The News Roundup For December 5, 2025

25:05We have so many discussions about it feels like flooding the zone sort of works because there's so much to pay attention to. But you almost get this sense that Trump's anger and these outbursts are happening because he knows that there is these external pressures and dynamics and that folks, as Arthur said, are not happy about the Epstein files, are not happy about the affordability in the economy. We got this comment from one listener who says, I live in Minnesota and it's not a hellhole. We are not hiding in our houses. Yes, the fraud in this state has been perpetuated by many Somalians. That does not mean the whole community is garbage, talking about alleged Medicaid and public benefit fraud in Minnesota.

25:51I work side by side with nurses from Somalia. They're some of the best people I know. Thank you for that comment from Minnesota. This kind of hateful rhetoric has real-world consequences, guys. after Vice President J.D. Vance and President Trump falsely accused Haitians in Springfield, Ohio, of eating cats and dogs last year during the campaign. The town received dozens of bomb threats, closing down public facilities from schools to health clinics. Arthur Delaney, what do attacks like this by the president do on the ground in communities? Well, you said it. I mean, this is definitely going to ramp up the bomb threat machine, the death threat machine against the Democrats in Minnesota and the Somalis in Minnesota, most of whom are U.S.

26:36citizens, the vast majority of whom are U.S. citizens. But it's exactly like the cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, who were falsely accused of being eaten by the immigrants there. And now a new ICE crackdown in Minneapolis that goes along with this rhetoric, Eric. Yes, the Washington Post had that reporting this morning that ICE is now detaining Somalis, Even if they have U.S. citizenship or green cards, they're still being targeted. And it reflects, right? ICE wants to carry out the orders of the president and wants to be in the president's good graces. He's going after Somalis. There is a correlation that we've seen time and time again.

27:12So racist and dehumanizing rhetoric from the president in the White House in front of the press in front of the cabinet paired with armed federal agents on the ground at the tip of the spear after these words are spoken. And that's the context that I think people need to take away from the president's comments and the president's actions in Minnesota this week. Okay, we're going to take a quick pause here. We'll be back with more of the week's biggest headlines in just a moment. Stay with us.

27:43before we stepped away we were talking about donald trump's racist rhetoric from the white house pairing it with an ice crackdown on somalians in minneapolis also a broad crackdown on immigration and asylum applications from 19 countries in reaction to the shooting in washington dc the suspect being from afghanistan now afghan refugees are also being singled out by the president after that shooting last week. A lot of them risked their lives to help Americans during the war in Afghanistan. And Trump has frozen the process, enabling thousands of Afghan refugees to seek asylum. Tens of thousands of refugees were vetted and allowed into the U.S.

28:26during the Biden administration. Other programs go back all the way to the Bush years, helping with special visas for Afghans who helped U.S. forces in Afghanistan and in Iraq as well, helping Iraqis who helped us in those wars. Now, the man who opened fire on the two National Guard members was first admitted to the United States, I believe, in 2021, had worked with the CIA for years during the war in his own country, but the suspect was granted asylum by the Trump administration this past April. Eric Bezell-Emile, some veterans see the administration's moves here as abandoning allies who helped the United States in the war in Afghanistan.

29:07Again, these programs go all the way back to the Bush years. They're not new, not an invention of the Biden administration. Tell us a little bit more about what the reaction has been to the White House's reaction in this regard. There's some astonishment because, yeah, these programs date back to the Bush administration, and they've been an article of faith almost in the bipartisan national security consensus that we're going to help the translators and the people who on the ground helped U.S. service members stay safe. I mean, these translators were indispensable for these decades-long conflicts that the U.S.

29:38was involved in. And it's this astonishment that this program is now being derailed because of one person who, by the admission of the Secretary of Homeland Security, was radicalized in the United States. The screening and vetting process would not have stopped this attack from occurring because Because all of the indicators were that after he had entered the United States, like the process that led to this attack. You said a word I want to ask one more question about because it's flying around a lot. Radicalized. Was he – is there any evidence that he was radicalized in the sense that we understand that word?

30:10Was this man – is there evidence he was a jihadist or radicalized with an anti-U.S. ideology? Do we have any idea what motivated him? There have been reports of depression, things going wrong in his life. The word radicalized means what here? It's radicalized to the point of carrying out an act of violence, but it's not clear what the specific ideology or motivation was. Investigators haven't revealed that. So in that sense, anyone who carries out an act of violence in this country in that sense is radicalized. They're violent. That was the turn of phrase, right? The Secretary of Homeland Security.

30:40They want you to think something specific with that word. That's why I'm bringing it up. And look, plenty of Senate Republicans have then said we need to know the facts of what happened. Like John Kennedy told me that when I asked him on the Hill this week. He was like, we need to have the facts straight. Nobody wants this to happen again, but we need to have the facts. All right. We'll continue following that story, broadening immigration crackdowns, of course, the United States. Meanwhile, plenty of legal news here in America. On Wednesday, House Republicans subpoenaed former special counsel Jack Smith, who prosecuted, of course, Donald Trump in two separate cases.

31:10Smith investigated and charged Donald Trump over his alleged efforts to overturn the 2020 election and also for taking and retaining top secret classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, along with obstruction of justice. Now, Smith has pushed for public testimony on Capitol Hill. Republicans will only allow a closed door deposition. Smith's lawyer wrote in a statement that, quote, the American people will be denied the opportunity to hear directly from Jack on these topics. Zoe Clark, the deposition is set for December 17th. What's the motivation behind summoning Jack Smith and what are we expecting?

31:48I mean, it's hard for me to answer it in any other way than just politics, political retaliation on behalf of the president and, you know, on behalf of some Republican senators on behalf of themselves. I mean, as you noted, you sort of set the table, right, that Jack Smith held these two investigations that led to criminal charges of Trump, you know, between his first term and his second term. The cases are no longer because he, you know, won a second term. And so now it really feels like this is the retaliatory tour, right? And this is what Trump and many of his athletes in, you know, Congress are doing now.

32:32And to your point, Jack Smith basically came out and said, like, hey, I will do this publicly. Like, I will testify with what our reports, what our investigation found. And these Republican Congress members are like, nope, we're going to do it privately. They don't want it in public. Meanwhile, in Florida, Arthur, President Trump and his lawyers are asking federal judge Aileen Cannon, remember her, to continue blocking the public release of special counsel Jack Smith's report on Trump's alleged hoarding of highly classified documents and obstruction of justice. How likely is it that the evidence that this investigation compiled will remain completely out of the public eye?

33:11Well, Eileen Cannon has been a real ally of the president's. So it's hard to imagine this not getting out. But if she's got it locked down, I don't see it happening soon. The Smith testimony, though, would speak to a lot of that. And even though that's behind closed doors in an effort to stifle the politically damaging facts that he knows about the president, I can't imagine that staying under wraps for long. There's a transcript, and it almost always—it'll come out immediately in part that day. I'll be there, and they'll give you bits and pieces, and the Republicans and Democrats will fight each other.

33:47But usually that transcript comes out in days, weeks, or months. Look out for Arthur Delaney's reporting when Jack Smith is on Capitol Hill for a closed-door deposition on December 17th. Meanwhile, more legal news. On Thursday, a grand jury in Norfolk, Virginia, declined to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James. Remember her? James has been an ongoing target of President Trump, who's been pushing to bring criminal charges against her. James brought a lawsuit against Trump in 2022. Arthur, just bring us up to date on the anatomy, the roadmap of yet another grand jury refusing to indict Letitia James.

34:24It's extremely rare for a grand jury to refuse an indictment. There's a cliche that you can indict a ham sandwich because you control the information that's presented to them. The accused is not present or able to raise a defense. So it's remarkable that they can't do it. You can indict a ham sandwich if you're an experienced prosecutor. That's my take. And if you're not, you might have some trouble. It really speaks to the weakness of the Trump second term authoritarian project and the whole turkey vibe that we've had for the past month. that this just isn't working, that you're not able to take over the entire government, that the constitutional checks and balances, which include trial by jury and the participation of many different people in the government, stops one person from getting everything he wants.

35:09James's first charges were dismissed by a federal court because of reasons that— Lindsay Halligan is her name, was illegally appointed that she didn't have the authority to make the charges dismissed on the technicality back to the grand jury. And now the grand jury says, no thanks. Meanwhile, in more federal legal news, let's talk pardons. The president was on a pardon spree this week, starting with former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted in a conspiracy that involved trafficking hundreds of tons of cocaine into the United States. Trump also gave pardons to Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar and his wife, congressmen, who were federally charged with money laundering, bribery, and conspiracy.

35:58And on Thursday, Trump issued a, quote, full and unconditional pardon to Tim Laiwiki. He was charged by Trump's own Justice Department for conspiring to rig the bidding process to develop a Texas arena. Zoe, big picture. What's going on here? And let's just look at the numbers. In his first term, he issued 237 acts of clemency. This year, Trump has been in office less than a year, right? 319 days. There have been 1 ,800 acts of clemency. Now, there's slight differences between blanket pardons and clemency. But it's like, so there's just the sheer number. But then as you just went through the list of just this week alone, it's the unusual, you know, nature or unprecedented reasons or ways, right?

36:47So pardoning those in some cases who haven't been indicted, even the broad nature of some of these pardons like January 6th. And then as you noted, just the type of people who he has pardoned and whether that has to do with, you know, political allegiance to this president or whether there are financial or, you know, ethical conflicts. I can tell you here in Michigan alone, it made a lot of news when he preemptively pardoned the so-called fake electors who had been charged in the state over election 2020. There weren't even federal charges against these more than a dozen Republicans here in Michigan, and he preemptively pardoned them just weeks ago.

37:29Meanwhile, a commutation of the sentence of former private equity executive David Gentile, who was convicted of defrauding thousands of investors, another white-collar criminal pardoned or given clemency by President Trump. Arthur, what stands out for you in the people that Trump has granted clemency to? Well, one thing is that, and this is rude to say, so it pains me, but the president is a criminal. I mean, he's a convicted felon. He made two pending indictments go away by winning the White House. And so he sympathizes with the former president of Honduras. He said they should never do this to a president.

38:06The other cases, including that one, they hired guys who the president listens to. They hired Roger Stone. They hired Trey Gowdy. And so if there's not a direct financial benefit to Trump from one of these cases, there's at least a connect. There's somebody there who can get the president's ear. Well, more legal news. It just keeps coming. On Thursday, Republicans got a huge win at the Supreme Court when it ruled that Texas could use its new congressional map in next year's midterms. Zoe Clark, does this mean five new Republican House seats for sure? Well, I mean, we're still going to have an election.

38:47What? But no, I mean, look, you know, this is as we've been noting, you know, past couple hard weeks for this administration, this absolutely was a win. You know, it's not the final word, but in all likelihood, this means that these congressional maps will move forward. But what you then are seeing are the effects across the country continuously, as we have talked about many times on this program, then of other states and this sort of arms race when it comes to redistricting. So, you know, five seats in Texas, how many seats in California? So there's just a lot that we're going to be watching.

39:28Democrats in Virginia signaling they could go 10 to 1 in their gerrymander in reaction to Texas. So this isn't over, even though Republicans look like they're getting a Supreme Court sponsored win for their gerrymander in Texas. Before we get to the end of the hour, we want to turn to some stories this week that you might have missed in this information fog of boat strikes, pardons, and testimony, retribution testimony for the former special counsel. One of the lingering effects of the government shutdown means we don't really have a full picture of how the job market is really changing. But data released on Wednesday from the payroll processing company ADP says private employment fell by 32 ,000 jobs in November.

40:11It's the third decline in four months, according to ADP. The November jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the real one we're supposed to have, was supposed to be out today, but it's delayed until December 16th. Data on inflation spending and production is also behind. Eric, we need this data. What does this new data, though, from ADP, lack of official federal data that I just mentioned, mean for our true understanding of how the economy is performing right now? It's adding to a lot of uncertainty. I mean, look, we always have to remember that the economy is just as much about the number of the stock market and the raw figures as it is about psychology and how people feel comfortable making choices.

40:47So people not having official job market data, that affects their investments. That affects the way that long-term Wall Street and banks are managing expectations and advising their customers. So the dearth of this data because of the shutdown, right, it really could lead to some negative events. if we have a more disappointing jobs report in December or we have successive bad GDP numbers in January, it's not an ideal situation for those who have investments. Arthur, we're heading into the holiday spending season too. The ADP report is much smaller sample size than what the government does, but it's pretty good and it usually tracks with what the Bureau of Labor Statistics says.

41:26So it's concerning that we are not adding jobs. That's bad. we could be going to a recession. It's just frightening as somebody who has a job in the private sector. The president on affordability this week said it was, said it's a hoax. Said it's a hoax, yeah. Biggest con job by the Democrats. He himself has also used the word affordability, so that was weird. He was the affordability president, as I recall. Okay, important health news. The CDC's Vaccine Advisory Committee, ACIP, did vote on Friday to end the longstanding recommendation that all babies get that hepatitis B vaccine on the day they're born.

42:02That decision has already been met with outrage by experts in the public health community and people who've devoted their careers and their lives to following the data on infants and disease. Now, U.S. advisors have recommended the Hep B vaccine for newborns since 1991. Since then, data shows Hep B infections among infants and children have dropped 99%. But Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has falsely linked the vaccine to autism. Zoe Clark, where do we stand now? Senator Bill Cassidy voted for RFK, was promised by RFK that he would make no moves to discourage vaccination is realizing now in public that RFK lied to him.

42:44Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, this hearing yesterday, it was sort of unlike anything seen before. And then this vote already being delayed, right, once. I mean, it just sort of goes back to this chaotic nature of what I think Americans really voted against during the first Trump term. Like so much was this idea of not having to sort of wake up every morning and check your phone and see what the latest, you know, controversy was. And it just feels like particularly this week, we are deeply back in it, both with the president and many of his members of his administration, whether it's Hegseth, whether it's Kennedy.

43:24I want to thank our guests as always. Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost, Eric Bezell-Emile, national security reporter at Politico, and Zoe Clark, political director for Michigan Public. Thanks to all of you for joining us. 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.

43:49Let's turn to the global edition of the News Roundup. Here to guide us through the top international stories of the week is Nancy Youssef. She's staff writer at The Atlantic covering national security and the Department of Defense. Hi, Nancy. Hi. Alex Ward is just to Nancy's right. He's national security reporter covering the White House and the State Department at the Wall Street Journal. He's also author of The Internationalist. Alex, great to see you. Glad to be here and always to Nancy's right. And joining us over the line, someone you know well. He is David Rennie. He joins us from London.

44:20He's a geopolitics editor and columnist at The Economist where he writes their column, The Telegram. Hello, David. Hello. All right, gang. Let's start with the Trump administration's missile strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Since September, the Trump administration has targeted vessels, it says, are being used by what the administration has coined narco-terrorists, a new term, to export drugs to the United States. Those attacks have killed at least 87 people now in 21 strikes. And this week, graphic depictions of at least two survivors being killed by a second U.S. military strike on an alleged Venezuelan drug boat, again, according to the administration.

45:00Well, those have sparked outrage as tensions between Caracas and Washington are escalating. Let's start with these comments from the president this week. I think you're going to find that there's a very receptive ear to doing exactly what they're doing, taking out those boats. And very soon we're going to start doing it on land, too, because we know every route. We know every house. We know where they manufacture this crap. We know where they put it all together. And I think you're going to see it very soon on land also. So to be clear, you support the decision to kill survivors after the initial strike?

45:34No, I support the decision to knock out the boats. And whoever's piloting those boats, most of them are gone. But whoever piloting those boats, they're guilty of trying to kill people in our country. Nancy Youssef, yesterday, Admiral Mitch Bradley, at the center of what's now shorthanded as the second strike story. We'll talk about first strikes, too, but the second strike story. briefed lawmakers on Capitol Hill. What do we know? So remember that the authorization for these strikes, there's not a congressional one. The authorization is that there's an imminent threat and that this is sort of in self-defense.

46:12That's their argument. So now we're asking why was that second strike necessary? Why, after the boat was hit and nine of the 11 on board were killed, why did this boat, as what remained of it, still pose an imminent threat to the United States. What we've heard is that he offered an explanation using some of the video, not audio, from that second strike. And what we've been told through sourcing is that the first strike hits, destroys the back of the boat. There are two people surviving. They're holding on and trying to turn over what's left of the boat. And this goes on for upwards of an hour.

46:53during this time, Admiral Bradley, who made the strike decision, is meeting with military lawyers and that they decide that because there's drugs nearby, that they're trying to move in some way, that that continued to pose a threat and decided to launch a second strike. Okay, so to be clear, there are drugs nearby. They're moving so that the threat is that these These guys floating in the water could collect the drugs and still do what the administration is calling a war by transporting those drugs to America, floating somewhere in the Caribbean, therefore kill them. Second strike. That's exactly right.

47:30There have been other explanations that perhaps there was a vessel nearby. There have been some who've said that they were trying to communicate. It's not clear that that was happening given the severity of the first strike. The challenge becomes, as the laws of armed conflict are defined, they're considered what they call out of combat when they're in the water. That is that they don't pose an imminent threat. Think of a pilot whose jet has been hit and he's parachuting down to the ground. While he's in the air, he is out of combat. Once he's on the ground, he's back in combat. So the essence of the sort of debate is were they potentially in combat, an imminent threat, about to become back in combat?

48:14As it was, even by Admiral Bradley's description, they were out of combat at the moment that the second strike hit. There is, David Rennie, a long history of the U.S. using these so-called double-tap tactics in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, to name a few places. The law on land is different than the law at sea. But anyway, this is not a war, though the administration, as Nancy Youssef says, still in a secret legal opinion, says it basically, for all intents and purposes, is a war. We hear the term war crimes. But if this September 2nd strike where two survivors were intentionally targeted and killed isn't a war crime, then what is it?

48:57Is it murder? Look, so you've got to unpack a couple of things. The argument that they're just delivering drugs to the US, which is going to kill people in the US, clearly, if you didn't have this separate argument that it's a war, that wouldn't fly. Because American police on the streets of the US are not allowed to shoot a drug dealer just because he's carrying drugs and it might kill someone later. So that would be clearly murder if you did that, if they didn't pose any threat at all. So that's why, as Nancy explains, you need to have this legal opinion that the United States is in a state of armed conflict, a legal state of armed conflict with drug gangs who are effectively invaders, enemies of the United States.

49:30And then you don't have to get congressional approval. On the double tap thing, clearly, you need to always be alert for war crimes. I think there's a danger of sort of getting wrapped up in the idea that, look, at the end of the day, if there's a war on and you're trying to kill people, there's no pretty way to kill people. And so one tap, two taps, you know, I think we can get too caught up in whether a double tap is worse than a single tap. If you're trying to kill people, you're trying to kill people. And it's a very ugly thing. But if you can justify it in terms of the defense of the United States' vital interests, then one, two taps, I personally think you can get too tangled up in that.

50:05Clearly, what's more important, I think, politically, even if ultimately this goes away because the admiral gets thrown under the bar, so the admiral is protecting the defence secretary and the president is defending the defence secretary, within the Pentagon, there is clearly really, really urgent debate about this. And we, in fact, saw new reporting from the Wall Street Journal that Pete Hegseth, the defence secretary, forced out the four-star admiral who was the head of Southcom, one of the reasons being that he seemed to be very anxious about the legal basis for these strikes on drug boats at all.

50:36So I think the biggest consequence of this, even if it never turns into war crime trial, is if the uniformed military believes that they're being asked to commit illegal orders and the political guys are willing to throw uniformed commanders under the bus, that is going to rumble on long after potentially this row dies down. We did see that reporting this week that Admiral Holsey, who you mentioned, former commander of Southcom, was forced out in part because of disagreements over these boat strikes. That was Wall Street Journal reporting. The Washington Post, meanwhile, also reported that Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, gave a verbal order to, quote, kill everybody in the September second strike in the Caribbean, though Hegseth has not acknowledged it.

51:15Now, on Tuesday in the cabinet meeting at the White House, he told reporters he did not see survivors in the live video he viewed and wasn't in the room when Admiral Frank Mitch Bradley, who we mentioned, the commander overseeing the operation, ordered that second strike. Now, according to the reporting, Bradley was complying with Hegseth's directive as the two survivors clung to the wreckage, as Nancy described. Now, Alex, you've written about Hegseth's quest to rewrite the rules of engagement. He talks about lethality all of the time. What questions of legality has his quest for lethality raised?

51:51Where are we at now with Pete Hegseth and the rules of engagement? His bumper sticker would be maximum lethality, tepid legality. What he means by that is that basically U.S. troops for years have had lawyers always looking over their shoulders and making it so that they can't fight the way they can fight. And so when Pete Hexeth was leading certain troops when he was in the military, his main argument was you just do what you need to do. You see a threat or you see somebody, you kill them effectively. You don't have to worry about what those lawyers say or do. You don't have to worry about the rules of engagement.

52:22You have to worry about the law of conflict. You just fight. You be lethal. You be soldiers. There's a couple of things here. One, I mean, Hexeth then basically goes on TV, writes about a bunch of books promoting this lifestyle. He also supports people who've been in trials over this kind of stuff to— Clemency for war criminals. That's how he got on Donald Trump's radar in the first place. And then he basically transfers this ideology over to the Pentagon. And part of what he's trying to do in his de-wokification plan of the Pentagon is to relax the rules of war. So there's always been, since he came into the Pentagon, a concern that there would be a moment, maybe not exactly like this, but something along the lines where Hexeth would defend a relaxed rules of engagement or some kind of strike like this.

53:05And so what we're seeing here – and I will just note, to David's point, I mean there was concern or initially with Hexeth's statements that they were trying to throw Admiral Bradley under the bus. I read it differently based on Hexeth's history. I read it as he was defending the guy regardless of what he did. Like even if Hegseth, you know, was briefed on this after the fact and he saw that there might have been, you know, not much consideration for the law, although they will say that they talk to military lawyers. Hegseth goes, great, doesn't matter. You got to do what you got to do. You got to be lethal.

53:34These are narco-terrorists as designated by President Trump and they get what they got coming to them. Nancy Youssef, in the midst of all of this, there are lawyers in the military. They're called JAGs, Judge Advocates General, the lawyers who help troops and commanders decide what's legal and what's not legal. What has Pete Hegseth done with the senior jags at the Pentagon? So you're right, there are jags and every commander has one. And in fact, there was a jag in the room as he strikes for happening, advising Admiral Bradley. But as Hegseth came into office, one of the first things he did was get rid of the top jags and signal that he felt that the lawyers too often, as Alex mentioned, restricted the military's ability to conduct operations.

54:15From his perspective, it's just too much armed quarterbacking from the seats and not from those who are actually in the fight. Too much legality. That's right. And so it raises questions. And how much pushback can a lawyer do if they have concerns in this kind of climate? David Rennie, before you do an international view here on the boat strikes, how is this situation that we're talking about, legality, potential war crimes, rules of engagement, even potential murder being viewed by other countries when they watch the U.S. military? How is it going into other actors' calculations about how they deal with or even fight Americans?

55:00Look, it's a real concrete concern. And if you want evidence of that, Britain, which has an incredibly close partnership with America going back to World War II when it comes to sharing intelligence, we are told by press reports that Britain has quietly stopped sharing intelligence with the US about drugs smuggling through the Caribbean precisely because lawyers in the British government are worried that these strikes are illegal and they do not want to see British intelligence or military ending up in court. And when British cabinet secretaries have been asked about this, they have been incredibly squirrelly, to use the technical term, and said, well, the frameworks of cooperation continue sort of uninterruptedly and we don't talk about the content of the stuff that we share through them.

55:40So Britain, the closest ally America has when it comes to intelligence, is not willing to share intel on these boat strikes. Alex? Yeah, just one quick thought on the background here about all these rules of war and engagements. Number one, they are written in large – not in large part, but in part to protect our own troops. If we have our forces out in the middle of wherever, we want them to be treated as humanely as one could be when you're engaging in war, which is, of course, an inhumane exercise. But there are rules and regulations and standards that we hope to set. And then there's the broader sort of national who we are argument is those guys fight dirty.

56:20They fight in a way that is – there's no real honor to it. The United States, by showing a principle, by setting a standard in the way we fight, we add something. We show something about our national character in the way we do that and the way that we actually won't go after helpless people, et cetera. On a very practical level, Alex, one criticism I've heard here is that if people fighting the United States know that surrender is useless, in other words, these guys just shoot you. Don't put up a white flag because they'll kill you anyway. That's more dangerous for our troops in the field. Yeah.

56:50I mean, again, there are no real rules, let's say, in war, but like there can be some sort of standard. There can be some sort of way in which, you know, you can put up the white flag. You can show that you're helpless. You can get off the battlefield if you're injured and unable to carry on. There is some way we can fight and do it so we're not – it's not just like an animalistic exercise. and the problem that a lot of people see and a lot of generals we've talked to is they go, once we, the United States, relax that standard, then others will do the same and then it becomes an even more brutal endeavor.

57:23We're gonna talk a lot more about the so-called rules of war, legality, lethality, and potential war crimes, maybe even murder in the Caribbean, how American troops, officers, and enlisted people interpret rules of war and how they operate and we wanna hear from you for our show on Monday. So make sure you join Jen and me on Monday as we dig deeper on this question. All right, let's pull back a little bit from this issue of boat strikes because it's happening in the context of an American confrontation with Venezuela. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has accused the Trump administration and Donald Trump himself of using the anti-drug campaign as a pretext to topple his government and seize Venezuela's vast oil reserves.

58:07on Tuesday in a defiant address to a rally in Caracas, Maduro, said this. We want peace, but peace with sovereignty, equality, freedom. We do not want a slave's peace, nor the peace of colonies. Colony, never. Slaves, never. Now, it's something at least one GOP lawmaker hasn't shied away from. Here's Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar from Florida on Fox Business this week. Venezuela for the American oil companies will be a field day because it will be more than a trillion dollars in economic activity. We got this from John in Ann Arbor, Michigan, who says, Ever since Venezuela tried to gain control of its oil resources under the Hugo Chavez administration, the U.S.

58:53government has supported U.S. oil companies' efforts to dominate those resources for themselves. This pressure to install U.S. client government on Venezuela has proceeded from Bush to Obama, Biden, and Trump and has now reached the lawless assault on persons and boats in the name of combating the narcotics trade. And we got this from Dario, who emails Venezuela sits on the largest volume of oil reserves in the world. I think the current administration's claims of Venezuelan narco-terrorism will ring as hollow as Bush administration claims of weapons of mass destruction and in the end will also just translate to oil.

59:33All right. That's a lot. Nancy Youssef, put all of this in context for us. On Sunday, Nicolas Maduro requested assistance from OPEC, the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries. Venezuela is a founding member of the group. Is this about oil? Well, it depends on who you ask. It's about a myriad of things. I mean, think of it as a Venn diagram with a lot of people having their particular interests. And in the middle of that diagram is strikes on Venezuela. So, for example, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has had a long interest in Venezuela because he sees its relationship with Cuba and sees it as a way to sort of break that alliance and to liberate Venezuela from, by any measure, a tyrant.

1:00:18If you're Donald Trump, the use of military force in these kinds of operations opens the aperture for the military in terms of not just as a self-defense, but in an increasingly policing function in this hemisphere. You've got U.S. troops on the border. You've got National Guardsmen on the streets sort of increasingly entering sort of police-like measures, and that allows space for that. If you're Stephen Miller, this is an opportunity to sort of show military force and potentially send a message to those who are seeking to cross into U.S. borders that this is showing that the U.S. is tough on immigration.

1:00:53And then there are those who say that the president also has a financial interest because it holds the world's largest oil reserves. I guess my problem with all of it is no one has answered, what does Venezuela look like the day after? Is there the stability there that would allow for this potential exploitation? We're talking about a series of armed groups within Venezuela, including the military, some of whom will have objections. FARC, armed Venezuelans themselves, all signs point to rampant instability in the face of the fall of the Maduro regime, even if it goes quickly. And so the absence of sort of a day after plan, I think, makes it hard to envision how Venezuela can be exploited if that's the aim for oil.

1:01:40because to do that, it starts with stability, and there's no clear pathway to get there. And in fact, lots of red flags about some of the potential threats that come with going in. Now, however you cut it, this confrontation with Venezuela, whether it be financial interest, oil, regime change, wherever you fall on the Venn diagram that Nancy Youssef just described, military buildup and threats, attacks on land that Trump has mentioned, this is all by choice. This is all by choice of Donald Trump and the White House. Meanwhile, we have a new national security strategy quietly released by the White House just today.

1:02:16Alex Ward, how does what we're seeing toward Venezuela fit into the president's broader picture for the world as described in their national security posture that we're just reading? Well, first of all, I enjoyed the Venn diagram, and I assume the Venn stands for Venezuela in this case. But in terms of the national security strategy, I mean, what it does on the Western Hemisphere part are kind of twofold. One is it firmly backs – excuse me – continued strikes on these boats, which effectively is now codified, if we want to put it, in the White House view of the world that keep going after these boats is going to be a central part of what the U.S.

1:02:52does. and it also talks about the Monroe Doctrine. For those who didn't follow our fifth president, who got a lot of input from Secretary of State John Quincy Adams at the time, basically what it came down to was the U.S. would have more control over the Western Hemisphere. It was really about Latin American republics and the Spanish, but that's a separate issue. But the way they talked about it is basically America now runs the Western Hemisphere. Great powers stay out. We're going to dominate our hemisphere in a way we haven't before. We've been adventurous. So it makes you think if you're Venezuela, OK, they're going to focus on me in Caracas if you're Maduro more and this region more in general.

1:03:30David Rennie, one line from Trump's new national security strategy that Alex is describing, it goes like this. The affairs of other countries are our concern only if their activities directly threaten our interests. So what does this mean and what does it mean for American influence and how Donald Trump uses it? the national security strategy is a really extraordinary document i read the whole thing i just need help write an instant kind of take on it for for our website it's a pretty disturbing document because it is trying to put an intellectual framework around kind of trump's america first foreign policy which is not an easy exercise and i think that sentence you pull out there points to one of the ways in which it's hard to thread this needle because donald trump got elected saying no more dumb forever wars america isn't going to try and make the world a kindly a nicer place, no more regime change to promote democracy.

1:04:21You then have what looks like, certainly in Marco Rubio's vision of taking out the regime in Venezuela, he sounds a lot like a conventional, very hawkish Republican saying, as Nancy says, they're friends with the Cubans, they're friends with the Russians, they're friends with the Iranians, they're a terrible illegitimate dictatorship, we need to topple them. So that sounds like the pre-Trump Republican Party. So how do you knit this kind of tangled ball of wool into one kind of seamless thing? Well, they say that they're going to be selfish, that they're not going to try and make the world a nicer place.

1:04:51It's all about America first, that everything is guided by America first. And to Alex's point, the national security strategy is incredibly aggressive about America's right to dominate all that happens in Latin America, Central America, to bully governments in the region to do exactly what America tells them to do when it comes to stopping migration flows, stopping drug flows, and that that gives America this kind of imperial reach over the whole continent. I guess the problem with this Venezuela buildup of massive force is we simply don't know. Is this Donald Trump's bluff tactic that we've seen from him before, where you build up enormous force in the hope that everyone is so scared of all the aircraft carriers and fighter jets that Maduro runs into exile somewhere else?

1:05:34I think that's clearly part of their hope. But if you, to dance, he's a very good point about what happens the day after. If you topple the regime in some way in Venezuela and there isn't a plan for orderly government after that, you could see enormous numbers of Venezuelan refugees taking the path up to Florida, up to the rest of the United States. Is that what Donald Trump wants? And so none of it really makes sense. And so you have this strategy, which is a very, very weird and unpleasant document in many ways, where it tries to kind of square all of those circles by saying the core of this is selfishness.

1:06:06You know, trust us, it makes sense because it's all about America first, but actually it doesn't really explain what they're up to. Even selfishness doesn't get you there. Speaking of the impact of U.S. foreign policy on the people of Venezuela and places like Colombia, the family of a Colombian man killed in a U.S. airstrike in the Caribbean has filed a former complaint Tuesday with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. The complaint states that fisherman Alejandro Carranza Medina was denied his rights under international law to due process in a fair trial when he was killed. September 15th in an airstrike off the coast of Colombia.

1:06:41Nancy Youssef, very briefly, what do we know? Well, this is a lawsuit filed with the commission. It's not legally binding the United States, but it's the first legal action we've seen taking and embarrassing for the U.S. and its claims that it's following human rights and conducting these strikes. Now, speaking of wars of choice, let's talk about Vladimir Putin's war of choice in Ukraine. Lots of news on that this week. Alex Ward, American officials. We think they're American officials. Steve Whitcoff is an American official. Jared Kushner is in on the talks. I was told he's not an American official, but is there also.

1:07:21The two of them, a real estate investor, another real estate investor, are talking with their Russian interlocutor, who is head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund, a former banker. It sounds like the punch up to a joke, but what are a Russian banker and two American real estate investors doing talking about the future of Ukraine and Russia's invasion? Well, when a lot of people shorthand what the Trump administration is up to in this negotiation that it's all about a real estate deal, you kind of get where it's coming from. I mean, in many ways, Trump has talked about this as just, okay, just trade some land and then everything will be fine, right?

1:08:00Well, no, there's greater issues at stake. There's greater interest at stake. Now, Whitcoff has been the main interlocutor here with Putin now. I believe this was his fifth visit to Moscow to meet with Putin. And Kushner, who Trump sees as a smart guy, had helped do deals in the Middle East, he's like, why don't you just go help out? Why don't you go help out, Steve? And granted, it should be noted that he's had a long relationship with this Kirill Dmitriev, who's the sovereign wealth fund guy from Russia. So they have a rapport. And so basically the hope here is that these three men in some way can fashion understanding where Putin is going to go, you're right, I should end this war, and then get them to some sort of terms that makes the Ukrainians happy.

1:08:42Well, in the Oval Office on Wednesday, the president, he had a take on what Vladimir Putin really wants after four years of war. Their impression was that he would like to see the war ended. I think I'd like to get back to dealing a more normal life. I think I'd like to be trading with the United States of America, frankly, instead of, you know, losing thousands of soldiers a week. But their impression was very strongly that he'd like to make a deal. Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday, their impression very strongly that he would like to make a deal, that he would like peace. Nancy Youssef, does Vladimir Putin want a deal and want peace leaders in Europe don't seem to think so.

1:09:22Well, I was struck by his conduct in the run-up to that meeting. On the previous Sunday, he's in his military fatigues. He announces that Russia has taken Purovosk, which would be the biggest gain that Russia's made in two years and was once a strategic hub for Ukraine. And I think he was signaling that we don't need to compromise. We're making advances. We don't need to agree to anything right now. So his actions in the run-up to that was not someone saying, We're ready to sort of negotiate on this, that and the other, but rather that we have the upper hand and we don't need to make deals. And so if they were saying it behind closed doors, I can't speak to that, but publicly at least, he is trying to signal in every way possible that they have the military advantage and don't need to make compromises.

1:10:09Having said all that, it's not that maybe true, maybe not, because you have a Russia that's got that city through huge costs in terms of personnel and time. It took a tremendous amount of effort for them to gain that city and to take all of Donbass. By NATO's estimate, it would be a multi-year effort by the Russians. David Rennie, put into context the meeting between two real estate investors and a Russian banker into the national security plan that you just described. What does it mean? Well, it's an America first move. I think Russia thinks that if you could offer enough business deals in the Arctic, oil deals to these two very business driven guys, then you can peel the Americans away from Ukraine's allies in Europe and impose a terrible deal on Ukraine.

1:10:53And the Russian deal, Russian drafted deal that is being peddled by Steve Wyckoff is basically very little different from the deal that Vladimir Putin would have asked for four years ago. They've not moved at all. And they're hoping they can get Donald Trump to literally sell Ukraine out. Literally sell Ukraine out. One thing I'm drawing from David Rennie's description, Vladimir Putin knows what language Donald Trump speaks. If the business deals are good enough, he can convince Donald Trump to sell Ukraine. All right, let's move as we do every week here on the International Roundup to the Middle East.

1:11:28President Trump insists the next phase of his Gaza plan is, quote, going to happen pretty soon, even as the ceasefire there remains fragile at best. That's a generous word. This week, Israel continued targeted strikes, it says, are aimed at Hamas operatives violating the truce. Civilians have been among the casualties. Associated Press spoke to Aisha Abu-Jazar, who is displaced from Rafa. Most of the children were asleep. We were about to go to sleep when an explosion occurred. We we were supposed to be in a ceasefire. We were shocked to see an unusually intense fire. The Wednesday night strike in the southern part of the Gaza Strip left five people dead, including two children.

1:12:15More than 350 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire began. That's according to Gaza health authorities. And now one of the most consequential questions for people trapped inside the Strip, whether they can leave. Israel says it will reopen the Rafah crossing in the coming days, but only for Palestinians exiting Gaza into Egypt, a one-way street. In other words, Rafah is Gaza's main gateway to the outside world, the only border crossing not shared with Israel, making it a critical conduit for travel, medical evacuations, and aid. But Egypt is pushing back, saying it will only accept a two-way reopening under the ceasefire plan.

1:12:53the World Health Organization says more than 16 ,500 patients in Gaza still need to leave for medical care. So, David Rennie, what is Israel proposing at Rafa in the southern corner of the Gaza Strip? And how does it differ from the two-way reopening laid out in the ceasefire plan? So, as you say, Israel is saying that it could reopen the Rafa border crossing in coming days, but only one way. So, Palestinians will be allowed to leave into Egypt. And it says that Palestinians who need to leave will need Gaza, to leave Gaza will need to get Israeli and Egyptian security approval. They haven't made clear what that would mean.

1:13:32And Egypt is very opposed because, of course, the context for all of this is the fear that at least some elements of the Israeli government, their plan is to essentially ethnically cleanse the Gaza Strip and push all of the Palestinians there, or a very large number of them, out into other countries, which other countries don't want to do on multiple grounds. One, because it would be ethnic cleansing. And two, because if you are neighbors like Egypt and Jordan, you are not keen on the idea of millions of refugees turning up in your economy. Certainly, a country like Egypt already harbors a large number of refugees.

1:14:07And so this is not just about this crossing. It's about what Israel's long-term intentions are. Because of course, you know, although Donald Trump is saying that you can add the Gaza peace plan to his list of wars solved, as you've discussed so many times on your show, this isn't a war solved. This is a ceasefire, which is a good thing. People aren't being killed right now in the same numbers. But so many of the hardest problems haven't been resolved, whether it's Hamas giving up its weapons or, in this case, what do you do with the millions of Palestinians still living in utter misery amid the ruin and the rubble of the Gaza Strip?

1:14:39And if Israel's plan is to just push them all out, which isn't official government policy, but is certainly the preference of members of the Netanyahu government, will neighbors allow that to happen? And David, it's not what's envisioned in phase two or beyond of the Trump plan, right? So the hopes and dreams of right-wing Israelis notwithstanding. That is right. And there are people in, there are hawks in Washington who would say that is the only viable solution. And, you know, you've got important figures like Steve Wyckoff, the presidential envoy, saying some months ago after he had flown over the sort of rubble of the Gaza Strip that he had, as a real estate guy, he had said it would take 10 years to clear that much rubble.

1:15:17It simply can't be done. So that was what led originally to the whole talk of moving everyone out and rebuilding Gaza as kind of the Trump Riviera. And so there is this ongoing suspicion that Israel's plans don't make sense. So are they planning something else? Back in Rafa, Nancy Youssef, given the WHO's estimate of 16 ,500 patients needing to evacuate because of urgent medical care, how realistic is meaningful medical attention, healthcare attention, and movement under these rules that are being contemplated here? Not much. I mean, the border crossing itself is physically damaged. So we're not even sure the functionality of it.

1:15:57There's that. But there's not medical aid coming in at the pace that was promised in the peace deal. And so even getting the basics to Palestinians in Gaza has not happened at the expectation of the deals from back in October. And as you know, there are all these logistical challenges and also political questions. Egypt, for example, is not just requiring a two-way street, but they want the ability for Palestinians who are already in Egypt to go back into Gaza. And that question hasn't been resolved. So there are so many outstanding issues, both politically and logistically, in a conflict where there's a very bad track record of just solving these kinds of basic questions, that it's hard to be optimistic that there will be a strong enough plan that allows for that level of medical care, very serious medical care for that many people.

1:16:51And back to the immediate term in the ceasefire itself. Israel identified the body of a hostage returned by Hamas this week. The remains belong to a Thai agricultural worker who was killed during the attack on October 7th. The body of an Israeli police officer is still in Gaza. He would be the last of the living and deceased hostages to be returned under the phase one deal between Israel and Hamas. That handover would complete the conditions. But Alex Ward, what are the key factors that could push this ceasefire either to the left into broader conflict again or to the right, if you will, to phase two?

1:17:30Well, we're still seeing Israel strike inside of Gaza. I mean, they're still fighting. I mean, it's a ceasefire somewhat in name only. It did achieve an important objective in the release of the hostages, as you just noted. But in terms of the actual fighting in Gaza, that is continuing. And whether Trump actually knows about it too much or not, he's not saying so. He continues to claim that the war is solved. Now, the Trump administration is pushing for a phase two announcement pretty soon, preferably by the end of the year, where Trump would be the chairman of this board of peace. They would start to do all this rebuilding.

1:18:01But at this point, it doesn't really look like that is heavily likely. And just very one minor point, that national security strategy we talked about, there's a whole section there about how the U.S. will no longer do nation building in the Middle East. Well, literally faith to and beyond is literally nation building in the Middle East. Yeah. I mean directly. It is literally that. Precisely what it is. Meanwhile, there is a conscription crisis within the borders of Israel. We've talked about this in the past. It's also a political crisis. It's around the draft and the draft bill that would put more ultra-Orthodox men into the military in Israel.

1:18:38The exemption for full-time religious study students called yeshiva students dates to Israel's founding in 1948. But the high court in Israel ended those arrangements last year, and lawmakers in the Knesset are now considering a draft bill to end that exemption. Now, public support for mandatory service has surged in the last two years of war, but mass protests have erupted in ultra-Orthodox communities in Israel, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition depends on parties that strongly oppose broadening the draft in Israel. David Rennie, this fight comes as Benjamin Netanyahu is also seeking a presidential pardon in his corruption trial.

1:19:19All of this is swirling around at once. How does the conscription bill intersect with Netanyahu's political survival? So, Todd, you're right that this has been going on forever. I mean, I remember a conversation with an Israeli soldier like 25 years ago telling me about coming back from a combat mission and finding some ultra-Orthodox young men praying for him as he crossed the border. And he got into trouble for attacking one of them with his rifle buck because he was like, you know, you don't pray for me. You come and serve in the army. So there is growing resentment started with just secular Israelis, but now you can see right across the spectrum, including right wing parties in the Netanyahu coalition.

1:19:53And that is why this law is actually potentially going to be very difficult to pass in parliament. Angry about the idea that this is a country exhausted by constant service by tens of thousands of reservists called away from their normal lives and jobs. And yet you have the army told lawmakers that there are 24 ,000 draft notices issued last year to ultra-Orthodox young men, only 1 ,200 of them reported for duty. But Benjamin Netanyahu doesn't have a lot of room for maneuver because his fragile coalition government includes ultra-Orthodox parties for whom this is an absolute point of principle.

1:20:27they will not budge. No question of making ultra-Orthodox young men serve in the military or the police, even though there are special units set up for them to serve that try and take account of all of their objections. So this is really divisive. You are seeing opposition lawmakers taking advantage of it. Yael Lapid, the opposition leader, the former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, no friend of Benjamin Adanyahu, but also no squishy liberal, a very conservative guy, saying that this bill, if passed, would be betraying the troops. So a very, very tricky moment, but can Benjamin Netanyahu, the great survivor, use the whole question of a pardon, which of course comes in the wake of Donald Trump telling the Israeli Knesset that they should pardon Netanyahu, telling the president of Israel to pardon.

1:21:10Donald Trump is a guy who likes to pardon his friends. Can Netanyahu ride that political pressure and the idea that Trump would like this and would dislike the opposite to get out of jail that way? There is a deep irony in Israel that some of the most religious Israelis fall into two camps. One, very, very religious Jews who think that yeshiva students and ultra-Orthodox need not serve in the army, but also right-wing, often religious Israelis who believe because of the Bible that the land is theirs. They call it Judea and Samaria for a reason, those two groups, close allies. And I think there's a deep, deep irony there in Israeli society.

1:21:52Nancy Youssef of The Atlantic is here, Alex Ward of The Wall Street Journal, and David Rennie from The Economist. And I'm Todd Zwillick. You're listening to 1A. Well, back to Washington now and another conflict around the world, another one that Donald Trump claims to have solved in addition to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and so many more. President Trump summoned the leaders of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda to sign a peace deal over fighting in eastern Congo. Now, besides the president's theatrics here at the newly renamed Donald J. Trump Institute for Peace here in Washington, D.C., Alex Ward, what's this deal that might stop fighting in the DRC that traces back to the Rwandan genocide, 1994?

1:22:37So this deal was actually signed in June, and it didn't stop the fighting. So let's start there. The deal was signed in June. This deal was signed in June. Why did I watch a photo op within the last 24 hours in the White House? Because it was just the stage show of the signing ceremony. So Trump wanted the ceremony and the pageantry of the deal, which was signed separately. And so he brought him to D.C. The subplot to this is that the Donald Trump Institute of Peace, that used to be the U.S. Institute of Peace, a congressionally backed think tank that they took out as part of the Doge process and now is whatever this is.

1:23:12But anyway, Trump just wanted the ceremony. and what we're finding so far is that this deal has not really worked. Again, signed in June, but the whole point is basically the Congolese have, and, you know, M23 rebels that are Rwanda-backed are still fighting. There is still war. In fact, just recently there was a lot of fighting in a Rwanda border town in Kamaniola. So this war has not stopped, and all the conditions set forth in that June meeting, which is basically like, you know, the warring parties pull back, et cetera, that hasn't happened. So we've had a peace signing ceremony about a conflict where there has been no peace.

1:23:45We're going to round out the hour now. Thank you for that deep update on Rwanda and DRC. I had no idea that deal was signed all the way back in June. Here, I thought it was new. That tells you what media craft is like at the professional political level. It's a good thing to have people like Alex Ward, Nancy Youssef, and David Rennie here to cut through it and let you know what the stage craft really means. I want to get your thoughts on what's in your notebook, what stories we should be watching. David, you're first. Look, that national security strategy also had some unbelievably aggressive language about Europe in which the Trump administration says that European governments are betraying Western civilization by allowing mass migration into Europe and that the Trump administration will work to try and undermine the European Union by working with hard right parties that are devoted to breaking the European Union.

1:24:32That is astonishing language. It's now in your national security strategy. Nancy. I'm a geek, so I'm looking for the next report to come out, which is the national defense strategy, which we expect in a few days, which will sort of try to codify Pentagon resources towards what we've just been talking about, the national strategic strategy. Alex Ward. Let me combine Europe and Israel in a fascinating thing happening in Eurovision, where right now you've seen four countries decide to withdraw from the competition because Israel is going to be in it. And if you only think Eurovision is a Will Ferrell movie, it's actually an amazing competition that the Europeans care deeply about.

1:25:08But this is now tugging at the culture of Europe, at the politics of what's going on and the geopolitics of what's going on. And then there's also the anti-Semitism issue with Europe is dealing with. So a lot of stuff all boiled into what seems like a sort of frivolous weird story, but actually just a lot of Venn diagram, if you will, of issues. Yeah, not frivolous at all. All right. I want to thank you for that look into your notebooks. Now, as we round out the hour here, I want to leave you with this record-breaking news. a diamond-studded crystal Fabergé egg that once belonged to Russia's imperial family has sold for a record, here it is, $30.2 million.

1:25:43It's called the Winter Egg. It's considered one of the legendary jeweler's most beautiful creations. It was bought by an anonymous bidder at Christie's auction in London. The egg is decorated with 4 ,500 diamonds, opens to reveal a tiny basket of white quartz flowers inside. I feel like I should be the auctioneer describing what's inside this beautiful thing. This treasure was commissioned by Tsar Nicholas II in 1913 as a present to his mother. That's my impression of a Christie's auctioneer. So they're saying in Russia, Mom, happy birthday. Here's an egg,$30 million worth of quartz and diamonds.

1:26:20Let's not scramble it. I want to thank Nancy Youssef, Defense Department National Security Reporter at the Atlantic Alex Ward National Security Reporter covering the White House and the State Department at The Wall Street Journal, and David Rennie at The Economist. 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.

1:26:57This 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.