there's lots more to talk about. And we'll get to it all right after this. Stay with us.

AI is everywhere, and so is the hype, fear, and jargon around it. I'm Jess Love, hosts of the new podcast Life Automated, thoughtful conversations about AI that go deep without getting too technical. You shouldn't need to be an AI person to make sense of the future we're building. Life Automated is from Kellogg's Ryan Institute on Complexity and distributed by KQED, part of the NPR Network. This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, we uncover a pattern in political ad spending. As the midterms get closer, Republicans are leaning into an issue they've won on before, immigration. We look at their message and also what Democrats are saying on the issue in a very different way. Listen now on the NPR Politics Podcast. Waylon, it seems like everything is being called a recession indicator these days. Yeah, like the box of hamburger helper in my pantry. Or the new Apple Neo book. Or the resurgence of press on nails or lipstick or no lipstick. I've lost track. There is only one way to know if these are actual economic warning signs, though. Listen to the indicator from Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. We've been talking about Jeffrey Epstein and the White House trying to, by the way, downplay this whole story, once again calling it a hoax and a Democratic distraction. But President Trump also appears to be pressuring Republicans who supported the discharge petition, specifically, David, the Republican women who signed this discharge petition. We've been talking about that got finally 218 signatures. What do we know about these Republican women and what happened this week? Yeah, well, to take one example, Congresswoman Lauren Bobut was summoned to the White House, and there was an attempt to persuade her to withdraw her name, and it appears that she refused. Another leading voice on this, of course, is Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from Georgia, who has really been at the forefront, and she'll be taking part of that press conference next week. Taylor Green, exhibiting an increasing independent streak in all sorts of ways. Congresswoman Nancy Mace is another. And yeah, it's fascinating that there has been this Republican rebel group of kind of four to start off with. But there are indications now that when it goes to the vote next week, those numbers might swell. Perhaps there's some. courage in the unity there. And it raises, it's been raising some interesting questions over, are we at least at the beginning of Donald Trump becoming a lame duck president, even though, you know, he's still in his first year in office, but he did have that bad election defeat. He can't run again. Someone was recently suggesting, well, you know, he talks about running in 2028 just to put off this idea of being a lame duck. But, On this and a handful of other issues, there are at least hairline fractures in the Republican coalition. I mean, we know famously they've been so devotedly loyal to Trump for the past decade and dissent is usually crushed. But maybe Epstein will be different. And I think it also does feel different in that every other political scandal Trump is all about throw it all out there.

sort of total transparency, I don't care. And in this one, he's behaving much more like a conventional politician with something to hide. And, you know, the reason he was talking to Bobut and others was, you know, clearly... He really does not want this vote. He does not want these documents to come out. But it seems like that seems like that's going to happen. And I do, it's an interesting question. We just got an email from John who says, I'm in Minnesota. I'm Mexican-American. I'm Republican. I don't care one bit about Epstein. I don't know any one of my friends who cares about Epstein. Epstein means absolutely nothing to most people. Thursday on the program, we spoke to frequent Roundup guests, Taylor Popillars of Spectrum News about this story. And here's how Taylor responded when we asked if fans of Trump even care about this. A good amount due. A good amount alleged a cover up before President Trump was back in office. And now they're questioning why the president himself is not following through with what he campaigned on. Wendy, it's hard to say, as we've been talking about Republicans who are speaking out about this, do we have a sense of how much this issue is resonating and probably playing very differently depending on what type of media you're consuming? Absolutely, in the terms of the media. And while I hate to disagree with my friend Taylor, the... I don't think this is a pretty Washington-focused issue and an issue focused among the class of people who might know or be on whatever client list there might be. I think most voters, as we saw a couple Tuesdays ago, are laser focused on the cost of living, on getting through the day. And whether some billionaire did something untoward with another billionaire, it just doesn't. It just doesn't resonate, I don't think, as a voting issue. If it is a way for Democrats to, you know. I don't know, make Trump look bad. It's probably a good idea. And quite frankly, we should get to the bottom of this. There were important people besides Prince Andrew who were abusing underage women. And that is where Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace, who is a publicly admitted sexual assault victim or survivor. Survivor. Sorry. you know, they really feel that this is important. And so I think in that sense, it might resonate. I mean, I do think it's worth saying that this is probably never going to become law. In other words, the House could pass it and probably will, but the Senate probably won't, and Trump is not going to sign it. So it's not like...

after this vote, these records are all going to be released. But I think Trump wants to avoid the spectacle of perhaps dozens of Republican defections that's something that he has said is very important to him in a matter of principle and is called a hoax. I think he doesn't want to see that next week. And that explains some of the pressure that he's been imposing on Lauren Boebert and Mace. Let's move to the Supreme Court. The court has agreed to hear a major case challenging Mississippi's mail-in ballot laws. That issue is the legality of ballots being counted that arrive after election day. The court's ultimate decision could have implications for multiple states in the midterms next fall. Neftali, what's the significance of the Supreme Court taking up this case then? Well, as you say, this involves votes that were mailed before election day but received after election day. And some 30 states allow for those. votes to be counted. Some Republicans are arguing that that amounts to counting votes cast after election day. And obviously, President Trump and many of his supporters have made a big deal about mail-in voting as some kind of terrible, corrupt thing. I don't think the evidence bears that out. I think it's worth noting that the appeals court sided with the Republicans. So the fact that the Supreme Court is going to take this case. doesn't mean that they're going to throw out Mississippi's rule. It may be that they want to affirm Mississippi's rule. But I think it's part of an ongoing battle that involves everything from gerrymandering to voting techniques to early voting, you know, that President Trump has elevated to one of the big political battles of the era. In other big Supreme Court news, the court declined to revisit its 2015 decision to legalize gay marriage. And I know you were also watching this closely. Yeah, this was a case brought by Kim Davis, who some people may remember as a clerk in Kentucky who declined to offer marriage certificates to gay couples, even though the Supreme Court upheld gay marriage as a right. And there were fears on the part of some LGBT activists that the court would strike down this case. But the justice has sent a pretty clear message that they don't have an appetite to wait into this right now. However, I think the fear of a lot of people that some well-established rights are under threat. While the Trump administration continues its push to get National Guard troops deployed in Chicago, the city has seen some tense standoffs, especially this week, between ICE agents and protesters. Agents in Chicago have also been accused of using pepper spray, tear gas, flash bang grenades against residents, which prompted a federal judge on Thursday to issue a ruling limiting the agent's use of force. When Chicago man says his family, including his one-year-old daughter, was pepper sprayed by ICE agents while driving their car in the opposite direction. I couldn't feel my cheek. I couldn't feel nothing, not even my face. If my face was none, now I didn't imagine my daughter's face. On Saturday, the Department of Homeland Security says several of its agents were shot at during an ice raid. Wendy, how is the DHS characterizing these incidents and how is that at odds with what immigration advocates, legal groups, as we just heard one bystander saying? Right. So DHS is...

sadly, not always being truthful in their reports on this. A few weeks ago, they claimed that a woman rammed her car into theirs, and the truth was that it was exactly the opposite. They had rammed their car into this woman because they thought she was approaching them, and she was really just trying to drive around her neighborhood. This week, someone did apparently shoot in the general direction of ICE agents, which is wrong, is illegal, shouldn't happen. But ICE then arrested a Mexican immigrant as the suspect in the shooting when the description was a man in a black sheep. I mean, we'll let the court sort that out, but it certainly helped their narrative. And that is what they are trying to do with these descriptions of violence. The people at the scene will say that... the violence is perpetrated by the federal agents who are on a hair trigger with this pepper spray, with tear gas, with flashbang grenades, which can be, you know, traumatizing and terribly frightening and physically damaging. And that then people get angry and respond. But there have not been the kind of riots or insurrection-level violence that would demand the troop deployment that Trump wants. On Wednesday, a federal judge ordered the DOJ to release more than 300 people detained in federal custody related to ICE operations in the Chicago area. Lawyers say the government made illegal arrests without warrants. Meanwhile, protests against ICE operations are only growing more frequent. On Veterans Day, protesters gathered in Chicago. Portland and L.A. to speak out against Trump's immigration crackdown. David, do we have any sense of how much immigration in these ICE raids motivated voters during last week's elections? I certainly think it was a significant factor, especially in Virginia, where Abigail Spanberger was working closely with the Latino community and had Latino leadership, maybe slightly less in New Jersey. But just talking to voters, it came up often, just this sense of fear in the Latino community. Everyone has a story. You hear anecdotes about, you know, they'll say I was speaking Spanish to my family member. I, you know, I stepped in and looked me up and down, wanted to know what I was doing there, just this atmosphere of hostility, people afraid to even drop off their children at school. And I think, you know. All of this is worth prioritising and highlighting because with so much other news going on, it can get forgotten, just that fear and dread, that terror that people are feeling. Certain news feeds, certain outlets don't really cover it at all. And what we also have with ICE and Homeland Security is this.

fairly sophisticated media operation with glossy videos and music that's from sort of action movies and Kristi Noem sort of posing as this sort of dramatic heroine and there are certain sections of the population consuming certain media who just see it as this this kind of muscular operation that's kind of cleaning up America. We've been talking about a lot this hour. So I just want to end with some listener emails and have you all sort of reflect back on what else we may have missed. But first, a couple of final thoughts from listeners on the shutdown. Barry says, it's been disturbing to hear pundits talk about the politics of the shutdown and ignore the pain it was causing. Jim says one panelist began to speak to the Democrats now as the party fighting hunger. But please emphasize that with repeated votes, all Republicans now own the party that advocates starvation. And from Tina, I couldn't agree more with Jamie and Riley, who wrote in about hunger and struggling. I think the bigger question we should be discussing is why so many American women and children were living meal to meal before the shutdown. The class system developing in this country is astounding. We also got an email from Bob about Jeffrey Epstein. We've gotten some similar thoughts from others. Having been a victim of clerical abuse from the ages of 14 to 15 and understanding how much outrage the clerical abuse scandal still affects the church, how could anyone not be concerned about this abuse scandal? Marvin says no one cares about Epstein. It's the sexually abused victims that need justice. Thanks to everyone for sharing all of those thoughts. I'm going to throw it back to our panel here. Neftali, Wendy, David, we've talked about a lot. So what have we missed? What did you want to go back to? Neftali, let me start with you. Well, I think some of those comments suggest in a way how much... pain there is in the country. I mean, that could be from hunger. It could be from health care issues. It could be from abuse. I mean, you get the sense that we're a country in agony right now. And you also get a sense that we're a country with extreme political divisions where the political system is not up to addressing some of what Americans are going through. And I think that's in a way the unifying theme behind a lot of what we've talked about right now. And it's painful to see. I think it's a suffering country and a floundering political system. system? I'm surprised I'm going to say this, but I was very impressed with something Marjorie Taylor Greene said when she was on the view, which is that both parties have failed this country for so long. And that, you know, to echo what Naftali is saying, we are by far the richest country on this planet. And yet we can't seem to keep people healthy. We can't seem to get to house the homeless. We can't seem to deal with people. being able to feed their children. And neither party has really tackled that as they should. Yeah, all of it speaks to a broken system. And I think of John Stewart, host of The Daily Show, who's made the point a couple of times that, you know, what Democrats were fighting for in this government shutdown was a piece of Obamacare that is itself deeply flawed and just benefits ultimately health insurance companies.

nothing to do with universal healthcare. And actually, you know, the irony is, you know, take a step back. The healthcare system requires a much more root and branch overhaul, as do so many of these other domains that we're talking about. All right, well, that's all the time we have for domestic headlines this week. Thanks so much to our guides for today. Neftali Ben David, senior national political correspondent for the Washington Post. Wendy Benjaminson, Washington Senior Editor for Bloomberg News, and David Smith, Washington Bureau Chief for The Guardian. After a quick break, we welcome to new guests and get into this week's headlines from around the globe back in just a moment. AI is everywhere, and so is the hype, fear, and jargon around it. I'm Jess Love, hosts of the new podcast Life Automated, thoughtful conversations about AI that go deep without getting too technical. You shouldn't need to be an AI person to make sense of the future we're building. Life Automated is from Kellogg's Ryan Institute on Complexity and distributed by KQED, part of the NPR Network. Back now with the International Edition of the News Roundup. Coming up, who's at this year's UN Climate Summit? Russia launches some big overnight drone strikes in Kiev and the latest on tensions between the U.S. and Venezuela and the Caribbean. With me in studio, Elizabeth Haggardorn, diplomatic correspondent for El-Monitor. Welcome, Elizabeth. Thanks for having me. Joining us from New York, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPos. Hi, Akbar. Great to be here, Naila. And also on the line, Michelle Jim Risko, White House and National Security Editor at Bloomberg News. Hi, Michelle. Hi, Naila, good to be here. Let's start in Venezuela, where this week the USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier arrived in the Southern Command military region in waters near Latin America, along with three accompanying warships. The Ford is the largest aircraft carrier in the world, with more than 4,000 sailors and dozens of fighter jets. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced the carrier's new assignment three weeks ago when it was off Croatia. Michelle, there are now about 15,000 U.S. forces in the region. Experts say the firepower inherent to an aircraft carrier strike group seems excessive for the type of strikes that U.S. forces have been carrying out on alleged drugboats since early September. What questions do these military movements raise about whether the administration is poised to strike or is this a show of force to pressure the Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro? Well, I would think specific to the Ford carrier arriving in the region, which we got noticed directly from the Pentagon about earlier this week. I think it's symbolic until it's about action, but we have seen the action so far. It's just a question of how much further this might escalate. So the movement itself of the carrier group isn't as notable as how it was announced. In the press release that we got, the second paragraph made it very clear that this is all in the name of the counterterrorism campaign. What they have continuously said are narco-terrorists.

on these boats, and we can talk about the legality of that and the questioning of how certain they are separately. But as one of our Pentagon reporters noted, more unusual and notable about this release was that it detailed... aircraft and anti-aircraft, anti-submarine, anti-surface capabilities. And to your point, just the tremendous show of force that is capable with the resources in the region now. So we definitely are on edge for, you know, further warnings, further threats and further action of the U.S. against Venezuela to come. Akbar, CNN reported this week that President Trump is considering updated military options that were presented to him but hasn't made a decision. If the Trump administration does try to oust Maduro, what are the dangers of that backfiring within Venezuela? It's a hugely risky prospect. There's not, while there is a Venezuelan opposition movement, there is, this is a regime that a lot of Venezuelans, particularly in diaspora who have left, are very upset about. There's also a really significant rally around the flag effect that Maduro can count on. And don't forget that this is not new for Venezuela, right? This kind of long dispute with the US, the sense that. before Maduro Chavez was a target of this broader American axis of evil, that's a kind of rallying effect that's been there for 15 or 20 years. Now, there's a lot of support. And what we know from experts in Venezuela, people on the ground is there could be, you know, this would be really messy if this were to go through. It doesn't necessarily mean that you'll have huge violence against U.S. troops, but I don't think it'll be some sort of smooth, easy regime change operation in any way. In response to the military buildup that we've been talking about, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro signed into law a new national defense framework to integrate civilian and military forces and the deployment of almost 200,000 soldiers as part of a special operation.

By signing this law, all integral defense commands that bring together all public institutions of the Venezuelan state, the military and all popular power must be activated at dawn. So by signing this, the order must be activated for integral defense commands to be established, structured and put to work in order to be prepared. Elizabeth, we are talking about shows of force here. How should we interpret what President Maduro's response has been? Well, as you heard in that clip, the Venezuelans are responding to this U.S. military campaign with defiance. Maduro, as you mentioned, has ordered this massive deployment of soldiers involving some 200,000 troops and militia forces made up of civilians. They've been carrying out exercises across Venezuela this week, responding to what officials in the country are calling an imperialist threat posed by the U.S. strikes on these alleged drug vessels. And Maduro, of course, fears that this U.S. U.S. military buildup in the region is an effort to push him from office. And Trump himself has hinted at this, saying in a recent 60 Minutes interview that Maduro's days are numbered. Maduro has reportedly received military equipment from Moscow. Russian President Vladimir Putin has reaffirmed support for Maduro. Akbar, how likely is Russia to offer game-changing support here effectively against the U.S.? Look, the sort of Russian perspective on this is we are tied in with the US in Europe. We are losing influence. I mean, the Russians have seen American influence grow in the Middle East, right? They've lost the Bashar al-Assad regime. They've seen Iran, their regional partner, be pushed back. So is there an incentive for Russia to say we still have a foothold in your neighborhood where's still a global power? Yes. Resource-wise, is that possible? That's a much bigger question. And given the fact that... Vladimir Putin is not looking at an end to the war in Ukraine any time soon. I don't necessarily see him being able to devote significant support. And again, this is a question of does it go to an open hot war or does Vladimir Putin try to help Maduro using the diplomatic channels we know he has with Trump, right? The wavering of the president here is still the really determinant factor on whether the U.S. goes ahead with a full military intervention. And we do know that Vladimir Putin and people in his circle have been able to sway Trump's thinking before. I think it's a lot more likely they try to do that here in favor of Maduro. Stephen says, as a comment, I think it's really important to address the larger picture of what it means to normalize a leader unilaterally deciding to target anyone deemed to be doing something wrong. No one anywhere can feel assured of their safety and it could easily expand beyond boats. Michelle... To Stephen's point, the Trump administration says it has killed 80 people and 20 strikes against alleged drug running boats in the Caribbean and in the eastern Pacific Ocean. That's just in September. What are we hearing from Congress? There has been some bipartisan legislation that has talked about the ability to restrain the president when it comes to military force here.

Well, that's right, Naila. I mean, there's an ongoing fight in Congress and elsewhere, and we can talk about the other critics of this. But, you know, I would have to say first, jokes aside, we'll have to see if there's a renewed campaign now that lawmakers are back to work after the shutdown. But they do have a lot to tackle right now. I think this issue has particularly fired up a lot, as you say, on both sides of the aisle. I'm thinking Mark Warner on the Democrat side, as well as Rand Paul on the Republican side, who has, you know, had this awkward relationship with Trump. calling him one of the best president or the best president of his lifetime while also really hitting hard on this very question, on the legality of all this. And I think this will only get louder as the drumbeat keeps being pushed by the U.S. side with this show of force with the forward carrier group in the region, but also the still lingering question of will they tackle land strikes, which is still up in the air and uncertain. So we're hearing a lot in recent days from former military. and civilian officials continuing to question the legality or lack thereof of the strikes and also from the MAGA base where Trump is seeing renewed pressure as they continually get frustrated on the lack of focus as they see it on domestic economy issues, which arguably lost three elections last week, but also this kind of distraction, as they say, on foreign conflicts and foreign involvement that they're just not supporting. that they say, let's get back to the basics here. Let's also talk about more of the diplomatic fallout from this. On Tuesday, the Colombian president Gustavo Petro ordered his nation's security forces to stop sharing intelligence with the U.S. until the Trump administration stops these strikes on suspected drug traffickers. The countries were once, of course, allies in the fight against drug trafficking. On Thursday, the U.K. followed suit for Intel specifically related to alleged drug boats. Akbar, what is the significance of this move by U.S. allies? It's huge, Naila. Particularly with Colombia, what we know from Gregory Meeks, who's the senior Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, is that 85% of the intelligence that the US has been able to act on within the last year on actually countering narcotics has been from Colombia. So if that's your goal, this isn't really how you won't go about it. I think what these also point to is a question of... undermining the Trump administration's case for Venezuela. So clearly the Brits, Colombia, other U.S. allies, you've seen Canada also distance itself, are saying we don't want to be implicated in something that... potentially could be violating international law and put us at risk. And we've seen a kind of broader suppression within the Trump administration of legal analyses at the Defense Department, other parts of government that have been questioning this. But this legal question is out coming to the fore and I think will be a real factor on if the Trump administration decides to move forward, escalate this further.

How much do they want to be testing the legal boundaries here? And will anyone hold them accountable? That's where Congress has a role too. We got this question from Mitch. As we're talking about these strikes on alleged drug dealers and these boat strikes in the Caribbean, Mitch wants to know, can the U.S. get sued for wrongful death for someone getting killed on one of these boats? Akbar, do we know? The short answer is Naila, we have surrendered the roots for legal accountability for the government killing people with these kind of arguments. And there's a direct line from the post 9-11 kind of lack of accountability through to U.S. actions by itself and then U.S. partner actions. So no, I think while there's a lot of concern, the Trump administration has not proved that any of these people did criminal activity. They haven't tried to prosecute them. The actual legal fora and arenas have been surrendered by U.S. judges, by lawmakers, by the public, and the executive branch has a huge amount kind of through presidents, a huge amount of libe that's developed Democrats and Republicans to not have to answer for killing people in these ways. We also got this question from Byron. What are the chances of these boats being blown up that could have been mis-idied? Will it take a scuba dive boat off of Aruba being sunk to stop this crazy action? Elizabeth, we were talking about Colombia. We know President Petro met with the family of a Colombian fisherman who was alleged to have been killed in these strikes. We've also seen citizens from Trinidad and Tobago and Ecuador, not just Venezuela involved here. What are we hearing from leaders in the region about this? Well, and to answer the listener question, I mean, that's something that Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has mentioned that, you know, when you look at the statistics, it shows that... not all boats that are suspected of carrying drugs actually have them on board. When they're boarded by the Coast Guard. Exactly. Exactly. And, you know, there's been a mixed reaction from leaders in the region, some of whom have condemned these civilian deaths, which, as you mentioned, have reportedly included fishermen from their countries. You know, on one side, you have Colombia's Petro, who's been outspoken against the strikes, of course, as have the leaders of Mexico and Brazil who've urged restraint amid fears that this could escalate into a wide. war. And then on the other side, you have the right-wing leaders in countries like Argentina and Ecuador who are typically more aligned with the Trump administration's stance on drug trafficking. They have not gone out of their way to criticize this U.S. military buildup in their neighborhood. Noteworthy is Trinidad and Tobago's prime minister who has not only welcomed the naval presence in the region, but praise the strikes on suspected drug boats. Let's stay in the region and head to Brazil, where for the first time in 30 years, top U.S. government officials are not attending this year's UN climate talks. The annual climate summit began Monday in Belém, a city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest. California Governor Gavin Newsom is one of the few U.S. representatives who take a tent. I'm here because I don't want the United States of America to be a footnote at this conference. And I want you to know. that we recognize our responsibility and we recognize our opportunity. Along with Gavin Newsom, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham also attended the conference. Michelle, you cover the White House. What is President Trump said about our changing climate in the first year of his second term?

Well, not much, Naila, but he doesn't have to. His record on this is pretty well known, and his actions are really speaking for it most recently. He's obviously repeatedly called climate change a hoax. And in political messaging, we've seen him kind of pump coal and played as supporters and communities where renewable energy is not a very popular tagline. But on the actions that speak to this, he's tackling much more traditional energy issues. as he cuts bilateral deals with foreign leaders. And these deals, of course, have been like a centerpiece of his first 10 months in office. I mean, take Alaska, for example. When he hosted Vladimir Putin there, he put in a good word for U.S. energy. And now in talks with China, Trump has been teasing an investment in Alaskan oil, which has yet to be announced or confirmed on the Chinese side. But the climate change conversation, Trump would prefer to just have die off, we think. I mean, he's shunned the United Nations talks on this. He pulled the U.S. from the Paris Agreement on his first day back in office as he had pledged. And finally, I mean, just recently last week with Iran and Saudi Arabia, the U.S. derailed these plans for a global carbon tax on shipping. So I think it's pretty clear where he stands on this. And his absence just kind of reaffirms that stance. Of course, Michelle, it's not just the U.S. India and China's top leaders are absent from the summit as well. these three countries being the biggest greenhouse gas emitters in the world. Akbar, what's notable about these other countries that also did not show up this year? Why are they, why did they make those choices? I think it's significant that the Trump administration is creating precedence of... at least pushing this down the agenda, right? So it's not that China, China to a large degree and India are investing in renewable technology at a much higher rate than the US. There's a lot of push there, there's a lot of government support. But what we're seeing is... this broader sense of making the global conversation about hot conflicts, about great power competition, and these kinds of issues, rather than what a lot of people see as life and death for billions of people. And I think that's a question I'm going to be paying the price or choice by going to be paying the price for. years down the line where these leaders are going to feel we've missed an opportunity. Brazil has called this cop really important as the climate talks of implementation, right, actually getting into what particular countries can do when your three biggest submitters are not engaging at the highest level, they're not going to be making those changes that can have a measurable impact. Elizabeth, so it kind of begs the question how important is this gathering in Brazil and what are the conversations that are being had? So despite the no-shows, it was still the second largest cop in history. You had a strong showing from countries in Africa and the global south. Climate finance was a key topic, as was how countries are progressing toward their Paris Agreement targets. But...

The fact that 1,600 fossil fuel lobbyists were granted access to COP, significantly outnumbering every single country's delegation, but Brazil, does raise some questions about, you know, whether polluters have too much influence in a forum meant to address the climate conference. You know, that combined with the fact that the United States, China, and India did not send their leaders, I think we're seeing having a global ripple effect. President Javier Milei of Argentina, for example, who was an ally of Trump's, also boycotted the meeting and is threatening to quit the Paris Agreement, mirroring Trump's earlier decision to do the same. And so I think there are a lot of questions about global unity when it comes to tackling this important issue. We know that protesters at COP this year are calling for participation of indigenous people in climate talks and demanding that Brazil halt plans to increase development in the Amazon rainforest. About 100 protesters blocked the entrance to the conference on Friday morning. On Tuesday, they clashed with police. Another major shift in U.S. relations this week, a man who once had a bounty for $10 million was hosted by the White House on Monday. In fact, it was almost 20 years the day of his arrest by American troops for membership in al-Qaeda in Iraq. Today, Ahmed al-Sharaa is the transitional president of Syria. Here he is speaking to Fox News about the White House meeting through a translator. We talked about the investment opportunities in the future in Syria, and so that Syria has no longer looked at as a security threat. It is now looked at as a geopolitical ally, and it's a place where the United States can have great investments, especially extracting gas. Elizabeth, the meeting kept a stunning year for Ahmed al-Sharaa, a 43-year-old former al-Qaeda commander who toppled the longtime leader of Syria Bashar al-Assad last December. I will say the meeting was muted. The welcome was quiet. There was no big fanfare. But what was the biggest achievement of this visit? I think ostensibly Syria's joining of the coalition of countries that is fighting the Islamic State was the biggest outcome of the meeting. But as my outlet, I'll monitor reported, you know, this agreement basically formalizes the intelligence sharing that had existed between the U.S. and Damascus already. And Syria also isn't joining the military coalition, just the diplomatic and political effort to counter ISIS. And, you know, we didn't see big announcements on issues like the Trump administration's effort. to broker a security agreement between Syria and Israel or an agreement between the Syrian military and the Kurdish-led forces in the northeast. But I think, you know, for this White House, the visit served arguably a more important purpose, and that was to normalize Ahmed al-Sharaa, the first Syrian leader to ever step foot in the White House. And as you mentioned, just one year ago, Ahmed al-Sharaa was a rebel leader in Idlib with a $10 million U.S. bounty on his head. Pretty remarkable.

Agbar, how also we've seen the world shift its positions on Alshara and also HTS over the past year? We've also seen Britain this recently lifted sanctions on Ahmed al-Sharaa. We've seen European leaders definitely express a lot of enthusiasm. Ahmed al-Sharaa's rise is being seen as this kind of question of... how to wield influence in the Middle East after the events of October 7th, the ongoing Gaza, which I know we'll get to. And I think a lot of regional players, in particular, Turkey, Qatar, to some extent, UAE and Saudi Arabia, are trying to wield influence through Ahmed al-Sharaa and over Ahmed al-Sharaa as well. So that will be quite an interesting question. I think this raises a lot of potential for conflict because not everyone agrees, right? You have some of these Gulf states and... not wanting the same vision as Turkey. And then you have a lot of European leaders who want to see Syria as a kind of safe country, not thinking about that migrant issue anymore. Is that really realistic or responsible on the international law and their own commitments? So that's kind of the place we're at. Elizabeth, Akbar was just talking about sanctions. We did see an announcement, the Treasury Department announcing the lifting of sanctions with some exceptions on Damascus for another six months. This gets very complicated. Can you explain a little bit about the reporting you've done about how sanctions are around Syria and what the chances of them being fully lifted are? So a question here is the Caesar Act. And that was meant to punish Bashar al-Assad and his financial backers and prevent the country's reconstruction as long. long as he remained in power. Congress passed that back in 2019. But now the White House wants it repealed. They want to give the new Ahmed al-Sharaa government the best shot at rebuilding the country. So they've been lobbying lawmakers hard in recent weeks to repeal the bill in what's known as the NDAA, the year-end defense bill. There has been a key holdout to that effort. That's Republican Congressman Brian Mast, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He's a veteran who lost both of his legs serving in Afghanistan. And he has reservations about lifting sanctions on a country whose new leader was once aligned with al-Qaeda. So in the meantime, the Trump administration this week issued another six-month sanctions waiver for the Caesar Act and says it will continue to issue waivers until the law is repealed. But the problem is that temporary relief might not be enough to convince international companies to invest in Syria, where the World Bank estimates reconstruction from the war will cost. over $200 billion. Agbar, can I go back to what you were talking about, about this sort of U.S. vision of integrating the new Syria into a Washington-led regional order? The president has said he would like Syria to enter the Abraham Accords, normalizing relationships between Israel and Arab countries. How could the relationship between Syria and Israel complicate things? Do we know if that was on the agenda? Absolutely. That's a major sticking factor, right? It's something that the Trump administration and President Ahmed al-Sharaa Circle have tried to downplay. They don't want the Israel question to become an issue in the spouting friendship and relationship, certainly not with, as Elizabeth mentioned, kind of key dates for lifting sanctions on Syria coming up. But it's an ongoing question. Israel with U.S. support under the Biden administration.

did go into more of southern Syria. They've already occupied some of it under international law for more than 50 years. They took even more territory, right, last year, and they've been holding it. They've been bringing tour groups in. They've been bombing. They've been suppressing some of the Syrians who live there. That's an ongoing sore for the Syrian... government, just like lack of control over their own territory. Simultaneously, there's a lot of weariness in the Israeli government of Ahmed al-Sharaa. They have not kind of shed the al-Qaeda label in the way that the US has. So could Benjamin Netanyahu push back? I think that's a really high risk of that. Syria seems to be willing to reach some sort of settlement with Israel. I don't know if it'll go as far as an Abraham Accords Agreement. But there's also the question of a Washington-led regional order to what end? Is this just for Israel security or other benefits for everyone else? There's been a Trump administration push to say, Sharah is actually going to help us against Iran. Does he really want to be pushed into that position relative to Hisbalah and Lebanon? There's a lot of risks for him there, too. Let's move to Israel and talk about Gaza where the shaky ceasefire between Israel and Hamas has been in effect for over a month now. Earlier today, Israel returned the bodies of 15 Palestinians to Gaza, part of the ceasefire deal, the remains of 15 Palestinians in exchange for the remains of one Israeli hostage. Israel believes the bodies of three hostages remain in Gaza. There have been a handful of moments that have threatened the ceasefire. The government media office in Gaza reports that Israel has violated the agreement at least 200. and 82 times in the month since it began, but now a new challenge is emerging. Hamas fighters are believed to be in tunnels below the southern city of Rafa, which happens to be beyond what's become known as the yellow line in an area under Israeli control. Michelle... President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, met with Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday to discuss the next steps of the ceasefire since the first stage is nearing an end. As we said, the ceasefire has been a little bit shaky. How did those conversations go? What has been the main reasons for the fragility this week? Well, I think shaky, fragile, whatever you want to call it, I think there is an acknowledgement on all sides that this ceasefire needs constant attention and that pressure is on, you know, in the view of the U.S. officials especially, the pressure is on for the Hamas side to hold up its end of the deal in relinquishing weapons, returning the hostages in true form. And we saw how recently when Israel responded to what they said was a Hamas attack some days ago, Trump weighed in that it was justified as a defense move. So we can kind of see. how this posture is coming out. Since the start of the ceasefire, that's been backed by a similarly heavy pace of U.S. official visits to the region. So you mentioned Jared Kushner, who's been involved in this for a long time, dating back to the first Trump administration, as well as JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Steve Witkoff. So we've seen how the U.S. is pushing behind the scenes, the UN to support a proposal to send foreign troops to Gaza. And in the meantime, they're continuously speaking about

this sort of board that they want to set up that everyone wants to be on according to Trump and will be meant to kind of propel the humanitarian side as well as kind of get some sort of structure up and talk about governance. But in the meantime, yeah, all very fragile as we see day to day. We got this comment from Stephen. I don't understand why a president who ran on staying out of world affairs has spent so much time creating news that is stirring up conflicts with Middle Eastern and Latin American countries. Agbar, can I ask you, if we go back to the Middle East where we were talking about, you recently reported on how the Biden administration was considering the possibility that Israel was violating U.S. and international law through its offensive in Gaza. The administration was also weighing U.S. liability. What did you find about the potential for Israel to be charged with war crimes? This actually links, Tyler, to the comment you just read up because the Trump administration has continued this sense of broad overall impunity for Israeli actions conducted with U.S. support. So while President Trump promised to be a peace president, a lot of his positioning has not actually gotten to these broader questions of accountability, human rights. What I reported this week is that the Biden administration kicked the can to Trump, knowing that Trump had been someone. openly dismissive of international law of any kind of standards in warfare. And this was, of course, the Biden administration talking about the law of war being something to shield Palestinian civilians. I found that at the highest levels, there was a consideration of new intelligence showing Israeli actions were... was so severe as to be quite likely violations and pull in U.S. officials. This was something that Biden's Middle East advisor, Brett McGurke, pushed back hard against, but some others, including a very high-level intelligence official, was saying, we have to do something on this. And the goal here is not necessarily coercion or pressure on Israel. It's... about having a clear reckoning of these actions, right, of disproportionate indiscriminate attacks, of violations of U.S. and international law in the treatment of humanitarian aid. When you don't have that, which the Biden administration did not provide at the end, you don't have a strong basis now, a year later, to end that Gaza war, to be honest about what the problems have been, and to talk about how human survival and a greater sense of stability can be created. What a lot of the Biden folks said was, look, we knew we were on. way out the door, we could have done this to at least be honest for the record. The more than two-year assault by Israel has killed more than 69,000 Palestinians. Gaza health officials shared that update Saturday after more bodies were pulled from demolished buildings. The war has resulted in one of the worst humanitarian crises in the world with evidence of famine in parts of Gaza. Elizabeth, on Wednesday, Israel said it opened a main route for supplies to flow into northern Gaza. What is the state of the humanitarian crisis today? What's still needed?

So that was the third major crossing to open, and the hope is this will ease conditions in northern Gaza that faced famine-like conditions throughout the war. But Israel has yet to open the important Rafa crossing on the border with Egypt. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that Israel will only consider doing so if Hamas returns all the bodies of the remaining hostages in Gaza as required under the ceasefire deal. More broadly, aid deliveries have increased under the ceasefire. but they are frequently slowed or blocked by Israeli restrictions and bureaucratic delays. That's according to aid agencies working in Gaza. And so... Countless gauzens are left without adequate food, clean water, supplies, and shelter. This as winter is approaching. Let's move to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's corruption trial. He's being charged with bribery, fraud, and breach of trust in a trial that has gone on for more than four years. This week, President Trump sent a letter to Israel's president Isaac Herzog, urging him to pardon Benjamin Netanyahu. Michelle, what else has the White House said about this? Well, when Benjamin Netanyahu has been on Trump's good side, as he is right now, Trump has taken the opportunity to show kind of a kinship on this issue. I mean, in Trump's eyes, there are two embattled leaders who have had legal cases against them in Trump's case, and were threatened with removal from office, both, as he sees it, great leaders under trying circumstances who have been unfairly targeted. So we've heard a lot about that from Trump. More recently, even before this letter to Israeli President Herzog, as you mentioned, you know, Trump flicked at this in his interview with 60 Minutes last week where he said Benjamin Netanyahu is the leader that Israel has needed for these times, and he kind of mysteriously said, you know, Benjamin Netanyahu was being unfairly treated with the trial on the three charges that you mentioned, and then he says, we'll be involved in that to help him out a little bit. And that was sort of cryptic, but you can see now with this letter what he meant by that, at least in some part, with this kind of unusual. interjection into a trial of a foreign leader, though we can't be surprised that this is sort of Trump's style to apply that pressure. So there's certainly more to come in this drama, but there's a lot of questions, again, legal questions about how this pardon could play out, especially since Benjamin Netanyahu hasn't actually been found guilty yet. So to pre-pardon, as I understand it would be pretty unusual in the Israeli judicial system. It's certainly clear where Trump stands on this and why he's seeing, as I said, a sort of kinship with the Israeli leader. I think this also gets to a really important pattern for the Trump administration, where you've also seen them come into Bilat, Javier Milei, of Argentina. The Trump base did not think that they were electing this kind of muscular intervention on behalf of people all around the world. And you've seen these fractures come up, particularly in the Maga movement over support for Israel. I don't know how much longer President Trump's desire to be allied with these forces and be kind of aggressively out there globally.

is going to be tolerable to his base. I think that dynamic is going to be quite interesting because the Trump administration will have to fight really hard if it does want to create the sense of impunity for anyone globally who's their ideological ally. Let's turn to Sudan, where a brutal civil war has been raging for more than two and a half years. The fighting between Sudan's military and the rapid support forces, or RSF, has led to the most pressing humanitarian crisis in the world. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called for the flow of weapons to be cut off from the RSF. Elizabeth, a top advisor to Sudan's paramilitary group said Marco Rubio's comments could threaten a ceasefire that has still yet to be agreed on by both sides. The ceasefire is U.S. led. What do you make of Marco Rubio getting involved and the RSF's reaction? Well, Marco Rubio's comments come as the situation in Al Fasher where the RSF or the rapid support forces have taken control after an 18th month siege. And the scenes are horrifying. Human rights groups warn that the violence carried out by the RSF is starting to resemble the genocide in Darfur some two decades ago. So I think that's why you saw Marco Rubio sharpen his rhetoric on Sudan this week, calling for weapons to be cut off to the RSF. He stopped short of naming the United Arab Emirates, the country that has been credibly and widely accused despite its denials of supplying arms and other support to the RSF. The UAE is, of course, a close partner of the U.S. And critics say the Trump administration could be making better use of its leverage with the Gulf country. And, you know, as you mentioned, the senior advisor to the RSF's commander warned that these comments could jeopardize the ceasefire. The RSF and the Sudanese army have accepted multiple ceasefire proposals over the past two and a half years. None have held. I don't think many are terribly optimistic that the latest truce efforts are going anywhere. This week, we covered the full scope of Sudan's civil war. You can learn more about the conflict, the challenges for aid groups, and the global powers fueling the war further up in your podcast feed. Earlier Friday, Russian missile and drone attacks on Kiev killed five people and injured at least 34. Ukraine's president, Volodymyr Zelensky, says Russia targeted high-rise apartment buildings. Russia says it didn't target civilians. The overnight attack also targeted Odessa and Harkiv. Michelle, as we're thinking about Russia expanding its front lines in the war against Ukraine this week, making gains in the south of the country, we know they're fierce attacks continuing in the eastern Donetsk region. How successful has this recent push by Russia been?

Well, this is the evergreen question, you know, how much more firepower do they have? And Ukrainians obviously don't really want to test the answer. So the fear is very real that this has legs and especially, you know, ahead of the very cold winter months. So we're hearing the same warnings as in the past few years, but arguably a little bit more severe that this winter could be worse than past winters for Ukrainians who are seeing these Russian strikes targeting not only these high-rise buildings, as you mentioned. and civilian sites, but Ukrainian infrastructure that really makes the country unlivable in these tough times. And it reminds me of what Vladimir Putin biographers have said about the Russian leader, that he's often most dangerous when he's backed into a corner. I mean, we know that these Russian strikes and the draining of resources, as well as what they're taking, you know, they're taking a hit from some Ukrainian drone attacks on oil refineries. We know that those are weighing on the Russian... economy and the Russian people. And so the extent to the extent that Russia looks weak, his opponents might actually be right to be most fearful of what's to come. So we just don't know how severe the coming months could be. But one thing I would note, especially on the energy side, is that just this week, gas prices in Russia dropped a little bit. And that's in part thanks to some Russian fuel producers who are repairing damage to their facilities that, again, have been hit by Ukrainian attacks. So Russia, too, is being hurt on the energy side with gasoline shortages across several. regions, but the government there, and we don't have as much visibility on it, but the government is saying they have stability. They've imposed a ban on gas exports until the year end and some restrictions on diesel exports. That's coming from record high fuel prices at the Russian commodity exchange. So there's a lot of questions on both sides about how vulnerable both countries have been, but certainly a bleak outlook for Ukraine as they head into these very cold winter months. Elizabeth, Michelle was talking about inside Russia. I just want to ask you one last question about inside Ukraine, a corruption scandal, rocking Volodymyr Zelensky's government. Can you just quickly tell us who's involved what they're accused of? what effect this is having inside Ukraine? I mean, it's easily the most serious corruption scandal to hit Volodymyr Zelensky's presidency. The allegation is that close allies of his were suspected in a scheme to siphon some $100 million from the country's energy sector. And it comes at a time when Ukrainians are enduring widespread power outages from these Russian attacks on their energy infrastructure. While Volodymyr Zelensky himself is not directly implicated, the scandal does risk damaging public trust in his leadership. leadership and also potentially giving more ammunition to critics in the U.S. and Europe who question the value of continued aid to Ukraine, including the billions poured into Ukraine's energy sector and infrastructure.

Okay, one last story before we go to reporters' notebook. On Sunday, Tim Davy, BBC's Director General and Deborah Turneris, the organization's new CEO, resigned. A day before last year's U.S. presidential election, a documentary on the BBC's Panorama program edited together two different sections of Trump's speech before the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol. On Monday, the BBC chairman apologized, admitting that this edit led to a misleading clip of Trump inciting violence. The BBC has also been criticized. for its reporting about Gaza. Following the resignations, Trump wrote on Truth Social, the top people in the BBC, including Tim Davy, the boss, are all quitting, getting fired because they were caught doctoring. My very good, all caps, perfect speech of January 6th. The president has threatened to sue BBC for a billion dollars if they don't fully retract the documentary, apologize and pay him a sum of money to quote, appropriately compensate President Trump for the harm caused, end quote. On Friday, the BBC did apologize to Trump for the edit and said it would not air the documentary again, but the organization said it would not pay him compensation. Also revealed this week was a second instance where a BBC program edited a clip of Trump speech this time back in 2022. All right, we've done a lot of news around the world. I just want to give you all a few minutes to just peek into your reporter's notebook, what we may be missed or what we're watching for next week. Michelle, let's start with you. Well, beyond definitely being on edge for the next big move on Venezuela, as we talked about, I'm always interested, especially from years reporting from Singapore, on the U.S.-China relationship. And so there's plenty to follow up on after the Trump-She meeting in terms of what they will actually agree and execute across fentanyl, across visa restrictions, and other ever unresolved issues. Akbar? I'm going to do it too far very quickly. No, you have time. Well, you know, I grew up in Pakistan. I've been tracking what's happening there with a real strangling of the military chiefs. And that's where going into a period that looks a lot like Pakistan's previous military dictators, given the relationship between the Trump administration and Pakistan's army chief, Austin Maneer, and the risks of Pakistan-India tensions, which we already saw become a hot war earlier this year, and Pakistan-Afghanistan tensions. There's a lot to pay attention to there. I'll be at a conference on Georgetown tomorrow discussing all this if people are interested. And then finally, one year ago, this time, we were seeing President Trump come into office with what he called this unprecedented huge mandate. We know it was not as huge as he said, but a lot of people globally got the message that America was 100% behind Trump. I think now we're at a moment of weakness for Trump with the Epstein files, elections for Democrats. How will global leaders react to that? And I'll be watching for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to Washington. It will be his first in seven years and the first since the killing of dissident Jamal Khashoggi brought U.S.-S.-Saudi relations to a low point in Trump's first term.

Well, we'll have to leave it there for today. A big thank you to our All-Star panel. Elizabeth Hagedorn, diplomatic correspondent for El Monitor, Michelle Jem Risko, White House and National Security Editor at Bloomberg News, and Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. Thanks to you all. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Costano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexandra Boati is our senior supervising producer. Eileen Humphreys is the editor and producer of One-A-on-Demand, and Barb Angiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson for additional support this week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Naila Boodoo. Have a great weekend, and let's talk again soon. This is one of you.

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