The News Roundup For August 15, 2025

25:12So there could be legal fighting about that. I mean, just broadly speaking, Trump likes to insert himself into these things. And, you know, they're trying to get these other revenue streams, gold card, that kind of thing. It's just, it is completely unprecedented. Frankly, no one seems to know for sure if it's legal. Democrats don't really know how to react. It is similar to the way Trump used tariffs for his own power because he imposes this worldwide tariff regime. And then everyone has to come to him to beg for an exception. You saw Apple CEO Tim Cook giving him a present in the White House.

25:50Phones had been exempted from tariffs on electronics. So for now, for now, he'll need to come back with more bags of money in the future. But this is how he operates. We had a whole conversation about whether to bail out the automakers in 2008, 2009, right? And now Trump is on the back of a napkin talking about taking a significant stake. Potentially, we don't know what level in Intel. So it's times change, apparently. And that was an outrage that the government was using its money to support those companies. And now this is something that is being done, you know, sort of at Donald Trump's pleasure.

26:26Just very briefly, Josh, like how are we seeing the market react to any of this? or how are we seeing companies react to this? Intel shares are up for that, for them specifically. Generally, the markets are at all-time highs right now. Trump is rolling in joy about that. Markets are swallowing tariffs in a way that they weren't necessarily before. Remember, they tanked in April when he had his Liberation Day announcement. And so if you're hoping that Trump will sort of pull his hand away from the hot stove on tariffs and other things, he sees vindication in the markets right now. And so there's not a lot of, I think, indication that he's having any second thoughts.

26:59I think he's sleeping pretty well at night, even though a lot of industry groups are warning that these tariffs are crippling a lot of sectors. More to come on the News Roundup right after this. Stay with us.

27:15One more news headline I wanted to read to you before we head way north to Alaska. It's about the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. GOP cuts to that public assistance program will cause nearly two and a half million fewer Americans to get food stamps this year. That's according to a new estimate from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. The findings come after Trump's budget reconciliation bill has expanded work requirements for some parents, older enrollees and veterans, among others. Now let's head north, as I said, way north to Alaska, where later today Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are expected to hold a summit.

27:53They'll meet at a U.S. airbase north of Anchorage to discuss Russia's war in Ukraine and an end to the conflict. It's their first public face-to-face meeting in six years and the first time an American president has met with Putin since 2021. Josh, what are we expecting out of this meeting, big picture? I mean, Trump has said that this is sort of a fork in the road. Either Putin comes to negotiate and then Trump wants a very quick second meeting with Zelensky and maybe others, European leaders potentially. and I mean immediate, like potentially within days or even, you know, a moderate number of hours after the Putin meeting.

28:25Or it doesn't, and Trump has been silent about what that means. So if he does not think there'll be a deal and the conflict will keep going, will the U.S., for instance, crank up more sanctions or secondary sanctions as they've tried to do on Russia? Will they, you know, move more heavily into arms sales again to Ukraine? Trump doesn't like Americans doing that, but it's kind of toyed with Ukraine or Europe buying arms from America to give to Ukraine. I mean, he's been silent on that. So sort of he's holding the carrot and stick, the stick he doesn't want to talk about, and the carrot, it seems like it's up to Putin.

28:56The risk, of course, is, you know, does Putin get in his ear? That is what national security experts will tell you is the fear, particularly if they meet one-on-one without delegations. But we'll see. We got this email from David in Minnesota that says, We hear lots about Russia's push in Ukraine, but we hear nothing about whether the U.S. has increased military support to counter Russia. How has U.S. support changed? They haven't increased it. They have opened the door to selling it, such as Patriot missiles going to Germany. So Germany can give its to Ukraine. It's workarounds like that. Generally speaking, the spigot has kind of shut off.

29:36Trump is not interested in new appropriations for aid to Ukraine. so the Europeans and Ukrainians would have to buy it if they want it. But even then, it's not clear he'd approve it. Eva, we've certainly seen the administration framing this meeting with Putin differently in the last few days. President Trump has described it as a chess game. He, in my view, has really tried to downplay expectations going into the meeting. He said that there will be a give and take as to boundaries, lands, et cetera. But, you know, his entire posture going into this really illustrates that he continues to—he doesn't view Ukraine sort of as the victim here, as the country that was invaded.

30:17And really even giving Putin this platform is arguably a huge gift and opportunity. I think many are worried about this meeting because he has shown historically to be deferential to who he is in front of. But we know that this has been a persistent frustration for him, that he thought that he would be able to waltz back into the White House and solve this issue. Which he set a campaign promise in the first 24 hours. Exactly. Why are they meeting in Alaska, Eva? Well, I think it's like a central meeting point. But still, it's significant that it's here in America. You know, to give Putin the platform of being able to meet with an American president on American soil is huge.

31:02And Trump thinks that that is like Putin bowing to him by agreeing to come to his back door, but not a lot of people see it that way. And we should note that this meeting is happening because Putin asked for it, and this meeting is happening without Zelensky. What are we hearing from members of Congress, especially Democrats, Arthur, in the run-up to this? So the point Eva made that this is right off the bat, no matter what happens in the meeting, a huge win for Putin just because he's coming to the United States. He's being essentially welcomed back into polite society after he'd been ostracized by every country in the Western world following the start of this invasion.

31:39Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, said it could be worse than that. Because if Trump tries to get a peace deal and Putin basically thumbs his nose and Trump then does not go and ramp up support for Ukraine, Murphy said that Putin will know he can win this war. While we're in this state, Alaska's capital, Juneau, avoided severe flooding after a nearby ice dam released a surge of rainwater and snowmelt. Temporary barriers in the Mendenhall River prevented around 450 homes in the area from flooding. The area has experienced flooding before, which comes from a glacier that's near the city.

32:20Noah says Alaska has warmed twice as fast as the lower 48 states in the last few decades. And that's actually in line with another new report that came out this week. The State of the Climate Meteorological Report for 2024 showed that Earth's greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere were the highest on record and that 2024 sent another record for global surface temperatures. We're rounding up the week's news with Eva McKendt, national politics reporter for CNN, Josh Wingrove, White House reporter for Bloomberg, and Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost. Now onto some health news.

32:55You might have noticed more people around you coming down with colds this summer. It could be that they have a new strain of COVID. Cases of the Stratus variant are rising across the country. The state seeing the highest rates include New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana. This recent surge comes as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has unilaterally changed federal recommendations for the COVID vaccine, according to a June report from the World Health Organization. Current COVID-19 vaccines, quote, are expected to remain effective to this variant against symptomatic and severe diseases.

33:32Speaking of RFK Jr., after a shooter opened fire at the CDC headquarters in Atlanta last week to, quote, make the public aware of his discontent with vaccines, agency employees have expressed outrage at Kennedy's and President Trump's ongoing anti-vaccine rhetoric, which they believe is linked to the incident. The shooter died from a self-inflicted gun wound at the scene and had been experiencing severe mental health challenges leading up to the event. A police officer was killed in the shooting as well. Josh, what are we hearing from CDC employees and expressing anger at the Human Health and Services Secretary and President Trump?

34:10Yeah, I mean, I want to be cautious here because it, you know, such a tragic situation. And so let's, you know, dwell on that for a moment. But broadly speaking, the CDC and the career officials in the health field are, you know, demoralized, upset, confused, outraged in many cases over the secretary and the administration's approach. So much of what the secretary is doing flies in the face of what the decades-long medical experts at the CDC and these institutions would want him to do. Like so many things with Trump, there are things that are being advertised that are positive, like the Maha movement talking eating healthier, this kind of thing is, you know, of course, that is less controversial.

35:06Everyone probably, my wife certainly would like me to eat healthier. But I think, broadly speaking, this is where some of the biggest tension between the career staff and what is going on of all the departments is happening. And because Secretary Kennedy is a longstanding and avowed skeptic, if not critic, of pretty much all vaccines. And he dances around it sometimes. And of course, there are exceptions here and there. But if we have another COVID variant flare up, more than is happening now, if we have a new outbreak, I think the real fear among health professionals is A, the public is tuned out and won't care, frankly.

35:46And B, the administration won't really do much to advance that. And go ahead. The outrage over the shooting is that they believe that this is conspiratorial, conspiracy theory stuff, questioning the efficacy or safety of vaccines, and you're going to endanger their lives by... Combined with someone with a severe mental health. Yes. Somebody who's unstable is going to act on that. That's the idea of the outrage over RFK's response to this. I do want to ask about one other thing about the FDA. despite this new COVID variant we've talked about spreading across the country, the FDA is considering revoking its authorization of Pfizer's COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children under the age of five.

36:35Eva, what is the FDA's reasoning for this? So it has long been available under an emergency use authorization, and they are ending that authorization. And it would essentially add another barrier for parents who want to vaccinate their healthy kids. But this is core to the HHS secretary's universe of beliefs. He always has cast doubt on these vaccines, especially for healthy people. He has argued that it's unnecessary. So it should be no surprise that revoking this is under consideration. And because they also would point out like kids aren't the people who get sickest from COVID. That's part of their justification.

37:19Yeah. And these were EUAs that were done at the time because we were in a rush. Right. This was during the pandemic. Yeah. Right. And so normally, if it was not in a pandemic, these vaccines would have gone through a different process. If you're revoking an EUA, what you're essentially doing is kicking it to the original normal stream, which is more stringent, takes longer, more approvals. So it's not to say that it wouldn't potentially someday be approved, but it certainly takes it off the table for quite a period of time. I want to make sure we follow up on a story that we covered last week, and that's the redistricting efforts in Texas.

37:52Democrats apparently are planning to end the standoff. Arthur, what's the latest? So Texas Democrats left the state so there was no quorum, so Republicans couldn't push through a plan to expand their share of the Texas delegation. This is about Donald Trump, by the way. This is about reducing Democratic gains in next year's midterm elections so that he can't get impeached or whatever it is Democrats would do. But if they win the House, then his ability to steamroll everybody is significantly altered. And so Texas Democrats are going to come back now. They feel like they've made their point. And the Texas governor has said they're going to call another session and push this through.

38:32Now, it's escalating because Governor of California Gavin Newsom says if they do that, then we will redistrict, too, and we will subtract the same number of Republican seats that Texas gets rid of Democratic seats. So there's an arms race. And Newsom is very upfront that this is about Donald Trump's presidency. And so to be clear, what are we thinking will happen with this redistricting in Texas? Well, Abbott says they're going to do it. And if the Democrats don't run away, I don't see how it could fail, even though there is some anxiety about how they're drawing the districts and how current Texas Republicans could lose their seats.

39:11I would expect it to start happening and I would expect California to follow suit. We're getting a number of emails asking what's happening with the Epstein files, given that, as we discussed earlier, the D.C. takeover has been distracting from this issue. Arthur, your hands up. Everything went up quickly. Go ahead. Every issue is a distraction from the Epstein files. I think that's incidental in most cases. I don't know how often Trump deliberately does a distraction. He knows that everything he does being a distraction is great because it's attention on him. But a lot of stuff is going to happen with the Epstein files.

39:49This is just material at the Justice Department that they've said they can't put out. There's a Republican subpoena for this material with a due date for them to respond by August 19th. And that's next week. So the Justice Department is probably going to say no. Will the Republicans take him to court? That's what you have to do if you want to enforce a subpoena. So that's one part of this ongoing thing. the most important part, I would say, for right now. And then there's also Ghislaine Maxwell, the Epstein accomplice, who's been moved to a minimum security prison. Why did that happen? We're going to find out if she's going to get a pardon or give testimony or what.

40:30So there is a lot going on, but I think it's rightfully not the top of the news at this moment. We will cover it next week on the Roundup as well. Before we get to stories you're all working on, a moment to say goodbye to a sound that for many define the beginning of an era.

40:52For all the kids who don't know what that sound is, that, of course, is the sound of AOL dial-up internet. It might conjure some angst, depending on your age, or maybe this sound still gives you a little flutter. You've got mail. AOL debuted its dial-up service in 1989, and this week announced that in September, it will end for good. So long beeps, boops and static. Let's talk about what other stories you're working on or watching for this week. In my reporter's notebook, I will say I have been watching the Kennedy Center Honors, the way the Trump administration is dealing with this. I started my career with Reuters in D.C., and it was one of my favorite assignments as a young reporter to cover the Kennedy Center Honors.

41:32So I'm very curious to see how these changes will play out? What are you guys watching? I continue to think that the most fascinating story is the one right under our nose with the takeover of D.C. I arguably think that Mayor Bowser is enjoying somewhat of a honeymoon period right now from activists who are being really patient with her and understand this tightrope that she has to walk. But how long does that last as the law enforcement presence becomes increasingly intrusive? What is the endgame here and what What kind of risks does President Trump walk into as this escalates? I agree. The D.C.

42:09takeover is huge and will become an even bigger story. I'll cover the Epstein stuff next week. And also, what is going to happen with the monthly jobs report? We might never get one again. I think we'll have one for this month. But then after that, if this guy gets confirmed, we'll see if he tries to bury it. Let me then point to the Alaska meeting again, where, of course, if Trump and Putin make some type of progress to Trump's belief, that they will have another meeting and all eyes will be on that. And every European ally will be just hoping that they can steer Trump to something that is sort of to Ukraine's benefit that has been a constant tension within U.S.

42:47allies since he came back to office. Trump believes that Russia is this unbeatable force and all his allies think Russia's on the ropes. And that is the real tension of those meetings. My thanks to our expert panel, Josh Wingrove, White House reporter for Bloomberg, Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost, and Eva McKendt, national politics correspondent for CNN. We're going to take another quick break, but we'll be back with another panel for the Global News Roundup right after this.

43:17I'm Naila Boodoo, and it's time to take a look at the week and world news with our panel of experts. Vera Bergen-Gruin is here, national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Also, Jack Datch, national security reporter at Politico, and Nick Schifrin, foreign affairs and defense correspondent at PBS NewsHour. Let's start in Gaza, where the health ministry says 239 people have starved to death in the Strip, including 106 children. Mohamed Abou Nal spoke to Al Jazeera after he managed to get some aid from a U.S. and Israeli-backed GHF distribution site, where accessing food has become a question of life or death.

43:57Our suffering is like war between hills. We were crawling on our stomachs, bullets flying between our legs with the wounded and the dead all around. The dead were lying beneath us. We were pulling them out. I don't know. I just came here to feed my children. I have no money to buy food. If I had food and water, I wouldn't come here. What should I do? Steal? Loot? We call on all countries to stand with us, to stop the war and to end our suffering. This week, more than 100 aid organizations, including Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders and Care, accused Israel of, quote, weaponizing aid with registration requirements for groups delivering humanitarian assistance.

44:38Jack, the rules announced by Israel in March require organizations to register by handing over full lists of their donors and Palestinian staff for vetting. Why do they say that's needed? How is this in accordance with international law? For the Israelis, it's all about Hamas. It's the idea that for Israel, these measures are needed to stop Hamas from getting their hands on humanitarian aid, potentially using it for military purposes. But of course, we've seen massive protests, as you mentioned, Naila, 100 aid groups protesting this. They've sometimes given seven, eight days to comply with these standards that could violate serious personal safety concerns for a lot of these people.

45:22And you just see groups that are not willing to comply or are unable to comply have to leave a lot of their aid stashed in warehouses. They're unable to provide it. And so you have tens of millions of dollars of aid still sitting in storehouses that can't get forward because groups aren't able to do this. And what precedent is there for requiring this of aid groups in a war situation? It's fairly unprecedented. I mean, And this is really about Israel's security requirements, what they've put into the Gaza campaign and their insistence, of course, that they're going to destroy Hamas. But we will see where this military campaign goes that Vera mentioned that's going to pick up in the coming days.

46:00Right. Vera, the mounting backlash over aid restrictions and the worsening humanitarian crisis in Gaza have been cited by several countries as a factor in their moves towards recognizing Palestinian statehood. As we're seeing more countries talk about this, how has Israel responded to this? You know, as we said, it's the images of this crisis and the fact that Israel is now really kind of seeming to respond to this pressure. That is, more and more countries are now saying that they might recognize Palestinian statehood. And it's also leading to a bunch of other, you know, potential things that, you know, pressure points.

46:35They're saying Germany has said that they're freezing some arms exports. Norway Sovereign Wealth Fund is saying they're cutting investments in Israeli companies. And, you know, along with, we're really seeing this pressure mounting diplomatically, financially, but it's not really seeming to have much of an impact yet on Israel. That's what we're not seeing. We're seeing them really responding and galvanizing in response to Israeli aid restrictions. But Israel, even though it does say that it's going to allow more aid in, it's kind of made some of those moves, you know, aid groups say that's not nearly enough.

47:07So we're not really seeing that impact yet of this pressure that we're seeing internationally. And in fact, last week, Israel's security cabinet approved plans to seize control of Gaza City in the north of the Strip, laying the groundwork for a full occupation of the territory. That plan was met with criticism internationally, as well as from Israel's opposition leaders and most notably from its military chief. On Wednesday, though, the military chief announced his approval of the plan's core concepts. Nick, even though there does seem to be a consensus now, what were the concerns of the Israeli military here?

47:40Israeli officials described to me that last week the prime minister was at a certain place, that he envisioned more of exactly what you just described, a kind of full occupation of the strip, as a part of an Israeli hope that they could push Palestinians down south toward the Egyptian border and then hopefully eventually with the United States convince Egyptian President Sisi to open the gates and see who might leave. But after, as you said, some resistance from the top of the Israel Defense Forces, including the chief of the general staff, the plan was shortened, basically, or constricted a little bit, Israeli military officials told me, that it looks today much more like what the IDF chief wanted, which was an encirclement of Gaza City itself, and perhaps the same just south of that in Muwasi, which has been a humanitarian zone, what the Israelis call a, quote, safer zone, as well as some camps in central Gaza, some refugee camps in central Gaza that Israel has not gone in to the extent it has in the rest of the Strip, 90 percent of which is devastated today.

48:52And so that's where the Israelis are right now, that there is a much more IDF-led plan to encircle Gaza City, some areas in central Gaza, and that the occupation threat, the reoccupation threat, is very amorphous. They've given what is for Israel a very long time frame until October the 7th, of course the anniversary of the terrorist attack, for this plan to be enacted, during which, as we were talking before, there will continue to be ceasefire negotiations. So it is both an IDF plan that they're preparing for, but also pressure on Hamas to see what they can get at the negotiating table. Jack, can you just remind us what relations have been like between the IDF and Netanyahu during the past few years and if what we've seen in terms of the military in lockstep with the Netanyahu administration?

49:44Well, as this campaign in Gaza has dragged on, there's been significant protest all the way up to Lieutenant General A.L. Amir, who's the head of the IDF, who has basically said this campaign to actually take over all of Gaza and occupy it long term isn't doable. When you look at the fatigue that's on the Israeli military, they only have about hundreds of thousands of reserves in their pool to keep throwing at this problem. And then you just look at the issue, even in a place like Gaza City, I mean, 75 % of this city has been destroyed, according to international authorities. So you're looking at troops going into places which are rubble, essentially having to deal with booby traps, going down narrow streets, even if they're just going into the suburbs, not to mention all of the people that are going to be coming out potentially if the IDF goes in.

50:35So it's just a significant logistical problem, and Israel is really at the end of its bandwidth when it comes to what the IDF can do. I want to shift to another topic, which is settlements in the occupied West Bank, in particular, the controversial E1 project. Nick, this settlement project has been discussed and blocked for more than three decades. Why are we seeing a push now and particularly this week around this project? Yeah, three decades. It's absolutely right. And for those of us who have lived in Israel, know that this has been one of the hottest topics or one of the biggest threats, I guess I should call it, that successive Israeli governments have waged against the continuity of a future Palestinian state in the West Bank.

51:18So E1 essentially is a tract of land that extends out of East Jerusalem. And it has been so controversial for decades and is used as a threat because of its geography and its size. It juts out of East Jerusalem into the West Bank, which, of course, the Palestinians say should be part of their future state. And it reduces the ability of Palestinians to get from the south to the north of the West Bank. And that's exactly what you heard from the right-wing ministers who talked about this expansion of an existing settlement using phrases like this will be the death knell or this will bury the idea of a Palestinian state.

52:00We have not heard that language from the prime minister. The prime minister who has talked about E1 with, I think, four presidents, if my math is right, over the last few decades. And so this is yet another threat that the Israelis have used and are using again to threaten the idea of a contiguous Palestinian state in the West Bank. But the bottom line is that we don't know how far they will go this time because they have also threatened this in the past. But international observers definitely say that this would really challenge the ability to create any kind of contiguous state in the West Bank and challenge the ability of Palestinians to go in and out of East Jerusalem into the West Bank.

52:45Vera, I'm going to ask if you can respond to this email from 1A listener, Christine, who said, is there no military or law enforcement, I presume Christine means internationally, to deal with these illegal Israeli settlements? I think actually Nick, since he was just discussing that, maybe might be a little better position to answer that. Yeah, Nick, you want to weigh in? Well, you know, I think the international community believes that as the occupying power, Israel is not allowed. It's illegal to build settlements. That's against the Geneva Convention. However, Israel has built settlements, as we call it.

53:23So the international community calls these settlements in the occupied West Bank. Israel calls these Jewish neighborhoods in Judea and Samaria. And so that's an approach that has long existed in Israel, but it does get a larger push since Netanyahu needed to create a coalition with far-right ministers. And so the UN international organizations, of course, will oppose this. Over the years, though, it has come down to the U.S. president opposing these kinds of moves, especially when it comes to something as controversial as he won. And we don't know what President Trump is going to do about this time.

54:01Well, and Nick, that brings up the point that I wanted to go to next, which is just in the U.S. looking at domestic politics, a question of how Democrats recalibrate a relationship with Israel, which is something that we're seeing conversation around this week. We saw some interesting reaction among Democrats to Pete Buttigieg and how he handled talking about the U.S.-Israeli relationship on the Pod Save America podcast this week. A June Quinnipiac University poll asked Democrats whether their sympathies lie more with Israelis or more with Palestinians based on what they know about the situation in the Middle East.

54:34Just 12 percent of Democrats said Israelis, 60 percent said Palestinian. Jack, what are we seeing particularly among Democrats? How much there may be a change in how the Democratic Party is viewing relationships with Israel, which long had been pretty bipartisan among U.S. politicians about how Israel was treated. That's right, Naila. I mean, I think we see the ground shifting, especially among national figures like Pete Buttigieg, who's long likened the Israel relationship to a friendship where you sort of get them to a better place. Now very much on the fence in terms of continuing military aid to Israel.

55:09And we see even governors like Wes Moore, Josh Shapiro, the 2028 field, seemingly declining to get into the nuts and bolts of the U.S.-Israel relationship. Ruben Gallego says his opinions evolving. Even Richie Torres seemingly troubled by what's going on in Gaza recently, and he's been one of the most staunch defenders of Israel in Congress. So it's going to be a defining issue. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out at the state level. Two big state races to watch. One, the Senate race in Michigan. Of course, major Palestinian communities there in the Dearborn area and the Detroit metro area as Mallory McMorrow and Haley Stevens looking to reclaim that seat for the Democrats.

55:50And of course, John Ossoff running for reelection in Atlanta, the Georgia, Atlanta suburbs, a lot of Muslims, a lot of Jews in that area that could potentially decide that race. Nick's joining us from Anchorage, where President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin will be meeting later on Friday. Nick, can you just give us a sense? We can kind of hear in the background, you've been moving around a little. I know you were relocating to the press area. What's it like in Anchorage right now? Yeah, sorry about the all. No, no, no, you're fine. Surrounded by a working reporter. It's okay. We're on we're on buses, you know, covering these summits.

56:24People don't understand that there's a lot of waiting around. And so, you know, we're 10 hours away from a Putin press conference. Sorry, a Trump Putin press conference that's scheduled. And we're on buses getting into the base where the summit will be held. Anyway, so that's what we expect at the end of the day. the president's coming out to the press for the first time since they did so in in Helsinki in Finland during President Trump's first term of course that was an infamous press conference in which the president sided with Vladimir Putin over his own intelligence community when it came to the assessment of the 2016 election hacks but that's the end of the day what we're going to see in the next couple hours is Putin's plane arriving and Trump's plane arriving within the hour or so So they're going to meet and they're going to do what we call a spray in the media.

57:11They're going to invite the cameras in for a few minutes at the very top of their meeting. How many people are there? So I've been told there are 700 journalists who are covering this event, which having covered a lot of summits and a lot of big events, that's a lot. So there's obviously incredibly high interest, including from Russian journalists who are here in Alaska with us as well. The president is on Air Force One, as Nick noted, as we speak, making his way to Anchorage. Here he is speaking to journalists on board Air Force One Friday morning. Thank you for coming back to take questions.

57:45We saw that Russia continued its violence into Ukraine last night, launching even more drones. What did you make of that? I think they're trying to negotiate. He's trying to set a stage. I mean, in his mind, that helps him make a better deal. It actually hurts him. But in his mind, that helps him make a better deal. if they can continue the killing. Maybe it's a part of the world. Maybe it's just his fabric, his genes, his genetics. But he thinks that makes him, gives him strength in negotiating. I think it hurts him, but I'll be talking to him about it. Jack, I wonder if you can sketch out if Trump is on the same page in terms of what the goals of the summit are with Putin, with European leaders.

58:28Because we've certainly seen European leaders united in their demands when it comes to conditions for peace talks and an end to the conflict? I think it depends on which Donald Trump shows up to the meeting, Nyla. We saw Donald Trump before the inauguration in his first 100 days very much trying to get peace at all costs between the Ukrainians and the Russians. We saw around the NATO summit, European leaders very effectively moving the needle with Trump, sometimes by very patronizing tactics to get him more supportive of Ukraine, especially as Russia ramped up its attacks. Now we'll have to see, is it going to be Donald Trump one or Donald Trump two?

59:05What is what he just said there? Can you give us some instant analysis of what you think of what he just said in terms of if that gives you any insight into which Donald Trump will show up? It sounds like a softer version of Donald Trump two that we saw over the summer. Somebody who's upset with the Russian tactics of trying to push the battlefield. The Russians also breaking through on the front lines in Donetsk this week. So upset and frustrated with that, but seemingly a little bit more open to dealing with Vladimir Putin. Jack, as we're talking about this big meeting, that's this big summit that's about to happen, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, who's not there, held a call along with EU leaders with President Trump on Wednesday, an attempt to influence his thinking going into today's meeting with Putin.

59:48Did the Europeans get what they wanted from that conversation? They're signaling optimism, and we'll see if this is real optimism or just whistling past the graveyard. The readout that we're hearing is that Trump was pushing very much for an unconditional ceasefire. That's sort of his key bullet point here. And then he's going to loop in the Europeans and the Ukrainians after this meeting. The problem is, of course, with that analysis, Trump has a habit, of course, of glomming on to the last and most powerful voice in the room. And if that voice is Vladimir Putin, that could leave the Ukrainians and the Europeans out in the cold, but it does seem like they're at least going to get a meeting or some sort of virtual follow-up soon.

1:00:29We all know how Donald Trump feels about golf. Vera, you reported this week that Finland's President Alexander Stubb is also a lover of the sport. He actually attended college in the U.S. on a golf scholarship, and that's given Stubb important access to Trump leading up to this summit. How influential might that kind of relationship be as we talk about European leaders and their relationship with the president? I think it's going to be incredibly influential. As we all know, the president is a personality guy. He likes people or he doesn't. We've seen this term way more European leaders, given the pressure in Ukraine, really try to flatter him, try to get to him.

1:01:08And almost no one has done this more successfully than the Finnish president who flew to West Palm Beach. He played golf with Trump in March. And since then, they've actually, they text at all hours, they call each other, and they've actually become quite close. And, you know, Trump calls him more than the Finnish president calls Trump, which is unusual, and actually asks him about his opinion about Putin, whether he can trust him. And he doesn't have complicated feelings the way he does maybe for France or Germany or another country. So all other European leaders have actually used Stubb for months trying to get him to be kind of the friendlier voice that they can use as a conduit to shape Trump's thinking.

1:01:48And they think he's been quite successful. White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt said this about the meeting on Wednesday. This is a listening exercise for the president. Look, only one party that's involved in this war is going to be present. And so this is for the president to go and to get, again, a more firm and better understanding of how we can hopefully bring this war to an end. Nick, how much does this temper expectations for the outcome of this meeting? And I guess my question to you also is why downplay it before it even starts? They've been downplaying it because they think it's going to be successful, and so they want it to feel like Trump did something successful in the room, I think.

1:02:28But going back to what we were talking about with Jack, I think it's really important to mark a few things about what President Trump could or could not do today. And he did reveal a little bit more on Air Force One than what he said just in the clip that we played before. First of all, he said something very important, again, which is that, yes, Russia wants to talk about normalization, wants to talk about economic deals. Putin this week said they'd talk about an extension of the New START Treaty, the last remaining arms control treaty between the United States and Russia. But Trump very explicitly said, we're not going to have that conversation or we can't make progress on that until the war in Ukraine is solved.

1:03:09And he used that language this morning on Air Force One. So clearly, there's the Treasury Secretary on board Air Force One. Putin has brought his economic people. But Trump is very focused on Ukraine. He also said this morning that he was willing to talk about land swaps for Ukraine, but that he would not make any decisions at all. That was up to Zelensky. So combine those two, you see Trump wanting to make progress with Russia, wanting to head toward a normalized relationship with Russia. And U.S. officials I talked to say that everyone is still on board with that. But Trump very determined to get something out of Putin that Putin hasn't been willing to at least publicly state, which is, I commit to a ceasefire, I commit to ending the war in Ukraine.

1:03:52That is what Trump is looking for, according to his public statements, but also U.S. officials I speak to. And we just don't know how far he's going to go in pushing for that. We don't know where his red line is going to be in terms of whether he accepts what Putin says or does not say. And so it's really unpredictable how that's going to go. But he's been very clear that there needs to be some kind of indication from Putin that there's a ceasefire and there's an end of the war. And then all of these other things can happen after that. Nick, so that's what the U.S. wants. I imagine that's also in line, as we've been hearing with Jack, what we want, European officials want.

1:04:27What are Putin's goals going into this meeting? Well, Putin's goals is, one, to have the summit, which obviously is happening on U.S. soil, first time in almost a decade that the Russian president has visited the West. the United States rather. But I think the larger goals are what we I just talked about, the moving beyond Ukraine. You know, every time that Putin or Yuri Ushakov, his top foreign policy advisor talks, they talk about the irritants in the relationship. They're talking about a new version of a Moscow-Washington relationship that isn't bogged down in their mind by the war in Ukraine, which is, you know, a domestic thing, right?

1:05:12They want to talk about nuclear stability. They want to talk about economic deals. They want to talk about the Arctic. They want to be seen on par with the United States. And only Donald Trump offers them that, or at least the possibility of that. And so what I think might be most interesting today is understanding how far Putin is willing to go, has been willing to go, and will go tonight in Anchorage alongside President Trump in saying, yes, I am willing to make these XYZ steps in Ukraine in order to get that normalized relationship that I've been talking about. And we'll see how far Trump is willing to go.

1:05:49Obviously, he's had summits with Putin where he comes out very, very supportive of the Russian position. But we just don't know how it's going to go. Vera, as we've been talking about, European leaders have been sidelined from the summit with Trump and Putin. As we discussed, They held a virtual meeting with Trump on Wednesday. Why weren't they included? Why wasn't Ukraine included? What has been the strategy that we have heard from U.S. officials about this? I think this is also partly very in line with what Trump likes. Trump likes big dramatic summits. He likes bilateral summits. He likes to be kind of in control.

1:06:23And he wants to be seen as kind of the peacemaker. We've seen this be the themes of his term so far. He, you know, people keep nominating him for the Nobel Peace Prize. he wants to be the face of this thing. And so that's part of the reason. I think he keeps saying he just wants to sit down face to face with Putin and really kind of, you know, have that conversation. And then, you know, what has been really striking again is that we saw him say that again on Air Force One. He says that he is just there to kind of lay the groundwork, but he will not make any deal on behalf of Ukraine. And everything he said today was just— And that's actually different than what we've heard in the past.

1:06:59Very different. And everything he said today is almost word for word the talking points we've seen the Europeans repeat for the last couple of weeks, who were quite anxious. You know, they publicly, they've expressed a lot of optimism because Trump is repeating all of their own words, saying, you know, Ukraine will make the decision. There won't be any, I won't agree to any concessions on their behalf. But, you know, having Trump say that is quite remarkable. But as Jack has mentioned, you know, we haven't really tested this yet. We haven't tested whether he's willing to face Putin and use the U.S.

1:07:30leverage. Trump does have all the leverage, but we haven't seen him willing to really use it yet. And so now that he's actually sitting in the room with Putin, it's really going to be the test of how much he's internalized the message from the last couple of months, which has taken, you know, hundreds of people behind the scenes trying to prime him. Jack and Nick, I would love for you to weigh in on this as well. Historically, how have face-to-face meetings between Putin and American leaders gone? Well, it's been a back and forth, right? I mean, of course, George W. Bush looked into Putin's eyes and saw his soul apparently before, of course, the war in Georgia and lots of other things, the first invasion of Ukraine, the second invasion of Ukraine.

1:08:07So there's a desire to get on the same page. There's a desire to have this superpower negotiation. That's what we saw during the Biden administration, right, was what Vera and Nick were talking about, almost this whole laundry list of what America and Russia were to agree on, cyber, nuclear, sort of the entire menu of things across the relationship. So there's always been this desire dating back to the Cold War to look into arms control and beyond and to make large standing deals with the Russians. Of course, what's put an anchor in that has been Russia's intractability on a lot of these issues and Russia's insistence really that the status quo in Western policy isn't acceptable, that NATO can't keep expanding.

1:08:52You can't have these missile defense batteries in Poland and Romania, which Russia argues could be used offensively to fire missiles into Russia. So there are deep, longstanding misunderstandings that probably can't be rectified by one meeting. But American presidents are always looking for that Hail Mary with Russia. Nick? Well, I think, as Jack said, you know, it's really gone in different ways. Joe Biden was the first president not to call for a reset with Russia. So Trump obviously has a unique relationship with Putin. But for the last 25 years, multiple presidents have been calling for resets with Russia.

1:09:33And that was a bipartisan goal. I think the uniqueness here is that President Trump has exhibited a willingness to share a worldview with Vladimir Putin. And what I mean by that is exhibited over the years, you know, statements about the United States being not so nice. Or even the other day asked about a Russian hack in the United States. He says, well, what's the big deal? We do the same thing to them. Right. So there's a relativism that comes out of President Trump that is not the same at all as all of his predecessors. And Putin, from the very beginning, regardless of how far he went in the meddling, which obviously is a political point right now, recognized that opportunity in Trump that he saw the world a certain way.

1:10:18And Trump has exhibited time and time again a willingness to see the world as Vladimir Putin does. Now, does that mean that he's going to abandon Ukraine? Does that mean that he's going to make a deal over and above Ukraine's heads and European's heads? We don't know. The indications are this morning that he's not. But I think what worries European officials and certainly Ukrainian officials is Trump's willingness to say the things that Putin likes to hear and his willingness to normalize with Russia, which is something that obviously the Biden administration refused to do. And so, again, we will see how far Trump is willing to go.

1:10:53But at least according to what he's saying today, he is largely in line with what the Europeans want. Ceasefire first. No land swaps without Ukraine. And let's get the two sides in a room rather than make a deal over Ukraine's head. And Jack, is that also what Zelensky wants, what Europe wants? No, I think there's frustration in Kiev and throughout Europe that this meeting is sort of getting Putin out, right? He's able to go onto the world stage. He elevates himself. And giving him a platform that Zelensky doesn't have. It gives him a platform, right? I mean, Putin is arguably the little brother in the axis of upheaval with China, North Korea, Iran.

1:11:33Putin's not the number one figure in that, right? China is now the number one figure when it comes to a major U.S. adversary. So this elevates Putin to the level of the United States just by putting him shoulder to shoulder with Donald Trump. And it slips out of some of the major things that the U.S. could do to punish the Russian economy when it comes to the sanctions package that's been moving through the Senate that Lindsey Graham has prepared. And it comes at a time, right, when Russia is moving very rapidly on the battlefield in Ukraine. They have 10-mile pincers coming out of Pekropsk. It's a major breakthrough in the Ukrainian lines, and it sidelines the United States with a lot of their biggest policy tools when it comes to sanctions and military aid.

1:12:14I did want to just talk about the situation actually in the war. Russia has increased its attacks on Ukraine as these talks have gotten underway. Seizing a village in the eastern Donetsk region. Here's a resident in Kiev speaking to the Indian media outlet, Weyan. It's been three days since they started shelling us so heavily. It was normal before. We were sitting there. It was quiet. Well, there were drones flying around. They shot them down and nothing happened. something here and there. But now, for three days in a row, they've been shelling us heavily. Jack, what do we know about what's happening on the front lines and in Kiev at this moment, as you were starting to talk about that?

1:12:55Yeah, so the Russians have been trying to go for the city in Ukraine's south called Pokrovsk for a number of weeks and months. They now seem to have broken through the Ukrainian lines with two very small salvos. The Ukrainians have had trouble fending that back, but that's a key breakthrough. We haven't seen anything like that in months. And of course, the missile and drone salvos have continued on major Ukrainian cities, Kiev, Odessa, throughout the country. So Russia is continuing, as Trump said, to try and leverage its negotiating position by these types of attacks. But I think the key thing here is this small hole in the Ukrainian lines.

1:13:34We haven't seen anything like that in months. Well, that's all the time we have for today, but a big thank you to our panelists for their analysis and insight on the week of international news. Vera Bergen-Gruen, national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Jack Datch, national security reporter at Politico. And Nick Schifrin, foreign affairs and defense correspondent at PBS NewsHour, thanks so much to you all. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexandra Bote is our senior supervising producer.

1:14:06Amanda Williams is our special projects editor. Aileen Humphreys is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. And Barb Anguiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson for additional support this week. And we'll go out on one last piece of history. Today marks 60 years since the Beatles' historic performance at Shea Stadium, former home of the Mets in New York City. They went out on this song, so we will too. Have a great weekend. This is 1A. We all alone and nobody else You still know Keep your heart to yourself I'm down I'm really down I'm down Down on the ground I'm down I'm really down How can you laugh When you know I'm down How can you laugh When you know I'm wild

1:15:07Oh well you know I'm down a bucksaw on my side I'm really down I'm really down Don't you know I'm down I'm really down Are you down? I'll be my down

1:15:53I'm down