The News Roundup For October 17, 2025

25:20there. And so I think what these protesters are doing, there really were stark naked people on bicycles. I don't want to think about the comfort of that, but stark naked people on bicycles riding past the protesters. There's these guys in the frog suits who are getting pepper sprayed, and they're just saying, this is ridiculous. I saw a video of one guy in a tiger suit who sings made-up satirical songs who actually got arrested or taken by ICE agents. He was singing into a megaphone and ICE agents come and take him into custody. There was that. Wasn't that a giraffe costume? Oh, I'm sorry. Giraffe.

25:54You're right. Get your costumes right. Oh, he calls it Jeffrey Epstein giraffe. You're right. I want to talk about one other thing that's important though. New reporting from ProPublica as we talk about protests across America to ICE tactics. ProPublica reports that more than 170 United States citizens have been arrested or detained by ICE agents since the beginning of this administration. The new analysis reports those Americans have been tased, dragged, tackled, and in some cases held for days. Olivier, that reporting from ProPublica, more than 170 United States citizens caught up in these dragnets.

26:33Almost certainly an undercount. And that's what they say, almost certainly an undercount. Yeah, that's right. And I think if you want to look at, there's a big discrepancy between the polling numbers on Trump wanting to deport people who were here illegally and his tactics. There's just a chasm. And what's causing that chasm, I think, is local news outlets reporting these abuses, focusing on the clashes, focusing on ICE grabbing the guy in the giraffe costume for no greater offense than singing, you know, bawdy protest songs. That's one of the things that's really driving down the popularity of that approach.

27:05We're going to take another quick break. Back with more in a moment.

27:12let's get back to our conversation about ice and the tactics the agency is using in places like portland and chicago james emails to say ice must use body cameras as margaret mentioned they say they don't have any so now what that's the question from james i'm stumped you've stumped the chump i i think they can get some i don't know i of course like the federal government has the ability to get body cameras and a judge has ordered it. But like everything else is going to be litigated. Literally everything gets litigated. I'm sure the Chicago police would be happy to love them. Turn them over, yes.

27:47Well, one thing we do know is that ICE does have the budget. They have the money that we know on the order of— But in a shutdown, right, can they spend the money on body cameras? That's a convenient excuse for them, of course. I mean, the president just directed the Pentagon to move six and a half bazillion dollars over to keep active duty forces paid through this. Boy, we could pull on this shoelace all day long, couldn't we? Thanks, James. Yeah. James, you just got a window into what it's like to hang out with four Washington journalists when a very good question gets asked. And there's actually an answer that four effective D &D nerds could answer, but not in a way that you really want to hear.

28:26So that's what that's like. I've been friends with Olivier and Margaret and Wendy for a long time. So there you go. All right. Back to serious news, though, because speaking of journalism and what it's like to get journalists together, I want to stop at the Pentagon where more than 30 of our colleagues, 30 members of the Pentagon press corps left on Wednesday afternoon. They refused to be censored by the agency that they cover. More specifically, they refused to sign on to a new directive placing limits on information that journalists could access and report on. The policy also further restricted members, press members' ability to roam the halls of the Pentagon and talk to the people who work there.

29:04Olivier, what are the implications of the DOD's press corps leaving the headquarters so publicly and en masse as they did? Well, there are a couple of different things. And before I really get into it, I would point out that Margaret and I are past White House Correspondents Association presidents. So we've dealt with issues like this in the past. It was a remarkable display of solidarity. I want to highlight something, though. So this new policy, which the people who turned in their badges rather than adhere to the policy, this new policy included things like merely posting your contact information, like on Signal, saying I'm on Signal at this was considered a violation.

29:42And if you – the focus has been on solicitation, the idea that a reporter asking someone at the Pentagon, an official at the Pentagon, to disclose something that hadn't been prepared for release was solicitation of a criminal act. In other words, journalism. Well, that's the thing, right? And there's unfortunately a long thread in the federal government of going after behavior that is really journalism. I don't know if you remember, but in the Obama era, the FBI accused Fox News' James Rosen of violating the Espionage Act because he had worked out a system for getting classified information from a State Department official.

30:23But what it means is that we've got far fewer people in the building. And that may sound silly, and obviously a lot of the best Pentagon coverage is being done from outside. It has always been outside the building. But it means you don't bump into Captain So-and-so. It means you don't have these opportunities to chat with people casually, which can often inform reporting or even kickstart a story. Right. Lead to tips. Let me just point out many news outlets, Bloomberg, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsmax, Daily Caller, Fox News, all said no to these rules. One American News said yes.

30:59The Federalist, Epoch Times, and several Turkish outlets did sign on and are covering the Pentagon from inside the building. Margaret, the implications here in your view. Well, when you take a look at that list of 15 compared to, you know, more than 100 who said no way, you do start to understand what this is about. I have to say, call me naive, I actually was kind of surprised that the Federalist signed on to this. Yes, folks in the organization have been aligned with President Trump in many ways, but this kind of goes back to originalism and what could be more original than the First Amendment?

31:36I mean, they use in their slogan the idea that freedom is like a core part of their belief system. Maybe it's instructive as to how seriously they take that principle. When you look at these, when you look at what this effort has been about, it is about an effort not to restrict the spread of classified information, but to restrict basic reporting. So I think it's really important that the Pentagon Press Corps stuck together. I think they will—obviously, the fact that this list of 15 got leaked to the Washington Post right after tells you that kicking someone out of the building doesn't mean they won't be able to talk to people and get information.

32:14And it may hurt Pete Hexeth's ability and his team's ability to have a sense of what's going on. Well, and first of all, and I oversaw national security coverage at the AP for a number of years, it's not like you can walk into the chairman, even under previous administrations, it's not like you could walk into the chairman of the Joint Chief's Office and look at his classified documents on his desk before. I mean, there were national security sort of restrictions, as there are in many federal buildings, including the White House. So, fine, on that. But I will point out that there was a story in the New York Times late yesterday afternoon about the head of U.S.

32:47Southern Command resigning. And the public documents that if you had signed on to this thing, you would have gotten said he resigned because he'd been around for 37 years and it was time to go home. But what reporters were able to get, even without their building pass, was that he was in a beef with the administration over the current Venezuela policy. Right. Right. Admiral Alvin Holsey, the actual reporting, says that he was uncomfortable and raised objections about the U.S. military being ordered to blow up boats in the Caribbean instead of interdicting them. So it's going to be a lot harder to stop journalism than I think Pete Hegseth understands at this point.

33:26Okay. So we leave it there at the Pentagon across the Potomac for the moment. The reporting will continue. The journalism will continue, if not inside the building. and the journalism will continue probably revitalized now that they're doing it from a distance. But let's check in on the Supreme Court, another key institution here in Washington, D.C., because the fate of the last key provision of the Voting Rights Act is uncertain now that the Supreme Court has heard arguments this week over Louisiana's congressional map. Now, over the past decade, the court has repeatedly gutted the Voting Rights Act, with one exception in a 2023 case involving Alabama's congressional maps.

34:04The court did rule that districts were diluting black voting power in Alabama. Now, we don't know what will be in this decision until June, but what is this case revealing, Margaret, about the fate of districts? This case happens to be in Louisiana, but it's really about Section 2. Yeah, that's right. It's about Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. There's a 1965 law, so it's been a long time. And some sort of the early indications from court watchers are that pretty close to a majority, maybe a majority of the justices, just seem ready to further weaken the Voting Rights Act. And why should we care in the near term?

34:45Well, the short-term implications really could be to help Republicans who are in this mid-cycle push at redistricting. Now, we should say Section 2 says that you can't draw political boundaries, congressional maps, with race as a motivating factor. You cannot draw out minority voters for political power. That's essentially what Section 2 says. So the contours of what we saw certainly suggest, and Politico has done some great reporting on this, that Alito, Gorsuch, and Clarence Thomas are, like, ready to go. that Kavanaugh, newer member of the court, maybe appears to be leaning in that direction because he thinks that these kind of protections that were born out of the Voting Rights Act should be for a limited period of time and not in perpetuity, not forever, that the conditions in the 1960s are different than the conditions now.

35:40And John Roberts himself famously said in another case that there was no more need for this type of policing of largely Southern jurisdictions about their behavior and voter suppression from the past. What could this mean in the immediate term for the midterms, Olivier? We're expecting a decision in June. I don't know that it'll have any immediate impact. I don't know how, I don't know that they can get maps drawn and approved for the midterms. But over the medium term, the estimate is that this would result in probably 27 House seats swinging to the Republicans and the basically the House being lost to Democrats for a generation.

36:17That's Olivier Jay Knox of U.S. News and World Report, Margaret Tolliv of Axios is here, and Wendy Benjaminson, Washington senior editor for Bloomberg News. I'm Todd Zwilich. You're listening to 1A. Now, let's move to the fallout from some explosive reporting from Politico this week. It exposed racist, homophobic, and sexist messages from a Telegram chat by members of the Young Republican National Federation Group. That's a political organization of around 15 ,000 members in many states between the ages of 18 and 40 years old, not all that young as it turns out. Some members already work inside the party or are elected officials themselves, and one, like I said, even a state senator.

37:02Now, Republican New York Assemblyman Michael Riley already fired his chief of staff, Peter Gunter, over his messages. Gunter wrote in one message, this is a quote, Everyone that votes no on their parochial race for control of the organization, everyone who votes no is going to the gas chamber. That's a quote. And in another exchange, he said rather ambiguously, I love Hitler. William Hendricks is the vice chair of the Kansas Young Republicans, used variations of the N-word more than a dozen times in the chat. Politico obtained thousands of messages over a span of seven months from young Republican leaders in New York, Kansas, Arizona, and Vermont.

37:44Aside from the vicious anti-Semitism, the racism, the open bigotry in these messages, Wendy, what else did we learn? Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play? What we have learned, you know, it sort of exposes what, you know, this sort of new bro culture that is promulgated by Trump and the administration is that it is now OK to be open about that. Speaking of that, Vice President J.D. Vance was asked about the messages on the Charlie Kirk podcast, and he rose to the defense of the people writing these messages and he declined any opportunity to condemn them. The reality is that kids do stupid things, especially young boys.

38:28They tell edgy, offensive jokes like that's what kids do. And I really don't want us to grow up in a country where a kid telling a stupid joke, telling a very offensive, stupid joke is caused to ruin their lives. Get over it, says the vice president. Kids with edgy jokes. As I said, some of these people are up to 40 years old, Olivier. Yeah. Right. It's the youngish Republicans, not the young Republicans. Right. He said that, of course, he famously in a private chat described Trump as Hitler. But yeah, of course, they're going to play this down. We've had quite a cycle for private messages becoming public since the Democratic attorney general candidate in Virginia was caught out wishing for the death of Republicans.

39:21But I don't know how long, I don't know what kind of shelf life this sort of story has. What does it say about the permission structure inside the Republican Party, in this case, in the future of the party, that these were the young Republicans of the future across the country? I think Wendy pretty much nailed it there. I think that we are seeing the rise of this sort of bro edgelord kind of culture where the point is to push the envelope. The point is to say the offensive thing because not being punished for it is sort of a show of force. The lack of accountability is the show of force. We have just a couple of minutes left.

39:55I want to do Reporter's Notebook, one of my favorite parts of the show, to dig into what stories you're watching for next week, what you think will be important for us to watch. I'm going to give you two, but very quickly. Zelensky, White House, does he get what he won or does he get just destroyed in a Trump-Putin-Victor-Orban play? And I'm fascinated by Walmart's announcement that they're going to hold hands with open AI and create chat GPT shopping for Americans. This could potentially just transform the way we use AI in the consumer space. In the aisles of Walmart. Thank you, Margaret. Olivia.

40:36No kings. What's the attendance going to be like? How widespread will it be? and are we going to see an actual physical crackdown by federal forces on protesters? And my favorite AI or favorite, my most frightening AI story is the Sora 2, which now lets you make all these incredibly realistic videos. It's going to get used for political purposes and it's going to be dark as heck. I mean, I've already seen fake videos of Tupac Shakur palling around with Mr. Rogers. I mean, right. Those are bad. They're astounding. Those are bad. But the grainy security-style footage of someone breaking into a ballot box are the things that worry me.

41:11Wendy? Well, Margaret and Olivier stole most of mine, but I'll add shutdown and to see whether the Democrats still hold to their positions. And whether anything shakes loose in the government shutdown. As we mentioned at the top of the hour, as the White House seeks advantage by firing Americans or canceling billions of dollars in construction projects in New York, New Jersey, and other places across America. I want to thank our panel for a great hour. Wendy Benjaminson, Washington Senior Editor for Bloomberg News, Margaret Tollev, Senior Contributor for Axios and Director of Syracuse University Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship.

41:44And of course, Olivier Knox, Senior National Correspondent for U.S. News and World Report. We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with another panel for the Global News Roundup right after this.

42:00Let's turn now to the global edition of the News Roundup here to help break down all of the week's biggest news from Tel Aviv. NPR's national security correspondent, Greg Myrie, is here. Greg, always great to have you. Same here, Todd. Thank you. And right here in the WAMU studio, James Kitfield. James is senior fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress and the author of In the Company of Heroes, the inspiring stories of Medal of Honor recipients from America's longest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Always great to have you, James. Good to be here. We will start, of course, in Israel and in Gaza.

42:35These were the sounds of joy this week as 20 living Israeli hostages were reunited with their families after more than two years in Hamas captivity. They were freed as part of the first phase of the Trump plan to end the war in Gaza.

42:57And 2 ,000 Palestinians were released across Gaza and the West Bank as part of the plan. Here's some of the celebrations from the occupied West Bank.

43:14On two different sides of a horrific conflict, unmitigated joy. The deal was signed into effect earlier this week in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh. Greg Myrie, what have we heard from hostages who've returned home to their families about their time in captivity? Yeah, Todd, we really haven't heard a lot. They were immediately after they were whisked out of Gaza, they were put on military helicopters, flown to hospitals in the Tel Aviv area where they're still being treated. So they're not saying very much. We've seen a few glimpses of them, some of those celebrations we just heard. You did get to see the families hugging their returning hostage.

43:56They're slim. They're skinny. None of them had immediately that we could tell any life-threatening sorts of illnesses. but what they will be sort of kept in these hospitals for a fair amount of time, just both for their medical checkups, their mental health, and just slowly readjusting. I mean, one thing you have to do is if you haven't been eating a lot of food, is you have to reintroduce food pretty slowly. You can't just put a feast out for people like this whose body can't really handle it initially. And there have been some of the previous hostages has talked about not having a passion for food when they come out.

44:37So we haven't heard much from the hostages themselves. We have heard from the families of some of the hostages who were quite angry with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying he could have ended this war earlier and therefore got back the hostages. In fact, last Saturday night when there was a big rally just when their release was imminent, Steve Whitcoff, President Trump's envoy was here. He was cheered wildly. When he mentioned Trump's name, the crowd started chanting. And then when he tried to reference Netanyahu, there was this long, loud chorus of boos. So Netanyahu has faced a lot of criticism.

45:16And now, of course, we're looking at the release of the dead hostages. Right now, so far, Hamas has returned the bodies of nine of the 28 deceased hostages. Only two of those have been identified. Now, Hamas says it's returned all of the bodies that it can currently access because of rubble and destruction in Gaza and that it is still a war zone. Anger has been growing over the delay in handing over these bodies. Now, Israel is putting pressure on Hamas to act and to follow through. Per the agreement, Israel was supposed to allow 600 humanitarian aid trucks, James, into Gaza per day. After the slowdown of the return of dead hostages, Israel initially reduced aid to 300 trucks per day as a form of leverage.

46:03That number is now increased now. The Rafa crossing with Egypt remains closed. This dynamic, what danger does this situation of reduced food and humanitarian aid, but also a delay in the return of agreed upon bodies of deceased hostages, what risk does it pose for the ceasefire here? There are so many risks involved with this ceasefire, it's almost hard to categorize all of them. But, you know, I will say that Israel, you know, obviously the return of these deceased hostages is a hugely emotional situation and issue in Israel. And there's lots of pressure to find these bodies. I don't understand what Hamas' motivation would be if they had these not to give them over.

46:45They've given over a number of them as well as 20 live hostages. So maybe they really actually just can't get to them because there's so much rubble and collapsed tunnels underneath there. And there are people who have said in Egypt and others said, we'll come in there and help you. And Turkey, we'll come in there and help you find those bodies. There are an estimated 55 million tons of rubble in Gaza right now. U.S. advisors, for their part, say Hamas has not violated the deal in their view. Right. I mean, it's hard to understand, as I said, the motivation for them actually doing so. And I think Israel also walked back the decrease in aid.

47:21So these first days are going to be fraught with so many possibilities for this thing to get derailed. It's a very, very complicated ceasefire. And the second phase gets even more complicated when you get into the politics of who's going to govern Gaza. So right now, I think the U.S. needs to play a role where it sort of is the mediator between these two sides because these are traumatized societies on both sides of this conflict. We got this message from Kathy in Rochester who says, it very much appears that Israel has found an excuse to continue starving civilians and will restart military attacks.

47:57So this ceasefire is already dead. That's Kathy's view from Rochester. Greg Myrie, what response has this gotten from hostage families and members of Netanyahu's right-wing coalition, the failure to return bodies as agreed to and what it might do to the dynamics of the ceasefire. Yeah, a few, a range of responses. The far-right members of Netanyahu's cabinet have expressed sort of mixed feelings about the deal overall. They said they were very happy to get the living hostages back and were hoping to see the dead ones come back as well. But they were pretty critical of the ceasefire overall, saying that Hamas should have been destroyed completely.

48:39They opposed the part of releasing these 2 ,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. Most of them were people, Palestinians, who'd been detained without charge during the war. But there were 250 or so who had, over a course of decades, had been convicted of serious crimes, including murder or even multiple murders of Israelis. So that was the real point that the far right and many other Israelis were talking about. And as James said, the issue of the dead hostages is going to be very complicated here. Hamas is saying that many of them were killed by the Israeli bombing campaign and they were killed underground.

49:28and Hamas simply can't get to the bodies without special digging equipment or without teams from the outside. And I think this is really where you could see an agreement that they seem to have reached and they seem willing to go forward with could really delay getting to the phase two, getting to things like setting up a new Palestinian government in Gaza, a new police force, the reconstruction efforts. So this positive momentum, this sort of rare day of joy that we had on Monday as both sides got their people back, could be lost very quickly if they get tangled up over an issue like the return of the dead bodies.

50:09The return of dead bodies. We are going to talk about other issues that may be endangering the ceasefire, including the fact, as Greg Myrie mentioned, that Hamas remains armed and putatively in power in Gaza, at least at this point. We'll talk about that coming up. I do want to take a moment to talk about conditions. As Greg Myrie said, 2 ,000 Palestinians approximately also released from detention as part of this deal. About 1 ,700 held without charge since the start of the war after October 7th, and around 300 or maybe 250 convicted of crimes, in many cases, violent crimes. So different kinds of prisoners there.

50:49But James, what conditions have they described as they've come out of detention? Abuse. They have been described as being blindfolded, handcuffed, beaten, deprived of food. So it's a very harsh sort of imprisonment that they've described. And I'll say the obvious, it goes both ways. I mean, the hostages, I mean, we haven't heard very much, as Greg said, from these hostages. We've heard enough from hostages who've been released over the last year that their conditions in Palestinian and Hamas in Prisma has been very, very difficult as well and lots of abuse. I want to take just a moment before a break to also kind of talk about the kinetic parts of this ceasefire right now, like really the literal, the pullback, where are the guns, where are the tanks?

51:39Phase one of the deal also calls for the withdrawal of Israeli troops to what's called the yellow line inside the Gaza Strip that creates a security belt. James, what can you tell us about this yellow line? How much of Gaza is still under direct military IDF presence right now? I don't know the exact percentage, but the yellow line is still within Gaza. And on the other side of that yellow line are Israeli forces. In fact, we've had an incident already where it was being approached by Palestinians. There was some fear that they might be open conflict and shots were fired. So that's another, as we said, a potential flashpoint.

52:17But right now, until, you know, as you mentioned, Hamas is supposed to disarm. Until you get to the other phase two issues, I don't think you'll see a full withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza. And just remind us, how does this work? We're at the yellow line now. As different phases are achieved, the IDF agrees to move back and back and back. And to leave Gaza once there is a security force, we can talk about later, but once there's a security force to take the place, they are supposed to leave Gaza altogether. With a several-kilometer buffer zone, right? Sure. Yeah, right outside the boundary.

52:52Let's talk about conditions and life for Palestinians inside of Gaza after this horrific two-year war. Joining me now from Gaza is Jacob Granger. He's an emergency coordinator in Gaza for Médecins Sans Frontières, otherwise known as Doctors Without Borders. Joining me now from Gaza City. Jacob, welcome. Thank you. Thank you so much. What are you seeing in Gaza City right now, and what are the most urgent needs for Palestinians today? I'm going a little bit around in Gaza City and the northern neighborhoods, Sheikh Hadouan, or the South Eastern neighborhood, Sabra, where I saw the level of destruction that was difficult to meet for.

53:36It's an entire a neighborhood that have been totally destroyed. I see rebels on rebels. And amid this rebel, there are some people. So there's the people that stayed over there despite the Israeli forces' invasion and attack, despite the strikes, the building, the instructions and the tanks ongoing. What I see is that humanitarian actors had to leave, including Doctors Without Borders, end of September because we had things less than 100 meters from hospitals or 500 meters from MSF parameters and what I see is that people are still over there so there's a temporarily ceasefire which is of course great but we need to understand that it's not because there's a ceasefire since a week that the people are healed and that the needs of the people.

54:35Jacob, if you can still hear me, we'll try to stabilize your line. Have you seen any improvement in the ability to bring in aid, food and medicine into Gaza since the ceasefire? Is aid flowing at least? Aid is not flowing, it's for sure. So there's an improvement, but improvement is, I mean, everything is relative. Before the situation was so catastrophic, that improvement is not much. For now, there's a little bit more food coming in, which is great. It would be in the southern part of the Gaza Strip, but not in the northern part for now, which is still necessary. But then outside of the food, there's also medical items.

55:22There's also items necessary to distribute water to the population. And for these, there's no improvement. There's still impediment from Israeli authorities because some of the items are seen as dual-use items. Oh, dual-use. In other words, they could potentially, in the eyes of the Israelis, be used as weapons of war in addition to their humanitarian function. What are the biggest challenges, Jacob, right now for your medical teams? What are they facing on the ground? Two challenges. So one is on the ceasefire and the possibility we have on the fact that we are going to foresee it's going to last or not.

56:06The approach operationally for health sectors is, of course, not the same if we have some kind of guarantee of stability. And the fact that bombs are not going to hit everywhere, as it was the case before. The second one is on humanitarian aid flowing in. So this dual-use item that you defined rightly, thank you for that. To give an example, some cream for scabies, which is basically hydrating cream, was considered as dual-use. So it's also a guarantee from Israeli authorities that every item necessary for health and for water distribution is going to be able to go inside Gaza Strip with a sustainable and foreseeable pattern.

56:55That's Jacob Granger, Emergency Coordinator in Gaza for Médecins Sans Frontières, Doctors Without Borders. Thank you so much for the update and thank you for joining us. Thank you. Bye-bye. Now, despite the ceasefire in effect, we've already mentioned it. There's been ongoing internal violence in Gaza. Now we're going to talk about Hamas. Hamas militants have shot and killed up to a dozen rival Klan members, potentially more. And in a stark warning on Thursday, President Donald Trump warned Hamas, we will have no choice but to go in and kill them if internal bloodshed persists in Gaza. The president later clarified that we doesn't mean U.S.

57:35troops. Greg, can you help us understand the tension between Hamas and these other groups inside of Gaza and how that dynamic could impact the stability of the ceasefire? Sure. Hamas has ruled Gaza for nearly 20 years now, but obviously they were decimated by the war. That includes their political leadership, their fighters as well. So the group has been thoroughly degraded by the Israeli attacks, but they're still there. And in fact, there's really no other large faction there. However, there are a lot of clans. These are old traditional Gaza families who have power just because they've been there a long time.

58:20They had business interests and in many cases some criminal interests. They were operating essentially as armed gangs, but they were mostly interested in things like smuggling goods from Egypt to make money. But when they see Hamas weakened, there was obviously this vacuum there. There is no real government in Gaza right now. So some of these groups were trying to, it seems, reclaim their territory or lay down a marker for themselves. Hamas saw this, and there have been gun battles on the streets in a number of cases. In one particularly terrible episode that was on Monday, eight men were accused of collaborating with Israel.

59:05They were forced to kneel. Hamas gunmen shot them in the back of the heads. So we've seen horrific incidents like that in addition to some other battles in the streets. So there is this real threat. Now, these are not political groups. I wouldn't necessarily expect them to emerge as a political force, but they are armed and they're fighting with Hamas. Hamas has made accusations that they're supported by or collaborating with Israel. So the question is – this is why it's so critical to get – move along with this ceasefire so that you don't have this vacuum where you have no real government, no real formal security forces in control.

59:49Now, phase one of the 20-point plan put this ceasefire into effect and returned hostages, but now possibly the most difficult part of phase two. We've been talking about all the difficult parts of phase two, which calls for, among other things, Hamas giving up its weapons and the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip, as James mentioned earlier in the hour. Now, both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Trump addressed that issue this week. Here's the president. Well, they're going to disarm because they said they were going to disarm. And if they don't disarm, we will disarm them.

1:00:22We will disarm them. Now, James, the president initially, at another point, downplayed this violence in Gaza. He sort of suggested that Hamas had the green light to go and clean up messes or that they were fighting crime. He seemed to really take it on board and not really be worried about this type of violence from Hamas. What changed? There's been very different messages within the span of just a couple of days from the president. What changed is you saw these videos go viral of these Hamas gunmen lining up, you know, handcuffed prisoners and killing them brutally. Changed the dynamic dramatically.

1:00:59You know, we should mention that some of these clans and criminal groups were armed by Israel during the Gaza war to fight back against Hamas. So they have weapons, and he may have thought that these are just criminal groups. A lot of them are guilty of looting, you know, aid caravans, et cetera. So it's post-acopped looked at kind of Mad Max environment right now, and there's lots of different clans, militias. But also now the president and the United States have equity in Hamas insofar as they – good faith is needed to move to phase two. Hamas has to play along. So now the president is invested in what Hamas does.

1:01:42Right, which is going to be, I think, the most difficult deadline to get over is them disarming. They have said they will give up sort of heavy arms, rocket-pilled grenades, but they're not going to give up their rifles that basically are for self-protection, but also for basically intimidating the populace as well. So, I mean, Hamas has not disarmed as of now, as you mentioned, James. It's not given up at least putative control of the Gaza Strip. And it appears, in fact, to be trying to consolidate power by killing rivals, as Greg Myrie mentioned. And Netanyahu repeatedly stated during the war that Hamas has to be eradicated and removed from Gaza for the war to end.

1:02:22Greg, how long can Hamas continue to remain armed and in Gaza before things begin to fall apart in what Netanyahu feels he has to deliver to his coalition and to Israel? Well, the clock is ticking. So every day that passes and you don't move towards a sort of stable situation in Gaza, which I think includes the government and a security force that is recognized and accepted by everybody, it gets more and more risky. Now, the plan is outlined in the ceasefire calls for some committee of technocrats, nonpartisan Palestinian technocrats. Egypt says there's a list of 15 people that has been approved by Hamas, by Israel, but we still don't know the names.

1:03:08We don't know when they'll get here. We don't know how much authority they'll have. It's hard to imagine how much they would have, but you do need to get to some sort of government here. Then there's the security forces. Egypt and Jordan are training several thousand new security forces. Most of this is being done in Egypt with young Palestinian men, training them to be a new police force. But we don't know when they'll be ready, when they'll get here, and then whether Hamas would accept their presence. They're supposed to, according to the ceasefire agreement, but we'll have to see if that happens in reality.

1:03:46And quite frankly, Israel wasn't able to disarm Hamas in two years of fighting. and they won't be able to do it now unless they attempt to have another major incursion. So it would probably be have to, Hamas would have to disarm voluntarily. It's probably not anybody who can rip all the weapons out of their hands. Well, as you're hearing, lots of unanswered questions and untraveled roads to get from phase one, even to phase two, if we'll get beyond that in Israel and Gaza. Meanwhile, people and nations have a lot to gain as we look forward to the future of Gaza. Reconstruction and redevelopment, if it happens, that means big influence.

1:04:30And it also means big money, for sure. Have a listen for just a few seconds to this hot mic moment between the president of Indonesia and President Donald Trump at Sharm el-Sheikh, the meeting signing the peace agreement earlier this week.

1:04:52Now, that's a little hard to hear, but it's the Indonesian president there asking if he can meet with Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., Donald Trump's two older sons, who run the family's billions of dollars in business interests, and the president saying he will put them in touch. And Politico reports that Indonesia, Azerbaijan, Pakistan are among the top contenders to supply troops for a future stabilization force. in the Gaza Strip. So Trump's 20-point plan says the U.S. will work with Arab and other partners to deploy that temporary stabilization force that will train and support vetted Palestinian forces.

1:05:30Now it's possible that these two things are connected, or at the very least, Trump's business interests, which also happened to be with foreign leaders, are networking with him at diplomatic meetings. Both of these things are happening side by side, and simultaneously the president's personal financial prospects and the prospects for diplomatic solutions in Gaza and Israel. James, what do you make of that exchange that we just explained? Well, I mean, it dramatically makes the point that the Trump administration and the Trump business enterprise are very connected in the Middle East. I mean, we brought – and rightly so brought Jared Kushner back into the discussion for this peace deal who is responsible largely for the Abraham Accords.

1:06:15Well, after he left government, he's gotten more than$2 billion of investment for his investment company from Saudi Arabia and other kingdoms involved. There's all kinds of interplay here between the Trump business and the Trump presidency. And that's just a part and parcel of the way this administration works. We look across the Middle East and American allies there and see example after example of Middle Eastern governments giving financial considerations to Donald Trump directly, his businesses and his family, including Jared Kushner, right alongside the diplomatic efforts that they've all been charged with.

1:06:53The money flows back and forth and so did the deals. Not to mention a 747 aircraft worth close to a billion dollars, you know, given from the Qataris. And the Qatari bailout of Jared Kushner's 666 Park Avenue building in New York. Correct. The list goes on and on. Now, before we leave the region, more on the world travels of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharah. Last month, he was the first Syrian head of state to attend the UN General Assembly in 58 years. This week, al-Sharah appeared with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. We're trying to introduce this new Syria to all the countries of the world and reconnect the political and strategic relationships with all regional and international powers, including the Russian Federation, because there are also historical links in common.

1:07:41Also in Russia, at the same time, in hiding, the man al-Shara overthrew Bashar al-Assad. Russia supported Assad in Syria's civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of people, displaced nearly 14 million. Putin claimed in this meeting that he's driven by, quote, the interests of the Syrian people. In Russia, there have never been any relations in regards to Syria that were connected to our political situation or special interests. Throughout all these decades, we've always been guided by one thing, and that's the interests of the Syrian people. Putin has only the interests of the Syrian people in mind, James Kitfield.

1:08:22What else might he have in mind for his strategic relationship with al-Shara? He has in mind keeping his toehold of military bases, particularly seaside military bases, what gives the Russian Navy its entry into the Mediterranean. But it is rich to see him talk about a special relationship with Syria after, you know, enabling Assad's massacre, including using chemical weapons against the Syrian people. It's real politic as Putin likes to define it. A brutal massacre in Syria, years long. It didn't make much news here in the United States, but brutal nonetheless. And there's a high irony to the fact that Assad remains harbored in Russia while this meeting takes place.

1:09:02Now, President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin had a phone call on Thursday. The topic, of course, Putin's war in Ukraine. Now, Putin and Trump plan to meet face-to-face in Budapest in the coming weeks. And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is at the White House today. Greg Myrie, what is President Zelensky's main objective for this, his, I think, third visit to the White House during the Trump presidency? Yeah, you're right about that, Todd. If we had to boil it down to a word, that word would be tomahawks. That is the U.S. cruise missile that's been in service for decades at this point.

1:09:43It can fly 1 ,000 miles or more, pack a very heavy punch, and it travels low, follows the contours of the terrain, so it can be hard to find and destroy by the enemy. This would make a significant difference for Ukraine. I don't think it would be right to call it a game changer. We've seen this discussion throughout the war where if Ukraine wants a particular weapon and the debate may go on for months and then it finally gets that weapon. All of these things help Ukraine. It makes it stronger. It makes it more competitive, but it doesn't completely change the trajectory of the war. Ukraine has addressed a lot of this.

1:10:20I remember in the first year of the war, Ukraine really had trouble striking. The fighting took place almost entirely on Ukrainian territory. They didn't have weapons that could reach into Russia. Even when they got some U.S. weapons that could, the Biden administration told them they couldn't use them inside Russia. So Ukraine has addressed this issue by making its own drones. It's probably going to make four million of them this year. Some of them can travel hundreds of miles into Russia and are hitting Russian oil refineries. Ukraine also has made and is apparently starting to use its own cruise missile called the Flamingo, which it says can travel up to 1 ,800 miles.

1:10:59We'll have to see if it's as good as advertised and how effective it is. But the Flamingo in many ways sounds similar to the Tomahawk. And this would be, again, another significant step forward in Ukraine's capacity to fight Russia on a more level field, having some of the weapons that can travel long distance. So that's going to be his big ask. So Tomahawk cruise missiles on the table for Zelensky, James Kitfield. Now, the New York Times reports that Vladimir Putin initiated this last phone call to Trump, praised him for the Gaza ceasefire that we've been talking about, proffered potential business deals in the future for the United States, for Russia, for Elon Musk.

1:11:44And then shortly thereafter, Trump equivocated on the plan to provide Tomahawk cruise missiles to Ukraine. Went in front of the press and sort of seemed to equivocate on whether or not he would provide them. What's going on here? Well, what's going on is Trump deal-making. I mean, he says one thing one day, he says something the next. We've seen this constantly, so it can't be a surprise to anyone. And he's dangling the Tomahawks as a piece of leverage. and Putin, this summit that's planned for next week, apparently, he'll probably reverse totally from that. Color me doubtful he'll give them the Ukraine tomahawks for a couple of reasons, one of which is even though Ukraine has every right to do to Russia what Russia is doing to Ukraine, those weapons require U.S.

1:12:34navigation and intelligence, so that would be an escalation in our involvement in that war. They're also dual use. I mean, they were originally designed to carry nuclear weapons into the former Soviet Union. So it would be provocative escalation to give Ukraine a lot of Tomahawk missiles. And I have a hard time believing Trump will do that. But who knows exactly what President Trump will do? It's clearly leverage that has gotten Putin's attention. And we'll see if, you know, again, hats off to President Trump for the ceasefire in Israel and Gaza. He's on a roll. And maybe he wants to sort of press his momentum.

1:13:07him and we'll see what happens. What about the timing from Putin here? Tomahawks, he wants to stop that, but you have to view the situation through Putin's past behavior, which is overtures that result in more delay. Overtures that result in more delay. European leaders crowing from the top of the parapets that Donald Trump continues to get played by Vladimir Putin who wants more delay. Is this part of that same dynamic? I think it is because Putin has shown zero willingness to make the kind of concessions that a peace deal would require for Ukraine. And I'm not talking about all the territory they've captured.

1:13:45That's probably not going to be realistic. But the fact of the matter is Putin still thinks that he can win this war. And until he is convinced otherwise, it's hard for me to see him reaching a peace deal because someone's threatening another weapon. Now, meanwhile, Poland's foreign minister said on Tuesday that Europe must better protect itself from Russian drones. We've covered that in detail here on 1A. We've talked about on the Roundup and elsewhere a proposed drone wall on NATO's eastern border. Ukraine's defense minister says his country needs$120 billion to keep fighting off Russia in the next year.

1:14:20And this week, Germany announced it's pitching in $2 billion, but Germany is just one of 32 member states, of course. Greg Myrie, how cohesive is NATO's support of Ukraine heading into what's now year five of Russia's full-scale invasion? It's pretty strong and certainly much stronger than many predicted back in 2022 when this war broke out. And the big debate was how long will NATO stay together and provide support for Ukraine against Russia? So as nobody at that time was saying, it would be the U.S. that would be backing away from support for Ukraine and NATO that's stepping up. But they have done that.

1:15:01The big question, I think, is really whether they have the resources to do it. Now, they can buy, they don't have a lot of weapons that Ukraine needs. They have some artillery, rifles, stuff like this, some air defenses. So they have been helping Ukraine all along, But not at the – they just can't do it at the level that the U.S. can. Now, Ukraine – sorry, the European NATO countries are buying U.S. weapons, and we're seeing this a billion here, a billion there. That's significant. I don't want to scoff at that. But it's still not at the level the U.S. was providing early on. So we'll have to see if these NATO countries in Europe can provide enough weapons and the kinds of weapons that Ukraine needs.

1:15:52And I would cite air defense weapons in particular. Greg, briefly here, Tomahawk cruise missiles, sure, that's an incentive for Vladimir Putin. He doesn't want those flying into Russian airspace, of course. More broadly, what other incentives does Putin have to end the war now, if any? Boy, that's a great question, Todd, and I really don't know the answer. Putin has suffered, Russia has suffered, an estimated million casualties, dead and wounded, in these almost four years of war. They don't give figures. A lot of these are estimates, so that's not a precise figure. But it's enormous, somewhere in that ballpark.

1:16:35And Putin hasn't slowed down. He's continued to recruit. They offer big bonuses to get troops to sign up. Nothing has deterred him so far, and he has been able to field both the troops and the weapons going to places like North Korea and Iran to get the technology and the weapons he needs. So far, we haven't seen it, and Russia has paid a very heavy price. It's very hard to tell. He's put all his chips on the war in Ukraine, and he's not backing off. Presumably there is some pressure point, some pain point that would force him to change his mind. We haven't seen it yet. We should also note that Vladimir Putin appears prepared to tap into a reserve corps of up to 2 million, I call them troops, they're Russian citizens, to move them to the front and into action.

1:17:24So we'll be following that story as we do every week here on the International News Roundup. Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office today, and we'll have much more coverage of that discussion on 1A in the coming days. But I want to make sure we talk about the Caribbean, the United States, and Venezuela, because President Trump said on Wednesday that he had authorized the CIA to conduct operations inside Venezuela. Now, this is the latest in a series of aggressive steps the administration has taken toward the government of President Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. When asked about it in the Oval Office, here's what the president had to say.

1:18:01They've allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners, mental institutions, people from mental institutions, insane asylums, emptied out into the United States. James Kitfield, what do we know about this CIA operation inside Venezuela? Only that he's admitted that it's going on. The CIA doesn't obviously advertise what its actions are. But, I mean, they're giving all the evidence of sort of a Bay of Pigs type operation, where they put a U.S. fleet off of the coast of Venezuela of some 10 ships, including Marines, which is an amphibious group, a ship that includes ground troops. So they're trying to ratchet up the pressure on Maduro.

1:18:43They definitely want him gone, offered$50 million bounty on his head for his arrest. And they have signaled that they're willing to go to lengths we haven't seen before. I should say that this claim that Venezuela or any other country has emptied its prisons and sent their people to the states is just false. We should say that. Trump has made this claim. Constantly. Many other groups, many other countries has claimed that they've emptied their prisons. Without evidence. Without evidence at every time. Meanwhile, in the Caribbean on Thursday, the United States military struck a sixth boat off the coast of Venezuela.

1:19:22And for the first time, there were reportedly survivors. This is according to U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters and CNN, but there have been no official words from the White House. At least 27 people have been killed since the first vessel was blown up by the U.S. military on the orders of President Trump in early September. Remember, the administration says these boats were headed to the U.S. and loaded with drugs. Greg Myrie, what evidence has the White House provided to the public or to Congress about the justification for these attacks, both that these boats are carrying drugs, that they're headed to the United States, and that the people driving the boats are terrorists attacking America?

1:20:04Yeah, not a lot. They have released some video, sort of black and white footage apparently taken from the strike itself. So you see the boats blowing up. And then Trump, when asked about it, says, well, there's the evidence those boats were full of drugs. Well, we, of course, don't know. Were these boats carrying drugs? Are they fishing boats? And then even the legal authority, even if these are boats carrying drugs, that's a criminal activity. The White House has tried to pitch it as it's part of an attack on the United States because so many Americans die from drug overdoses that this is, in a sense, a conflict with the United States.

1:20:48That's a real stretch to say that this criminal activity is somehow a military operation against the United States. And again, just I think a very important point to make is that the drugs that are killing Americans in very large numbers, in particular, it's fentanyl. Fentanyl comes from chemicals made in China that go to Mexico where the fentanyl is produced and then smuggled over land to the U.S. In other words, it does not come from Venezuela even in the worst case. Correct. Venezuela is just not a major player. Yes, there's some Venezuelan involvement with some other drugs, cocaine or marijuana perhaps.

1:21:32But that's the major smuggling route even for cocaine and marijuana is not from Venezuela to the Caribbean. Yes, there's some of it. But if you're trying to deal with all of these deaths, you would focus on the chemicals coming from China, the fentanyl labs in Mexico, and the smuggling overland into the United States rather than a smaller number of boats in the Caribbean. Greg, we got this breaking news report just now from the AP who reports that the United States has seized survivors from that last sixth boat strike against Venezuela that I mentioned. So the United States reporting that it's apprehended or seized whoever might have survived that latest attack.

1:22:15We got this email from Janelle in Ohio who asks, what is the view from your panel on the four-star admiral who announced his retirement amidst the Venezuelan boat bombings that he was in charge of? James Janelle is referring to Admiral Alvin Holsey, commander of Southcom, who just said he's stepping down. So if you're a senior military official and you're asked to do something by the commander-in-chief that you think is potentially illegal, you only have one recourse, that is to resign. And that is what he has just done one year into a three-year assignment. He hasn't said why, but it, to me, is an indication that there is, and there has been reports that he was extremely concerned about the legal rationale for these deadly strikes on drug runners.

1:23:04That's a whole new category of, quote-unquote, terrorists that, you know, where that ends is very hard to assume. Admiral Alvin Holsey, whose story we will be following here on the Roundup. I want to thank our guest, James Kitfield, a senior fellow in the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress, and Greg Myrie, NPR national security correspondent, joining us from Tel Aviv. Before we go, I do want to end in a part of the world we don't often end up in, that's Cyprus. Cyprus has too many cats, right? Just too many. Officials on Cyprus estimate there's now one feral cat for each of the one million inhabitants, but activists claim the number is even much higher.

1:23:44Now, authorities in Cyprus are increasing funding for sterilization of those kitties all across Cyprus, even though people put out food for them, have little feeding stations all across Cyprus. They love their cats. There are too many. When a producer, Maya Garg, wanted me to say too meowny cats, I refused to say it. I said, I'm not saying that. Oh, rats. Oh, rats. I think I just did. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexandra Botee is our senior supervising producer. Aline Humphreys is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand.

1:24:23And Barbonguiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Michael Falero, Alison Brody, and Matthew Simonson for additional podcast support this week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Todd Zwilich. Let's talk more soon. This is 1A. Thank you.