The News Roundup For August 29, 2025

27:17All right, gang, let's move on to the latest news in the world of public health. The Centers for Disease Control, the CDC, has dissolved into chaos this week due to the actions of HHS Secretary RFK Jr., Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and led to an open revolt from top-level staff at the agency. Megan Scully, let's start with RFK's attempt to fire the CDC director, Susan Menares. Why did he want to get rid of her, and why did he try? It was a dispute over vaccine guidance. This week we saw a rolling back of the recommendations for COVID from the HHS secretary, and she did not agree with it. Neither did four other CDC leaders who resigned.

28:03But what's so interesting about this is that Menardez was handpicked by RFK Jr. in part to assuage concerns on Capitol Hill. Some senators, including Senator Bill Cassidy, a physician, reluctantly agreed to approve RFK as to confirm RFK as the Health and Human Services secretary, despite concerns about his his vaccine skepticism. And and she was sort of the the person put in place to quell those concerns. Now we're looking at not only revolt within the CDC, but possibly a political rebellion and pushback from moderates on the Hill. Well, let's actually talk about Bill Cassidy real quick. Arthur, you have a front row seat to that Senate committee where RFK promised senators in his confirmation hearings that he would not unilaterally try to change scientific based vaccine policy, that he was not anti-science, that he would not use his own personal views to upend vaccine policy in about seven different ways.

29:07None of that was true. Right. And it didn't really seem true at the time. This is one of the most predictable outcomes, I think, so far this year. Bill Cassidy has put out a statement saying that the next meeting of the vaccine panel should be indefinitely postponed because anything they said at this point would lack all credibility. So Cassidy recognizes— Now, just let me say, this is because that panel known as ASIP, RFK fired them, this scientifically based advisory committee on immunization practice, and then reinstalled the committee with some of his own handpicked people. So Cassidy's had it with this.

29:43It's too late to take back his vote for RFK Jr., but he will have a chance to talk to him on Thursday. Because RFK will be on the— Oh, he's coming up to the Hill. He will be testifying this coming week, and that will be epic. We'll be watching out for that for sure, especially given the news from yesterday. Now, as Megan Scully said, four other senior public health officials resigned in protest this week. They include the head of vaccine safety, the CDC's chief medical officer, its chief data officer. Here's Dr. Dimitri Daskalakis on MSNBC last night, one of the CDC officials who publicly resigned.

30:20I am seeing CDC being transformed into a weapon where people are not allowed to share scientific data and that that scientific data is potentially going to be contaminated more and more with ideology. And so as a clinician, as a doctor, I see that that is harm. And I see that if science isn't able to shine through the ideology, then what we are going to see is a lot of trouble, both in sort of what my health is, what my kids health health is like, but frankly, also national security. Hey, Amanda Becker, Dr. Daskalakis also said in a long statement that he put on social media, his resignation letter, that if the Trump administration continues on its current path that he was just describing, this is a quote, they risk our personal well-being and the security of the United States.

31:12And he said a whole lot more, too. Yeah, I mean, his critics on this, the administration's critics on this and RFK Jr.'s critics on this are really not mincing words when it comes to the stakes that they see. And we're seeing for the first time in years, many years, key medical groups actually refuting what's coming out of this DHHS and also offering different recommendations. For example, the American Academy on Pediatrics called Kennedy. They said he ignores science. He cherry picks sometimes fraudulent studies when it comes to vaccines. And they are actually going against the recommendations and saying that all babies six to 23 months should still get the covid vaccine, for example, as well as older kids who have risk factors.

31:53So this is a real departure between kind of the entire medical community and the agency. Dr. Paul Offit is director of the Vaccine Education Center and an attending physician in the Division of Infectious Diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He was on 1A earlier this week. Here's what Paul Offit had to say. I think that if you listen to what Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been saying for the last 20 years, he has said that he thinks that vaccines have merely substituted chronic diseases for infectious diseases. He has said that he thinks no vaccine is beneficial. He has said that when he sees a parent holding a child on a biking path or hiking path, that he goes up to that parent and he says, don't vaccinate your child.

32:33And he says, I believe in that way. I've saved that child. He said that if he could do anything, he would pay any amount of money to go back in time and not vaccinate his children. He's a true believer. He means it. He means it. And he's in control of public health policy, Arthur. RFK also said this week, he made a statement that was on television, that he walks around all the time and sees children in airports with mitochondrial challenge. I took the liberty of searching PubMed, the national database of the medical literature for mitochondrial challenge. It doesn't exist. It's not a thing. As if I were to say RFK Jr.

33:12has a fake tan and works out in blue jeans, and that makes him weird. It would be completely unprofessional. But anyway, as a result of his policy, there's supposed to be a narrower criteria for who can get coronavirus vaccines. They're gone in like 16 states already. Pharmacies aren't carrying them. Now, let's talk about that. Yeah, I mean, exactly where I wanted to go with this. The FDA this week also, this is FDA now, not the CDC, on Wednesday, severely restricted who can get the new COVID vaccine. and a lot of people won't have access to it now. Amanda Becker, this is a sweeping new FDA policy.

33:53Who will and who won't have access to the COVID vaccine now that the FDA has acted? It's really, so it's going to be a lot more limited than it was before. Like I was just talking about children and, you know, part of this is FDA approval, of course, often impacts whether your insurance is going to cover it or not. So even if you're not one of the groups that's allowed to get the COVID vaccine and you want to get to any anyway and you go somewhere else where you're able to get it, it's now unclear whether your insurance is gonna pay for it, what's that gonna cost the consumer? So there have been arguments over pregnant people, for example.

34:30The administration doesn't think that they're as at risk as the medical groups taking care of and making recommendations for pregnant people. So only those 65 and older right now are the people, the group that the FDA thinks should get the COVID vaccine. And the rest of us are apparently viewed as not being high risk. And as you said, the American Academy of Pediatrics has issued its own recommendations in light of the fact that advice coming from the federal government now they consider unscientific and unreliable. It's a remarkable, remarkable state of affairs. Okay, well, while the administration is attacking the director of the CDC, President Trump has been attacking the Federal Reserve.

35:15This attack is continuing this week, the attempted removal of Fed Governor Lisa Cook. Now, this move is unprecedented, possibly illegal. We'll talk about it. Cook has refused to step down. First, what does Trump say is his reason why Lisa Cook needs to go, Megan Scully? So basically he said that she claimed that two residences that she was purchasing on the mortgage application, she claimed that they were primary residents, both of them. And that obviously is not possible. You can't have two primary residences. With that would come tax breaks and as well as mortgage rate cuts, et cetera, et cetera.

35:56So he's claiming that she did this for her own financial benefit. Now, she's filed a lawsuit against Trump over his decision here. And she says that it was merely a clerical error when she was filling out these forms. Why is he saying this? I mean, we've talked about on one day, I'll just say it. Trump needs cause, right, to fire a Fed governor. He can't fire it because he doesn't like her or because he's been hectoring Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. He wants to gain control of the Fed. And this is the pretext? This is certainly another step in that direction. So Lisa Cook was a Biden appointee.

36:36She was confirmed in 2022, which automatically, you know, puts her at odds with Trump, you know, who has been trying to sort of get any sort of Biden appointees or Biden leftovers within the government out. going after Jerome Powell was sort of going nowhere for him, at least for the moment. But he has been obviously railing against Powell, the chairman of the Fed, to lower interest rates. And Cook, I think, was seen as somewhat of an easier target here. Trump has also gone off after other people in regards to their mortgage documents, including California Senator Adam Schiff. This seems to be sort of a growing piece of his playbook.

37:18This information, by the way, is not from a criminal investigation. It's Trump's Federal Housing Finance Agency director just going ahead and taking a look at these people's mortgage documents and letting us all know that, oh, there's two primary residences here. So this official is digging dirt on people and sending it to the White House for action? That's right. And it's not clear that for a cause means you had an incorrect or fraudulent mortgage document before you were on the Federal Reserve Board. I want to take a moment before the end of the hour because it's important news. The ongoing detention of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland man who was wrongly deported to El Salvador back in March.

38:01He is back in ICE custody this week. Abrego's lawyers filed a new petition for asylum in the United States. And a Maryland district judge, a federal judge, ruled that the government can't move Abrego outside the continental United States while his lawsuit is pending. That judge was very, very clear to the government, do not move him. Do you understand me? She kind of got in the face of a prosecutor a little bit. Now, that hasn't stopped the Trump administration from announcing plans to deport Abrego to Uganda. Here's what his immigration attorney told PBS earlier this week. The notion that they're using the immigration system and even more specifically the decision of which country someone is going to be deported to, you know, to sort of try to weaponize and gain leverage in a criminal prosecution is just flatly unconstitutional.

38:49It's very punitive. They say that their goal is to get him out of the country as quickly as possible. There's already an offer on the table from Costa Rica for refugee status in that country and a guarantee that Costa Rica will not deport him on to El Salvador. If they wanted to get him out of the country as quickly as possible, we could work that out tomorrow. Arthur Delaney, Abrego's lawyers say he has no ties to Uganda. You just heard his lawyer saying Costa Rica is on the table and that the government is using the threat of deportation to Uganda as kind of a cudgel over his head. Why Uganda?

39:23And let's step back a little bit. What's going on with the strategy here? Remember that he was sent to that El Salvadoran gulag by mistake. And the mistake was that he had already been adjudicated by an immigration judge to have had a credible fear of persecution in El Salvador. So they're saying, well, we won't send – fine. We won't send you there. We'll send you to, I don't know, Uganda. So it's partly trolling, partly intimidation, making an example of him, sending him to somewhere that he has no ties. And also partly there's no promise Uganda won't send him to El Salvador in the end. So it's not totally unheard of to do a third country, but it's a threat that the Trump administration is wielding, I think, partly to intimidate immigrants in general.

40:09So speaking of immigration and the Trump administration's ongoing crackdown here, resources for undocumented residents are disappearing as President Trump continues to pursue his program of mass deportation. The Department of Homeland Security is barring states and volunteer groups that receive federal funds from helping undocumented immigrants. That's according to The Washington Post. Megan Scully, what do we know? I think this is something that would be almost impossible to implement, but could certainly, you know, if the president decides to actually enforce this, it is something that could really be hamstringing for these organizations that are – are they supposed to be asking for immigration documentation before giving out free school lunches, for instance, or medical aid after an emergency?

40:57It's just one of these sort of unworkable motions that this administration is putting forward. Meanwhile, one more piece of news from the immigration world. The detention center in Florida, known by the euphemism alligator Alcatraz, will likely be empty in just a few days. That's according to emails obtained by the Associated Press from the Florida Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie. What's going on here, Arthur? Well, they built it real quick. It's slapdash governance, typical Trump stuff. They didn't do environmental reviews, and I believe the lack of those is the reason for the holdup.

41:32It's going to be appealed, though. Alligator Alcatraz could fill up again in the future. So we'll watch for ongoing court appeals. We'll watch for more fun and jokey names for mass detention coming from the Trump administration. And we'll keep an eye on the attempted deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. I want to thank our expert panel. As always, you know them. They're Megan Scully, Congress editor at Bloomberg News. Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost, who said, I don't go outside. That's a lie. And Amanda Becker, Washington correspondent at the 19th. Let's take a quick pause here. We'll be back with the global edition of the News Roundup in just a moment.

42:09Stay with us.

42:14It's the international edition of the 1A News Roundup. Around the table with me this week, Nancy Youssef, staff writer at The Atlantic. covering national security and the Defense Department. Thanks for being here, Nancy. Great to be with you. We're so used to saying Wall Street Journal with you. It's been a long career, but now at The Atlantic. Yes, and I'm very, very lucky to have worked at both. Well, and we're glad to hear it. You should look for Nancy's byline now at The Atlantic. Thank you very much. You're used to seeing Nancy in the pages of The Wall Street Journal for all those many years.

42:42Akbar Shahid Ahmed is here, HuffPost senior diplomatic correspondent. Hi, Akbar. Thanks for having me. And on the line from London, you know him, David Rennie, geopolitics editor and columnist at The Economist, where he writes their column, The Telegram. Hello again, David. Hello. Good to have all of you with us. Another unrelenting week of war in Gaza, and with it, Israel killing five more journalists, dozens more civilians in the Gaza Strip. On Monday, the attack on Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunus consisted of two strikes, otherwise known as a double tap. The second strike was captured on camera, showing a direct hit on a staircase where journalists and rescuers were standing.

43:25Here's a clip from CNN documenting what happened. Israel has targeted the fourth floor of the Nasser Hospital where the camera stood. Reuters cameraman Hussam al-Mazri is killed. Emergency and health workers rush to the scene along with journalists from a ground floor media tent. It is all broadcast live by Al-Khad TV from the street below. Visible on the staircase is Mariam Abu Daga working for AP. Al Jazeera cameraman Mohamed Salama and freelance journalist Mu 'ath Abu Taha in the final moments of their lives. A rescue worker says they carried two body bags down as they gathered remains of a third body.

44:11There was a second explosion. As mentioned there, 33-year-old Miriam Daga was an AP freelance journalist killed in Monday's attack. She was remembered by her friend, Yumna Saeed. In between those moments of struggle and covering and tear gas and bullets and explosions, we're still those moments where we just sit and rest for a couple of moments and speak about our kids. The Committee to Protect Journalists says at least 189 Palestinian journalists and media workers have been killed by Israeli forces since October 2023. Foreign journalists are not allowed to cover Gaza without a military escort.

44:58Now, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office said that the strike on Nasser Hospital in Khan Yunus was, quote, a tragic mishap and that the military is now investigating. Nancy Youssef, what is a double tap attack? What happened here? Let me begin by saying, you know, I feel these losses so profoundly. We don't know what's happening in Gaza without these journalists who are braver than any other war correspondent we will ever meet in our careers. And so it's a heartbreaking story to watch unfold. And so I just wanted to start there. To your question of a double tap, basically it's hitting the same site twice, usually minutes apart.

45:41And the reason you do that is between the first and second strike, what happens? Emergency workers, aid, medical personnel, journalists show up. And so the consequence oftentimes is that in those second strikes, those kinds of personnel are hit, which is a violation of international law. There are a few circumstances where you could argue that that double taps can be used or at least militaries have argued it. For example, when they want to make sure that a particular target has been hit, but too often, and particularly in this conflict, it has led to the killing of those sort of first responders.

46:20And that's why it's been so controversial. Controversial. I'm aware from remembering the Iraq War and the so-called war on terror that double-tap strikes are a signature of al-Qaeda and extremist terrorist organizations. Do militaries, uniform militaries, do this kind of thing? They have, including the United States military. They have done them, but they're done very rarely. And the thing is on this one, it's a double tap on a hospital, the last functioning hospital in southern Gaza, on an area where it was known that journalists were operating in. And as you've seen in the video from this week, no clear imminent threat.

46:59The Israelis have said that they were aiming at a camera that they said was pointing from Hamas, pointing at IDF troops. Those are not sort of those circumstances are problematic. And Israel hasn't really addressed the issue of double tap in the strikes. They've said they will investigate. What they haven't said is whether we'll see the results of that investigation and whether that investigation will address the use of double taps. not only in this strike, but throughout this conflict. And the United Nations says they want an independent investigation. And I just add to the question of uniformed militaries and the American role here.

47:35Of course, America is Israel's chief enabler, military supplier. And what we know from American officials over two years of conflict now is the IDF has never shared its rules of engagement fully. American officials do not know how these decisions are made about what to strike. And there have been calls consistently. The IDF has said, we'll investigate ourselves. Now, stepping back from the double tap strike on Nasser Hospital in Gaza, a day after that attack, President Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Whitcoff, told Fox News that he thought the conflict in Gaza could be resolved by the end of the year.

48:09The White House special envoy also said he's pushing for all hostages held in the Gaza Strip to be returned this week. David Rennie, what's the status of the talks that Steve Whitcoff is referring to? what kind of deal could be on the table this time? Well, it's been frenetic diplomacy in the region, but also really unusual diplomacy in Washington. And to start with the region, because I think that's what you want to talk about, first of all, you know, we've gone backwards and forwards, and I think there's now quite a lot of criticism in Israel that Bibi Netanyahu, in some ways rather cynically, has completely reversed his own position, that for a long time, the push was to have, let's get the hostages back, that's a priority, we can have a temporary ceasefire to get at least some of the hostages back.

48:53We saw that happen a couple of times. Those ceasefires fell apart. And Hamas was the side that was calling for a comprehensive peace deal and was seen as sort of obstructive. Now that Hamas is now seeming to accept a temporary ceasefire with the release of some hostages, which is a deal that's been going through negotiations in Egypt and in Qatar with American involvement, suddenly Netanyahu is flipping the script and saying, no, no, he now wants a full and comprehensive deal. It is always unclear with Steve Witkoff, the world's most important diplomatic envoy, but also basically a property developer who has been plunged into this role because he is very close to Donald Trump and has a lot on his plate covering the Ukraine crisis as well as Gaza.

49:39It's very unclear whether he has a consistent, logical view of these things or whether he is trying to read Trump's mood. And it's also very unclear, at moments, they have seemed to have some distance between Donald Trump, who thinks that this war is ghastly for Israel's image, that it needs to end soon, and whether they're essentially aligning with Bibi Netanyahu's own domestic Israeli political goals. And at the moment, we're in this strange situation where the American drafted plan, or something very, very similar to it, is being at least somewhat accepted by Hamas, but now the Israelis have taken a completely different line.

50:14And it seems that Witkoff has backed them in that. But then we have quite separately a track in Washington at the White House with meetings about the future of Gaza, which do not involve Palestinians, let alone, of course, Hamas. Yes. And let's talk about that separate track, David Rennie. There is the issue of the immediate questions of ceasefire, hostages, Hamas's ongoing presence or governance in Gaza, Israel's role. Then there's the second day question that you just mentioned. an apparent next day plan for Gaza. Now, there was a meeting at the White House. Lots of surprise people showed up.

50:50The president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who has not been closely involved in the White House this time around. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, David Rennie. What is that signal and what's coming out of these meetings? So I think if you take a step back, because listeners may think, you know, there's so many meetings, there's so many proposals, there's so much kind of noise. what is really going on here, how to read this. I think the meeting that happened at the White House was, it was a meeting where you had essentially Westerners, Americans, Tony Blair, who has tremendous experience in the Middle East, but clearly is not trusted by everyone in the region.

51:25What you didn't have, at least in the room, was Arab governments. You certainly didn't have any representatives of the Palestinians. And in fact, towards the end of the meeting, it's a very good reporting by Axios all week on this, President Trump said that he knew that one of Bibi Netanyahu's closest aides, Ron Derma, the former ambassador to the US, now strategic affairs minister, was in the White House for meetings. Let's get him in the room so we hear what Israel thinks of this. Why was someone like Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, in the room? He's been spending months and months going around the Middle East talking to Arab governments about how could you help try and find some kind of post-war deal for Gaza that works.

52:06And the overwhelming sticking point, and one can have some sympathy for this, is that the Israeli government absolutely does not want Hamas to have any role in the future governance of Gaza. You've heard what David has to say. What are you seeing? I think David's point about Arab governments not being involved is a really important one. The other point I'd raise, of course, Kushner has not been involved. But what we can tell from Kushner coming in at this moment and Blair is that it's a reversion to that kind of pre-October 7th. We were talking about a post-war plan, discussions around a post-war plan for Gaza, a next day plan for Gaza once this horrific war ends, discussions, talks taking place at the White House involving Ron Dermer, Jared Kushner, Tony Blair, and of course White House officials.

52:55Meanwhile, this week, a reporting from the Wall Street Journal finds that Egypt has started training hundreds of Palestinians to be part of a force of up to 10 ,000 troops to provide security for a post-war Gaza Strip. Nancy Youssef, what do we know? So they are training hundreds now. And the idea would be that they would be under the Palestinian authority, despite the fact that it's not clear that Israel would accept that kind of infrastructure and government setup. and that the idea is that they would be there to secure Gaza when the Israeli forces leave. But there are a number of challenges in this plan.

53:32In addition to under what government they would fall under, how many would be Egyptian? How many would be Palestinian? There was talk of having non-Palestinians as part of this force. Would the Palestinians accept it? Would the Israelis accept it? And there's also just sort of frustration among the Palestinian population with the PA. And so the idea of bringing that government to Gaza raises a number of concerns internally within the Palestinian population. And then, you know, there are Hamas fighters there. Even if the terror group is eliminated, you will have people who are affiliated with Hamas who will know the territory better than some of these trained fighters coming in.

54:10Where is their place? You can't push them all out. And so if you don't find a place for them, you will have a force that knows the area better, that is more entrenched with the population but doesn't have a place in the post-war period. You're suggesting a situation where dispossessed Hamas fighters on the streets of Gaza could have a go at Egyptian-trained security. What I'm saying is by virtue of Hamas being in control, as long as it has been, there will be people who will have some connection to Hamas, not in sort of the violent way that we think about it, that you have to be sort of affiliated to survive governance in Gaza.

54:50And so what happens to those if the supposition is that they all have to go? Can you weed them all out? Can you find a place for them? I'm thinking about it in the context of the Ba 'ath Party post-Iraq, that the effort to kind of just push everyone out had second and third order effects that lasted for decades. And I'll just quickly add to that, Nancy. You know, I interviewed some senior Hamas leaders last year and talked about this question of bringing in foreign Arab forces. They were explicit that they would attack even Arab government forces. Right. So that's been a consistent position of theirs.

55:21and what we've seen throughout the war is Hamas has been able to build up its recruits again and again. Israel has said, oh, we've wiped out Hamas in this neighborhood or this area. When you have such a dispossessed, angry population, and as Nancy said, that's been the government deeply rooted for so long, you will have the grounds for an insurgency that could be quite effective long-running. As Egypt trains a putative force for the future of Gaza, So many questions about the future of Gaza as talks go on at the White House and elsewhere in Cairo, apparently, and in many other places around the Middle East.

55:58Let's go back on the ground now in Gaza because important developments on the military front in Israel's invasion of Gaza. The Israeli military says today that Gaza City is now a combat zone, a dangerous combat zone. And the decision to conquer Gaza City was approved by the Israeli cabinet earlier this month. More on that operation in a moment. First, what's already happened to the more than 2 million people who live in Gaza, as we update you every week here on the Roundup. The operation Israel is now mounting comes as man-made famine, which has been documented and declared by the United Nations, continues to stalk the Gaza Strip.

56:39332 Palestinians have died from starvation with the death toll increasing every day. More than 63 ,000 people have been killed since the war began in October 2023, including nearly 19 ,000 children. Now, those numbers are from the Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas, and those numbers don't differentiate between fighters and civilians. But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly denied that starvation exists in Gaza. His government calls the recent famine declaration by international feud security experts, quote, an outright lie. David Rennie, knowing all of that, what are the consequences of this move by Israel to move into Gaza City, a combat zone, as the IDF and the Israeli government now calls it?

57:27There's a couple of obvious real concerns. One is that, you know, what do they mean when they declared a combat zone? It's that there was this, in theory, this temporary humanitarian pause, which was linked to trying to get at least some aid to the people sheltering in, you know, essentially the largest city left in the Gaza Strip. The fact that they've now declared that that pause is over leaves them able to launch attacks. One of the things that's so striking about this, and this has happened again and again in recent months, is that there are clear signs that the top of the Israeli military doesn't really see a tremendous military utility to this attack.

58:01And we've seen some pretty public riots between the new top Israeli general and Bibi Netanyahu, with the Prime Minister about whether this is even a good idea. And my colleagues on the ground in the Middle East were saying just in a meeting just now that it seems that the army hasn't gone full into Gaza City at the moment. They're kind of around the edge. And there's a real sense of uncertainty about whether this is an operation with any real point. The second leg to that, though, is where the people who are crammed into these remaining areas, where they go. What kind of humanitarian shelter is Israel actually planning for them?

58:32And I think that's another second enormous concern every time you start sweeping into these last remaining, albeit very badly damaged, urban areas. Nancy Youssef protests about the operation from the top ranks of the Israeli military, also protests from the ranks, thousands of reservists being called up for this operation and reports out of Israel that many of them are refusing to show up for duty because they are reservists or if they show up refusing to fight in a war that they no longer support. Yes. I just want to pick up on something that David said. When we talk about people in Gaza City having to move, this is practically what it looks like.

59:08People who are hungry, who have been hungry for months, have to now find the resources and the funding and the transport to move to someplace to find the funding for tents. They don't have that money. They don't have the food. They literally don't have the energy. They don't know what's safe. And this is not, in many cases, their first move. And so the logistics around this are extraordinary. What is safe in Gaza right now? Where is a safe place to go? And how do you even find the resources to do it? And I just think that's important when we talk about the Israelis saying the Gaza City residents must move.

59:43That is an enormous logistical challenge for every family there. You raised a very important question about here's another operation, which, as David noted, and many in the IDF have said that doesn't further achieve the goals that they want to achieve, now being called up, being called away from their families, and also at a time when Israel has really suffered economically for an extended period of time because of this war. And so it is one of the challenges. Having said that, I think the operation will proceed in some form. And what I find interesting and connected to what we talked about earlier, is this the latest, is this a factor in the president saying that he hopes the war will end by the end of the year?

1:00:28Has the Israeli government come to the United States and said, we need to do this operation. It's the last bastion of Hamas. And if we do this, we can end the war. If this is the latest sort of promise of the operation that will end the war. Well, Todd, we've seen this movie before, right? I can't help but think about Rafah, which was supposed to be the red line for the Biden administration, the place where more than a million Palestinians were pushed out. And there was a similar narrative after that. After Rafah, we'll get the ceasefire. Let the Israelis do this. Biden unveiled his speech. It didn't happen.

1:01:01The missing factor for ending the war has always been U.S. pressure on Netanyahu. We're not seeing the Trump administration want to explore that. Instead, what we're seeing is this increased frustration among Israelis, is also about the fact that there are still 20 roughly living Hamas hostages, many of whom could be at risk from this operation. And the fact that from the humanitarian standpoint, this is so different from Rafa. There is no independent aid operation inside Gaza right now. And that's so important to remember when we hear claims of people can go to a safe zone. Even the groups that were there before are not able to operate.

1:01:35No, no independent humanitarian operation as the IDF pushes into Gaza City, or at least is on the fringes, as David Rennie reports from reporters at The Economist, not aware of at this moment that operation has reached its full force and we will be following it. Meanwhile, away from Gaza in the West Bank, Israeli forces this week carried out raids in the cities of Nablus and Ramallah, injuring dozens of people there. Israel said it was targeting money exchanges linked to Hamas. Akbar, what do we know? What we know is that these raids look like storming and searching houses, right? There are protesters who are throwing stones.

1:02:16There are Israeli forces shooting back at them. This is chaos. It's by no means a targeted operation, even if you are talking about, which there is, a growing Hamas presence in the West Bank. That's indisputable. Its support has gone up during the war, you would question has Israel's own policy led to that, right? And it's really important to see this in the context of the question of Palestinian statehood that keeps coming up and that many countries, including U.S. allies, say they want to pursue. Repeated Israeli pressure in the West Bank is a way to show this cannot be the basis of a future Palestinian state.

1:02:49We are ruling out Palestinian statehood and autonomy in this region. We will always be here and we're making the Palestinian Authority, the internationally backed body that's supposed to be running these places, pursuing Hamas, look irrelevant. The PA is headquartered in Ramallah, in the West Bank. Americans don't hear as much about the PA, the Palestinian Authority, anymore. What's the status of the PA now in terms of their viability, their ability to govern, their desire to govern, and a possible role in a day after here? The desire is there among certainly people at a lower level than the PA president Mahmoud Abbas, who's a kind of sclerotic, older figure, deeply unpopular and really doesn't seem to have a vision.

1:03:31The desire to kind of move towards Palestinian autonomy to a degree is within the PA. But over two years again of U.S.-enabled Israeli policy, where the Israelis have been slashing tax revenues, they've basically been starving salaries of the PA. So the PA can't pay its security staff, can't pay its personnel. That's why we're not hearing from them to a degree, right? And they're kind of seen as collaborators. So they're squeezed from both fronts where the Israelis are weakening them, a lot of Palestinians dislike them. Meanwhile, in Israel, on Tuesday, almost 300 ,000 protesters marched through Tel Aviv demanding a ceasefire and the return of hostages held in Gaza that Akbar just mentioned.

1:04:11Here's one protester. I cannot think of something more important than ending this pointless, endless war and bringing back the hostages. There is a deal on the table, and I wish that the cabinet must and will discuss it and reach the conclusion to bring them home. Now, within Israel, polls show clear majority favoring any sort of deal that would bring remaining living hostages home. and, as that protester said, end the fighting. David Rennie, Benjamin Netanyahu, as ever, appears unmoved by the groundswell of public pressure, including 300 ,000 people in the streets of Tel Aviv and the television cameras there to capture them.

1:04:56What reaction have he and his allies and his cabinet had to the protests? Look, Israel was an incredibly divided society before Hamas launched their brutal attacks on October 7th, and it remains an incredibly divided society. And it is a big deal that this number of people are still coming out now and they're not exhausted by this. But the brutal electoral politics is that Bibi Netanyahu does not have to face election for another year or more till October 26. He is keeping his extremely hardline right-wing coalition together by not ending the war. And as long as his coalition partners don't abandon him, he is still prime minister for another year.

1:05:36And that appears to count for a lot more in his calculations than the fate of the hostages. And that's not just me, the reporter, sounding snarky. That is the line of many senior Israeli officials and senior Israeli defense officials, and in fact, American officials, including Trump administration people, who are very suspicious of Bibi Netanyahu's motives. So it matters in as much as it links back to what you were talking about with Nancy, about the reservists being unwilling to turn up. Now, some of them are mostly worried about their marriages and careers and being exhausted. Some of them are politically disillusioned with the war.

1:06:08But there is a sense that it matters to that extent. But Bibi leads, you know, he needs 50 plus one in a society divided down the middle to stay in office. And so very large protests don't always mean as much as they might seem to mean. From politics in the streets back to operations in the streets and back to the West Bank, We mentioned on the roundup last week that the Israeli government approved the building of 3 ,400 housing units in the mostly empty area known as E1. This is in the West Bank. And this comes as there's been an uptick in settler violence toward Palestinians, which Akbar mentioned in the context of raids in Ramallah and in Nablus.

1:06:49Now, United Nations estimates indicate that Jewish settlers have carried out around 2 ,000 attacks against Palestinians since the war in Gaza began. Again, this is in the West Bank. That number represents what really is a dramatic surge compared to any previous period during the nearly six decades that Israel has controlled the West Bank and ongoing conflict between settlers and Palestinian neighbors or town to town violence, which does occur, I'm sorry to say, fairly regularly in certain precincts of the West Bank. Nancy, what impact does this lower level violence of settlers have on Palestinians and their daily lives as we're talking about sort of the big politics here?

1:07:28Well, there is damage to property in those attacks. What we've seen are things like olive trees and property damage to hundreds of thousands of those. So that impacts just ability to make a living. And then there are sort of practical things. As those attacks go on, it's harder to get to infrastructure. It's harder to get to health care services or emergency services. It's harder for Palestinians to move around in the wake of all these attacks. And then on a broader level, it is an erosion of what the UK and France have said earlier this year, that they want a two-state solution. And as these attacks happen, as the Palestinians in the West Bank find it harder to maneuver and lose territory, either officially or unofficially, the dream of a two -state solution goes with it.

1:08:20I mean, to give you a sense, in those 2 ,000 attacks, the estimates are 972 casualties in that period. That's a real impact on the community there. In one sense, this type of violence isn't new. Highly religious right-wing Jews in the West Bank driven by their belief in a claim on the land all the way back to the Bible. I mean, this runs deep. And Akbar, in the past, attacks like this have been denounced by American administrations, pressure put on Israeli governments to pull back on settlers, to yank the leash and prevent attacks. Is that happening now? Sanctions, right? The Biden administration broke precedent and put sanctions on settlers, which many European nations have upheld.

1:09:00But it's so critical to see that through a legal context. The West Bank is legally occupied. There are Israeli legal implications, American implications, and international implications. And there's a lot of institutions that right now should be pursuing these settlers for what are clear violations and are not doing that. And I think it's important for outsiders to recognize as we head toward a break here. We talk about the massive Israeli society, secular society, getting into the streets, 300 ,000 strong, protesting the war in the streets of Tel Aviv. That is not who we're talking about, settlers in the West Bank who are attacking Palestinians.

1:09:34We're talking about right-wing, messianic, highly religious, ideologically driven right-wingers who are resorting to violence against their neighbors because they think the land is theirs. As I said, it runs very, very deep, and it helps to appreciate some of the awful context. We put one conflict aside in the Middle East and an excellent discussion, by the way, from our panelists that I want to thank you for in the first two-thirds of the show here. And move on to Ukraine's capital of Kiev because early Thursday, Russia hit Kiev with 32 missiles, hypersonic missiles and others, nearly 600 attack drones.

1:10:12Now, that attack killed at least 23 people, including four children. It also wounded 48 people. Nearly 100 buildings and homes were hit in that onslaught. It's the first major strike on Kiev since President Putin and President Trump met in Alaska. David Rennie, what does Russia say was the target of this strike? And maybe as a second thought, we really have to get to what Vladimir Putin is thinking and doing now just a few days after his getting the red carpet rolled out for him by Donald Trump in Anchorage. So there was a moment in Anchorage where a reporter asked President Putin whether he was going to stop attacking civilians and he shrugged.

1:10:55So this is what that means. This is the Russian leader currently feels that he enjoys some degree of impunity. And that's basically impunity in terms of pressure from America, which is the only country that Vladimir Putin probably fears in this context. And think how far we've come. Now, it's been a rollercoaster kind of whiplash journey in terms of Donald Trump's own view of this conflict. But not that long ago, we had President Trump saying that, you know, I think Vladimir has gone crazy. He's attacking civilians. He's attacking cities. This is awful. It has to stop. I'm going to put incredible pressure on him.

1:11:27The big win for Vladimir Putin at the summit in Alaska was that he managed to flip the script from a ceasefire now, and then we start talking about the future, to this Russian logic, which is, no, no, if you stop us fighting now when we're winning, that's massively to our disadvantage. the Ukrainians will just go away and rearm. So you have to let us keep fighting and attacking. The thing that Donald Trump told us he found so morally objectionable, but now he's on board with that. And what is the consequence? It is one of the largest strikes, as you said, Todd, since the beginning of the war. There were three children killed in an apartment building at three in the morning by these drones.

1:12:05How is that a military target? How is that compatible with the Trump administration's view that war is this awful thing that must stop as soon as possible. We're now on Russian logic that because it is militarily advantageous for Vladimir Putin to keep pounding Ukraine, and then maybe he'll talk about a sort of comprehensive deal that addresses all his grievances, that's where we are. So what we saw was not just destruction and yet more death, but it was a Russian leader who feels he enjoys impunity. And I believe I read in the pages of The Economist, David, you'll correct me if I'm wrong, but Akbar, one advantage also that Putin now gets from flipping the script in Anchorage in a matter of minutes going from ceasefire now to Putin's script is that he gets to continue dividing the United States from the rest of the Western alliance.

1:12:53He gets to continue having Donald Trump putatively on his side and watching the consternation as European leaders rush to Washington to help out Volodymyr Zelensky and the rest of it and the weakening of the Western alliance. Well, there's a real investment, right, that Western leaders are putting into coming to America, trying to manage Trump while they are managing their own borders and very real fears in Latvia, Lithuania, Nordic states that Russia sees them as next. And, you know, the EU came out in response to these strikes and said, we will turn Ukraine into a steel porcupine, right? So that goal is very much there.

1:13:30But if you as European leaders are trying to rearm while you're also thinking, what is Donald Trump, what is Steve Whitcoff doing that we have no idea about? And meanwhile, you have the Trump administration shoring up anti-EU and far-right politicians within Europe. You're fighting on several fronts, right, in addition to the very active Russian psychological and tangible warfare. Well, back on the ground in Kyiv, the Financial Times chief correspondent posted stunning video on X on social media, A security camera that captured two missiles from this attack hitting a suburban part of Kyiv, one after the other.

1:14:07The camera's image goes bright orange, white really, and then plumes of smoke rise above residential buildings. You can see in sort of a double-tap form of a strike, although the missiles are one after the other, so maybe it doesn't meet the definition of such. The video shows that missiles also struck buildings that housed the EU's diplomatic mission to Ukraine and the British Council, a UK government cultural organization in Ukraine. The EU's foreign policy chief, Kayakalas, summoned Russia's envoy to the EU after the strike. And here's EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen speaking about the attack.

1:14:41And this is another grim reminder of what is at stake. It shows that the Kremlin will stop at nothing to terrorize Ukraine, blindly killing civilians, men, women and children, and even targeting the European Union. Nancy Youssef, what does Europe do after the strike that hit both Ukraine's capital, but also the EU's own diplomatic mission? And as David Rennie described, Vladimir Putin is happy to defy what appeared to be the basis of his meeting with Donald Trump in the first place and thumb his nose at the White House and at Europe. I think what they're trying to do is to create pressure, even if it's diplomatic pressure, that we can't continue to allow Russia to go after civilians and civilian targets.

1:15:30Why are they doing that? They are trying to break the back of the civilian population to say we need this war to stop. They are trying, and when they hit infrastructure, for example, to create conditions where there could be a potentially cold winter. This has been going on by Russia since the beginning of the war, and we've seen Ukraine do the same later on. But neither is working on either side to sort of undermine it. What it is as a message is that neither side can prolong the war. So if you're Europe, I think you're trying to reinforce that message on the Russian side as best you can. The reality is that they have very few cards to play.

1:16:10You have a division between your U.S. partners. And while they're starting to send more weapons, we're seeing that today, by the way, European-provided weapons to keep Ukraine in the fight. They don't have even collectively the necessary pressure against a Putin who is willing to go to great lengths to keep fighting this war. What about the lengths of the United States? White House Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt was asked about this attack. She said that President Trump was not happy about the move, but he was also not surprised. Has the president said anything about this attack? Has he reacted?

1:16:47Not to my knowledge. I mean, what we've seen from the president consistently is, yes, I think war is bad and I don't like it. And then we don't really go anywhere from that, right? The U.S., of course, has significant leverage on economic fronts that could use, military, all of that. No, no, no, Akbar. I wish to correct you. Going into the Anchorage meeting, the president said very clearly that Russia would suffer severe consequences if there weren't a ceasefire. That sounds threatening. What happened? That was two weeks ago. I mean, we're in the Trump news cycle, so that's kind of where we are.

1:17:19And what we've also seen consistently from the White House is real confusion, right? So Steve Witkoff, who keeps coming up as the president's envoy, allegedly has this file. There's also Keith Kellogg, who is supposed to be the envoy for Russia and Ukraine, but Russia doesn't like. So from a Russian standpoint, that sense of confusion and weakness is very clear in Washington. Meanwhile, some tactics on the ground in Ukraine, on the eastern front of Ukraine. Ukraine has begun to push back against Russia in territory with reinforcements. That's after Russia gained hundreds of miles of territory during an offensive this spring.

1:17:54This week, Ukraine's military confirmed that for the first time, a small number of Russian forces had crossed the border into eastern provinces, into central Ukraine, not just the east. But Ukraine says Russia has not established a foothold there in the central region. Nancy, what is Putin trying to accomplish with these latest incursions, latest small advances on the battlefield? So one thing the president Trump has said is that there could be potentially an exchange for a land for some sort of peace settlement. And by taking or aiming to take more territory, what it does is it expands the Ukrainian front line.

1:18:29So they have to have more troops over a wider swath of area. It potentially hurts Ukrainian military morale to see the potential loss of territory after years of fighting and really trying to stretch out their resources. And it becomes a potential bargaining chip in these possible negotiations under the terms that President Trump has laid out in his sort of possible scenarios for ending the war. Meanwhile, while we're talking about Russia, one other story that I want to bring to the attention of the panel and get your reaction. We've talked about the Alaska summit, Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump.

1:19:02News this week from the Wall Street Journal that days after the Alaska meeting, Trump's director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, revoked the security clearances of a senior Russia expert at the CIA who helped with preparation for that meeting. The revoking of the offer security clearance effectively ended their career with the CIA. Gabbard posted the announcement on X with no specific infractions mentioned. She also removed clearances from 36 others named in the post. Her announcement appears to have publicly outed this officer who did have cover and was undercover. David Rennie, what effect does firing a senior Russia expert have on the administration's ability to manage the peace talks we've been spending so much time talking about?

1:19:53and what can we possibly make of the timing of firing a senior Russia analyst just after the meeting with Trump, who, by the way, had their cover blown? So it's not just him. There's other people, him or her. There's other people who have been fired in roles, some of which have not been made public. And our reporting at The Economist is that they essentially offered their advice to the president and his team as he went into the summit, and that advice was not welcome. And so to be a Russia expert, telling the president what he doesn't want to hear or telling his envoy, Steve Witkoff, what he doesn't want to hear is a very dangerous place to be.

1:20:28And of course, it's not just Russia. We saw the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the main military intelligence agency, he got fired, we think, because his agency released reports saying that the damage of the strikes on the Iranian nuclear program had not set that program back quite as much as the White House claimed. So he got canned. And so there is a sense, which is a very dangerous sense, that intelligence is being absolutely and overtly politicized. But as we learned from 9-11, among other disasters, if spies can't tell the truth to their political masters, you get bad information leading to very bad decisions.

1:21:05Spies being fired by the Trump administration for advice that the president doesn't want to hear. We're getting to the end of the hour now. I want to take just a minute for each of you and give us a look into your reporter's notebook. Let us know what stories are on your radar, what you're looking forward to in the next week. We don't have a ton of time, but give us a thought each about what we should be watching out for in the coming week. David Renny, you go first. So I'm wishing I was in Beijing. I've been in a lot of military parades and the crowd in Beijing. There's going to be a big one next Wednesday to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II.

1:21:37But who's going to be there? It's going to be Vladimir Putin. It's going to be the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, on one of his first meetings with international leaders for a long time. A sense that the kind of the bad guys of the world are getting together to thumb their noses at Donald Trump. And that is never a good thing to see. Nancy Usa. So David stole my answer, so I'll try to come up with one. Do you want to take a minute? No, no, no, no. I mean, I'm actually very interested in how India has reacted to the tariffs. And I can't tell. 50 % tariffs now. 50 % tariffs. And this sort of their defiance and even with the risk to their economy and certain sectors of the economy.

1:22:12I'm really curious if they hold the line in the coming days and weeks. Akbar. I'll just add on the India point very quickly because I am Pakistani. I'd be remiss to not say this. India's narrative of self-reliance is so interesting to see as the Trump administration embraces Pakistan too. Of course, India's traditional enemy. So let's just see what keeps going on with New Delhi. I'm tracking Iran. And I'm really, I think folks should really start preparing themselves. This was not a popular warning I gave in my newsroom, But I said, I think we are looking at a potential fall-winter conflict with Iran.

1:22:43Again, I think Israel is inching closer towards that. Nuclear diplomacy is getting harder. The Europeans are putting back sanctions on Iran. Iran is moving potentially away from the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. We're in a very dangerous place there. And I think American involvement is quite possible. And the United States and Israel have made clear that kinetic attacks are on the table. And we question what Iran's incentives are now to avoid achieving a nuclear deterrent. Thank you for that look forward. We're going to end the day in Spain just real quick, where an estimated 20 ,000 people took to the streets of Bignon to participate in a very special food fight, the 80th anniversary of La Tomatina.

1:23:25What is La Tomatina? It's what it sounds like. Overripe tomatoes, 240 ,000 pounds of them pelting it one Spaniard to another for over an hour. This festival is said to be inspired by a 1945 food fight between children that apparently was memorable enough that they decided to do it every year to call their remaining supplies of rotten tomatoes. I want to thank our panelists, Nancy Youssef from The Atlantic, Akbar Shahid Ahmed of HuffPost, and David Rennie, geopolitics editor and columnist at The Economist. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer.

1:24:03Alexandra Botee is our senior supervising producer. Eileen Humphreys is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. And Barbanguiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson and Arfi Getty for additional podcast and on-demand support this week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Todd Zwillick. Thanks for listening. This is 1A.

1:24:45Thank you.