The News Roundup for May 8, 2026

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28:50Let's turn to immigration. Senate Republicans have added$1 billion to a$70 billion immigration bill for a White House construction project that includes building a new East Wing with a large bomb room. The money is designated for security enhancements, although President Trump previously said costs of the renovation would be paid for using private donations, not taxpayer dollars. Megan, I think the very obvious question is, why is this being included in an immigration bill? It is being included in large part under pressure from the White House, which is in court right now, defending the ballroom and essentially including this money in this bill would essentially serve as congressional authorization to proceed with the ballroom.

29:36There's also, of course, you know, the shooting earlier this month at the White or late last month at the White House Correspondents Dinner has really galvanized Republicans behind the ballroom saying they need this for security purposes. But this billion dollars that is proposed in this package that would pass both the House and the Senate along party lines only can get through some procedure. It's immune from some procedural hurdles in the Senate. You know, it's a billion dollars for security enhancements for a ballroom that was expected to cost$400 million. So there's a lot of questions here as to what would be considered security.

30:17So sorry, you're saying that the security enhancements are that they're authorizing the costs are more than the entire project of the renovation. That is our understanding. The billion dollars would be for security enhancements and Secret Service. Well, it says security enhancements because that's the new reason for the ballroom. Initially, it was because I want a ballroom. There's not enough seats at the White House the way it is. and they can't write fancy ballroom that's terrible politics in legislation. So they wrote security. It does beg the question what kind of political fight this is setting up, Elena, especially when we think about the idea that these renovations now could be funded by taxpayer dollars.

30:57Right. When you talk to Democrats, they see this as a total layup for them, which is to say that they're not going to necessarily dwell on the ballroom itself, but rather say, voters, look what he's spending on this ballroom when he needs to be focused on your cost of living issues. And I think that Republicans as a fallback really did lean on this idea that donors were going to be the one to cover the cost. That was their quick answer whenever anyone asked them about this project. And now that sort of answer is being taken away from them. To get into the weeds on this process, though, Republicans are aware that this is bad politics.

31:32and they have narrow majorities in the House and Senate. They need to pass this themselves. They are going to have a problem with some members getting it through each chamber because there are moderates who don't want to vote for a ballroom. This was also supposed to be a bill just for ICE and Border Patrol, and the Republican leadership said, no, we can't add this SAVE Act, the voter ID. We can't add all this other stuff you want. It's got to be just these two things. Oh, but now we're going to add a ballroom? So it will be an interesting thing to watch this coming week. Earlier this year, former ICE lawyer and whistleblower Ryan Schwenk accused the agency of slashing hundreds of training hours for new recruits.

32:13Now the Department of Homeland Security says it's returning to its previous training standards, which would require 72 days of instruction and scrap a compressed 42-day program that was implemented last fall. Arthur, why did the DHS say they were doing this? Do you remember when Democrats said we won't fund DHS unless there are reforms? This is a result of that. They couldn't get it in legislative text. They couldn't reach a deal. But right away after Minneapolis, the Trump administration knew that its immigration crackdown was chaotic and bad. And they were open to body cameras. They were open to training.

32:51And now that the House has passed a regular DHS funding bill, they have their money. So I believe that that unlocked this training reform that is meant to just sort of make their overall immigration posture a little softer and return to the standards that they had cut when they got this huge pile of money last year to ramp up ICE hiring. Sticking with the DHS, the department confirmed that it has closed its Office of Immigration Detention Ombudsman, which had served as an agency watchdog for immigration detention. This was a place where people could report misconduct, excessive force, other rights violations.

33:32The office is now archived on DHS's website. More than 60 ,000 people are currently being detained at immigration detention centers. At least 46 people have died in detention centers since the beginning of the second Trump administration. Arthur, as we've discussed the mass deportation and detention campaigns on the Roundup over this year, many of our listeners have asked. I think you've been here when listeners have emailed in about government checks and balances. With the closure of this watchdog group, what other checks and balances remain on ICE for their actions in this arena particularly?

34:08Well, real quick, it was my HuffPost colleagues Dave Jamison and Matt Shuham who scooped that this office had shut down inside DHS. Federal agencies, this was an ombudsman. They also have inspectors general, which investigate, you know, bad work and can make criminal referrals. I think in the Trump era, all of that is in doubt. If you get beat up by an ICE agent and they break your stuff, you can file an administrative claim. If they don't act on your claim or give you money, you can go to court. So there's not a whole lot of recourt. But there are cases, including some high-profile ones, where people are trying to do that.

34:49The Supreme Court this week temporarily blocked a lower court decision that would have stopped the mailing of mifepristone, one of the drugs used in medication abortions. The stay ends on Monday. We got into the nuances of the legal battle and the effect it's having on patients and providers earlier this week on 1A. Layla Copeland is a nurse midwife and director of clinical operations for telehealth and mail order abortion provider, Abortion on Demand. One thing I've noticed in practicing telehealth for about 10 years right now, providing abortion care this way, is that proximity to a clinic doesn't necessarily mean that folks want to go to a clinic.

35:26There's so many other reasons that people may choose telehealth, including needing to take time off of work, for safety reasons for folks if they're not able to tell partners or parents. not having cars, again, being in a rural area. So telehealth is not just for folks who are living rurally, far from clinics, but it's sometimes the best and safest method for folks to get care. Mifepristone is used in more than 60 % of abortions. It's also used to help women who've had miscarriages. And since the FDA allowed it to be prescribed via telehealth in 2022, it's become more widely accessible, even to people living in states with laws banning it.

36:03That's a problem for abortion opponents who are growing increasingly frustrated with what they see as the Trump administration's inaction on abortion. Megan, why hasn't President Trump been more vocal on this issue this year? Well, there are a lot of other things taking up his time, certainly the Iran war and his staff are trying to get him to focus on the economy. me. Abortion is not even in the top of the issues for Republican voters even heading into the midterm elections. He sees the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade as his victory in this area and has largely moved on. What about, Elena, other Republicans?

36:47What are the political stakes here? What divisions does this issue reveal within the base? Well, I think there's real frustration amongst Republicans, particularly those who identify as pro-life, that Trump is not doing more on this, in particular because abortion is going up after Roe v. Wade. Abortions have continued to rise despite barriers to access for women on this procedure. And in 2024, abortions hit a decade high in usage. So I think that there's a real frustration from those who who this is their central issue, that not only is this, you know, not only is Dobbs not ultimately stop this, but it's actually gotten worse in terms of their issue.

37:27And so I think that certainly there is real frustration about it. But again, I think that adds to sort of the laundry list of people who are frustrated with what Trump is or isn't talking about and still aren't able to necessarily shape then what he says. Let's turn to HHS. Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week launched a new plan to help Americans quit antidepressants. He blamed the U.S.'s mental health crisis in part on over-medicalization and the over-prescription of psychiatric medications. Psychiatric medications have a role in care, but we will no longer treat them as the default. We will treat them as one option, used when appropriate, with full transparency and with a clear path off when they are no longer effective.

38:15Kennedy has a history of criticizing antidepressants. He said they're as addictive as heroin. He has blamed them without evidence for a rise in school shootings in America. But this week he did moderate his tone, saying that HHS is not telling people taking antidepressants to stop, but to promote non-pharmacological treatments for mental health conditions. The American Psychiatric Association told NPR that it does support investments to better train health care providers to safely prescribe and wean patients off of antidepressants. Arthur, what else did we hear from the medical establishment this week?

38:50Well, they were not outright against what HHS is doing here, even though the secretary has made sort of weird and inflammatory comments about the effects of these drugs, the school shooting thing. And he said this week, well, I'm an expert on this because I was on heroin. I'm not sure how appropriate that is for this topic. But the idea that people going off of antidepressants can have side effects that are not good is I don't think that's very controversial. And that's the idea here that they want to look into whether they're prescribed too much that people can avoid getting in that situation.

39:28And I believe that something similar was done in Britain previously. So this may not be one of Secretary Kennedy's more outlandish actions as HHS secretary. Notice is reporting that another senior FEMA official is on the way out the door just weeks before the start of hurricane season. Deputy Associate Administrator Keith Turi has decades of experience in emergency management. He oversees FEMA's nationwide disaster recovery logistics and field operations. Three of FEMA's four top leadership positions are already vacant. The agency hasn't had a Senate-approved administrator since the start of Trump's second term.

40:07Alina, we have to ask about what this recent departure means for FEMA's readiness. I have to say we're a month away for those in southern states from hurricane season beginning. That's right. So my notice colleagues were able to speak to a number of people who expressed real concern about this official's departure and what it would mean in terms of just the knowledge within the agency in order to respond to major emergencies. And as we all know, it's incredibly important when people who are in these positions have some context, have some knowledge about how to handle and respond and how to move the levers of government in order to help people in moments of real emergency when people are really desperate.

40:46And thinking about, obviously, hurricane season. I'm from North Carolina. We are deeply familiar with the intensity and ferocity in which these storms can roll in. But it's not just that. I mean, FEMA plays a role in all kinds of not only just emergency response, but just simply safety efforts. Like, they are a part of DHS, and they are going to still play a role, in fact, in the World Cup and security around the World Cup. And so we know that there's going to be millions of visitors who come and want to watch soccer games. And if there's going to be issues that, you know, prevent them from being able to enjoy that experience, that's going to be pretty disappointing for those fans.

41:19But it's also a new reality of a federal government that has been essentially hollowed out by this administration. So we have a few moments for Reporters Notebook. In my notebook, let's talk—I just wanted to note that the Pulitzer Prizes in journalism were announced this week. Of course, we know some of the biggest outlets like the New York Times and the Washington Post got awards for remarkable print and visual stories. I also want to point out the great local reporting and awards that were given to the Baltimore Banner, the Seattle Times, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, among others. But especially I wanted to note, as someone who started my journalism career at the Miami Herald, the special citation that was given to reporter Julie K.

41:57Brown for her reporting on Jeffrey Epstein. Her stories were published in 2017 and 2018. And now in 2026, she finally has received recognition from the Pulitzers for the worldwide impact her reporting had. And if it hadn't been for those stories, we wouldn't be talking about this today. It was her reporting, I believe, that caused the federal government to get back on the case. Correct. After Alan Dershowitz and the rest of Epstein's legal team fought off the Justice Department and got them a plea deal with the Florida state government. What else did you guys want to talk about this week? What's in your notebook, Megan?

42:33Well, I'll be looking ahead to next Saturday, which is the Louisiana primary. And what we have there is this is going to be another significant test of Trump's power. Senator Bill Cassidy, the incumbent, is up against a Trump-backed candidate. Cassidy voted to impeach Trump on the second impeachment during his first term. He's also found himself at odds. He's a doctor with RFK Jr.'s time at DHS and a lot of his policies. So whether or not Cassidy survives this election, I think will be it'll be one of those, as Artie said earlier, seismatologist moments for us as journalists. Elena? I was going to mention Louisiana, too, but I'll go for a different election that's coming up on Tuesday.

43:17There's primaries in Nebraska and West Virginia, but there's a Democratic primary in Nebraska's second district, which is very gettable for Democrats. But the two top candidates there fighting out tons of money spending spent, but the state senator who could win if he were to win would likely then be replaced by a Republican in the state legislature. And there's a very real concern that the blue dot status for Nebraska, where they divide their electoral votes, could be ultimately threatened. And in this new environment in which Trump is going full maximal approach to redoing and restructuring the way that elections and redistricting are run, we could see another run at trying to eliminate Nebraska's blue dot status and turn it into a winner take all state.

44:01I'll be on Capitol Hill next week following the debate over security enhancements that are needed at the White House, that hole in the ground where there used to be the East Wing. That was Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost. I want to thank Megan Scully as well, Congress editor for Bloomberg News, and Elena Schneider, national political reporter for Notice. So nice to have you all in studio with me. And 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. Stay with us.

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45:53Call 1-800-GRAINGER, click grainger.com, or just stop by. Grainger, for the ones who get it done. Welcome back to the 1A podcast. Let's get into the international edition of our weekly news roundup. We've got a full house at the WAMU studio today. With me around the table, Abigail Hausloener is U.S. Middle East foreign affairs correspondent at the Financial Times. Abby, welcome to the roundup. Thanks for having me. Alex Ward, national security reporter covering the White House and State Department at The Wall Street Journal. Alex, welcome back. Yeah, thanks. And Greg Meire, national security correspondent at NPR.

46:28It's always good to have you with us, Greg. Great to be here. We love to hear from you as well. You can send us your questions and comments for our expert panel here. Email us 1a at wamu.org. It's another week, another attempt to end the Iran war and a familiar message from the White House. They want to make a deal badly. And we'll see if we get there. If we get there, they can't have nuclear weapons. You know, it's very simple. But what's not to submit? So they had a Navy with 159 ships and now every ship is blown to pieces and lying at the bottom of the water. They had an Air Force, lots of planes and they don't have any planes.

47:04They don't have any anti-aircraft. They don't have any radar left. Their missiles are mostly decimated. They have some. They have probably 18, 19 percent, but not a lot by comparison to what they do. had, and their leaders are all dead. So I think we won. Washington and Tehran have now scaled back their efforts to agree to a comprehensive peace deal and are now seeking a limited pact, one that puts off the complicated issues to a later time. Both camps have said the latest peace efforts are aimed at a temporary memorandum of understanding to, one, halt the war, and two, allow traffic through the Strait of Hormuz while they discuss a fuller deal.

47:44With this in the background, the U.S. said it traded fire with Iranian forces in the Strait of Hormuz and attacked an Iranian commercial ship. Abby, it's a complicated question that changes on an hourly basis. But as of Friday morning D.C. time, what is the latest in the strait? Well, as you alluded to before, it is in many ways another groundhog day in that, you know, The U.S. and Iran exchanged more fire this morning. The U.S. military said it targeted two Iranian-flagged tankers that were trying to reach an Iranian port. So from the U.S. view, enforcing Trump's blockade on Iranian activity, Iranian ports.

48:27And this all comes after we saw clashes multiple times this week. the U.S. trying to move its destroyers through the strait, Iran retaliating, you know, a very short-lived Project Freedom, which was an operation that Trump had said would help stranded commercial vessels leave the strait. And all of this comes as we are waiting, as you mentioned today, for Iran to respond, as the U.S. expects today, to provide its latest response, I should say, on this draft memorandum of understanding that's been passed back and forth between Washington and Tehran via Pakistan as of late. Alex, what is in the proposed framework that, as Abby mentioned, we're expecting to hear back from Iran on today?

49:23Yes, there's 14 points in it. My understanding, and I'm curious if others have this understanding as well, is that most of the points are kind of agreed to, but there's two pretty major sticking points in this. One is for how long Iran can no longer enrich uranium and where the currently enriched uranium can be. On this latter point, the U.S. would like it actually transferred to the U.S. The Iranians would like to perhaps keep it or give it to a more friendly nation like, say, Russia. But for those are not insignificant sticking points, right? So when you hear the administration say we're very close to a deal, they're talking about the numbers of remaining points.

50:01Like 12 out of 14 sounds close. There's a reason these are the two last sticking points because they're the hardest. And I would say the administration is closer but not close to some sort of deal. And in the meantime, the more the fighting goes on, you can imagine the less there's an appetite for some sort of diplomatic inclusion. Yeah, I agree with Alex. Absolutely. I would just make the distinction between the short term of— The memorandum of understanding. Absolutely. A very basic one-page agreement where the ceasefire is permanent. Iran wants this to be the end of the war. And then you've got these longer-term issues they're going to have to work out primarily over Iran's nuclear program but also its missile program.

50:41So essentially what we're trying to do is two separate things. Yeah, and we got this email from Joseph who says, to me, the word ceasefire has lost all meaning. We have a ceasefire. Israel has a ceasefire. Russia agreed to a one-day ceasefire, then it attacked. I think the reason politicians say it is for the markets. That's Joseph's take on this. But to his comment, what kind of ceasefire are we experiencing? Let's just start with Iran and the U.S. if we're exchanging fire. I mean, there's not a lot of fire ceasing in the ceasefire. So Joseph is right. Now, I would note that this is an MOU, not a full deal.

51:25That said, I think Trump's history is such that he tends to take like an MOU and go, we're done. He gets disinterested. Everyone moves on. Even though there might be more technical and more serious and substantive talks down the line. Particularly regarding Iran and nuclear. Iran nuclear, maybe missiles, maybe it's proxies, a bunch of whole other things, you know, stuff that took years to negotiate in the JCPOA during the Obama years, although it did include proxies and missiles. You know, Trump will kind of go, great, we did it. We moved on. I mean, think about Gaza, right? They basically had a 20-plus point agreement.

51:55It's not nothing, but it's not like that situation is solved. In fact, one could argue a ceasefire is also not taking place there. So I could imagine a sort of similar, broader-like scenario in Iran here. Right. I would add to Alex's point, you know, it's interesting. Relative to some of the other wars raging in the region where the U.S. has also helped broker supposed ceasefires, Gaza and Lebanon, I would say Iran is actually, you know, there's more of a ceasefire, you know, lesser fire in place certainly than in Lebanon. on. But, you know, as Alex was saying, you know, this—it's—Trump likes to move on.

52:37He likes to declare, you know, that he's worked something out and we can just move on. What's really keeping or, you know, making this ceasefire, you know, less relevant in a sense, even if there's less, you know, violence going on between the two adversaries, is the fact that—is the looming Strait of Hormuz crisis. And that's what prevents Trump from walking away, which is that once this war got going, Iran figured out that it could leverage this vital waterway. And it continues to have a hold on that. And that is ultimately what needs to get resolved if any of this is going to move forward, even into a sort of stalemate whereby the regime is still in place.

53:21It's reconstituting its weaponry. The U.S. pulls back. None of that can really happen with any sort of claim to a victory, you know, from Trump without getting the Strait of Hormuz back to flowing the way it was before. We are going to get to the Strait of Hormuz in a little in depth in a little bit. But Greg, can I just ask you that Israel is not directly involved in this peace effort or this MO, this memorandum of understanding, even if it's a short version. This is a joint operation by the U.S. and Israel. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has not been shy about his desire to continue the war or to subject Israel's campaign against Hezbollah to a deal.

54:03So where does that leave? Yeah, Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are in a bit of an awkward position here. When the full-scale fighting was going on and the U.S. and Israel were waging that operation jointly, the militaries were coordinating quite closely. Politically, they were in close contact. And Netanyahu has been sidelined a little bit, not entirely, but a little bit. It seems that the U.S.-Iran negotiations are taking place sort of through Pakistan and Israel is not directly part of that. But obviously, as we've seen, the fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon is still significant.

54:43Israel was sort of forced into a sort of ceasefire there, but it's still continuing to carry out strikes. Israeli troops are in southern Lebanon. Just this week, I believe even just yesterday, or it was announced yesterday, Israel hit a Hezbollah leader outside of Beirut. First time that had happened, a strike near the capital since the ceasefire was declared. So Israel could certainly create issues if it keeps carrying out these attacks. It's got to be consulted. And as you noted, Netanyahu makes no qualms about the fact that he would like to inflict as much punishment on Iran on Hezbollah as possible.

55:23And as we think about the region, Gulf states are not united on how to end the conflict. Abby, they oppose a deal that leaves Iran able to keep hitting them or, to your earlier point, imposes controls on the Strait of Hormuz, which is their main trade route. What other fears do Gulf states have here? Well, the Gulf states were fairly united before the war in trying to prevent one. You know, they saw this economic and security hardship, certainly the economic hardship coming, and they didn't want the U.S. and Israel to start a war with Iran. Once it happened, though, they've really been divided on sort of the exit path.

56:05You increasingly see Saudi Arabia, certainly Qatar and Oman, pushing for a diplomatic resolution that, you know, quiets things down and opens that straight back up and also allows these countries to repair their energy infrastructure, which has also been pretty severely damaged by these strikes from Iran. The United Arab Emirates was hit the hardest, partly out of geography. It's very close to Iran, but partly also because it has really thrown its lot in with Israel and the United States as a security partner. And it's sort of doubled down on that in a sense. And so we're seeing a divergence there.

56:54We're also hearing privately, I think, from some of these Arab states that, you know, this big concern that Trump could leave the region with the strait not resolved, which would cripple their economies and also possibly leave the Iranian regime powerful enough to attack again. We started this hour talking about how there had been some familiar messages from the White House this week, but there were also some conflicting ones. Here's Secretary of State Marco Rubio in the press briefing room on Tuesday. The operation is over. Epic Fury is a president notified Congress. We're done with that stage of it.

57:29OK, we're now on to this project of freedom. The operation Epic Fury is concluded. We achieved the objectives of that operation. I'm not going to, you know, we're not cheering for an additional situation to occur. We would prefer the path of peace. What the president would prefer is a deal. He would prefer to sit down, work out a memorandum of understanding for future negotiations that touches on all the key topics that have to be addressed. a full opening of the straits so the world can get back to normal. And he preferred that that be negotiated through the route that Steve and Jared have been working and that all of us have been supporting.

58:00And then what appeared definitive was fleeting because just three hours later, the president announced that Project Freedom, the day-old mission he announced on Sunday to help guide ships out of the strait would be paused for a short period of time. He said this came based on a request from Pakistan. Alex, in your reporting this week, you write that President Trump for days has toggled between two competing impulses, punishing Iran for failing to abandon its nuclear war and avoiding a significant escalation. And so I wonder if you can put all of this in context that we've been talking about, everything happening in the Strait of Hormuz, the start and pause of this Project Freedom, but then also attacks on the U.S.

58:42ships and a global economic meltdown that's happening in the background. Yeah. President Trump is looking for a silver bullet that doesn't exist. And it's very clear he doesn't want the war to restart as it did, as it was in those major combat operations. And it's also clear that he doesn't want to, as of this moment, back down from his maximalist stance, which is basically Iran dismantles the entirety of its nuclear work and vows never to do it again. And there'll be all these kinds of safeguards on it that will be impossible to break. Meanwhile, there's more than 1 ,500 vessels from 87 countries currently stranded in the Persian Gulf.

59:17That's according to the U.S. military. More than 22 ,000 mariners are stranded on these ships, including many from South and Southeast Asia. Here's Ramon Kapoor from the Indian Merchant Navy speaking to the BBC. He's been stranded in the Strait of Hormuz since February 28th. In the past, in the month of March, we have witnessed various missiles and explosions around our ship. And sometimes we have witnessed like, you know, hundreds of missiles flying over our head in a span of 30 to 40 minutes. That was a very, very devastating and frightening moment for all of us. The United Nations has called it an unprecedented humanitarian crisis, and some crew members have described worsening conditions on board, including shortages of food and fresh water.

1:00:07On Thursday, Iran announced the creation of a government agency to vat and tax vessels seeking passage through the Strait of Hormuz. Greg, how has this Iranian effort to formalize control over the channel raise new concerns about international shipping and this unprecedented humanitarian crisis we've just been laying out? Yeah, I think that the U.S., the Arab countries of the Gulf, the international shipping community says this simply can't happen. And if you don't mind, I'll turn this into the math part of the program here. These big ships can carry about a million barrels of oil or up to two million even.

1:00:45And Iran is talking about charges or has charged one million to$2 million per ship. So that's like a 1 % tax,$1 for every barrel on that ship. So yes, if you have your ship stuck there,$100 million worth of oil, you might pay$1 million, a 1 % tax to get it out. But as an ongoing proposition, that would be a huge revenue boost for Iran. It would turn an international body of water into an Iranian toll booth. None of which existed before this conflict, I feel like I should point out. Absolutely. So that would just be to get it back to the status quo. And it would be also a clear victory for Iran if they could not only raise the revenue but impose their will.

1:01:34And obviously Arab countries on the other side of the Gulf, their whole economies depend on freely exporting their oil and gas. So they simply couldn't accept this outcome either. So Iran is building barriers to make an arrangement or some solution even more difficult. I want to ask all of you this next question. Reporting from The Washington Post this week revealed that U.S. intelligence has told the Trump administration Iran can outlast Trump's Hormuz blockade for months before facing more severe economic hardship on top of job losses and currency devaluation. This is, of course, contrary to what the president and the administration has said publicly.

1:02:16Undoubtedly, Iranian power has proved to be resilient as we see so many deadlines coming and going. Where have you seen Iran's greatest advantages in this war? What could be the turning point here? This has always been sort of an imbalanced conflict in a way, which I think gave the U.S. administration a lot of sort of hubris going into this. There's never been any question, right, about the capabilities of the U.S. military versus the Iranian military. But what everyone is finding out is that Iran doesn't need a massively sophisticated military. They can keep going. They can dig in. And they can maintain their leverage over the Strait of Hormuz, which is their greatest point of leverage in this conflict in which they're not going to give up easily, simply by being able to threaten it with, you know, tiny drones that it can reconstitute really easily, with, you know, little projectiles that it launches it at something.

1:03:19And so, you know, we've been hearing from regional analysts, you know, for the weeks that this has been going on, the warning that, you know, for Iran, all they have to do is survive. This can be a guerrilla conflict. they can just keep lobbing things and inflicting some harm. And I think that's what they're prepared to do. And that's troubling for the United States, which I think does not have the same tolerance, certainly for economic pain. Yeah, but here would be the flip side of the people who want this war to continue. They would say, hey, this has been a five-decade-old enemy, and it only will require three or four more months of pressure in order to get them to collapse, or at least be on the verge of collapsing.

1:04:01So the question, which he notes really well here, is like who's got the watch? Who's got the time? If you're President Trump and you're worried about – if you're worried about the midterms and you're worried about gas prices going up and you might be worried about the future of the stock market, maybe three to four months sounds like a long time. But if you are really committed to a moment where the Iranian regime could really be on the verge of collapse, which remains a big question. But say you're convinced by that, maybe three to four months doesn't sound like a lot of time. The hawks, the people who are really pushing for Trump not to make a deal here, who believe a deal would not be followed through by Tehran, are really saying, hey, stay the course.

1:04:36Three or four months really isn't that long. You know, the post-scoop was a very good one in looking at this CIA analysis here. But ultimately, I think the question is kind of unanswerable. The administration says, OK, Iran can only hold out another couple of weeks and then they're going to cave in and the CIA is estimating three to four months. You know, the question is, when does the economic pain become so great that the Iranian leadership? On either side, though. On either side, either side. But let's say that the Iranian leadership would make the concessions that the Trump administration wants.

1:05:09We don't know. The Iranian leadership is not facing midterm elections. It does not worry about the gas price. So we don't know how long it could hold out. And so you literally have to be inside the heads of who's ever making the final decision in Iran. And you just can't be there. But it frames the issue well, I think, even if you can't answer that question. Let's talk about other players in this, particularly in Europe. This week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio visited the Vatican for a two-and-a-half-hour visit with Pope Leo and the Vatican Secretary of State. That visit comes amid strained relations between President Trump and the leader of the Catholic Church over the war in Iran.

1:05:53The president has attacked the pope several times, a move that has divided his MAGA base. We are going to talk about the Cuba part of the conversation in a minute, Alex. But first, can I just ask how Marco Rubio approached Iran in this meeting with the pope? What do we know about that? I mean, he took—they had a direct discussion about Iran, right? The pope said, hey, end this war. It's not great. Rubio says, no, there's a reason we're doing this. There's actually, you know, major strategic calculations that this administration is making. And, you know, they agreed to disagree to the points we were just making a second ago.

1:06:25I mean, one of the arguments Rubio had made to the pope and had made to others has just been, look, this is a regime that only in January killed, you know, roughly 30 ,000, 40 ,000 Iranians, has not cared about its people for a long time. You know, they might not – they don't have midterm elections. They don't have economic worries. They are willing to hold out. And if you're the pope, you're going, hey, fine, but the strategic question here is somehow you're going to reopen the strait, the nuclear issue is going to be resolved, and all this other stuff. Is this really the best way to go about it?

1:06:54And if not, maybe quit the ceasefire that isn't cease firing. So they agreed to disagree, but it looked like there was some sort of a – speaking of ceasefire, a bit of a ceasefire in the U.S.-Vatican relationship in the sense that at least there could be a cordial relationship. In fact, Robbie Grahmer, our State Department correspondent, is with the secretary now, noticed that Rubio got to go under the Arch of the Bells, which is usually reserved for heads of state. So the Vatican kind of rolled out a red carpet for Rubio here perhaps as to improve things. But it was not lost on anyone that the gift that the pope gave Rubio was a pen made out of olive wood, a literal olive branch.

1:07:29So both relating to Iran and perhaps relating to the U.S.-Vatican relationship. Greg, do we think that Ollich branch has been accepted? Where are we at when we think about U.S.-Vatican relations, which is a strange question to ask on the first anniversary of the first American pope marking that to say – to talk about the state of relations between the Vatican and the U.S.? Yeah, you thought you might be talking about his fandom for the White Sox or something like that. And here we are with this very sensitive global issue. I mean, you know, the statement talked about they're going to – they pledged to improve bilateral relations instead of the sort of – sort of what Pat phrase that the Vatican often uses about referring to good relations.

1:08:14So we can parse these phrases, but I think we might not have to because we've had President Trump directly criticizing the pope. We've had the pope criticizing the war in Iran. So their meeting, you know, the Rubio and the pope met, it was cordial. There were probably some more frank discussions behind the scenes that we're not hearing about. So there's tension there. You know, there's disagreement. And it is quite unusual. You wouldn't expect that to be part of the conversation. But here we are. That's Greg Myrie, NPR's national security correspondent. We're also with Alex Ward from The Wall Street Journal and FT's Abbey House Loaner.

1:08:58I'm Naila Boudou. You're listening to 1A. Now, let's move to Lebanon. On Thursday, the Israeli military said it had killed a senior Hezbollah commander in an airstrike in Beirut's southern suburbs. The first attack near the Lebanese capital since a U.S.-mediated ceasefire took effect last month and is scheduled to end on May 17. Since the latest round of fighting that started on March 2nd, Israeli strikes have killed 2 ,759 people in Lebanon, including more than 10 today on strikes in southern Lebanon. That's according to the Ministry of Public Health. Frequent News Roundup guest Joyce Karam, the editor-in-chief of El Monitor, joined us last week and discussed the fragile ceasefire and the constant tests it's been facing.

1:09:43So the American president has gone from enough is enough, no more bombing of Lebanon, to, OK, you can bomb here, you can destroy this village there, just don't touch Beirut. Despite the declared ceasefire, Israel and Hezbollah have continued to exchange daily attacks in southern Lebanon. Envoys from Israel and Lebanon are scheduled to hold another round of U.S. broker talks in Washington next week. But, Abby, what kind of message is this Israeli attack on Beirut sending to both Hezbollah and to the U.S.? Well, the Lebanese would say that the message is that Israel feels completely unrestrained by the United States, which is something that the Lebanese government, you know, has been asking for.

1:10:27They want to see the Trump administration reign in Israel to try to get some sort of agreement actually moving here. For the Israelis, they feel very constrained by the United States that, you know, they would like to, I think, hit a lot more in Lebanon. They see that Hezbollah has been able to keep going, keep up the fight, even escalate in some cases. And so, you know, we're, yes, we're going to see another round of talks next week. I should, we should note, these are at the ambassadorial level. So this is actually not very high level, you know, in the realm of trying to resolve this war. And so far, you know, just to be blunt, it really hasn't gone anywhere.

1:11:17Let's go to Gaza, where disarmament talks as part of the next phase of the October ceasefire has stalled. Hamas has accused Israel of using targeted killings to influence negotiations and pressure its leadership. This week, it is really airstrike killed a son of Hamas's chief negotiator with the Trump Board of Peace. It's his fourth son to be killed. The Israeli military has not commented. Alex, according to a letter obtained by the Times of Israel, the U.S.-led board of peace has made it clear will not hold Israel to ceasefire terms unless Hamas agrees to the phase two framework for disarmament.

1:11:55So now what? Good question. No one really knows. I mean, it was something we were saying earlier. You know, Trump tends to get bored after some kind of deal is made. That's B-O-R-E-D, not B-O-A-R-D. And now that there is the Board of Peace, maybe he's kind of not giving as much attention. He's focused on Iran. He's focused on the China trip next week. He's focused on other things, the ballroom, less so this. And the main argument from the administration here in Israel is, you know, Hamas needed to give up its weapons, literally like arms, in order to move on to the next phase to show that they were interested in actual peace talks.

1:12:34Hamas has not done that, in which case both American officials and Israeli officials say, well, Hamas isn't negotiating good faith. Might as well keep this war going. And this comes back to the general, I guess, meta policy of this administration when it comes to the Middle East is that there's a real belief that military pressure or continued military pressure will somehow cause folks to heal. We haven't seen that work in Gaza. We haven't really seen that work with the Houthis. We haven't seen that work with Iran yet. And yet that is the method they keep employing. Before the break, just to note, we're keeping an eye on British local and regional elections that are likely to shake up the country's politics.

1:13:08And as expected, they dealt a heavy blow to British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. Let me be clear. These are really tough results. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. These elections choose about 5 ,000 local councillors and a handful of mayors across England. They're the biggest set of elections since Labour swept to power in a landslide in July 2024. On Friday, Starmer said the voters have sent a message, but he's not backing down. I was elected to meet those challenges, and I'm not going to walk away from those challenges and plunge the country into chaos. Moving on to our next topic, Israeli strikes in Gaza have killed more than 72 ,500 Palestinians since the start of the war.

1:13:52Greg, there's reporting this week from NPR's Anas Baba in Gaza about recovering bodies. Around 8 ,000 bodies are believed to still be buried under debris in Gaza. That's according to Gaza's health ministry. Can you tell us more about that and Israel's moves to prevent recovery and rehabilitation efforts until Hamas is disarmed? Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of this is sadly predictable that Gaza sort of fades into the background once the ceasefire was declared last October. And even the most basic things, removing rubble, recovering bodies is taking forever to do this. And as you noted, the Gazan officials believe there's about 8 ,000 bodies buried in the rubble.

1:14:34There's exactly one excavator to remove that rubble to look for the bodies. There is no DNA testing. So when they do recover a body, it has to be identified by sight, not by, there's no DNA test to go there. About 800 Palestinians have been killed since the ceasefire seven months ago. And NPR, and Anas Baba, NPR's reporter there, has done just an incredible job the past two and a half years. Under very difficult circumstances, obviously. Absolutely. And really followed this one family, the Abu Nasser family, which says they lost more than 130 members in an attack early in the war. And there's 20 still missing.

1:15:14And he was there as they were excavating and found some more bodies of that family. But again, there's about 20 still missing. A really powerful story on just what it's like in Gaza these days. The fighting has not entirely stopped. And there's still bombing. There is food. There's not a dire crisis in terms of getting food, but just horrible, horrible living conditions that are not going to change anytime soon. One important factor to take into consideration when thinking about what Alex mentioned about the sort of stagnation of the Board of Peace is that, you know, for all the talk, especially last October, about rebuilding Gaza now that there was this ceasefire in place, None of, as Greg just mentioned, building supplies, excavators, bulldozers, all the equipment that would be needed not just to remove the rubble and remove bodies but also to rebuild has simply not been allowed in.

1:16:16And that's been a consistent theme over many years, including before the Gaza War, with, you know, Israel deems a lot of this stuff dual use and that it can be used for weapons or for military purposes. And the ceasefire and the Board of Peace never resolved that. Let's talk about Israel, where the far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gavir is facing outrage after posting a TikTok video glorifying executions and celebrating his birthday with a cake decorated with a noose. This comes just weeks after Israel passed a controversial death penalty law targeting Palestinian detainees. The video uses the viral Voices in My Head trend and features AI-generated images of nooses while Ben Gavir declares he dreams about executions.

1:17:09Abby, I don't know if we need to put this in the context of also it being an election year in Israel. What do you make of these political maneuverings? Well, with Ben Gvir, one important item of context to remember is this is easily one of the most far-right extreme members of the Israeli cabinet. He is known for being very provocative. He's very overt about his desire for total Israeli annexation of Palestinian lands, of the West Bank. And this noose issue seems to be connected to the recent passage that he pushed of a death penalty law that assigns a specific penalty to Palestinians. So it's a sort of a separate punishment for Palestinians accused of terrorism than for Israelis or Jewish citizens of the state.

1:18:07let's move on to the fracturing relationship between the u.s and canada president trump has repeatedly suggested a u.s takeover of cuba in recent months most recently during a speech in florida last friday he joked about a military operation in the country on the way back from what we'll do on the way back from iran we'll have one of our big maybe the uss abraham lincoln aircraft carrier, the biggest in the world, will have that come in, stop about 100 yards offshore, and they'll say, thank you very much. We give up. Cuban leader Miguel Díaz-Canal called the joke a, quote, threat of military aggression and called the current U.S.

1:18:48regime fascist. Alex, Trump's remarks about a military incursion in Cuba came the same day as a new executive order aimed at strengthening the U.S. embargo. Why is the president turning up the temperature here? How much was it he being in Florida playing to that audience? Well, it kind of relates to the Middle East thing. I don't know if your listeners are familiar with the movie Knocked Up. But in that movie, there's Seth Rogen is dancing with Catherine Heigl and he's doing this weird dice move. And his friends are like, why is he doing the dice move? They go, that's the only move he's got on the dance floor.

1:19:19That's kind of how President Trump does foreign policy. He does it through military pressure. And if that doesn't work, there'll be even more military pressure because all he has is the dice move. So in this case, when it comes to Cuba, his move is great. Lincoln will come by and then, you know, the Cuban regime is just going to collapse. On their way home, the Lincoln will come by. On their way home and they're just going to collapse and like, if not, I guess we bomb them or whatnot. But it's interesting. I guess there's one parallel to Venezuela. Before the boat strikes and before the Maduro operation, it was a lot of sanctions.

1:19:46It was a lot of economic pressure. It was a lot of diplomatic pressure. You could sort of see that play happening right now that they're going to sanction the Cuban elites. They're going to try to cut off money that the Cubans have in Spain and Panama. They're going to say that they're a bad regime, and then they're going to make the military threats. So can we discount a military attack on Cuba down the line? We can't. Does that mean it's going to happen? We don't know. But it's certainly not a zero percent chance, and at least we know that Secretary of State Marco Rubio wants the pressure ratcheted up on Cuba, and we know that President Trump has had his eyes on Cuba for some time as well.

1:20:22Abby, can I also just ask, the U.S. military did strike a boat in the Pacific Ocean on Tuesday, killing three men. The U.S. said it was targeting alleged drug traffickers. They posted a video online of the boat strike. U.S. boat strikes have killed at least 191 people since September. Are these boat strikes ramping up again? To Alex's point, I think we don't know. But certainly if Trump seeks to, you know, if he manages to extract the Navy from the Middle East and wants to turn up the pressure again on Cuba on the Western Hemisphere, then we could certainly see an escalation of those. We know that people in Cuba have been posting on social media about life on the island as the U.S.

1:21:11embargo on fuel to Cuba leads to power outages and fuel shortages. I live in Cuba, and this is how my morning started. Without electricity, but with lots of energy. I make my coffee the night before and put it in a thermos to avoid having to make it in the morning. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced new sanctions on Cuba on Thursday following Trump's executive order. Greg, who do these new sanctions target? Yeah, my first reaction is what is left to sanctions in Cuba? This has been going literally for more than 60 years. It seems that these are directed more as these sort of secondary sanctions against third countries that are investing or operating in Cuba or working with Cuba.

1:22:00But, you know, relevant to both not only Cuba but to Venezuela or to Iran, it's very hard to change the mind of foreign leaders as we've seen in all of these places. There were huge sanctions against Venezuela for years. That didn't move Maduro. The sanctions against the Cuban leaders for more than 60 years, their ideology, their approach to the U.S. hasn't changed. And Iran for a half century. So sanctions don't – inflict punishment, inflict real pain on economies, but they don't tend to change behavior or leaders. and then you can see how messy the military option is. Secretary Rubio spoke about Cuba at the podium when he gave the White House press briefing on Tuesday.

1:22:49The only thing worse than a communist is an incompetent one. And that's what, so incompetent communists run that country, they don't know how to fix it. They really don't. And we have 90 miles from our shores, a failed state. That also happens to be friendly territory for some of our adversaries. So it's an unacceptable status quo. I will be addressing it, but not today. Alex, what do Rubio's comments reveal about how negotiations with Cuba will pan out? We talked earlier about Marco Rubio's visit with the pope. I imagine Cuba also came up then. It did. I mean, there's no question that Rubio has his eyes set on Cuba.

1:23:22The administration has had meetings with Cuban government officials. They've even gone to the island. This is, again, it's a Venezuela play. They're going to have diplomatic negotiations. And if the Cubans don't give the U.S. whatever it wants, which is usually a maximalist position, they will use other methods. And they're going to start sanctioning and sanctioning and sanctioning until there's nothing even more to sanction. And then you could imagine President Trump getting tired with the diplomacy and the sanctioning and then the USS Lincoln's nearby or whatever. That's where we're headed now.

1:23:53Of course, with the midterms, with gas prices, with the economy, with people wanting more focus on domestic issues, is there general – is there political appetite for another conflict or big sort of play on Cuba? Perhaps. Obviously, it could be popular in Florida. But, you know, you could also imagine that President Trump – and he's kind of spoken about this. He's a little tired of war to a certain extent. He's tired of the killing. He said that. He literally said, Iran, please make a deal so I don't have to kill more Iranians. So is he worried about having to start a war with Cuba? Perhaps. But there's no question that the pressure is going to keep going for a while.

1:24:30Before we wrap up this week, a story we've been following here on 1A, election results in the Indian state of West Bengal. Writer and author Emily Timken shared why the elections were of such significance. Well, one big story is that voting is underway in West Bengal. This is the fourth most populous state in India. And it's one that I encourage people to pay attention to because last time and also this time, Modi and the BJP have really looked to it to say, like, we can finally make inroads here and that will mean something to our political project. Mumta, who runs West Pangolim, the TMC, are saying, I don't actually think so.

1:25:01I don't think that's going to happen. So we will find out, I believe, May 4th. But voting is under right now. So pay attention to that, too. Tensions have been running high after Prime Minister Narendra Modi's BJP party declared victory in legislative elections, defeating the TMC party, who had ruled over the state legislature for 15 years. The TMC and its leader, Mumta Banerjee, said there had been widespread irregularities in the vote and accused the BJP of, quote, looting the election. Banerjee has refused to resign. In the run-up to the election, the national government carried out a special revision of the electoral roll to purge what they called illegal voters.

1:25:38That process resulted in more than one million people, the majority of them Muslims or from minority groups, losing their right to vote just before the election. One other note of a story, Russia has scaled back its annual Victory Day parade in Red Square, which was due to be celebrated on Saturday in a parade with no heavy military hardware on display. In the run-up, the government has shut down airports and temporarily suspended mobile internet. The Kremlin has declared a unilateral truce, warning that any Ukrainian attacks during the celebrations could trigger a massive strike on Kyiv. Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has rejected the proposal.

1:26:17Greg, is this a sign that things in Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than four years later are not going to plan? Oh, absolutely. And just to put this in context for listeners, This Victory Day parade commemorating World War II, it's July 4th in Russia, but with an entirely military theme to it. So it's a huge, huge deal. And strange that they wouldn't have military hardware on display. They're either needed for the war or are worried now that Ukraine's drones can hit them. But to have that military parade without the hardware, it would literally be like Fourth of July in the U.S. without fireworks is sort of the equivalent.

1:27:02And just one little side note, when I was in Moscow, based there in the late 1990s, we learned that those parades with those massive missiles on trailers were actually fakes, that they were actually plywood. They were not real missiles. But still, this whole huge celebration is really a massive day in Russia and particularly for Vladimir Putin. So for him to scale this down like this is not something he was expecting four years ago when he invaded Ukraine. A few minutes to wrap up. I just want to take a peek in your notebook. Anything we missed from this week, what you're looking ahead for next week, Alex?

1:27:38Well, in about 48 hours from the moment of this taping, I'm flying to China. So if you are on my flight, say hello. But I'll be following President Trump's visit with Xi Jinping. Sounds like it's going to be mostly of a trade mission where they'll make some deals perhaps on soybeans, Boeing, beef. But really, it's a moment for Trump to have a tête -à-tête with what he considers the other near-peer leader of a G2, right? The U.S. and China, two world leaders meeting, having a big superpower discussion and right-sizing a relationship that had been a bit rocky, especially over trade issues, chips, AI, and technology.

1:28:16So that's a pretty significant meeting. But who knows how much Iran, you know, overcomes this or, you know, overshadows this. Abby? I'm going to be looking at the Trump-Xi discussion or face-off over Iran. China, along with Russia, have so far been sort of the veto power against whatever resolutions the U.S. and Arab states have tried to get through the U.N. to try to condemn this war. But China is this other major power. It trades with Iran. It also trades with the other states in the region. I think a lot of the Gulf states would like to see China get involved to try to mediate some sort of resolution and get the strait open.

1:29:05And so we're going to see whether it does that or whether it sees this as to its advantage because it's hurting the United States. You get one word too, Greg? Yeah, back to the Russia-Ukraine war. Right around this time of year, the summer fighting season picks up. Russia traditionally launches a big offensive. The Ukrainians have been able to push it back. It just doesn't seem these two countries can fight at this level for a sustained period. It'll be another big marker to see how the state of the war is going. That's Greg Myrie, National Security Correspondent at NPR. Also with us, Abigail Hausloener, U.S.

1:29:39Middle East Foreign Affairs Correspondent at The Financial Times. And Alex Ward, National Security Reporter covering the White House and State Department at The Wall Street Journal. Big thanks to you all. 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 WANU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR.

1:30:16I'm Nyla Boodoo. Have a great weekend. This is 1A.

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