The News Roundup For October 3, 2025

26:20There was significant concern as well. There had not been much telegraphing from the Pentagon about what exactly was going to be discussed. So many generals were worried that this was going to be a very – either that something bad had happened or that it was going to reflect a new vision that – there was a lot of anxiety going into this about what exactly would be discussed. We're going to take a quick break. And afterward, we're going to talk a little bit more about the other part of the president's message, the enemy within that he talked about and his vision for using the U.S. military as a training ground in United States cities.

26:57We're going to talk more about that. We'll be back with more of the roundup in just a moment.

27:06before we took a break we were talking about the program that the defense secretary and the commander-in-chief put on at quantico for 800 generals admirals and their senior staff now president trump also told military leaders in attendance to prepare for a quote war from within it seems that the ones that are run by the radical left democrats what they've done to san francisco Chicago, New York, Los Angeles. They're very unsafe places, and we're going to straighten them out one by one. And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That's a war, too. It's a war from within.

27:44Controlling the physical territory of our border is essential to national security. We can't let these people in. And then the president got more specific about where that war from within could happen. And I told Pete, we should use some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our military, National Guard, but military, because we're going into Chicago. That's a big city with an incompetent governor, stupid governor, stupid. Now, these comments and others sent shockwaves across Washington, shockwaves across veterans communities. The commander in chief told military leaders that U.S. cities and the people who live in them will be their training ground for war.

28:28Eric, help us digest what we heard there. I think first we have to address the training part of this. Look, the United States military, because of our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, certainly understands how to do urban warfare. The U.S. military is very much prepared for these scenarios. They don't need more training per se. They have the battle hours. Our generals understand those schematics. Sure, but the president's not concerned about their level of training. He's concerned about making threats. No, to first address that part of it, it's pretty unprecedented. And the idea then those soldiers would be deployed to U.S.

29:01cities, it's a big— if that were to occur, it would be a very large breach in the relationship between the U.S. military and civilians. The U.S. military does not typically fill that role. The National Guard on some occasions when there is an extreme circumstance, When there are large periods of unrest in cities, maybe we'll be deployed. But the U.S. military is very much an escalation. Within my lifetime, it has been very seldomly and sparingly used. And we should say when the National Guard has been deployed in the past, in the event of protests or riots, it is at the request of or with the agreement of the governor, who is the commander in chief of the National Guard unit within his own state.

29:45even when they are federalized. The governor typically signs off on it, and that is very different than what we're seeing now, particularly in states like Illinois. And we should note that in that authoritarian threat, the president talked directly about Chicago. Well, we did see a massive ICE raid on a Chicago apartment building just a couple of days ago, Eric. Yes, we did. And the people who lived in that apartment building said that ICE agents were pretty indiscriminately detaining people. Many people who did not have warrants were ultimately released, but it was after several hours. There was not particular explanation about why that building was targeted.

30:22So, you know, and look, I mean, the administration will argue that its actions are necessary, right? They argue that this kind of speed and this kind of, you know, move quickly and then like clean up the aftermath approach is necessary to deal with an unprecedented influx of immigration. But at the same time, there's lots of debate about whether that is an appropriate response and whether that honors the legal guardrails that govern the way that immigration enforcement can be carried out. Now, back on the event at the Pentagon, and now it's aftermath. Karen, after that meeting, your colleagues at the Washington Post reported on proposals at the Defense Department showing senior leadership plans to impose random polygraph tests on staff at the Pentagon headquarters.

31:01And the department will require them to sign broad nondisclosure agreements. These new NDAs would apply to more than 5 ,000 personnel. Now, this is the Defense Secretary trying to crack down and prevent leaks. What's the goal behind these decisions? To crack down and prevent leaks and also to prevent – I mean, they're trying to put restrictions on reporters who cover the Pentagon to sign an agreement, which I think at this point – I'm correct, Eric, nobody has – that they will not report anything that is not authorized by the Pentagon. And this is not the first time an administration has gotten frustrated by leaks.

31:41Even going as far back as the Reagan administration, there was a proposal to put officials through polygraph tests. And Secretary of State George Shultz threatened to resign over it. Karen, the thing that struck me about the reports from your Washington Post colleagues about polygraph and the leak crackdown, It broke right after this event at Quantico, right at the time when enterprising reporters, senior reporters like you and others who have deep contacts in the military would want to be calling those generals on background and getting their reaction to what they heard. And now the message has gone out.

32:21We're going to polygraph you if you try it. Don't talk to a reporter. Again, this is the type of proposal that in the past people would have resigned over. So I don't know how far they are going to take this, but I think there will be potentially senior officials who just say, no way. We talked briefly about ICE and a raid on a building in Chicago. In other places, ICE agents this week seen on video grabbing and shoving journalists, seriously injuring at least one at a courthouse in New York City. Now, tensions around immigration courts have been rising as the Trump administration's essential, as we learned, crackdown continues.

33:07What strikes you about this particular incident, Karen? That I think there has been a surge of ICE agents. We're seeing it everywhere. There has also been a surge to recruit a lot of new agents. In fact, the government is offering signing bonuses of up to$50 ,000. So I think that you are having a bunch of agents who are under a lot of pressure and who really don't have a lot of sort of training in the niceties of things like civil rights. Well, speaking of training, other ICE-related violence has emerged in recent weeks, in some cases against ICE officers. In others, against detainees or people suspected of living in the United States without legal status.

34:02Eric, what do we need to know? Are we seeing a jump in violence? And we should, as a coda on that, add that there have been more detainees reported dead in ICE custody just in the last week. Like, you know, it's hard to execute whether this is like part of like a pattern because of just like new directives or also because of, you know, there's a large ramp up in immigration enforcement. So obviously like the raw number will be higher. I think we're also trying to digest what the scale of it is. But there certainly has been more. You know, I mean, especially in Portland, like in the last couple of days, like we have seen a significantly more aggressive civilian response to immigration enforcement operations.

34:38And it's reflective of just how charged these scenes are. You go to these immigration courthouses and it's incredibly emotional when you see ICE officers standing outside of a hearing room waiting to detain someone who maybe has like a minor traffic infraction. People are yelling and crying. It's a very tense situation, even for the most seasoned officer. So it's also very reflective of just how emotional this process has been and the human cost of this immigration enforcement action from the White House. Now, this week, we got some news that related to an incident back in May in Newark when the mayor of Newark, Ross Baraka, very publicly was arrested by federal agents while protesting an ICE facility.

35:19This week, we learned of body cam footage that appears to reveal who ordered that arrest of the mayor of Newark. Megan Scully, what did we learn? Yeah, this was incredibly interesting. And like you said, this happened back in May. A lot of people had forgotten about it. But, you know, the Newark mayor and members of Congress showed up outside of this detention facility in protest. And what we saw was a body cam of federal officers, homeland security officers, being ordered by who they said the chief officer on the scene said was the deputy attorney general ordering him to arrest, to put in handcuffs the mayor of Newark.

36:03Deputy Attorney General, is that Todd Blanche? It did not say who it was, but I presume, but there were no names on the video. It's important to note that the Newark mayor had already left the scene, was outside of the gate. So the officers had to basically go and retrieve him off site and handcuff him and were surrounded. He had asked to be blocked and for there to be a perimeter around him. But it was certainly alarming to see. And this is essentially what the mayor had said had happened. Now, some health news, some economic news from this week. On Tuesday, President Trump announced a new government-operated drug website called TrumpRx and a new deal with the pharmaceutical company Pfizer.

36:55Pfizer has agreed to provide some of their most popular current medications to all consumers at heavily discounted prices of anywhere between 50 and even 100 percent. And that's off. That's off the price. Discount of 100 percent would be free. These drugs won't be free. Karen, go ahead. How's this going to work? It's not really all that clear that it's going to have that much of an impact. But the fact is you can buy a lot of these very expensive drugs overseas for a lot less than you can buy them here. So basically, Pfizer gets an exemption from some of the tariffs that Trump is threatening to put on drug companies if it agrees to join this program.

37:44But the larger impact of this is not going to necessarily be all that much. It only applies to people who don't have insurance and don't get their drugs through an insurance company, for starters. That's correct. So if you have insurance through your employer, the chances are buying your drugs through your insurance is going to be cheaper than this. But I do think he is addressing an issue here that is a real issue. But doing these things by executive order rather than legislation is something that also has a lot of concerns. Because let's face it, Big Pharma, when Congress has tried to do these things legislatively, it's not gotten very far.

38:38Yeah, they haven't worked out. We're getting close to the end of the hour and close to your reporter's notebooks to find out what stories you're looking forward to for next week. Before we do, back earlier in the hour, of course, talking about crackdown on federal agencies as part of the government shutdown fight. We got this message from Robert who says if RussVote is firing federal workers in blue states, can't those states refuse to pay tax revenues to this federal government? Is that a potential response? I mean, we're speculating. People are looking for what the response is going to be. You know, even going like as far back as the Vietnam War, there were people who would say, I'm not going to pay that little part of my taxes.

39:16I don't want my money going to war, in other words. Yeah. The IRS will come find you. Governor Newsom, you heard it from Karen Tumulty first. If California doesn't pay in, the IRS will find you too in Sacramento, sir. Reporters' Notebooks, I want to find out a little bit about what you're working on, what you think is going to be important for us next week. Eric, go ahead. I'm very curious to see where, as we're talking about this government shutdown, the U.S. is negotiating a pretty large financial bailout of Argentina. It's$20 billion that's going to be done through a currency swap or absorbing some of Argentina's sovereign debt.

39:50It seems like there's a lot of wish casting for the future of the U.S. relationship with Latin America. So that's one that, beyond obviously the big stories, I'm watching as an indicator. It seems like it can go through even if there's a government shutdown when Argentine President Javier Millet comes to visit later this month. And that also reminds me of something we mentioned earlier in the hour, Elon Musk's chainsaw gifted to him by Javier Mille. Interesting how things tie together. Karen Tomlton, your notebook. Oh, I'm afraid I'm stuck in the box canyon of the shutdown, which it's just really not looking like there's any way out of this.

40:23But I think that we all ought to be looking outside of Washington for the impacts. Megan? In that regard, I'm very curious to see if we see any sort of cracks in the Republican facade on this. You know, all eyes have been on whether these Democrats would cave to Trump. But these ACA subsidies, the letters are going to start going out soon about premium increases. And this is a very real pocketbook issue for voters. And are we going to see any Republicans in the Senate or in the House starting to wonder whether maybe this is a fight worth fighting? So Democrats might be banking on when people see those letters, oh, your premiums are going up, then the shutdown might start to gel for people like in Democrats view why this is all happening.

41:07Absolutely. If your premiums go from$600 a month to$1 ,800 a month, which will be the case for some Americans, that's certainly an issue that that's an issue people vote about. I want to thank our amazing expert panel, Megan Scully, Congress editor for Bloomberg News, Karen Tumulty, chief political correspondent for The Washington Post, and Eric Bezalemil, national security reporter at Politico. First time joining us. Great job. Thanks for being here. Thanks for having me. Hopefully not the last time. I hope not. I would love having you around the table. Stay with us. More of The Roundup still ahead.

41:45It's the international edition of the 1A News Roundup. We have an expert panel of journalists who are here to break down the week's news with us. Jack Detch is here, defense reporter at Politico. Hi, Jack. Hi, Todd. Good to be here. Great to have you. Vera Bergen-Gruen is with us, national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal. Hi, Vera. Hey. And joining us from London, David Rennie. He's a geopolitics editor and columnist at The Economist, where he writes their column, The Telegram. Great to have you back, David, as always. Hello. All right, let's start, gang, with this new peace proposal for the war between Israel and Hamas.

42:22Here's President Trump and a few highlights from his press conference on Monday with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. If accepted by Hamas, this proposal calls for the release of all remaining hostages immediately, but in no case more than 72 hours. Working with the new transitional authority in Gaza, all parties will agree on a timeline for Israeli forces to withdraw in phases. They'll be withdrawing in phases. No more shooting, hopefully, as progress is made toward achieving these goals. Arab and Muslim nations need to be allowed the chance to fulfill these commitments of dealing with Hamas.

43:05I have a feeling that we're going to have a positive answer. Now, it's an extensive, in some ways ambitious, 20-point plan laid out there by the president for ending the war in Gaza. Jack Detch, we heard some of the highlights. What can you tell us about this plan? Yeah, so the big bullet points are an immediate ceasefire, the release of the hostages that are remaining in Hamas' custody back to Israel within 72 hours. Those are alive hostages and, of course, the ones that have died in custody, as well as a massive plan for humanitarian aid. It's not fully sketched out, but you'd be looking at the massive rebuilding of the Gaza Strip, perhaps with international money coming in, as well as a new structure for governance and security without Hamas being present.

43:48Now, that's kind of where this gets a little bit thorny, because when you look at the transition structure, the administration proposing a temporary technocratic Palestinian government, Israel has continually balked at different types of Palestinian leadership coming into the Gaza Strip, not the Palestinian Authority, not Hamas. So it's unclear how this group would be vetted, how the transition plan would work, and who would ultimately agree to it. So it seems like there are gonna be a lot of sticking points, but especially when it comes to the governance of the Strip. Yeah, and we're going to talk more about that ambiguity and the reaction to those ambiguities as we go forward here.

44:27Vera, on Friday, the president gave Hamas a Sunday deadline now to agree to this peace deal, or they will face, in his words, all hell. What indications do we have from Hamas so far? So as we know, the president's deadlines seem to be somewhat fluid. As of now, Hamas has still not issued a formal response. They say they're still looking it over. But, you know, key mediators say that they're leaning towards, you know, a, quote, positive reply. But, you know, that they will want some amendments or so-called clarifications on a few sticking points. And U.S. officials have warned that there's very little room to renegotiate.

45:02So, you know, they basically will want some wiggle room or, you know, I guess more clear and binding timetables when it comes to some of these things that Jack has outlined. And they consider some of these things to be too vague. But, you know, they haven't responded yet, and we'll see how long Trump ends up giving them. Vera, as Jack mentioned, there are 48 Israeli hostages in Gaza, 20 of them believed to still be alive. What have we heard from the families of hostages on this plan? You know, the families have really welcomed this as a breakthrough. You know, it's the first one that they've seen in months.

45:35But they're really pressing leaders to move quickly because they say every single day is just putting the captives at risk. And, you know, as one of them, I think, said is, you know, these declarations are nice, but our sons are still not here. And I think they worry that as everything gets kind of stuck in the details, you know, they will just keep on waiting. David Rennie, Axios reports that this plan contains significant changes requested by Netanyahu, especially on the conditions of Israel's withdrawal from Gaza. What concessions did Netanyahu get even before the plan was announced? Yeah, this is a really important point.

46:10And in fact, it's leading to some pessimism from diplomats from Arab states who've been briefing the last few hours that the Hamas negotiators, they've talked to basically say that the plan that Donald Trump discussed with Arab leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York was not a bad plan, that it contained a lot that they could like, but that the problem was that the plan that was announced was essentially, in the words of one diplomat, bebe Netanyahu's plan in disguise. And I think that may be exaggerated because there's plenty of things in the plan that Netanyahu's coalition partners don't like.

46:43But the key concessions that Axios, Barak Ravid doing really fantastic reporting for Axios at the moment, noted is that that withdrawal that was discussed of Israel withdrawing from Gaza is conditional. And it gives Israel a veto over the process. It has to involve the disarming of Hamas and Israel gets to decide on that. And that instead of leaving Gaza completely, Israeli forces get to be inside a security perimeter inside Gaza. And there's language about, and that is going to stay until Gaza is properly secure from any resurgent terror threat. And Arab diplomats and apparently Hamas negotiators think that that's basically Israel giving itself permission to stay forever in places like controlling the border between Gaza and Egypt.

47:28So these are the places where the ambiguity is in the details, Jack. We heard a lot of them from David there. A buffer zone inside Gaza, timelines for withdrawal, Israeli veto power. You mentioned governance by the Palestinian Authority and whether that will ever fly. Is that the list or are there more details that are potentially going to be major sticking points going forward here? Well, I think David just outlined it very well. I think the biggest unanswered question is the Israeli response, because we've seen in the past Israel reject the idea of an international force led by Egypt and the Arabs.

48:05We've seen Israel reject the idea of the Palestinian Authority making a comeback in the Gaza Strip. And so there's kind of a lot for the Israelis to smile and nod at in this plan, but we've seen them reject key details in the past. We don't really have a clear point to get from point A to point B when it comes to the reconstruction. There's been the Gaza Riviera floated by Trump. There's been this great trust plan that leaked in the Washington Post that looks sort of like a Riviera plan, but we haven't seen anything that's really cogent or tangible for what the day after looks like and how Israel will respond.

48:41We'll talk a little bit more about the Gaza trust plan and who's involved with that. Now, as you said, we do not have an answer from Hamas yet, but people in both the Gaza Strip and in Jerusalem spoke out on the deal with the BBC earlier this week.

48:59If they released all the hostages at once, then we are finished. We are completely done. We will have no life left. Whatever happens, we absolutely need to end the war and to bring the hostages home. I think they should have been done two years ago. Now, David Rennie, you mentioned, of course, the UN General Assembly last week where many of these countries were meeting on the sidelines, Arab leaders, American leaders. And at the UN General Assembly, as we talked about last week, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom, France, Portugal recognized a Palestinian state. Now, line 19 in the plan expresses support by the Trump administration for, quote, a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood.

49:44But does the agreement provide any guarantee to Palestinians in that regard? No, it provides the opposite because that credible pathway that you're quite right is in line, sort of paragraph 19 of the 20-point plan. There's a giant asterisk. There's a giant caveat that if the PA, the Palestinian Authority Reform Program, which is this idea that at the moment the Palestinian Authority, the closest thing to a government that the Palestinians have running the West Bank, clearly not running Gaza because they do not get on with Hamas. All of these conditions that they have to reform in ways that, you know, they're actually some of these fairly familiar demands that they ease corruption, that they change in lots of painful ways.

50:26But it says that when that reform program is faithfully carried out, then the conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway. And so I think there are Palestinian voices saying that again looks like nothing like a guarantee, whereas Israel does get guarantees. That said, my own paper, The Economist, we've said that there are big, big wins for the Palestinians here, which I think clearly are causing big trouble for Netanyahu with his coalition, including important things like saying that Israel will not permanently occupy the Gaza Strip and that Israel can't annex the West Bank. And those are big wins for the Palestinians, even if Hamas is not in a position to accept this deal.

51:04Now, Vera mentioned this. As part of this deal, Hamas, David Rennie, is also required to give up control of the Gaza Strip to this Board of Peace, an international transition administration chaired by the president himself, but with members including former prime minister of the UK, Tony Blair. I feel like I'm in a time machine reaching back to 2006 or so. But why Tony Blair now for this role? So if you're a Tony Blair critic, you say it's outrageous, you know, he's best known in the Middle East for being the British prime minister when Britain joined America in invading Iraq. But it's not completely crazy.

51:37One detail is that, among other things, Tony Blair did negotiate successfully or finish the negotiations on a Northern Ireland peace process. That was a very, very big deal for Southern Ireland, for the Republic of Ireland, and for Northern Ireland. And he himself has said that that's potentially a model for very, very bitter sectarian conflicts like in the Middle East. He was also the envoy for the Quartet, for the European Union, Russia, United States, until he basically quit that job. That was basically a peacekeeping envoy for the Middle East and the Palestinian territories until 2015, where he basically failed and quit.

52:11And as sort of ex-premise, he's been running this sort of think tank consultancy that's been doing a lot of work on the Middle East. He's very close to some of the Gulf Arab states. Now, does that mean trust in him? I don't know, but he's not a completely ludicrous figure for this role. Just very quickly, David, I'm just so curious from the view from London, Tony Blair back on the scene, Brits, I mean, And does that meet with eye rolls or any enthusiasm? He's a very divisive figure. People who hate him will hate him that little bit more. But, you know, he's also a very credible senior statesman.

52:39And if he can help, maybe that's worth a try. The president of the United States would chair the Board of Peace, as we mentioned. Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair is part of the cast. And so is the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Now, you'll remember that Qatar, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia combined to give Jared Kushner more than$2.5 billion for his investment firm. In addition, Cutter also paid$1.1 billion in 2018 to bail out a Kushner real estate deal in New York for 666 Fifth Avenue. Taking all of that on board, Vera, your thoughts on the role that Jared Kushner might play on the Board of Peace?

53:21Well, this has been quite interesting to see because compared to the first administration, Kushner obviously has been playing out a lot less of a visible or formal role, but he's been so highly influential behind the scenes. He's been advising Steve Whitcoff, Trump's Middle East envoy. He's been joining a lot of these discussions and, as you mentioned, at the same time running this investment fund that's just backed by billions from a lot of these states. And, you know, this blurring of the lines has really raised a lot of questions because he's really, you know, he has a lot of input in what happens in the region while having a huge financial stake in what's going on.

53:54So, you know, it's so unclear what his eventual role would be. But, you know, the critics definitely say that this financial stake really blurs U.S. policy. So your best feeling right now, Vera, on what's to come, we're waiting for Hamas's response. Of course, the president says they have until Sunday or they will experience all hell. We have all of the ambiguities that you and David and Jack have discussed and the unease among Arab leaders about what those ambiguities might mean. Give us a roadmap, if you can, for what you feel like, I don't know, the next two or three weeks might look like here.

54:30It really depends, I think, on how much the U.S. will be willing to allow any kind of amendment or, again, they call them clarifications, or how rigid they're willing to be. I'd be curious in what Jack and David think. But, you know, it does feel like it really depends on when they come back, how much they're willing to kind of kick the ball to the Israelis and see what they do if Netanyahu actually has to follow through with this. All right. Well, let's do it. One thought from each of you on sort of what the next two weeks might look like here and what next moves. But, you know, we'll see what Hamas' response is, of course.

55:05And then after that, David, what are you looking for? Look, and Hamas could do a yes, but kind of response. A lot of this is always about how much pressure Donald Trump is willing to put on Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel, because America has extraordinary leverage, which it has not really been willing to use. And some of the reporting is that, for example, when Israel struck Hamas negotiators in Qatar, an Arab state that is a friend of America's, that was an opportunity, that it united the Gulf Arabs behind Qatar because they don't necessarily get on with Qatar very well. And it was also an opportunity for the Americans to say to Israel, okay, you went too far.

55:41You crossed a line. We even saw Netanyahu being forced to make a call to apologize formally to Qatar, we believe from the White House. And so if that momentum signals more pressure from America, then maybe we'll see movement. But that's where a lot of the attention is going to have to be, I think. Well, let's talk about that. The apparently forced apology by Benjamin Netanyahu to the Qatari prime minister for the strike when Israel struck Hamas negotiators in Doha. This was a couple of weeks ago. Jack, what's notable about what David mentioned in the conversation between the three leaders, the president of the United States, Israel, and Qatar?

56:18It's notable that Netanyahu capitulated in this way and did give an about face, at least an expression of regret to the Qataris, if not an apology. So it does indicate he's been under tremendous pressure from the United States to at least express some regret for what happened. And I mean, this obviously is a major disruption to the security architecture in the Middle East, because you have in Qatar a small, natural gas-rich country that has a lot of very fancy, expensive weapons, but is basically dependent on the United States for protection. And it's left Doha in this position of asking themselves that if the Israelis have this power to unleash themselves on the region and the United States, which has 11 ,000 troops on the ground in Qatar, can't give them a heads up, who's going to protect them?

57:10So it's serious questions about the security architecture in the region from Qatar. Well, the prime minister of Qatar was speaking to the press to Al Jazeera in reaction to the Gaza ceasefire plan unveiled by President Trump. He said it does meet key goals set by mediators stopping the killing and the displacement of Palestinians, but he also acknowledged some of the challenges with the plan that Jack and David and Vera have been talking about. Listen. Of course, there are challenges. There will certainly be practical challenges and implementation challenges. But we must also look at the opportunities.

57:49There are challenges and there are opportunities. The opportunity, as unified position, everyone agreed on stopping the war, preventing displacement and full withdrawal of the Israeli army. These are the three main and pivotal matters, and the direct responsible party for managing Gaza are the Palestinian people themselves. And then outside of that, Vera, as Jack just mentioned, the president signed an executive order this week vowing to use all measures, including U.S. military action, to defend Qatar, basically a security guarantee. What do we know more about the pledge? And Jack talked about it, but put it in the context of your view of the balance of power in the Middle East right now as Trump pursues this Gaza plan.

58:34Right. I mean, it's quite an extraordinary thing. I mean, it's modeled on NATO's Article 5, and it's the first time that the U.S. has extended this kind of pledge to any Arab state. So it basically ties Qatar security to America's own, saying that an armed attack would be treated as a direct threat to the U.S. and its security. So it locks in, you know, Qatar's role as a central U.S. partner and really increases their leverage in the region as they clearly are going to keep playing a really, really important role, both in the, you know, everything that comes with the Gaza plan, but just in general, now when they're negotiating, when they're doing what they do, you know, they're really backed by the full power of U.S.

59:13security guarantees. Now, it's impossible to talk about that false U.S. security guarantees in the might of the U.S. military and security guarantees for Qatar without reminding ourselves that that country gifted a$400 million 747 jet to Donald Trump, which he happily accepted. Vera, what's the state of that deal now? What's going on with the$400 million plane right now? I believe there's still, you know, a lot of it's still up in the air about this gift. But, you know, as we know, it's basically been accepted. And it muddies the line, as you mentioned, really between diplomacy and influence peddling.

59:52And now, given everything that we're seeing, you know, over the last couple of weeks, I mean, you know, it raises this question of whether Trump feels somewhat indebted to Qatar or whether he's going to feel somewhat, you know, like he needs to favor their interests in return. And it's difficult not to see everything that happens between these two countries through that lens. Well, meanwhile, far from the negotiating table, attacks intensified in Gaza City on the ground this week. On Wednesday, Israel's defense minister ordered all remaining Palestinians to leave Gaza City and noted that anyone who stayed behind would now be considered a terrorist or a terrorist supporter.

1:00:30Some of the last people to leave Gaza City described what their escape out of the city was like to Channel 4 in the UK. Everything's being fired at us. Everything's destroyed. There are explosions everywhere. There's nothing left for us. When we got to the Netsarim crossing, we found out that there was bombing going on and tanks firing and quadcopters and people dead on the road. Now around 400 ,000 people are believed to have fled south from Gaza City. Israel's military campaign in Gaza has killed more than 66 ,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which is run by Hamas. Now, the ministry does not differentiate between civilians and fighters in its toll, but it has said that women and children make up around half of the dead.

1:01:18David Rennie, winter is just around the corner. What does the humanitarian situation and the humanitarian aid part of the plan that we've been talking about look like? So there is language about full aid being immediately sent into the Gaza Strip on acceptance of the agreement. And it gives some sort of examples of the rehabilitation of infrastructure, water, electricity, sewage, removing rubble. And crucially, the entry of the aid into the Gaza Strip will take place without interference from the two parties. And it can take place through things like the UN and its agencies, the Red Crescent. So it's kind of back to the future.

1:01:52It is sort of describing the aid distribution system that sometimes was allowed to work well in the early stages of this war by Israel and then sometimes choked off completely. And it doesn't mention that very controversial aid distribution system that Israel, with American backing, set up using private contractors that's been so criticized. So it looks as if the plan is to go back to where we were before. But the problem is it is all conditional on acceptance of this agreement. And so if the worry is that Hamas either doesn't agree or it's a yes-but-agreement or the Israeli coalition starts falling apart, because we've seen very, very hostile commentary on this potential agreement from the far-right members of Benjamin Netanyahu's own coalition, where does that leave the Palestinians, as you say, Todd, waiting for aid as winter sets in?

1:02:43And of course, you might think it's the Middle East, it's going to be warm, but it's not. It's miserably cold and wet, and these are people living in winter, going to be living under plastic sheets, trying to keep their families alive. And it's just a desperate situation. We don't have clarity on what is going to happen. And David, realizing this is a gigantic question, just given the utter devastation of infrastructure, you mentioned it briefly. In the best world where the deal goes forward and aid starts flowing, how is it supposed to flow properly when so much of Gaza lays in waste? That's an incredibly good question.

1:03:14and you can begin with the simple stuff. It should be going in by truck. It should go in hundreds of trucks a day. That was the situation before. But if you're thinking about how aid used to go in the old days, you're absolutely right that that was into a completely different Gaza. Now you have these shocking images that essentially it's a giant field of rubble. You have large numbers of people penned in these very, very crowded, unsanitary refugee camps. Very, very hard to get aid to them. even kind of in a condition of safety for people to go and collect it. We've seen violence again and again when people try and go out and collect this aid.

1:03:50And so it's a really miserable situation. And I guess one of the big unanswered questions is given how unsustainable, given how wretched this looks, what is the plan for what comes next? And will this International Supervision Board, people like Tony Blair and others, will that be accepted by people on the ground? Will Hamas disarm as planned. There are so many ifs, so many details up in the air. And in the meantime, the need of the people on the ground is so incredibly urgent. It's just there's a mismatch between the number of vague details that will need to be resolved and the urgency of the humanitarian disaster unfolding on the ground.

1:04:28Meanwhile, out at sea this week, Israel intercepted the global Samud flotilla. Now, this is a group of more than 40 civilian boats carrying about 500 parliamentarians, activists, protesters, and lawyers. The ships were headed toward Gaza, bringing humanitarian aid. Italian and Spanish naval frigates accompanied the boats while they were in international waters. Jack Ketch, what do we know about the Israeli intercept, about the people who've been detained, and what's happening with them now? Yeah, this is a high-profile group of people who've been detained. Greta Thunberg, of course, in there, Mandela Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, members of European Parliament, and a lot of former politicians, about 443 activists in total from 47 countries.

1:05:15So you're looking at sort of a rainbow coalition here. Israel's saying they're safe and in good health and their plans to deport some of these folks back to their home countries. But it has been connected with this larger European protest of Israeli policy that we've been seeing. Of course, it was at the UN with more EU countries recognizing Palestine as a state to try and get the peace process on track. But now we sort of see these mass protest movements unfolding in major European cities, your Roms, your Madrids, Barcelonas, and Berlins of the world. So that's going to continue to keep the foot on the gas.

1:05:54Ultimately, though, of course, the issues are going to be resolved, of course, with the Israelis, in the Israeli body politic, and on the Israeli street. But certainly you see Bibi Netanyahu and his fragile coalition in the Knesset facing a bit more pressure, at least from abroad. Now, meanwhile, elsewhere in Europe, two people were killed, three others seriously injured on Thursday. when a man rammed a car into a crowd and stabbed people at a synagogue in the northern English city of Manchester. Worshippers were observing Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Police have declared it a terrorist incident.

1:06:35David Rennie, what do we know? So a man has been named as the attacker who was in fact killed by police, Jihad al-Shami. He was 35. He had British citizenship, which he had since 2006. He'd arrived from Syria as a young child, and he tried to break his way into this synagogue, rammed his car through the gates, he said, went on a rampage with a knife. He was shot dead by police who believed he was wearing a suicide vest, although in fact it looks like it was a fake suicide vest. Unfortunately, there were two other victims, one of whom the police now believe was shot accidentally by the police. He was someone from the synagogue who was hiding behind a door.

1:07:12And it has been just another giant shock to a country that does wrestle with accusations that there is a big problem with anti-Semitism. The levels of security you see outside a British synagogue, I think, would stun many American listeners. When I lived in the States, I lived around the corner from a synagogue in Washington, D.C., I remember being stunned by the way that it didn't have barbed wire, it didn't have concrete blast walls, it didn't have mesh over the windows, which you need to have in a European synagogue. And so it's another really shocking incident. And the government is now trying to work out, did this man act alone?

1:07:48How did he get to be radicalized in this way? But it's a very shocking and depressing moment. Let's move on to Russia and Ukraine, as we do every week, and the new chapter of drone warfare. Overnight on Thursday, Russia attacked Ukraine's power grid with unprecedented strength. 381 drones and 35 missiles. Some of the facilities were critically damaged. The head of Ukraine's state-owned gas company said it's, quote, deliberate terror against civilian facilities. These attacks are not new. They've happened in the run-up to winter ever since the full-scale invasion by Russia in 2022. But at a security forum this week in Warsaw, the U.S.

1:08:30envoy to Ukraine said this of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Probably in his heart of hearts, he realizes he can't win this. That's retired U.S. Army General Keith Kellogg. He reminded the audience that way back in February of 2022, the U.S. expected Russia's war on Ukraine to last three days. We, the United States, offered President Zelensky a ride out of town, and he made the comment, I don't need a ride, I need ammunition. And he told it to the Russians, you're going to see my face, you're not going to see my back. And this war is now in its fourth year. It's so hard to imagine. So hard to imagine, says the U.S.

1:09:08envoy. Maybe that's a lack of imagination, David Rennie. I don't know. I mean, David Kellogg detailed in his view why Russia isn't winning the war. They haven't ousted the government in Ukraine. They haven't taken Kiev or Kharkiv or Odessa. Where do Kellogg's comments fit in with the current White House view and military backing for Ukraine against Russia, if any? So Keith Kellogg is a very interesting figure. He does have a close bond with Donald Trump. He was one of the very first kind of big national security figures, or at least a general. He wasn't a famous general to go and endorse Trump before he even became president.

1:09:43So there's a kind of bond of loyalty there. But he has not been absolutely pivotal to these talks. He's essentially Trump's link to the Ukrainians and is often shut out by other voices and certainly doesn't have the clout of someone like Steve Witkoff, who's the guy who goes to the Kremlin, negotiates on behalf of Donald Trump with Vladimir Putin. But so often with Trump world, there's that phrase you hear about when people say things is for an audience of one and that one is Donald Trump. And I think what's been fascinating the last week or so is that the argument you hear from supporters of Ukraine, people who want to shape Donald Trump's thinking, is that Putin is a loser and that he's not a winner and that he promised he would win this in a few days and he didn't win this in a few days.

1:10:22and what did we hear Donald Trump say at the UN General Assembly? That everyone thought Russia would win in three days and they didn't and it's not making Russia look good. And I think you saw a few weeks ago a big push by European government leaders to say to Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin is disrespecting you, Donald. He says he's ignoring your calls for a ceasefire, hoping to get him that way. Now I think they're playing on the very well-known, well-established belief of Donald Trump that the world is divided into winners and losers and he does not want to be associated with a loser because it is the icky of ickies, as if it's contagious, and he wants to be with winners.

1:10:55And so I suspect that's where Kellogg's remarks fit in. Jack Detch, weigh in here. It is fascinating. It was fascinating at UN General Assembly. It's fascinating now what David Rennie describes, which is watching in real time as the strategies that especially Europeans and others have learned about how to manage Donald Trump and his personality sink in and then come out of his mouth in real time. yeah it's it's sort of the the duke of york phenomenon right it's when you're up you're up and when you're down you're down and i mean right now we see the ukrainians and we see the europeans on the up and up but in the next couple of weeks certainly that could change but it does seem like you you do have views right now from people like keith kellogg that are ascendant perhaps that's sort of the breakdown of the administration we've seen sort of as the nsc as traditional policy bodies have gone away.

1:11:48It's basically whoever's at the White House and can talk to Donald Trump. It's that last voice in the room phenomenon. But, you know, of course, we do see Trump change his mind based on sort of the last piece of information that's come in. So it seems like the Russians will have another bite of the apple at some point. And you can't forget the famous limo ride in the Beast in Anchorage between Trump and Vladimir Putin when Donald Trump came out and completely changed his mind about a ceasefire in the war. That was 17 years ago, or in this case, about two months. Now, this week, also, President Zelensky in Ukraine said that the Ukrainian military is sharing its drone expertise with Denmark.

1:12:31Now, this is because multiple drone incursions have occurred into NATO territory. Overnight, officials temporarily closed the airport in Munich, Germany. After drone sightings, it disrupted more than 30 flights. Earlier this week, AP reporter Emma Burroughs told us what Russia is up to with drones and beyond. This is part of an escalating threat picture. And into that threat picture, I would put as well, not just drones, but we've seen increasing numbers of arson attacks across Europe. We've seen the attempted assassination of the head of a German weapons manufacturer, Rheinmetall. These are all gray zone attacks, which have been directly attributed to Russia's military intelligence, the DRU.

1:13:13But the issue with these attacks, and this is where Russia wins with these attacks, is that they drain resources. Now, as part of the response to these gray zone attacks, European defense ministers are planning what's called a drone wall. But the Estonian defense minister told Emma that it's not as easy as it might sound. The defense minister, Estonian defense minister, said to me, you know, drones are not mosquitoes. It's not like there's going to be some invisible shield on the border between Russia and NATO in the Baltics, which if a drone hits it, suddenly it's zapped like a mosquito or it's sort of like bounced off with some invisible force shield.

1:13:49So, Vera, will the rest of this war be fought across so-called drone walls? Why is this so challenging? It's so challenging because, you know, not just technologically, but economically, it's been really extraordinary to see how drones have just rewritten the way that wars are fought. And, you know, of course, a drone wall wouldn't be a literal fence. It would be sensors, jammers, you know, missiles, everything else. But it's so cheap to produce these drones, and they evolve so quickly, as we've seen. You know, I was in Ukraine two years ago covering, you know, covering all these little drone startups, and everything they showed me is so outdated at this point.

1:14:26And then intercepting them is so incredibly expensive. So, you know, to answer your question, yes, I think we're going to keep seeing different defenses, you know, drone walls, whatever we end up calling them, pop up. But it is a problem that is, it's just very, very difficult to imagine that they will be very effective. And it depends whether, you know, whether the drones actually intend to probe, you know, European defenses, whether they actually intended to attack something, jam something. But it really doesn't matter because just trying to respond to them, as we've seen, that can be so disruptive, shut down airports, all of that.

1:14:58But just trying to detect them and counter them is, you know, many, many orders of magnitude more expensive and more difficult. And by the time they probably put that up, the technology would have evolved already. Increasing gray zone drone and aircraft incursions across NATO. We're going to be talking more about that on 1A in the days to come. Let's move on to another hotspot, though, across the world, closer to home, in the Caribbean. and Donald Trump's announcement that the White House is now declaring war on drug cartels. A Trump administration memo from Thursday declared drug cartels in the Caribbean on lawful combatants.

1:15:35It says that the United States is in a, quote, non-international armed conflict. Now, last month, the United States carried out three deadly strikes against boats in the Caribbean Sea, killing all 17 people aboard those three boats. Additionally, the United States is increasing its military presence in the region. Eight warships, thousands of troops to the coast of Haiti, 10 American fighter jet station now in Puerto Rico. Vera, let's start with this declaration that cartels are unlawful combatants. What does that mean for how the United States is now going to interact with alleged drug traffickers in the future?

1:16:12It basically means that they intend to treat them as terrorists, right? They're putting them in the same category that the U.S. used for al-Qaeda and the Taliban after 9-11. And it's really extraordinary and unprecedented because usually they've been treated as a law enforcement problem. You've got the Coast Guard kind of stopping them. If anything, they're shooting out their motors and investigating the drugs on board, things like that. And now we're seeing this really massive military buildup. We're seeing these strikes on these boats, which have already killed 17 alleged drug smugglers. And it means that the president and the Trump administration believe they can basically treat this region, which is usually a backwater and ignored when it comes to national security, they're now treating it as a counterterrorism mission, not law enforcement.

1:17:01And it means they think that all options really are on the table when it comes to using lethal force. And so far we've seen, again, these strikes, really, we haven't seen anything like this in decades. And I think there isn't a ton of empathy for alleged drug smugglers, and this kind of tends to go under the radar. But the legality of it and what this means, because this military buildup clearly signals something larger is coming, has really unnerved a lot of the region. At the same time, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has called on militias in his country to be ready and has ordered drills to defend the country.

1:17:40Now, this comes, as I said, as U.S. military assets move into the region. the Venezuelan government issued a statement saying that they detected five U.S. fighter jets about 75 kilometers from their coastline. The Venezuelan defense minister called it a provocation. Jack Detch, what do we know? Is the United States poking Venezuela? And what's up here? Well, this is an unprecedented buildup that the U.S. has staged near Venezuela. You're talking about three guided missile destroyers, F-35s in Puerto Rico, amphibious ready groups full of Marines. I mean, Pete Hegseth himself called this a floating island of military power when he visited some of these Marines as well.

1:18:24So this is an enormous buildup. And I think Vera was right to point out the legal ground is shifting tremendously because you haven't seen a president invoke authorities like this, I mean, basically using the Article II constitutional provision of self-defense, which we've seen utilized in some limited circumstances, now being utilized to target drug boats in the Caribbean is a substantial assertion of legal authority, something that a lot of constitutional scholars and legal experts are pushing back on, including folks in Congress as well. So I think you're just going to see continued pressure on the Venezuelans, but you're also seeing pushback on Capitol Hill on this strategy.

1:19:08We're going to be talking a lot more about the buildup in the Caribbean and pressure on Venezuela through the military from the Trump administration. I want to check in with each of you on your reporter's notebook stories you're watching for next week that we should be aware of. Let's do a quick thought from each of you here as we get to the end of the hour. David Rennie, You go first. What are you watching? So we've just had the first female Archbishop of Canterbury in 1 ,400 years. So she is head of the whole Episcopalian Anglican communion around the world. She is a former cancer nurse. She was the chief nursing officer for England, brought in essentially because the previous Archbishop had to resign because of seen as not taking sexual abuse of children seriously enough.

1:19:48But it's a huge deal that a woman is now in charge of one of the major religious organizations in the world. Yes, indeed. A first in the UK. Vera, your thought? As we mentioned, I mean, I think I'm just very, very closely watching this military buildup in the Caribbean because it just keeps increasing. We see U.S. Southern Command, which, again, is usually not doing anything like this, you know, posting all these videos of training exercises. And it seems like it's building up to something, whether it's just a show of force or some actual action. But, you know, it definitely is putting people on edge in the region.

1:20:20And I'll be watching very closely where that goes. Jack Detch, what are you watching? I'm curious to see the follow-up from the administration on Hegseth and Trump's meeting with the generals at Quantico earlier this week, pushing for them to maintain higher fitness standards that we haven't seen imposed on 60-year-old officers in quite a while, not to mention defanging the inspector generals just as the SignalGate report is expected to come out. And a threatened news blackout, threatening reporters that they shouldn't report anything that's not vetted by the Pentagon, and threatening to polygraph officers who talk to the media, so-called leaks.

1:20:56All things to watch. And, Jack, we're glad you're on the story there. Jack Detch is defense reporter at Politico. Vera Bergengruen, national security reporter at The Wall Street Journal. And David Rennie, geopolitics editor and columnist at The Economist. Thank you all so much for being with us this hour. We appreciate you and your expertise as always. Before we go on the roundup this week, we want to take a moment to remember Jane Goodall, famed primatologist, anthropologist, and conservationist. She was born Valerie Jane Morris Goodall on April 3rd, 1934, in Hempstead, London. Goodall was considered the world's leading expert on chimpanzees, and her research on the behavioral links between humans and chimpanzees began back in 1957 after traveling to Kenya and meeting with renowned anthropologist Louis Leakey.

1:21:41In 1960, Goodall dedicated herself to observing the behavior patterns of chimpanzees in what's now known as Tanzania. And she shared some of what those observations were on the Diane Rehm show here on WAMU back in 2009. He looked directly in my eyes, reached out, took the nut, dropped it, and then very gently held my fingers, which is how chimpanzees reassure each other. so that that was a perfect communication in which we each understood the other, probably based on the same kind of language that our earliest ancestors used before the development of human language. She had an empathetic approach.

1:22:22Goodall was able to earn their trust, allowing her to make revolutionary discoveries and effectively change the way animals are studied and changed humans' assumptions about what makes us exceptional in the animal kingdom. Jane Goodall died of natural causes while in California on a speaking tour in the United States. She was 91. 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. And Barbanguiano produces our podcast.

1:23:00This 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.

1:23:30Thank you.