The News Roundup For January 23, 2026

27:17But it's really an independent body, right? Right. And so the question is, how much could he get involved and for what reason? And they, as you said, they really did seem skeptical of that. More than a month has passed since the government's deadline to release the Epstein files. That includes millions of documents related to investigations into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. This was a legal deadline reminder set by Congress in November. But earlier this month, the DOJ said it had released just one percent of the files. Wendy, is the sheer volume of this the major reason for the delay here?

27:50We really don't know. And the why the delay is absolutely the question that Ro Khanna and Thomas Massey, the two congressmen, one Democrat, one Republican, have been asking DOJ and demanding to know. They have released a tiny, tiny fraction. There are thousands of pages left to be released. And while, yes, they have to be redacted, the DOJ has had plenty of time. They knew this law was coming. It was passed. Then they were given more time, then more time after that. And they've still only released tiny, tiny little bits. And even the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's antics have been assaults, I should say, have been pushing and pushing for this to come out.

28:35Some of the president's most vocal supporters, like Lauren Boebert, who went against the president to get the files released, are now this week defending the administration's delay. Do we know why the about face? All I can imagine—no, in short—but all I can imagine is that they have decided that they need the president for more things. There was a bill that would have affected funding to Colorado that Lauren Boebert was fighting for. Maybe she wants that more than she wants the Epstein files released. But again, this is where Republicans start to stand up to the president and then cave and accede to whatever he wants.

29:12We've also seen this start to affect other cases. The Justice Department or the attorneys involved here can't really get into other things or they're delayed in other cases because they say they have 500 people working on this particular case on redactions, including in the Southern District of New York. And so you've seen in the courts up there that people are saying, well, look, we're delayed here in something else. And so I think you're starting to see the repercussions. They still say they have two million documents left. So this could go on for a very long time. We got an email from Zach responding to our earlier conversation about Doge to say very quickly on Trump's claim that everyone that was Doge went to the private sector.

29:51As a career government epidemiologist who is no longer employed with the CDC, I can personally attest to the fact that many other doged epidemiologists have not yet gone to the private sector because we're all competing for the same positions. That's right. Zach, thanks for sharing that and your personal story with us. We appreciate it. This week did mark the first full year of President Trump's second term. Less than a third of voters say the country is better off now than it was before Donald Trump took office. That's according to a new poll from the New York Times and Siena University. A majority of respondents also said the president is focusing on the wrong issues.

30:28Just over half of them said Trump's policies have made life less affordable for them. Still, 73 percent of Republican respondents said the country is better off than it was a year ago. Arthur, broadly, how has public opinion of the president shifted over the past year? It soured a little bit is basically the big takeaway from that. I mean, he's still doing better on economy than Joe Biden was doing. So it's not like he's got absolutely catastrophic polling. But his polling is bad, and it's clearly having an effect on the administration. We also saw an Associated Press poll from earlier this month conducted just after an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Macklin-Good in Minneapolis found just 38 percent of Americans approve of how the president is addressing immigration issues.

31:19That's down from 49 percent who approved of his handling of immigration in March. Wendy, what does it mean that the president's approval ratings are so low for one of his core policy initiatives, which helped him get elected? That's right. It did. And the most immediate impact that we might see is in the midterm elections, where Republican members of Congress who have gone out of their way to back Trump on this, to say things that we saw with our own eyes didn't happen, and that sort of thing, may get voted out. They may lose their elections, and the majority of Congress could go to the Democrats at that.

31:57And, I mean, so far it doesn't seem like Trump is backing off at all. He took the tiniest step in calling the shooting of Renee Good a mistake, but he didn't say it in terms of it's a mistake and by golly, we're going to get to the bottom of it. It was a mistake and oh well, things happen. But I do think the more strident the administration gets about these immigration crackdowns, I think the more the public is going to not like images of five-year-old boys. It wasn't that long ago that immigration and the economy were President Trump's strong suits, right? Republican strong suits. And it's interesting to see that both of those issues now are not in his favor by a lot of people.

32:43But what the Democrats have to watch out for is that they don't go back to appearing to be, you know, in favor of anyone can stay in the country because that's what cost them the 2024 election. So they have a tightrope to walk to. Well, they have not been clamoring for a pathway to citizenship. So they've stayed to the right than where they were. But yeah, people don't like five-year-old kids getting arrested and mothers of six-year-olds being shot and killed. Right. This week saw the end to a tragic court case surrounding a school police officer in Uvalde, Texas. A jury acquitted Adrian Gonzalez for his response during the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in the small Texas city.

33:23Gonzalez was found not guilty on all 29 counts of child endangerment. 19 students and two teachers were killed in the Uvalde shooting. Let's go to an email from Rebecca who says, I'm writing from a suburb of Minneapolis. It is critical for listeners to understand that ICE's 3 ,000 agents are spread far and wide. They are in our suburbs and rural towns. They are using illegal tactics to detain community members going to work and school and driving on roadways in quiet suburban neighborhoods. Also, resistance and mutual aid support goes far beyond marching in the streets. Entire networks are assisting community members by delivering food, monitoring school bus stops, and providing safe transportation.

34:06This is a story about the state of Minnesota and not just Minneapolis, and it is a story about community resistance and support and not just street protests. Rebecca, thanks for that email. I spoke to Ilhan Omar briefly yesterday, a congresswoman from Minnesota, and she said the same thing, that it's not just Minneapolis. And she also said it's been really bad for business that a lot of shops are getting a lot less revenue. And that was before we had this strike thing that's happening today. And to Arthur's point, we've seen hotels that are parts of major hotel chains in St. Paul just closing.

34:43They were housing ICE, and it just got to be too rough for them to have the protests there. They probably didn't really want to house these ice guys. And so they are simply closing. So this will eventually affect the economy of Minneapolis and the rest of the state. We've got a few minutes before we go to our international panel. Can we talk about other stories you're working on or watching for next week? I'm watching the snow. And I know that sounds kind of silly because, you know, there's not food in the stores. But it's actually a major storm. And I'm going to be watching what the federal response is.

35:19We also have the major storm coming in Virginia and New Jersey, two new governors there. Sort of how is the response to this? And, of course, what happens across the country? Two new governors inaugurated this week, which is another story that we didn't talk about. Two women who were roommates, right, at one point, if I remember. Oh, wow. That's great. I'll be watching the ICE operation in Maine to see, you know, if they continue these tactics in another state as well. I'm following the contempt of Congress resolution against Bill and Hillary Clinton who have defied a subpoena for testimony related to their relationship with Jeffrey Epstein.

35:53And they could be thrown in prison for this. It's an entirely plausible outcome. But it does look like they are negotiating with the committee and there could be some kind of accommodation where maybe they speak to lawmakers outside of D.C. or in some way that's not as hostile as what they appear to think would happen if they came to the committee room in D.C. Arthur, let's back up a minute because I do think this is an important story. Can you remind us why they were held in contempt of Congress, what their role is supposed to be in the House investigation into Jeffrey Epstein? So Bill Clinton famously friends with Epstein, just like Donald Trump was, photographed socializing with him.

36:34And the committee subpoenaed the Epstein files from the Justice Department. Before they broke this law requiring the disclosure, they also defied the subpoena and never gave the full files to the House committee. And as part of that, Republicans said, well, let's subpoena the Clintons too and all these other people. It was a way to help the subpoena to the Trump administration go down a little easier. And now we're seeing serious consequences from that because the Clintons wouldn't come in. But they've been negotiating through their lawyers. And even Democrats on the committee voted to approve this subpoena at this contempt resolution, which could get a full House vote in two weeks.

37:12So there's a deadline ticking. Anita, what are the next steps here then as he's talking about this deadline? Yeah, I mean, it's going to be referred to the Justice Department and they'll review. You know, we've seen this in the past where Congress votes for contempt or chooses contempt. And I think they have to fully do that. But then we'll have to see what the Justice Department does. You know, I think if it goes through all the way through here and they are found guilty, which is I'm speeding way ahead. It's a fine. It's it's time in jail. I don't prison. I don't think it's going to come to that.

37:46We haven't seen that before, but it is, you know, this battle continues. And the Clintons have been sort of the, you know, the Clinton back and forth continues, right? Bill Clinton has been the Republican boogeyman for a long, long time here, and they want to continue to make him that. Well, two officials from his first presidency did go to prison for this exact thing, and Trump himself did say, please investigate the Clintons. So I think it's plausible. I think that Clinton's lawyers are very expensive and will avoid this outcome. however they need to do that, because the threat of prison is pretty serious.

38:21It's real. Let's go to one email from Valerie who says, I am an attorney who regularly does redactions on legal documents through an electronic discovery company that specializes in handling these matters and more. It is routine to have millions of documents to redact in any given case, and it is routine for teams of attorneys to get this done fairly rapidly. It should not take a very long time for the release of the Epstein documents because of the need to apply redactions, regardless of when these redactions were initiated, and they should have been initiated a long time ago. What a good source.

38:54Oh, my God. Thanks to our 1A audience. I think they're just saying in court that, oh, we have so many files. We can't do it. Obviously, that's not what's happening. Trump is all over these files. We know from previous reporting they were looking for all the mentions of the president. Even though they're not implicating him in crimes, they don't like it. He doesn't like it, so he won't let it out. Let's end with some news from the sports and entertainment world. The Indiana University Hoosiers won the college football playoff national championship on Monday, defeating the University of Miami Hurricanes 27 to 21 at the Hard Rock Stadium in South Florida.

39:312025 Heisman Trophy winner, Cuban American, and I should add Miami native, Fernando Mendoza, and coach Kurt Signetti led the Hoosiers to their first ever national championship in the program's history. And Sinners, director Ryan Coogler's vampire blockbuster set in the American South scored 16 Academy Award nominations on Thursday, breaking the all-time record for Oscar nods. Frequent 1A guest and Rotten Tomatoes awards editor Jacqueline Coley told us her thoughts on this year's Oscar nominees. Yesterday Academy Award nominations is probably ones that for most people would be inoffensive. I mean, there was an incredible amount to celebrate, including the 16 record-breaking nominations for Ryan Coogler's Sinners, followed closely by Paul Thomas Anderson's One Battle After Another, earning a not-so-record-breaking but still incredibly impressive 13 nominations.

40:25But perhaps the nomination that made me smile the most was that of Delroy Lindo. I think him earning his very first Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor after nearly five decades of stellar work on screen was something like the collective film community coming together and saying, yes, we do need to give this person their flowers while they're here. And it was probably the nomination that made most people who follow the Academy Awards smile as well. We talked about Sinners last year as part of the 1A Movie Club series and spoke to Ryan Kugler, who's up for Best Director at the Oscars, as well as the film's composer, Ludwig Goranson, who was nominated for Best Score.

41:07You can find that conversation at the1a.org. As always, thank you to our expert guests, Wendy Benjaminson of Bloomberg News, Arthur Delaney of HuffPost, Anita Kumar of Politico. And we'll be right back after a quick break with the international headlines from this week. Stay with us.

41:28Now let's get right back into it and round up all the news from around the world. Here to provide their analysis for us this week, Felicia Schwartz is the diplomatic correspondent at Politico. Hi, Felicia. Hello. Akbar Shahid Ahmed is also in studio with us here in Washington, D.C. He's a senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost. Hi, Akbar. Hi, Naila. And from London, David Rennie is joining us, geopolitics editor and columnist at The Economist, where he writes their column, The Telegram. Hello, David. Hello. Retaliation or reconciliation, what is possible after this week's déton in Davos?

42:01All eyes were on the Swiss mountain town this week, where world leaders gathered to hear what the U.S. president had to say amid boiling tensions and threats of force over Greenland. We need it for strategic national security and international security. This enormous, unsecured island is actually part of North America on the northern frontier of the Western Hemisphere. That's our territory. It is therefore a core national security interest of the United States of America. And in fact, it's been our policy for hundreds of years to prevent outside threats from entering our hemisphere. And we've done it very successfully.

42:43We've never been stronger than we are now. For more than a year, European leaders have worked an intense charm offensive on Donald Trump. Flattery and deal-making, promises to purchase U.S. goods, accepting tariffs that at one time would have been unfathomable, visits with royals and time spent in castles. But on Wednesday, it was all for naught. Since 2019 and his first administration, Donald Trump has coveted Greenland for its strategic location and natural resources. And the run-up to Davos, European leaders conveyed openness to expanding a U.S. military presence in Greenland and offering investments in mineral resources.

43:19But on Wednesday, the president made it clear that was not enough. Soon after that came a familiar Trump playbook, threats of tariffs, and then the announcement of a framework of a deal. There is now a, quote, framework in place for Greenland. We'll have more on that in a moment. The response from European leaders this week has been historic, unprecedented, and perhaps explained the world as we know it. Take a listen to just some of them. It's a new law. We will never back tell. We do prefer respect to bullies. We do prefer science to plotism. And we do prefer rule of law to brutality. Let me put this in words you might understand.

43:58Mr. President, f*** off. That was the Swedish finance minister, Elizabeth Svantisyn, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Danish member of the European Parliament, Anders Vettisen. David, I know you're not in Davos this week, but I wonder if you can give us a sense of how European leaders are feeling this week. We heard some of their public statements. I think right now they are feeling some relief. It could have been a lot worse. We could have been talking about a world in which Donald Trump had amped up his tariff threats. He could be preparing for military action in Greenland. None of this is to sound kind of polyanerish, but it could have been worse.

44:38And I think European leaders are cautiously wondering whether they managed to do something quite tricky, which is to raise the costs and make it clear to Donald Trump that things he cares about, whether that's the American financial markets or his ability to get other stuff done, that was in danger if he went down this path. And they offered him an off-ramp and he took it. And it could have been a lot worse. Felicia, what do we know about that off-ramp about this quote-unquote deal? So first thing that's interesting is it's actually a verbal framework. It wasn't written on paper, in part because Ruta, who I just want to say, you forgot in your intro that in addition to offering goods and whatever, they also called Trump daddy.

45:23Ruta, the guy who calls Trump daddy. But it's a verbal framework, which is which just kind of like speaks to the like the fragility of this moment. Right. Because they're worried about leaks, that Trump will change his mind, whatever. But basically the idea is to there's some talk of giving the U.S. more sovereignty in some areas, though. You know, Danish politicians have come out since and said they're not open to anything that changes sovereignty or anything like that. But basically, I think it's like a clever way to more or less update the 1951 treaty, which frankly probably allows for most of this stuff anyways.

45:55But I think Trump, I think everyone's just trying to find Trump a win. I think he was super spooked by the markets. But yes, like as you said, it's mineral rights, talking about more U.S. basing, you know, keeping Russia and China out, elevating NATO's role in protecting Arctic security. But I think there's still a lot to be agreed on. Akbar, the about face on taking Greenland came after weeks of refusing to take U.S. military intervention off the table. What do we know about the pushback on that move from within the Trump administration? Because as we discussed on the roundup last week, Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller has not been shy about using that threat.

46:32Right. What we know, Naila, is that there's some folks in the White House, particularly from my understanding, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Vice President Shady Vance, are feeling a couple of concerns. Number one is their domestic political concern ahead of the midterms. They know that Trump is very down in the polls on a whole range of issues. His trademark issue immigration, but the economy, broader issues. And they're thinking, do we really want the president to look like all he's doing is slaying dragons abroad? He should be focusing on the American people. Let's not get into huge fights, wars, unexpected conflicts.

47:04But I'd also note, you know, all of this is also happening after Trump faced a threat of himself, which of his own, which I think we haven't quite processed in the US, the European Parliament said to Trump, we are not going to ratify your US-EU trade deal. So not only was there Ruta calling him daddy and all this sort of flattery, there was also a sharp edge of the sick. And that a lot of Europeans I'm hearing from are also feeling that affected folks within the administration, the sense that there could be punitive actions from the Europeans that they didn't expect. David, on Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, quote, nostalgia will not bring back the old order.

47:43It's time to seize this opportunity and build a new independent Europe. What are these new discussions about a new Europe looking like? Yeah, look, I mean, this week has been it's been weird. We've had an enormous amount of piling on and kind of sneering at Europe. We've seen that obviously from Trump. We expect that. We also saw that from Gavin Newsom, the governor of California turned up, and his only contribution at Davos was to say that European leaders should have brought their knee pads because they're such kind of an embarrassment. We saw Volodymyr Zelensky insulting Europe and saying how useless they are.

48:14Perhaps we'll get to that later. To sound kind of defensive Europe, I actually think that Europe did the right thing this week. What does Europe want? It clearly thinks that Greenland is entirely insane. That what Donald Trump wants, if he wants to have more security, American forces on the island of Greenland that wants mineral rights and greeners, he can have all of that today under the existing treaties and Denmark telling him he is very welcome to invest in mineral deals there. He doesn't need to own it. He doesn't need to buy it. He doesn't need to invade it. So none of that made sense. But actually, European leaders are extremely concerned that Ukraine is getting forgotten in the mix, that, you know, when Mark Rutter calls Trump daddy, I don't actually think that he's an idiot.

48:58He's a very experienced Dutch politician. prime minister for years. He is taking one for the team. No doubt in his memoirs, he'll tell us how much he hates it. But right now, people in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, are freezing every night in minus 20 below zero temperatures because the Russians are attacking their power grids. We still need American satellites, American weaponry, American ammunition, which the Europeans are paying a good price for. That help for now is vital and Europe is willing to try to avoid a complete blow up of the relationship with America whilst making it clear that Ukraine, that the Greenland sovereignty is an absolute red line.

49:34So actually, I think Europe played it pretty well and pretty in a very grown up way this week. David, to your point, while we did see several European leaders before this week struggle to come up with a response to Donald Trump, Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada has been on the move looking elsewhere for allyship. Last week, we reported on his visit to Beijing, where Carney and Chinese leader Xi Jinping revived both trade deals and words of friendship, but it was Carney's speech this week at Davos that brought both political and corporate leaders to their feet in a rare standing ovation. Here are some moments from that.

50:08Let me be direct. We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs is leverage. Financial infrastructure is coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. The middle powers must act together because if we're not at the table, we're on the menu. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It's the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination. Perhaps one of the most striking elements of his speech was the push for multilateralism and the dangers of great powers going in alone.

50:45Felicia, is Carney doing what other nations could be learning from in order to survive the new world order? 100%. And I think we're also starting to already see it. The EU, for example, they've been stepping up their efforts to diversify trade. They've signed a deal with the South American bloc Mercosur. That's a deal that's taken 25 years to mint, and I think it's no coincidence that it's ending now. They're also updating agreements with Mexico. They're talking to Indonesia. The French are opening some of their own bases in Southeast Asia. I think we're going to see a bunch of hedging. And even like, you know, some of the U.S.'s Gulf partners like Saudi Arabia, UAE, they've never fully been willing to give up on China.

51:29And I just thought, Naila, you know, as you think about these countries, why were they standing up and giving Marconi the standing ovation? Because the skepticism of America has gotten so deep. So I agree with David. I think Europeans felt they came together and seized this moment. But going forward, those pro-American voices in European capitals are going to have to be a little softer. And the people saying sovereignty, independence, look elsewhere, they are a lot louder. So that's the long-term shift and change that I'm hearing from those capital. David, I did want to ask you to weigh in on how China is watching all of these developments this week.

52:04It is a mixture of glee and the usual Chinese caution. Chinese foreign policy does not move quickly. It's like a supertanker. But, you know, they see a propaganda win for sure. the Chinese vice premier who's in charge of economic matters, Khalifeng, was at Davos. He gave an entirely predictable speech about how certain countries, i.e. America, are trying to bring back the law of the jungle, that China is a great defender of the World Trade Organization and the kind of the trade rules. And, you know, as your panel was saying, we did see Mark Carney go to Canada last week and sign what looked like an attempt.

52:36Some people were calling a hedge with China. Actually, yeah, what's interesting is how limited the deal that Carney and the Chinese did was. The Chinese have been burned before in their view with American allies saying they're fed up with America and China thinks, okay, well, maybe we can sign these people up. And then America cracks the whip and allies fall into line. So China is not that interested in signing up allies. It wants propaganda wins and good optics. But actually, if you look at the core of the deal, it's going to, you know, Canada is going to import something like the equivalent of 3 % of Canadian car sales a year.

53:10And the Chinese are going to buy some canola on lower tariffs. The Chinese are playing it for propaganda wins. They are delighted to see Donald Trump blowing up the West. They would be delighted to see him do more to divide Europe from America. That's one of their big ambitions. But they're not proposing themselves as an alternative to China anytime soon. And the fundamental loneliness of countries like France or the UK or Canada is the stuff they currently buy from America, which they are utterly dependent on, those incredibly advanced jet fighters, the F-35s and stuff, they're not about to buy Chinese jet fighters.

53:42So they've got a real problem, which is, you know, we know we need to spend more on defense. We need to become more independent. We need to become stronger in Europe. But we've been doing that in the last few years by buying a ton of American weaponry as America goes from being kind of resentful of bailing out Europe to potentially hostile. And that is a giant dilemma with no easy solution. There's no easy way to hedge that. If you can believe it, a year ago this week, President Donald Trump took the oath of office in the Capitol Rotunda. Moments after, he made this promise to Americans. We will measure our success not only by the battles we win, but also by the wars that we end, and perhaps most importantly, the wars we never get into.

54:29But the Trump administration's national security strategy released late last year contained these two statements. the Trump Corollary, which asserts American primacy in the Western Hemisphere, and a warning about Europe's, quote, civilizational erasure in Europe. David, so what then does America First mean anymore now that we've seen MAGA become such a global affair in the past year? I think if you look at the common thread over all of these military adventures that we've seen from Donald Trump, as you say, which sounds like a non-MAGA thing to be doing, They've all involved very low or zero American casualties.

55:07He likes very showy things. So even the bombing of the Iranian nuclear program happened after Israel had taken out all of the Iranian air defenses, and it was essentially not a risky operation. In Venezuela, the American special forces got lucky. They did have a helicopter shot up, but there were zero casualties. When things look more risky, like potentially an operation to overthrow the Ayatollahs in Tehran, he backs off. And so that bit, I think there's a kind of low-risk spectacular thread to it, and then dominance. It's about dominance in the Western hemisphere. And then this civilizational erasure stuff, I'm afraid it is very hard to read that as anything other than anti-Muslim racism.

55:44It is often backed up with talk about the fact that London has a Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan. It is backed up by this idea that Western capitals in Europe are being invaded by, you know, Trump officials talk about barbarians. They talk about, you know, Londonistan. This is essentially a white chauvinist argument about immigration in Europe, and it's going down extremely badly with European leaders. I'm seeing lots of nodding heads for those of you here in the studio with me. Well, I just, I think that that is absolutely correct. I mean, there's no way to read this language from the Trump administration other than exclusion.

56:18And the reality for countries like France, Britain, countries across Europe is their Muslim populations are not going away, Right. France has the biggest Muslim population in Europe. The UK is filled with diversity. I'm not sure the American Muslim population is going away. Well, they're trying. Right. Certainly there's an effort to make that happen. But I think that if you are, again, those European powers, if you are countries across the world that have diversity baked into their societies and you are worried about your own internal stability, rule of law and kind of some kind of mutual respect is really important.

56:50And what MAGA is exporting right now is an escalation of tension, racial division, stereotyping, and hatred that's really corrosive not just to this country but to a lot of other societies. I mean, diversity is, in fact, or was a fundamental value in the U.S. You know, we prided ourselves on being a melting pot. So kind of startling to hear you talk about these other governments clinging on to things that we hold dear. But I would just say I think that the important thing when we think about America first is Trump constantly says, I am MAGA. MAGA is me because he'll get questions all the time like, isn't snatching the leader of Venezuela not, you know, does that really comport?

57:27Or maybe that's a bad one because of the Western Hemisphere stuff. But like is bombing Iran really part of America first? And he's basically like, it is whatever I say it is. Like I'm the guy. So I also think it's just a power play on his part to kind of craft the world in his image. Speaking of the fact that this is a midterm election year, one that could be key in how the president moves forward, I want to ask you, Felicia, about a recent AP Nork poll conducted with the University of Chicago, which found that more than half of U.S. adults believe President Trump has, quote, gone too far in using the military to intervene in other countries.

57:59I think all of that pulls really badly. The Greenland stuff does not pull well. I mean, ICE is really not pulling well, which is like a bit of a militarization of national security stuff. But basically, yeah, all this foreign adventurism really doesn't pull well. And all of his advisors, I think Akbar, you said this earlier, all they want him to do is talk about the economy. He's supposed to be traveling to like, you know, one state a week to talk about the economy. Which was the beginning of the Davos speech. It was. It was. I still think, I mean, to pick Davos as a place to talk about affordability is just completely out of touch.

58:33You know, it's completely inaccessible. It's an elite haven, but whatever. Okay. I just think that, you know, they would like to see him. I think his base maybe likes that he's a strong leader. But, you know, now that it's the midterms, I think they also need to start thinking about swing voters, independents, people in the middle. And I do think the midterms might offer some sort of course correction here. Can I get back to this, just this idea of Mark Carney calling this in terms of the new world order a rupture? Akbar, is this a rupture? Is it a transition? Has Donald Trump crossed a red line here?

59:11Do you think we'll have the world before Davos 2026 and the world after Davos 2026? I think one of the interesting moments at Davos beyond Trump was the way that people around Trump conducted themselves. So you saw Treasury Secretary Scott Besson make fun of, quote, the dreaded European working group. You saw other Trump officials talk about oil, oil, oil, oil. Other countries are saying climate change is real. Sustainable development is something we need to care about. Gender is something we need to care about. So I think what this year's Davos really emphasises, you're not going to have either adults in the room.

59:43and you have a U.S. that seems at this point quite detached from reality. So where Trump is saying, we want the Western Hemisphere, Venezuela is ours, Greenland is ours, a lot of other countries are saying, the world is moving forward. You're blocking yourself off from us. So that's where I see it as a fracture that other countries have to prepare for because they want to advance these goals. And you look at someone like Mark Rutter, of course he's been an effective Trump whisperer to a degree. That's a band-aid. That's just dealing with Trump right now. So if you're thinking about longer term challenges, like the question of how do you deal with Iran, how do you deal with Venezuela, that's diplomacy, expertise, international law.

1:00:21And that's not happening from D.C. right now. Just to offer, I guess, a slightly more I don't know what kind of take. But I just think that when I talk to European officials, I think there's this feeling that they really wish that they could find America a little bit more predictable and easier to work with. but that their best bet is still to try to get the U.S. to meet them in the middle. They really, you know, David gave a very good listing earlier of what's going on in Ukraine and how important American support is there. I think, like, on the one hand, of course, there's a pivot, and I think there's a lot of talk in Europe about how to prepare for that, but I think that's kind of pretty far divorced from the day-to-day.

1:01:01And I think that in my conversation, it just doesn't quite feel like Europe is thinking about it, but I don't know that they're really ready. I mean, I think they still cling to the kind of post-World War II international order. David? So I think that that's clearly what you will hear a lot of European diplomats saying in Washington, D.C., but that's a very select group. Their job is to try and have the best relations they can with the United States. I think the big shock for me in my conversations with capitals here in Europe, and actually, frankly, in Asia, when I was recently talking to U.S.

1:01:32allies in Asia a couple of weeks, a few weeks ago, they are done trusting this administration. They do not actually see any, you know, they're trying to avoid bust-ups. They're trying to, you know, as we've discussed, try and keep flows of, you know, arms and intelligence. And, you know, if you're the UK, your entire nuclear deterrent is still utterly dependent on the United States because the American missiles are needed to make the British submarines and warheads work. So there's a real cost to having a total bust-up. And of course, everyone wants to avoid that. But something has happened. It was not just Davos.

1:02:03It was the threats to Greenland. It was the threats to tariff countries that stood by Denmark after Greenland. It's the whole of this year so far, which is not even a month old. Can we just consider that? 23rd. People are absolutely done with this deadly combination that this administration is seen as extraordinarily unserious, but extraordinarily destructive. And something has kind of broken in terms of trust. And I don't think it's going to be easy to mend. On Thursday, President Trump officially launched what he's calling the Board of Peace at the World Economic Forum. Trump initially conceived of the board to oversee Gaza, but he's since broadened its goals.

1:02:43We can spread out to other things as we succeed with Gaza. We're going to be very successful in Gaza. It's going to be a great thing to watch. And we can do other things. We can do numerous other things. Once this board is completely formed, we can do pretty much whatever we want to do. And we'll do it in conjunction with the United Nations. And I think the combination of the Board of Peace with the kind of people we have here, coupled with the United Nations, can be something very unique for the world. It's for the world. This isn't United States. This is for the world. Akbar, what happened to the original plans for the board to be focused on Gaza?

1:03:21Well, one year ago, Naila, we were supposed to have ended the war in Gaza. and there weren't supposed to be, for instance, three Palestinian journalists killed in an air strike just this week in addition to civilians who continue to be killed every single day in U.S.-backed attacks. So none of those promises have borne fruit. I think within Trump's own comments, you hear him talk about the people who are around him in that board, and that in itself is so telling about the rupture and fracture. This group of 15 countries that he's managed to pull together. I mean, we're talking about Belarus, right?

1:03:50We're talking about Algeria and Morocco, Qatar and Turkey, powerful countries, UAE certainly, but it's not. The U.S. used to be able to rally 150, 180 countries together to support it in international moves, right? This is the demonstration of, as Trump says, this Board of Peace is going to be my organ of international influence well beyond Gaza. And it's quite clear he's now deputized Gaza. It's not top of mind for president. I would argue it's not even in his top 10 issues. It's Jared Kushner, his aides, R.A. Lightstone, other people in this very small circle who we can talk about. But it's become a demonstration of Trump's continued focus on ego and this pursuit of global statesmanship that's quite ludicrous to a lot of international observers.

1:04:34Scott in Ohio emailed us, the Board of Peace sounds like the perfect way for Trump to take control of the world without going to war with anyone. David, last night the president posted on Truth Social that he was removing Canada from the Board of Peace. Can we expect to see more of this? If you criticize me, you'll be removed? yeah we don't have to guess right i mean he he also said during his speech uh in davos president trump said directed remarks at carney that you know uh canada wouldn't exist without the americans and next time you kind of make a statement like you did mark you know think about that when he told the europeans you know we'd like you to give us give us greenland let us buy greenland and if you do we'll be very appreciative if you don't we will remember and so this kind of uh people were comparing it to sort of mafia godfather language.

1:05:20And the border piece, the problem is that for many European governments, we've seen the big ones, you know, France and Germany saying that they do not wish to join it. They don't see how it's compatible with the existing international law. I think a lot of governments feel jammed by the Trump administration because the United Nations Security Council endorsed the creation of the border piece very much in the context of overseeing the ceasefire and what comes next in Gaza. They did not expect it to suddenly kind of mutate into this giant global organization of which the chairman, as far as we can tell, for life is Donald J.

1:05:55Trump. And he was asked about whether that could continue after he's president. He said, yeah, sure, why not? Maybe. And so he has, under the kind of the very skimpy rules that we've seen so far, veto power over everything the Board of Peace does. And that's why you're seeing the major governments of his Western allies at the moment either saying that they'll think about it, they're looking at it, or actually, in the case of, say, France, saying they are not going to join. Let's move to Gaza. On Thursday, the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, presented a blueprint for what he called, quote, new Gaza at Davos.

1:06:28Gaza, as President Trump's been saying, has amazing potential. And this is for the people of Gaza. We've developed it into zones. In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, let's build a free zone and then we have a Hamas zone. And then we said, you know what, let's just plan for catastrophic success. Hamas signed a deal demilitarized. That is what we're going to enforce. People ask us what our plan B is. We do not have a plan B. We have a plan. We signed an agreement. We are all committed to making that agreement work. There's a master plan. We'll be doing it in phasing. In the Middle East, they build cities like this in two, three million people.

1:06:59They build this in three years. And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen. The multi-phase master plan projects an estimated$25 billion to transform Gaza into an economic hub by 2035. Just a reminder, Gaza is a tiny strip of land on the Mediterranean Sea, half of which has been occupied by the Israeli military. It's home to more than 2 million people. As we've been talking about, Israeli strikes on the enclave since October 7, 2023 have killed more than 71 ,000 people. Gaza's Ministry of Health says that more than 171 ,000 people are injured. 92 % of homes are damaged or destroyed.

1:07:36Felicia, so given that, what's in and what's not in this plan? First, I just have to say I'm someone who's actually reported from Gaza and, you know, it's one of the most densely populated places in the world. It's completely destroyed right now. It's I think somewhere between 5 ,000 and 10 ,000 Gazans live in the part of Gaza controlled by Israel. The rest live in Hamas-controlled Gaza. So, I mean, there's an incredible master plan of what Gaza could be like, but it's very divorced from reality. When Kushner says catastrophic success, it's just assuming that Hamas would disarm. This is basically the central issue between Hamas and Israel for years, if not decades.

1:08:16And, you know, none of this development, tourism, airport, whatever, residential areas, manufacturing will come to pass if that doesn't happen. We're still following developments in Iran where an internet blackout by the government has entered week three. The blackout follows widespread protests over the economy that started late last month. Iran said Wednesday that 3 ,117 people have been killed. Human rights groups say that number is actually far higher, at least 5 ,000. President Trump says he stopped Iran from executing 800 protesters. Iran's top prosecutor said Friday that's, quote, completely false.

1:08:57Let's go back to Davos and the subject of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine about to enter year five. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff told a panel at the World Economic Forum this week that he thought negotiators had made, quote, quote, a lot of progress and that the agreement was down to, quote, one issue. Wyckoff plans to go to Moscow with Jared Kushner, the president's son-in-law, who we heard from earlier, to meet with Vladimir Putin. And then U.S. and Russian negotiators are in military-to-military working groups would continue in Abu Dhabi in the UAE. Felicia, the one remaining issue is basically what the war started over, correct?

1:09:33Territory. That is the big problem. I mean, at this point, Russia has been very consistent. They say they want to control all of the eastern Donbass region. Ukraine still controls about 25 percent of it. Russia expects Ukraine to hand that over. I mean, this is a very important strategic region for Ukraine. I think they've actually, I mean, they have been, I think, relatively flexible on territorial stuff. I think they understand that, you know, Ukraine is probably not going to look like what it did before Russia's full-scale invasion. But, you know, no one I talk to seems to think that Russia has had a change of hard on this.

1:10:07So it's hard to know how they're going to bridge the gap. I mean, the U.S. is envisioning, you know, like a sort of like DMZ with like all kinds of technology. They're trying to incentivize Ukraine with a terror-free zone. I think they're just trying to like incentivize. I think, you know, at various points, the U.S. negotiating position has basically been, well, they're going to get the Donbass anyway. They'll keep fighting you for it. So you may as well hand it over. Ukraine is held firm. But I think they're trying to incentivize them with a bunch of different things to see if they can budge, but I don't really know if that will happen.

1:10:38Meanwhile, President Zelensky said on Thursday that officials from the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia would meet for the first time this Friday and Saturday to push for an agreement, but his office later told the Financial Times that the three-party meeting was still unconfirmed. While at Davos, Trump told reporters it would be, quote, a disgrace if the three parties don't reach a deal. Zelensky and President Trump did meet on the sidelines of the forum Thursday. Ukraine's president called the conversation, quote, productive and substantive. Akbar, do we know what Zelensky focused on in his talks with Trump?

1:11:11Zelensky spoke with Trump about sort of the, quote, last mile of the agreement and, you know, gave Trump more of the flattery that he likes. But I think when we look at the broader dynamic, Witkoff is going back to Moscow, and that has been consistently where this all falls apart. I mean, we've seen this movie before where the Americans think they're there, the Ukrainians think they're there, and then a Russian talking narrative comes into the Trump administration's ear, and it sets everything way, way back. And I think there's a lot of concern that that's right where we are. I think for President Zelensky, he's feeling that he's walking this fine line.

1:11:44He wants to support President Trump, not alienate the Europeans. What does he get out of that? Eventually, for Zelensky, is this worthwhile? And we did see Zelensky give a speech at the forum directed at European leaders. Let's hear some of that.

1:12:27If Putin decides to take Lithuania or strike Poland, who will respond? Alicia, this is a very different tone than we've heard from President Zelensky when he's talking to folks in Europe. In that same speech, he referenced the movie Groundhog Day that, you know, for Ukrainians, they're waking up every day and it's been the same. I mean, they're going through such a horrific crisis of heating and electricity and one of the coldest years on record there. I think he's just, you know, he is under a lot of pressure, of course, to deliver for his people. I think he's exasperated that the world has kind of, you know, feels like the world has not come together.

1:13:07And I think at this point he kind of thinks that Europe is enabling Trump to some extent. David, what do we know from European leaders on where we've reached so far with Ukraine? What's been the response to what Zelensky said at Davos on Thursday? I think behind the scenes there's a lot of anger and frustration. Look, people are sympathetic the guy's country is being bombed and attacked. He's exhausted. It's four years of this war. But it was a really dumb speech. You know, if anyone is delivering weapons to Ukraine right now, they're being paid for by Europe. America is not paying a single cent for weapons of Ukraine right now.

1:13:37So one of the things that Vladimir Zelensky asked Donald Trump for was new air defense missiles. Those air defense missiles are going to be American. They're going to be paid for by European taxpayers. Billions and billions and billions of dollars of help is now going to Ukraine. Could Europe do more? Sure. Is Europe slow to take decisions? Yes, but Europe is, Donald is Zelensky's best friend right now. And the best judgment that anyone could make is that he was trying to suck up to Donald Trump because he feels he needs to do that for his own purposes. But it was a really dumb speech. And if you want to see how everything is now soured by this total lack of distrust for Donald Trump, the Davos was meant to see the signature of this$800 billion prosperity plan, which is essentially an American and European plan and to fund the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine.

1:14:27There's going to be private finance, a bit of taxpayers' money. That signature didn't happen. The deal has not been signed because the Europeans were not willing to have conversations with the Americans about how much Europe was going to pay for Ukraine when they were simultaneously being threatened with tariffs for helping Greenland's sovereignty. So that deal is now, you know, hopefully it will get signed. But that was why that meeting with Trump and Zelensky didn't actually have an agreement signed at the end of it, because there are costs to continually attacking Europe. And I don't want to sound like kind of some sort of whiny European.

1:14:58Europe has done pretty well recently on defending Ukraine, a lot better than America has. And it was just a, you know, at best it was an expression of his frustration and exhaustion, but it was a dumb thing to do. David, I wonder also if it was an expression of the whole Greenland situation and saying, look, you have helped us, but NATO hasn't really had to deal with this. Are you prepared? Here's the problem. Do European governments now realise that, to their absolute horror, America is changing from being frustrated with Europe not spending enough on defence, which goes back to Barack Obama, to something much darker, to something much more hostile, to something that gives us lectures about our cities being invaded by barbarians and being unwilling to defend us and bullying us and threatening to take Greenland off Europe?

1:15:43But here's the reality. When you talk to senior officials at NATO, as I have, they will tell you it's a 10-year project for Europe to build up its own completely autonomous armies. We don't have the satellite intelligence. We don't have the long-range airlift. We don't have the central command and control. Some of that is because Europe didn't, you know, spend enough on defence. Some of it is because for the last many, many years, different American governments told Europeans, no, no, don't spend money on those things. We provide those. That's wasteful duplication. What we want from Europe is for you to be in places like Afghanistan and Iraq with light expeditionary forces helping us in the global war of terror.

1:16:23And countries like Denmark sent troops to fight and die in Afghanistan to be good allies. And then they heard Donald Trump this week saying that the Europeans had not been in Afghanistan. And then when asked, well, yes, they were in Afghanistan, he said, well, they weren't on the front lines. Well, more people died per capita in Denmark in the war in Afghanistan than in the United States. And veterans in Denmark, as that clip showed, are absolutely furious and heartbroken. So there is a real sense that this is, to quote Mark Carney, a moment of rupture, not a transition. Meanwhile, the war is pummeling Ukraine's infrastructure in the middle of winter.

1:17:05David, you were talking about this earlier. 60 % of the capital, Kiev, is without power. that's over a million residents, which follows a large overnight missile and drone strike by Russia on energy facilities. Ukraine's energy minister has said Russia has now hit every single Ukrainian energy facility in the country and carried out 612 attacks on infrastructure in the past year. Akbar, what have we seen from Russia this winter as it continues to strike at Ukraine? You almost want to ask, what's left? It's just unbelievably punishing, given the situation that Ukrainians are living through. I was talking to a couple of Ukrainian contacts earlier this week, and the narrative was very much, not just, Felicia mentioned this really good point, the sense of has the world forgotten us?

1:17:49Have we fallen down the priority list? But also, are we powerless? Do we have any agency or independence anymore, even in our own capital? This is not in Donbass. This is the heart of Ukraine, where people thought they could start rebuilding businesses, start rebuilding their daily lives. People are moving back from Europe. How do Ukrainians live through that when they're so vulnerable? And I think this is really where there's a broader reflection of the damage and erosion that this administration has done. Because you're not hearing anything about how international law and any standards for civilians are being violated anymore.

1:18:22There is no discussion of are there global principles? Will Russia be held accountable for mass collective punishment of Ukrainians? And so when you erode systems like this, this is the outcome. Well, and I suppose this is the erosion of when someone says the erosion of the rule-based order, what they're referring to. Right. And today it's Ukrainians and Kiev, and tomorrow it could be anyone in Washington, D.C. or anywhere else in the world. Before we wrap it up for the day, I want to leave some time for you all to pull some things out of your notebook. Tell us what else you've been watching, what we've missed from this week.

1:18:53Felicia, can we start with you? Yes, definitely. First, just going back to your Iran topper, the U.S. is sending an aircraft carrier toward the Middle East. You know, I think let's see if Trump sees the statement from the Iranian prosecutor that they actually haven't called off these executions. He might feel, you know, Iran has kind of disappeared. We were about to go to war with Iran last week. It kind of settled down. Greenland. Then Greenland. Then Greenland. Yeah. So I'm just wondering if now that the U.S. will have more assets in place, whether they will consider again an attack or something else.

1:19:32So I'm looking at that. And then, you know, I'm very curious to see, you know, Akbar, you made this good point that there is kind of this cycle in the Ukraine negotiations that the U.S., Ukraine and Europe get very close to something. Russia kind of comes in, invites Wyckoff to Moscow, you know. Everyone flies to Anchorage. Everyone, right. And so I guess what I'm wondering is, like, will this cycle continue? There's been another flurry of talks. There's been another kind of, like, reach out from Moscow. Will this actually lead to anything tangible to end the war? Or will, you know, everyone go back to their capital, say we have to talk about paper, and then this cycle will begin again?

1:20:10And then I guess just lastly, I'm preparing to go to the Munich Security Forum in a few weeks. And I think this will kind of be, you know, last year it was really a venue where this like European civilizational decline is on display. This year, like parties like the AFD and others, they're like actually invited to attend and participate. So I'm just wondering how that's all going to shake out. David? So I endorse all of the worries about Iran. Actually, if you want something that may turn out to be in the long run very, very consequential, America completed its withdrawal from the World Health Organization this week.

1:20:43We can go back to that clip you played at the top of the French president saying that he believes in science, not... He actually used this, basically, a French word in English, plotisme. He means conspiracy theories. Science, not conspiracy theories. For Western governments, partners of America, to see things like the American Center for Disease Control, the National Institutes of Health, seeing the damage being sort of dismantled, seeing the damage that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is doing to the vaccine regime in America that was the gold standard for vaccine science, that created the mRNA vaccines that saved the world from the pandemic.

1:21:14That is unbelievably shocking to see measles outbreaks in the world's richest country because of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. To Western allies of America, that is something that is going to have consequences and lead to deaths for a long time to come. Hadfar? You reminded me, Naila, with playing the Jared Kushner clip of just where we are with Gaza. To use the term, quote, catastrophic success after the bloodiest conflict we have seen in this century, certainly, and in decades, is unbelievable. I think it's just staggeringly offensive to people who've lived through that. I'm in the process of finishing a book on the U.S.

1:21:52role in the Gaza war. And this has been U.S. policy through the Biden administration, continued by Trump, built on by Trump, where it's constantly been, we're going to give these moonshot plans. Maybe the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia are going to reach a deal. Maybe Saudi Arabia will pay to rebuild Gaza. But you've never actually had anything concrete to improve the situation. In fact, what you've had is just constant immiseration of the people who are now living in mass disease, no reconstruction. So I'm looking at that concern around Gaza, which I think is going to fuel more regional tension because other powers, Turkey, UAE, Saudi, are saying, how can we not move forward on this?

1:22:30How are we still stuck here? And that's somewhere where Israel and the U.S. face a lot of tough questions. Linked to that, I'm looking like Felicia at Iran. I think there's still a strong desire in Israel to go forward. But I think this message is so muddied now with the U.S. having backtracked from its threat of military strikes and with how the Trump administration continues to treat the Iranian people. Just today, there was a really important story about the deportations of Iranians, including gay Iranians who could face the death penalty as soon as they are sent back to Iran. So Trump is not seen as a friend of this country that he keeps going ahead and saying, we're going to bond them to freedom.

1:23:06One last bit of news. The fashion world is paying its last respects to the legendary designer Valentino Garavani, who died in Rome this week. So let's end with this. The designer whose high glamour gowns and trademark shade of red became an iconic symbol of Italian elegance, dressed some of the biggest names. His gowns became some of the most photographed images in the world. Valentino was 93. A big thank you to our expert panelists today, Felicia Schwartz, diplomatic correspondent at Politico, Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent for HuffPost, and David Rennie, geopolitics editor and columnist at The Economist, where he writes their column, The Telegram.

1:23:46Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexandra Boti is our senior supervising producer. Aileen Humphreys is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. And Barb Anguiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson for additional podcast support this week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Naila Boudou. Let's talk more soon. This is 1A. Thank you.