The News Roundup For October 10, 2025

24:49Is she trying to carve out a new political lane and identity separate from MAGA, which kind of she made her name on, right? And you see her now with these health insurance comments talking openly about how her kids are facing these higher premiums coming that I was just talking about. Democrats are starting to say, geez, I agree with Marjorie Taylor Greene and use her for cover. It's a remarkable new political identity, and people have yet to kind of hear from her about what she's doing because she was passed over for some state-level opportunities. So she might be trying for something bigger.

25:20According to the Congressional Budget Office, as many as 750 ,000 federal workers who have been furloughed, their compensation amounts to approximately$400 million per day. but the president says some of those workers may not get that back pay. I would say it depends on who we're talking about. I can tell you this, the Democrats have put a lot of people in great risk and jeopardy, but it really depends on who you're talking about. But for the most part, we're going to take care of our people. There are some people that really don't deserve to be taken care of, and we'll take care of them in a different way.

25:52Why do you say some federal workers should not get their back pay? Why do you say some? Well, you're going to have to figure that out, OK? Ask the Democrats that question. Taylor, this contradicts actually a law President Trump signed during his first term. What does this threat mean for negotiations? Can you give us some context here? I think it's a reminder of, one, how much these negotiations lack substance right now, and two, how partisan they've become. Because you have the president, who of course is the leader of the Republican Party, in addition to being the leader of the country, expressly saying, we're going to target workers who are either Democrats or programs that Democrats find popular.

26:29On Thursday, the president actually held a cabinet meeting, and afterward I got to speak with three of his cabinet secretaries, the transportation secretary, the agriculture secretary, and the head of the Small Business Administration. All of them were almost surprisingly pivoting to partisan talking points about the shutdown, deferring on comments about how many of their workers could be furloughed, if that could lead to layoffs. And they were basically indicating that whatever President Trump wants in terms of using the shutdown to exert political pressure, they will sign on to, which I thought was really striking.

26:59Let's head to a quick break here. We'll be back with more of the News Roundup in just a moment. Stay with us.

27:10Coming up, we'll be talking about the president's continued pressure on the Department of Justice to prosecute his rivals. But first, I just want to get back to the shutdown conversation that we were having. Arthur, we were just talking about the president's comments about not paying federal workers. How is that playing out among Republicans? What are you hearing in Washington this week about those comments? This was the latest retaliatory shutdown threat from the Trump administration that basically backfired among Republicans on Capitol Hill. They were caught off guard. They all voted for that law that says everyone gets paid back after a shutdown.

27:50And suddenly they were being told, actually, that law is ambiguous. It's not. You can read it. It's only 400 words long. And it followed the Trump administration's threat to fire workers instead of merely furloughing them, which they said they were going to start doing last week and have not done. In fact, agencies have been asking workers to come back, including the Department of Labor. So it's it's Trump's instincts here have been off where everything he's doing is making Democrats say, well, now I'm not going to vote for your bill. That's what you're doing. This is what the Democrats who are centrists in the Senate, who they had thought would cave by now, are saying.

28:32And that's why they're not caving. So many people point to air traffic controllers calling in sick as a factor that forced the government to reopen in 2019. That caused flight delays, cancellations, pushing politicians in Washington to act. We are seeing signs that this shutdown is beginning to affect air travel as well, taxing a system already overstretched. This is Nick Daniels, head of the Air Traffic Controllers Union, speaking to BBC World News America on Wednesday. Right now, it's a complete psychological, unnecessary distraction that leads to stress. It leads to fatigue. That fatigue leads to anger.

29:07So I think what's been interesting tracking this, people remember the awful plane helicopter collision in Washington at the start of this year. That really shined a new spotlight on the air traffic controller shortage and how it could potentially lead to catastrophe like that. What's been interesting is the Trump administration has been actively working throughout the year. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy has been talking about trying to recruit more air traffic controllers. But it takes a long time to not only hire them but then train them before they're actually in the towers helping direct traffic.

29:37I spoke with Secretary Duffy on Thursday, and he told me, first off, that people should not be concerned about the safety of their flights. He said that they're not letting planes in the air, like leaving or arriving at an airport unless they have enough air traffic controllers. Just why we're seeing so many delays that we saw this week at Reagan. That's why we're seeing delays at Reagan Airport here in D.C. Burbank Airport in California was shut down for several hours. I think in Nashville they saw the same thing. But what was interesting is Duffy made headlines earlier on Thursday where he alluded to the fact that if air traffic controllers weren't showing up to work while they're not being paid, that they may not get back pay.

30:11And then he walked that back in the afternoon. So they're cognizant of the fact that people are noticing this. But to your point, with the last shutdown in 2018-19, it played out during the holidays when a ton of people are traveling. We're now in almost late October, so Thanksgiving is right around the corner. If this continues, that'll start to be something that the public is getting frustrated with on top of lawmakers who live on planes on a weekly basis. But Duffy insisted to me that they're doing everything that they can while also trying to expedite this training process for air traffic controllers.

30:41But it's a real problem for a system that was already stretched before the shutdown. Alana, what other pressure points are you watching that you think might crack resolve on the part of the GOP or Democrats to force an end to this shutdown? Are you seeing anything? Well, in addition to those open enrollment notices I mentioned, which is really kind of a hope of Democrats to bring Republicans to the table, I think Republicans are hoping to force more rank-and-file Democrats to the table. Taylor said earlier that there's no conversations happening at the leadership level, and that's undeniably true.

31:11But I think a lot of folks in Senate Republican leadership offices think, why do I have to deal with Chuck Schumer? I just have to get Gene Shaheen, Maggie Hassan, a couple of, you know, the more centrist Democrats to vote with me. I can keep ignoring him. So I would watch those personal conversations between the folks in the middle more so than even leadership in the Senate. On Wednesday, former FBI director James Comey pleaded not guilty to indictments brought against him by the Justice Department. He faces charges of making false statements to Congress in 2020 and obstructing its investigation into the Russia collusion probe around the 2016 election.

31:47Here he is in a video on Instagram last month after he was indicted. My heart is broken for the Department of Justice, but I have great confidence in the federal judicial system and I'm innocent. So let's have a trial. Arthur, what did we learn this week? I don't think we got a lot more detail on the charges. Then he's not guilty. Right. This is a formality. This part of it, the trial will be a huge deal. They raced to get these charges in under the statute of limitations, which is five years from the day of his testimony, in which he was merely asked, like, do you stand by your earlier testimony when he'd said that he had not authorized someone to make a leak to the media about an investigation?

32:29I'm not sure if we even know at this point which news story is at issue. And one of them is merely word of the investigation into the Hillary Clinton handling of email. So it's we haven't learned a whole lot, except that we know this is still a pretty thin case brought by Trump's handpicked prosecutor who filed the charges because Trump was pointing at James Comey. So I want to talk about some other charges. We know that President Trump has publicly talked about going after New York Attorney General Leticia James. This week he did. On Thursday, the Justice Department won an indictment against her accusing James of committing mortgage fraud when she purchased a property in Virginia in 2023.

33:16She released this statement. These charges are baseless, and the president's own public statements make clear that his only goal is political retribution at any cost. I'm a proud woman of faith, and I know that faith and fear cannot share the same space. And so today I'm not fearful. I'm fearless. Alana, what else do we know about these charges in this case? Well, it's important to know that Leticia James, Senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat from California, and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook were all referred for mortgage fraud investigations by a man named Bill Pulte. And most Americans haven't heard of this guy.

34:00He's in charge of the Federal Housing Finance Authority. And what he's doing is essentially telling President Trump, and he's talked about this openly, here are some ways to get at your political adversaries. He's pretty open about that. And he, of course, truly believes that these three high-profile folks Trump wants out, Lisa Cook's not really a Democrat per se. She was just appointed by a Democrat. It's not a great look, frankly. This is not typically how the DOJ pursues mortgage fraud investigations. And for that matter, if you ask most lawyers, mortgage fraud is incredibly hard to prove in court.

34:33So the fact that the Attorney General James was indicted, yes, it's a momentary victory for the president. But we've talked to a lot of legal experts this week who think that's about where it stops. Yeah. I mean, these cases could be thrown out potentially before a trial for vindictive prosecution. The president said, go prosecute these people. It turns out this was in a message to Pam Bonney that he thought was a DM. That he posted to everyone on Drew Social. But big picture, it's just a total mockery of the concept of equal justice under law. And that's why we had traditions of the president trying not to direct the Justice Department in what it's doing.

35:12Joe Biden, that's why he appointed special counsels. And this is why Republicans under Joe Biden went through thousands of pages of records and did all these depositions to find out if he had somehow thwarted the prosecution of his son. And to have covered that and now to watch this happening, it's really stunning. Which we saw on display this week in Congress with Attorney General Pam Bondi in front of Senate, in front of this Senate committee. I want to play a little bit of an exchange that Attorney General Pam Bondi had about Comey's prosecution in an oversight hearing. This is her with Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

35:54Did you discuss James Comey with the president of the United States? He was sitting just to your left. Well, two seats down. Yes, two seats down. And I am not going to discuss any conversations I've had or not have with the president of the United States. Because the American public is entitled to know, Madam Attorney General, whether you took instructions from President Trump after he told you very directly to indict James Comey. Taylor, did we hear a clear answer to Democrats, from Pam Bondi to Democrats asking her about their question about the, quote, weaponization of the DOJ? There wasn't a clear answer because most of Bondi's testimony was attacking back and clapping back at the Democratic senators.

36:38There was actually a still photographer caught a great image of one of her folders that she brought in and it had tweets from Democratic senators and notes talking about, you know, political attacks she would kind of slap back at them with. So it was much less substantive testimony than we're accustomed to for a cabinet member like this. And Bondi has made very clear that she has taken on this role as attorney general to be kind of a bulldog for president trump and she is not concerned about the the political influence that seems to be directing a lot of her motives and i think what arthur mentioned that truth social post that the president put out last month that the wall street journal this week reported was supposed to be a direct message to bondi because it was just directed to her in first name it said pam colon and it talked about i want you to go after james comey the former fbi director i want you to go after latisha james the new york attorney general and then California Senator Adam Schiff.

37:29Since then, two of those three have been charged and they pushed out the U.S. attorney in Virginia who was not willing to bring those charges and put in place one of the president's former personal attorneys who's never been a prosecutor before. And she has now brought those indictments forward through grand juries. So Bondi has been defending all of these moves left and right. She also, and we've seen it with the FBI director too, they're very on-camera public figures in ways that we've not seen a whole lot in previous administrations. for an FBI director, for an attorney general. It's kind of like the CIA director.

38:02They do a lot of work, but you don't see it. And so it's been really interesting to see them kind of jump on this and be willing to defend it publicly. Taylor, just a question about Lindsay Halligan. To your point, there are questions about whether her appointment was even valid. Can you explain a little bit more about that and what else we need to know about this newly appointed U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia? So her background is that she is a lawyer. She was a tax lawyer for a couple of years before she signed on to join the president's personal legal team. She was involved in the classified documents case when the FBI went to the president's Mar-a-Lago club and found boxes of documents there.

38:36And then earlier this year, she was working in the White House as kind of a special assistant position doing some other jobs. But the president pressured this U.S. attorney, Eric Siebert, to step down. Siebert claimed that he resigned because of that pressure. President Trump said he fired him because he didn't feel that he was doing his job properly. And then they install Lindsay Halligan to serve as this interim U.S. attorney. So she did not get confirmed to be in this position. But she immediately, I think it was three days after Tate getting sworn in, she got those charges filed against Comey.

39:06She's never been a prosecutor before. So a lot of people are questioning her qualifications beyond just being a lawyer and the fact that she's been a very public advocate for the president and for kind of his personal political issues. So a lot of members of Congress, especially Democrats, are questioning whether or not this should be allowed. But so far, she's been able to act on this interim basis without needing Senate confirmation. And these indictments are pouring out day by day. Before we wrap up, one Supreme Court story I wanted to talk about. This week, Justice has heard arguments in the case of a Colorado therapist who says the state's ban on conversion therapy for minors limits her right to free speech.

39:43We should note that conversion therapy, which aims to change a person's sexual and gender identity, has been widely discredited by major medical organizations and is associated with an increased risk in suicide. Arthur, we're not going to hear about this ruling until next year, but what did we learn from the justices' line of questions this week? Well, the read is that the six conservatives on the Supreme Court are skeptical of a state ban on conversion therapy and the arguments that, well, this is free speech because this is talk therapy reportedly. That is at issue in this case where it's not medical at all.

40:17It's not done by doctors. And we heard some skepticism from the justices about that line of defense. the justices i thought were in favor of the idea that that's allowed under the first amendment and of course the liberal justices uh don't agree but it sounded like they were more defensive in looking to limit the ultimate impact of this ruling you know how far will it go beyond the state that brought the issue so we just have a minute or two left i just want to end by asking you all all of you across different parts of washington this week what you're sort of seeing in terms of the vibes with the shutdown, which is, of course, such a big story here in the D.C.

40:54area. Alana, can I start with you? The vibes are pretty bad. You know, I was particularly struck by the way that Republican leaders are, you know, are talking as we head into day 10 about an October 18th protest that's called No Kings. It's basically a second edition of a kind of straightforward liberal protest that happened a few months back. Republican leaders are now calling it the Hamas and Antifa wing of the Democrats. And, you know, that is a pretty gross mischaracterization of a pretty standard liberal group rally. But it's kind of indicative of how high and crazy the temperatures are running.

41:30You ran a clip earlier of members just fighting in the halls. It'll probably get worse the longer the shutdown goes on. Yeah, and the group putting on No Kings, Indivisible, was named by the administration in their talking points about, you know, what sort of leftist radical terrorist groups are we going to go after? So it'll be interesting to see if they do try to crack down on this protest. They haven't said they would. Yeah, and I've been at the Capitol. Nothing's happening like it normally is, except press conferences and these little beefs in the hallway where lawmakers are saying, well, why don't you open the government?

42:03Why don't you quit protecting pedophiles? Not too impressive. Over at the White House, all you hear from White House officials is pointing the finger at Democrats. But otherwise, the White House is much more focused on other issues. The president is set to go to Egypt and Israel in the coming days to talk about the peace plan he's negotiated between Israel and Hamas. So they'd much rather talk about that than the shutdown. They say until Democrats come to the table, there's not much they could do. Thanks to our expert panel, Alana Shore, senior Washington editor for Semaphore, Taylor Poplarz, national political reporter at the White House for Spectrum News, and Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost.

42:35Thank you all for joining us. We're going to head to a quick break. We'll be back with more of the News Roundup in just a moment. Stay with us.

42:47All right, let's turn now to the global edition of the News Roundup. And we have an expert panel of journalists who are joining us from across the U.S. to break down all the world's biggest news with us. With me in studio here in Washington, D.C., Nancy Youssef is a staff writer at The Atlantic covering national security and the Defense Department. Nancy, welcome back to 1A. Great to be with you. On assignment in Arkansas, Akbar Shahid Ahmed is senior diplomatic correspondent at HuffPost. Akbar, pleasure to have you with us again. Thanks for having me, Naila. And joining us from New York, a familiar voice, Indira Lakshmanan, Ideas and Opinions Editor at U.S.

43:21News and World Report. Indira, thanks for making time for us. Great to be here, Naila. After two years and two days of war in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh, negotiators from Hamas and Israel came to an agreement Wednesday on the first phase to end the war in Gaza. Part of Donald Trump's 20-point plan, this initial phase calls for the release of the remaining 48 Israeli captives in Gaza, 20 of whom are still believed to be alive, in exchange for 2 ,000 Palestinian prisoners. And Israel family members reacted to news of the deal. Very exciting to hear that my brother come home. We pray of him a lot.

43:59We're waiting for him. It's a perfect morning. It's a miracle. In the Gaza Strip, Israel's retaliatory offensive has killed more than 67 ,000 people and razed entire cities. UN experts have declared famine and acts of genocide. Millions have been displaced. With this first phase agreed upon, Palestinians who fled northern Gaza to the south say they hope to return to their homes.

44:27We are waiting. We were happy that Hamas agreed to the plan, and we look forward to going home soon. Nancy, as of today, what are we seeing? What do we know? Well, the images we're seeing out of Gaza are tens of thousands of people walking back, Gazans who have been displaced multiple times throughout the course of this war, a sort of physical display of the hope that this ceasefire will have some enduring impact and allow them to return home. We know that while the deal calls for some of the deceased hostages to be returned to Israel, that Hamas is already signaling that that might not happen immediately within the sort of 72-hour window that has been discussed because they don't know where all those remains are.

45:13And so while so many in Israel are eager to have all of their hostages return home, not all will. And we know that there is a hope that we'll start to see hundreds of humanitarian trucks coming into Gaza in a strip where there has been famine declared and we've seen horrific examples of starvation. Lastly, I would say we know that this is the first step, as you noted, and that this is temporary. But the bigger questions sort of are still out there. And so this is the first phase. and the start of a conversation about some of the harder parts of the deal, and some of which Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, said that Israel won't agree to governance for the Palestinians, for example, the disarming of Hamas.

46:08And so we kind of know what's going to be happening for the first five days, but the harder period comes in the weeks ahead. We're going to talk about that. Let's talk about how we got here. This week, U.S. Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of President Trump, along with the Qatari prime minister and head of the Turkish intelligence, joined the talk. Akbar, what got this over the finish line? You know, Naila, there's really a huge personal responsibility here for President Trump. substantively, a lot of these terms are not hugely different from what Israel, Hamas, and the U.S., and Qatar, and these other mediating countries have been talking about for more than a year, extending back into the Biden administration.

46:51But the Biden administration wasn't willing or able to push, particularly Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, over whom the U.S. has the most influence, but also to work with other countries that have influence over Hamas to push everyone across the line. What changed in the last few weeks is President Trump, who did secure the first kind of ceasefire in the Gaza war in January, again, had that tougher line with Netanyahu. And also, really importantly, didn't fall back on the old U.S. pattern of treating any obstacle as exclusively from Hamas. So when Hamas came out in response to President Trump's plan a week ago today and said, yes, we'll accept it, but we have these conditions, rather than as the U.S.

47:38might have done under presidential Biden and as even the Trump administration might have done earlier, Trump said, that's great. Hamas is with us. And that, what my understanding, talking to regional officials, is that was the key decisive moment that showed Trump was not only willing to kind of push Netanyahu, he was breaking with this policy of total U.S.-Israeli coordination and collaboration and saying the U.S. sees Hamas as a little more reasonable. The U.S. is going to push Israel to get that too. Let's have this sealed. And I think especially the entrusting of these top lieutenants, Steve Witkoff, who's personally close to the president, and Jared Kushner, these were seen as people who could get something across the finish line and had the president's personal confidence.

48:20Indira, what do you think changed as we're hearing Akbar talk about the way that President Trump talked about Hamas? What led to that? So much changed and vitally in the last month. And I would say that one of my favorite sayings about diplomacy comes from George Mitchell, the former senator who was the great leader on the U.S. side of peace in Northern Ireland, who described diplomacy as 700 days of failure and one day of success. And in Gaza, what we've seen is more than 700 days of failure. But in the last month, there was a huge change on the ground, which was one month ago, Israel struck on Qatari territory trying to hit a Hamas leadership meeting.

49:04And they ended up not killing the Hamas leadership, but there were other deaths, including of a Qatari security official. And remember that Qatar is a key ally of Donald Trump, the United States. It was one of the places he visited on his first international trip in this administration. It's also, remember, the country that gave Donald Trump a$400 million plane that he wants to retrofit for use both as Air Force One and afterwards as his own presidential library plane. So he has a close relationship with Qatar. And the fact that this strike happened, which really angered Qatar, seems to have motivated President Trump to essentially put pressure on Netanyahu, demand that Netanyahu make an apology to Qatar's prime minister by telephone from the Oval Office.

50:03And apparently the White House wrote that apology and made him deliver it. And so this kind of from one month ago, along with the fact that the United Nations General Assembly happened last month in New York. And at the UNGA, what we saw was an incredible succession of events between major countries saying they were going to recognize a Palestinian state. France, the UK, Canada, Australia, major US allies, as well as the New York Declaration, where basically the UNGA said, we are pushing for a two-state solution. There must be a Palestinian state. This war must end. There was suddenly so much pressure on Israel.

50:46And after this two-year war and the 67 ,000 deaths that had been reported by the Gaza Health Ministry, essentially. It's like a real momentum shift, Indira. Real momentum. Israel was left without other, you know, on the back foot without allies. And Trump, who's been a huge ally, was essentially putting the pressure on them at this point. Akbar? I just wanted to add, I thought Indira's point was so important about the 700 days of failure. And just something to remember, as we do talk about President Trump taking credit, and he's, of course, taking a victory lap, there were daily choices by U.S.

51:22officials to not apply this pressure over 700 days as famine was reported and experienced, as there were preventable deaths in Gaza every single day, as Israeli hostages lost their lives, right? So just important to remember in this moment of triumph that there's a lot of responsibility and a lot of sense of missed opportunity over a very long time. And I just also note that, of course, 67 ,000 is understood to be a severe undercount for the actual Palestinian death toll. Hamas has said it was seeking international guarantees that Israel will not resume bombing Gaza after the group releases all the remaining hostages as we've been talking about.

52:00The deal also requires Israel to pull its troops back to, quote, an agreed-upon line. On Thursday, Hamas's chief negotiator, Khalil Ahaya, addressed Palestinians in Gaza after the deal was announced. We have received guarantees from the mediators and also from the U.S. administration confirming all of them that the war has ended permanently. And we will continue to work with the national force in order to resume and to make sure that we achieve all the other steps and to achieve all the aspirations of our people. Nancy, what else are we hearing from Hamas at this point? So the reason you're hearing concerns is throughout this war, Hamas has believed that holding the hostages gave them their biggest leverage in terms of dealing with Israel.

52:53and the fear now is that once those hostages are released, when these much tougher issues come to be talked about and worked out, if there's not an agreement, that Israel will resume bombing in Gaza with the political room to maneuver because the hostages will be released at that point. I think the big thing to remember is as hard as it has been to get to this point, in some ways this is the easy part. And what they're sort of saying is the next steps will be the challenge in the bid for a truly enduring peace in that region. The days ahead could be politically tricky for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

53:33Members of his far-right coalition are not happy with this deal. His grip on power has been largely contingent on the support of these hardliners. Akbar, what do you anticipate happens now for Prime Minister Netanyahu? though? We're already seeing Prime Minister Netanyahu offer a tougher line saying, I will see Hamas disarmed and D-Mil try something that is a really contentious part of the peace plan that hasn't been agreed upon yet. And we don't know what that will look like. So we're seeing Netanyahu try to cover his bases from the right. But I think that Netanyahu is in a pretty happy position politically.

54:11You know, he had been accused of abandoning and forgetting Israeli hostages for so long, he's now going to be overseeing their return, smiling, standing beside President Trump. He faces an election about a year from now, maybe earlier, maybe in March. But he's able now to say all the kind of components of his brand, which have been, number one, I am the person who can deal with American presidents and Middle Eastern leaders and get results for Israel. Number two, my tough approach is worthwhile. And, you know, yes, I'll have a kind of quasi-authoritarian power grabs while doing it, be against my opponents really harshly, but you're going to support me anyway.

54:50And number three, Netanyahu is kind of pushing the sense of himself as something more than the prime minister who allowed the October 7th attack to happen, a national trauma for Israel. He's saying, I'm ushering you into the next moment. He's already been Israel's longest-serving prime minister. He's kind of hoping to stamp that legacy even more. And I think the Trump administration is kind of keen to be that political support for him as he looks to elections next year. Right. So you mentioned elections next year. Of course, he's also been involved in an ongoing corruption trial. How does this—how does perhaps this war ending affect all of that?

55:29To the extent, it continues to hold a ceasefire. it's something that helps Netanyahu kind of solidify that grip on power, even with the far-right kind of supporters in his cabinet saying, we're not thrilled with you over this. This diffuses various other issues in Israel that could be threatening to his power. So for instance, there's been a big question mark over putting the ultra-Orthodox in the Israeli military. Netanyahu is kind of now able to distract from that issue. Say, look, I got a win, right? And similarly, he's able to distract from his criminal allegations and troubles. And we've seen him not only, right, he pursued a judicial overhaul that was extremely controversial to Israelis.

56:11He's gone after Israel's attorney general in the last kind of year. So we've seen him push back really strongly against his domestic critics. And I think in this moment where he feels emboldened, empowered, he's going to be doing more of that. All of that hinges, as you say, on whether the war truly is over. And I think that Niyahu will be hoping that he can keep open the opportunity to resume the war, to look tough and kind of have that as a political fallback. Because again, the second he loses power, he's extremely vulnerable in those criminal trials. Let's talk about those next steps that Nancy mentioned before the break.

56:47as part of this plan, if the first phase is complete, Gaza would be governed by a temporary transitional committee of Palestinian technocrats, supervised by a board of peace headed and chaired by Donald Trump involving former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair. And Dara, do we have any further information on this peace board? I think it's really interesting that Trump has essentially named himself as the chairman of this board. Not surprising, of course, since he sees a personalized approach in everything he does. And I totally endorse what Akbar pointed out that, you know, there have been more than 700 days of failure before this day of, let's call it success, because it is a ceasefire and it does look to be the end of the war.

57:31We'll see what happens. But this board, people have drawn comparisons between it and this and the provisional authority, the coalition provisional authority that was established after the 2003 Iraq invasion. And you'll remember that that board was seen as an American imperialist project and really came to be very hated with an American governor over the defeated Iraqi country. We'll see what happens here. I mean, one thing I will say is that this is a far cry from, you know, Trump Gaza, The idea of turning Gaza into a Riviera, pushing out all the Palestinians and redeveloping it as a resort complex, which was something that Trump actually talked about, as we'll all remember, not that long ago.

58:21So to be able to say that there are going to be other members and heads of state that would be announced later, there have been some reports saying that this could be officials from Gulf states, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, which obviously brokered these talks. Qatar, which has been a key behind-the-scenes negotiator, representing and pressing for Hamas all along the E3. France, Germany, and the UK are expected to push to have their own representative on the board. We'll see what happens because, of course, if this governing board is seen as an outside authority, it could be quite resented if it doesn't have the proper Palestinian representation.

59:02And as we know, the PA, the Palestinian Authority, has been told they have to reform themselves and change. Hamas has been told they're not going to have a role in all of this. Right. So, right. And to Indira, to that point, Nancy, can I ask about the Palestinian Authority to what Indira is talking about? Because governance of the strip would eventually be handed over to the PA. Is the Palestinian Authority equipped in its current iteration to take on this role? Does the plan include anything about helping equip them? So to your first question, simply no. You know, the Palestinian Authority hasn't ruled in Gaza since 2007, hasn't had elections since shortly before that time.

59:40There's not a clear successor to Minister Abbas. And so even if there are major reforms, there are a lot of challenges in it. And whoever governs Gaza next won't be decided by the Palestinian Authority. It won't be decided by Hamas. It won't even be decided by the sport of peace. It's going to take a sort of collection of various interests to come up with a governing authority for the strip. In the meantime, there are more immediate questions. The technocrats that you referred to, it's not clear who they will be, who will choose them, how they'll go about governing Gaza after two years of a really vicious war in that strip.

1:00:26And so I think issues around governance are among the most vexing going forward. But I think for the Palestinian Authority to have any kind of role would require major reforms in it to then govern potentially in some way in a space that they haven't been in for nearly two decades. Cecil shares, I can't imagine why anyone would trust Israel or Donald Trump to keep a promise. I hope the people of Gaza are now saved from the ongoing genocide, but I am not optimistic. Earlier this week, we spoke with Ayyad Amawi. He's an NGO coordinator in Gaza. Ayyad and his family have been displaced four times since Israel's attacks began.

1:01:05He spoke to us from Deir Elboula about the most pressing medical needs in Gaza. No one can imagine the pressure over our medical teams here. Most of them complained all of the time from the starvation, from the repeated displacement, from the repeated evacuation order. Also, a lot of doctors injured and some of them martyred. And as our people, they face horrible times within this continuing world. A lot of our children injured and under the trauma, under the psychological pressure all of the time. I touch that as a father, as NGOs coordinator. So the basic need for me and all of my people to stop completely the bumping, the explusions, it's horrible time.

1:01:54Akbar, we know the famine was confirmed by UN-backed experts in August. Trump's plan specified 600 truckloads would be delivered each day to the Strip. Do we expect that to begin happening on Monday? I think we will see some significant uptick in aid. And that's something that, you know, the U.S. wants from a PR perspective. It's important to remember as we think about Palestinian survival, Palestinians moving past this moment, that the Trump administration has been really clear what it thinks of Palestinians. It does not see them as agents in this force, as having a huge say in their future. And so Palestinian well-being, to the extent it hinges on U.S.

1:02:34pressure, it's concerning. I mean, I think even Israel does not want to see images of starving children come out for their own kind of VR purposes. But major, major hurdles remain to safe distribution of aid. And some of those are, for instance, Israel has severely restricted the access of international aid workers into Gaza. It's talked about limiting visas. It's talked about limiting charity registrations. It's talked about undermining UNRWA, which is the UN agency focused on Palestinians. So will all those steps be rolled back and will there be safe aid distribution? It's not guaranteed. And the needs are, of course, really immense.

1:03:12I think we don't even have a picture of the needs, right? We haven't had international journalist access unsupervised into Gaza for two years now. And aid workers have also faced major limitations on their access, particularly in this year, with the Trump administration's okay. So that humanitarian picture, yes, there's a desire to improve it, but it's not something that can be pushed back immediately. I mean, what we hear from experts, especially on the hunger aspect, is so many of those who are hungry are children and are newborns. And so there's permanent damage done to their systems. And then those who are in severe, severe malnutrition, it'll take specialized, consistent treatment to bring them back to normal.

1:03:54And we don't know that that's going to happen. It's not just about getting packages of food in and kind of tossing them at people. We got this question from Barbara. I'm glad the war may be over. However, this is quick. Trump changed his mind quick. Everything changed really quick. This sounds like maybe there were some dealings under the table. I want to know what they are. Trump has said he wants to build a big resort there. Nancy, is there any more that we might know about these conversations, to Barbara's point? I understand the question. I think what really changed, or I thought was interesting, is the president was coming out and saying that deals had been last week, that deals had been struck, agreements had been made, and sort of left it for the negotiators to work out later.

1:04:34Now, it was quite a bold and risky move. I don't know if it would work again, but I think the reason you saw such a change is ultimately that you saw the United States putting pressure on the Israelis by, in some cases, announcing deals before they'd actually been made. The other thing that happened is a lot of the sort of harder points to reconcile, they sort of pushed them aside. And so this was a framework to get to what so many in Israel saw as the most important issue, which was releasing hostages. And so it was an unconventional way to bring about an agreement here. You talked about Jordan Mitchell earlier.

1:05:12It was 700 days of negotiation. That's not what happened here. This was sort of in fits and starts. And this was the first time we really saw the United States putting pressure on Netanyahu in a way that said this has to be the moment to at least meet these sort of entry points into a broader deal. Before we move on to other news, I do want to pause at this moment. If we think about the events of October 7, 2023, not just triggering this war in Gaza, but if we think about the series of other events we've seen over the past Lebanon, Iran, Syria, across Yemen, worldwide protests, a UN investigation last month that accused Israel of genocide, recognition of a Palestinian state at the United Nations.

1:05:57And can I just ask all of you how you're thinking about how this conflict has forever changed this region? Akbar, can I start with you? Yeah, I think what I think about the most is how we have eroded a real, any confidence that existed in a lot of these international norms and the sense of lessons learned from past mistakes in the region. and I think about the way in which the ICC has pursued charges against Prime Minister Netanyahu, also leaders of Hamas who were killed, and how that's been attacked, how the ICJ has been attacked, how the UN has been attacked in unprecedented ways, right? The greatest number of UN workers ever killed in a conflict, the greatest number of journalists we've seen killed in decades.

1:06:41So that erosion of international norms pushing us towards an acceptance of greater brutality, I think that's a price that we're going to be seeing paid across the region for a very long time. And, you know, of course, it's always been a flawed patron of those values. But the U.S. has been, because of its stature and because of its stated ideals, seen as the defender of all that, through Biden and into Trump, the abandonment of any of those principles around the laws of war, around civilian protection. That's really terrifying to me. And I think that's going to shape future conflicts. Gandhira?

1:07:20I think about, of course, the tens of thousands of people who have died, the millions who are starving in Gaza. I think about the fact that under Biden and Trump in the last two years, the United States has given almost$22 billion in military assistance to Israel. I think about how Israel is militarily stronger than it's ever been, but it's also more isolated than it's ever been. It's, of course, used this period to attack Hezbollah, to attack Iran, which the United States joined in that attack in June on nuclear facilities. So, you know, Israel can say it's snuffed out a lot of its enemies, but at the same time, it is more isolated than it has ever been before.

1:08:04And I think the, you know, there's been, we're seeing a reshuffling of what's happening in the Middle East. And at the same time, these stronger ties between the U.S. and the Gulf states. And I think it's going to be really interesting to see what happens next and how this peace plan plays out and if it can really be lasting. Nancy? To me, the connective thread between these two sides is a generational shift. I'd be remiss if I didn't pick up where I left off and talk about the suffering that the Gazans have endured over the past few years. More than 90 % of homes destroyed. Nearly every hospital hit.

1:08:43More than 1 ,000 doctors killed. You know, we talked about 67 ,000 killed. That's the minimum. 3 % of the population, another 150 ,000 plus injured in an area where 50 % of the population is made up of children. That's a generational shift. These kids haven't had education over the last two years. And for Israel, for the first time, we're starting to see a shift, a generational shift, amongst its support here in this country. We saw polling for the first time indicating that a majority of Americans don't support the approach of U.S. policy towards Israel. 61 % of Jews surveyed by the Washington Post said that they thought Israel committed war crimes.

1:09:24That's a generational shift in terms of their standing with Israel and for the people inside Gaza. Let's move now to the war in Ukraine. Overnight, Russia launched 465 strike and decoy drones at Ukraine and 32 missiles. Ukraine's Air Force says it blocked most of the drones and half the missiles, but what got through knocked out power in Kiev and several other regions. Strikes in Kiev wounded at least 20 people, a child was killed, and a separate attack. Indira, do we know how morale is in Ukraine ahead of another long, cold winter under attack looming? Look, this is a strategy that Russia has been using, let's face it, for, well, certainly since its 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine, but even for more than a decade before that, since it seized Crimea and was also occupying and seizing parts of eastern Ukraine.

1:10:21They've always targeted energy infrastructure and sought to starve out and freeze out Ukrainians over the winter. This is an annual tactic. This time, though, despite how harsh the winter always is, Ukraine has shown a real capacity for withstanding these campaigns. The Ukrainian Red Cross Society has a special strategy in place to provide aid, including heating and shelter to vulnerable populations. And there is a broad rejection for Moscow's demands for peace. And many people in Ukraine are saying that they can't make concessions because it would just be rewarding this ongoing aggression. There's a lot of resentment in Ukraine about how Putin has been seen as buddy-buddying up with Trump and, you know, sort of getting what he wants at the same time the U.S.

1:11:15is now more recently, you know, giving support to Ukraine again. It's been portrayed as kind of Trump changing his policy by now supporting Ukraine again. But what I find most striking is that just today, Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, has spoken with Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, and is basically putting pressure on the Europeans to allow the use of frozen Russian assets for Ukraine's defense and reconstruction. So that's something really important to keep an eye on. Let's move to France, where ooh-la-la, the drama, the country's new prime minister, Sébastien Le Corneau, is out.

1:11:58That's after just 28 days in office, after he promised to, quote, rupture the normal politics of previous governments. Nancy, President Emmanuel Macron's office said the outgoing prime minister would stay on for 48 hours to hold last-ditch talks to agree on a, quote, stability plan. What do France's political parties, when we're thinking about Macron's center-right coalition, the broad-left alliance, the far-right of Marine Le Pen, what needs to happen here? So on the face of it, it appears that this is a conflict over forming a government because nobody has enough seats to sort of shift the National Assembly in such a way to their favor.

1:12:36However, I think this is really about some of the financial struggles that are happening within France. It has a high national debt and is a large public deficit, and there's not a consensus on how to deal with it. And I think that's at the core of these disagreements. How do you deal with the austerity measures? Do you suspend Macron's decision to raise the pension age from 62 to 64, which was put in place to sort of deal with the national debt? And so while the politics of it looks like it's about sort of picking the government, I think it's— Some deep problems. That's right. I mean, this will be his sixth prime minister in two years, and his last prime minister lasted less than a month.

1:13:17But I think the underlying issue is how you deal with some of the financial issues within France. And that disagreement is what's driving the governing one. This morning, a big announcement from Oslo. The 2025 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado. The Nobel Committee said the candidate pool for the prize included 244 individuals and 94 organizations. Here's a bit of the phone call between the secretary of the Norwegian Nobel Committee and Machado, who's been in hiding. You are receiving the prize for, and here I quote directly from the announcement, for her tireless work promoting democratic rights for the people of Venezuela and for her struggle to achieve a just and peaceful transition from dictatorship to democracy.

1:14:10I'm honored, humbled, and very grateful on behalf of the Venezuelan people. We're not there yet. We're working very hard to achieve it, but I'm sure that we will prevail. And this is certainly the biggest recognition to our people that certainly deserve it. Indira, a lot of emotion there on that call. What can you tell us about Machado's work in Venezuela? Well, first of all, I want to point out that she's one of a long line of female Nobel Prize winning laureates who've confronted authoritarian regimes. Think of Aung San Suu Kyi more than 30 years ago, the Iranian activist Nargis Mohammed a couple of years ago.

1:14:57Maria Ressa, you know. Well, I wasn't going to say Maria. I was going to say Maria Corina Machado, this one, this winner. But, of course, Maria Ressa, too, who's a friend of mine and extremely deserving, the Filipina-American journalist who got it also for press freedom. But Maria Corina Machado, you know, has really been a symbol, has been resisting not only Nicolás Maduro, who's been in power. It's now, you know, if you count back to Hugo Chávez's authoritarian rule, it's been more than 20 years. and the Venezuelan people have been trying and trying and trying to restore democracy. It hasn't happened.

1:15:38She's in hiding. She, despite, you know, her, the figure who she chose to run in her place because she was barred from running, the man who she chose won handily but was not allowed to take office. So this is nonviolent struggle. It's showing that the committee is trying to value democratic struggle at a time of rising authoritarianism, Although, as I said, in Venezuela, authoritarianism is not new. I thought it was interesting that the White House put out, White House communications director put out a very sour grape statement saying that Trump was overlooked and this wasn't fair. But, you know, Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, has been a vocal supporter of Machado's nomination, certainly since the time he was a senator and he has praised her.

1:16:26So let's see, you know, maybe this will, it's certainly a symbol of supporting peaceful resistance, democratic resistance to authoritarian rule. Akbar? I just wanted to highlight a brief part of the Nobel statement because I think it's so important to remember this in the context of President Trump's pursuit of this prize. The Nobel statement talks about, as Indira pointed out, rising authoritarianism globally. And they say we see the same trends globally. Rule of law abused by those in control, free media silenced, critics imprisoned, and societies pushed towards authoritarian rule and militarization.

1:17:03And I just think that that statement from the Nobel Committee in this moment, at a time when President Trump is seeking this prize, is really important to think about, particularly maybe at the White House. We did see U.S. military threats to Venezuela increasing this week. On Thursday, President Trump ended diplomatic outreach that had preceded U.S. attacks on small boats off Venezuela. The U.S. has killed 21 people on four boats in international waters since September 2nd, claiming the crews are ferrying drugs to the U.S. and are part of foreign terrorist organizations. In a conversation with Bloomberg this week, Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky said typically the Coast Guard stops a boat suspected of carrying drugs, and they're not always right.

1:17:44About 25 percent of the time, the boat that they board doesn't have drugs on it. So they have made an error, but they don't kill them. But we've blown up four votes now, and if the percentages hold true, did one of those four votes not have drug dealers on it? Paul is one of two Republican senators who joined Democrats Wednesday in a vote to stop the U.S. military strikes, but the effort under the War Powers Act failed 48 votes to 51. The senator said the strikes may be an effort to provoke and force out Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro. Nancy, can you give us some more thinking into the strategy here, if that may indeed be it?

1:18:22So when the U.S. conducts these strikes, they say that this is to go after the drug problem and drug trafficking. There's just a few problems with that. They haven't been carrying these boats, haven't even been carrying enough fuel to get directly to the United States from where they are. Fentanyl, the drug that the president said he really wants to go after, does not come from the Caribbean. And we don't even know who is on these boats. We don't know if they're part of the organizations that they've designated as foreign terrorists. And as you note, even some Republicans on the Hill have questions about the legality of these strikes.

1:19:02And so the question becomes, then why is the U.S. doing them? I think if you were to draw a Venn diagram, the strikes are in the middle of a lot of interest within the administration. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been a longtime supporter of the Venezuelan opposition. And I think some hope that these strikes will sort of tip the scales in such a way to force Maduro out of power or lead to some internal strife there to lead to his ouster. Stephen Miller and J.D. Vance, I think, see these strikes as a form of deterrence through action, that even if those boats aren't directly tied to drugs, by doing it, it'll deter drug traffickers from traveling to the United States.

1:19:39and the president himself who wants to use the military in new ways and have a message of the use of the military as a form of law enforcement and show action against drug trafficking. And so in the middle of all that are these strikes from where I sit. And the question becomes, though, over time, how many will they do? How far will the U.S. push the boundaries of it? I think politically for the United States, for the administration, It's a win potentially for them in that it's hard to sort of come to the defense of drug traffickers. And whatever happens, they'll be able to say, look, we took out, we eliminated some drugs from entering the United States.

1:20:19Let's move to Argentina, where this week President Javier Malay performed rock songs and launched a book before 15 ,000 people in Buenos Aires. Here's part of his cover of Charlie Garcia's Demoliendo Hoteles.

1:20:38The event comes ahead of midterm elections on October 26th. The far-right libertarian Malay took office nearly two years ago, but is vulnerable headed into the midterms. In the past few weeks, we've talked about the Trump administration's plan to boost Argentina's economy with a$20 billion package. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bassett confirmed a currency swap with Argentina on Thursday. Akbar, we got this question from Elizabeth, who emailed 1a at wamu.org. Why is the Trump administration firing public workers and cutting many, many government programs but bailing out Argentina? What is the benefit to Trump, his administration, his family, and this country?

1:21:21Certainly, that echoes a concern among a lot of observers of this policy, particularly Democrats. Senator Elizabeth Warren and others have been calling out this policy and saying, look, we are experiencing a government shutdown as a crisis here in the US. For Trump and his movement, Millay is so much more important than just leader of one country. I mean, they see him as at the forefront of a really significant right-wing nationalist movement that crosses borders. And they want to kind of demonstrate their own influence in Latin America. So at a time when, as we just discussed, they're kind of talking about this greater opposition to Maduro.

1:22:03They also want to say, who are our friends in Latin America? And so Milley is someone seen as ideologically important to President Trump. And I'd almost link this to really more emotion, right, than rationality or any particular plan. This is just not someone who the U.S. under Trump can allow to fail. And it's someone I'd put in the tradition there of Viktor Orban, other associates of Trump internationally, who he really wants to prop up as evidence of his own ideology's strength. Can you put in perspective what the setbacks are Malays facing in Argentina right now, Indira? Yes, a whole bunch of setbacks.

1:22:41His party has a minority in Congress. So to begin with, he's been struggling to pass legislation. He's alienated a lot of potential allies. Just a couple of days ago on October 8th, The Argentine Congress voted to curb his ability to pass decrees. This really reminded me of President Trump because Millet has issued more than 70 decrees, essentially executive orders, since he took office almost two years ago to push through his agenda. And Congress this week said, nope, no more. And they overrode his vetoes on legislation that Congress had passed that would increase funding for public universities and for children's health care.

1:23:25So this is a big deal that they're pushing back against him at the same time. His party was trounced in the provincial elections in Buenos Aires last month, which is seen as a bellwether for these upcoming midterm elections. And also his sister, who was a top aide to him, Karina Malay, got involved in or was caught up in a corruption scandal involving bribery allegations. A key candidate has had to resign as a result of this. His currency is unstable. So despite the U.S. attempts to prop it up with this$20 billion swap, he's facing a lot of problems right now. And, you know, one difference between him and President Trump, of course, is that Trump has a Congress that is going along with everything he's doing, has a majority, and Millay does not.

1:24:17Okay, well, that does it for us for this week. A big thank you to our panel for truly covering the world with us. Nancy Youssef, staff writer at The Atlantic, covering national security in the Defense Department. Akbar Shahid Ahmed, senior diplomatic correspondent at HuffPost. And Indira Lakshmanan, ideas and opinion editor at U.S. News and World Report. My Kid is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexandra Boti is our senior supervising producer. Aileen Humphreys is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. Barb Anguiano produces our podcast.

1:24:52And special thanks to Matthew Simonson for his additional support this week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Naila Boodoo. This is 1A. Thank you.