The News Roundup For February 27, 2026

25:01What happened? It was confusing. And it was the latest example of the Trump administration having one of its departments make a decision, apparently without the president and his team being in the loop about it. And it seems like once the White House got wind of what was happening, they said, no, we're going to nip that in the bud because a lot of people are impacted by TSA pre-check. But to Anita's point, I think what's unique about this shutdown is that DHS is still operating. And while there's almost 300 ,000 employees under DHS, and some of them are going to be impacted by missed paychecks, and they're still having to go to work, there was reporting earlier today that surfaced that Coast Guard members, which falls under DHS, did get paid.

25:37And so it seems like they're trying to figure out loopholes because they know there's not going to be a resolution to this. It's like Democrats taking a stand. Yes, it's like the lowest key stand ever. Totally low key. But unlike some other departments, most of DHS is essential. And essential means they're reporting to work, right? So 90 % of staff is reporting to work. So the American people might not see any of those. And the shutdown then means that many, as Taylor mentioned, not the Coast guard. Okay, but many people do come to work and often don't get paid until afterward. Well, while Congress debates, President Trump is barreling ahead with his crackdown on legal and undocumented immigrants.

26:16Former ICE attorney Ryan Schwenk appeared on Capitol Hill as a whistleblower in high-profile testimony this week. He said that ICE supervisors are teaching new cadets to, quote, violate the Constitution. Listen. For the last five months, I watched ICE dismantle the training program, cutting 240 hours of vital classes from a 584-hour program, classes that teach the Constitution, our legal system, firearms training, the use of force, lawful arrests, proper detention, and the limits of officers' authority. Megan Scully, Ryan Schwenk basically said that nobody fails these courses. ICE cadets who don't know how to follow the Constitution, get questions wrong or tactics wrong, we graduate them anyway.

27:06That was his message. What else did we learn? Essentially that, you know, that the academy here is teaching the cadets to violate the Constitution. It's not just if you don't pass the test. And that, you know, particularly the Fourth Amendment, search and seizure. And this is kind of what we are seeing play out in real time, and what we saw in Minnesota and what we're seeing in other states, you know, entry into homes, into buildings, et cetera, et cetera. So this testimony came across as very credible. He just resigned about 10 days before this testimony. So his intelligence, his information was very up to the moment.

27:46And he was incredibly detailed as he told Democrats. It was a Democratic hearing as he walked Democrats through this training program. Well, we're going to head to a break. We're getting lots of comments from you still about the State of the Union and the state of the GOP in the State of the Union. Robert in Michigan says, with Trump's approval rating so low, why are Republicans still afraid of him? That's a lame duck question, Taylor. That's what you call that. At what point do Republicans decide that their fortunes diverge from his? For many of them, we're not there yet. He still has a lot of power in Republican primaries.

28:21Dave from Durham, North Carolina, wants to know why we should care about the State of the Union if Trump was just spewing lies in an inside the Beltway echo chamber. Does it matter? That's an existential question, I think, for you, Dave, for the people in the room, and especially for those of us who cover it. I think it's an important question, one that I ask myself all the time, having gone to about 20 of those speeches in my career. Does it, in fact, matter? I still say yes. I say absolutely yes. All right, we have to go to a short break. More on the State of the Union, immigration, and Minnesota.

28:56All to come. Stay with us.

29:02Welcome back to the 1A podcast. It's the weekly news roundup. Protests erupted on Columbia University's campus in New York this week after ICE agents detained student Ellie Aguilleva on Thursday morning. Then, before the end of the day, New York Mayor Zoran Mondani met with President Trump in a surprise visit to the Oval Office, and Agaiava was released. The school alleges that federal agents entered a university-owned building under false pretense, claiming that they were searching for a missing child. This was a dizzying turn of events at Columbia and in the Oval Office. Megan Scully, what do we know?

29:40Well, we know that Mayor Mondani traveled to Washington. I believe this is his second personal visit with the president since he was elected in November. And he brought up this specific case. And shortly after he left the Oval, he was notified that the student would be released. I think it goes to show, as Taylor pointed out regarding the closure and then the reopening of TSA and global entry, that sort of chaotic nature with which this administration often operates. And also, you know, Trump, when he's sort of pressed about these individual cases by somebody who he said during his State of the Union, he doesn't agree with Mamdani, but he likes him, that he will often reverse court.

30:28Is that the difference, Taylor, here, the personal touch? I mean, lots of people have been bagged by ICE at Columbia and other places. Lots of people have protested. Lots of court cases have been filed. And the Trump administration has steadfastly refused to let these people go. or if they do, they often charge them with crimes to get another bite at the apple. Here comes the mayor of New York, the socialist mayor of New York, just makes an ask, and she's out. We do see this happen over and over again, and I think it's a reminder, and President Trump, it's not unique to him, but presidents live in an echo chamber.

31:01They're only presented certain information that, you know, is important enough to reach their desk, and then when they learn about that, they can make decisions about it. But the president openly says, almost on a daily basis that he, whether it's DHS policy or economic policy or foreign policy, if people he respects or likes come to him and offer something, he'll act on that. So I think this is an example, even though it contrasts with all the cases you just outlined, all the court challenges. But the president has a good relationship with the mayor and he called, apparently the president called the mayor back shortly after they met in person and said, oh yeah, we got a release.

31:33And that was that. Meanwhile, Those who cover him know that it matters who he talks to, the last person he talks to. Yes. He often makes the decision off them. And it matters if he likes them. So Zoran Mamdani is getting dividends for having a good relationship with the New York president. It's why he presented the president with a fake New York Daily News cover that showed him the president being lauded for approving this idea for a federal housing project that Mamdani used as the reason for this meeting. And the president loved it and was happy to take a picture with it. And then the mayor's team held it next to the historic headline of Gerald Ford.

32:08Drop dead. Yes, drop dead New York City. So that's part of the game that is played. And he plays it well. Meanwhile, in the courts, let's stick with immigration for one more moment. Federal agents, a new lawsuit alleges that federal agents unconstitutionally retaliated against lawful observers of federal immigration enforcement operations. That retaliation includes, according to the suit, collecting personal information and labeling them domestic terrorists. That lawsuit was filed by the legal nonprofit Protect Democracy. And also in the courts, the Trump administration has been deporting migrants to third countries, countries different from their place of origin.

32:44Panama, Eswatini, and of course, El Salvador have all taken deportees from the United States by the hundreds. But on Wednesday, a federal judge in Massachusetts ruled that the administration could no longer do this without due process. The case centers around eight migrants who were removed from the United States, sent to South Sudan in March, then sent to Djibouti instead near South Sudan. None of the migrants had either country listed on their removal paperwork. Aminita Kumar, why has the administration sending migrants to third countries gotten into the courts in the first place? Why is this a tactic?

33:21Yeah, I mean, sometimes it's a tactic simply because we have a relationship. The United States has a relationship. the country agrees to take people, right? But I think it's also a tactic where it's showing immigrants that, you know, this is their tough action on immigration, that you're going to go to a place that you don't have any tie to at all, which is pretty scary for a person. And so I do think it's sort of their message to immigrants, and they keep coming back to this, and this judge keeps ruling, and this has gone to the Supreme Court, so it's probably not going to be resolved. Let's go to Minnesota.

33:57The Trump administration surge and immigration crackdown there appears to be waning. But the pain and punishment of Minnesotans continues, this time using the Medicaid health care program for low-income people. On Wednesday, Vice President J.D. Vance announced that the administration is temporarily cutting some of Minnesota's Medicaid funding over concerns about potential fraud. What's happening in Minneapolis, in California, in a number of states all across our country is that the generosity and the good hearts of our fellow Americans are being taken advantage of. We're taking that social contract that says that our American citizens, we take care of one another and we're allowing a few bad actors to get rich off that generosity of spirit instead of providing the services to the kids who need it.

34:45This is disgraceful. Some context for the social contract and Americans taking care of one another through Medicaid. Last year's cuts to Medicaid in the GOP's big, beautiful bill over a decade add up to more than$900 billion and increase the number of uninsured people by$10 million, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Taylor, the Trump administration has been talking about fraud in Minnesota for months. President Trump used it as the backdrop for some racist attacks on Somali immigrants and Somali Americans and used the involvement of Somali immigrants in at least one of the fraud cases as a justification for the crackdown in Minneapolis.

35:24So tell us, what evidence is there of Medicaid fraud in Minnesota? What's behind this vice president's announcement sort of making a marquee out of withholding hundreds of millions of dollars in Medicaid funds from the poor people of Minnesota? Yeah, there's a lot to this story. One, those funds you just alluded to have been approved by Congress and the Trump administration is arguing that they have the authority to basically control these funds despite the fact that Congress had approved them. So that's a potential legal challenge. Two, there is a legitimate fraud scandal playing out in Minnesota, but the Trump administration, as it has a tendency to do, is seemingly exaggerating the extent of it.

36:03The Justice Department has charged almost 100 people there with allegations of fraud tied to$1 billion with a B, having to do with Medicare fraud. And of the 98 people they've charged, 85 of them are Somali because there's a large Somali community in Minnesota. We should also say, going back years, the case isn't new. It seems new, it's not. Yeah, it's not new, and it's something that Minnesota's Democratic leadership has acknowledged they dropped the ball on and that they have to kind of pick up the pieces from. What the Trump administration has latched onto, there's a conservative YouTuber named Nick Shirley who spent some time in Minnesota recently and then published what he called a documentary that went very, very viral on X.

36:41We know the Trump administration, I say it almost every time I'm on, is a very online administration. and he was alleging that the fraud was so much more rampant. And that's where people might have seen clips about illegitimate daycare centers in Minnesota, all run by Somalians. And President Trump and Vice President Vance have looked at that video and have said, we need to act on this. The president in a State of the Union address alleged that the fraud is$19 billion. But again, the Justice Department has only linked so far to charges associated with$1 billion. So that's where the governor is upset saying, there is a problem that we're trying to tend to, but you're blowing this out of proportion and now you're taking away this congressionally approved funding.

37:18We should note here more than half of Minnesotans with Somali heritage were born in the United States and are American citizens. Of the foreign-born Somalis in Minnesota, 87 percent are naturalized U.S. citizens. Megan Scully, what's the real-world impact of these kinds of cuts or withholding of hundreds of millions of dollars in Minnesota and possibly other places like California? Well, as Taylor mentioned, this is legally questionable, but it could be precedent setting. So if the administration does withhold these fundings from Minnesota, there's nothing to stop them from doing it in another state.

37:54These programs, I should say, Medicaid improper payment rates, which is generally how the government measures this. And improper payments are not necessarily fraud. Sometimes it's clerical errors. But the improper payments for Medicaid are at less than 5 % nationwide, which is actually lower than a lot of private insurance programs. So fraud in Medicaid does happen, as we've seen play out, but certainly not at the levels that the administration is saying. How has fraud been handled in the past? Has the federal government just said, you don't get your money now, or have they investigated the fraud?

38:30Typically, it's an investigation, and then people are held accountable through the courts. this sort of baseball bat tactic, then there are people who are going to suffer the consequences who are legitimately on Medicaid, whether it is because they are low income or because they are people with disabilities. In Minnesota, for instance, transportation programs are essentially getting cut for people. So a wheelchair van that will take somebody to a doctor's appointment is not going to be operational for some of these people who are legitimately on Medicaid. That then has reverberating consequences for people's health, but also for the economy, because in many states, these Medicaid cuts that are already on the horizon are forcing many rural hospitals to close because they can't deal with the influx of uninsured patients.

39:20This is only going to get worse in the months ahead. So if this goes beyond Minnesota, the compounding effects of this are going to be really very acute for individual Americans and the economy writ large. Well, speaking of the Trump administration and America's health, President Trump's second nominee for Surgeon General, the name's Dr. Casey Means, was in front of senators this week trying to get confirmed. Now, Means is a friend of HHA Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an advocate for his Make America Healthy Again agenda. She is not currently a practicing physician, does not have an active license, which was an issue in her hearing.

39:59Like RFK, she's expressed anti-scientific views about vaccines. Do you believe that there's no evidence that the flu vaccine has efficacy in reducing serious injury or hospitalization? I, I, I. This is an easy one, doctor. This is an easy one. I support the CDC's guidance on the flu vaccine, and I will always be working with the CDC, ASIP, and the agency. So you believe it is an efficacious vaccine to reduce hospitalization? Is or is not. Is. You believe it is. As I said, I support the CDC's guidance. An exchange there between Casey Means and Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia. Anita Kumar, what more do we know about Casey Means?

40:45And is she going to have 50 votes to get approved in Senate? Yeah, I mean, there were a lot of very pointed questions, largely about vaccines, but other issues as well. We know that she's 38. She attended Stanford Medical School. She's been, as you mentioned, training. She was training to become a surgeon, but opted to leave, quote, traditional medicine to study the root causes of why Americans are sick. She's been asked a lot of questions about why she doesn't have that medical license. She says she doesn't need it and she's not going to, you know, try to get that for this job if she does get it.

41:18It's been questioned quite a bit. I would say the vaccine piece is the is the key one, though. She she would not say directly if she would encourage mothers to vaccinate their children. When asked about autism and vaccines, she said science is never settled. So there were a lot of questions, Republicans and Democrats. What does Senator Bill Cassidy say about all this? I mean, he feels like he got burned once by RFK on the issue of vaccines. I don't know. Has he said anything? I haven't seen if he commented on this specifically, but he's made his frustrations clear with the contradictions. He has made his frustrations clear.

41:52He asked some pointed questions at the hearing itself. He's not said whether he will come out against her. All right, we'll keep an eye out for that. I want to make sure we talk politics a little bit before we round out the hour because primaries are coming next Tuesday in places like Texas. Let's go back to Trump at the State of the Union, who, of course, knows the midterms are coming and knows that affordability, whether he likes it or not, is a big issue. One of the primary reasons for our country's stunning economic turnaround, the biggest in history where the Dow Jones broke 50 ,000 four years ahead of schedule and the S &P hit 7 ,000 where it wasn't supposed to do it for many years were tariffs.

42:34Speaking to the Democratic side of the aisle there, Anita Kumar, that's the affordability issue. Let's just talk Texas. There's a big primary coming up on the Republican side. John Cornyn, sitting senator, being primaried by two major candidates, including the attorney general, Ken Paxton, a MAGA favorite. We'll talk about the Democrats for a minute, too. I don't know how much the affordability question plays into a Republican primary for Senate. What's the dynamic there? Could John Cornyn be out of a job in Texas? He could. It's a very nasty race. It's very personal. And so, you know, there's just a lot of money pouring in, a lot of Republicans that are, as we quoted in Politico the other day, freaking out about this.

43:16I mean, they are worried, Republicans, that if John Cornyn loses the primary, either now or at the runoff time, and Kim Paxton wins, that they could lose the seat. Now, we say that a lot about Texas, and it's been decades since that's happened. It's also been decades since a Democrat has won Texas. Democrats believe that Trump is doing so poorly in the polls and they're winning so many special elections and outperforming so well that maybe, maybe, oh, they're praying maybe this is their year. It's James Tallarico, the Texas state representative versus Jasmine Crockett, member of Congress in a primary.

43:50What do we need to know about this race, Taylor? And who has the best chance of reaching for that chalice of a Democratic senator seat? So James Tallarico has gone very viral over the last few years. I would compare him to a Pete Buttigieg. He offers this kind of, you know, academic positive spin on politics. Very Christian. Very Christian. He's a seminary student. He appeared on Joe Rogan's show. Rogan, after talking to him, said you should run for president. He's gotten a lot of attention. Jasmine Crockett is a firebrand on Capitol Hill. She gets into a lot of arguments during committee hearings.

44:21Jeff Zeleny, the CNN correspondent, was in Texas. I actually wrote this down. He said this in his report yesterday from down there. He said Democrats have to choose between firing up the base or expanding it. Crockett fires up the base. Tallarico's goal is to expand the Democratic base, and I think that represents this primary well. Oh, and represents the dilemma of Democratic politics, especially in a place like Texas. That's Taylor Popolars of Spectrum News. I want to thank Megan Scully of Bloomberg and Anita Kumar of Politico. Thanks to all of our domestic news panel, but we're just getting started with this week's headlines.

44:54When we come back after the break, we'll have a new panel with all of the news from around the globe. Stay with us.

45:05Now let's get right back into the international portion of our weekly news roundup. Talks in Geneva as President Trump threatens war on Iran. India and Israel make nice while killing continues in Gaza. Pakistan declares open war on Afghanistan. A strange and deadly shootout on the coast of Cuba seems to surprise U.S. officials. and more international fallout for powerful men in the Epstein files. Let's get right into it with our guest. Nancy Youssef is here, staff writer at The Atlantic, covering national security in the Defense Department. Hi, Nancy. Hi, Todd. Joyce Karam is here, editor-in-chief at All Monitor.

45:43Thanks for being here, Joyce. Great to see you. Great to be here, Todd. James Kitfield is with us, not in studio today, but with us nonetheless senior fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. Hi, James. Hey, good to be with you. Now, our panel is here to answer our questions and, of course, your questions and to field your comments. Hey, your opinions, too. If you have them, you can email us, 1a at wamu.org. Well, as I mentioned, talks in Geneva between President Trump's envoys, Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner, and the Iranian government concluded after several hours without a breakthrough.

46:18But progress is what both sides said after that meeting. The talks were widely considered a last chance for a diplomatic solution before Trump opts for war. Tehran says that important and practical proposals were advanced during negotiations. Joyce, another round of talks mediated by the Omanis and the IAEA scheduled for Monday. So more talks on the agenda here. We also know that Secretary of State Marco Rubio now says he will travel to Israel next week. putting all of those things together, the cryptic but positive sort of messaging coming out of the round of meetings this week. What do we know about what happened Thursday and where this might be headed?

47:02So if you put the Rubio trip, the technical talks on Monday, that's definitely positive. But if you look on the other side, what happened on Thursday, the third round of talks, there was no breakthrough. There are still big gaps when it comes to enrichment. The U.S. wants zero enrichment. They want complete dismantling of three main Iranian nuclear sites. The Iranians said, no, we're not going to do that. We also know President Trump met with Cain, joint chief of staff, and with Cooper, the head of CENTCOM in the region. This morning, what we were looking at was China, was Canada evacuating citizens from Iran.

47:41The U.S. ordered authorized partial departure of non-essential staff from Jerusalem. So this could go either way. The president could order strikes as soon as this weekend. The carrier, the U.S. military hardware in the region or approaching Israel and the Middle East is at its largest since the Iraq war in 2003. Three. So given where things are, I would be cautious that it's just not looking good. James Kitfield, what is your perspective on this dynamic, as Joyce mentioned? Maybe positive signs coming, at least the rhetoric coming out of meetings, technical talks still in the offing, but a massive U.S.

48:25military buildup in the Gulf and in the region. Yeah, it is a massive buildup. And as I said previously on the show before the operation in Venezuela, when you put that much military deployments in a region in a threatening manner, it becomes its own sort of logic that it has to go forward or there has to be some off-ramp that both Trump can claim as a victory and the Iranians can stomach. And it's a little difficult to see what that's going to be. I mean, we should remember that we've gone from the Trump administration demanding the moon as is their normal negotiating tactic. You have to stop building missiles.

49:04You You have to stop supporting your terrorist proxies in the region. You have to give up totally your nuclear program. Now it's down to apparently just the nuclear portfolio, which is a sign of progress. And if there is a deal, it probably involves Iran basically saying we're not going to for the foreseeable future be enriching any more uranium. But that'd be a tough pill for them to swallow. So everyone's on pins and needles trying to figure out what's going to happen. Sorry, isn't what you just described, James, and anyone can chime in on this, very, very similar to an agreement known as the JCPOA that Donald Trump tore up when he became president?

49:43We had an existing nuclear deal with Iran. Nancy, am I off base? What James Kitfield just described is it as a qualitative matter. It's quite similar. That's right. The 2015 agreement that was reached in, it took months to reach it, and it took an extensive conversation about technical parts of the program. I actually think any deal reached now, it would be harder to reach that standard, given that that didn't just include the United States, but five allies. President Trump left that agreement in 2018. But more than that, what we've seen is a president that has engaged in talks with Iran only to then conduct strikes in the midst of those talks.

50:20As you'll recall, last June, the United States in the midst of talks and conducted what it called Operation Midnight Hammer, which sent B2s into Iran. And so I think the challenge is not only, as you rightly point out, the decision to leave what's known in Washington as Jikpoa, but to now be potentially on the second example of the United States engaging in talks with Iran only to now launch strikes in the middle of what is supposed to be the midst of diplomacy. When this latest iteration of confrontation first started, Donald Trump said it was about students. It was about protesters in the streets.

50:55Help us on the way. We're going to protect you. Those protests, Nancy, continue. University students, others in the streets across Iran, as recently as last weekend, there are reports of armed plainclothes police and security forces flooding universities in an attempt to crush these protests. What is the state of protest? What are students demanding and what do we know about the regime's response domestically right now? So you rightly point out that the first time the United States considered sending military force and was in the midst of those protests, which started December 28th, but were shut down by the Iranians because they killed, by some estimate, as many as 30 ,000 people.

51:36And so what we saw last Sunday was protesters coming back to the streets, I think in part because it was the 40th day of mourning, which is an important period. And I also think it was an effort to sort of revitalize the protests because I think they're hoping that that in and of itself will lead to the kind of regime change. Yes, the regime is still in power, but its hold is tenuous and it came at great cost to keep that power. Yeah, go ahead, Chris. It shows you just how much of the new generation is fed up with the regime. That's even when they kill 32 ,000, when they're shooting them in the middle of the street, they're still coming out, chanting, you know, death to Khamenei, freedom.

52:18So we are at a very important juncture in Iran since, you know, the Iran 1979 that we know this is a different generation. This is some, you know, groups that want a different Iran. Well, the president has done very, very little to make a public case for a military confrontation with Iran for an invasion or war. Certainly when you compare it to the run-up to the Iraq war, based on false information of weapons of mass destruction if you want to crack your history book there, but nevertheless, a long run-up and a long effort to build public support for that. President Trump has done nothing of the kind, but he did bring an impending attack on Iran up at the State of the Union address on Tuesday.

52:59After a midnight hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, and in particular, nuclear weapons, yet they continue. My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can't let that happen. And the president also raised for the first time the charge that Iran was, quote, working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States. Iranians denied it and attacked Trump for his rhetoric. The buildup is massive.

53:38150 aircraft moved from bases in Europe and the Middle East to the area since the second round of talks ended on February 17th. Nancy, you've reported on what a war with Iran could look like, depending on the goal. What do you potentially foresee here? So I think you bring up a very important point, that we haven't heard an outline for what the U.S. wants to achieve. And the reason that's so important, other than the obvious ones of domestic political buy-in and preparing the American public for the consequences of that military action, is that purpose shapes the military operation. So if the operation is, for example, going after the Iranian ballistic missile capability, which, as you noted, the president referenced in his State of the Union speech, then you see strikes using fighter jets to go after things like the roads on which they transport those missiles, the warehouses in which they store them, the places where they build them, for example.

54:36If you're going after their nuclear capability, then you need bombers that can carry ordnance that is designed to penetrate deep into the ground because so much of it is buried underneath. The other thing is we've already seen from Iran some signals of what a potential response from them could look like. They had conducted an exercise on the Strait of Hormuz. And I think one reason that they did that was to say that if you come at us, we have a navy that is capable of creating a choke point and where one-fifth of the world's oil travels. We also saw them fly a drone over the USS Abraham Lincoln, again, signaling that we can get towards your forces.

55:11And so that's the dance that's happening right now. What does the president want to achieve so that we therefore know what kind of military campaign we could see shaped around that? And lawmakers want to know, too. The Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, went to Capitol Hill this week. He briefed what's called the Gang of Eight, basically congressional leaders and intelligence leaders on the Hill. And when Democrats came out of that meeting, some of them issued statements that seemed quite grave. But here's the Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Closed-door briefings are fine, but the administration has to make its case to the American people as something as important as this.

55:46James Kitfield briefly, the reaction from a lot of people coming out of that meeting was quite grave. They didn't share classified information, but many of them seem to betray an idea that an attack is imminent. Sure. And, you know, we had this reporting this week that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has warned the administration that they are, and this is one of the worst kept secrets there is, that we're very low on the munitions, air defense munitions, that would be very much needed to protect places where U.S., you know, access bases in the region. So this is not going to be a one and done.

56:25Iran has said itself that it will escalate. What do we know about the American public's appetite for this war from Trump's base, from American voters more broadly? If that effort hasn't been made, do the American people want this? Will they sustain support for it? It's a great question. It's hard to imagine the base wanting another war in the Middle East. I think that's one of the reasons they voted President Trump in. And to Nancy's point, President Trump never outlines what his goals are. And I think that's part of his negotiating style, which he basically wants to claim great victory no matter what happens.

57:06But if you actually lay out your goals in an operation like this, if you don't achieve them, it's a bad look. So we're not getting any kind of sort of preparing the public for what exactly they're trying to accomplish. And it's very hard. I mean, maybe a one and done like last summer, no boots on the ground. He never talks about soldiers on the ground. Maybe that works for him, but I think a lot of people are telling him, especially in the Joint Chiefs, that this could escalate into something that is not a one and done that could take weeks or months and response and go up the escalating ladder.

57:47It could be pretty ugly. So I think that it's a problem that he hasn't really leveled with the American public of what he's trying to achieve here and why, after we said we obliterated their nuclear program last summer, we're already back into the situation we are in now. Within the last two weeks, Steve Whitcoff, Nancy Youssef raised this in the break. After the president said Iran's nuclear capability was obliterated, Steve Whitcoff has said they could have a nuclear weapon within a week. Both of those things are not true, James. Can I just say that this talk about Iran could put a nuclear warhead on a missile that could reach the United States is rubbish.

58:28Iran has never shown anything like the capability of an ICBM that could reach the United States. Reminds me of Dick Cheney's talks about mushroom clouds before the Iraq invasion. It's just nonsense. So we should get that out there right now. it. That's just not true. So we're dealing with a White House that has become a disinformation source in many ways as the American people try to calculate for themselves whether war with Iran is worth the lives and the treasure and the diplomacy. Joyce, what about inside Iran? How are they calculating? How is the leadership calculating? We've talked about unrest in the streets.

59:05We've talked about the American posture. We've talked about Iran's desire probably for a weapon, yes, but also their strategic desires around the region, pestering Israel and worse. What are they calculating right now with American forces on their doorstep? So what we know, what we're hearing from the Iranians is it depends on the kind of attack. If this is another 37-hour operation, like the one we saw at Night Hammer in June, then they can sustain and they will rebuild, they will restart their nuclear program the after. The nuclear program is not something you can completely eliminate. I mean, it's the know-how, it's the scientists, it's decades-old program.

59:45So that's one. However, if the attack is, you know, what Nancy mentioned earlier, that it would hit the IRGC, it would hit their security, and it might go after their leadership, it might go after Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 86 years old. In that case, yes, this could stretch out for weeks. We could see Iranian retaliation not just in Hormuz. Iraqi militias are threatening the U.S. today. The Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon. So this could become a larger war. The U.S. already evacuated some embassy staff in Beirut, Lebanon. The British are evacuating in Iran. So it depends on the operation that President Trump authorizes and how far he wants to go.

1:00:30Iran has a large and vibrant Kurdish population in the north. If the regime deteriorates or is weakened, one contingency to think about that I haven't heard anyone really consider, what happens if those Kurds in the north decide that now is their time for a Kurdish state? I think Turkey wouldn't tolerate it. But the risk here for regional conflict is gigantic. For sure. I mean, you have the Kurds, you have the Sunnis and the Ahwas. So you could see internal strife in Iran. You could see fragmentation of Iran. But for such operation, for such developments to take place, it has to go for more than, you know, two days.

1:01:10And it might then involve troops on the ground. The other question, Todd, is will Israel join? Yes. And does Israel have, you know, long-term plans to, you know, for regime change in Iran? Stephen thinks that the administration is desperate to distract from Trump's involvement in the Epstein files and trying to distract MAGA from other failures. Robert in Sagatok, Michigan, says, it angers me that Trump, who pulled out of an agreement that international inspectors said was working, is leading us toward war. And we got this from Martha, who says Netanyahu in Israel seems to be pushing Trump to make these aggressive moves.

1:01:46He needs this for his own political purposes so that Israelis will be distracted by his failures in Gaza. Well, thanks for those messages, 1A listeners. It's a good time for us to then talk about Gaza, where this week an Israeli airstrike killed two Palestinians in the northern part of the Strip, according to the territory's health officials. relatives identified those two as members of Hamas. And the Israeli military said it killed a militant who posed a threat to its forces in the southern part of Gaza near the yellow line. That's the temporary boundary established under the ceasefire agreement took effect on October 10th.

1:02:24It separates areas where Israeli forces deploy from Western areas to where Palestinians can move. Gaza's health ministry reports that at least 618 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the ceasefire in October. That brings the cumulative toll to more than 72 ,000 since the start of the war. Those numbers, of course, do not distinguish between civilians and Hamas fighters. Joyce, progress in the Gaza peace plan has stalled over disagreements of how Hamas should be disarmed. Israel's threatening to go back to full-scale war if Hamas is not disarmed. This has always been the major impediment to phase two or to moving the peace process beyond this phase one non-cessation of fighting.

1:03:14It was clear at the very first Board of Peace meeting, in fact. Give us some context on the disarmament issue, where it stands and whether it can be overcome, Hamas in particular. So, of course, this was the phase two plan for Gaza that part of it Hamas would disarm. The thing is, it was vague on sequences and what arms, what heavy weapons or lighter weapons that Hamas may give up. Where Hamas stands today, Hamas, if it disarms, it will be against its existence. It's, I mean, the group is called Harekat al-Muqawwam al-Islamiyya, the resistance group. Since the 80s, it's built its reputation, its foundation on fighting Israel militarily.

1:03:57So it's nowhere complete disarmament. Some ideas on the table is, listen, Hamas, maybe you can agree to some of the PLO principles, PLO charter, and enter the PLO and give your weapons to the PLO. or maybe you just lay down your heavy weapons and work with an ISF, an international security force in Gaza, allow them in and become, you know, sort of find a political path and become a Palestinian political group. But we are nowhere near there because the Israelis are also growing more impatient that if phase two doesn't commence, you have, you know, the far right, the Smotrich and others, they want to go back heavily into Gaza.

1:04:43Is Hamas interested in a cessation of violence or is confrontation the point? For Hamas, they just want to keep control of Gaza. And they have to a large part, especially of the south. So for them, it's just a matter of buying time now, trying to as much say we are agreeing to the plan without disarming. Meanwhile, in Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going outside of his borders to build what he called a hexagon of alliances. Just picture that if you're not a geometry expert. Hexagon of alliances. These are allied nations in or around the Middle East to collectively stand against what he calls radical adversaries.

1:05:26His proposed group includes Greece and Cyprus along with other unnamed Arab, African, and Asian states. At the core of this block is India. Nancy Youssef, let's start with the vision for this alliance. What's the hexagon and how does Netanyahu see it working? I'm so glad you mentioned India because he announced this on the eve of Modi's visit to Israel. I think broadly it's a strategic grouping put together by Netanyahu to create an alliance that more closely works on things like defense, intelligence. The idea is that they share common security concerns. To me, it suggests that he's trying to build an alternative sort of alliance and relationships abroad, particularly as the prospect of normalization with other Arab states is not in the same pacing that I think some had hoped because of disagreements from Gaza.

1:06:20It's all very theoretical, though. Whether it actually comes to fruition is something else. But I think it is a sign of an Israel that has felt that its old relationships are not in the same place that they were post-Gaza and trying to reconfigure new ones. And for India, I think it's an opportunity to expand its relationship and particularly its defense cooperation and purchasing of weapons from Israel. Well, let's hear from the prime minister, Narendra Modi. This was the first time an Indian prime minister had addressed the Knesset, which is the legislature in Israel. Here's a little bit of his speech.

1:06:56We are democracies shaped by history and focus on the future. Our partnership is grounded in shared experience and shared aspirations. Our strong partnership not only serves national interests, but also contributes to global stability and prosperity. Well, James Kitfield, Israel is facing increasing international isolation. You wouldn't know it to hear the prime minister of the world's largest nation and largest democracy there in front of the Knesset. How is this growing affection between India and Israel beneficial to both countries? Well, it certainly helps. Israel is feeling quite isolated after the blowback from its operations in Gaza.

1:07:56And if you recall, Modi was in 2017, became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel. I think Modi clearly wants to sort of diversify away from his dependence on Russia, especially on defense weapons. It has, Israel has become a top supplier of India in terms of defense capabilities. And it's something Israel is very good at. And so I think it's, they're kind of reaching a common agreement that they both need friends. And I find it kind of unusual since India has always in the past been a strong supporter of Palestinian statehood. but here we have this unusual alliance building between India and Israel.

1:08:41And yeah, it makes sense in a certain way. Joyce, the skeptic's view of this relationship also from Israel's perspective is that Netanyahu may be able to motivate and find a home for Modi's anti-Muslim attitudes. Exactly. This is an anti-Islamist, what you want to call it, hexagon, whatever, six-party alliance, whatever. But at the core of it, the anti-Islamist nature of thinking, you know, Modi or Netanyahu. I mean, they've had terrible attacks. They've had terrible attacks in India. Of course. But then also, you know, they've had huge economic projects together, even regionally. If you look at the IMAC corridor they're trying to build, it goes from India through Israel.

1:09:21Lebanon just announced this week that they may join to Europe. The other alliance they're in is called I2U2. It's Israel, India, U.S., and UAE. So this can give us, you know, some idea to what Netanyahu is thinking in an election year in Israel, of course. That's Joyce Karam of All Monitor. Nancy Youssef from The Atlantic is here. And James Kitfield from the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress. We move on to Ukraine now, as we do every week here on the International News Roundup. Another grim milestone in that country. Four years of war after Russia's invasion in February of 2022.

1:10:00to. Russia initially thought it could capture Kiev within days of the full-scale invasion. Vladimir Putin miscalculated about that. Donald Trump campaigned with the boast that he could end the war in one day. He miscalculated about that. Now analysts are calling the conflict a war of attrition with little incentive for Putin to stop fighting. Four years in, Nancy Youssef, where do these two sides stand now? Well, as you note, it is a war of attrition, And I think you're seeing a couple of things on the Ukrainian side. I think you're seeing questions about sort of the constitution of the people to keep enduring these losses because 2025 was the deadliest year for civilians in Ukraine.

1:10:46And so the question becomes, can Ukraine continue to fight amid a United States that isn't providing the kind of support? Can the Europeans step up in a way that will sort of fill that gap? And I think the other question becomes what is an acceptable outcome? Arguably, the U.S. is asking the Ukrainians to give up territory to the Russians that they haven't lost yet. And so if you believe that, then for the Ukrainians, it is an existential threat to them to make the agreement as it's sort of been laid out. For Russia, the challenges are economic because we're now starting to see this year for the first time in real tangible ways, real impacts to their economy.

1:11:31So much of it has been devoted to defense. We're starting to see a sagging economy there. And so for the Russians, can they continue to tolerate this economically, this heavy investment in the military, not in things like AI and more future assets that would benefit their economy longer term? President Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke on the phone on Tuesday. Axios reported Trump said he wants a peace deal by the summer. Meanwhile, Ukrainian officials and Trump envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff met in Geneva. Zelensky has not been shy about his frustration over the ongoing impasse to end the war.

1:12:10He said this week he wants Trump to, quote, stay on our side. And in talking to the CBC in Canada, warned of Russia's warmongering. Putin will not stop. We are stopping Putin now. We have to recognize reality. Putin attacks us by missiles. His missiles already can go on 5 ,000 kilometers. In three years, Putin will have all the missiles 10 ,000 kilometers. Nobody is saved in the world. So if he can do it here, why he can't do it in other countries? Sometimes I speak with Americans that they don't believe that Putin can attack by the MSAS any continent, including the United States. Nancy Youssef Zelensky wants Europe and the United States to understand not the Ukrainian implications, but the global implications of Russian aggression.

1:12:57We talked about the State of the Union earlier in the show. You didn't hear a strong U.S. sort of marking of the anniversary. If he wants that, I understand it. But we haven't seen signals from this administration that they're as committed to it. Well, let's talk about China. While we're talking about Ukraine and Russia and the four-year anniversary of that war, on Wednesday, German Chancellor Friedrich Maers traveled to China to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping to talk about deepening their financial ties. Countries around the world are realigning their relationships thanks to President Trump's tariffs and America's pullback from alliances and international cooperation.

1:13:33On Tuesday, Trump's global tariff rate of 10 % took effect. He says they're working on raising that to 15%. Of course, that's after the Supreme Court struck down President Trump's previous tariffs last Friday. Mares and Xi also did talk about the war in Ukraine. The German chancellor said he asked Xi to use his influence to help end the war. Joyce, what kind of support is China providing Russia for their end of the war? And could pressure, or at least an ask from Germany, help make any sort of impact here? First thought, it's really interesting that we've seen in the last three months, more European leaders go to China than come to Washington.

1:14:15We've seen, you know, Starmer, Macron, and now Mertz. Earlier, you know, was Ursula von der Leyen of the EU. On Ukraine, specifically, we saw Mertz, you know, urging Xi to just pressure Russia to come to a settlement. But it's not that simple for China because there are economic links. There's banking support, credit support that China is offering Russia, and it's helping both sides. So despite, you know, the European efforts, the pressure on China, it doesn't look like China is anywhere close to just fracture its alliance with Putin. They're paying very little cost for, you know, the return from what they're getting from Russia.

1:15:01Well, we were just talking, I was just mentioning we're doing this show on Monday, James Kittfield, that takes in a lot of things about Taiwan's defense, but really uses Ukraine and Ukraine's defense against Russia as the example for how Taiwan is trying to learn. What does China see when it sees this dynamic? What does China need from this Ukraine war if it has eyes on Taiwan? Well, I think that Taiwan is looking at Ukraine and saying, we need to sort of look at this drone warfare that has sort of come to the fore. But I think China's looking at it and saying, Russia thought it was going to take Ukraine in a matter of weeks.

1:15:40And it's now just looking at the four-year anniversary and saying, maybe Taiwan's going to be a little more difficult than we thought. But I still believe that Xi has made bringing Taiwan back into the fold his legacy-defining issue. So I still worry very much about what China, and I think China also sees in the Trump administration's sort of withdrawal from alliances around the world as an opportunity. So Taiwan remains a huge concern to a lot of people in geopolitics. All right, let's bring it back to the Americas now. Let's talk about that very strange and unfortunately deadly confrontation off of Cuba on Wednesday.

1:16:21The Cuban government says 10 would-be terrorists, they call it, approached the island in a speedboat that apparently left from the United States and fired on troops. The Cuban military or the Coast Guard returned fire, killing four people, wounding six people on that boat. Cuba's interior ministry says the group of Cubans were living in the United States and that the U.S. is conducting its own investigation. Here's the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. It is highly unusual to see shootouts in open sea like that. It's not something that happens every day. It's something, frankly, that hasn't happened with Cuba in a very long time.

1:16:58But we're going to find out. We're not going to base our conclusions on what they've told us. And I'm very, very confident that we will know the full story of what happened here, and we will know it soon. And then we'll respond appropriately based on what that information tells us. Nancy Yusef, how are national security operators looking at this incident? It seems hard to tell for sure. it seems like the Secretary of State was genuinely surprised by this event. I think so. I don't think people are disputing the facts. I think they're asking what was the intent of those on the boat, and that'll be sort of the core of the investigation.

1:17:33You know, this comes at a time when there's real tensions between the United States and Cuba. Since the January 2nd capture of Maduro, which Venezuela was the key supplier of oil to Cuba, those oil shipments have all but stopped and has devastated Cuba economically. And so that this incident happened amid those tensions, I think, exacerbates the discourse around it. The other thing I would note is that the United States has done a number of boat strikes in that area as well. And so I think it contributes to sort of the tensions about how the U.S. has approached security in the Caribbean. And so I think we'll see an investigation.

1:18:14I think there'll be an earnest one. And what it'll attempt to answer is whether they really did, the occupants of that boat, posed a threat. I think we'll see one, as you note, from Secretary of State Rubio, but also from Florida authorities. And you raise an important point. American boat strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific side off the coast of Colombia and Venezuela continue. They are way down in the news, but these deadly strikes from the U.S. military continue. They continue. You know, we haven't seen investigations into that or details about what's happened or talking an explanation to the public about why these particular boats needed to be struck.

1:18:49James, Cuba-U.S. relations are especially bad. Nancy Youssef just ran down all of the reasons why, especially post-Maduro in Venezuela. There is, of course, a long history of confrontation here. This deadly skirmish a mile off the coast of Cuba reminded a lot of people of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. What do you see in confrontations like this one that left four people dead? I mean, it's going to be a very interesting investigation to see what was behind this. But beyond just stopping Venezuela oil from reaching Cuba, the United States has basically embargoed oil from not only Venezuela, but Mexico.

1:19:30go. So Cuba is teetering. And I think that some right-wing Cuban Americans might have gotten sort of, like you said, a Bay of Pigs idea to go in there and hit at the government at its moment of weakness. But we really just don't know. If that was the case, it was a bunch of rookies that make the Bay of Pigs look like a well-planned operation. Which it was not. Which it was not. If you read the history of that operation, a textbook failure. really. But it also shows, I mean, Cuba is not Venezuela. And, you know, no matter what success can be seen in Washington, Venezuela is, it's not going to be as easy to replicate it in Cuba.

1:20:12The younger Castro is not Dulce Rodriguez. So this is the new realities that the administration has to grapple with as it seeks change in Cuba. Well, every week here on the show, one way or the other, we've been talking about accountability or lack of accountability stemming from the Epstein files, and this is an international story in addition to an American story. We go to the UK, where last week we covered the shocking arrest and investigation of the former Prince Andrew, now simply known as Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, over his ties to Jeffrey Epstein. This week, another high-profile arrest.

1:20:50Peter Mandelson, Lord Mandelson, former UK ambassador to the United States. Police arrested him, like the former Prince Andrew, on suspicion of misconduct in public office. No charges yet, but that investigation is ongoing. This week, the UK government said it will release files about Andrew's appointment as trade envoy when he allegedly shared government reports with Epstein. That seems to be the crux of the investigation there. More files are expected soon on Mandelson's appointment as ambassador to the United States. A big question right now, can Keir Starmer, the PM, survive what's to come?

1:21:27He appointed Mandelson in Washington to go to Washington in 2024. Joyce Karam, Keir Starmer is experiencing a moment of weakness. He is lagging in the polls. Special elections in the UK last night, a by-election, a small election didn't go his way. And he's getting a lot of pressure and blowback over what a lot of Brits see as a suborning. No, this has been a terrible year so far for Starmer. He's kind of overpromised but underdelivered. You know, he had these big promises, free movement with the EU, didn't get that, nationalizing some of the services sectors, water. He didn't do that either. So he's deeply unpopular.

1:22:09As you mentioned, the election on Thursday, it just shows a new nature for British politics where it's not just the Labour and the Conservatives anymore. You have the Green Party, you have the reform. So it's not a good picture for Starmer, whether it's within his party or for the Labour Party more generally. And Mendelssohn, I mean, he's a big figure to be implicated in the Epstein files, not sexual misconduct, but receiving money from Epstein. So we'll see where that goes. But if you were betting today, I don't know how long he'll be prime minister. Nancy Youssef, there has been some accountability of elite men here in America, the fallout from the Epstein files.

1:22:55Larry Summers, former Treasury Secretary, is leaving Harvard. The owner of a high-profile talent agency, Wasserman, is giving up his ownership stake in his own company because of the Epstein files. But not in the halls of government, not like in the UK where government officials, royals literally are being dethroned because of this. It's different here. There's commercial accountability. There is very little governmental accountability. Yeah, and it's a complicated list of reasons why. I mean, and I don't mean to oversimplify it because I think a lot of people are asking the same thing when they see so many legal actions happening in law enforcement involvement across Europe.

1:23:37So under the Biden administration, the Epstein files were treated as a law enforcement matter. And it really kind of became a political one when elements of Trump supporters who also subscribe to QAnon and Pizzagate wanted the release of these files. And when they got it, it became a political problem for the president. And so you've seen the president now try to sort of distance from that. Whereas in the UK, when these files came out, again, in recent months, it was both a law enforcement matter and a political matter at the same time. And I think that's the key difference. And rightly, a political matter.

1:24:16You've got now a member of the royal family, the top, one-time top diplomat for the UK. And I think the fact that those are together have allowed this to become executed on more so than we've seen in the United States. Well, before we round out the hour, I want to make sure we touch on a couple of more important stories while we've got the experts here. James, overnight, Pakistani airplanes over Kabul and Pakistan declaring, quote, what it calls open war on Afghanistan. What's happening? Terrorist attacks are happening. There was a terrible February terrorist attack against a mosque where it killed almost 170 people, which was the worst attack in Pakistan's capital in, I think, two decades.

1:25:03And the people who Pakistan is blaming are the Afghan Taliban, who are basically supporting the Pakistani Taliban, who are allies in the war against the United States when we were in Afghanistan. and now the Pakistani Taliban is turning its eyes on the government and being harbored across the border in Afghanistan and Pakistan's had enough of it. Well, we'll call this sort of the reporter's notebook section of the show even though I have specific questions for you guys. There's another one for you, Nancy. Anthropic, which is the leading AI company, had a blow up at the Defense Department this week.

1:25:39I want to ask you about this specifically since it's your beat. Um, Anthropic was summoned by the defense secretary last week. And now this week, um, this is a major AI company saying, sorry, Pentagon, we can't meet your demands. What's going on here? What does the Pentagon want from Anthropic and from AI? So they want essentially for limits to be removed that Anthropic is saying that they cannot do for access. And at the crux of this is a question about the intersection of AI and national security in terms of how that information is labeled, how that information is processed, and what private sector can do versus what the government can do.

1:26:18Anthropics says mass surveillance is something we won't do and we won't participate in autonomous weapons. Is that what it's about? I think it is about that because this becomes the parameters in terms of how we define AI and the use of it going forward. And I think that's why you're seeing such an aggressive showdown really this week between Anthropoc and the Pentagon. And it's remarkable for this country to say, no, we're not going to go along and we will take the commercial or political hit coming from an administration that is known to be vindictive. That's right. Because I think at some point they will face the liability and consequences of it, that they can't do these things in a vacuum, even when they're being asked to do so on behalf of the government.

1:26:57Joyce Karam, what are you working on for this week? What's a story that you think we should be watching? Well, definitely. Iran, are we heading to war, or are we going to see a deal that's going to be the big story, you know, keeping us busy through the weekend and next week? Well, I want to thank our panelists for today. Nancy Youssef, staff writer at the Atlantic, covering national security in the Defense Department. Joyce Karam, editor-in-chief at All Monitor, a valued member of the Roundup family here. You all are, actually. And James Kitfield, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency in Congress.

1:27:27Well, before we go, I'm going to make some time for Punch. Punch the monkey. Oh, man. You know what I'm talking about? Of course. Yeah, of course you do. If you're not familiar, by the way, just Google it. Google Punch the monkey. You will see immediately how big of a deal this is. If you Google it, the animations start right away. Little Punch faces full of hearts careening down your screen. People love this little guy. He's only six months old. He's an orphaned macaque at the Ichikawa City Zoo in Japan. After being abandoned by his mother months ago, zookeepers, they're giving him little plushies.

1:28:06He's bonded with the plushies, an orangutan from Ikea. He's a social media star. Apparently, he's making improvements. Panel, punch thoughts. Nancy, you're looking at me. What do you think of this monkey? I mean, there's no way to weigh in that doesn't become the most controversial thing I say on this show. Nancy Youssef unwilling to weigh in on Punch the Monkey, not even to say, I heard he's grooming that little plushie, and that means healing for a young monkey punch. We wish you the best. My kid is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our acting executive producer.

1:28:43Alexandra Botee is our acting senior managing producer. Aileen Humphreys is our senior producer and editor of 1A On Demand. And Thomas Liu produces our podcast. It's 1A.