The News Roundup For August 21, 2026

25:17And the president is very, very high on that loyalty. We saw that he would interview other people, FBI directors and others requiring this. But Todd Blanche is wrong. Todd Blanche knows that historically, attorney generals have always pledged to be independent, that the rule of law is above everyone, that the president is included in that equation. And right now we're seeing the flipping of that equation. In part, it's not just him. It's the Supreme Court and others that have found. It's going back generations of a part of the legalist action, Antonin Scalia, who believed in the unitary executive, so that there is no branch, no department, no agency that is truly independent of the chief executive.

25:57And so he's living that new interpretation of that equation. Right. There's a fancy intellectual veneer to it where this is the president controlling the government. He was elected, but also this guy is Trump's lawyer and quite obviously his henchman. All right. Well, during that interview, Todd Blanche also signaled that the DOJ is going to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider dozens of cases where lower court judges have ruled that states do not have to hand over their voter rolls to the federal government ahead of midterm elections. Todd Blanch says it's a question of election integrity. Wendy Benjaminson, states have always run their own elections.

26:35What's at stake here? That very principle is what is at stake here. And in fact, the idea of of free and fair elections if I don't make this too big a point. I mean, the DOJ is saying that they believe, and yet they have provided not a shred of evidence, that non-citizens are voting and that there's voter fraud. And of course, this goes back to 2020 when Trump lost to Biden. And so he is suing states demanding that they turn over their voter rolls. And I should add that those are not just the usual suspects, California, New York. These are red states like Idaho, Nevada, Utah, Georgia, and Vermont.

27:15Let me mention Nevada since you did. The Trump administration says non-citizens are registering and voting all over America. Here are some facts. This came out just on Thursday. Nevada is one of the states that has been fighting the Trump administration on this request, this demand to hand over voter rolls. Department of Homeland Security accused Nevada of having nearly 16 ,000 non-citizens registered to vote in the state. Now, after a review, the DHS says it's identified 185 potential non-citizen voters in the state so far, according to reporting for The New York Times. Even that list doesn't include names, and it's nearly impossible to verify.

27:57Exactly. And the fear of these state's attorney generals, attorneys general, who are in charge of making sure everything works there. What their ultimate fear is, is that in November, in November 28, let's say, Trump, you know, the Republicans lose. And the fear is that the feds will then seize voter rolls and count them themselves. This is an extreme possibility, but that is the ultimate fear of this. If the federal government can control states, state-run elections, then they can take them and recount them. And, you know, the question is, do you trust the Trump administration to reveal the correct number, the correct results of the vote?

28:43And I think that's a question for the American people. And Arthur, in Congress, there's also a concern about Mike Johnson, who has helped traffic in the idea that illegal people are voting all over America. He started it more than a year ago with this rhetoric. It's baseless. But Mike Johnson ultimately will have a huge say in which elected members get seated to Congress in the new Congress. And that's a concern to many election watchers. Yeah. And this is the Save Act was the major focus of this. And, you know, that's gone and they can't talk about it now that Congress is out. And so we've we're shifting to what Trump can do unilaterally.

29:20And then the I actually had not heard him talk about possibly not seating people. And it's the kind of thing I don't think he'd suggest himself. But if the Justice Department wants him, if Trump wants him to, you know, he does what Trump says. Mike Johnson, as far as I know, has not suggested he wouldn't seat members. Many election experts are concerned about the possibility that he might not, because of his many statements, that voting by undocumented people is rampant. And it is not. I asked him if undocumented was going to steal the election. He said, that won't happen. We'll believe the results of this election.

29:50Oh, he did. Well, with some qualifications. So he's on record there, though. We have to take a quick break. But when we come back, more from you and from our guests. Stay with us.

30:05This week on the NPR Politics Podcast, the Trump administration is taking credit for a major drop in violent crime. Murder, robbery, assault, all down in big cities and small towns. We're going to dig into the numbers and unpack whether this is really as simple as the president claims it is on the NPR Politics Podcast. Listen on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. OK, so you're driving to work or you're on a walk or you're at the gym or whatever, and you just need to clear your head. That's the perfect time to hit the play button on NPR's All Songs Considered. It's not the news, it's not work or whatever else is weighing you down.

30:44It's just a good time with good friends and great tunes. Listen to all songs considered every Tuesday in the NPR Music Podcast. Welcome back to the Friday News Roundup. I'm Todd Zwillick. Let's talk about a White House story that spilled out of Donald Trump's orbit and all over the media and all over politics this week. It's the curious case of Natalie Harp. She's 35. She's a former anchor on pro-Trump One American News. She's by the president's side pretty much all the time. And increasingly, she's showing up in reporting now, like the stories that placed her in that catering truck with the president when he switched planes for security reasons last month in Turkey.

31:26Mostly, it was Internet fodder for political junkies until Georgia Democratic Senator John Ossoff kind of put Harp on blast and her relationship with President Trump. He doesn't want to do the job. He wants to build his ballroom and travel with Natalie on their apparently defenseless flying palace gifted by the emir of Qatar. Now, Arthur Delaney, in some ways, this feels like a trivial story. On the other hand, it's proven to be really revealing about what's driving a lot of politics right now. Why does this story matter and what John Ossoff did? Well, I think because it superficially sounds like a dig on the president for having potentially an inappropriate relationship with an aide, and there's no evidence for that exactly.

32:15But it's a serious story because it's turned out she hasn't got a security clearance. And I think the most important thing people should know is that all the weird letters she sent the president where she is devoted to him, the concerns about this relationship have been coming from inside the White House all along. It started in 2024 when Maggie Haberman had a story in the New York Times breaking the news about the letters she sent them. The sources for these were people who are concerned, people who work for Trump, who don't like the access she's got. And, you know, maybe that's just them jockeying for position, but it doesn't seem like it.

32:57It seems a little more serious. Yeah, I was going to just say backstabbing staffers in the White House is nothing new of any administration. It's a very competitive and hardworking environment, and, you know, that's a snake pit. But yes, I do think that what happened here is John Ossoff very deliberately—that was not off the cuff. He very deliberately poked the bear, and the reaction he got from the White House and the reporter who dared to ask him about it— She was with— CNN. CNN, thank you—asked a perfectly legitimate question about the comment, and he blew up. And then all the Twitter accounts, ex-accounts of the White House, blew up with these intensely personal attacks against both of them in this very protective way against this young woman whose job it is, apparently, to craft some of that AI slop that you see him tweet out and her job is to print out his clip file for him because of his generation.

33:57He likes it printed out. And, you know, it's a pretty low-level administrative job. I'm not sure it even requires a security clearance, but she does have extraordinary access to the president. And she, yeah, and she's written him these notes. And everyone in the White House has a security clearance, I thought. That could be. And it's like a routine thing. It's not the top level. One of the effects of this story is that it has driven a whole week of coverage and driven some, not salacious reporting, but real reporting. Arthur mentioned it, that she operated for more than a year at the president's side without a security clearance.

34:33But Steve Clemens also that she had become an important switchboard for contacts with foreign leaders, texts, conversations with foreign leaders and foreign operators without a security clearance, circumventing a lot of the normal information flow into and outside of the Oval Office. that's real substantive reporting that came from this, you know, poking the bear innuendo kind of kind of campaign prodding that Ossoff was doing. Ossoff seems to understand something about the media environment. Ossoff took a page out of Donald Trump's book. It's sort of what Gavin Newsom was doing with Trump for a while, kind of using some of the tactics there.

35:10But I think what you're saying is very important. I've known a lot of the body people, body men and body women for, previous presidents, also President Trump. She, in my view, is doing nothing that different. Maybe some of the communications may be different, but she may be very innocent in this entire imbroglio, but she is trusted by him. She's on the inside. And guess what? Ambassadors, foreign ministers, people around the country are always trying to text and get in to somebody right in that inner circle. And so she's one of these people. I think one of the legitimate issues is she doesn't have a security clearance.

35:44So she's a pathway in, but so are others that are inside that. And I think that, one, we should be careful in castigating Natalie Harp at all for the role that she has with the president, which she wanted to do. But I think on top of that, John Ossoff has done exactly what Donald Trump has done to many others and gotten under his skin. Now, meanwhile, that story will probably be here next week, given the amount of attention it garners, which media outlets love. The future of social media and how or if it ever gets regulated in this country is really on trial right now. Social media giant Meta, they're in court.

36:24Several states have sued the company over accusations that it's designed to its social media platforms to hook young users and harvest their data. There are thousands of similar cases at play all over America. On Thursday, a teen in New Jersey dropped her suit against Meta and Google and Snap, who make Snapchat, alleging that their social media platforms are designed to be addictive. The potential financial penalty that Meta could face in this suit from attorneys general if things don't go their way,$1.4 trillion. That's what's potentially at stake. But Steve, this trial is underway now. What do we know so far?

36:59Well, what we know is that there is a whistleblower who has come forward, Arturo Bajar, who's testified that the move and break things fast, kind of modus operandi of Meta that Mark Zuckerberg put forth, really never built in or baked in, you know, child safety concerns. And parts of this in terms of developing addictive personalities to reels and to endless scrolling, et cetera, are part of this. So we know that this proceeded, we've got this. And, you know, as you kind of laid out, the stakes are very, very high for Meta. That said, because I think it's important to be fair to Meta, since this has happened, this has been some years ago that this has been done, Meta and many others have kind of seen the writing on the wall.

37:40And there's been all sorts of developments in age gating and the technology approaches to basically responding to this. So you may have penalties for past behavior that technological advances that Meta and other people have brought in may, in fact, obviate some of this. But we just don't know. On the other hand, Wendy, experts have described these cases potentially as similar in scope to the big tobacco cases of the 1990s that led to massive settlements and reforms to cigarette marketing with kids. Huge billions of dollars to states all across the country, anti-tobacco funds and all the rest of it.

38:15What precedent could this set for Meta and others like it for holding tech platforms accountable, potentially? Well, as you brought up, those tobacco cases in the 90s were tremendous in ending the advertising like the cute camel that advertised for camel cigarettes and attracted kids to it. And I think what the precedent – that is exactly the precedent. What could happen is that states or the federal government begin to regulate the use of social media by children. I mean, one of the documents, I just have to bring this up, one of the documents that's in the trial is a report from Meta, an internal report from Meta called Long-Term Retention.

38:56The young ones are the best ones, which is really creepy. But, you know, countries in Europe are trying to establish an age limit before you can get on social media. It could end infinite scrolling. Total bans. Absolutely. Or referral, the algorithm referrals, recommendations. those sort of things could all be tightly regulated if this goes through. And if you happen to be a user of social media, you can see that this stuff actually is really creepy. If you just keep scrolling, anything that catches your eye, like, oh, he looked at that. They'll show you more. And it gets weirder and weirder. Absolutely.

39:31And there are proposals to ban this kind of stuff for children in the United States Congress that have even passed the Senate or the House. And it's always on the verge of becoming law, but being held up. So at some point, it's going to break through. We're going to have some sort of national level reform while these state and these lawsuit settlements are going on. Now, while we are in federal court, let's talk about another location of the media, ABC, and its parent, the Disney Company. They're suing the Federal Communications Commission now, saying that that agency violated their First Amendment rights.

40:09The network claims that the FCC and its commissioner, Brendan Carr, are using control over broadcast licenses to pressure ABC over its content. Steve, what do we know? How could this fight between Disney and Trump play out, the Trump administration, I should say? Well, let's be honest here. I think Brendan Carr and the FCC have a similar view of their agency that maybe Attorney General Todd Blanche has of the Department of Justice. The unitary executive. The unitary executive, exactly, that the president controls this, et cetera. And so, I mean, the notion is that there still exists out there, you know, some faded version of fair use and that fairness in this.

40:47And they see Brendan Carr has sort of looked at Jimmy Kimmel, some of the other shows out there, The View, as assaults, political assaults on the president that are unbalanced. So they've demanded that eight stations reapply early for licenses, which creates this filter and screen that some argue is for political correctness, et cetera. And ABC is, you know, fighting back. It reminds me a lot of what was going on with universities. So universities being challenged by the Department of Justice over anti-Semitism or various other programs and now fighting back. And ABC is one of the first major institutions to make a, you know, freedom of press, freedom of speech pushback on this in the coming forward.

41:32They were also one of the first to settle. Remember that lawsuit over George Stephanopoulos. I mean, everybody was settling. I mean, CBS, ABC says - 16 or$17 million. And Donald Trump, believe me, has not forgotten it from his first lawsuit against ABC. All right, we're getting close to the end of the roundup for this week. But before we get there, I want to make sure we cover some very important environmental news from around the country. Because on Tuesday, the Trump administration barreled ahead with plans to open nearly 45 million acres of the country's national forest to logging and to road construction.

42:06And this move would undo protections that have really been in place for over two decades. Arthur Delaney, how significant is this change that the Trump administration is pushing in American national forests? I think environmentalists consider it a major significance. I mean, it's of a piece with their push to try to get oil companies to drill. It happens as there's very controversial bulldozing on Texas National Parkland in order to make way for the law. It just speaks to their general approach to allowing corporations to do what they want to do. It's sort of a standard Republican deregulation with Trump flair.

42:45Now, meanwhile, water levels. Here's another important piece of environmental news from out west. Water levels in Lake Powell on the Colorado River. Record lows this week, threatening water and power supplies for millions of people in that region. Lake Powell is the second largest reservoir in the country. And it's not the only one in crisis. Water levels on Lake Mead, America's largest reservoir, also fell to historic lows last week. Neither lake has been this low since the 1950s. And in Texas, border security construction in another piece of national land, Big Bend National Park, border security wall and other infrastructure.

43:25It's been paused now, at least now, according to Customs and Border Patrol Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott. I landed in Texas, headed to Big Bend National Park. Last night, I put a pause on all activity in that park as far as construction goes until I can get down there and do a personal evaluation, talk to some stakeholders, talk to local law enforcement in that area. Big Bend National Park. Wendy Benjaminson, this is another big initiative of the Trump administration. It's been unpopular even with some Republicans. Absolutely. What's going on? Well, when you have Chip Roy, who's a Texas congressman, yelling at the president, you know that he may have misstepped.

44:05Big Bend National Park looks like the moon. It is one of the most spectacular places on Earth. But you don't immigrate through there. First of all, the Rio Grande is 10 feet below the surface, basically, and there is a steep gorge that gets up the hill. So you have to be an expert repeller to even get into Big Bend National Park. Then there is no water. There is no shade. There are predators. I mean, it is not the place you choose to go through. There is the nature around it has given the border right there all the protection it needs. Texans were upset, Stevie. John Cornyn. Greg Abbott, the governor, is upset.

44:44And so when the Texas governor is upset on the wrong side and he's allied with the Democrats. And Cornyn and Tallarico are both in agreement on this. Everybody is angry and there was never supposed to be a wall there. And they decided, oh, we got to have a wall there. Right through the National Park. Well, we're going to leave it there for the week. And I want to thank our guests, Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost, Wendy Benjaminson for Bloomberg News, and Steve Clemens, who joined us in person during his August break. What dedication to the roundup. Steve, we thank you and we love you.

45:18Have a great weekend, everybody. We're just getting started with the week's headlines. When we come back after a break, we'll have a new panel and all the news from around the globe. Stay with us.

45:53podcast on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to the 1A podcast. It's the international half of our weekly news roundup. A 60-day deadline for the United States and Iran to negotiate the biggest sticking points of the war expires. Meanwhile, the president wants warmer ties with another nuclear adversary, a continued lack of progress with the peace plans for Gaza and calls for a new election in Ukraine. We're going to cover all of that and hopefully a whole lot more on this international roundup. Josh Keating is here. He's an independent journalist covering foreign policy and national security in Washington, D.C.

46:32He's also the author of Invisible Country's Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood. Josh, great to have you here. Great to be here. Abigail Houseloaner is here at the table. She's U.S. Middle East foreign affairs correspondent at the Financial Times. Abby, thanks for coming in. Thanks for having me. And joining us on the line from the West Coast, Alex Ward. You know him. He's national security reporter covering the White House and the State Department for the Wall Street Journal. Hi, Alex. Hey, thanks for having me. Thanks for joining us. We appreciate it. All right, let's start a little closer to home than we usually do.

47:05Let's start with Canada and the now raw relationship with the U.S.'s closest trading partner. President Trump started the week threatening Canada with drastic new tariffs, some as high as 50%, if negotiators didn't reach a new trade deal. Then, late on Tuesday, just hours before that deadline, President Trump announced a tentative deal. The Canadians also said a deal was close, but not final. There's a new deadline now for midnight on Friday, but details are still thin. Trump has floated, reviving the Keystone XL pipeline, easing tariffs on Canadian cars and steel and aluminum. Alex Ward, both sides want things out of this deal.

47:45What more do we know? So, yeah, to your point, if there is no deal by 12.01 a.m. on Saturday, East Coast time, then there'll be 50 percent of tariffs placed on 20 billion dollars worth of product. Now, you have the Canadians and the Americans saying that they are close, that their only main sticking points are on steel, aluminum, and lumber. And at the end of this three-day pause, you know, everything will be okay again. But let's not gloss over what's sort are happening here, which is Trump is angry at Canada. He wants to punish them economically for what he feels is Canada ripping the U.S. off across multiple industries.

48:22In some cases, he has a point. In most cases, he doesn't, per experts I'm talking to. And he's using his favored tactic, which is to basically threaten an economic annihilation or some sort of big reprimand. And then when the moment comes, he backs off because apparently everyone reached a deal and everyone's so happy and healthy. So here's where we are. You know, we're minutes or hours away from either a fantastic deal that Trump will claim credit for or a collapse, which could further harm relations with arguably America's closest ally. Now you talk about further harming relations. Okay. Canadians and Americans were making all the positive statements about the deal, trying to work towards something.

49:01But just another example, as Alex Ward says, of how many Canadians feel about the United States and the second Trump administration. And here it is, a parliamentary petition demanding that the prime minister of Canada kick out the U.S. ambassador to Ottawa. It now has more than 240 ,000 signatures and Canada is not a very big country. That's a lot of people. Josh Keating, what's going on here and what does it say about the relationship? Well, this is former representative Pete Hoekstra. He also served as ambassador to the Netherlands in Trump's first term. And basically the roots of the beef between Canada and Pete Hoekstra is that he's repeatedly amplified these memes that Trump has posted calling Canada the 51st state.

49:48He's retweeted them. He said that he doesn't understand why it's a big deal. He thinks they're funny. And there are also reports that U.S. State Department officials have met with separatists who want to make the province of Alberta an independent country. So these are kind of the roots of why Canadians are calling for Pete Hoekstra to be declared persona non grata, kicked out of the country. And this is something that happens with U.S. ambassadors in various countries and states of conflict around the world. It's not unheard of, but it's very unusual when it comes to the U.S. and Canada. And is there any chance that the prime minister, I think the prime minister has control over this decision, right?

50:30Is there a chance Pete Huckster, the U.S. ambassador, gets expelled? It's almost certainly going to come up for debate in the parliament in the fall. It seems a little less likely that they would actually expel the U.S. ambassador, particularly as Alex was talking about with these ongoing negotiations on the trade deal. All right. We started closer to home with fracturing American relationships with Canada. Now let's take them around the world onto the war in Iran. Back in June, the United States and Iran agreed to that ceasefire that included 60 days to work out the toughest issues, control of the state of Hormuz, the future of Iran's nuclear program, and other big issues.

51:06Now that ceasefire broke down very quickly, and the 60-day deadline ended on Monday. Cue President Trump issuing a new threat. Here's the new one, an economic D-Day for Iran. Here's the Secretary of the Treasury, Scott Besant, on CNBC on Thursday. I see lots of reports that said, oh, well, this has never worked. It does work because we have a combination. It is a one-two punch. We have the blockade, and we are going to have the toughest sanctions in history. And I will tell you, this will work. It worked in Venezuela once we put up the blockade. It is working in Cuba right now, and it is going to work in Iran, and we are going to collapse this regime.

51:48Abbey Hasloner, what is the economic D-Day? What is the U.S. government planning for this latest attempt to shake Iran loose? Well, there are a lot of questions about what there is left to sanction at this point. Iran has been under pretty heavy sanctions for many years now and certainly more so during this war. But, you know, as Besant kind of indicated, the administration desperately needs Iran to eventually buckle to these sanctions because they don't really have another tool in their toolkit right now. You know, at 60 days, you know, where this deal expired, you know, Trump hasn't really gotten any bang for his buck from Iran.

52:43You know, there have been cycles of negotiations and then standoffs and then violence and then, you know, supposed progress. Most recently, Iran threatened Trump. They said, hey, we're not going to open the Strait of Hormuz to shipping traffic until you lift the blockade and give us access to our assets. So, you know, none of this is going well. Alex Ward, what's the thinking inside the administration for why this could work now? We heard the Treasury Secretary say, hey, it worked in Venezuela. It's working in Cuba. Just look, tough economic sanctions. What's the thinking about what more can be done to ratchet down pain on Iran?

53:27Well, first, I'd encourage the Treasury Secretary to talk to some historians in his own administration. I mean, it didn't work in Venezuela. The Trump administration had to go send elite units to go capture Nicolas Maduro and bring him to the U.S. Cuba's been embargoed for decades now. That regime is still in charge. And even Trump tried what he called maximum pressure against Iran in the first term. And guess what? Iran didn't give up its nuclear ambitions or its nuclear program, I should say. It still funded proxy militias and elsewhere. And then he had to launch a war to achieve what he said he wanted to achieve and still hasn't.

54:00So, you know, what is he doing now? I guess he's going to try maximum, super-duper, gigaforce, incredible, amazing pressure in hopes that it will work this time. But it's unlikely to. I think the likeliest outcome here is if anything is going to happen. and what you hear from administration officials is that they kind of hope that this makes the war go away, right? That the economic pressure does harm the Iranian economy, which is struggling under these sanctions, we should note, and will probably continue to suffer more under these sanctions, the Iranian people, that is. And then maybe at some point, you know, the U.S.

54:36and Iran sort of agreed, okay, maybe some sanctions relief, and then we promise super-duper to never, you know, go after nuclear weapons again, and then everyone can walk away claiming victory. But the notion that somehow the entire regime is going to collapse and like small democratic leaders are going to pop up in Tehran and that the U.S. and Iran are now going to have this new flourishing relationship. It hasn't worked, despite what the Treasury Secretary has said in other countries, and it's unlikely to work here. Daryl from Euclid, Ohio has a great question. What is the average Iranian going through under the strain of war and drought right now?

55:12Alex? Yeah, I mean, you know, from the first term, they've been struggling to get medical supplies. They've been struggling to get food. There's been some weather issues in Iran that have affected crops. Also, inflation is sky high. You know, the currency there is becoming more worthless by the day. I mean, when we talk about sanctions pressure, right, it's usually talked about in terms of, oh, well, we're going after the regime. We're going after the government, making them follow, you know, American demands. But who gets hurt? No question the governments get hurt in large part because their revenues get shrunk, including, you know, in Iran's case by the American blockade.

55:50But the regular Iranian is the one who's going to suffer here because they're the ones who are just not going to get their regular government services. Their food is going to cost more. Their currency is going to be worthless. And the sort of long-term hope here is that this kind of sanctions pressure foments Iranian anger to the point that they somehow overthrow their regime. But in the short – you know, could that happen? Perhaps. But in the short term, what you're going to do is you're going to turn a lot of Iranians against the U.S. Well, it looks like the United Arab Emirates in the region are trying to play their part, Josh Keating.

56:22UAE says it's suspending trade with Iran this week. Why is the UAE suspending trade now? Well, there are two ballistic missiles fired towards Iran earlier this week. It's unclear if they were fired at the territory of the UAE or at shipping through the strait. And Iran has regularly fired its ships transiting through this trade, including those owned by the UAE's state-owned oil company. So UAE is an important trading partner of Iran, accounts for about a third of its imports. And, you know, it's called the lung of Iran sometimes because of the role it plays in helping Iran import despite sanctions.

57:01So this is a significant step. You look forward to Monday when the U.S. Treasury Department says they're going to have announcements on this new pressure on Iran, what Alex Ward calls super duper mega pressure now from the Trump administration and the UAE ratcheting down some pressure of its own. Well, we've been talking about Iran as we do every week these days on the International News Roundup. The key front in that war, the Strait of Hormuz, of course. Also this week, President Trump threatened to bomb Oman over its potential deal with Iran to co-manage traffic through that Strait of Hormuz.

57:38Alex Ward, what's Oman's role been in the war so far, and why did it attract the threat and aggression of Donald Trump? So we actually don't know exactly why Trump is so mad at Oman right now. Now, I've called US officials and their basic line was, well, Trump was just trying to say, please don't get in the way of negotiations. And I was like, okay, well, are they getting in the way of negotiations? They said, well, no, not really, just in case. So it's really odd that this happened now, but we do know that the US has been angry at Oman for a bit. So before the war started, Oman was kind of the main negotiator between the US and Iran to avoid a war.

58:18And when war was coming, the foreign minister came to the US, spoke on the news and said, oh, a deal is coming very shortly. There should be no war. And that was just not the position of the negotiations and the Americans. And since then, they were kind of cast aside. Now, the Iran and Oman are discussing a mechanism by which ships can get through the Strait of Hormuz. And the US was actually kind of happy about those talks because then the US and Oman could work together and maybe find some sort of arrangement to help get more ships through. So why Trump all of a sudden kind of turned on Oman, here is still a mystery and one that even administration officials can't explain to me in any kind of clear way.

58:59Abby, what have you heard? So Oman, let's remember geographically, is also really critical because Oman and Iran are the two states that have, whose territorial waters comprise the Strait of Hormuz, this very narrow waterway. And as Alex mentioned, right, Right. Oman had played this really critical role in these negotiations. Oman has always seen itself as kind of the Switzerland of the Middle East. It tries to be, you know, neutral, like the UAE that we mentioned before. It has had, you know, this big trade relationship with Iran. And so they saw themselves as a mediator, as an ally of the U.S.

59:38that could also do business with Iran. And things really started to change when the war started. Oman, I think, like Iran, felt blindsided. They were in the middle of negotiations and the U.S. and Israel launched the war. And more recently, you know, Oman and Iran have been holding these bilateral talks about how to govern the strait. Iran wants to set up a mechanism for the two countries to govern that. Obviously, the rest of the Gulf and the U.S. And to collect tolls on it. Exactly. Don't want that. Oman is now pulling back from that. But that has really frustrated the Americans. Well, let's talk more about it and go into the strait this week because at least three ships were attacked by projectiles, three commercial ships.

1:00:19One crew member was killed. U.S. official telling Axios this week essentially Iran doesn't control the strait. We do. Donald Trump has declared that the Strait of Hormuz is U.S. territory. I'm not sure that anybody actually believes that. But the New York Times reports that the U.S. Navy is helping tankers sneak through the channel with their transponders switched off. And U.S. officials say around 10 million barrels of oil are now making their way to global markets. It's about half of what was moving prior to the war. Josh Keating, is that 10 million figure credible? And give us a better understanding of how the U.S.

1:00:56military is navigating the strait and how much oil they're actually able to pass through at this point. Yeah, there's some irony to it. We've spent the last few years talking about the shadow fleet that countries like Iran and Russia used to ship their oil around the world. and now, you know, everybody's kind of the shadow fleet. It seems like we're turning off our transponders to exit the strait. U.S. officials say that about 15 to 20 tankers are exiting each night, about 10 million barrels a day. Whether or not that's true, I mean, I think the better question is how sustainable that is. You know, ships are still being attacked.

1:01:31There's been reporting, and, you know, the U.S. military operation in the region is showing the strain. The USS Lincoln is finally heading home after being at sea since November, spending a record amount of time without a port stop despite concerns about mental health on the ship. The U.S. currently has no carriers in the Pacific. They moved the last one out to assist this operation. We've discussed on this program before the shortage of critical munitions. So, you know, whether or not we're getting the, you know, something close to half the regular amount of oil out of this trade, I think there's good questions to be raised about, you know, how long this is really a sustainable thing for the U.S.

1:02:11military to be doing. Abby? It's worth noting also that we're hearing a very different narrative from the shipping industry and from, you know, regional experts. And I was going to ask that figure, 10 to 20 ships, do markets believe it? Not really, no. You know, what we're hearing from industry experts is that the estimate, again, we don't know the exact number because the transponders are being turned off on a lot of these ships. But a lot of the estimates that we're hearing are more like between four and six million barrels a day. And again, a lot of that is now happening on the same set of ships that are being reused in and out.

1:02:46And the cost of these ships has skyrocketed, again, because it's so risky to make that passage. We talk about the war in Iran as we do every week here on the show. And Pat Fisher from Oakland Township in Michigan asks, where is Israel in this equation? They seem to have disappeared. It's all on America now? Alex Wart. I mean, Israel's still around, right? They are still a part of this conflict in theory, but it has mainly become a fight over the Strait of Hormuz. And Israel's got other fish to fry, including Gaza right now. So it's become more of a U.S.-Iran negotiation over what to do and also to get ships out of there, which the U.S.

1:03:29military is largely leading. There are indications that the Israeli military, which has a sort of coordinated command with the U.S. and the Middle East, is helping in some way with intelligence with some other ways. But in terms of who's actually doing the heavy lifting right now, it's the U.S. We'll talk more about Israel and the war in Gaza a little bit later in the program, some developments there. All right, we leave Iran to the side, at least for this week. I'm comfortable predicting we will be back to it next week. Let's go to South Korea and the Korean Peninsula because President Trump opened up another front in America's increasingly chaotic diplomatic relationships around the world.

1:04:11The president ordered the Pentagon to downsize complex military exercises, annual exercises with South Korea, which had already started in his reasoning. South Korea's lack of interest in, quote, the denuclearization of Iran and the U.S. war. He criticized the South Koreans for declining to help in that war. Trump also praised North Korea and its totalitarian leadership for being, and this is a quote, unthreatening and respectful toward the United States. Alex Ward, what is the president up to and why now? Oh, we are so back, baby. I'm so glad we're doing this again. Okay, so with the South Korea bit, you're right.

1:04:53It's about Iran. And in the first term, Trump actually also reduced the size of this ulchi freedom exercise in order to lower tensions with North Korea. And when Trump is talking about North Korea being so nice and respectful, what he's really talking about is that they're not launching massive ICBMs at a high clip. but ratcheting up tensions between the US and North Korea and increasing the likelihood that somehow, or at least the perception that they might attack the US. So for Trump, he's kind of rewarding North Korea for not doing that by downsizing these exercises with South Korea. But of course, that angers the American allies in Seoul.

1:05:29Now, the interesting thing here is that Trump is also, we have to consider this. I know you wanted to leave Iran to the side, but we have to consider the context. It ain't going so hot in Iran right now. And Trump is certainly on the hunt for a legacy-defining victory that can put him in the history books as an incredible foreign policy or wartime president. And where does he think he can make some sort of progress? With a nuclear power in North Korea. Obviously, Iran doesn't have nuclear weapons, and North Korea does, so the chances of Trump making some sort of nuclear deal or dismantling the nuclear program is fanciful.

1:06:00But could he get something out of Kim? Maybe. Like, perhaps even just sort of pro forma declaration to end the Korean War, maybe the repatriation of the remains of American troops who fought during the Korean War or something else. But let's be clear that if there was going to be some sort of dramatic summit between Trump and Kim, it ain't going to go so hot for Trump likely because North Korea is in a stronger spot these days. Not only is their nuclear program stronger, but their ties with China and Russia are stronger. So it's a bit of a risky gamble for Trump. But who I think Trump is most aware, and this is what I think is really going on, is he's worried that the cameras of the world are going to turn off of him after the midterms, when 2028 starts to heat up, and what's going to keep the cameras on him, one of the most dramatic summits you'll ever see between Trump and the North Korean leader.

1:06:49Fascinating, the spectacle of it all. Well, on Thursday, 70-year-old Hwang Hyo-min spoke to the Associated Press in Seoul during a nationwide civil defense drill.

1:07:02I don't think much about the national security. What Donald Trump is doing doesn't seem like an attempt to hold hands with North Korea. I think it's more like putting pressure on our country. I'm just a citizen, so I'm not an expert. It's just what I think. I was born in a divided country, so I'm particularly anxious. All right, Josh Keating, pretty sanguine there from the streets of Seoul. But what about the South Korean leadership? There are about 28 ,000, 30 ,000, depending on the estimate, American troops in South Korea now. They've been there for decades defending against a potential northern invasion.

1:07:34We all know that across the 38th parallel. What's the reaction of South Koreans now that Trump is cozying up to Kim? Yeah, it's worth knowing that, you know, the current South Korean president, Lee Jae-myung, actually has favored taking a less confrontational stance with the North. And he's also, you know, Trump frequently talks about, you know, he basically sees the South Koreans as free riders. He thinks they're, you know, the security alliance isn't worth it. you know, the current South Korean government favors, you know, taking over combat operational control of the troops in South Korea, which is, and actually these exercises were, you know, meant to assess that.

1:08:13So, you know, it's a bit of an awkward position from the beginning, because, you know, clearly this move wasn't made with any coordination with the South Korean government. I mean, I think the question to keep in mind here is South Korea's own potential nuclear future. A majority of South Korean citizens favor the country developing its own nuclear deterrent. That's something the U.S. has traditionally opposed. But, you know, if they start to feel like these U.S. security guarantees really aren't worth the paper they're printed on, I think the political pressure for South Korea to acquire a deterrent of its own is only going to grow.

1:08:49So, Abby, Alex ties this back to Iran, the situation in North and South Korea. Let's do that a little bit more because the U.S. president is still pummeling Iran while he's trying to play nice with North Korea, which is a nuclear adversary. What lesson does Iran's leadership take from how Trump is treating North Korea with its approximately 60 nuclear weapons and apparently ICBMs that can reach U.S. shores and about the incentives about being a nuclear power? Yeah, I mean, I think if Iran has learned anything from this conflict, it's that maybe they should have developed nuclear weapons sooner.

1:09:28Maybe that would have acted as a deterrent. Certainly no one's bombing North Korea. But, you know, the Iranians, I think in the, to say, sorry, the Iranian leadership, I think in general has stopped trusting and even really closely monitoring every little twist and turn in Trump's narrative because they don't see him as a reliable actor. They feel like they have the upper hand at this point, even as the economy is being squeezed. And, you know, they think that they can play the long game at least longer than Trump has. And also, you know, they might be watching how the North Koreans have responded to this, because to pick up on the awkwardness of this whole thing, there are two other awkward aspects.

1:10:12One is that the North Koreans have said, cool, you know, to Trump's overtures, cool. But yeah, No, thanks. Not really. Kind of a shrug. Kind of a shrug, kind of a rejection. And two, Trump won't even say if denuclearization is the main reason for this overture. So, you know, it doesn't look so great on either front. Ernie writes in to say Trump is making it clear to Iran that having a nuclear weapon like North Korea brings respect. Ernie, thanks for that comment. All right, let's, as promised, move into Gaza now, starting with the U.S.-backed peace plan, still struggling to get off the ground.

1:10:53Jared Kushner, who's the president's advisor and his son-in-law, traveled to the Middle East this week to push that plan forward. He met with Hamas leaders in Egypt. He met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem. Netanyahu rejected the plan earlier this month, saying that Israel won't withdraw from Gaza fully unless Hamas fully disarms. Then on Tuesday, one day after those peace talks between Kushner and Netanyahu, Israeli's army carried out a deadly strike in Gaza. At least seven people were killed, including one child, 14 injured, according to the head of Al-Shaifa Hospital in Gaza.

1:11:28And on Wednesday, at least 10 people were killed in two airstrikes in Gaza. Israel says the strikes targeted Hamas leaders. Josh Keating, the Trump administration told Congress last month that it'll be sending more than$206 million to Gaza for a peacekeeping force, according to newly released documents out this week. What do we know about this peacekeeping force, its makeup, and what exactly they're supposed to be doing? Yeah, I mean, this announcement feels a little like putting the cart before the horse. This is funding for equipment and infrastructure vehicles for this peacekeeping force. And there are, you know, five countries have committed troops to this so-called stabilization force.

1:12:09But it's unclear when those troops are actually going to deploy, given the factors you talked about, the fact that this peace deal is still very much a work in progress. Israel's rejected the latest terms. Hamas seems likely to agree to any plan that would see Israeli troops remain in Gaza before it disarms. So, you know, this seems to be funding for a stabilization force, and we don't know actually when, if ever, that's going to deploy. Abby, your view on the state or the non-state of peace progress in Gaza between Hamas, Israel, the Americans, a potential peace force, and phase two? Well, this is where Trump got another kind of rejection recently, where, as we mentioned, there was a sort of new deal, in quotes, that the administration announced with a lot of excitement that they had reached this new framework with Hamas to disarm so that they could get to phase two of Trump's original plan.

1:13:18And then the Israelis said no. And so that is where things stand right now. Now, there hasn't been any progress on that. Fighting continues. And that's where things stand. This week, Israel opened new criminal investigations into two high-profile killings of Palestinians in Gaza, one of five-year-old Hind Rajab and her family, and the killing of 15 paramedics in Gaza, two separate incidents there. The Israeli military previously denied killing Hind Rajab and her family. This was in early 2024. They were in a car when the Israeli military opened fire on their vehicle, and Hinn died after a three-hour phone call with paramedics while she was trapped in a car.

1:14:04Now, two years later, the Israeli military is saying they did fire on that vehicle. Hinn's grandmother spoke to the Associated Press this week in Gaza City.

1:14:18We want them to be tried and held accountable for their actions because no one accepts injustice, and this is an injustice against the people of Gaza and the children of Gaza. A child like her, an innocent child, and the children who were with her in the car, her cousins, all children, who did nothing to warrant these soldiers killing them deliberately and senselessly. Israeli officials also announced a criminal probe into the shooting of 15 medics. This was in March of 2025. The medics were buried in a makeshift mass grave plowed over by Israeli bulldozers. Now, Israel said it will not open investigations into three other attacks of aid workers that reached international news, including the April 2024 attack that killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen.

1:15:06Abby Hauslener, what does accountability look like in these cases? Again, these are criminal probes now involved in these cases. What does accountability look like both for the cases that are being investigated, but also the several that we mentioned that won't be? Well, Americans, a lot of Americans are probably familiar with local frustration here over investigations into police killings or killings by the U.S. military abroad. Israel is sort of on a different level in that the Israeli military has been accused by major human rights organizations for years, even before this war, of war crimes.

1:15:44Tens of thousands of children have been killed in this war, aid workers, paramedics, journalists at an unprecedented number. And historically, these Israeli investigations are very few and far between, and they very, very rarely lead to punitive consequences for soldiers involved. And so, you know, what we've heard already from some of these organizations like World Central Kitchen, whose incident is not being investigated, and others, is that there isn't a high expectation for justice in any of these cases. The International Criminal Court, while we're on the topic, has arrest warrants out, I believe, for Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel.

1:16:33These criminal investigations now notwithstanding. And that brings us to some other news from the U.S. State Department and the connection there. Alex, you cover the State Department. This week, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, he continued his mission to dismantle the ICC with sanctions against the court's president and a senior lawyer there. Remind us quickly just what the ICC does, why the Trump administration is going after it now. Yeah, so the ICC, the International Criminal Court, is in The Hague. If you've ever heard of The Hague, that's what they're really referring to. And it's a court that looks into cases of war crimes, genocide, et cetera, across the world.

1:17:15Now, to continue a theme of what I've been doing, it seems like it's actually the Trump administration has been going after the ICC for even since the first term. And the reason is they are worried that the court is going beyond its mandate of looking into alleged war crimes and other things from party members to the court. Not every country is a member. Notably, the U.S. and Israel are not members. But the ICC has been looking into alleged war crimes by Israeli forces in Palestinian territories. And the U.S. has been protecting Israel, or I should say more accurately, going after the ICC for looking into those cases.

1:17:55Because, again, Israel is not a party member. And there are concerns that if the ICC would look at a country that isn't party to the court, and by that meaning the ICC has no jurisdiction over their actions, then there are fears that maybe the ICC would look into the conduct of American forces who have been fighting the war on terror in Afghanistan or in Iraq and elsewhere. And so in their mind, or the Trump administration's mind, this court has gone rogue. And so they've sanctioned the head of the ICC, who is a Japanese national, and of course Japan is a key ally, and others. And this is a way to delegitimize the court and potentially protect American forces.

1:18:30But it's also part, we should note, of a broader general campaign by Republican administrations who do not like the sort of more world government, quote unquote, aspects of the UN, the ICC, the International Court of Justice and other things, other organizations, because they prefer that countries kind of handle themselves without this non-sovereign, these non-sovereign entities hanging over them. All right. We're going to spend some time in a moment talking about Ukraine and Russia and the war there. Before we do, I want to bring you up to speed on two other important stories, one in Brazil and one in Africa.

1:19:06In Brazil, presidential candidates kicked off campaigning this week. The country's left-wing president, Ignacio Lula da Silva, is seeking an unprecedented fourth term after coming back to power in 2023. Now, his main opponent is Flavio Bolsonaro. And if that name sounds familiar, it should. He's the son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right Trump ally who Lula beat in the last election. And Jair Bolsonaro is currently serving a long jail term for trying to organize a coup after he lost that election. His supporters even staged a January 6th-style attack on government headquarters in the capital.

1:19:43Recent polls show it's a tight race in Brazil with Lula holding a slight lead. We're going to be watching that race here on 1A and, of course, on the Roundup. Meanwhile, the Ebola outbreak in Africa deserves our attention. Over the last several weeks, we've been following the details and the response to the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It's now the deadliest in the country's history. On Tuesday, government data showed that there are now over 5 ,000 confirmed cases and over 2 ,300 deaths from Ebola. The World Health Organization said on Tuesday it remains a global health emergency and, quote, the epidemic is far from being under control.

1:20:24All right, let's go now to Russia's war in Ukraine and Ukraine's efforts to continue fighting four and a half years into this full-scale invasion. In Kiev last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky fired his popular defense minister, Mikhail Fedorov, and then the minister's supporters took to the streets in protest. Now Fedorov is calling for elections in Ukraine in a video that he posted on Tuesday. How can the state function if the war lasts for years? And what if the war lasts another year, two or three? Can Russia, in effect, gain the right to decide when Ukrainians will again be able to elect their authorities?

1:21:03I am convinced that it cannot. Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia. Josh Keating, the 35-year-old minister we just heard from there, didn't say if he would run in this election. It's wartime after all. But what kind of challenge does this call represent to President Zelensky's leadership in the middle of this war? Well, Fedorov's an extremely popular figure in Ukraine. He's seen as the mastermind behind Ukrainian military's successful use of technology in fighting back against Russia, particularly the use of drones. And he identified a number of common criticisms of the Zelensky administration, including what some describe as a kind of authoritarian style of hiring, firing people in his office, concerns about corruption, which led him to fires number two, Andrei Yermak earlier this summer.

1:21:54But, you know, the call for elections, I think, you know, did not go over well, even with the leaders of some of the protest movement behind Fedorov's firing. You know, there's just a widespread feeling in Ukraine that it's just not practical or even legal to hold elections during wartime when large parts of the country are still under Russian occupation. So, you know, I think even, you know, a lot of supporters of Fedorov are are pretty skeptical of the idea that they can really organize an election now. Alex Ward, what's Zelensky's political situation right now? I mean, at the start of the full-scale invasion, his approval rating was sky high, above 80%.

1:22:32It's fallen since. What's his standing in Ukrainian politics? It ain't good. It's bad and getting worse. I mean, there's a lot of backlash to this firing, a sense that Fedorov represented a kind of future of Ukraine, and instead, by firing potential political rivals, you know, Zelensky is falling into this historical trap of corruption and backroom dealing and sort of, you know, trying to create a sort of personalist cult around him. Now, to all the right points, you know, this is a war, it's hard to do an election, but there is a feeling that Zelensky is now kind of overstayed his welcome. And one thing we tend to forget is you're right, Zelensky got really popular when the war started, but he was deeply unpopular before it did because of economic mismanagement and other problems in the country he was failing to solve.

1:23:17So now with sort of, let's say, war goggles being removed or with so much time having passed, a lot of folks are reminded of what it was like before the war with Zelensky and feeling that there might be a need for a new way forward at some point. And obviously when he starts getting challenged internally and he actually cast away a previous rival, sent him to the UK to be ambassador. And there have been other corruption cases, including around his former chief of staff and basically head of presidential office, almost a co-president in Andrei Yermak. There's a sense that maybe it's time for new leadership in Ukraine.

1:23:51Abby, what about inside Russia? I mean, Fedorov is popular because of Ukraine's Yusef technology. They have used that technology to bring the war to Russians and to Putin's doorstep. We know that. Just on Tuesday, 800 drones launched across Russia and Crimea, as well as the Black Sea. 600 drones launched against Moscow in that region alone. What about inside Russia? How is Russian state media covering this continued ramp up of attacks within the country? How are they viewing Putin? Does it matter to him in an autocratic environment? Yeah, well, Russia, you know, continues to try to paint Ukraine, obviously, as this sort of terror aggressor state that needs to be kept under control.

1:24:32But Russians, I think, are really feeling the insecurity and the sort of the terror brought to their doorstep. I mean, another attack that happened this week is Ukrainian drones targeted Crimea. You know, a major Russian beach resort. Crimea is, of course, legally part of Ukraine, but was seized by Russia in 2014. And, you know, this is where, you know, Putin normally likes to vacation, and apparently he's not there this year. And so I think ordinary Russians are, if they were feeling squeezed and isolated before, I think it goes without saying that experiencing or risking drone strikes while going to the grocery store or on beach vacation is really rattling a lot of people.

1:25:26All right. Let's visit the UK as we move towards rounding out the international news roundup this week. A tragic story from the United Kingdom, igniting conversations about race, academia, the British press, and a whole lot more. Jason Arday was a sociologist and former Cambridge professor. He was found dead in London last Friday after weeks of media scrutiny tied to allegations that he plagiarized work and exaggerated his life story. Arday was the youngest black professor in Cambridge history. Then on Thursday, a university in Belgium suspended Nathan Kofnus. He's the former Cambridge academic who accused Arday of plagiarism in the first place.

1:26:09Kofnus is an American. He says he's being politically targeted for those accusations. He's also made a career of peddling racist theories that black people are genetically predisposed to lower intelligence than whites. His post accusing Arde of plagiarism kicked off a media firestorm. A New York Times investigation found that Cambridge University ignored warnings about the quality of Arde's work and about the veracity of his life story. Abby Arday and the accusations, they were covered aggressively by British tabloids. What have the conversations been like now in the U.K. over race, the media, inclusion in the aftermath of this tragic death?

1:26:51Well, Arday has become, you know, this real lightning rod, as he noted, for conversations about racism. You know, his supporters and family say, you know, he was attacked from the very beginning, you know, before even these allegations came to light about plagiarism. You know, just when he assumed his role as the youngest, you know, black professor at Cambridge in Cambridge's history, that he, you know, was repeatedly criticized, subject to very harsh scrutiny. And obviously, since this American professor raised these allegations and this became sort of a firestorm of a debate, you know, there was a lot of people jumped straight into arguments about DEI, you know, about it surfaced a lot of racism.

1:27:46You know, whether people of color were somehow being promoted unfairly due to DEI policies, which is something we certainly hear an allegation made by the Trump administration. And so it surfaced a lot of kind of ugly feelings that don't even necessarily have to do with Jason Arde. And, you know, it's, I think, brought up a lot of things that people in the UK are now reckoning with. And we still don't know a cause of death in London. It takes UK authorities much longer than here in the United States. There has to be an official inquest. We're going to go in just a moment. But Josh Keating, you've been watching this story.

1:28:27What have you seen in British media and society in reacting to this story? My sense in following it is that a lot of the reporters who are covering this story, like extremely aggressively leading up to Jason Arday's death, are now much more reluctant to talk about it. There's a lot less commentary. And I think, you know, it's definitely sort of changed the tenor of the debate about this, that just how aggressively this was recovered before. That's Josh Keating, independent journalist covering foreign policy and national security in D.C. He's author of the book Invisible Country's Journeys to the Edge of Nationhood.

1:29:05Abigail Hausloehner, U.S. Middle East foreign affairs correspondent for the Financial Times, has also been with us. And Alex Ward, national security reporter for The Wall Street Journal. I want to thank all of you for joining us for this hour. Alex, thanks for joining us from the West Coast. We appreciate you. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexander Bouttee is our senior supervising producer. Aileen Humphreys is our senior producer and editor of 1A On Demand. And Thomas Liu and Matthew Simonson produce our podcast.

1:29:37This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Todd Zwillick. This is 1A.

1:30:05This week on Sources and Methods, 260 days at sea. We're learning more about the conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, which President Trump says hasn't been deployed long enough. I was talking to one retired admiral who said, you know, the problem is they didn't plan this. That and more of the week's big national security news on Sources and Methods. You can listen on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts. It's hard to refine your taste when everything in your algorithm is vying for your attention. Is that influencer you follow giving you the right advice? What should we actually be paying attention to in our social media feeds?

1:30:40This week on It's Been a Minute, culture critic and host of the new podcast, Feedback, Ira Madison III, takes our hand and shows us the way. Watch the full It's Been a Minute episode on YouTube or listen in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.