The News Roundup For December 12, 2025

24:32That was the issue, and both of those bills failed. Alana, Republicans have been promising a health care plan, not just for weeks, not just for months, but for many, many years. Do they have any unity on a plan now, keeping in mind, of course, that enhanced ACA subsidies expire in just a couple of weeks? Short answer is no. And, you know, that's for the predictable reasons. Trump has not weighed in. Trump has been very dismissive of concerns related to the subsidy as much as he's been dismissive of affordability. But, you know, cut out the noise from the divisions in the Republican Party. And what I find most striking about what's going on right now is more and more Republicans are starting to admit, oh, we made a huge mistake.

25:15Maybe we should have cut a deal before now because, you know, open enrollment is almost over. And you're hearing that come out in people like Roger Marshall, a pretty conservative senator from Kansas, who told us at Semaphore this week, I think we're going to try to get a bipartisan deal in January. I mean, that kind of stuff is wacky given the political intensity and the partisanship that we saw. But it's not surprising, Todd, because four Republican senators backed the Democratic plan. It was the more bipartisan alternative of the two. Alana, I noticed that Senator Dan Sullivan of Alaska, a Republican who's up for reelection, voted for the Democratic bill, a three-year extension of enhanced ACA subsidies.

25:55That's notable because Sullivan is one of the guys who voted over and over again to repeal Obamacare over the years. Now he's up for election and here he is voting for more subsidies. What does that say? It says a lot, especially when you see the other Alaska Senator, Lisa Murkowski, who some, you know, in the party deride as a rhino, kind of leading the charge. Okay, we're going to take a quick pause here. We'll be back with more of the week's biggest headlines. Just a moment. Stay with us.

26:28All right, back to the roundup now with our expert panel. We were in the halls of Congress before the break. Let's stay there just for the moment because lawmakers this week put a provision in their annual defense policy bill that says Congress can withhold a quarter of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's travel budget until he releases unedited videos of the September 2nd boat strikes. the very ones that have been controversial for potentially illegal orders. You might know them by the epithet double tap strike. The bill is expected to pass both chambers of Congress this month. Now, the video has been shared with some members in both the House and the Senate on national security committees and the intelligence committees.

27:14And lawmakers from both sides of the aisle appear to be split on whether the video depicts what the administration claims it does two combatants who are, quote, still in the fight. That's what Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton had to say when he saw the video. Other lawmakers, including many Democrats, say that's absolutely not true, that these were two people clinging to wreckage in the middle of the ocean when they were hit with a second strike. Steve Clemens, if more lawmakers see the video, a wider audience, and if the public sees the video, what kind of consensus, what kind of pressure could emerge from that?

27:53Well, look, I think if the video were to be seen by more legislators across the aisle, I think they realize that this video is likely to make its way into the public domain. And as that happens, people will be making values decisions. What I find very interesting is you listen to Senator Cotton's take that he saw nothing wrong, that this was the government doing what it should be doing. You listen to Representative Jim Himes, who said it's one of the most disturbing videos he's ever seen. Senator Rand Paul is already out there basically saying these are summary executions and murder. And he is still in the GOP.

28:29And so when you kind of look at that broadly, I think many legislators are beginning to ask, what if this makes its way into the public? And many military families who tend to steer conservative have very, very strong feelings that you do not kill. You do not. It is my father was in the military. It is embedded deeply that you do not take the kind of actions that Jim Himes and others are asserting that Pete Hegseth's command staff took. So I believe that as it gets seen more, it will probably build a consensus. And you have to remember at the beginning of this, Donald Trump himself came out and said, show the video.

29:06I have no problem. And then he deferred to Secretary Hegseth and said, do what you want. And so many people are beginning, you know, this feeds conspiracy theories that Hegseth is trying to cover up. Well, one, he's trying to shove the admiral out in front and blame it on him, but also cover up something from the American people. The president at first said, release the video, I have no problem. When a reporter asked Trump about that statement, he denied having ever made it. Of course, it was made on video, so you had the before and after. He absolutely did say it and then backtracked. Alana Shor, what's the conversation like behind the scenes in Congress?

29:41A lot of lawmakers reacted privately also when they saw this effort from many weeks ago from Democratic national security members, Mark Kelly of Arizona and others, the illegal orders video applying pressure to this issue. What's the conversation like? I think it's actually splitting between the House and the Senate, perhaps, honestly, because of Kelly's central role. You're seeing Roger Wicker, who's the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, kind of not back down in terms of wanting to investigate further, wanting more information beyond, you know, what's been included in this bill, imperiling funding if they don't comply.

30:16However, in the House, Mike Rogers, his counterpart on Armed Services, is kind of, he's satisfied. We'll put this provision in the bill and we'll kind of move on. Now, that's not surprising. It wouldn't be the first time the Senate put up more of a fight than the House. But we'll have to see how serious Wicker is about this because there is more investigation to be done, according to Democrats. All right. We go from Capitol Hill back to the White House. We got this question from Dan. In the past month or so, we've seen Donald Trump become more erratic and more insulting to reporters asking reasonable questions.

30:48falling asleep multiple times in public appearances, and he slurs words he can't even track with his own party's messaging. Why hasn't the mainstream media been as ruthless with Trump's effects of his age in his first year of term as they were with Biden in the last year of his term? Now, the New York Times says this week that it will keep reporting on the president's health, even after the president called the publication, quote, true enemies of the people for doing so. Taylor Poplarz, what has the Times reported on recently? And what do we know from your vantage point in the front row at the White House about the president's health and the effect of aging on his body?

31:32So we know that this coming June, President Trump will turn 80. He came back into office as the oldest ever president, slightly older than when Joe Biden was sworn in for his term. The Trump administration has been very sensitive to any questioning about the president's health, his abilities. We know that he's gone to Walter Reed Medical Center twice this year for various physicals and examinations. It eventually came out that he got an MRI. And there have been more questions about that because the White House hasn't disclosed full details about why that was conducted, what it was looking for.

32:04And he talks a lot about the cognitive tests that he's been getting. He says he aces them as though they're intelligence tests, but cognitive tests aren't given for fun to people his age. No, and he has claimed he's taken three of them, but we don't have a timeline for when they've been taken. And the White House has not released any record of sort of those results. The president released a very, very, very lengthy Truth Social post ranting and complaining about this attention on his health. He did. The New York Times story was extensive and it talked about his schedule, which President Biden's schedule was scrutinized because he operated mostly in a five to six hour window during the day.

32:39I'm at the White House every day. I could tell you, you know, when the president is in the West Wing because a Marine is standing outside of it. On average, if the president is here in Washington, he shows up in the West Wing between 10 and 11 a.m. And he is there usually later in the day. But the Times looked at that. It looked at his comments. It looked at the fact that his hand has been photographed a lot recently. He is bruising on his hand. He covers it up with makeup. There are bandages on it. The White House says it's because he takes a daily aspirin and he shakes a lot of hands, but medical experts question that.

33:08I've personally— That does not pass the smell test. I've personally been in the room with the president when I've seen him start to doze off at events. So this is happening more than it was in his first term as he's getting older. That extended Truth Social post from the president on his health, and Jimmy Kimmel joked that the post actually has more than twice the number of words as the Gettysburg Address. I checked. It does. More than twice the length of the Gettysburg address. I believe he also said in that post that it is treasonous for news outlets and seditious to question his health. And given the very legitimate concerns and feedback about the lack of coverage of President Biden's age and abilities, it's only fair that President Trump receives it when he's around the same age.

33:46All right. Let's move from the White House back out to the states in America. The effect of Donald Trump's immigration crackdown on communities across this country. Start with a fallout from the federal immigration crackdown in Minnesota. Over the last two weeks, DHS has disclosed 19 ICE arrests in Minnesota, but it won't disclose exactly how many people it's detained. On Wednesday, Minnesota Democratic Governor Tim Walz demanded Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem review those arrests after reports of at least two United States citizens being detained by ICE. One of those citizens was 20-year-old Mubashir, who only wanted to use his first name.

34:24He was arrested while on his lunch break in Minneapolis and detained in a federal building. He says he wasn't allowed to show his passport for hours. He spoke at a press conference with Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Fry and Minneapolis Police Chief Brian O 'Hara. All I did was step outside as a Somali-American, and I just got chased by a masked person. The agent then, at one point, he didn't identify himself. He didn't say, I stopped. I felt like I was getting assaulted. lousy and kidnapped. And that's exactly what it was. Taylor, President Trump has spent the last two weeks disparaging in ugly and racist terms a Minnesota Somali community of about 80 ,000 people, the vast majority of whom are American citizens.

35:06Not that that matters. How has the latest immigration enforcement been playing out on the ground in Minneapolis and across Minnesota? So like we've seen in many other states where the Trump administration has been conducting these enforcement operations, it does create fear amongst community members. It does create a chilling effect of sorts. That gentleman who you just featured talking about, he was out on his lunch break and got detained and it was hours before he could even show his passport that he had on him to prove his citizenship. That is having a ripple effect. We're seeing the mayor of Minneapolis, the mayor of St.

35:38Paul, the governor of Minnesota, all Democrats, they're coming out and sharply disagreeing with the Trump administration's stance on this. But to your point, the president's remarks, especially about Somalians here in this country, as you alluded to, most of which are here legally, have been really stunning. And it has shown that the president himself has a dislike for this sect of people and he wants them removed. He's openly saying that. He's saying Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who is a U.S. citizen, duly elected, should not be allowed to serve and should go back home to her home country. And the Department of Homeland Security seems willing to carry out that mandate.

36:10And also at that Pennsylvania rally, standing in front of placards that said bigger paychecks, the president mused about why we can't have more immigrants from places like Norway and Denmark and Sweden, places filled with white people. That was Donald Trump's wish, standing in front of placards that said, bigger paychecks. And he confirmed a 2018 story where he called African countries assholes, which after denying it, after he and his administration vehemently denied it in the first term, and somebody shouted it out at this Pennsylvania event, and he said, oh yeah, you remember when I told the senators that?

36:44And all of us who cover him were like, oh my gosh, he just confirmed that. So his views are very clear on this, and the Department of Homeland Security is willing to carry it out. Well, also this week, a federal judge ordered the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland resident, who became a symbol of Donald Trump's mass deportation campaign. He was released on Thursday. Abrego was wrongfully deported to El Salvador in March. Of course, he was released and then arrested again and had been held in detention in Pennsylvania since June. The Trump administration was trying to deport him to Liberia, where he has no ties.

37:17Now he's free. Steve Clemens, could this be an end of this saga of detention and release for Abrego Garcia? Not a chance. Essentially, the judge also acted to preempt an immediate re-detention order. The authorities have already said they're going to appeal the judge's decision and try to take this up to get a re-evaluation of the kind of core reasons for his detention. and expulsion. So that's going on. He also has legal proceedings against him in Tennessee regarding human smuggling and conspiracy charges in Tennessee. That legal issue will continue. And he's still going to have to continue to be supervised by ICE, though not detained, and have regular meetings under supervision of ICE.

38:06So his encounter, his face time with ICE is going to continue. And you're going to have the legal dimensions of this continually battled. And we won't know for quite a long time whether or not Abrego Garcia is free from further detention and free from this process. But at this moment right now, it doesn't look like it. Meanwhile, the ACLU and other civil liberties groups put out a list of what they say are abuses faced by people in ICE detention in Texas. The ACLU says that four Cuban immigrants were driven to the border with Mexico told to cross it or face violence and imprisonment. The ACLU also says 45 interviews with detainees at Fort Bliss detention camp in El Paso yielded stories of beatings, sexual violence by guards, DHSs denied these accusations.

38:56What do we know, Alana Shore, about the ACLU's warning here and what it says about how ICE is engaging in third country deportations and how they're treating detainees? Well, what you didn't mention is that one of these detainees died of liver and kidney failure, according to the ACLU, after failing to receive appropriate medical care. So the allegations being raised here are really, really serious. And they'll have a political impact. Obviously, you're already starting to hear talk about Kristi Noem potentially being forced out of the cabinet amid dissatisfaction. The president says nice things about her.

39:31But what is happening here is an agency that got, what,$90 billion, I believe, in that tax cut bill is throwing a lot of money into operations that are allegedly committing serious abuses, and they will be litigated. One more story I want to check in before we go. It's Netflix pursuit of Warner Brothers media, which includes CNN. Now, you know the story. Netflix wants Warner Brothers. Paramount, also in a hostile fashion, wants Warner Brothers. Donald Trump wants to see, wants to make sure that CNN is sold. Steve Clemens, we only have a couple of seconds here, but just put it into context. The president of the United States saying he's going to dictate the terms of the sale of one of America's most important news companies, one that he's called the enemy of the people.

40:20It's a huge assertion in a very unconventional way of, of presidential authority where there's no place for it. You have a process of reviewing these mergers and acquisitions in the country, looking at how they test the monopoly status and whatnot and how this affects consumers. And these are controversial bids. The problem is Jared Kushner's involved in backing one of them. And you've got, it's very controversial and the president's gonna say, hey, I'm gonna get to know these people and make this all about himself. So that's a problem. And his family's money, Jared Kushner has backing of one of the private equity firms in that deal.

40:57Let that sink in and wrap your head around that. Thanks to all of you for joining us. Steve Clemens of the National Interest, Taylor Poplarz of Spectrum News, and Alana Shore of Semaphore. We're going to head to a quick break now. We'll be back in a minute with the global edition of the News Roundup. Stay with us.

41:19It's the international edition of the 1A News Roundup. can the United States legally seize a Venezuelan oil tanker, or is it an act of international piracy? What does this latest move by the Trump administration toward Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela mean for the escalating pressure campaign on Venezuela? And here in Washington, the Secretary of Defense goes from denial to defiance over those boat strikes. We'll get to all of that this hour. Joining us on the line from California, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. Hi, Akbar. Thanks for having me, Todd. Here in the studio, friends of 1A, you know them, Joyce Karam, senior news editor at All Monitor.

42:05Hi, Joyce. Hi, Todd. Great to be with you. And to Joyce's right, Jack Detch, defense reporter at Politico. Hey, Jack. Good to be here, Todd. Great to have you too. Our panel of guests are here to answer all of your questions from around the world. Send those to us, 1A at wamu.org. Well, let's start this hour as we so often do in Gaza. Torrential rain from storm Byron swept across the Strip on Thursday, flooding overcrowded tents, sheltering tens of thousands of families displaced by two years of war. Close to five inches of rain were forecast to fall across the territory, and local health authorities say at least three children have died from exposure to the cold.

42:46Sami Yusin is a displaced Palestinian living in central Gaza.

42:54It poured all night and we were flooded. I couldn't move out as I have an amputated arm and shrapnel on my leg that I can't wade in the water. I started shouting and asking people to help get my children out, but they couldn't. The food was spoiled and the tent's canopy got blown away. I don't know what to do. The mayor of Gaza City says the rain cut off several roads, some of them completely submerged. Municipal and civil defense officials say they can't cope with the storm because of fuel shortages and damage to equipment. Hamas-led authorities in Gaza say Israel is not allowing in as much aid as promised under the truce agreement.

43:30Aid agencies say Israel is blocking essential items. Israel says it's meeting its obligations and accused agencies of inefficiency and failing to prevent theft by Hamas, which they deny. Joyce Karam, what has Storm Byron exposed about aid shortfalls since the October 10th ceasefire in Gaza? It's truly a devastating situation. It's the last think-thought that Gaza needs at this point. You have almost one million internally displaced. There is no infrastructure. These people are soaked. Their tents cannot hold appropriate shelter from the rain. So the footage we're getting, what we're hearing from Gazan is just terrible.

44:12I saw this morning that it's almost eight people died from the storm, from inadequate shelter. They're pleading with the Israelis to send more aid. That's not happening. I think part of this aid should be tents, should be tools to prevent flooding. It's not happening. I mean, when you look at the picture, it's totally two different areas here. Israel, which has warned its citizens, has equipped its hospitals before the storm, and then the Palestinians who have nothing. And you mentioned the aid shortages. Yes, Israel is not sending as much as agreed in the ceasefire. The agreement was at 600 trucks.

44:59The Associated Press reported that it's around 450 that are arriving. On the question of food, we got this question from Mara in Pennsylvania who says, Palestinians say they're looking for flour and other foodstuffs that will allow them to prepare their own meals. Like others, I'm sure, I thought that the United Nations was back in charge of distribution of food and that 500 food trucks and 200 trucks with medical and fuel supplies would be resumed to be delivered daily. What's the real-time situation in the Gaza Strip? That's from Mara in Pennsylvania. Is the UN in charge? And what do we know about the volume of aid that's flowing?

45:35No, it's Kogat that's in charge. It's the Israeli organization, part of the Israeli military that allows what aid comes in and what aid comes out. The crossings are—the Rafah crossing is still closed. So what's been entering is minimal. It's obviously better than what was before the ceasefire, but it's nowhere near what Gazans need. And on the numbers, yes, they're falling short by almost at least 30 percent from the numbers I've seen. So it's just nowhere to be enough, especially in the cold and winter season. Now, U.S. officials have confirmed that intense negotiations are underway to move to phase two of the U.S.

46:18negotiated peace plan in Gaza. a key element and a major sticking point, calls for Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups to surrender weapons to an international peacekeeping force. And senior Israeli officials have described this as a crucial aim, warning that failure to achieve it could cause the truce to collapse. Senior Hamas officials like Khaled Mashal say they're trying to convince the Trump administration to follow Hamas's own vision on how to deal with disarmament. Jack Detch, what does that mean exactly. And how likely is a move to phase two looking right now? Well, getting to phase two will be like trying to eat soup with a knife, as the old U.S.

46:59counterterrorism metaphor went. I mean, if you just look at the checklist of what needs to be done, Hamas has to return the last dead Israeli hostage still in their custody. There has to be an international stabilization force that doesn't yet exist to basically police and oversee this operation. And then after all of that, this force and the international community would have to go through all of Hamas's tunnels, all of their hidden arms caches, all of the underground bunkers. They have rocket arsenals throughout the strip. Only then do you get to phase two. So it's geopolitically difficult to negotiate all these things that still are blank slates.

47:36And does Hamas have any incentive to enable all of the difficult steps that you just described in the tunnels, disarmament, decommissioning weapons. Well, remember when Hamas agreed to this deal, it wasn't quite a yes. It was a yes, but they didn't really fully agree to disarm, to basically remove themselves from being a contender in the future state of Palestine. So you have this situation where Hamas is kind of playing along with the checklist, but we're getting down to crunch time on some of the key issues. And it's really unclear where this is going to stand. Joyce? And the major obstacle here to Jack's point is sequencing.

48:14What happens first? Hamas is saying Israel has to withdraw. Israel is saying, no, Hamas has to disarm. The Americans are saying we have to get an agreement on the ISF, on the international stabilization force. So there is no even an orderly implementation of phase two. And each side is playing the blame game. Hamas, you know, these leaders are sitting in Qatar, you know, in five-star hotels, including Khaled Mish 'al. So they're completely contradicting each other at some point on what does this armament mean. We've spoken to a Hamas figure this week. And what he's saying, we can guarantee that we won't shoot at foreign troops that will enter Gaza.

49:02And if they are in the cities, we may target them. Khaled Mish 'al is saying something else. So another issue around withdrawal versus disarborment is the yellow line, that line that divides the Gaza Strip under this peace plan. Israeli troops have pulled back in Gaza, staying behind the line that was meant to be temporary. Akbar, what's going on around the yellow line now? Israel's military chief told soldiers this week that it's, quote, a new border for them, that's not what's in phase one of the agreement or even in phase two. Is that just bluster or new dimensions that Israel's trying to establish?

49:43In a way, Todd, this exemplifies the basic problem the Trump administration is facing, which is that the U.S. is back to the future on so many of these issues, right? Hamas's infrastructure has clearly not been degraded over more than two years of hugely devastating war. So what have all those deaths been for? the UN question of distributing aid, as your listener was asking about, has been an issue throughout, but we haven't seen the US pressure Israel. And that's where this yellow line issue is a problem too, because we're not talking in any way about holding Israel's feet to the fire on its agreement or thinking about these long-term problems.

50:21Why does the yellow line matter? It matters for Palestinians going back to their homes, for reconstruction. But most importantly, it matters for this question of, are we moving from war towards some kind of peace and settlement, which would involve no permanent Israeli occupation of the territory of Gaza. The Israeli military chief coming out and saying we're going to keep 53 % of the strip is a real indication that the Israelis aren't feeling the pressure to go towards that kind of settlement or that kind of bigger approval. And of course, we've seen President Trump enable Prime Minister Netanyahu after pressuring him earlier this year.

50:55So there's a lot of echoes of the kind of sealed U.S. policy all the way from Biden from the start of this war. Although, Akbar, Donald Trump has a lot invested in this being some kind of lasting peace. He's invested a lot in his ability to end wars. This is the most important one. So is there any pressure, any incentive behind the scenes that he's putting on Netanyahu to not blow up this deal with a lack of leverage on Israel? or is he happy to see things progressing as they are, which is this kind of very tense, very unstable limbo? We've seen reports of Trump pressing Netanyahu heavily, including on matters like hostages, including on matters like increasing aid, but it's all been rhetorical, right?

51:42And where the U.S. is leveraged with Israel really exists as military and diplomatic in terms of weapons and in terms of the cover it provides for the continuation of the war. That's never been in question. And in fact, when you see the Trump administration saying we're trying to get a pardon for Netanyahu and defend him from the International Criminal Court, he's feeling pretty safe from a U.S. perspective. And that shows in Israeli posture around the yellow lines back on the ground, doesn't it? Absolutely. It gets to this question of will Netanyahu kind of acknowledge that there has to be Palestinian autonomy, right?

52:13I mean, Hamas, of course, is playing its own game from a self-interested point of view. But will he allow any kind of replacement and substitute to Hamas to rise up within Gaza, which we haven't seen a willingness for? All right, gang, I want to stay in Israel or at least Israel adjacent for the moment because this week Israel greenlit the construction of 764 more houses in three Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. The United Nations has declared Israel's settlements illegal, and numerous UN Security Council resolutions have called on Israel to halt all settlement activity. That's going back decades now.

52:49Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians spiked during this fall's olive harvest. According to a UN report, there were at least 264 attacks in the West Bank against Palestinians in October, the biggest monthly total since U.N. officials began tracking such incidents nearly 20 years ago. These Palestinians in the occupied West Bank near Nablus lost their family olive groves to Israeli settlers who uprooted the trees and took their land. These olives are our lives. My great-grandfather planted them. They were meant to stay and provide for our families. I wish I didn't live to see this day. Israeli forces arrived with the bulldozers, leveled everything.

53:38They didn't leave any olive trees. Now, an anti-settlement watchdog group has accused the Israeli government of, quote, racing toward de facto annexation in the West Bank. Jack Detch, what has Israel said about their ambition with this land at this point? It depends on who you talk to. I mean, the finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has been sort of a key figure in all of this. He's come to the West Bank with sort of the maps of what he wants it to eventually look like, which certainly does look like more of a de facto Israeli presence there. We've seen the incidences of settler violence go up as well, which, of course, are not endorsed by the central government.

54:16But that seems to be somewhat of a symptom of what's going on here. So from Netanyahu himself, it's very much sort of this counterterrorism posture. We're preventing anything rising up against the IDF or Israel. But you see within Netanyahu's cabinets these factions that very much see the West Bank as long-term, de facto part of Israel, if not de jure. Akbar, does what Jack is saying about the power structure and incentives within Netanyahu's cabinet help explain why he's not doing more to rein in these attacks? What is the Netanyahu government doing to rein in settler attacks, and have they been holding back?

54:56You know, it's certainly relevant that there are far-right ministers who are very close to Netanyahu in his coalition government. But I just encourage people to sort of look at the bigger picture here in the trend lines, which are there is no one on the Israeli political spectrum speaking about political rights for Palestinians in the West Bank, right? There might be folks who condemn settler violence, but the overall environment that's been fostered, particularly since October 7th, is one of an intensive crackdown. And in my reporting, talking to Israeli and Palestinian peace activists who've been out there in the West Bank quite recently, they've said they anticipate the situation where we're moving towards Gaza levels of atrocities, violence, displacement.

55:34You have 40 ,000 Palestinians who were displaced at the start of this year in what was called a counterterror operation. There's been no date given for them to return back to their homes. Right. So, yes, there's factions and there's disputes over how quickly do we move towards this. But the overall direction is certainly not towards a kind of peace and stability move, which I think is quite concerning for the U.S. It's concerning for regional powers because this gets, again, to the question of should people feel that there is a partner for peace on the Israeli side? Certainly, there's always been questions about whether there's one on the Palestinian side.

56:09But looking at housing units, looking at the violence, much of which is actually carried out by the Israeli military, not by settlers, there's a lot of alarm. From Israel's border with the West Bank North to its border with Lebanon this week, the United Nations said Israeli soldiers fired at peacekeepers on patrol in southern Lebanon. The UN is partnering with the Lebanese standing between Israel and Hezbollah there and trying to support a shaky ceasefire there as well. Israel's military launched airstrikes in southern Lebanon earlier in the week against what they say are Hezbollah targets. Joyce, you've been following this story.

56:45U.S. broker talks were held earlier this month. I might have said before that talks were going on between Israel and Hamas, Israel and Hezbollah. They're not. They're going on between Israel and Lebanon, but Israel's still fighting Hezbollah in southern Lebanon. What do we know about these talks, and is there any hope of an expanded ceasefire between the two sides? Todd, it's really a big deal that we're seeing talks, direct talks between Israel and Lebanon. This is the first time in 25 years that we see such talks. Last time was the Madrid Conference, 1990, 1991. So in an essence, Lebanon is conceded and is sitting down with Israelis and holding talks on the stability of the south, on the ceasefire that's in place.

57:34The issue that Lebanon has, that the Lebanese government has, is it doesn't have the capability to disarm Hezbollah, which is enlisted in the ceasefire, which is a main Israeli ask. So what's on the table now, and the U.S. is pushing for that, is maybe Hezbollah can move its weapons to warehouses. Maybe Hezbollah can withdraw completely from southern Lebanon. At the same time, what we are also reporting this morning is Arab governments, regional powers as well, such as Turkey, have communicated to Lebanon that if this doesn't happen soon, Israel could go again in an open war. How weakened is Hamas now after the very public – Hezbollah, pardon me.

58:25How weakened is Hezbollah now after the very public cell phone attack after Israel and the United States bombing of Iran, which is so important for funding an organization for Hezbollah? What's the state of the organization now? It's very much weakened and not just militarily. But, you know, when you talk to people in Lebanon, people even in the Shia community, they're fed up. They don't want to be involved in one war, another war, second war, third war. People are really fed up with this continuous cycle of conflict. Is it to a point that they're going to give up their arms? No. Has Israel changed the rules of engagement since 2007?

59:04Yes. Is this a pressure campaign that will continue? Yes. I mean, they've just done airstrikes this morning. So it's a tough balance for Lebanon and Beirut. is trying its best to navigate the domestic pressure from Hezbollah, and that's coming from the outside. Three fronts around Israel that we discussed, Gaza, the West Bank, and the border with southern Lebanon and Hezbollah operating there. Let's leave the region for the week, and I'm sure we'll come back to it as we always do, and go to Venezuela now. As we said at the top of the hour, the Trump administration escalating tensions with Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro.

59:44The U.S. seized an oil tanker this week off the coast of Venezuela. That was on Wednesday. And the Trump administration says the tanker was transporting sanctioned oil from Venezuela to Iran. The Venezuelan government has called the seizure a, quote, blatant theft and an act of international piracy. Now, Jack Dutch, the U.S. has sanctioned more than 170 vessels that it accuses of moving illicit oil from Venezuela. So why seize this tanker now? Well, the skipper had been involved in sort of a mass network of this type of sending of oil. So it had been refueling with oil in Iran. It had been taking oil from Venezuela, and now it appeared to be headed to Cuba.

1:00:28For the administration with the skipper, I mean, it's one of the last levers they have left, right? If you're Trump and you want to put the screws to Maduro without putting boots on the ground or missiles in the air. You've sanctioned pretty much the entire government. You've labeled Maduro himself as a supporter of a terrorist organization. You've cut them off from the U.S. financial system. So now they're applying the squeeze by basically taking over these ships. Is it legally fraught? You bet. But it's certainly another way, another tool in the toolbox that the U.S. has left, and it'll take the courts a long time to try and figure this out.

1:01:03Joyce, the New York Times also reported from its own reporting that this ship had a history of misreporting, falsely reporting its location with, you know, messing with the transponder that's supposed to say where it is located, that its location has essentially been false. What else do we know? And that's a practice. It's called spoofing. It's not just for the skipper. But in the case of the skipper, it was giving different GPS location. It was flying the flag of Guyana without authorization. It's operating like, you know, many vessels operate in dark fleet environment, like the Iranian vessels that go to China do the same thing.

1:01:43So it was attempting to hide illicit movements, which helps the Trump administration in justifying the raid that they did. But is this raid exactly about oil? Is it about, you know, we really want to implement sanctions? Well, the U.S. does not do this kind of behavior for Iranian vessels that are going to China. This is to, as Jack said, to squeeze Maduro to part of a pressure campaign to get Maduro out of office. Akbar, earlier this week, two U.S. fighter jets circled over the Gulf of Venezuela as well. What's the message there? One of the big concerns that experts have had about this entire Trump pressure campaign on Venezuela is not only its legality, which is strongly disputed, but the idea of blowback, right?

1:02:29The sense that even if you are saying Maduro is an illegitimate leader, we want him out of office, we don't think he's supportive of the Venezuelan people or U.S. interests, by threatening and kind of boosting fear, are you just increasing the risk that Venezuelans will rally around him? And I think this broader message of this week with the fighter jets, with the tanker seizure, are really increasing that risk of blowback to U.S. policy on Venezuela. The U.S. has justified this by saying, look, these fighter jets were in what we describe as international airspace. Venezuela claims it as its airspace.

1:03:02There's a dispute there. But the broader message of kind of overwhelming pincer-like military pressure, I think is really going to increase the sense of encirclement and the sense of the U.S. leaning into militaristic options, even as Trump administration officials have kind of indicated, maybe we'd see a diplomatic off-ramp here. I think there's a real concern that we're heading right into a military confrontation that no one's sort of authorized. Meanwhile, a corollary of the increased pressure campaign on Venezuela, boat strikes in the Caribbean and in the Eastern Pacific. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth under pressure to release complete video footage of strikes against what the administration claims are drug boats in those two bodies of water, especially footage of that attack on September 2nd that killed two survivors.

1:03:51Jack Detch, what levers do lawmakers have to force Hegseth to release this video now? And what do they hope to learn from seeing video in its entirety? I should say a couple of lawmakers have seen it, but the broad backbenches of the House and Senate have not seen it. They have the ultimate leverage. They hold the purse strings. And right now, the NDAA, that's the authorizing bill that goes through Congress, the$900 billion Pentagon budget, is being held on a clause that it would withhold a quarter of Pete Hegseth's travel budget until Congress gets to see this unedited footage. And that's part of the push from Senator Roger Wicker, who's an ally of the administration, but has basically been saying, we're not getting the full story here.

1:04:38we'd like more. In the House, you see a very different story, even though that bill is moving along. You see Mike Rogers, the chairman, very allied with Trump, basically going out and saying, we've heard enough from these classified briefings. We've gotten the justification we need. This is lawful. Lawful. What about the claim that these boats carry fentanyl or they carry drugs headed to the U.S. border, that this is essentially a terrorist operation? Is that something the chairman of the Intelligence Committee can rule on. How is that claim landing? I mean, it seems like from everything we've seen from the closed door briefings, from all of the evidence, these appear to be boats that are trafficking cocaine that comes from Colombia through Venezuela towards the United States.

1:05:24Cocaine, not fentanyl. Cocaine. And the argument has been this is a precursor or a gateway to get people hooked onto fentanyl. So you see sort of the evidence and the argumentation is quite thin in terms of what they're trying to push this on. Yeah, the economics of drug use do not indicate that cocaine is a gateway drug to fentanyl. No, I mean, it doesn't seem like the argument would hold up under intense scrutiny, but you sort of see varying levels of scrutiny, right? You see in the Senate a little bit more scrutiny, more of a push to hold DOD's feet to the fire, and then in the House, at least from the Republican majority, a desire to move on here.

1:05:58So in terms of the legality of these strikes, Akbar, you've been reporting on the office within the State Department that considers whether government actions are in line with international law. Is our own government indicating that these strikes in the Eastern Pacific and in the Caribbean are legal? What my reporting has found, Todd, is that within the State Department, where morale was already just hugely low after mass firings, the Office of the Legal Advisor, which was critical to all these discussions of international law, is facing a huge exodus. I've heard that about more than 60 people have left from an office that's normally somewhere between 200 and 300.

1:06:37A lot of these are experienced career professionals who have been doing this across administrations and partisan lines. The State Department is part of the discussions between DOD, the White House, the Justice Department about these arguments. And I think the concern that I've heard from people at state and from outside legal experts is, if you're losing this talent and you're losing this nonpartisan font of expertise, what does that mean for your decision making? This is actually the only office that's extremely focused on international law in particular, not just US law. And so that's where you have a concern of, has the US got into a period where decision making is being made from, the president wants this, so make it happen.

1:07:18not what's legal, what are the bounds of where we could go. And I think this raises a broader concern of are there any sort of checks and balances anymore in decision-making, right? When we've seen the Trump administration kind of trot out new justifications, particularly for this campaign, and not face up to scrutiny of either arresting people and trying to prosecute them, or have a kind of more open discussion of a war against drugs or Venezuela, these closed-door briefings, who's involved and are they really qualified people? Meanwhile, some dramatic news from the coast of Venezuela. Of course, Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Chirina Machado left her country with the help of the United States, traveled to Oslo to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

1:08:05She missed the ceremony, but she talked to reporters while she was there. Some people talk about invasion in Venezuela, the threat of an invasion in Venezuela. And I answered, Venezuela has been already invaded. We have the Russian agents. We have the Iranian agents. We have terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas, operating freely in accordance with the regime. Meanwhile, reporting from the Wall Street Journal on a dramatic scene in the open ocean, Machado, who you just heard from, secretly speared out of Venezuela to attend those prize ceremonies. rescued by an American extraction team on a skiff in the dark after losing their GPS transmitter, a dramatic scene, Joyce, reported overnight by the Wall Street Journal.

1:08:48Very dramatic and a big moment for Machado. We haven't seen her in public since January 9. She's been isolated. Some say she hasn't seen any people. So, you know, to see her in Oslo, to connect with people, she was very eager and hungry to do that. Now the reactions back in Venezuela are mixed. Some say, oh, you know, she left the country. She's, you know, another exile leaders, but she has her base support, which is why Maduro blocked her from elections. All right, gang, I want to, as promised, visit Russia's war in Ukraine as peace efforts continue to limp along, if you can even call them that.

1:09:31Wednesday, Donald Trump spoke with European leaders, namely France's President Emmanuel Macron, Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Parsing through official readouts. Akbar, what did they talk about? What's the state of discussions over what I hesitate to even call a peace plan now in Ukraine? There's a very tentative and cautious effort to push back against what the U.S. is hoping Ukraine will accept in terms of a deal with Russia. But what we're seeing is the Europeans are not yet being quite as forceful as they might be. So while the Europeans have certainly said, we want to stand with Ukraine, we don't want the US to force it into concessions, their narrative and their rhetoric is still very much, we respect the Trump administration, we think they're going to do the right thing.

1:10:21I'm very curious to see when that will change and when we see a tougher line from the Europeans. I know there's a lot of doubt about whether that might ever happen, but I think we're seeing this in the context of increased fears of a broader Russian effort in Europe, so beyond Ukraine, and the sense of what happens if we do embolden Putin, give him significant land and make him think that this was a win here in Ukraine, three, four, five years down the line, are the Baltic states at risk? We've seen greater reports of Russian drones, intelligence plots, all of that, broader even as far as Ireland.

1:10:53So I think European leaders, while they're trying to be really cautious with the Trump administration, will probably push a harder line for Ukraine and not allow it to make these concessions. Jack Tetch, what about Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine? He largely basically rejected that 20-point plan, which originated in Russia or in Washington or a combination of both. He's come up with a revised draft of his own asks for any peace talks to move forward. What do we know about the Ukrainian perspective here and how much purchase it has in Europe and with the Americans? Yeah, that's right.

1:11:26Zelensky has unveiled a new 19-point plan for a demilitarized free economic zone in the Donbass. What that would look like is potentially American business interests operating in that area. So that's clearly a move to placate Donald Trump, who that's one of his favorite talking points. But it would move away, of course, from Russian troops controlling that region, which is circulated in Russian proposals and, of course, in the American proposals. So it seems like this has always been the key for Zelensky, right? We haven't resolved the security guarantees. We haven't resolved the territorial issues.

1:11:59Zelensky ran on keeping Ukraine whole six years ago in 2019. So if he were to cave on that now, that would be a huge public defeat for him. Well, President Trump sat down with Dasha Burns of Politico on Monday for an interview. The president again brought up the need for Zelensky to run an election in his country, currently at war.

1:12:47Is it time for Ukraine to hold an election, do you think? a democracy anymore. Well, hours after Politico released that interview, Zelensky said he would ask parliament to draft a bill to hold elections within three months if the United States and European allies provided security guarantees for that election. Joyce, what else is contributing to this question coming up now at this point while these discussions are going on with Putin about whether Zelensky should hold elections? So this was originally a Russian ask that Zelensky is not popular, why doesn't he hold elections? Then it became also a U.S.

1:13:20ask, very much like the peace plan you're talking about. It was a Russian plan, then it became a U.S. plan. Zelensky is desperate. He can't give up on the U.S. support. So whatever Donald Trump needs, he sort of has to concede. But holding election in wartime is very challenging. I mean, you have million troops fighting, what are they going to do? Are they going to leave their bases and vote? You have Russia attacking Kyiv day in, day out. How are people going to go under drones to vote? The displaced, the occupied territories in Ukraine now, in the Donbass, how are these people going to vote?

1:14:02And who guarantees the safety and the transparency? I mean, elections are good when they're free and fair. We believe in them. But what does it mean for Zelensky to be responding to what you said was primarily a Putin leverage point, a Putin ask. It's almost Putin trolling. Why doesn't he have an election? He has no choice. If it's now a U.S. ask, he has to, you know, respond. And he dodged it to the parliament that we could discuss, we could hold an election. But having that impractical is nearly, I mean, it's very difficult. You don't see, I mean, the U.S. asking Gazans to hold elections. So Putin can get Zelensky to respond to his demands by filtering them through the United States, it sounds like.

1:14:47And we've learned that through the Wall Street Journal articles on Woodcoff, on the Bloomberg transcript of Woodcoff's call with a Russian advisor to Putin. I mean, it's very much circling these talking points that then come to the president, and he said it in the political interview. All right. Well, let's step back from some of the day-to-day news from the week and reflect a little bit on the Trump administration's, I'll call it a new world order after nearly a year of the president's second term. There's a new national security and diplomacy doctrine out. We talked about it last week here on the show.

1:15:22One of the biggest shifts is in relations between the United States and Europe. The president sat down with Dasha Burns of Politico, as we mentioned. Here's a little bit more of that conversation. There'll be a point, and it's very close to that point. And what will that mean? It will mean that they're no longer going to be strong nations. Does that mean they won't be allies anymore? Or they'll be, well, it depends, you know, it depends. They'll change their ideology, obviously, because the people coming in have a totally different ideology. But it's going to make them much weaker. They'll be much weaker, and they'll be much different.

1:15:53And what will that mean for our relationship with them? Look at your mayor of London. He's a disaster. He's a disaster. He's got a totally different ideology of what he's supposed to have. You know, sir, it's sometimes hard to tell when you say these things. Do you intend to send kind of a message of tough love to our allies to push them to make reforms? Or do you think that many of them are just weak and you don't really want to be allies with them? I think they're weak. Now on Thursday, Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, responded. It's the voters who decide who is the leaders and nobody else is supposed to interfere without any question.

1:16:29I want to put this to the group. You've all covered U.S. diplomacy, defense, national security, foreign policy. You've been around the block, as they say. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, what do you make of these comments from the president? I think we have to call it what it is, which is so clearly advancing a nativist, and one might come as close to saying racist, narrative about Europe, right? You're seeing him call out leaders of non-white heritage, like the mayor of London. You're seeing him particularly talk about demographic change as being incompatible, essentially, with a U.S.-Europe alliance, which not only affects how he's seeing Europe, but suggests something about how he sees America, a country that itself is becoming majority non-white.

1:17:12I think you're going to see the Trump administration pressure the Europeans much more, but it's quite ironic that given its entire narrative throughout its time in office, that European leaders have been suppressing their own populations, there now seems to be a very clear Trump agenda to advance a certain ideological bent on the continent. So this is part of why, while he's called himself a president of peace, while some of his supporters have said he's anti-intervention, he doesn't want to meddle in foreign nations or do nation building, that's precisely what we've seen the Trump administration do in the Middle East, in Latin America, and now in Europe, where there's crucial elections next year.

1:17:49Jack Detch, your reaction from your perch of many years covering these issues, not only to the president's Politico interview, which we heard where he called the European allies fundamentally weak, but to the diplomatic and defense posture, a national security posture document that came out that we've been discussing, and the Trump administration's vision of America's role in the world order. Well, it's a revisionist view of the world order. It's a vision that sees countries like Russia and China as ascendant. And it seems like especially the draft version that was leaked to Defense One, which saw sort of a C5 replacing the G7 and bringing Russia and China into that fold.

1:18:30C5, what does that mean? The C5 would be sort of a core block of nations. It would include the United States, Japan, China, Russia. So you're talking about a lot of the largest economic nations in the world. But, I mean, it would be sort of a revisionist view of the world where the U.S. is no longer necessarily an adversary with these countries, especially Russia and China. But they're sort of looking at them as security guarantors in their regions. Joyce, what's your view on all this? No, very much what Jack is saying. But also, you know, this is a president who believes in profit first, you know, making deals.

1:19:06So you see the Nvidia deal with China. That's not national security first. That's really sending China AI chips that they couldn't have before. When you look at the deals he's doing with the Saudis, with the Emiratis, with the Qataris, it's all profit first. Add to that the geopolitical realignment that he believes in. He called in the same interview with Politico, you know, Europe as an old country and decay. They don't know how to get their economy together. So this is very much in line with that realignment that the administration is seeking. I want to get everyone's quick reaction to just one more story.

1:19:47One more thought. Everybody has heard Donald Trump's claim through repetition, through branding, that he's solved eight wars. then he's a president of peace. Now, two of the eight peace agreements in question that Trump takes credit for are under severe strain. Thailand and Cambodia are back at it this week. Violent clashes across their border. Also renewed fighting between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda-backed M23 militia. Just for one thought, each of you, Akbar, you go first. I'm not so concerned about the president's self-branding, but about his ability to broker of these deals and how he sells them to the public?

1:20:28It gets to what Jack was referencing, where this great power vision of instituting peace from above and just getting leaders to shake hands with Trump and say they're going to support American businesses doesn't bring societies closer to accountability, justice, real questions of reconciliation. And I think that's the bigger lesson that hopefully the Trump administration will take into 2026 of if it wants to continue diplomacy, see it's not just about having a few individuals around Donald Trump. Joyce? I mean, there is this confusion, it seems, in the administration that a ceasefire is somehow a peace deal.

1:21:01It's not. It needs hard work. It's temporary. Twice in Gaza now, phase one gets implemented and phase two has fallen apart. So it's not surprising because when you look also at the State Department, they don't have the staffing to do this. Jack? Yeah, it's kind of a move fast and break things approach to settling conflicts. The problem is the speed limit on all of this is Trump's attention span. And even as a mostly foreign policy president, you can't span yourself across this breadth of conflicts. It's too difficult. I want to thank all of you for your expertise this hour. Akbar Shahi Ahmed of HuffPost, Joyce Karam of All Monitor and Jack Detch of Politico.

1:21:41We want to leave you, though, with this story, a golden story from Argentina. A ver, el objetivo principal es batir el record. Yo creo que lo vamos a superar. Es un record. That's influencer and dog lover Fausto Dupere. He led a record-breaking gathering of golden retrievers in Buenos Aires this week. I told you this was something you could feel good about. In the summer sun, 2 ,397 dogs barked in concert, played, slobbered in Bosque de Palermo. but the AP says no group photo for all them dogs, despite goldens wearing football jerseys, bows, baseball hats, tutus. No one wanted to lose their pup in the crowd.

1:22:26The Argentines beat the Canadians last year's unofficial record with a gathering in Vancouver of a small number of 1 ,685 golden retrievers on the West coast of Canada. You can beat that. The Argentinians just did. Akbar, Joyce, Jack, thank you so much for being with us. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexandra Botee is our senior supervising producer. Eileen Humphries is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. And Barb Anguiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson for additional podcast and On Demand support this week.

1:23:05This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Todd Zwilich. Let's talk more soon. This is 1A.