The News Roundup For October 31, 2025

25:44Now, this is all part of the Department of Homeland Security. This week, an investigation of DHS and its propaganda about immigration and crime crackdowns on social media. Now that the border is secure, the battle for the soul of our nation turns inward as federal agents work day and night to arrest, detain, and deport vicious criminals from our nation's capital. That was DHS Deputy Assistant Secretary Micah Bach. Now, a Washington Post analysis found misleading footage and descriptions in multiple posts, including in that one that you just heard about arrests being made in Washington, D.C., while showing footage in other areas of the country.

26:24Wendy, what else did we learn from this investigation? Well, first of all, kudos to our colleagues at the Washington Post. And this is terrifying on a number of levels, not only that this administration just flat out lies to us, but also this notion of what is news and what isn't. So this showed ice raids. They would say this was happening in Portland and it would show this violent scene of protesters and doing things. And in fact, it was in Nantucket or it was in Chicago or it was in some other city or it was years ago. And so the danger is that, you know, you don't, these videos are getting more views than accurate news reports.

27:04Wendy, I also want to point out that this isn't the only thing going on with the people who run DHS's social media accounts. And if you're not well-versed in the nuances of propaganda. This one was easy to miss. In July, on July 23rd, in fact, DHS posted an image depicting a white figure, clothed in white, heading west with pioneers. The post included exactly 14 words, which experts noticed as code for a white supremacist neo-Nazi creed. It also included the words heritage and homeland, both capitalized. That's common online code for HH, which stands for Heil Hitler. That's your government advertising for ICE recruits with 14 words and HH.

27:46And it's real. We'll be back with more of the roundup in just a moment. Stay with us.

27:57Let's get back to the conversation now with this message that we got from Richard, who says, I suggest that the Democrats would look pretty good now from a public support standpoint. If They gave into Republican demands for a temporary budget extension to avoid the chaos that seems to be brewing. And then the Republicans refused to go forward with budgeting for such things as health care snap and other benefits that the Democrats were fighting for. Think of how Republicans would be perceived under that scenario. And we got this from Kathleen in Pittsburgh about the shutdown. Couldn't they step in and offer low or no interest loans to those people who are affected?

28:33They'll get the money eventually. My Chase Bank website does have a link saying, are you affected by the shutdown? And we got this from Anne in the Adirondacks who says, while 47 has been globetrotting, regular Americans are suffering. This has to stop. Get out and vote on Tuesday while we still can. It's so hard to hold on to hope. Well, thanks for those messages. Thanks for your message there, Anne, in the Adirondacks. Well, let's talk about some big elections taking place. Well, right now, it's not just about the midterms next November. Elections happening in America on Tuesday, and they can be bellwethers.

29:10New Jersey, Virginia, the race for mayor in New York City making big national news. So let's start with New Jersey, Arthur, where Hispanic voters make up over a fifth of the voting population. The president's agenda expected to have a big influence on the governor's race in New Jersey. What are the key issues? What's that race looking like? Well, one big thing that both candidates are talking about a lot is actually utility bills because energy costs are going up. This is widely attributed to the rise of AI and data centers, which guzzle electricity. And so Mikey Sherrill, the Democrat, is for clean energy like all Democrats are.

29:49And Jack Cattarelli, the Republican, is like Donald Trump saying that's a green news scam. We've got to use oil and gas. And so that's a clear battle line. But I think the biggest thing could actually be Trump. And this could be a mini-referendum on where we are in national politics because that's – in addition to your utility bills, that's a major signal in local politics as well, increasingly a bigger signal in local politics. New Jersey is a blue state historically, but the polls in that race have been very close. It is close. And, you know, I wondered near the outset of the shutdown when the Trump administration said they would shut down this bridge tunnel project to New York, if that would have a major impact.

30:34And seemingly not. Chattarelli is doing perhaps better in the polls than many may have expected. So he's still well behind, you know, not within the margin of error. But it's an important race to watch. And I think it could be a bellwether for where things are headed in next year's midterms. That's New Jersey. Then there's Virginia, which one way or the other is about to have its first woman governor in the running for governor, current Republican Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earl Sears. And on the other side, Democrat three-term congressional Democrat Abigail Spanberger. Amanda Becker, where does this race stand just a few days out here from Election Day?

31:12A few days out, Spanberger, the Democrat, is pulling far ahead. this has, of the two governor's races, New Jersey and Virginia, this one does have a potential to be a blowout. That doesn't mean that it will be. But if the polls that, as it stands now, come to fruition on Tuesday, I mean, in some polls, she's about 10 points ahead. You know, Virginia, especially the area around Washington, D.C., has a lot of federal workers. They've been hit very hard, both by doge cuts earlier this year and the shutdown. About 22 ,000 people lost their jobs in Virginia after Doge axed kind of a lot of the federal agencies in D.C.

31:50and their workforces. And so Spanberger has really been focusing on policy more than personality and making the case that Trump's policies and this administration's policies just aren't working for the state of Virginia and the workers there in particular. And, you know, we see Earl Sears remain really kind of closely aligned with the Trump agenda. So this is one way or another an embrace or a repudiation of the Trump administration in this governor's race in Virginia right outside. But when some Earl Sears is aligned with the Trump agenda, she does not have the Trump endorsement, right? Correct.

32:26Why? You know, I don't know. Trump's endorsements and non-endorsements are all over the place, and he chose not to weigh in on this one. Well, federal workers, their jobs and their prospects are a big deal in this race, Wendy. Another big deal is redistricting and the redistricting wars that we've been talking about on the show for the last several many months. Texas, of course, redistricting to get Republican advantage. And then other states reacting, red and blue states, in this arms race for gerrymandered House seats. What happens in Virginia if Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat, becomes governor after next week?

33:05Well, if she does, and I just want to very quickly add that one of the things that's interesting nationally about Spanberger is she is focusing on policy. She is not running a Trump is bad campaign. So that will be very interesting to see if Democrats can come out of the wilderness with that. But what will happen is that Democrats in Virginia will attempt to redistrict, not as dramatically perhaps as California, but will try to redistrict the state. Right now, it is a very purple state. As Amanda mentioned, you have the Washington suburbs in the northern part, which is one of the most, if not the most populous area of the state.

33:42That is blue as blue can be. As you get down into rural Virginia and down toward Norfolk, where there's that large military presence, it gets a little more red. But it is far fewer people. And so they will be able to gerrymander around the University of Virginia area and things like that to maybe add a couple of Democratic seats. Greta emails to say that we're making a mistake by referring to these races as bellwethers. She calls it typical wishful thinking. So about voter preferences for 2026, we'll let that comment stand. Then there's New York City. There's New Jersey. There's Virginia. Then there's the city of New York.

34:19It never sleeps, and it's also having a high-profile race for mayor. Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo running as an independent. And the Republican candidate, Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, If you remember the 80s, they're both running well behind Democratic Socialist and State Assemblyman Zoran Mamdani. Let our words ring out so loud tonight that Andrew Cuomo can hear them in his$8 ,000 a month apartment. New York is not for sale. That's from Sunday when Mamdani drew a crowd of about 13 ,000 people to a rally in Queens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was there. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York was there as well.

35:05What does it signify that Mamdani has run such a successful campaign, especially online, aligned with progressives over pretty much all establishment figures, Amanda, from the incumbent mayor to the former governor to a familiar face for New Yorkers, at least, and Curtis Sliwa? I mean, he's sort of outrun them all with this really, you have to say, well-oiled online campaign especially. Yeah, I mean, some of his campaign videos are frankly some of the best I've ever seen. And I've covered politics for 15 or 20 years now. And so Mandami is running, you know, the energy is behind him. He is double digits ahead of the people, you know, the other people in the race right now.

35:48He is particularly focused on a kind of expanding the electorate, bringing in people who might not have participated otherwise or in the past. He has a lot of energy from young people. And so, you know, this race, I know, you know, we just heard that not not to consider these races bellwethers, but I do think they indicate energy in the party and what type of candidates are resonating with voters. And that could be different in different places. And in New York, it's kind of the progressive left wing of the Democratic Party right now. Meanwhile, Arthur, Momdani has run an impressive campaign, especially online.

36:23The videos are, I think, objectively that they're compelling. He's 27. Running New York technocratically is the hardest job probably in American politics. Maybe there's one harder, but actually running the city is going to be a completely different set of skills if he's elected mayor. It's going to be a big challenge for him. The conventional wisdom about that is that the mayor of New York is not as well-liked on the way out as on the way in. You're battered by that job. But right now, Mom Donnie has been the most important name on Capitol Hill during the shutdown. Every morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson has said, this is the head, the new leader of the Democratic Party.

37:07So we'll see if that continues. You know how they like to settle on a Pelosi or an AOC, and he's the new one of those. And it's been jarring to see. He's the new foil, in other words. for. He's the new foil, but he's exactly the kind of like fun, energetic young person who can do videos on the internet that I thought Democrats had been wanting for all this time. And there's this furious effort to portray him as an anti-Israel, anti-Semite by Republicans. One skill that Momdani does have that Democrats have been hungry for, politics aside, well, it's still politics, but it's messaging really, the ability to break through, the ability to get noticed, the ability to get shared.

37:45In some ways, that's separate from the actual details of the content, but he does break through, and that has a lot of Democrats. Even if they think his politics are too left, that has a lot of Democrats taking notice. Well, let's turn just for a moment to the justice system in the time that we have left. This week, the Trump Justice Department put two federal prosecutors on leave after they filed a sentencing memo referring to January 6th attackers at the Capitol as a mob of rioters. Prosecutors referred to them as a mob. They got sidelined. The defendant in this case was a pardoned January 6th writer himself convicted for later gun charges separate from January 6th.

38:25Then hours after those prosecutors were sidelined for this memo, the Justice Department withdrew that sentencing memo and filed a new memo that scrubbed all references to January 6th at all. Amanda, how do we understand why prosecutors were put on leave and what the DOJ did with this memo in this case? I think this is widely seen as just the latest act of retribution from Trump trying to shape the Justice Department in his image to deploy it against political enemies. I mean, the man in this case, this is someone who turned up armed at former President Obama's house, which, you know, I think anytime someone shows up armed at a former U.S.

39:10president's house, that's generally viewed as a credible threat. And so this is him trying to reshape the Justice Department, which we've seen on a number of fronts, you know, over the first months of this administration. Also, the effort to erase January 6th from the public memory and the public consciousness has reached courtrooms across America. I should say, either I Mayor Wendy said that Mom Donnie is 27 a moment ago. He's 34. I think I said that. He's actually a little bit older. He's 34. He made a video about turning 34, so got his age wrong. I do want to point out another important story from Illinois this week, a verdict there in Illinois.

39:44Former Sheriff's Deputy Sean Grayson was found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of Sonia Massey. She was an unarmed black woman who called 911 to report a prowler. Family friend Teresa Haley spoke at a press briefing after the verdict. We can't call the police and feel safe in our own homes. That's what Sonia did. She called for help, you all. Yes. And she was murdered in her own home. Say her name. Sonia Bassett. Say her name. Sonia Bassett. Say her name. Amanda Becker, what does this verdict tell us about how police-involved shootings are being handled now, both by courts and by communities?

40:26I think, you know, there's been a push for more accountability, and I think we're finally starting to see it happen. The former sheriff's jeopardy who was convicted faces up to 20 years in prison. This case drew condemnation widespread from all across the community and the state overall, including the governor, the White House at the time, which obviously was the previous White House. It led to policy changes in Illinois in terms of police and police training. And so I think that this is just, you know, one recent example of a demand for increased accountability and it actually happening. All right.

41:02Well, before we leave the show today, I want to do a quick lightning round, a couple of quick issues. These are some important stories that we don't want to necessarily fly under the radar before we go. We want to make sure we get to them before a meeting overseas with the president of China this week. Arthur, President Trump said the United States will resume testing nuclear weapons. That hasn't been done since 1992. He said we'll do that. Don't know if we will because can't always go on Trump's word, but it would be really escalatory. They say it's not really necessary for maintaining the integrity of our weapons.

41:34So watch to see if that actually happens. Meanwhile, President Trump had previously teased the idea of running for a third term, trolling both Democrats and Republicans. Steve Bannon's been doing it, too. There is no legal basis for him to run for a third term, but that doesn't stop him. And this week, the president appears, maybe, to have settled the question. Here he is on Air Force One. If you read it, it's pretty clear. I'm not allowed to run. It's too bad. It's too bad, she says, Wendy. Yeah. And my personal suspicion on this is that all of this was him trolling for fun, trolling for affirmation, which is something from his fans, which is something this president, you know, seems, well, says he needs a lot of.

42:15But I think even he knows this is flat out unconstitutional. The Constitution says you can only run and stand up for election twice. He's he's win election twice. He has done that. That's it. Another important part of this, by the way, not for Democrats, not for the general public, but for Republicans. Donald Trump after the midterms is about to be what's called a lame duck. And if Republicans believe he might run for a third term, maybe he can stave off that weakness that's built into the American system and the Constitution that forms lame ducks. Well, thanks so much to our guides today as we rounded up the week's news.

42:50Wendy Benjaminson of Bloomberg, Arthur Delaney of Hot Post, and Amanda Becker of the 19th News. Thank you all for joining us. We'll be back with more of the conversation in just a moment. Stay with us.

43:06it's the international hour of the news roundup president donald trump wraps up a week-long multi-stop tour in asia there were warm welcomes dancing even a golden crown gifted for the president as well as trade deals and tariff tweaks but most important was the grand finale a high-stakes meeting with president xi of china in busan south korea we're joined now by bloomberg Washington correspondent, Tyler Kendall. She's been traveling with the president this week in Asia and is on the line from Seoul. Tyler, thanks for being here. Yeah. Hey, Todd, thanks for having me. And I know it's the middle of the night in Seoul.

43:41We really appreciate you joining us here at the top of the hour. Now, President Trump and Xi's meeting, well, this was their first sit down in more than six years. And of course, there's been months of tariff threats, retaliations, increasingly heated rhetoric, trade restrictions on both sides. What came out of this meeting? What were the big deliverables? And are we now in a denouement of the trade war between the U.S. and China? Right, exactly. So this is, of course, a welcome truce at this point. We are expecting there to be this reprieve, this easing in the tensions for at least the next year, according to officials on both sides, but it doesn't really address some of the more core issues, the fundamental things that really contributed to the standoff between the U.S.

44:31and China in the first place. I'm thinking about national security, trade imbalances, both countries lobbying for dominance when it comes to the tech sector. And that's why our analysts at Bloomberg Economics say that this calm may really only be about buying time for both sides to strengthen and their own economic position ahead of what's expected to be a long road ahead of competition between these two countries. That's fascinating, sort of a short-term papering over of differences that'll get us to the next year, not a fundamental deal that's going to cool things off. Right, exactly. Though we will see some immediate impacts, right?

45:09China is going to see this immediate reduction in its tariff rate as President Trump says that he is cutting that 20 percent levy in place over fentanyl by half in response to what he says are China's pledges to curb those so-called precursor chemicals that are used to make the drug. And, you know, that's going to be a pretty big boon for the Chinese export market, particularly ahead of the busy holiday season as they're trying to export more to the U.S. Just for, you know, quick context here, Chinese exports to the U.S. are down 17 percent this year. So this is coming at a very welcome time for these exporters.

45:46And then in terms of other tangibles from this deal, it really feels like a pullback in the recent escalation from the past few weeks. The fentanyl tariff, that is different because that tariff has been in place for months. So that is really significant. But a lot of what we saw are really new threats that were on the table and are now being taken off. China will suspend those recently unveiled export curbs on critical and rare earth minerals for at least a year, though they're certainly still in the pipeline. The threat is still there. And Beijing will also resume the purchases of U.S. soybeans.

46:19That, of course, is so significant, particularly for American farmers, which haven't seen those imports at all this harvest season. And then on the U.S. side, we saw the White House also take off some threats off of the table. Well, you know, they're set to halt those plans to impose fees on Chinese ships that are docked at American ports. That's a key concession that we know Beijing really wanted to see. And they're also going to pause this rule that would have expanded restrictions on Chinese blacklisted firms. That also was considered to be a major concession that Beijing really wanted. Now, Todd, I will also quickly add there were things that we were watching that we thought might make it into this framework, but ultimately didn't.

46:59That included that President Trump said that the leaders, they did not speak about NVIDIA's Blackwell chips. That was a significant development leading. High tech AI chips of the future that there's a lot of concern if China has access to them. Exactly. That was unlikely a sigh of relief for defense hawks in Washington who were kind of caught in a tricky position after President Trump said that he was potentially going to discuss this with Chinese President Xi Jinping. But after that meeting, he said that the leaders did not speak about these advanced semiconductor chips. We know that there have been concerns in the nation's capital about lending that technology over national security concerns.

47:40He also said that they didn't even talk about the potential of a downgraded version of that process. Or that's something that a few months ago President Trump had floated could be on the table. But for now, it doesn't look like that. That was an option at this point in time. Well, Taylor, let me ask you about some of these details that you mentioned, because there's a lot of analysis here back home in the States concluding that really that China got the better of Trump here for this deal, that agreeing to buy soybeans and lift export curbs on rare earth metals, as you mentioned, simply returns to the status quo ante in exchange for major U.S.

48:15concessions. That's a lot of the analysis here. What's the best analysis that you have and what are economists saying about the, I dare say, I don't really want to say who got the better of whom, but who got the upper hand out of this thing? Well, so it's a little difficult. If we put into context, you know, both economies have been watching this very closely. This is going to be a welcome reprieve for markets that have been sort of royaled by an up and down in the trade relationship, if you will. The analysis that you're pointing to that we are hearing from experts really goes back to this idea that China has such a grip on the global market when it comes to critical and rare earth minerals.

48:55And that is a huge leverage point for China. They account for 70 percent of global supply in rare earths, 90 percent of global processing. So it's just an enormous amount. And the idea that they had these newly unveiled export curbs on critical and rare earth minerals. Now, we should say there are other export curbs that are already in place, but these were new ones. They would have had a really big global impact. The fact that they were threatened and now only delayed a year while the U.S. also had to put up its own significant concessions, including that it's going to roll back this idea it was expanding its entity list.

49:34it's sort of equating that these critical and rare earth minerals can be used as a bargaining chip. And that's sort of why you're hearing this argument that perhaps that leads more into China's leverage more so than the United States. Well, Tyler, we're going to let you go, but we've been talking about China. I do want to talk briefly just for a minute about Japan because the president trumpeted major Japanese investments in the hundreds of billions of dollars in the United States during this trip. Companies like Toyota, though, turned around and said they never agreed to the types of investments that President Trump was advertising.

50:11How much of that agreement with Japan is reality versus hype? So at this point, we got this initial list from Japan on this$550 billion investment fund pledge. And that is really critical to Japan securing those lower, more preferential tariff rates at 15%. Importantly, that also extends to autos. A really critical part for that rate to be lowered, though, has to do with Japan investing. And we saw President Trump at this reception in Tokyo with business leaders, a lot of Japanese business leaders, but also American CEOs there too. Tim Cook sitting next to the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, for example.

50:51But the projects that have been proposed haven't necessarily been finalized yet. So that's something to watch out for here because really the U.S. government and the Japanese government need to put pen to paper and work together on these investment deals to get them approved and over the finish line. So there's still a lot of negotiations ongoing, but this Japanese deal is very significant. And Todd, it comes hand in hand with some other deals that were inked. You know, they signed one with Japan on critical minerals, on ship building. I was in Tokyo and every front page newspaper of all the local Japanese papers was really touting this shipbuilding cooperation agreement.

51:31Because, again, this goes to the fact that the U.S. is really trying to bolster its leverage ahead of that critical meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in these sectors that are critical for competition. That's Tyler Kendall, who traveled with the president this week in Asia, reporting for Bloomberg. She's a Bloomberg, Washington correspondent, joining us from Seoul. Tyler, safe travels back. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right, let's bring it back here to the United States and to Washington, D.C., and to our panel. You've heard them all before here on The Roundup. Amy McKinnon is here, U.S.-Europe foreign affairs correspondent at the Financial Times, dressed for Halloween as a train engineer around the table.

52:10Hi, Amy. It's good to be back. Happy Halloween. Jack Detch is here, defense reporter at Politico, who at this moment is wearing a Phantom of the Opera mask around the table. Happy Halloween, Jack. A retro art deco mask, I suppose. Not branded, non-branded retro art deco. Rishi Iyengar, otherwise known as Iron Man, sitting across from me, staff writer at Foreign Policy. Hello, Iron Man. Hi. Got to stick with the Marvel Cinematic Universe. So thanks for having me. At all times. Well, the president did return from his trip to Asia, boasting of millions of dollars in trade deals that we just heard from Tyler there and wins for the economy.

52:46So many meetings great for our country with literally hundreds of billions, trillions of dollars have come into our country over the last four days represented by this meeting. But trillions of dollars where Toyota is going to build plants,$10 billion worth of plants. And, you know, I could go over so many different companies coming in. They're pouring money into the United States. So beyond even this meeting, this was an unbelievable trip. And I hope you're glad you were part of it. There's the president selling it as he does. Now, Amy McKinnon, Toyota says that$10 billion, Toyota says that's not true.

53:21I don't know if trillions is true. I think it's not. That number's not true. But more broadly, do these deals truly reflect the president's America First agendas as a win for him? Certainly as a core part of his agenda. I mean, every president in the world likes investment in their country. But, you know, Toyota's remarks, that's really a pattern that we've seen in the Trump administration. He has touted, I think, upwards of$17 trillion in investment. But when you actually look at the detail of some of these, there are very vague promises. And when you kind of look at the track record of the first Trump administration, a lot of the deals and investments that were announced then either never came to fruition or were a lot less than initially billed.

53:59So there is a lot that remains to be seen here. We can't finish talking about this trip without talking about the adulation and the gifts that the president got. A gold crown from South Korea, a gold leaf wrapped golf ball, a gold-embroidered cap, golden foods. Jack, foreign leaders have figured out what the president likes. Shinzo Abe's putter, too, on that list. Trump has always decked himself out in gold, the best way to stay in his good graces. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Every week here on The Roundup, of course, we check in on Hamas, Gaza, and Israel and the war there. Now, this week, Palestinians in Gaza experienced the deadliest 24 hours since the start of the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect almost three weeks ago.

54:44Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered what he called powerful strikes in Gaza after Israel said Hamas shot at Israeli soldiers in the south of the territory. Now, those strikes killed more than 100 people, including 46 children, according to local health officials in Gaza. On Wednesday, the Israeli military said it was returning to the ceasefire, but remained ready to attack again if necessary. President Donald Trump voiced support for Israel's actions while traveling in Asia this week and said nothing would jeopardize the ceasefire. You have to understand Hamas is a very small part of peace in the Middle East, and they have to behave.

55:25They're on the rough side, but they said they would be good, And if they're good, they're going to be happy. And if they're not good, they're going to be terminated. Their lives will be terminated. Well, Israel and Hamas have each accused each other of violating the ceasefire at this stage. Rishi, what risks does this round of strikes, these alleged violations, this very shaky, tenuous and violent ceasefire pose for the longer term process here? It's been 21 days since this ceasefire was agreed. And there have been a lot. This has been, as you pointed out, the deadliest attacks since then by Israel.

56:10But this is much longer. This conflict has been going on for this current conflict has been going on for over two years. And right now, as we heard from President Trump's comments just then, there is the United States, but also a big coalition of countries, Qatar, a lot of Western countries, very invested in making sure this ceasefire sticks. So even these violations, it is still a very fragile truce between these two parties. But there is a big investment. So there was a concerted effort to quickly get back to the ceasefire and treat these back and forth. What is Netanyahu trying to show? I think it's easy to understand the strikes and the tit for tat.

56:58I mean, this is Israel and Hamas after all. But going big, going powerful, as he said, to use a Trumpian word, killing 100 people. Netanyahu made a decision here not to strike eight people, but to strike 100. I think Netanyahu, this is clearly still such an emotional issue for Israel, for Netanyahu, for the Israeli public. where there's still negotiations over the return of some of the hostage bodies that Hamas captured during the October 7th attack a few years ago. And so it seems like an effort to show that any, they're accusing Hamas. Of course, Hamas has denied that they violated the ceasefire.

57:40But any attack on Israel will be met with extreme force. Now, Rishi mentions that local leaders, local Middle Eastern leaders in the neighborhood, are heavily invested in the success of this peace deal. That includes Qatar, whose prime minister, and that country is one of the guarantors of this peace deal, spoke about the violation of the ceasefire and blamed Hamas. What matters to us is how we make sure that we safeguard the agreement. We make sure that this event or this occasion doesn't make this agreement collapse. and making sure that we are back on track. And us and the U.S. and Egypt and Turkey, all of us, we were focused on that direction only.

58:24So, Jack, the prime minister also went on to say something that's true, which is that Hamas has not yet committed to unconditional disarmament. And that, after the return of hostages for Netanyahu, was like the entire reason for continuing this war for so long. Those two things, return of hostages, disarmed Hamas that no longer plays a role in Gaza. So how does this acknowledgement from the prime minister of Qatar complicate the deal and inform us about how it goes forward? Well, it's saying out loud what we already knew quietly, right, which is Hamas's agreement to this deal was always sort of a yes, but.

59:00Yes, we agree to the deal, but no, we're not going to disband and disarm, which was, of course, Israel and Netanyahu's core demand here. They don't want any Hamas and certainly not an armed Hamas. It's not something he's ever been willing to negotiate away. So it's not going to move the needle in getting Israeli troops out, in getting this down the road. But perhaps both sides feel they can play the clock a little bit, right? Trump's not applying consistent pressure. He's off in Asia. He's dealing with Ukraine. He's dealing with other foreign policy issues. And the Europeans, after the U.N., have not followed up with a major diplomatic salvo to get this conflict to an end.

59:36Amy, it sounds like, and this is me interpreting, when President Trump makes statements like we just heard him make, you're going to pay for it with your lives, your lives will end. And these armed elements of Hamas don't believe him. I mean, as soon as the deal was agreed to, we saw a real kind of show of force from Hamas. After, you know, two years of war, two years of being just pounded and bombarded by Israel, there was all these shows of force by Hamas kind of coming out on the streets, these very gruesome accusations of revenge killings, of them trying to kind of assert authority and crack down.

1:00:09So really kind of flying in the face of saying, you know, we're still here. and showing no intention of either backing down or disarming, as is one of the terms of the deal. Now, for some residents of Gaza City, these renewed strikes that we've been talking about have made them lose hope that there is a deal to be had. Here they are speaking to Al Jazeera. Where are the international guarantees that were promised? Where are the mediating countries that helped broker the ceasefire and pledged to ensure its continuation? Now, after the truce and the new wave of bombings on Gaza, people who had just begun to feel some sense of safety, peace and reassurance, who believe the war was finally over, are once again living in fear, especially the children and women.

1:00:54Now, this week, Hamas handed over apparent remains of two more hostages to Israel. Now, under the deal, Hamas agreed to return the 20 living and remaining bodies of hostages it was holding within 72 hours. All the living Israeli hostages were released back on October 13th in exchange, as we talked about at the time, for 250 Palestinian prisoners and more than 1 ,700 detainees from Gaza. But then, Amy, something strange this week. Israel and the Red Cross accused Hamas of staging the recovery of the body of one of the hostages this week. There was a video released by the New York Times of men appearing to bury, dig up, and rebury a body or body parts wrapped in a white shroud several times while Red Cross personnel at times stood next to a pit.

1:01:45It was a very strange scene that was recorded and published by the New York Times. How is all of this complicating the ceasefire? And what are we looking at here? I mean, it's the latest gruesome turn and an extraordinarily gruesome conflict on all sides. I mean, much of the deal now hinges on the return of the remains of the remaining hostages. There's 11 people, deceased people who remain in Gaza, and that Israel wants back. Hamas said pretty openly at the point that the deal was concluded, that they could return some of those remains immediately. Others, they weren't quite sure where they were.

1:02:24Some are buried by rubble and the years of war. Right, exactly. Some are harder to... Do we have any... It's a very strange scene that was recorded and published by the Times. Again, the digging up of a body, reburying it, moving it, burying it again, bringing in a backhoe. It was just very odd. Do we have any sense of sort of what this is? I mean, it could be an attempt to say that they are, you know, pretending to look for these bodies. It could also just be an attempt to kind of draw out the agony of hostage families, which is something we saw earlier when remains were returned, where they were paraded in coffins in front of crowds in Gaza, and in a very gruesome manner, not behind closed doors, as was the initial intent.

1:03:10Well, meanwhile, in Israel, protests in the streets in Jerusalem, hundreds of thousands of ultra-Orthodox Israelis converged on Jerusalem. This was on Thursday. They were there to protest mandatory reporting for military service. Now, in Israel, military service is compulsory for almost everybody, Jewish males and females, at 18 years old. But a recent Supreme Court ruling just last year said that there was no legal basis for allowing the most religious people to be exempt from military service. And in the absence of new legislation, the army has to begin drafting these ultra-Orthodox Jewish men.

1:03:50This is a first in Israel, hence the protest. Rishi, how is this very large protest likely to deepen divisions within Israel right now? Absolutely. It was, as you said, a huge protest, hundreds of thousands of people of the roughly 1.3 million ultra-Orthodox Jews in Israel that make up about 13 % of the population. And they oppose enlistment because they believe studying full-time in religious seminaries is the most important duty. Now, that's become an issue and a source of deep division during this war that we've seen because Israel's military forces have been stretched. There have been many reserve soldiers have served sort of hundreds of days and multiple tours of duty.

1:04:42And the Israeli military has said that they need more soldiers. And secular people want the religious people to join up and if not fight, be in green like everybody else. Absolutely. And it's also important because of Netanyahu, you mentioned his kind of almost the Trumpian language that he uses, and he has shown a similar ability to President Trump to really bounce back from otherwise career-ending sort of political setbacks over the course of this conflict and beyond. But his coalition that he's ruling right now is held together with the help of two of these ultra-Orthodox political parties.

1:05:25And there isn't an election scheduled until next November. But given the protests we're seeing, given the deep divisions, there is the prospect that he might have to hold early elections. And that creates a lot more uncertainty for him. We will continue to follow the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, the developments there, the prospects of Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, and the prospects of Hamas, who has yet to disarm as they are called to do if this peace deal is to advance beyond stage one. We'll continue to follow that story here on 1A. One story that we've been following concerning South Africa and policy here in the United States, on Thursday, the Trump administration announced that it will restrict the number of refugees that it admits to the country to just 7 ,500 people, and those people will be mostly white South Africans.

1:06:18No reason was given, but it's a dramatic drop from last year's ceiling of refugees set under the Biden administration of 125 ,000. So new restrictions, just 7 ,500 refugees to America, almost exclusively white South Africans. Well, let's get to some news out of Latin America. This week, the U.S. military struck another boat that it claims was carrying drugs and drug traffickers. The strike was somewhere in the eastern Pacific. We don't know exactly where it killed four people, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The U.S. military has acknowledged striking 14 alleged drug smuggling boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific since the beginning of September, killing at least 61 people that we know about.

1:07:02The Trump administration has offered little to no evidence to justify these attacks. But on Wednesday, officials offered a briefing on Capitol Hill to Republican lawmakers only. Senator Mark Warner, a Democrat of Virginia, he's the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee. He was really angry and had this to say about being left out of that briefing. When you politicize decision making about putting our service members in harm's way, you make them less safe. Now, on Thursday, the administration did hold a second briefing, and at that one, select Democratic lawmakers were allowed to attend.

1:07:41Jack Detch, what do we know about the kind of information that was shared in these briefings? What did lawmakers learn about the legal justification for these attacks and how the U.S. government is deciding who to kill and who not to kill on the high seas? The Trump administration has been saying that the U.S. is in an armed conflict with drug traffickers, almost akin to the armed conflict we were in with ISIS a few years ago, which sounds pretty cut and dry. But they don't have an authorization for the use of military force, a post 9-11 authority to do this. So they can call these people narco-terrorists, but they're using the constitutional Article 2 authority for military operations.

1:08:18I know that's a mouthful, but this means essentially they're capped at 60 days for their ability under the Constitution to launch these strikes. We're at day 59. We're expecting a war powers vote next week from the Democrats. So it's not clear these arguments that are going to specifically GOP lawmakers are going to hold up. And there was a fascinating anecdote from the bipartisan House briefing. DePence Department officials said they don't know precisely who they've killed in these strikes, and they can take these strikes without knowing the identity of these people. Wait a second. The tweets from the Defense Department identify, oh, we say that the boats were carrying drug smugglers, drug traffickers, narco-terrorist drug traffickers.

1:08:57But you just told me that the Pentagon says they don't know their identities. How can both of those things be true? What we're hearing from lawmakers, Rep. Sarah Jacobs of California, who came out of one of those briefings, said that Defense Department officials are telling them they do not need to positively identify people on these vessels and prove this connection in order to take these strikes. So, of course, this is something that the Defense Department hasn't said publicly, but this is what we're hearing from lawmakers who have been in these briefings. The U.N. human rights chief says just within the last several hours that these strikes are unacceptable and must stop.

1:09:30That's the message from the U.N. We got this email from one of from our listener Randall in Silver Spring, Maryland, who says we've heard the justification that these are drug smugglers that pose a clear and present danger to the United States. But there's been no proof provided. And those explanations seem absurd on their face. So why is the U.S. sinking these boats? Is it to set the precedent for unprovoked military action? Could this be the precursor that gets the media and citizens accustomed to unexplained military strikes? Is it to distract the news cycle from the shutdown? All of these.

1:10:02Amy, Randall has lots of theories, but the theory of militarization of the Caribbean and Venezuela is something that's more than just idle conjecture, I think. Absolutely. I mean, the Trump administration has made it very clear that it wants to focus on the Western Hemisphere and its defense posture, and this is part of that. I mean, as Jack alluded to, I mean, the power to declare war lies with Congress and the Constitution. The latitude that the president does have is when it's an immediate pressing national security threat. He does have the authority to conduct some limited strikes. But in that briefing that Jack referenced in the House Armed Services Committee, the DoD lawyers were absent from that hearing, so they were not there to present the administration's legal justification of the grounds, which they think they have the authority to carry out these strikes, which is frustrating lawmakers deeply.

1:10:52In other words, the people who can explain what's changed. We're not there. Two months ago, drug dealers on the high seas were people who you apprehended, arrested, and tried. Now they're people who you kill, even if you can't say who they even are. There's some news from Sudan that we want to make sure you're updated on as we keep an eye on tragic developments there. This week, paramilitary rapid support forces seized control of the entire Darfur region, ousting the rival Sudanese army from its last stronghold there. Video footage released this week showed trenches filled with dead bodies and paramilitary fighters executing civilians as they begged for their lives.

1:11:31The two-year battle for control of Sudan, it's killed over 40 ,000 people and created the world's worst humanitarian crisis with more than 14 million people displaced. The capture of the provincial capital of North Darfur by powerful Arab-led forces raises fears that Africa's third largest nation might split again nearly 15 years after the oil-rich South Sudan gained independence following years of civil war there. We were talking about American military strikes of what the government calls drug dealers and narco-terrorists on the high seas in the Caribbean and in the eastern Pacific. Pacific.

1:12:14And before we went to a break, Rishi, Amy was talking about sort of the connection of these strikes with another thing going on in the Caribbean, which is an American military buildup in Puerto Rico and in other places. A U.S. warship docked in Trinidad and Tobago for four days this week, engaged in military exercises before leaving the area. What can you tell us about this military flex that we're seeing in this region? Why is the U.S. fleet gathering around the southern part of the Caribbean here. It's all part of, as Amy pointed out, this effort to really put pressure on what the Trump administration calls narco-terrorists.

1:12:54Now, this U.S. ship that docked the SS gravely has further made that controversial between Trinidad and Tobago, where the U.S. ship docked, and Venezuela, which canceled an energy agreement. The Venezuelan government canceled an energy agreement with Trinidad and Tobago over this. But it does seem like Trinidad and Tobago, the government there, has kind of brushed that off and said that these are routine military exercises. So they're trying to downplay it and avoid inflaming for the tensions. But that comes as reports from the Wall Street Journal and the Miami Herald today that the U.S. government, citing U.S.

1:13:38officials, may be preparing for actual airstrikes on Venezuela on sites that they say are used for drug trafficking into the United States. So that would prove to be a major escalation, but possibly what the Trump administration legally or illegally sees as a logical next step for this military buildup that they've been doing. Ground strikes in Venezuela on alleged drug sites. What are we to make of this pretext? The focus of the Trump administration rhetorically has been fentanyl. It is the drug that is killing thousands of Americans and addicting thousands more. You can see the images every time you log on of what fentanyl looks like.

1:14:21Venezuela is not a major producer of fentanyl. Venezuela is not in the fentanyl game. That's very well established. How do we reconcile these two things? It's part of we saw that in a sort of unusual move, President Trump confirmed a few weeks ago that he had authorized CIA covert action in Venezuela. And out of all the places across Latin America, across the region, beyond the U.S. southern border, we've seen a big focus on drugs coming in. But there's been a particular emphasis from the Trump administration on Venezuela. And they've long had issues with Nicolas Maduro, the leader there. And so there is some speculation that they could be kind of laying the groundwork to take down the Maduro regime.

1:15:14And there's a lot of telegraphing. They, of course, have not said that overtly and won't say that. But it seems to be almost a pretext in some ways that the targeting of these drug groups is a way to target Venezuela. Pretextual designation of drug sites in Venezuela, killing of at least 61 people on boats that the military says are drug boats, providing no proof or evidence to the public or to members of Congress. Jack Rishi just mentioned reporting this week CIA actions on the ground, but the AP reported this week that U.S. law enforcement, an agent, secretly tried to recruit Nicolás Maduro's pilot to join a plot to capture the Venezuelan leader.

1:15:58What do we know? Yeah, this was 16 months of trying to pitch Bittner Villegas to help divert Maduro's plane to a place where United States authorities could make the arrest. They said they'd make him a very rich man. So, I mean, this extended over multiple administrations. There was an operation that tried to get this going. Villegas ultimately didn't buy into this, but this just references kind of what we're seeing right now, a stepped-up covert campaign that Trump has even referenced publicly, which is a huge step away from usually how covert operations are conducted, but it just shows the seriousness of the way that this has been stepped up, the way that the pretext is being developed, and the level of planning, of course, the journal reporting today that it seems like the U.S.

1:16:44now mapping out military targets within Venezuela that they could strike? Well, the Trump administration is advertising its pretexts and its coming strategy in Venezuela. Down in the southern part of the continent, the Trump administration is also advertising its strong support for Javier Malay and his government, pledging up to$40 billion in bailout funds if Malay's party won recent elections. Amy McKinnon, Malay's party won Unrecent elections. Did Donald Trump help? Whether or not it tipped the scales, I couldn't say, but they certainly did. The U.S. did weigh in to offer to prop up and stabilize the Argentine currency ahead of the elections, which I have to think would have tipped the balance in his favor.

1:17:29More news from around the Caribbean as we exit the region in just a moment. Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica as a Category 5 storm, winds reaching 185 miles an hour, accompanied by torrential rains. Melissa also impacted Cuba, Haiti, and the Bahamas. Here's Brandon Miller, meteorologist at CNN, who joined us on Wednesday. You know, this storm really maxed out the scale, you know, 185 miles per hour. We've never seen a storm make landfall stronger than that. We've only seen one in the Atlantic ever climb slightly above that. Category 5 storm, and we watched the devastation, covered it for you here on 1A just this past week as that storm passed over and devastated the island of Jamaica.

1:18:13We'll continue to cover and follow that story as well. All right, we'll exit our hemisphere, the Caribbean, South America, Venezuela, and Argentina for the moment, because of course it's the roundup, and that means we have to talk Ukraine, where there's news that Russia conducted two tests of new tech that can be used in a nuclear attack. President Vladimir Putin announced the first on Sunday, saying the country tested a missile that can carry a nuclear warhead and travel a lot further than conventional ICBMs because it's also powered by nuclear material. Then on Wednesday, Putin announced a second test.

1:18:49Russia had tested a nuclear-powered undersea drone called Poseidon, and it can travel about 100 knots, 115 miles an hour underwater and trigger a devastating tsunami if it's equipped with a nuke and it's detonated near a coastal city. These are two of Russia's six nuclear weapons projects under development. Jack, what else do we know about these weapons and Russia's development of them and the timing of Putin's announcements? So Russia has four novel nuclear systems they've been working on. One's a hypersonic glide vehicle called Avangard Kinzhal, which we've seen them launch in Ukraine. The Circon hypersonic anti-ship cruise missile and the two that you mentioned, the Burevestnik.

1:19:31Of course, I'll lean on our Russian speaker, Amy, to get the pronunciation right. Close. And the Poseidon, I'll take close. So this is kind of leading to these tensions between the two powers, between the Kremlin and the United States. because as we saw Trump launch the argument that there could be more nuclear tests from the United States, it's driving this feeling within Washington that the Russians are sort of cheating the United States on arms control. They're ripping us off. They're sort of pushing their weapons tests and their nuclear development programs past where the United States is, and it's leading us to a place where we're probably going to abandon some limits of arms control.

1:20:10In response to this, just as he headed into the meeting with President Xi earlier this week, Rishi, Donald Trump went on True Social, said the United States would resume nuclear testing. What would it mean? And there hasn't been a nuclear test in this country since 1992. What would it mean practically, financially, strategically for the United States to actually start detonating nukes and nuclear tests again? There's a lot of the Trump's nuclear claim is kind of unclear in many ways. the Trump administration or Trump has not confirmed whether it's just testing nuclear-capable weapons like we just heard Russia has done.

1:20:53They haven't made clear whether it's kind of a much more broader scale nuclear testing. And you've seen a lot of local communities in the U.S., in Nevada, for example, Nevada, Nevada, which faced the effects the last time the U.S. did this several decades ago, come out in opposition. So there's more questions than answers and a lot of unanswered questions around this. That's Rishi Iyengar of Foreign Policy. Jack Dech of Politico is here and Amy McKinnon from the Financial Times. I'm Todd Zwillick. You're listening to 1A. Amy McKinnon, you are the resident Russian speaker around the table. As Jack made clear, your take on the timing of Russia's tests and the American, or at least the presidential response that nuclear testing would resume, your take on the timing of that and how much of it is real?

1:21:49So the timing of these Russian nuclear tests comes after there was this kind of interesting flip-flop flurry of diplomatic activity between the U.S. and Russia earlier this month, where Trump announced that he was going to meet Putin in Budapest after their phone call, which Trump said was positive. And then five days later said that the summit was off. And then very quickly, Trump imposed sanctions on Russia's two largest oil companies. So clearly, Trump is getting frustrated with Russia. People close to the president will tell you that that is genuine, that that's not for show. And this is Putin trying to get attention.

1:22:25I mean, the Russians are often quite quick to reach for the nuclear file if they do want to kind of get American attention and do some saber rattling. You mentioned those sanctions, American sanctions against two large Russian oil concerns, Rosneft and Luke oil. These sanctions have a chance of moving the needle in Ukraine. U.S. analysts have now said, and these reports have come out, basically giving voice to what everybody in Europe seems to have known all along, which is that Putin is not interested, has no incentive for a ceasefire or an end to the war. Trump reached for the big ticket item.

1:23:02There were sanctions that he could have reached for that are smaller or more incremental, but going after Rosneft and Lukoil was certainly a big action. When you speak to people who are really versed in the details of this, it's going to fall down to enforcement. China is the biggest purchaser of Russian oil now. India is number two. Is the Trump administration going to speak to Beijing and New Delhi and get them to roll up their purchase of Russian oil? New Delhi seems to be interested in that. China, I mean, it didn't even come up, Trump said in his conversation with Xi this week. So it's all going to matter down the road when it comes to enforcement of these sanctions.

1:23:42All right, one final bit of news from Europe as we round out the hour here and get to your reporter's notebook, which we'll do in just a second. More arrests this week in France as police narrow in on suspects tied to that Louvre heist that captivated the world. The total number of arrests are now seven. Prosecutors say about 100 investigators are working seven days a week with roughly 150 forensic samples analyzed so far. About 189 items have been sealed as evidence, and key details have snapped into focus, including the fact that thieves knew the direction that outdoor cameras were pointing when they got that cherry picker outside the second floor of the Louvre in Paris.

1:24:20Still no sign of those Napoleonic jewels valued at more than$100 million. We have just a second before we have to wrap up the hour. In a sentence or two, if you like, tell me what stories you're looking at for next week. Amy McKinnon, the Halloween happy railroad engineer. Go ahead. It all depends on what Trump posts on Truth Social, to be very frank. My life revolves around that a lot these days. A little bit reactive. Jack Detch, Phantom of the Opera this Halloween. What's next for you? The U.S. lifted sanctions on the Bosnian-Serbian leader Milorad Dodic this week. That's a major move that sort of potentially frees him and frees his hand in a place that a lot of European officials are worried could be a separatist region or could provide some breakaway tensions there.

1:25:08Would that make the Russians happy, lifting sanctions on him? The Russians, of course, are very close with the Serbians and by extension close with Dodic. Yeah. Rishi Iyengar, Iron Man this Halloween, what's next for you? I'm surprised Amy didn't say this, but as our resident Russia watcher, but Hungarian President Viktor Orban is coming to D.C. next week. We'll be keeping an eye on that and also the Supreme Court hearing on whether Trump's sweeping tariffs are legal or not. Pay attention to the B-roll from news events all across Washington. If you see an engineer or a Phantom of the Opera or Iron Man himself from the Marvel Comic Universe, you'll know that it's either Amy McKinnon of the Financial Times, Jack Detch of Politico, or Rishi Iyengar from Foreign Policy.

1:25:51Thanks, guys, for being here, and happy Halloween. 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. Eileen Humphries is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. And Barb Anguiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson and Zoe Kazanzidis for their help every week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington. It's distributed by NPR. I'm Todd Zwilich. This is 1A.

1:26:27Thank you.