The News Roundup for May 22, 2026

26:40Let's get back to our weekly news roundup. We got this question from Denison, Ohio. I heard that part of the Trump agreement with the attorney general not only creates this$1.776 billion slush fund and stops the IRS from ever going after Trump, his family and businesses. it also stops all departments of the federal government from ever going after Trump, basically giving him immunity in perpetuity from the federal government. So the IRS part is the one to focus on. It doesn't stop the rest of the Justice Department or the government from going after Trump, though, of course, Trump himself will stop that the way he governs in his second term.

27:19But the IRS thing is huge because Trump was under audit and The New York Times obtained some of his tax information. This was what led to his eventual lawsuit that resulted in this so-called settlement. And he owed as much as$100 million in taxes because they found him to have perhaps improperly taken too many deductions for losses. And so the text of this was added to the agreement after it was first announced. They pointed out to me and reporters who asked that, well, we have 30 days to tack stuff onto this. And so it forever stops the IRS from pursuing any audit or enforcement action resulting from ongoing audits, which there had been, forever.

28:08Can that be overturned by a Democratic administration? I assume so. I mean, this is not something that happened in a court. It's not a law. It's just a thing that Trump did, an agreement between the Trump administration and Trump himself in his private capacity. No court said this was OK. So, yes, this can definitely be undone. So they're bragging that he was getting no money from this because initially he was asking for$10 billion. But your point is what he got was immunity. He potentially got$100 million in taxes that he doesn't owe, some sum of money. He could have owed the IRS. He no longer does.

28:43We've been talking about Republicans a lot. Let's shift to the other side of the aisle. On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee released its long-awaited autopsy report, which was expected to detail what went wrong during the 2020 presidential election. In short, this release was a debacle. DNC Chair Ken Martin initially decided not to release the report, saying it was a distraction from the core mission. But he told CNN on Thursday, quote, after last November's massive Democratic wins, I didn't want to create a distraction by not putting out the report. I ended up creating an even bigger distraction.

29:18Martin said the report did not meet his standards. The release had already sparked party infighting. A disclaimer at the top of the report reads, the document does not reflect the views of the DNC. Arthur, what is and most importantly, what isn't in this document that caused so many problems for the Democrats this week? So it doesn't question Joe Biden's decision to run for a second term, which was highly questionable. It doesn't question the Biden administration's support for Israel and its war on Gaza, which I think a lot of people within— And how that affected voters. Huge, huge issue in Democratic politics.

29:56It has some conclusions in there that I think centrist Democrats were happy with, that perhaps there was too much identity politics. But it's a weird thing. It had, like, factual and typographical errors. They released it anyway because it was weird. They had stifled it. And strange for DNC Chair Ken Martin to sort of blame the person who wrote it in addition to blaming himself. There are people calling for him to resign now as a DNC chairman. Anita, why has this report created so much backlash? And some would say pushed Democratic Party or certainly the leadership wing when it comes to elections into a crisis.

30:38Yeah, I mean, it's just, you know, the timing of it really has taken over. and then you saw what was in it and not in it. And then that created a controversy. I think it's just because the Democratic Party is still trying to figure out what it's, how it's going to win. Right. And what it's. I mean, it's almost June. Right. Right. We're months before the midterms. Yeah. And there's definitely some question about what the mission should be. How are they going to get there? And I think this goes backwards, not forwards. It doesn't address everything it should. It does criticize. It does criticize actually Joe Biden for not giving Kamala Harris sort of the right mission as vice president.

31:22It talks about how she didn't push back. Her campaign didn't push back against Trump enough. It talks about how on a specific ad even. But it doesn't even talk about sort of how to fight against Donald Trump. It just said, you know, we thought Americans would just not like him and they would vote against him. So it really shows that they don't know what their message is, combined with the fact that the chairman— It shows they didn't know what their message is, and does it show that they still don't know what their message is? Well, it calls into question if they know what that is, but also the timing of this.

31:53I mean, he's been under pressure for months now to figure out a way forward and to release this, and he felt that he was under pressure and had to do it, And now we are six months before the next election. Jeff, what does everything we've talked about with both parties say right now about the state of American politics and our political system? That's an easy question, right? We only have 10 minutes left for the show, so go ahead. I mean, in some ways, both parties are kind of a mess. Certainly the Democratic Party is struggling, as that report shows, and the fact that it's bringing attention to the dysfunction in that party, to the inability to come up with a message, and to the still not really dealt with wounds from 2024.

32:40On the Republican side, maybe less of a mess insofar as, again, President Trump is so firmly in charge and is having a huge impact on those primaries. It's not necessarily a question about messaging or direction, just whether or not people agree with that. That and the broad unpopularity that he has with the electorate and the implications that that has for the Republican Party. I did want to ask you, we just got this email. If Trump's approval is so low, why are MAGA supporters winning Republican primaries? What is going on? Well, again, the primaries are a reflection of just his party, of just the Republicans, of just his voters.

33:19And his voters are still very much behind him. This has been a while now, but several weeks ago, I went to CPAC in Texas to do some reporting on how his voters felt about the Iran war. And it was still early-ish days then, and they were all 100 % behind him. And that continues to be the case on many, many aspects of President Trump's presidency. I spent much of Sunday on the National Mall at the president's prayer service of Jubilee and Thanksgiving in praise to rededicate America to God. And certainly, just even by the T-shirts that people were wearing, there were just as many Trump T-shirts as religious Christian shirts.

34:01And sometimes they were both. Like I saw a lot of Jesus is my Savior, Trump is my president shirts. So that wing of the party is certainly very much behind him. A hundred percent. And that's been key to his rise. It was key in his first term and in the 2016 election. At that point, elevation of Mike Pence to the ticket helped bring conservatives. Pence, of course, is no longer part of President Trump's second term, or is not part of President Trump's second term, but the president held on to those evangelical voters in a major way. Two more stories before we end the hour. Two teenagers killed three people at a San Diego mosque on Monday before shooting themselves.

34:40The victims had distracted and delayed the gunmen and prevented them from getting into classrooms where more than 100 students and teachers were studying. The attack is being investigated as a hate crime. One community member, Khalid Alexander, remembered his friend, Amin Abdullah. He was the security guard killed in the attack. You know, he would have zero regrets. Everything about him, I think, led up to the moment that we saw yesterday. And even though it's a loss for us as a community, I don't think that he would see it as a loss. Again, he died doing what he loved the most and protecting children.

35:25Anita, it's just heartbreaking to hear about another mass shooting in America. What do we know about this mosque, the Islamic Center of San Diego, which had a very diverse congregation? Yeah, it was a very large—it was the largest mosque in the city. And there were a lot of people there that were immigrants, a lot from the Gaza area that had come to the United States. It was just a bustling place in San Diego where, you know, we mentioned the children there, children, community events, that people were always coming in and out in a place that in the past had people had gotten some threats and they had increased the security.

36:06And so we're really mindful of this and sort of we're thinking about it. So this comes at a moment when anti-Muslim discrimination is on the rise. the Council on American-Islamic Relations said it received 8 ,686 civil rights complaints in 2025. That's the most in a single year in three decades since it began publishing data. The grief and anger spilled over at San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria's press conference on Tuesday. All Muslim brothers and sisters have been talking to me for how long? You have to f***ing listen to this, Todd. Just in the last year, we've seen opposition to Muslims in communities across America, the blocking of construction of mosques and religious schools, House Republicans holding hearings about Sharia-free America, reviving tropes and conspiracy theories about the Muslim American community.

37:01We talked about that narrative at a special live 1A show I hosted in front of a studio audience on Tuesday. In partnership with Religion News Service, we asked what nation under God means today, especially in the context of that White House-sponsored prayer rally held at the National Mall on Sunday. During that show, I asked religious liberty scholar Asma Udeen what that narrative means for non-Christian Americans. She's an assistant professor of law at Michigan State University and a fellow at Aspen's Religion and Society program. It basically says we're rededicating this country to this particular vision.

37:32And those are the people who belong. And everyone else is just a guest. And I think the incident in San Diego yesterday and many other incidents tell us that not a very welcome guest. We did a deep dive on that program into what the Establishment Clause is, what our founding fathers intended, when they created it, and what that looks like today. You can hear the rest of that conversation on our website at the1a.org. Can I ask all of you how you think we'll see the conversation about America being a, quote, Christian nation, these ideas of freedom and religion and separation of church and state continue to play out, especially during this midterm season of the election and in wake of what we were just talking about in terms of this mass shooting?

38:13One small thing that I've noticed and others have as well is that there's especially pronounced anti-Muslim rhetoric coming out of Republicans in Texas. And there's a theory that maybe this coincides with the total stopping of illegal immigration across the southern border, essentially making it so that they don't have the same boogeyman to talk about. So they're pivoting to something that, you know, in a sense is more imaginary, but, you know, it doesn't go against the Trump administration by saying, well, we still have all these people coming across the border since that's actually been a success of theirs.

38:50I would just reiterate what we were talking about briefly earlier, which is that the president and the Republican Party still enjoys a lot of support from the evangelical community. And that is not only helpful with voters and with the MAGA base, but also with money and just generating broad support. And when I say broad support, broad support within that section of the electorate. That's Bloomberg's Jeff Mason. We're also with Anita Kumar of Politico and HuffPost's Arthur Delaney. On Tuesday, we're going to dig into the issue of health care workers further to talk about what this means for aspiring health care workers, particularly nursing, what the shortage of this is and how it might affect care in the U.S.

39:38And we would love to hear from you if you're thinking about entering the health care field or continuing your education. How do limits on student loans affect your decisions? What questions do you have about student loan caps? You can email us 1a at wamu.org, and you can hear that conversation on Tuesday. We just have a few minutes left, and I just want to ask all of you just what stories we missed, what you want to talk about. I'll jump in. We do have a potential IPO coming up, or not just a potential, I mean a likely IPO coming up of Elon Musk's SpaceX. If it goes according to plan, it's likely to make him the world's first trillionaire.

40:20He's already the world's richest man. And we'll focus and will be interesting for the markets as well because of the wide investor interest in that IPO. So Trump's not getting ballroom money from Congress. And that's big because a judge said you can't build that unless Congress says so. How long could the East Wing of the White House be a hole in the ground? And that's a story I'm working on for the long weekend. I'm going to go with something lighter, which we didn't talk about Stephen Colbert, the show. Oh, I was saving that for last, but great. Go ahead. Sorry. Well, the show ended. And I think a lot of people were tuning in to see what that show would look like and what he would say about Donald Trump and what he would say about CBS.

41:04And then instead, he did kind of a different show. He didn't really go off on that. And he said at the beginning, look, we're just going to, we thought we'd do a special show. We're just going to do our regular show. And actually, we have a little bit of audio, so let's play some of it. Now, on night one of the Colbert Report, back in the day, I said, anyone can read the news to you. I promise to feel the news at you. And I realized pretty soon in this job that our job over here was different. We were here to feel the news with you. And I don't know about you, but I sure have felt it. So last week, the show's original host, David Letterman, joined Colbert Live to say he was, quote, pissed off by the network's decision last July to cancel the show, which the parent company Paramount said was due to financial losses, not pressure from the Trump administration.

41:53But the cancellation came swiftly after Colbert called out the network for paying the president in a lawsuit settlement while it seeks the administration's approval for a merger. final thoughts on the last chapter for Colbert Report, especially as we think about how that's reflective of our media environment? I mean, the fundamentals of television are changing, and it's inexpensive to make that kind of show, but you cannot forget that this was the top-rated night show, and Trump didn't like it. Also, just really interesting to see how his fellow late-night show hosts rallied around him. That's a big shift from late night of previous generations.

42:27I was in New York and it was 9 a.m. and there were people already in line yesterday trying to get in for the show. And there was two blocks of lines already at 9 a.m. So thank you very much to our panel this week for joining us in studio. Jeff Mason, Washington correspondent for Bloomberg News. Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost. And Anita Kumar, head of standards and practices at Politico. We're just getting started with the week's headlines. When we come back after the break, we'll have a new panel and all the news from around the globe. We'll be right back.

43:02Welcome back to the 1A podcast. Let's turn to some international news for our weekly news roundup. We're with Emily Timken, a freelance writer and reporter and a contributing columnist at The Forward. Her forthcoming book is called Holocaust Consciousness. Emily, welcome back. Thanks for having me. Jack Datch is also joining us, a defense reporter at Politico. Hi, Jack. It's great to have you with us. Good to be here, Nyla. And Akbar Shahid Ahmed, diplomatic correspondent at Notice and author of the upcoming book, Crossing the Red Line, Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza. Akbar, welcome.

43:33Thanks for having me. Our panel is here to answer our questions and yours especially about what you want to know about the week in international news. You can email us 1a at wamu.org. Let's start in Cuba with a new indictment by the United States against former Cuban President Raul Castro. A federal grand jury in Miami ruled to indict the 94-year-old Castro for the killing of four people, three Americans, when a plane was shot down in 1996 by Cuban military forces, forces that the U.S. alleges were working under Castro's orders. Here's Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche announcing the charges on Wednesday.

44:11Today, we are announcing an indictment charging Raul Castro and several others with conspiracy to kill U.S. nationals. The charges were secretly filed by a grand jury in April, and that includes five Cuban military pilots alongside Castro. Akbar, what do we know about these charges? I wonder if you can just sort of address the nature of even how they were released. And is this symbolic or something that could lead to Castro's extradition to the U.S.? So, Naila, these charges are extremely important for the Cuban exile community and for people who feel that Castro should be held accountable. His brother, Fidel Castro, did directly and openly claim responsibility for that attack.

45:01And so a lot of people feel that justice has been sort of denied for years and that past administrations just weren't willing to do this for fear of rankling the Cubans. All of that said, there's a very low likelihood that this process is going to lead to the 94-year-old Raul Castro actually coming to the United States, choosing to be in a court. That's not something that the Cuban regime is particularly interested in. And, you know, while we've seen the Trump administration go after people like the former Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, it's a bigger ask now at a moment where they're dealing with other global crises.

45:37The charges are also interesting in that they take this point that for pilots, for Cubans who were involved in this, there is actually an opportunity further down the chain also to have some accountability. But I think we're not going to see much beyond political grounds happening around this. Emily, although Raul Castro is no longer head of state or leader of the armed forces, what kind of power does he still wield in Cuba? And especially just how much of it is because of his name? Yeah, I mean, his – first of all, as Akbar sort of spoke to, there's the symbolic power. But it's also widely believed that he has power behind the scenes as sort of a great eminence.

46:18And when we say the name, right, it's not just the name Castro. It's the family. And that includes his grandson. And his grandson's prominence and preeminence is taken as one signal that perhaps that although he does not have formal power, there are still lots of different kinds of power one can wield. Donald Trump spoke to reporters outside of Air Force One about the U.S. presence in Cuba on Wednesday. Well, we have a lot of people there. We have the CIA there. We have Marco is there. Marco's parents, as you know, were from Cuba. So we have a lot of expertise in Cuba. And it's not going to be like the biggest thing we've ever done.

46:55But I will tell you, to a lot of people, it's going to be one of the most important. They've been looking for this moment for 65 years. Jack, it might surprise some people to hear the president say the CIA is in Cuba. The CIA director, John Ratliff, did meet with Cuban intelligence officials and with Raul Castro's grandson, who played a major role in the ongoing talks with the U.S. But what's the CIA up to there? Well, this gives the U.S. another facilitator in the pressure campaign on Cuba, NILA. And it's not like the secretary of state coming who can jostle and cajole. The CIA has this long history of assassination plots against Fidel Castro, Bay of Pigs, using paramilitaries on the island.

47:34So there are a lot of different covert tools that the CIA brings to the table. And you just have to remember, too, over the course of this administration, John Ratcliffe, the CIA director, has been deployed as kind of this global fix-it man, kind of the same way that Bill Burns was in the Biden administration. We've seen Ratcliffe now pop up in Venezuela, in Europe, now Cuba. And he's able to kind of come there and make the case, look, if you don't make changes, we have other ways to bring the pain to you. Cubans have been living under an energy crisis due to the U.S. embargo and new fuel blockade.

48:09Residents say food and fuel are scarce. Some areas have had only two hours of electricity per day. The children don't have food to eat. They can't go to school. We are desperate. The women have lost 20 pounds. We're anxious. We don't have a way to support our kids. I had a conversation with one of the humanitarian aid groups that's authorized to provide aid to Cuba yesterday, and they were sharing with me that the food situation is so bad, oftentimes communities are banding together to create food together because they don't have enough. And so oftentimes what you'll see is an entire neighborhood bringing everything they have to make a soup, And then everybody has that, and that's the only meal that they have.

48:54Emily, Secretary of State Marco Rubio released a video in Spanish addressed to the Cuban people on Wednesday, which was Cuban Independence Day. In the video, he blamed the energy crisis on the government. Where do Cubans stand on who's to blame for what's happening there right now? I mean, look, while, you know, the Cuban people are not a monolith, I think the Cuban authorities have been quite pointed in saying that this is a result of U.S. policies. And one thing that I think we've seen in Cuba, and this is not unique to Cuba or even to the region, is that, look, sanctions are a tool. And so it's sanctions, blockades, energy embargoes, whatever.

49:29These are all tools. And so it's not effective to say, it's not righteous to say, oh, this isn't working. But I do think it's appropriate to raise the question is if your goal is to turn the people against the government, historically, does forcing the people through sanctions, blockades, et cetera, work? And historically, I think what we've seen is that governments can use it to encourage rallying around the flag, right, and blaming the United States instead of their own government. Secretary Rubio also spoke about the U.S. presence in Cuba this week. Here he is talking to reporters on Thursday.

50:01Cuba's consistently posed the threat to the national security of the United States. And the other thing that poses a threat to the national security of the United States is to have a failed state 90 miles from our shores run by friends of our adversaries. The adversaries Rubio mentions there are Russia and China, who he went on to say have shared weapons and intelligence with Cuba. Akbar, the big question here, which I think a lot of people are asking, not just in South Florida, but across the country, what do Rubio's statements reveal about what the U.S. end goal is in Cuba and the potential military action there to push for a regime change?

50:33As you said, this is different than Venezuela, but many people are thinking this seems like the same playbook. Right. And this gets to sort of what Emily was discussing about the rally around the flag effect and the question of, is the goal here to improve the living conditions of the Cuban people? Is it humanitarian concern? If it is, is forcing them into the kind of situation you described where neighborhoods literally are dependent on one soup for everyone to eat, is that going to lead to them being happier or sort of more satisfied? or is the question, you're a threat, we need to knock you down.

51:05And what we know is that the Cuban state security sector, very closely linked to Raul Castro, remains very powerful. So the Trump administration hasn't been clear. And when you look at that in the context of the Iran war, another war where the Trump administration sometimes says, we want to kneecap the Iranian regime, and then sometimes says, we want to free the Iranian people, there's not a coherent narrative that people can sort of cling on to or even that lawmakers, U.S. troops, U.S. officials themselves at the State Department in the intelligence community can say we know what our mission is here.

51:39You can join the conversation by emailing 1a at wamu.org. Jack, we're getting a lot of questions to this effect, so I'm going to put this question Robert in Michigan asked to you. If we can indict Raul Cascio for shooting down planes, can Trump be indicted for his blowing up of boats and killing innocent fishermen? Well, there's a lot of international law that the international courts could bring up against President Trump. It seems unlikely that we'll see anything specific just related to all of that. But as this campaign has continued to go on and we still see some of that activity going on in the eastern Pacific and the Caribbean, it's going to be a question that's consistently raised probably after the midterms as well.

52:21Emily, what are you watching for next here with Cuba? I think I'll be watching, you know, does the narrative get coherent? Do we actually have a sense of who this is meant to help, of what the end goal is here? If indeed the end goal is regime change, as some could infer it is, what does the international community such as it is do about that? I think Jack raised a really important point, too, of the strikes in the Caribbean and the Pacific, which also have to be seen as other peace with this. These are strikes that have killed almost 200 people over nine months, many of them civilians, without the U.S.

53:00government ever saying it knows who it is. So if you are a Cuban looking at the fact that Trinidadians are being killed, Colombians are being killed in your neighborhood without any kind of evidence of a U.S. plan there, that's also part of this equation. And that also gets to the questions around rule of law, the Trump administration's goals, and whether there's a human rights concern here at all. Jack, anything you want to add here? Yeah, I mean, I think you just look at the administration and the way it's handled the entire region, right, through the quote-unquote Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.

53:33And this is part and parcel of the same approach, just using that same military force they tried to apply on Venezuela and create the situation that's there now, potentially in Cuba, to affect some of the same compromises. A possibility of peace and renewed threats of strikes. It's been another week of the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran and familiar messaging from the U.S. president. Everything's gone. Their navy's gone. Their air force is gone. Just about everything. The only question is, do we go and finish it up or are they going to be signing a document? Let's see what happens. And while Tehran says the latest proposal from the U.S.

54:08has partially bridged the gap between the warring sides, Iran's chief negotiator says Iranians should be reassured that the country's armed forces have used the ceasefire to, quote, rebuild their strength. Here's Iran's foreign ministry's spokesperson. We approach every diplomatic process with deep distrust and serious scepticism in order to safeguard the national interests of Iran. Iran is aware that given the United States' track record of undermining negotiations, it may repeat the same actions at any moment. Jack, it's been almost 12 weeks of war. This does feel like a particularly 2026 version of the movie Groundhog Day, as I'm replaying all of those clips for you.

54:57How are we supposed to assess what we're hearing from this? Yeah, Nyla, enrichment is still the biggest game in town when it comes to Iran's stockpile of uranium. The U.S. initially pushed for zero. Iran said no pretty flatly. Now it seems like they're kind of coming together towards some partial narrowing, what could be a deal. It looks like there could be some temporary caps, some phased reductions in the stockpile, perhaps that magic number of 3.67 % that was in the JCPOA and some of those inspections. So this very much looks like a meet the new JCPOA, same as the old JCPOA. But you don't have those marathon talks that existed in Vienna.

55:43You don't have dozens of diplomats and technical experts working this. And you don't really have the time. The JCPOA took 20 months. Trump's sitting here looking at gas prices, looking at the polls, and looking at the November election looming. He needs this wrapped up ASAP. So let me just ask you about the uranium. The IEA estimates Iran had close to 1 ,000 pounds of uranium, or rich to 60 percent, when Israel and the U.S. attacked Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025. How much of that survived is unclear. Israel, the U.S., and other Western states have accused Iran of seeking nuclear weapons.

56:20Akbar, how does this gap get bridged? What could possible solutions look like? Is this exactly like the deal that we had before? But the deal that that occurred before, as Jack noted, not only involved technical experts, many of whom have been run out of the U.S. government and have not been consulted in this process. It also involved buy-in from the Europeans, the Chinese, the Russians. Not a lot of that diplomacy has happened this time to safeguard any of this. All of that said, a big gap is the sort of trust deficit, right, that exists between the U.S. and Iran. Really great, always throughout decades, so, so, so much deeper in this Trump era, given the propensity of the U.S.

57:04repeatedly to go from talking about talks, talking about a deal, to military strikes with Israel on Iran. That's now happened twice, and there's a constant fear it could happen again, including as soon as this weekend or right after the Muslim holiday of Eid next week, then there's President Trump's own consistent statements where he does not seem willing in any way to even acknowledge the Iranian repeated statements that they don't want a nuclear weapon. Iran has said that consistently. Previous U.S. administrations, particularly the Obama administration in pursuing the JCPOA, said, verify this, right?

57:39Yes, we won't take it at face value. Donald Trump has said, I don't even believe any statement from them. So how do you deal with that? And then finally, to the question of the enriched uranium, the U.S. has repeatedly said the Iranians can't keep their hands on it. For Iran, this is an issue of sovereignty, of their territorial integrity. And who do they trust to take it? Is it regional players? Is it Europeans? That's really your open question. Can I just ask you about Pakistan's role here, Akhar? Pakistan has been mediating. Of course, hosted the unsuccessful peace talks in Islamabad, which was in mid-April.

58:17The military chief was in Tehran this week to talk about this. What are they hoping for here? The Pakistanis are hoping for a kind of regional architecture building this in. They're working very closely with the Turks, the Saudis, the Egyptians, and the Qataris to an extent, where they're hoping the answer can be, let's address Iran's concern about questions including U.S. bases in the region, U.S. military personnel, its future security against Israeli attacks. All of that said, Pakistan is still a relative newcomer to this U.S.-Iran file, which is so bitter and covers so many issues that haven't even been mentioned here.

58:56I mean, there's also questions around sanctions relief, for instance, which would be very politically difficult here in the U.S., even if President Trump were to try to pursue it, Congress would push back. There's questions around Iran-linked attacks on U.S. forces. So Pakistan has been a meeting. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio just today praised the Pakistanis for passing messages back and forth. But in terms of actually building that compromise or finding the sweet spot, I don't know that they're quite there yet. I feel like we should talk about some absolutely jaw-dropping reporting for The New York Times this week on former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

59:32In the early days of the war, Ahmadinejad's home, where he had been held in house arrest over critiques of IRGC leaders, was hit by an airstrike, and he was initially assumed to have been killed. But now the Times, citing U.S. officials, reports that the strike was intended to kill his guards, allowing him to then be installed as the U.S. and Israeli-approved leader of a post-Islamic Republic government. Emily, the Times reporting makes it clear that this plan was concocted and primarily driven by Mossad, that's the Israeli intelligence agency, in cooperation with the Trump administration. Can you help me understand the potential thinking that is here and what this reporting revealed about that?

1:00:13You know, I don't want to come on to this program and to opine, but this report was a real, like, what are we doing here? Like, the plan was that they were going to strike his, according to the report, they were going to strike his house that he was going to escape and then become the new head of Iran. Like, that was the plan. And evidently the issue is that he got scared because his house was struck and said, oh, no, I'm sorry, this is a bridge too far for me, Ahmadinejad, to become the leader of Iran once again. I think that, like, basically the logic here is that any regime change is good regime change, as far as I can tell, right, because this is a person who is so— you're the United States and Israel.

1:00:47This is a person who was so fervently opposed to both of you during his time in power and who has since become— Including denying the Holocaust. Including Holocaust denial, right? Like up to it including Holocaust denial, who now that he's on the outs has been critical of those in power. And so your solution to your – the fact that you also have acrimonious relations, let's say, with those in power is to reinstall him. Like it's a combination of the belief that when you go to war with a country that the people will rise up and that the enemy of the enemy is my friend. And two things that, by the way, we have seen time and again do not hold.

1:01:23So that did not, I mean, as we have seen, that did not work out. But it's sort of like, you know, far be it for me to say that I know better than Mossad and various Trump officials. But the idea that this ever was going to work out is sort of baffling to me. Jack, Ahmadinejad's whereabouts are unknown. But I wonder what this reporting does to the credibility of both the Trump and Netanyahu's administration when it comes to this war. Well, it's a challenge, right? Because one of the key things that Trump has always claimed, dating back to January, February timeframe, when you had those massive Iranian protests in the streets against the Islamic Republic, was that help was on the way, that a U.S.

1:02:05strike was somehow going to help rally the Iranians and rally the Iranian opposition towards some sort of regime change. So this undercuts the idea that the U.S. is here helping democratic promotion when you're looking at someone with a track record of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who very, very violently crushed the 2009 Green Revolution after a highly disputed election that probably would have seen him ousted from power. You also have the troubling rhetoric, I mean, the denial of the Holocaust, the anti-Israel rhetoric. So it does add to not only this undercutting of the democracy narrative, but this strategic incoherence that Emily pointed at around the campaign.

1:02:48Let's talk about the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has been in talks with Oman on how to set up some form of a permanent toll system that will formalize its control of maritime traffic there. On Thursday, the president rejected that idea. We want it open. We want it free. We don't want tolls. It's international. It's an international waterway. They're not charging tolls. Right now, they are losing$500 million a day is what it's projected. I don't know, it sounds like a lot of money, but whether it's$500 or$200 or$300, they're losing a lot of money. There hasn't been a ship that's been able to get through without our approval.

1:03:25Iran has also expanded its area of jurisdiction and set out new rules for vessels seeking to transit the waterway, setting up a new body called the Persian Gulf Strait Authority. The authority has demanded as much as$2 million for safe passage. Jack, the irony here is that during the course of the war, the president himself said the U.S. could start charging fees. At one point suggested a U.S.-Iran joint venture for the strait. Where do we go from here? Yeah, we're in a standoff here. And the Iranians seem to really be transitioning their control of the Strait of Hormuz from this disruption with weapons systems to more of an economic regime.

1:04:05They've launched a cryptocurrency-backed insurance platform where cargo entities can sign up and potentially get protection from the Iranians. They're trying to raise$10 billion off of that regime. They've also had some success in flouting the U.S. naval blockade. So this is definitely Iran standing up and pumping their chest out here. But it's interesting just to see the back and forth. Marco Rubio at NATO today basically saying, look, we could sort of be in this long-term standoff where the Iranians are refusing to reopen the Straits, the U.S. is refusing to reopen the Straits, and then you have the Europeans also on the sidelines refusing to get involved until there's a formal settlement to the war in Iran.

1:04:50So it's just really a confusing situation right now. Earlier this week, the president said he suspended imminent U.S. military strikes on Iran after the Gulf states intervened to gain more time due to ongoing negotiations and concerns over Iranian retaliation. With Qatar saying Gulf leaders are united in trying to avoid a resumption of the war. On Wednesday, Middle East correspondent for The Economist Greg Karlstrom joined 1A to talk about the changing role of Gulf countries in the Iran war. They have been telling the administration, don't resume fighting. But do I think they did it earlier this week, the way Trump described?

1:05:27Do I think they told Trump, we're making good progress towards a deal, so just give diplomacy another chance? I don't believe that. Last month, it was Pakistan who was holding him back. Now it's the Gulf states who are holding him back. Who knows who it's going to be next time? He clearly doesn't want to do it. Akbar, what kind of insight are we getting on the role Gulf states are exercising behind the scenes here, whether that's preventing further escalation or including their concerted growing influence over the White House? I'll just start by tipping my cap to Emily, who did a valiant job of not bursting out laughing openly at how confusing this all is.

1:06:04You know, because even for Gulf countries, the fact that the U.S. is now inching towards accepting a huge degree of Iranian influence, despite the fact that the president is out here saying we're not going to let the Iranians charge a toll. it's a free international waterway, the Gulf knows that's not happening. So regional countries are looking at a new security architecture, one in which, conversely, Iran is going to have a lot more sway. And part of that, Naila, comes from the fact that Iran, to an extent, has been a more predictable player in all of this than the United States, right? So if you are the UAE, if you are Kuwait, if you are these states that have been pummeled, and seeing your bargain where you host U.S.

1:06:44military bases in hopes of defense and kind of stewardship of your region, that bargain doesn't look so good anymore. So Saudis, I do think Emiratis are in a bit of a funny position because they are very close to Israel, extremely opposed to Iran. But the Saudis, Qataris, many others in the region, I think are going to quietly move a little closer to Iran. Does that mean that they necessarily will anger the Trump administration? I think there's some willingness from some Trump officials, even potentially up to the president himself, to accept Iranian influence increasing, even though that might be unpopular and not seem traditionally Republican.

1:07:23Well, and President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed an effort to reach a deal with Iran and what would some call a, quote, testy call between the two leaders. To your point, Akbar, speaking to reporters about the Israeli Prime Minister, Donald Trump said this. He'll do whatever I want him to do. He's a very good man. And he'll do whatever I want him to do. The two have had temporary disagreements on Iran before, but have appeared closely coordinated in the war. Emily, remind us of what Netanyahu wants or not wants when it comes to these negotiations with Iran and then where the U.S.

1:07:58is continuing to diverge on this. Yeah, I think that, well, first of all, it's sort of it to me, the testy conversation reports. Well, you know, I'm not I'm not doubting the reporting, but I do think that it's the latest iteration. It's this administration's version of, you know, ex-administration officials are upset with what the Israelis have said while continuing to effectively work with their partner, Israel. That's the side. You know, I think for Americans, it's not totally clear what the goal is here. This war is really unpopular with the American voter. And so for Trump, it's how can I claim that there's some victory here and get out of this?

1:08:36Netanyahu does not necessarily want this. It's much more clear why Israel and Iran are at war, although as the war drags on again that, you know, his capability is sort of called into question there. But particularly given that Israel is going to be heading into elections too. Yeah, Emily, I wanted to ask you about that because this week the Knesset voted to dissolve itself. How are we seeing that be played out domestically in Israel as we think about that? Right. So Netanyahu is really going to want to run as the prime minister who can keep the country safe, as the security prime minister, as the sort of militaristic, like we need a steady hand, which he will present himself as.

1:09:18you know and I and and and well I think we'll try to use the war to paper over the internal contradictions that his own government just under the weight of which his own government just collapsed which I think we'll speak about in a bit but it you know this religious extreme religious you know the the most religious parties pulling out because their exemption for mandatory military service wasn't granted versus the quiet militaristic nationalistic demands of this very far-right government and the fact that military service is compulsory for the rest of the country Right. So there's the sort of that that's the sort of dynamic that he's trying to overcome.

1:09:52This war is one way to overcome it. And the fact that Trump wants it wrapped up without a clear victory for Netanyahu, I don't think is more important to Netanyahu than his own political future. And with Netanyahu's credibility in question at home and very importantly in the United States, a really big concern is Israel's stated goal of Iran with no nuclear weapon. we are so much further away from that. There's no evidence that this war has improved the direction, any military progress in that direction. Let's stay in Gaza for one more story. ABC News reports new satellite images show what appears to be a wall being built by the Israeli military along the yellow line in Gaza.

1:10:28The images show at least nine Israeli military outposts, new ones installed after Israel and Hamas reached an agreement for a ceasefire last October. At that time, Israel controlled some 50 percent of the Gaza Strip. Jack, this yellow line was meant to be temporary. What do we think is happening here? Yeah, I mean, just these these eviction orders that the Israelis have put into place have caused a lot of concerns. And it's sort of, again, kind of raising potential fractures within the far right wing of Netanyahu's coalition. you see just question marks about Smotrich, the finance minister, who's affected some of these policies, who's been a very outspoken person in favor of the resettlement of the West Bank, causing much more controversy.

1:11:21So we'll sort of see where this goes. But yeah, I mean, this is going to be an irritant in Israeli politics for sure. And the human toll of this is huge, right? For Palestinians, you've seen this Israeli control inch from what was meant to be 53 % to now almost 58 % and moving west, right? So more and more of Gaza has become inaccessible to a lot of Palestinians unless they want to live under intense surveillance and potential risk of shooting and death. So for people who are now more than 2 million Gazans still not able to have reconstruction since the war that began post-October 7th, This kind of development of the wall makes life even more desperate.

1:12:02And that's also put in the context of almost all aid to Gaza still being restricted and cut off. Let's move to another region. A week after President Trump visited Beijing, it was Vladimir Putin's turn to court Chinese leader Xi Jinping. The Russian president met with Xi on Wednesday saying their partnership is a stabilizing force in the world. The leaders have grown closer amid Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the war in Iran. China buys Russian oil and gas and is the country's top trading partner. Emily, we are going to get to the latest on the war in Ukraine in a moment. But first, I just want to ask what came out of this meeting.

1:12:40Who exactly is the main audience for this show of cooperation between Russia and China? It was a very productive meeting for Xi and Putin. It was more substantive than the Trump iteration. there were, you know, I should say the caveat to all of that is that there's a pipeline deal that Putin badly wants that was not actually finalized yet. But to your question about who this is for, I think there are many audiences. Two that I'll highlight are the U.S. and the rest, right? I think there were jabs made throughout the visit about sort of telling, showing the U.S., like, Like, you're, you know, it's us.

1:13:21It's not you. We're the reliable ones. We're the prominent ones. We're the big players. And for the rest of the world, it's, look, we've met, what, 40 times over however the past many years these presidents are coming and going. And when they come in, they can tell you one thing while you're negotiating and then go to war with you. That's not what you get with us. And so I think it was a show of stability. It was a show of power and it was a show of mutual trust from Russia and China. A brief ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine came to an end when Russia launched one of its largest attacks on Ukraine since the full-scale invasion, killing 24 people in an apartment building in Kiev.

1:14:00Ukraine's response was just as fierce, sending thousands of drones more than 300 miles. Jack, what has Putin been trying to project over the past two weeks? What are the state of his forces? Well, we've seen Putin kind of play this kinder, gentler Putin. He's said he thinks the war is coming to an end after four years, and he may be acknowledging he's on the back foot. The Russian spring offensive into the Donbass has hit a wall of four fortified cities that the Ukrainians have effectively booby-trapped in the Donbass. The Russians have been outpaced on the technological front in the drone war.

1:14:35And the Ukrainian long-range strikes have been so effective that the Kremlin really had to ask for a no-strike guarantee to hold their military parade on May 9th. So you see all of that difficulty simultaneously. You see the Russians causing a lot of trouble in the Baltic this week. The Russians have been spreading disinformation that Eastern European countries are effectively providing a launch pad for long-range Ukrainian drone strikes into Russia. and potentially are redirecting Ukrainian drones into Baltic airspace using jamming and other factors. So while Putin's current war in Ukraine is bogged down, his future war against NATO is potentially kicking off.

1:15:17And Emily, to that point about Eastern European politics, can you share Hungary and Ukraine's foreign ministers have been meeting to discuss the rights of Ukraine's ethnic Hungarian minority, why this is significant? Yeah, it shows that, I mean, that perhaps a new era of Hungarian-Ukrainian relations is upon us now that Viktor Orban has finally, or, you know, finally in the sense of after many years lost power. This was a political, I mean, not to say that the Hungarian ethnic minority in Ukraine is not a real issue, but it was also a successful political issue for Viktor Orban in, you know, stirring up resentment against Ukraine as a domestic political tool.

1:15:55And so even though I should – we should say that even though that's true, ethnic – when that ethnic minority or members of it fled into Hungary, they were not necessarily treated with open arms and, you know, like many Ukrainian refugees had to – or refugees from Ukraine had to struggle day to day to sort of make it. But anyway, this suggests a new – potentially a new era in Hungarian-Ukrainian relationships in which ethnic minority status is not used as a political football between the two countries. Jack, you mentioned NATO. Secretary of State Marco Rubio attended a NATO meeting today in Sweden.

1:16:31Meanwhile, at a NATO meeting in Brussels, the U.S. is expected to announce it's reducing the number of combat troops available to NATO in a crisis. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte addressed the plan on Thursday, noting the U.S. does need European allies for its own defense. You could argue that the defense of the U.S. mainland starts in Norway. Why? Because that's where we have to make sure that these nuclear submarines from Russia don't pose a threat to the U.S. mainland. So we are in this together, but this overall alliance has to stop. The U.S. is expected to reduce the number of emergency troops available to NATO.

1:17:09Jack, but is also committing to keep troops in Poland. What is going on? Fewer troops in general? What is actually needed in Poland right now and what is happening? Yeah, talk about head spinning, Nyla. The U.S. just did wrap up that meeting in Brussels at NATO where they told NATO allies they're going to reduce military contributions to the alliance that can be troops, potentially weapons. And the Poland decision initially came out of that process. The U.S. wanted to draw down the number of rotational brigades that come from the United States, do tours through Europe from four to three. And they had already planned that with the Germany drawdown.

1:17:49The tricky part was that didn't really jibe with Trump's own mental list of naughty and nice allies within NATO. The polls were able to successfully claw this back. and behind the scenes, Trump was imploring Pete Hegsett about why this actually happened, because Poland has been effectively a model ally, even for the Trump administration. They're the biggest military spender in NATO. So got to figure out how to get back to this 5 ,000 number that was taken away that Trump wants to add back. They could just delay the deployment and turn it back on, send those troops that were pulled back back over.

1:18:28They could cobble it together from other parts of the continent. But now you have European officials and NATO Secretary General Mark Ruta in this awkward position of basically standing in front of a fireworks show and saying there's nothing to see here. And I'll just add that President Trump is not the only decision maker here, right? These are longstanding U.S. alliances that are bipartisan. and my colleagues at Notice this week revealed that Republican senators were actually discussing what they would do. This is an issue that could lead to a significant rift with Congress, with Republicans even holding up Trump administration nominees or trying to write into law the amount of troops there.

1:19:07So this isn't just a matter of what Trump and the Pentagon may prefer, ideologically. That's Akbar Shahid Ahmed from Notice. We're also with Jack Detch of Politico and Emily Tamkin, a contributing columnist at The Forward. The head of the World Health Organization said today the Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo is, quote, spreading rapidly, but the risk for global spread remains low. So far, WHO reports 750 suspected cases and 177 suspected deaths from the highly contagious virus. There are two cases so far in neighboring Uganda. Here's what one woman whose son died from the virus told France 24.

1:19:49He told me he had chest pain and I thought it was his stomach. Then he started crying because of the pain in his stomach. After that, he started vomiting.

1:20:02Then he started bleeding and vomiting a lot. So far, just 82 cases have been confirmed. That's according to the DRC Health Ministry. One of those cases includes a doctor from the U.S. who had been treating patients. This outbreak is from a rare strain of Ebola that kills 30 to 50 percent of those infected. There's no current vaccine, but scientists at Oxford University say they're developing one that could be ready for trials in a few months. This is the 17th Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976. Some former top U.S. officials, especially from the U.S. Agency for International Development, are drawing a line from the Ebola crisis in Congo to the Trump administration's withdrawal from the WHO and elimination of USAID last year.

1:20:48The AP reports the U.S. has committed$23 million to support the response and will set up 50 clinics. Akbar,$23 million is not how much the U.S., first of all, gave during the previous Ebola crisis. So let's just start with that before we get to the gutting of USAID and the current crisis. This is a fraction, right, of what the U.S. would traditionally spend in this region and a place where the U.S. was the donor. So it's not just about the amount of money you pour in. It's about breaking those relationships, those expectations for health systems. You can't just build it back up overnight. So what do we know so far about how the gutting of USAID has affected virus detection and response?

1:21:33in the Congo and Uganda? There's kind of two big strains here. One is the disease surveillance and tracking of infections and sort of where they're spreading. And right now, some of the stats you quoted, there's just a lower level of confidence in that, Nyla, than there was even a year or two ago. So when we say, oh, there's a low chance of this coming to the U.S., or there's a low chance of this spreading and becoming bigger, we can't say that the same way that we could in 2024, 2023. and then linked to that question about disease tracking, disease spread, and actual experts on this, is the immense risk to health workers.

1:22:09So the U.S. funding was often what would enable health workers to have respirators, specialized protections. Now they have kind of the cheapest, easiest, most available things, so just maybe masks, maybe gloves. And that puts them at an immense risk, which of course is really risky for them, And it creates a situation where are they able to report back what they're hearing if they're getting sick themselves? So, Jack, I want to reiterate that the risk of a global outbreak remains low. But I do want to ask you, especially in light of the conversation we were just having about NATO, what we're hearing from other American allies and European officials about this outbreak and what needs to be done.

1:22:46What is the diplomatic community saying about this? Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of fear, basically. I mean, we've heard from the WHO director general that, I mean, the slow identification of this outbreak, like Akbar mentioned, is causing some risk. So, you know, I mean, obviously, you don't know that people have Ebola until they're expressing symptoms. So that's just a major challenge. And it's also a major challenge, of course, to Trump's immigration agenda is pause deportation flights back to the Congo and other places. So it's going to be a challenge for President Trump's domestic agenda.

1:23:23It's going to be a challenge diplomatically, especially just with the way the administration's been treating its allies. I mean, we're even hearing how this may affect the World Cup. Right. I mean, this is going to be a hugely disruptive issue. And it's inseparable from the idea that the U.S. is not playing that role as a global leader in emergency response. And that ultimately, it's not just an international issue. It links to domestic questions of, you have a health and human secretary who has been out here casting doubt on medical expertise his entire career. Emily? I think I just want to add that when you take resources away from things like USAID, what you are effectively doing is adding the time it takes to identify and treat and stop viral outbreaks.

1:24:06And when there is a viral outbreak or a spread of infection, et cetera, time is your most precious, your best tool, your most precious resource. And I just want to draw a really straight line between, like, memes and doge and the lack of seriousness with which these line items were, you know, were handled last year and what's happening now. And I just think it's important for listeners of this program, right, because we're here in the United States to understand that that's what we're talking about, right? When you listen to the first hour of 1A, you can predict ramifications in the second hour of 1A.

1:24:48We just have about a minute left, and I just want to ask you all quickly what you are looking for towards next week or what we missed talking about this week. Akbar, can I start with you? Yeah, I'm very curious to see what kind of concessions the Trump administration is going to be willing to make towards the Iranians, because the Iranians are making clear we're not capitulating, we're negotiating for a place of strength. So some flexibility will have to come from the U.S. Emily? We talked about Hungary, but we did not talk about Slovakia, which is sort of, at the moment, the last, like, not behaving or last thorn on the side member of the EU on Ukraine standing.

1:25:23So I'm going to be watching whether or not they play nicer with the EU, which actually they sort of have. But the FITA and company have also been playing nice with Russia. So how long they try to pursue that balancing act, that's one thing I'll be keeping an eye on. Jack? It's another big week for U.S.-China relations. The U.S. arms sale to Taiwan for$11 billion still on hold and potentially a visit for the Pentagon's policy chief in the balance to China as well. My thanks to our panelists today, Jack Datch, defense reporter at Politico, Emily Tampkin, freelance writer and reporter and author of The Influence of Soros and Bad Jews and forthcoming book called Holocaust Consciousness.

1:26:03I want to thank also Akbar Shahid Ahmed. His upcoming book is called Crossing the Red Line, Biden, His Advisors, and Israel's War in Gaza. Thanks very much. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexandra Bote is our senior supervising producer. Aileen Humphreys is our senior producer and editor of 1A On Demand. And Thomas Liu produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson for additional on-demand support this week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR.

1:26:40I'm Nailah Boodoo. This is One It.