The News Roundup For August 8, 2025

26:19officials inside the CIA wanting to protect sources and methods objecting to that release and their boss, Tulsi Gabbard, overruling them. That was reporting this week. We're going to have more on what's going on with members of Congress who left town to avoid Epstein votes when they're at home talking to voters. Stay with us. We'll be back with more of the Roundup in just a moment.

26:47before a brief break gang i promised we would talk about members of congress and what they're up to back home they're not in washington right now but they are home in fractious times and they're up to a lot hearing from their constituents and speaking to reporters i want to talk about georgia representative marjorie taylor green speaking out against her own party on monday in an interview with Daily Mail, Green said, here's a quote, I think the Republican Party has turned its back on America first and the workers and just regular Americans, end quote. Green also touched on attitudes towards women in the party.

27:21This is a quote. I think there's other women in our party that are really sick and tired of the way men treat Republican women. Amanda Becker, Marjorie Taylor Greene has been more than a Trump loyalist. She's been an acolyte in Trump's viceroy on Capitol Hill for many, many years now. A loyalist doesn't really encompass what Marjorie Taylor Greene has meant to MAGA on the Hill. What do you make of these recent comments? They're surprising because, as you said, she's been kind of one of the president's most closely aligned allies. We've rarely seen her break with him, and now she's breaking on a couple of fronts.

27:59I mean, in terms of the America First comments that she made, she's also used the word genocide to describe what's going on in Gaza and Israel's actions there. And, you know, we have heard from Israel just this week that they're planning on kind of a military takeover of Gaza City. So that is, you know, departing from where the Republican base is at right now, because they have been very pro-Israel in this conflict. Well, Amanda, you mentioned, I want to get to other House members just quickly here, because you mentioned before the break that House Republicans left town early to avoid voting on questions around Jeffrey Epstein.

28:37That's how Speaker Mike Johnson avoided a growing discontent in the Republican conference over that. He sent them home. Now at home, lawmakers have to face the people who sent them to Washington in the first place. And those people have questions about the passage of President Trump's big tax and spending bill. Here's some sound from a town Hall in Nebraska, where GOP Representative Mike Flood faced a crowd of over 700 people who brought the heckles and the booze. Why did you cut SNAP and health care research?

29:23We do not have unlimited money in the United States. Now, in March, the chair of the House's GOP campaign arm told Republicans to stop holding in-person town halls, probably, Alana, because of the type of sound that we heard there. What's going on in that district of Nebraska? What does it mean nationwide for Republicans? Well, Nebraska happens to be home to probably the most vulnerable seat currently held by Don Bacon, a rather centrist Reagan-style Republican who's now retiring. and we fully expect that seat to be flippable to Democrats. But you're seeing elsewhere in a pretty red state this natural groundswell of discontent about the quote-unquote big, beautiful bill.

30:06Now, this is not something Republicans are surprised about behind the scenes. As you stated, their campaign chief gave that guidance because the polls show the majority of Americans don't like this bill. Despite the focus on no tax on tips and other Trump-fueled ideas, people see it, And this is true as predominantly benefiting the wealthy. And that's just plain hard to sell on the ground. So it's a big problem. Are those heckles and boos made for the camera? Are those Democratic activists who know that we'll be watching August recess and they're piling into these times? It's their right to be there if they're constituents.

30:40But is that who we're hearing from there? A little bit of media craft? Yeah, that's a really good question. If you ask Republicans about this Hudson Edict to not do the events, they tend to say, well, look, we don't want to walk into an activist set trap. And to be honest, anecdotally, yes, that has and will continue to happen. We just don't know on a person to person basis. We've also, though, seen several Republican lawmakers confront constituents who say right off the bat, I'm a Republican and I have a problem. So it's kind of both. What an era where a town hall talking to your constituents is an activist set trap.

31:13Well, on the other side of the aisle, it's not just Republicans facing constituents, Democrats facing voters over the ongoing war in Gaza and American support for Israel. Last week, Democratic Representative Bill Foster was heckled by anti-war demonstrators. Right now, they are starving babies. I want babies starving every single day. Ma 'am, if you could please, if you would get in the line to ask your question, we'd appreciate it. A record number of Democratic senators in need have voted a few days ago to cut off weapons support for Israel. That bill didn't pass, but a lot of Democrats in the Senate voted for it.

31:49How is the war in Gaza changing incentives and calculations for Democrats as they face constituents? Yeah, I mean, we're seeing pretty much what we've seen earlier this year when there were other breaks, when there were other town halls where members of Congress went back home and they heard a lot of angry people talking about this. I think what's happening now, of course, you've just mentioned what this vote that you talked about. But I think what you are also seeing is I think what that woman alluded to, but it was hard to hear her, is that there are a lot of people talking about this current starvation crisis in the area.

32:27And we've heard that this is the worst. You know, it's a terrible case of famine going on in this in the in the area. And we're seeing a lot of photos showing up across the country, across the world, really. And I think there are a lot of people that are reacting to that and going to these town halls, just as you talked about the Republican town halls, that this is the one that on the Democratic side, we've seen a lot of people that be very upset and wanting to talk to their members of Congress. But this is this is not new. This is something that we've been seeing all year long with Democrats.

33:02And quite frankly, the party is a bit divided about what to do about it. And so we've been seeing that and seeing the pushback. Well, I want to talk about vital, important health news coming out of the federal government, especially mRNA shots, messenger RNA. You remember those. They were first used during the COVID-19 pandemic. And a recent study in JAMA estimated that those very vaccines saved 2.5 million lives between 2020 and 2024. The pioneers of mRNA technology won a Nobel Prize for medicine in 2023. This week, nearly$500 million of grants and contracts funding mRNA research were canceled.

33:47Canceled by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. Dr. Michael Osterholm is the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota. And here's what he told PBS NewsHour. Right now, globally, we have the ability to make enough vaccine in about 15 months after an influenza pandemic started to actually vaccinate only about one-fourth of the entire world. That would be an utter failure. Now, with the mRNA technology, we believe we could probably have enough vaccine for the whole world within a year. And it would make a big difference. $500 million in research that would make a huge difference around the world, according to vaccine expert Michael Osterholm.

34:32Amanda Becker, why did the Secretary of HHS, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cut funding for those vaccines? Yeah, so Secretary Kennedy says that he does not believe that mRNA vaccines protect against respiratory illnesses. And so it's therefore an ineffective use of government money and wasteful. Now, this obviously counters consensus within the medical community. COVID-19 was a respiratory illness. And you just mentioned the, you know, life-saving impact this vaccine had. And what, you know, pandemic specialists are most worried about, and we actually heard some blowback also from Republican Senator Bill Cassidy on this, who's a doctor, is that this is going to leave them unprepared for the next pandemic.

35:15Because what is also good about mRNA is that it's more quickly adaptable to new virus strains. They can develop it a lot more quickly. And they just aren't going to be able to respond to a future pandemic with the speed that they did the last one if they don't have access to this technology and if we aren't investing in this technology. There was other deep cost cutting, of course, across the federal government. We've covered it in detail here on 1A. But we've also talked about the National Weather Service, which faced deep, deep cuts. Hundreds of employees forced into retirement, fired, laid off a fork in the road, or let go.

35:53But as hurricane season enters its most active period, the National Weather Service this week got the green light to hire back hundreds of critical positions that were cut in the doge chaos. And the National Weather Service isn't the only agency rehiring after major cuts. Lots of other agencies include the State Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Food and Drug Administration, IRS. Anita Kumar, for all of the chaos in the court cases and the claims of cost savings and eliminating waste, cutting entire departments of government before Elon Musk moved on to other interests, what does it mean that all of these agencies are trying to hire back and beef up their workforces once again?

36:37Yeah, I mean, it really shows that they underestimated what workforce they needed, right? Certain people that are doing certain jobs that have experience, expertise. And so the government has lost some of that experience, obviously, and now they're trying to figure out in what pockets they need it back. It's very difficult to tell right now how many people, I mean, tens of thousands of people were let go in some fashion, different ways. and it's very hard to tell how many exactly are coming back. You've mentioned a lot of the departments and agencies, but I haven't seen sort of a comprehensive number.

37:15What's happening is that they're seeing in different places, hey, we don't have the experience here, or we need this person, or we don't know how to do something. And so they're bringing people back, but it's difficult. Some people are gone. Some people need to be retrained. Unless you're hiring back those exact same people, you're going to have to do some retraining. And so that has been really difficult, even though they're hiring back, it's they're going to be behind in what they're trying to do. And so it's a bit of a mess. It's just like it sounds like. It's across the board just trying to figure out where they need people back and what kind of training they need to do.

37:51Well, speaking of medical research, there was some potentially good news from the world of science this week signaling hope maybe for aging Americans and the loved ones who care for them. A study from Harvard Medical School released on Wednesday, reports a potential breakthrough for treating Alzheimer's diseases. Researchers discovered that a small amount of lithium orerate reversed Alzheimer's disease in mice. Now that could make lithium a promising candidate for humans. And investigators say that lithium might also treat Parkinson's disease, but that it needs to be rigorously examined. Early findings in mice that could offer some hope for millions and millions of Americans there.

38:33A few minutes left in the roundup, gang. I want to make sure that we talk about immigration policy, what the Trump administration is doing in its mass detention program across America. On Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced a new state-sponsored immigration detention center, this time in Indiana. and Trump officials have another catchy name for a mass detention facility. This one they're calling Speedway Slammer. They say it will expand detention space for immigration and customs enforcement ICE by a thousand beds. Now, this announcement follows the building of the controversial immigration detention center in Florida with another catchy name, Alligator Alcatraz.

39:14That facility opened at the beginning of July. Since then, detainees have complained of inhumane conditions. The ACLU has brought a lawsuit against that center for a violating due process. This week, we talked to the lead attorney in that ACLU case and Democratic State Senator Chevron Jones, who got a tour of that facility. Amanda Becker, Speedway Slammer is the fun slogan for mass detention. What do we know about this Indiana detention facility and how it compares to the Florida facility? Yeah, so this is actually being added to an existing correctional facility, the Miami Correctional Center.

39:53So it's not like they're building a completely new campus or anything for this one. As you said, it will increase their capacity by 1 ,000 beds. They're aiming to increase ice capacity by 80 ,000 beds. So this would get them another 1 ,000 beds of the way there. And the name has already gotten them in a little bit of hot water, these kind of catchy, memeable names that they're coming up with. IndyCar, which operates, you know, car racing in Indiana, which is a pretty big deal, has already put out statements trying to distance themselves from some of the posts from DHS on social media saying, you know, we are not associated with this endeavor in any way.

40:32So it really seems like the names for these are kind of like this bizarre branding effort. And, you know, like there's going to be merch coming down the pipeline for these places. Well, there already has been merch for Alligator Alcatraz. Yeah. So I would expect Speedway Slammer to be next unless they get into some sort of legal dispute with IndyCar over that. But yeah, so that's kind of what we know so far. It's unclear how long it's going to take to get it up and running. Sometimes at these pre-existing facilities, it happens pretty quick. So that's kind of the thousand bed edition in the state of Indiana for now.

41:04Well, the thousand bed addition is part of a massive ramp up at ICE. The Trump administration has set a goal to hire 10 ,000 more ICE agents and officials. And to achieve that, DHS announced this week it was doing away with its age restrictions for employees. Here's Kristi Noem, the DHS secretary, talking to Fox on Wednesday. We've removed any of the age barriers. We no longer have a cap on on how old you can be, or you can continue at age 18, sign up for ICE and join us and be a part of it. We'll get you trained and ready to be equipped to go out on the streets and help protect families. Alana Shore, ICE got a massive funding increase,$75 billion in the Trump tax and spending bill.

41:46What do we know about the massive ramp up at ICE in their budget? Well, a lot of that is going to go to detention facilities like the Speedway Slammer, extra funding for new beds to hold detainees and migrants. And a lot of it will go to exactly the hiring operations that you're talking about. But anybody who saw South Park this week knows that there might be some blowback from this operation. And huge financial incentives also for people who sign up, right? Yes, correct. As the show actually covered, we're in that space where they're giving you the news on South Park. $14 ,000 or$15 ,000 in incentives, signing bonuses.

42:21South Park is on the case if you want to sign up to be an ICE agent as the Trump administration ramps up mass detention. Across America, I want to thank our panel, Anita Kumar, head of standards and practices at Politico, Amanda Becker, Washington correspondent for the 19th, and Alana Shore, senior Washington editor for Semaphore. Thanks to all of you for joining us. We're going to head to a quick break now. We'll be back with the global edition of the News Roundup in just a moment. Stay with us.

42:54It's the international hour of the News Roundup. Coming up, the United States and Russia meet in Moscow. And within hours, the administration announces secondary sanctions. What can we expect from a Trump-Putin meeting now? Concessions or calamity? The White House is putting extraordinary pressure on Brazil, meanwhile, while Donald Trump defends a former president there on trial for plotting a coup to try to stay in office. And we have all the news of the week from Gaza and Israel talking us through that and a lot more from London. Kreeti Gupta is an anchor and correspondent at Bloomberg TV and radio.

43:31Good to talk to you, Kreeti. Thanks for having me. Rishi Iyengar is staff writer at Foreign Policy. Thanks for being here, Rishi. Yeah, great to be here. Thanks for having me. And Jack Detch is with us, defense reporter at Politico. You know the voice. Hi, Jack. Good to be here. It's now been more than 96 weeks since the war began in Gaza. It followed Hamas' surprise attack on Israel in October of 2023. Gaza health authorities say nearly 200 people have now died from starvation in the Gaza Strip. Ceasefire talks are at a standstill, meanwhile. Gaza's Hamas-run government says more than 61 ,000 people have been killed since the start of the war.

44:11Now, health officials there don't distinguish between civilians and fighters, but estimates are that half of the dead are women and children. Israel says 50 of the 251 hostages taken on October 7th remain in Gaza. They believe about 20 remain alive. On Thursday, in an interview on Fox News, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel intends to take control of the entire Gaza Strip, but does not want to govern it. Here's what he told Fox's Bill Hemmer. We don't want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter. We don't want to govern it. We don't want to be there as a governing body.

44:52We want to hand it over to Arab forces that will govern it properly without threatening us and giving Gazans a good life. We don't want to keep it. We don't want to govern it. We want to hand it over to Arab authorities. Jack, what do we know about the plan that Benjamin Netanyahu is signaling and achieving so far? Well, it looks to be a staged takeover of Gaza. Remember, they already control 75 percent of the Strip. So they'd be looking at Gaza City and then going further out from that, creating a security perimeter. But as Netanyahu said, not actually governing. The problem is who's going to govern Gaza.

45:31The Arab allies, of course, have turned on Hamas, but they're not offering a solution that's necessarily palatable to the Israelis. The Palestinian Authority is out for the Israelis. So Netanyahu's in a bit of a rock and a hard place. He's already down 11 seats in his coalition. The public's probably not going to stand by an indefinite occupation. But what he's offering is a long-term potential Israeli occupation in the strip with a military that's already quite tired out. Krity Gupta, Netanyahu and his supporters in the coalition, his right-wing coalition government, have basically drawn a line here that this war can't end while Hamas still has any viability.

46:11Food has been cut off. We're going to talk about the hunger and starvation within Gaza. So why now? How does this move, this latest escalation from Netanyahu, fit into that dilemma that Jack is describing? Well, this is, to your point, just another escalation. This is kind of something that you had seen Benjamin Netanyahu already talk about in some of his previous kind of plans for Israel. And one of the key sticking points in those ceasefire negotiations, which is simply that they wanted to keep a extended security presence in Gaza. And that was a non-starter for Hamas. Hamas, on the other hand, wanted all kind of Israeli presence completely taken out in return for the hostages.

46:53So this is really just amping up something that was already a key sticking point there. The other key piece of this is, to your point, the humanitarian aid, because that's really where a lot of the pressure is coming, not just domestically, but internationally, as well. And this is the one key piece of this thought or this deal, which hasn't been reported by Western media, but has by local Israeli media, that in this planned takeover, you could see an increase in security, but also an increase in humanitarian aid. But again, reported locally and not internationally. So Rishi Iyengar, what about what Kriti is saying there?

47:31Is Netanyahu who trying to find a way to get food into Gaza, relieve himself of the international pressure and negative attention he's earned for Israel here, while achieving his other goal, which the Israelis say when they let food into Gaza, Hamas takes it, sells it, uses it for weapons, uses it for their own black market purposes. Is this his way of blunting the criticism while not giving oxygen to Hamas? What's he going for here? Yeah, absolutely. So Netanyahu has said that, and Israel has said that it will allow a gradual and controlled entry of goods into Gaza through local merchants. They have set up the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, Israel-backed and partly U.S.-backed as well, that has been controversial.

48:27And the approved aid, they're sending in basic food products, baby food hygiene supplies. But as you pointed out at the top, there have been several deaths and accusations of starvation. The UN is talking about famine. The UN is saying that Israel needs to send in a lot more aid, around 600 aid trucks a day, which was what Israel allowed into Gaza before the war in order to stave off these starvation concerns. So for Netanyahu, it is a way to kind of try to walk that tight line. Rishi just mentioned it, famine and starvation in Gaza. On Thursday, the UN Office of the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported acute malnutrition among children in Gaza, and that it's reached the highest levels to date.

49:20Here's what the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhry, told the UK's Channel 4 this week about the current famine in Gaza. On October 9th, 2023, Israeli leaders announced a full blockade against Gaza and then imposed a full blockade. And we saw their starvation campaign really speed up so that by March of 2024, the International Court of Justice, when it issued its provisional measures, recognized the spread of famine and starvation. And then soon after, in November 2024, the International Criminal Court issued two arrest warrants, one for Prime Minister Netanyahu and one for former Minister of Defense Gallant for the war crime of starvation.

50:09So we've seen this unfolding for the last 22 months at least. The UN and other aid groups say Israel is blocking access to more than 2 million people, food access to them trapped in the Gaza Strip. As we mentioned, Israel says Hamas steals the aid, and as Israel prepares for this new offensive, Kreeti, can you talk a little bit more about Israel's plans for getting food and aid into Gaza as the world watches? How important a part is that to this escalation that Netanyahu is now undertaking? It's a key piece in terms of appeasing the international critics. And you're starting to see a lot of them that were really strongly in favor of Israel or at least backing Israel or even just not speaking out against potentially the starvation in Gaza start to now look at that situation and say, we can't keep moving this forward.

51:03and most crucially the recent speaking from France, from the UK, from Canada, starting to basically threaten Israel that if they don't stop, then come September at the UN General Assembly, they are going to move forward in recognizing Palestine. That adds pressure when it comes to addressing the humanitarian situation. That being said, the way that it's done still remains a big question mark because aid trucks coming in from Egypt or coming in from other places are still largely halted. aid that has been able to get through has largely been done in a very limited basis and being done through airdrops by the likes of Jordanian pilots, for example, one of the countries that hosts a large Palestinian population.

51:45So a massive question mark at the moment from how Israel is going to address the situation, but that's how things stand at the moment. We'll talk more about that international pressure on Israel, threats to recognize Palestine at the UN in September. All of that after a break. Before we head to the break, Jack Detch, I want to talk finally about this planned operation in Gaza City spreading out to the rest of the Gaza Strip. This is not the first time Israel has occupied Gaza. They did after 1967. They left entirely in 2005, a full Israeli withdrawal back then. But the proposed Gaza takeover now has a lot of critics strategically, including Israel's military chief, who directly criticized the prime minister on this plan from the military chief.

52:30That was remarkable. What's going on there? Right. There was a fascinating behind the scenes meeting on Tuesday evening where we saw the IDF chief of staff, Ayel Zamir, directly criticize this plan, basically saying it would put the military in a place where there would be no exit strategy. They'd be trapped inside the Gaza Strip. All of the hostages would still be at risk. And you have the Israelis, again, with a tremendous military burden. They have about 3 million people eligible for military service. They'd have to call up reserves who are already exhausted from serving. So this is just a tremendous strain on the IDF and potentially a plan with no end here.

53:08How many troops would be required for an occupation of Gaza at this point, have they said? Hundreds of thousands at the very, very least. Hundreds of thousands in a reserve structure that has 3 million reservists. That's a huge commitment. An enormous commitment by the Israelis, and it's just hard to see how they'd be able to sustain it long term. And the military chief in Israel directly criticizing this plan and calling attention to those real-world logistical problems before you even get to the dimensions of a further occupation and an escalation in Gaza. Well, last week, Saudi Arabia and France chaired a conference on a two-state solution for Israelis and Palestinians.

53:45It was at the United Nations in New York. Countries including France, Canada, the UK, Australia, and others announced that they would recognize or are considering recognizing a Palestinian state by the time the UN General Assembly is held in September. Kriti Gupta mentioned this just a few moments ago. Now, that recognition could be avoided, at least according to Canada and the UK, if Israel changed course on the war and improved humanitarian conditions. The meeting also resulted in a seven-page document called the New York Declaration. It was signed by all member states of the Arab League, as well as the EU and about 17 other countries.

54:24I want to hone in a little bit on the role of Saudi Arabia here. Rishi Iyengar, why is Saudi Arabia leading the charge for international recognition of a Palestinian state, which, as we mentioned, many allies of the United States and punitive allies of Israel are joining in on? Yeah, absolutely. So Saudi Arabia actually has been in support of a Palestinian state dating back to at least 2002. And the current effort started before last week's UN conference. In September 2024, Saudi Arabia, along with Norway, announced the launch of a global alliance for the implementation of the two-state solution.

55:06So this has been in the making. for Saudi Arabia I think one part of it is of course regional stability as you mentioned you have the entire Arab League signing on and that's a level of solidarity we haven't seen from that group in the past condemnation of Hamas from Arab countries in the region has been growing along with the global pressure and for Saudi Arabia the other part of it could be that it's an opportunity. Saudi Arabia has faced scrutiny and pressure in the past over its own human rights record. And this is a way to sort of show their support for a humanitarian solution, a humanitarian process, in addition to wider regional stability.

55:59Kreeti, an international coalition forming around that old, very old idea of the two-state solution. It used to be a marquee banner of United States foreign policy, and the United States has now essentially abandoned a two-state solution in Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza for Palestinians. What about this new coalition and the absence, the fact that the United States isn't involved? Can it be effective? It can be effective with perhaps limited results. So the answer is yes and no. No in that, of course, the United States is the largest kind of supporter of Israel. So naturally, having their sign-off is a much bigger weight and much bigger help to the cause than otherwise.

56:45That being said, the fact that, as Rishi was saying, that the Saudis have been at this for quite some time and have just now been able to get the support of a lot of European nations is actually significant because these are a lot of European nations that are very publicly making foreign policy stands against the United States or at odds with the United States. France is a major player. The UK, a major player. Canada, on the top of the border of the United States. The fact that you are starting to get kind of support from them as opposed to the previous support of the likes of Norway, other Middle Eastern countries, Spain, it's just starting to add a little bit more weight to the international consensus to the point that if you don't have American support now, perhaps it paves the way for American support down the road.

57:30Now, Jackie, you mentioned a little bit earlier that the Arab League, League of Arab Nations, condemned Hamas and the Hamas-led October 7th assault on Israel that killed about 1 ,200 people. Why was that significant, the timing and the declaration? Well, now it creates this momentum game with the Gulf, with the Arab League, with the European Union now, about 11 out of 27 European Union states behind this potential two-state solution push ahead of the United Nations meeting in just a few weeks. So this does provide a little bit of momentum, a push that seemingly is coming from the UK and Prime Minister Keir Starmer.

58:11So you do see quite a bit of heft behind this. But let's remember Netanyahu has resisted a lot of this international pressure before. At last year's UN General Assembly, even despite the condemnation of the international community. You saw him launch a massive escalation with the incursion into Lebanon. So it's not necessarily clear that all this diplomatic pressure is going to create any military changes. Would recognition of Palestinian statehood in September at the UN by countries like France, the UK, Australia, Canada, would that have an effect on Netanyahu and his posture? Is that pressure real?

58:44Potentially, but Netanyahu holds a lot of the cards with the presence that's on the ground, controlling 75 % of the Gaza Strip. So they need to find something that's potentially palatable to Netanyahu when it comes to a governing structure. Obviously, Hamas is beyond the pale, even for the Arab League now. So that's an important development. But the Palestinian authority hasn't been something Netanyahu has gotten behind either. So you need to find a governing coalition that is somehow palatable to Netanyahu and all of these groups. So that's going to be incredibly difficult to negotiate. Well, this week, a group of GOP lawmakers and activists were in Israel.

59:21They were led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana. They visited the Israeli-held Ariel region of the occupied West Bank that's been deemed an illegal settlement by the United Nations. One GOP activist on the trip cited Johnson as saying that the territory is, quote, the rightful property of the Jewish people. And And that comment got a lot of attention from people watching the proceedings. During a State Department press briefing, spokesperson Tammy Bruce was asked about the speaker's comments and if this was U.S. policy. Here's what she said. Well, I have said this about other diplomats who've spoken their minds, including Ambassador Huckabee.

1:00:02Um, uh, certainly, uh, that's not, uh, if there's a policy in that regard, you would hear it from me. Um, so I think I can, I can say that I'm not going to speak for him or characterize his words in any certain ways, but, uh, clearly that is his opinion. That's the State Department spokesperson, Tammy Bruce there. She was talking about Mike Huckabee, the current United States ambassador to Israel. Sarah Huckabee Sanders was along on the trip as reported. Um, Kreeti, that cadence and that statement from the State Department spokesperson, I think it's fair to say, um, is the sound of a spokesperson who doesn't really want to talk about comments like this coming from prominent Americans in the West Bank.

1:00:44Why was Mike Johnson's visit so provocative here? It was really provocative because of how close he holds his religion and even in the public eye. And I think this is something that isn't just a Mike Johnson kind of component. This is something that's really indicative of a cohort of Republicans that, and I would argue Democrats as well, frankly, that do hold their Christian beliefs in high regard and really kind of think of the conflict in Israel through a more theological lens. I mean, you had one quote there from Speaker Johnson, I'll give you another, where he specifically named these West Bank settlements by their biblical names, calling them Judea and Samaria and saying that the state of Israel must remain an integral part of those areas.

1:01:29This is also significant that he kind of referenced them in that biblical way because it's something that will speak to members of his base at home who do think that Israel potentially has a right to be in those areas. But to your point, those comments from the State Department suggest that no, she doesn't want to talk about it. We should also mention that those settlements are illegal under international law. So that puts the U.S. government and their public stance in some very serious hot water. Well, this trip also comes at a time when there's a split within the MAGA movement on support for Israel.

1:02:03Jack, how are we seeing the president navigate this issue, support for Israel versus America first? How's it playing out? Well, he's not navigating it. And remember, Trump, during the whole Iran strike mission, indicated that MAGA's in the eye of the beholder, and he's the eye of the beholder. And Trump's told reporters recently he doesn't want to pressure Israel to come up with a long-term solution to this because it would be rewarding Hamas. Now, it's not clear what rewarding Hamas means in this context. He does seem to be interested in at least setting up some food aid centers. Not clear the scale of that, but you do see pressure emerging among the movement, especially from Marjorie Taylor Greene, who's actually calling what's going on in the Gaza Strip now, a genocide.

1:02:46You've heard it from Matt Gaetz, from Steve Bannon. But the thing is, Trump has resisted pressure from MAGA before on Iran. He seems to be gambling he can do it again. Meanwhile, inside Israel, some domestic politics inside the government that has repercussions on the outside. We talk about things like this almost every week, how the tumult around Benjamin Netanyahu and his government spills out beyond Israel's borders and into the region. This week, Netanyahu's government voted unanimously to remove the attorney general who's prosecuting the prime minister for corruption. Soon after the vote, the high court of Israel issued a temporary injunction.

1:03:23The Israeli attorney general has repeatedly clashed with Netanyahu's coalition about overhauling the judiciary and the prime minister is facing charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. In three separate cases, Rishi, Is there a danger that the government could soon find itself in the same political crisis that it was facing right before the October 7th attacks? I mean, this was the same conversation right before Hamas and its allies poured over the border on October 7th. That's definitely a possibility. And as you said, it harks back to just before October 7th and this war that's now coming up on three years.

1:04:04and Netanyahu was under a lot of political pressure in the lead up to that. And there's been a lot of reporting out there on how the war in Gaza has really enabled him to strengthen his hold on power, of course, with the help of far right parties and allies in his coalition. Netanyahu himself did not participate in the vote to remove the attorney general, but his government did. And he has been under a lot of pressure, which along with the war in Gaza, the strikes in Lebanon and Iran have given him some political capital. But as global pressure grows over the war in Gaza and the prolonged fighting, he has expended a lot of that capital.

1:04:54And there is a possibility that should we see some sort of end to this war in Gaza, he's facing a lot of pressure internally in Israel over bringing back the hostages as well. But this is one of the biggest pressure points, this corruption case and these charges against him. We're going to turn to Russia's war in Ukraine in just a moment. But first, we have this reporting from The New York Times, which found that the Trump administration has plans to incinerate$9.7 million worth of family planning aid that's being stored in Belgium. The stores of birth control pills and other contraceptives were destined for clinics in the poorest countries in Africa through the United States Agency for International Development, or USAID, which the Trump administration abruptly dismantled earlier this year.

1:05:46The State Department confirmed in a statement that a preliminary decision was made to destroy certain birth control products. Well, now to Russia as promised, where Wednesday White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. Rishi, what did we learn from the readout of this Russian-American meeting? Yeah, so Steve Witkoff, as we wrote in Foreign Policy, has become effectively Trump's Mr. Fix-It, going around the world to address these various crises and negotiations that the Trump administration is navigating. This was his fifth visit to Moscow. And the initial readout from both sides was positive, if not terribly concrete.

1:06:40Trump posted on Truth Social that the talks achieved, quote unquote, great progress. The Kremlin, through an aide, said that the talks were useful and constructive. The most concrete thing to come out of it was the possibility, and Trump has confirmed this, that he could actually meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week and follow that up with a trilateral meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Putin. Now, there's a long road to get to that point, and we'll have to wait and see what happens. But the initial reaction from both sides was positive. Now, Russian strikes on Ukraine overnight killed three people, injured more than two dozen, including in the suburbs of Kiev.

1:07:31Donald Trump has promised to impose 100 percent tariffs on Russia if it didn't agree to a ceasefire. That's pressure on Russia, apparently coming from Donald Trump. Kriti, expand on what Rishi's been telling us. Positive signals coming out of a meeting between Steve Witkoff and Vladimir Putin. Promises of high-profile in-person meetings to come. That's a good incentive for Putin. What's behind all of this stagecraft? Well, this is coming after a very public deadline that Donald Trump had announced. 10 to 12 days to bring some sort of solution to the conflict. we're now coming up on that 10 to 12 day mark to the point where we are talking about having these negotiations.

1:08:12But I think that the key sticking point here, and this is something that Vladimir Zelensky had commented on as well, is simply this idea that he had threatened tariffs and secondary sanctions, using that vocabulary interchangeably, on some of the countries that do business with Russia, specifically India and China. And this is really crucial because geopolitical experts estimated that when it comes to Russia being able to kind of withstand some of the international sanctions being put on it and a crumbling economy, a weakening ruble, and a really challenging economic situation, they were able to stay afloat simply because of the funds that were being raised by oil sales, discounted oil sales, but oil sales nonetheless to India and to China.

1:09:01And those funds could kind of keep funding the war machine and the war effort when it came to Ukraine. That being said, secondary sanctions on countries like India or like China that are doing business from the United States and now potentially 50 percent tariffs on India, which is what Donald Trump is trying to put, severely impacts that kind of fundraising when it comes to Russia. And that seems to be, at least on the surface, what's brought the Kremlin to the table. Jack, we were talking Russia, Ukraine and India, the nexus between all of these, the increasingly complicated nexus economically between all these countries when it comes to United States foreign policy.

1:09:45One thing that Kreeti mentioned was the and that Rishi mentioned is the potential for a trilateral Trump, Putin, Zelensky meeting that could come out of all of this diplomacy. Can you just, Jack, update us on the state of the war on the ground right now between Ukraine and Russia and what a trilateral meeting, what Putin meeting personally with Trump would mean for his incentives on the world stage? Well, the Russians have been throwing a lot of combat power at the front lines all the way across that 600-mile front. So especially in the east in the Donbass, where they're close to taking full control of that area, in Kherson and Zaporizhia, where they have less control in the south.

1:10:28And then in the north in Sumi, they've been applying a lot of pressure this year. About 50 ,000 Russian troops have been stationed there. So what seems to be emerging out of all of this is the potential for a Trump-Putin meeting next week. What the Americans have been talking about is a territory swap. So you take some of those areas where the Russians have less control, places like Kherson and Zaporizhia, but nonetheless tried to annex in 2022 and exchange that for places in the Donbass and let the Russians potentially keep full control of that. Now, the question for Zelensky, and he's basically said, devil's in the details here, he's already lost a lot of leverage with the Ukrainian public after getting into a huge fight in the last several weeks over potentially sacrificing the independence of a major public watchdog.

1:11:13That triggered some of the biggest protests in Ukraine since the Maidan. And now he would potentially, if he accepts this deal, if that's in place, would be going back on his pledges all the way to 2019, which he said he wants to keep Ukraine whole. Tariffs, the threat of sanctions on Russia, also the tantalizing incentive of a public meeting for Vladimir Putin. Jack, Tom asks this question on next moves from the White House vis -à-vis Russia. Why don't they seize frozen Russian assets if Putin doesn't come to the table, Jack? It's a difficult game. A lot of these assets are controlled by the Belgians and other countries in Europe.

1:11:52So you have to apply pressure there. That would have cascading financial impacts. So we do see the Trump administration pushing to find leverage in different places. They're pushing on the Indians to potentially deal with their oil purchases from Russia to cut those down. We do see some pressure against Europe for some of these frozen assets, but still potentially not enough to break it out. And the Belgians and other countries that hold Russian assets would need to be made whole potentially with other assets so they don't drive the cost of their currency. Well, another bit of news out of Russia, the country's foreign ministry says it will no longer abide by a self-imposed moratorium on developing intermediate-range missiles that can carry nuclear weapons.

1:12:34Russia cited moves by the United States to position similar missiles in Germany next year. President Trump withdrew the United States from a treaty banning these weapons in 2019. So, Kriti, what's the significance of this announcement from Russia? Is this a significant escalation? It's not really coming as a surprise to anyone because allegations that they were developing these intermediate range missiles and nuclear carrying missiles, although those are all some scary words, those allegations date back to 2014 when President Obama had raised them around the discussion of the annexation of Crimea as well.

1:13:13So this has been an ongoing conversation. Russia had very publicly suspended participation in their treaty back in 2019. They said it was formally dead at that point. The international community isn't recognizing that. They're still holding that to them to account. And also in this kind of part of this announcement, they listed a very long list of reasons, and some of that including American deployment of weapons to European nations, to NATO countries, and in particular, the part that is, I think, perhaps notable and coming as a surprise is that they actively talked about the Indo-Pacific and weapon deployments to the likes of the Philippines, for example, and that really underscores very publicly what a lot of people, I think, know behind the scenes, which is just how close Moscow and Beijing are and how much the security of the South China Sea really impacts and can impact and has ripple effects to the conflict into Ukraine and ultimately Russia and by extension, China's kind of standing in the world.

1:14:13Well, I want to spend some time in Rwanda. We'll check in on Brazil. Before we get there, just to check in on Switzerland. Switzerland doesn't often figure in the news roundup. They tend to keep their heads down in Europe. But turns out this week, they can't. That's because the Trump administration hit Switzerland's just 9 million people with one of the world's highest tariff rates, 39 % tariffs on Switzerland, went into effect on Thursday. And Stinson, one a listener, asks, why are tariffs on Switzerland so high? What is Trump's beef with Switzerland? Kreeti. I think it came as a shock to, naturally, the Swiss and the entire world, given that Switzerland is known for its diplomacy, its neutrality, its chocolate, Roger Federer, you name it.

1:15:00And I think this is really crucial here because this really comes down to the economics. One of the things that Donald Trump wants to do, and to be fair, Joe Biden before him, is lower prices on drugs. And that is a domestic issue that of course is getting a lot of attention. Well, a lot of those pharmaceutical products are ultimately supplied by Swiss companies. That being said, the Swiss economy has also been seen as kind of an alternative to American assets because of its safety, because of its rule of law, because of its kind of haven-like nature. So when people don't want exposure to the United States because they think it's too volatile or they think that there is too much policy uncertainty, they tend to go to Switzerland.

1:15:41And that isn't something that Donald Trump has really liked. So this resulted in a very fast turnaround from the Swiss president who kind of uninvitedly arrived in Washington, couldn't get a meeting with Donald Trump, had a couple words with Marco Rubio and within 24 hours had to return to Switzerland with very little concessions on the table and very little progress. So we'll see what happens with Switzerland. But pharmaceuticals are a key part of that narrative. Yeah, 39 % for Switzerland. High in the Alps there. That's no joke. All right, let's leave Europe for the moment. Important things still on tariff news, by the way, in the U.S.

1:16:17foreign policy of tariffs, this time playing out in Brazil. The Supreme Court in Brazil placed former President Bolsonaro under house arrest on Monday. He's accused of plotting a coup to stay in office despite losing his election in 2022. Now, Donald Trump, president of the United States, calls Bolsonaro's plight a witch hunt, and he slapped a 50 percent tariff on Brazilian exports in response. Those took effect on Wednesday. Rishi, what's the connection between Bolsonaro's trial and United States tariffs? So this is an example of President Trump, as he has in many cases, kind of blurring the personal, the political, and these trade fights around the world.

1:17:07So Trump put out an executive order directly talking about the Brazilian legal system and the Brazilian government's treatment of Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro and Trump were, of course, very close. Bolsonaro was probably the Trumpiest of the world leaders outside of Trump when he was in power. And harking back to Jan 6, 2021, here in the U.S. in Washington, when we saw Trump supporters storm the Capitol, the closest thing to that was what Bolsonaro's supporters did, as you mentioned, and that is what he is now under trial for. And so that is the source of Trump's kind of kinship, he feels, with Bolsonaro and why he describes this as a witch hunt of someone he holds in great regard.

1:18:02Well, here's what Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had to say about Donald Trump using tariffs against his country to prosecute leverage for his friend, Jair Bolsonaro. We will pursue all available measures, starting with the WTO, to defend our interests. In fact, the government had already been working to strengthen our foreign trade and create new opportunities for domestic companies since before the change in administration in the U.S. I'm not going to call Trump about trade because he doesn't want to talk. Krita, Brazil, Lula touted a, quote, extraordinary relationship with China in some of the aftermath of this.

1:18:49That was in an interview with The New York Times. I mean, the implication here is clear. If the relationship, the close hemispheric relationship between Brazil and the United States continues to be poisoned or pressured by tariffs and Trump's affinity for Jair Bolsonaro, Lula's happy to turn toward China. What are the implications here? It's a friendship that's been brewing for quite some time. And not only is there a kind of ideological alignment in terms of the political spectrum there, but there is a relationship that kind of hurts the United States in a way. One of the largest exports of the United States, the largest exports, excuse me, of the United States, is agricultural products.

1:19:32It's corn, it's soy. You'll remember back in Donald Trump's first administration, he tried to create the farm deal, which included China buying quotas of soy, pork, cattle, corn, etc., to kind of help with that spending in the United States, quotas that were never matched. In the second Trump administration, there's been a massive trend of China getting those goods, not from the states anymore, but from Brazil and Brazil actively supplying them. So that has been a key point of contention, one that hurts American farmers and ultimately Donald Trump's base. I want to check in just for a moment on the relationship in a deal between Rwanda and the United States.

1:20:11This week, Rwanda became the third African nation to enter a deal with the Trump administration to accept migrants deported by the United States. On Tuesday, the Rwandan government said that it had agreed to accept up to 250 deportees from the United States. Here's David Mondo. He's a political science professor at the City University of New York speaking to China Global Television. The terms of the deal are also very nefarious. Rwanda is getting a grant from the U.S. We don't know how much that will be. So is this a quid pro quo between Rwanda and the U.S. in terms of deal making? This deal goes against international conventions and international law.

1:20:50This goes against international conventions and international law, Jack Dech. Why did Rwanda say yes? How could the country benefit from this deal? Well, Rwanda has been accepting refugees for a long time. Remember, there was the deal with the UK, which eventually went under after facing numerous legal challenges. There have been efforts from the UN Refugee Agency and the African Union to try and do this. So as the Trump administration has looked for different places to place migrants and deport them from the United States, Rwanda has come up as potentially a natural fit. Now, remember, this is our refugees.

1:21:26These are deportees. These are deportees. So, I mean, this is a small country. You're dealing with potential issues of nationality. Probably a lot of the people that the Trump administration trying to deport, not Rwandan nationals that are illegally in the United States, though they're from other nationalities. So this is going to create a huge scrum of legal issues if they continue down this path. Let's take a quick moment before we round out the hour to dig into your reporter's notebooks, a story, a thought, if you will. We're a little short on time on what you're looking forward to this week.

1:21:57Rishi, you go first. Yeah, so obviously we discussed the possible Putin-Trump meeting that could come as soon as this week. We'll be keeping an eye on that. But the other big thing I am watching as a tech reporter, which is also one of my beats for foreign policy, is the 100 % tariffs on semiconductor chips that President Trump mentioned during his meeting with Apple CEO Tim Cook in the Oval Office. that would really, really kind of mess with the global supply chain of these really critical things. And that could also come as soon as next week. I'll be keeping an eye on that. We'll be watching that.

1:22:35Kriti, one thought from you. It has to be the Trump-Putin meeting, whether Vladimir Zelensky is even a part of it and where they choose to hold it. If it's Turkey, if it's Azerbaijan or another locale, that would indicate a lot on the state of that relationship. And Jack Dech, what's in your notebook for this week. Yeah, turning south, the New York Times has a humdinger of a scoop about the Pentagon now having a directive to use military force against Latin American drug cartels that have been flagged as foreign terrorist organizations. This would be a huge expansion of the American military's role in the anti-drug fight, an aggressive step, and potentially something that would violate international law.

1:23:11Does that mean bombing Mexico? We'll see. I mean, it would open up the envelope for a lot of things. I need to get my hands on this memo, too. Big thank you to our panelists us today for all of their analysis and insights on the week of international news. Kriti Gupta, anchor and correspondent of Bloomberg TV and Radio, Jack Detch, defense reporter at Politico, and Rishi Iyengar from Foreign Policy. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Gastano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexander Boti is our senior supervising producer. Amanda Williams is our special projects editor.

1:23:44Aline Humphries is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. and Barb Anguiano 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 Zwilich. Thanks for listening. We'll talk more soon. This is 1A.

1:24:17Thank you.