The News Roundup For October 7, 2025

25:35Mark is in the Adirondacks in New York. In all of this discussion, the loss of SNAP, I've yet to hear a reminder that this is the holidays. There are plenty of SNAP beneficiaries who cannot afford a can of soup, never mind a Thanksgiving dinner. To deny a family Thanksgiving dinner is positively un-American. Now, there's a couple things going on here. FAA, SNAP benefits, which is just people getting enough to eat. Arthur Delaney makes the point. Democrats chose this moment. They chose this shutdown. Now, Republicans are choosing to increase pain for federal workers, anyone who flies, anyone who doesn't get enough to eat until Democrats relent.

26:15And that's the dynamic that we're in, Taylor. It is, and it's sad. It's a reflection of our politics. I also think, and I try to remind people all the time, members of Congress live in the bubble of all bubbles. Sure, they go back to their states and their districts and they interact with some constituents, but most of these lawmakers are independently wealthy. Most of them have never had to receive SNAP or have ever faced, you know, flight cancellations in a way that disrupted like a significant event for them. And so there is a little bit of out-of-touchness in both parties that then allows them to really dive into the politics.

26:47But then there's the question. After the break, we'll talk a little real quick about what's going on in the Senate because the answer is not much. But Megan Scully, what message should Democrats take from all this? Because Arthur's right. Democrats chose this fight and chose this shutdown. They did not pay for it at the polls. In fact, they got massively rewarded. So what are they supposed to think? So I think Trump even acknowledging that Republicans are being blamed for the shutdown gives Democrats, makes Democrats more emboldened to dig in for the long haul. You know, while people don't like to see Americans go hungry or sleep at airports or, you know, federal workers to go unemployed, you know, they see this as a longer-term fight over affordability.

27:32It's the News Roundup. We'll be back with more in just a moment.

27:41We got one email from a listener who didn't really like what we had to say about Dr. Mehmet Oz and his claim that several billion pounds will be lost as a result of more people taking Wagovi and Ozempic and drugs like that. The listener says the point was our president is following through on his promise to lower costs. So, Arthur, a little bit of context. Is Trump lowering costs? Can he make that claim? We talked about the simplicity of a message, and his message in the fall was I will bring prices down immediately. And that obviously has not happened. And he, as soon as he got elected, said, well, that'll take a while.

28:20And so he hasn't been – you can't do that. It was an unrealistic promise. However, sure, with this specific piece of drug price negotiation and lowered costs for these specific drugs for people covered by these specific programs, yes. Big picture, no. Big picture, no. Well, let's give the president his say on affordability and costs from the White House on Thursday since it is the national conversation and the conversation today on 1A. I don't want to hear about the affordability because right now we're much less. if you look at energy, we're getting close to$2 a gallon gasoline. With Biden, it was$4.50, $5.

28:59Another thing, inflation. We had the worst inflation in the history of our country. Now we have virtually no inflation at all. It's down at a very low number and a very normal number. Megan Scully, toward the end of the Biden administration, there was this disconnect. Americans were hurting from high inflation. Their personal economies were suffering. And the Biden White House would say, no, no, no, no, no, no. The economy is great. Look at these spreadsheets I have. Look at these numbers from the Labor Department. The economy is amazing. And Americans were saying, no, it isn't. And I think we're seeing a repeat of that right now.

29:33Americans are saying largely affordability is a mess. My electric bill is a mess. My insurance premiums are a mess. And so is the price of my turkey, which according to Purdue University this week is going to be 25 percent more expensive. And the president says, I don't want to hear about it. I've lowered costs. Costs are great. I don't want to talk about it. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, we are not seeing inflation month on month, year on year go up in the way that we saw during the Biden years. And, of course, that was a response to COVID era subsidies and other aid that happened. But we aren't seeing prices go down either.

30:13We're not seeing one of the reasons why we see Trump go after the Federal Reserve so regularly is because he wants to see interest rates drop precipitously. And we've seen them being chiseled away bit by bit, but certainly not at the accelerated pace that Trump would like to see. And he's keenly aware of that. So it is very much a repeat. There's plenty of politics. There's plenty of FAA. There's plenty of Oval Office. There's plenty of Chuck Schumer. I just want to mention one more time, people getting enough to eat. On this show earlier this week, NPR's Jennifer Ludden had this reminder for us in our conversation about food benefits, food banks, and SNAP.

30:57They need more food, more money, more hands. However, I will say food banks and pantries are the first to admit there's just no way they can make up the difference, the gap from SNAP. SNAP provides exponentially more help to people. than they possibly can, though they are doing their best. Megan? I saw one statistic this morning that, you know, food banks provide one meal for every nine meals that SNAP provides, just to give some context there. It's just not going to plug that hole no matter which way you slice it, which is a great time to talk about the United States Senate. Now, Senate Majority Leader John Thune is expected to put a bill on the floor today, as soon as today, that he says would create a path to ending the government shutdown.

31:41Arthur, what do we know? It's all about what will Senate Democrats do. And they had a meeting on Thursday where it seemed very high stakes. It seems like this could be them getting ready to essentially cave to try to find a way out of the shutdown that they started by voting no back in September. And they came out of there extremely grim, very solemn, not wanting to talk to reporters, leaving as fast as they could. The few who did speak said, well, we're united. So it appeared that there was not about to be a breakthrough, but just the body language to me gave the impression that they do want to get out of this if they can.

32:21So the big question now that Senate reporters are following is whether they'll be here this weekend, which they've not done, I don't think, for the last several weeks or even since the session started. So we're entering a sort of new phase where the pain across the country is much worse as a result. And senators are starting to be a little more antsy about it. We got this email from Richard who said, you should point out, in addition to the millionaires in Congress who've never needed access to SNAP, that during the shutdown, they continue to receive their paychecks, which is very true. Just as we always know, just for you know, just so you know, people want to see lawmakers lose their paychecks.

33:00sadly unconstitutional, can't take away their money in the middle of a term the Constitution says so. But if you want to change that aspect of the Constitution or hinge a government shutdown on on lawmaker paychecks, Arthur. Well, they you can't. That's the Constitution. They all say they're donating their paychecks. I don't know how we get that verified, but that's what they all and much of their staff is going unpaid. Yeah. And all the police in the Capitol. Everybody else who works there. Yes. Well, that's the United States Senate. And if you go just a couple of hundred yards east of that building, you arrive on the steps, the gleaming white steps of the Supreme Court.

33:38Where this week they heard arguments testing the legality of another thing that's causing price pressure in America, affordability pressure in America, the president's tariff campaign. The case could have sweeping implications for the economy and for presidential power. Now, Trump-appointed conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch led some tough questions in the court for the Solicitor General. What happens if the president simply vetoes legislation to try to take these powers back? Well, he has the authority to veto legislation determined in a national emergency, for example. I mean, he retains the powers in the background because I even still on the books.

34:15But if he declares an emergency and Congress doesn't like it and passes a joint resolution, yes, he can absolutely veto that. Congress is a practical matter. It can't get this power back once it's handed it over to the president. It's a one-way ratchet toward the gradual but continual accretion of power in the executive branch and away from the people's elected representatives. There's conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch there, Megan Scully, that he and a lot of other members of the court seemed very skeptical of the claim that the president can use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, otherwise known as AEPA, which I love, AEPA, to impose his global tariff campaign.

34:54What did the justices express here? What are they concerned about? Well, Gorsuch was incredibly interesting, his comments, because he is, just for some context, he was the first of Trump's three nominees to the Supreme Court and his most loyal one in terms of arguments in the last, you know, half a dozen years or so. So if Trump loses Gorsuch on this decision, then it's pretty safe to say which direction the Supreme Court is going to go. So what struck me as very interesting is that the Supreme Court, Gorsuch included, mounted a very forceful defense for the power of the purse, which resides in Congress.

35:37And something that congressional Republicans have essentially acceded to the White House, not just over tariffs, but over something called impoundment. When we've seen Russ Vogt, Trump's budget director, go in and try to claw back funds that have already been congressionally appropriated. Which incidentally, not to interrupt the thought, but this is this is key. Impoundment. The president saying, I don't want to spend that. I don't want to spend it. That's also a problem in the shutdown, because behind all this, behind health care costs and everything else, Democrats say we can make a deal with you.

36:07You're not going to honor it anyway. Impoundment. The president has taken this power. This lack of trust, of course. And, you know, Mike Johnson came out after this, Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House, came out after these arguments and remained in support of the administration's arguments here. So the dichotomy there, just, you know, as you said, just a couple of hundred yards apart where you have the Speaker of the House, the, you know, who is one would expect to be sort of a guardian of Congress's constitutional authorities, acceding that to the White House and the Supreme Court, the conservative Supreme Court, really mounting this vigorous defense.

36:44Taylor, here's one key question to boil it down. Is a tariff a tax? Is a tariff a tax or is it something else? Because if it's a tax, Article 1 of my pocket constitution says that's Mike Johnson's responsibility. He can't give it away even if he wants to, is what Neil Gorsuch says. And that was this was talked about extensively during the Supreme Court arguments. The Trump White House will say over and over and over again that in their view, a tariff is not a tax. The overwhelming majority of economists say that a tariff is a tax. And for people who don't get it, if you buy something that is made in another country and it is shipped to the U.S., there is a tariff applied at the port of entry when it arrives on U.S.

37:28soil. and the overwhelming amount of majority of time, it is the consumer that ends up paying for it or it is the business that's receiving it that has to pay for it. It's not the producer from the original country. The Trump administration argues that that's not the case. They are also saying over and over again that all of this has to do with the president's foreign policy powers and his negotiating tools. And the president paints the stakes of this case so high saying, we won't be able to negotiate. I've been able to solve wars because of these tariffs. And the Supreme Court, Even the conservative justices were questioning that and were saying, wait a second, if we're going to talk about this and taxing, if tariffs are a tax, are we talking about can a president declare war without Congress getting approval?

38:07Are we talking about other areas where traditionally a president has had to go to lawmakers? Are you saying that that isn't the case? And the Trump administration was sort of like, well, no, but maybe depending on what's going on. How many enumerated powers does a speaker of the House have the power to arrogate to the White House, Arthur? Just definitionally, a tariff is an excise tax. That's really all there is to it. By the way, IEPA doesn't have the word tariff in it. So we're talking – the Supreme Court went big picture. But if you read the law, the Trump administration is really winging it and no president has ever done tariffs citing IEPA.

38:42This is very, very important, though, because Amy Coney Barrett is not alone, but she counts herself as a textualist. And a lot of other conservative members of this court do. Textualism means read the statute, read the words. The statute, if it doesn't say tax, we don't need to talk about it because it doesn't say it. In this case, it doesn't say it. And she kept pressing the Solicitor General, D. John Sauer, who is the attorney for the Trump administration, on this. And they were going almost word by word through the IEPA text. And she kept saying, but tariff is not in there. Tariff is not in there.

39:16It mentions all these other avenues where previous presidents have used IEPA successfully, but not in the case of tariffs. And the Supreme Court previously has ruled against similar cases like this because they argue a president does have other authority to put tariffs in place, not using IEPA and not trying to do it in a sweeping of a way as President Trump is. But the Trump administration is not interested in that because the president wants to use Use it as this overarching tool. There's a lot at stake here, Arthur. The administration and other Republicans also say even if the court rules that the president can't use IEPA in this way, we have other statutes.

39:51We can do tariffs with other laws in other ways. So you're going to have tariffs one way or the other, they say. And that's true. They have ceded a lot of tariff power to the president, just not through this law. But if the Supreme Court strikes down these tariffs, they'll be doing Trump a huge favor. It will solve the economic problems that he has created with these tariffs. It will give him a huge boost. I think John Roberts has saved up all his political capital, avoiding ruling against Trump, so they could nail him on this one. And it's going to be a huge boost to Republicans next year. I read one statistic this morning.

40:25The House of Representatives has been absent for 47 days. Mike Johnson, not only does he say we have no tariff power, he says we have no war power. People are saying, you've just dissolved. Half of Congress. We have no power to seat the newly elected representative from Arizona, Adelita Grijalva. The only power is it's connected to a TV in front of his office that plays clips of Democrats saying stuff that's unflattering to them. All right. Well, before we finish, let's do a little bit of a lightning round today. Go around, hit on another couple of key issues, get you guys to talk about it a little bit.

40:59Of course, we got to start here in D.C. where a jury acquitted the man known as Sandwich Guy. Sean Dunn is his name. He's a former Justice Department employee, a paralegal, was found not guilty by a D.C. jury of his peers of assaulting a federal agent after flinging a 12-inch hoagie at that agent during a federal law enforcement surge in August here on the streets of D.C. His defense called it a harmless gesture of protest and the jury deliberated for seven hours before clearing him of charges. Thoughts, Taylor, on Sandwich Guy? He's on T-shirts. He's on posters around here. Oh, yeah. Not endorsing throwing sandwiches at federal officers, but he has become a cause celeb and in a way a resistance inspiration for people, at least in the District of Columbia.

41:51Yeah, there are still Sandwich Man posters around my neighborhood in Northwest D.C. I think what his case represents, It's a great headline and you're like, oh, it's Subway sandwich and the testimony was crazy. The broader thing is there are so many examples of the Trump administration leveling charges against people. They went after him for a felony and a grand jury refused to sign off. And that's the thing. And it's unusual that the government goes to grand juries time and time again leveling assault charges or obstruction charges and the grand jury says no. And that keeps happening. So the takeaway here is they went after him for a felony.

42:23Grand jury said no. They knocked it down to a misdemeanor. Petite jury said no. You lose and you lose. And that's rare. And the posters remain. Meanwhile, at the Heritage Foundation, the president of that conservative think tank, Kevin Roberts, he apologized to staff after defending Tucker Carlson for hosting Nick Fuentes, who is a white nationalist and openly anti-Semitic activist on his podcast. The fallout is being described as a civil war inside Heritage. And now it's a civil war inside the Republican Party. Arthur, why is this happening there and why is it so important? Nick Fuentes is the leader of the Groypers.

43:01This is a word we now all have to learn and use. And these are racist people, white nationalists, don't believe America's founding ideals. We're a party for the white people who founded the country. And they're all over the place. We're going crazy with Groypers lately. And the Heritage Foundation people have said enough is enough. And Kevin Roberts got in a lot of trouble for this and everyone was yelling at him. But we'll see where this goes from here. Donald Trump hosted Nick Fuentes for a dinner at Mar-a-Lago along with Kanye West. Remind people of that. Finally, the former vice president, Dick Cheney.

43:37He died at 84 this week, Washington power player for half a century. The arc of his career, Megan Scully from the Iraq War, Secretary of Defense to the end of his career, endorsing Kamala Harris and going after Donald Trump. Absolutely. I mean, I covered Cheney during the Iraq war, and I don't think you could have—there would have been no way in 2004 that I would have believed he would have endorsed a Democrat for president and really gone toe-to-toe with Trump. And when you talk about the end of an era, you talk about the retirement of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi. We'll talk more about her in the days and weeks to come, one of the most powerful speakers in history.

44:18Megan Scully, Congress editor for Bloomberg News, Arthur Delaney, senior reporter for HuffPost and Taylor Popolars from Spectrum News. Thank you all for joining us. We'll be back with more of the conversation in just a moment. Stay with us.

44:36It's the international hour of the News Roundup. Coming up, Caracas in Washington's crosshairs. And President Trump says Nicolas Maduro's days in Venezuela are numbered. Will support from friends in Beijing and Moscow and even Tehran be enough? Or are Maduro's biggest threats from inside the country? And in Sudan, the paramilitary rapid support forces agreed a humanitarian truce. Is the temporary pause in fighting enough to bring about a permanent end to a bruising, awful and tragic two-year civil war? We'll get to all of it this hour with Nancy Youssef, staff writer at The Atlantic covering national security and the Defense Department.

45:18Hi, Nancy. Hi, great to be with you. Also with us in studio, Indira Lakshmanan is ideas and opinion editor at U.S. News and World Report and soon to be co-host of NPR's Here and Now. Hi, Indira. Hi. And in London, Kriti Gupta, anchor and correspondent at Bloomberg TV and Radio. Hi, Kriti. Hi there. Thanks for having me. Well, let's start in Gaza and in Israel. This week, the bodies of two more hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were turned over to Israel in exchange for the bodies of 15 more Palestinian prisoners. Before that, heavy Israeli strikes across Gaza shook the U.S.-led ceasefire. Operations are underway to find the bodies of at least seven more captives believed to be buried under rubble in Gaza.

46:03Also this week, President Trump's top general, Dan Cain, was in Israel as part of the administration's effort to shore up the ceasefire. Now, since the start of the truce last month, the Israeli military has said that it was targeted at least twice by militants in Rafa, in the south of Gaza. It said those attacks have been staged behind the yellow line. That's the line of Israeli's military engagement, the line that the military has withdrawn behind under phase one of the ceasefire. The next phase of Trump's plan, where Hamas is supposed to disarm and surrender control of Gaza, has not been agreed to.

46:41Nancy, what can you tell us about these Hamas fighters in Rafah, why Israeli airstrikes have targeted this area, and what's going on around the so-called yellow line? So there are dozens of maybe up to 200 Hamas fighters that are hiding in tunnels in Rafah and have been launching some of the attacks which have led to breaks in the ceasefire, two major breakdowns actually since the agreement was first met last month. And so now the question becomes how do you remove them from that yellow line? Mediators have put forward a proposal in which Hamas would be disarmed in exchange for safe passage to another part of the enclave.

47:25The challenge is twofold. One, many in the Israeli government, certainly Netanyahu and parts of the elements of his supporters, do not believe that you can sort of negotiate with them. And the idea of not charging Hamas fighters or holding them accountable for these attacks just goes against what they believe should happen. And it's not a guarantee that they will disarm. We have not heard that agreement yet from Hamas. However, if there's a way to figure out how to remove these specific fighters that are so entrenched in these tunnels, and according to Hamas, some of them not even aware that the ceasefire has been reached, perhaps it provides a pathway for a diplomatic way to disarm Hamas, because the prescription now sort of striking over and over again over these past years has not been enough to fully disarm the group.

48:16And so I think those who are watching this are hoping that while there are huge obstacles, If an agreement can be reached, it creates a pathway for some sort of enduring solution. Indira, as Nancy mentioned, Hamas claims or has claimed that they don't have operational control or even communications with some of these fighters in tunnels in Rafah. We can't even tell them to stop if we wanted to. Do we know if that's even remotely true? But also why has the yellow line become such a flashpoint now at this phase of the ceasefire? Right. I mean, we don't know if that's true is the simple answer. And the yellow line has become a real sticking point.

48:58As our listeners may remember, the yellow line was established as part of the first phase of the ceasefire deal brokered by Donald Trump. But it was not initially physically marked on the ground, only on maps. So the Israeli defense forces have begun putting in some concrete yellow blocks and flags. Markers. Exactly. No more excuses, in other words. But they're pretty sparse. They're incomplete. They're difficult to see because it's rubble everywhere. People have crossed in this area to try to find their old homes without realizing they were crossing the yellow line. And the IDF has reportedly a policy of opening fire on individuals or vehicles that approach or cross the line, even if it's by accident.

49:41Fighters are not, in other words, a free fire zone. That's correct. It could be fighters who you want to shoot at. It could be people looking for their home who you shouldn't want to shoot at. Correct. And yellow is supposed to mean warning, not red, which is stop. I mean, there's a significance of calling it a yellow line. But what we know already is that there's been a lack of communication with civilian residents about where the safe zones are. And many people have been killed already. And so this has really become a huge problem. Apparently, 100 people, including dozens of children, have reportedly been killed in the first weeks.

50:17Now, this week, the World Food Program said that only half the amount of food needed is going into Gaza right now. Israel says it's fulfilling its obligations under the ceasefire agreement, which calls for an average of 600 trucks of supplies into Gaza every day. That's for more than two million people. Israel blames Hamas fighters for any food shortages, saying that they're stealing food aid before it can be distributed. Hamas denies that. But even if the food reaches the strip, people are having an almost impossible time accessing it. Huda is a displaced Palestinian in Gaza City. I'm speaking for myself and many other families.

50:57No matter how cheap food becomes, people still can't afford it. During the war, we spent everything we had just to survive when prices were high and goods were scarce. Now, recently, analysts have used a term Lebanonization to describe this cycle of attacks following a ceasefire. Kriti, you'll remember that Israel signed a ceasefire with Hezbollah in 2024. There have been almost daily strikes across the border, including this past week. And some people believe that's a strategy to keep your neighbor weak, divided and unable to predict the future. Kriti, do we have any indication of whether a Lebanonization is an accurate description of what's happening in Gaza now?

51:42Well, there's no clear confirmation that that's what's happening, but it looks very, very similar. Analysts saying, to your point, kind of this idea of keeping them on their toes, making sure that there isn't some sort of kind of going back to the way things were. Annals are saying that their attacks in Gaza since the latest ceasefire are evidence that that is exactly what's happening. And that even though on the surface there's a ceasefire, there's a truce, there's a nothing should be happening, there are still kind of atrocities that have happened. 236 Palestinians killed, another 600 wounded are some of the figures that are circulating around in the media.

52:21But basically this idea that because Israel has this superior military strength, they can do kind of the Lebanization of Gaza if they want. So from that perspective, the two circumstances look fairly similar. Nancy? I think those are great points, and I would just add to it. When we've seen the break in the ceasefire in Lebanon where there are strikes by Israel, we've seen very sparse international condemnation. I think the most aggressive response we've seen in terms of Israel launching these sort of preeminent strikes were against Qatar. And so I think the concern becomes that when we talk about a ceasefire, that it only lasts as long as Israel believes those terms are being met.

53:02And that there isn't a mechanism for the international community to make an assessment about whether the agreement is actually being followed through. Now, if you can get there, if you can secure the yellow line, if you can not shoot at people who cross it and cause conflagrations and airstrikes, if Hamas can control its fighters and if Hamas agrees to disarm and effectively leave Gaza, you might get on one day to phase two. Phase two would include an international stabilization force. And the United States now is seeking a mandate from the United Nations Security Council for that international stabilization force to be deployed in Gaza.

53:44On Thursday, the president said he expected a force to be in the region very soon. We've had countries that have volunteered, if there's a problem with Hamas, as an example, or a problem with anything, but they volunteered to, on a single basis, go in and take care of it. we're very powerful countries in this coalition. And it's not, you know, this is a because I've heard some of the press saying, well, it's a very tentative or it's not tentative. This is a very strong peace. This is peace in the Middle East. Hamas is a very small part of it. Very, very small part. And if they don't do as they said, if they don't behave, then they've got themselves a big problem.

54:22Krita Gupta, the president says it's not tentative at all. The stabilization force is happening, this is going forward. Is that realistic? It's a tall order for the region, because there is hesitation from a lot of these leaders who have, of course, kind of entertained the offer and have entertained the prospect. This is part of Donald Trump's 20-point plan. It works on demilitarizing, or at least the hope is to demilitarize the area, to stabilize it, to train Palestinian police, and ultimately kind of turn over control to the Palestinian authority. But already you're getting a lot of questions here and a lot of pushback.

54:59I'll quote one, for example, King Abdullah of Jordan made some comments as well this week. Jordan is one of the biggest countries in the region that has the largest Palestinian populations, both refugees and just in terms of ethnicity. And it's kind of, he's really making the point that this is not a peace enforcing task force. This is a peacekeeping task force. This is an assistance. And that But delineation hasn't been made clear. So even from the likes of Jordan, which has a vested interest, there's a little bit of hesitation. Jordan has a gigantic vested interest, as you mentioned, Krita Gupta, so that people don't miss it.

55:35Jordan has a huge Palestinian population. King Abdullah is Hashemite. They are the minority. They have minority rule in Jordan. Most of his citizens are Palestinian. He has a stake in stabilization here. Well, Nicolas Maduro, president of Venezuela, is in the crosshairs of President Trump and the White House right now. Now, the Trump administration says that boat strikes that have killed at least 69 people in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific are necessary to stop the flow of illegal drugs into the United States, but has provided no evidence to back up these claims. The president has also justified the attacks with false statements about a flood of immigrants coming from prisons and mental institutions in Venezuela and has claimed that he has the authority to declare who's involved in hostilities against the United States and then kill them.

56:28Meanwhile, the military buildup in the region continues. On Thursday, the New York Times reporting that U.S. military planes are operating now out of El Salvador. But questions about whether the United States is preparing to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro have become louder. Here's Donald Trump speaking to Nora O'Donnell on Sunday on 60 Minutes. On Venezuela in particular, are Maduro's days as president numbered? I would say yeah. I think so, yeah. His days are numbered, says the president. But on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that President Trump has expressed reservations to top aides about launching military action to oust Maduro in Venezuela.

57:10Nancy, help us understand this. What options could the administration be considering to get rid of the Venezuelan president? Do they all involve aircraft carrier groups in the Caribbean? What's going on here? So based on the military posture that we've seen the U.S. formed so far, which is eight Navy vessels in the region right now, and the USS Ford and her accompanying ships headed that way, which would put us at about 13, what's off the table, it appears to be sort of a ground invasion of any kind because we're just not – if you saw the 82nd Airborne there, then we'd be having a different conversation.

57:44So then the question becomes, what military or other assets could you hit in Venezuela that would tip the scales such that the Maduro regime would fall? Does that involve, for example, hitting a presidential palace in Caracas? Does it involve only hitting infrastructure related to drug traffickers? And will those strikes be enough? in the time that the U.S. has done these strikes, I think some had hoped that this would lead to defections within Venezuela of military leaders and others to push Maduro to leave office. We have not seen those. And in 2019, we saw hundreds of them. So it is notable that we haven't seen those kinds of defections because I think the Maduro regime is deeply entrenched in Venezuela and has put in safeguards to protect his hold on the country.

58:33So will an escalation of strikes be enough to sort of tip events there against Maduro? I think that's the question that the administration is wrestling with right now because one risk, and there are many, but one risk is if the United States conducts strikes on military targets, on the presidency, and it doesn't lead to the fall of the regime, does it further entrench Maduro's grip on Venezuela? And be just drastically destabilizing in the region. Indira, we've seen reports in recent weeks that the United States, as part of the strategy that Nancy's discussing, is increased CIA activity or says they're signaling somehow that they're increasing CIA activity in Venezuela.

59:19Part of the on-the-ground strategy, maybe paired with airstrikes, who knows. Now, on Thursday, Senate Republicans, they blocked a resolution that would have prevented the president from attacking Venezuela without congressional authorization. What's the role of Congress here and what's the broader picture about the balance of power and how far the president's willing to go? Well, I do want to point out that that was a very close vote. It was actually 49 to 51 and two Senate Republicans actually defected. Rand Paul of Kentucky and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska voted in favor of the resolution. It was, of course, Adam Schiff, the California Democrat, who brought it forth in the first place, pushed for it because he said that this is an open secret, that this is much more about regime change.

1:00:04It's not about drug traffickers. Just to remind listeners, the campaign so far has killed 69 people in 17 known strikes, many of whose families have said we were just poor fishermen. These were not drug traffickers. I think the issue here, to answer your question about Congress, is the War Powers Act. Congress is the one who has the right to declare war. And Congress, at least the Democrats in Congress and two Republicans, were trying to put – trying to rein in President Trump and say you can't be starting this as a covert war and then ramping up. I mean the fact is, as Nancy alluded, the U.S.

1:00:42has moved its most advanced aircraft carrier into the Caribbean Sea. So even if it's not got a ground troop buildup, it's certainly concerning. And you've had some Republicans like Tom Tillis in the Senate say, well, hold on, if we're worried about drugs, shouldn't we be focusing on Mexico and where drugs are coming in from, from fentanyl and not so much worrying about Caribbean strikes on the air? Krity Gupta, one of the tenets of the MAGA movement, if it's not isolationism, it's America first, certainly. Things like adventurism, things like regime change, things like getting involved in other countries' affairs and deciding who their leaders are don't fit with the MAGA vision of national security.

1:01:34Does this go against that? And as the president contemplates regime change in another country, does he risk overextending his brand on the world stage? He absolutely does. I mean, I think you said it best there. And what's really interesting here is on the campaign trail, he had actively pushed and criticized openly the Iraq war, openly criticized Joe Biden's role, of course, in any sort of peace prospects in the war in Ukraine, actively criticized the Bush-Cheney era for these exact reasons because he was running on an anti-interventionist kind of policy agenda. I think your point is valid on the isolationism, excuse me, in America first kind of agenda, because this goes against everything he campaigned for and certainly is fanning the flames within kind of the MAGA crowd and the Republican faction that is very against this.

1:02:30Indira just named Rand Paul as one of the defectors on the Senate bill that was recently voted on. Rand Paul is also a very vocal critic, a member of MAGA, a member of this Republican faction, but also a very vocal critic of Donald Trump not only involving himself in Venezuela, but other parts of the world to the point that you're starting to see the same members of the Republican Party that are criticizing the U.S.'s role in supplying weapons to Ukraine, likening it to any sort of involvement in the Caribbean and in Venezuela. Now, we got this email from Nancy in East Tennessee, who says, my view on Trump's interest in South America, follow the money, that is minerals and oil.

1:03:17Meanwhile, Nancy Youssef, Nicolas Maduro has been making appeals on the international stage to Russia, to China, even Iran, to help counter U.S. aggression. What's the nature of the appeal, and is he getting help from American antagonists? Let me just start with a quick background, which is they've had relationships with Venezuela because, very simply, I mean, it's more complicated, but this has been a means for Russia and China to have influence in this hemisphere. So let's look at Russia, where we've sort of seen the Russian officials signal that they're willing to help with defensive capabilities, and Maduro is sort of welcoming it, and kind of go through the pluses and minuses.

1:04:00If you're Russia, on one hand, if you provide things like GPS jammers, drones, missile systems, you could be a thorn in the U.S. society and provide weapons to Venezuela, much in the way that the U.S. has provided weapons to Ukraine. Sure. Right. On the other hand, you can't potentially afford to lose those weapons right now because of the war in Ukraine. And moreover, the president of the United States has not been that aggressive in sort of going after Russia vis-a-vis Ukraine. Could he become more agitated if he starts to see Russian weapons coming in to Venezuela? So those are the calculations that I think you're seeing countries like Russia make in terms of the type of military support it may or may not provide.

1:04:49If they provide it, and these are things that could in some cases be transported quite easily, it could make it harder for the United States to launch drone strikes. It can make it harder for it to use things like F-18s to strike inside Venezuela. Nancy, who's driving this? Is this Marco Rubio? I mean, Donald Trump, as far as I know, has never had much of an interest in Venezuela, followed Marco Rubio for a long time, ever since he was a senator. He has always been very focused on Cuba, very focused on Venezuela and the authoritarian regimes in both of those countries. He's now the secretary of state and the national security advisor.

1:05:23Is this Rubio? I think he's a big factor because of all the points that you make. I also think, though, that the president likes using the military in these sort of more law enforcement ways. And then I think Stephen Miller sees this as a way to sort of go after immigration issues. So in a way, this is like a Venn diagram and in the middle of the Venezuelan strikes in which various factions within the Trump administration see an advantage to their own interests by at least threatening to conduct these kinds of strikes. One listener asks, going back to the strikes on boats in the Caribbean and the Eastern Pacific, if these ships that the U.S.

1:06:01Navy has fired upon are really carrying drugs, why not follow the typical protocol? The Navy fires across the bow, orders the ship to surrender, then boards the vessel and brings back all the drugs that are confiscated to show off for PR. What the listener is describing, Indira, is law enforcement, what the United States usually does with drug traffickers or alleged drug traffickers. And what's going on here is something very different. Absolutely. And that's why so many people, both inside and outside of Venezuela, have referred to this as a covert effort for regime change. One really important thing, I wonder if you want to talk about how the two major opposition leaders in Venezuela are divided on that.

1:06:39In fact, I do, because Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado praised Donald Trump on Wednesday at a speech in Miami given via video feed. She's currently hiding inside Venezuela. She won this year's Nobel Peace Prize and dedicated it to Donald Trump. I think she knows who her friends are overseas, and she wanted to make sure that he felt honored by the prize that she got, that he thought he was entitled to. She got her prize for her efforts to free Venezuela from Maduro's dictatorship. She had this to say about Trump's actions in the region. What President Trump is doing to protect millions of lives of American citizens, Latin American citizens, and certainly Venezuelan citizens.

1:07:24Maduro started this war and President Trump is ending that war. Indira, Marita Karina Machado believes that Donald Trump is her best avenue to ousting Maduro. But you say not everybody in Venezuela agrees. Right. I mean, she's hitched her wagon to Trump, seeing him as a way to finally get out Maduro between Chavez, Hugo Chavez, his predecessor for whom Maduro was the vice president and Maduro himself. We're talking about two and a half decades of these guys in power at this point. Yes, Maria Corina Machado has has said Trump is right. Let's get let's get Maduro out. But another leader of the opposition in Venezuela, two-time presidential candidate Enrique Capriles, has said, no, this is too dangerous, too destabilizing.

1:08:19It would be bad for Venezuela. And what we really need are more negotiations to get Maduro. Let's not forget that Maduro has been indicted in the U.S. on drug and corruption charges that he denies. There are already sanctions against him. It's really hard to see how there would be negotiations that would work. But at the same time, it's reasonable that people in Venezuela are concerned about the potential of U.S. intervention. One important point is that 60 percent of Venezuelans do not support the Maduro regime. And even though he is in power now, outside observers believe that this last election was a fraud and that it was won by the opposition.

1:09:00But it's also impossible to overstate how little, really zero trust there is in Latin America for United States intervention. They have a long, they don't need to be told. They have a long, long, long, long history of interaction with U.S. interventionalists and the CIA. I mentioned the name of Henry Kissinger on forward. This is in their DNA. And if you think they're looking forward to more CIA in their affairs, you should read a history book. I mean, there's a long, long history. Krity Gupta, we talked about Maduro appealing to Iran and Russia and China. Nancy was pretty clear about that. How has he responded domestically to U.S.

1:09:37hostilities and provocations? How is he managing it with his own people? I mean, he's calling it a, quote, crazy war. He's saying that it's uncalled for. He's saying that the U.S. is stepping out of bounds. Basically, all the arguments we just made for not intervening, that is the exact argument he's making to his people. you aren't necessarily seeing it invoke any sort of massive kind of sentiment that isn't already pre-existing from the opposition on the ground, though. There isn't a sense of that just yet. The other piece that's kind of factoring in, and Nancy mentioned this earlier, is Russia's role in all of this.

1:10:13Because you have where Maduro had previously called and requested for help with Moscow, with Beijing, with Tehran as well. He's now actually got it and got the support from Moscow, which wasn't an immediate yes from Russia. So this is also a key piece of this where Moscow is saying, OK, well, we'll put we can help out with repairs. We can help out the radar system. We can help out with deliveries. Maduro is talking about putting civilian reserves in action in the case of a potential deployment on the ground from the United States. So he's preparing for that while also kind of denouncing it. Well, Nancy Youssef mentions help from Russia, whether Putin can even afford to help Venezuela, help Maduro right now, because does he have the weapons and the material to send even if he wanted to?

1:11:05And that's a great time to turn to Russia's invasion of Ukraine just for a moment before we head to a break because this week in Ukraine, the strategically important eastern city of Pogrosk, Russian and Ukrainian troops have been fighting there for more than a year. Ukraine's military and Russia have made breakthroughs into its front line. Ukraine's responded by deploying American-made Black Hawk helicopters to resupply troops. On Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited troops nearby that are part of a counteroffensive effort. And on Wednesday, Russia's defense ministry called on Ukraine soldiers in the city to surrender.

1:11:46Nancy Youssef, they're not going to surrender. What does all this mean, if anything, for the future, the obscured future of Peace Talks? So this city is a consequential one. It would be the biggest change if it's lost since Bakhmut in 2023. I think essentially at stake is this city could become a potential gateway to the Donetsk region for Russia. And I think for Ukraine, holding it means stabilizing the front, holding on to resources and holding on to morale. Well, let's stay in Ukraine and Russia's war in Ukraine. On the fringes of this war, attacks in the east, drone strikes, one drone strike deep inside Russian territory.

1:12:35Behind all of that, President Vladimir Putin has asked his government to draw up options for resuming Russia's nuclear test. Now, that's after President Trump said on October 30th that the United States would restart testing to put the country on what he called equal basis with Russia and China. Yeah. Nancy Youssef, what could this tit-for-tat escalation of nuclear testing look like in practice? It feels like 1964. I hate to say it. You don't want to see mutual nuclear escalations at a time like this. Is this strictly rhetorical or is this going to get practical? Well, look, right now it's rhetorical and there's always a risk that it goes further than that.

1:13:22This is one of the rare times I'm going to be slightly optimistic in that. So the president comes out and says, we're going to resume nuclear testing and doesn't offer any specifics. Someone asked for those specifics doesn't answer them. And he refers to the fact that other nations are doing these tests. The only nation doing true weapons testing is North Korea. What other nations are doing is they're testing the delivery systems, the missiles, the launchers, those kinds of things. And so this week, the energy secretary clarified that that was the kind of testing that the U.S. would do and has been doing.

1:13:55And so while there was a sort of kick up rhetorically, and you always hate seeing that because of the potential of unattended consequences on something as important as nuclear weapons, practically speaking, I don't think we've seen changes. What I saw was a president of Russia taking advantage of this and saying, putting sort of the option on the table that if the U.S. does more, that he's ready to do more in the coming days. The good news is that we're not seeing indications of that from the energy department where that decision would be made. They've kind of good copped the bad cop of nuclear testing, right?

1:14:31And said, Indira said, well, it's not weapons testing, as Nancy said. This is strictly rhetorical for the time being. Still, you don't want to see a dynamic. Right. Well, let's take it back to where it came from. I think that the reason the president threatened to resume nuclear tests was because of Moscow's high profile tests of nuclear capable weapons systems. You hear that word and you may think it means nuclear tests, but those don't involve nuclear weapons. And so he then, I think, gets tough and says, we're going to resume nuclear testing. Also, let's not forget Robert O 'Brien, who was one of Trump's national security advisors in his first term, wrote an article for Foreign Affairs last year that argued for the resumption of testing and the production of nuclear materials if Russia and China refused to engage in arms control talks.

1:15:23He still has influence over the president. You know, the president is listening to lots of people. But explosive testing has not been happened, has not happened in the U.S. since the 1990s. The only place it could happen in the United States is underground in Nevada. To prepare the ground for something like that happening would take at least two to three years. So it's not something that could happen instantaneously anyway. And the last country who we know of definitely definitively conducted explosive testing was North Korea in 2017. Pakistan, China, Russia have all denied the president's claims that they have been doing explosive testing.

1:16:01But, you know, there is the whole question of they can do testing that is, you know. Weapons systems, not weapons themselves. Weapons systems testing, exactly. Delivery, command and control. Correct. New torpedoes, stuff like that. There would be so many environmental consequences, safety consequences, tit for tat, escalation consequences of actually doing explosive testing. I think it's a lot before we would get to that point. Well, just to stay in Ukraine and with Russia for just one moment, Kriti Gupta, Ukraine now appears to be one step closer to membership in the European Union. One of these meta issues that at least according to the Russians has been behind their invasion of Ukraine all along, whether you believe it or not.

1:16:46That's after EU leaders hosted an enlargement summit this week and published an assessment of countries that could join the EU in the future. Can you explain where this report fits into the long process the countries have to go through to join the EU and how close to the finish line Ukraine might be here? Well, we're not close to the finish line at all, but we are one step closer to that prospect. This is something that Vladimir Zelensky has been pushing for for quite some time, not only to have security guarantees and the security umbrella that comes with being, one, a NATO member and two, an EU member, but also gives you access to EU funds, creates a more integrated economic system, and of course creates the free trade within the European Union as well.

1:17:35So there's a lot of benefits here for Ukraine. The hesitation from a lot of the members, remember, you have to have 27 members within the EU say yes to this. The hesitation has been that ultimately this requires a lot of reconstruction funds that aren't yet even being given to Ukraine to begin with. Frozen assets in Belgium right now is a really big sticking point. But you're also having to deal with this idea of reforms that need to be made within Ukraine. That being said, this is something that Kaya Kalas, who's the number two in the EU, had made a very big speech about, not just Ukraine, for Moldova and for the Balkan.

1:18:11And really showing kind of this idea that there is a little bit more unity and the idea that Ukraine could be one step closer towards being a member of the EU. Hungary is a major sticking point here. Hungary has been unwilling to sign off on this process at all, Kriti. It has. And Hungary is really important. And I should mention there's a couple of others as well. Now the president of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, who kind of created this right-wing coalition in Eastern Europe, Viktor Orban, is due to meet the president as well of the United States. One of the key pieces of this is the energy story.

1:18:47Hungary is a major ally of Russia. They get a lot of cheap energy from Russia, a lot of LNG from Russia. The similar story with the Czech Republic and Slovakia as well. They are pushing back against this idea of including Ukraine because it quite literally goes against basically the geopolitical system that they've built and the stance that they've relied on in terms of negotiations with Russia, China and the United States. Well, as always, we will continue to follow developments in Russia's war in Ukraine, Ukraine's bid to join the EU and Vladimir Putin's promises, provocations, escalations of testing nuclear weapons along with his adversary, Donald Trump.

1:19:30We will stay on that story here on the Roundup and on 1A. We wanted to make sure that we carved out ample time today to talk about Sudan and to talk about the war in Sudan, where people are now living through one of the world's worst humanitarian crises with famine declared in two regions this week. Twenty more regions are at risk. It's been more than two years of fighting between the paramilitary group RSF and the Sudanese Armed Forces. Aid groups say it's impossible to know how many people have been killed. Estimates range from at least 40 ,000 to more than 150 ,000. Put that in context. The war could be at a turning point, though.

1:20:10Today marks the first full day of a humanitarian ceasefire. The RSF agreed to the truce on Thursday that came from a U.S.-led coalition. Meanwhile, the Sudanese army, the military, told the Associated Press that they will agree when the RSF leaves civilian areas and gives up weapons. And the RSF violently seized North Darfur's capital city of El Fasher nearly two weeks ago. That's after an 18-month bombardment. Radha Mohammed spoke to the AP at a displacement camp after fleeing the city.

1:20:46In the street, we saw beating, raping, whippings. They were whipping people with whips and with other things. They even ran people over with cars. I see the hospital life.

1:20:59Indira Lakshmanan aid groups said Thursday that they don't know how many people are trapped in El Fasher. What are we hearing about conditions in this city? The conditions are dire. What we do know is that the U.N. Human Rights Office has confirmed mass killings, summary executions, rape, sexual abuse, pillaging by the Rapid Support Forces. At least 1 ,500 people were reportedly killed in the days right after the capture of the city. And what the RSF has done is reportedly filmed and circulated videos of the killings, the rapings, and the attacks as a form of psychological warfare against the population.

1:21:40As you mentioned earlier, the city has been under an 18-month siege. It is now experiencing confirmed famine. Residents have been surviving on leaves, animal feed, grass. There's a terrible rate of child malnutrition. Humanitarian workers have also been targeted. At least five Sudanese Red Crescent workers were killed. Others have gone missing. So the situation is really dire. We got this message from Sandra who says, helping Sudan is just not a part of Trump's playbook. Now, to be fair, I don't know if that's true. I mean, we just mentioned that a U.S.-led coalition helped broker this humanitarian ceasefire.

1:22:22But Sandra has a concern about it. Also, there's a broader point here, which is that this conflict gets nowhere near the attention of other conflicts that capture the attention of Americans on the left and on the right. Nancy Youssef, why not, do you think? What's the disconnect here? I think it's hard to get journalists there to see what's happening. I think it's hard to come up with solutions for it. There are no clear solutions or pathways for it. And there are no good guys in this. I mean, either side. There aren't in Gaza either. That's true. That's true. But at least we have some visibility, even though we're not in Gaza, to get there in a way that we, I mean, by comparison, it's much more remote.

1:23:09That's right. And you'll remember that the last time we saw a major conflict in Sudan, it took an international effort. Celebrities got involved to sort of craft a solution. So this is not the kind of conflict, I think, where you can have those who could find a solution kind of coming in and out. That this requires a very strong spotlight on it to get to a solution. That's what past experience has shown us. Kritty, we got that message from Sandra who said that helping Sudan is not in Trump's playbook. The U.S. has been involved there to be fair. But there's another fact too. The Trump administration has dismantled USAID.

1:23:47$4 billion humanitarian fund for Sudan is only 28 % funded while this awful, unconscionable humanitarian crisis goes on in this war zone. So even if the United States is participating diplomatically, in a humanitarian sense, we've pulled way, way back. Absolutely. Pulled way, way back. There's a question of access here even for global aid organizations who are going to be allowed to get in. This is something that they've talked about quite a bit because even though the RSF has agreed to the proposal, So we're still waiting for the confirmation from the Sudanese armed forces as well to agree to at least the entering of some of the aid here.

1:24:30And this is really after, again, an 18-month siege that had blocked the aid altogether. You have locally run kitchens that are dealing with exhausted people. They're dealing with a lack of resources, shortages, neglect, you name it. So even the global aid organizations that are potentially poised to act can't because there's one still the security concern that's there. We're only on day one of that ceasefire. But then also there's a question here of just how much they can do to reverse some of the damage that's already been done. Nancy Youssef is correct that Sudan has far less visibility than other conflicts around the world.

1:25:091A has been dedicated to keeping our gaze on Sudan, and I can promise you that we will continue to do that going forward and hope that the humanitarian ceasefire holds there. Before we round out the hour, I do want to get into your reporter's notebooks just for a quick minute. We only have a couple of thoughts from each of you here left, but Kreeti Gupta, you go first. What's in your notebook? What stories are – what's the big story that you're watching for next week that you think we should be aware of? I mean, the one that I'm currently obsessed with is what's going on with Hungary, with Viktor Orban.

1:25:42I mean, it's such an interesting spot to look at because Hungary is at the core of so much that's happening at the EU level. So many alliances that are being formed within Eastern Europe and also between Russia and the United States. Hungary and the U.S. had a very good relationship in terms of Donald Trump and Viktor Orban. But Viktor Orban is pushing for exemptions to sanctions that have to do with taking on Russian oil, the same pressures that you're dealing with in China and India. So I'm curious how this all plays out. Holes in the American sanction regime. And we saw sanctions against two Russian oil companies just last week.

1:26:19Indira? I'm looking at what President Trump is going to do about Nigeria. He has threatened military action because of the persecution of Christians. Apparently, Fox News is the one who ignited his interest in the persecution of Christians by Boko Haram. Defense officials say that he has asked them to pull up light, medium, and heavy options. Nancy? What we talked about earlier, Venezuela, because the carrier strike group will be arriving at the end of next week, I think it puts the pressure on the administration to kind of make it a decision about how it wants to proceed. We'll be keeping an eye on those stories.

1:26:55Thank you all so much. Now, before we go, bend it like Beckham. You've heard of it. It took on a whole new meaning this week. This week, British footballer David Beckham knelt before the king himself, was touched on each shoulder with a sword, and poof, David Beckham is now Sir David Beckham. The 50-year-old was knighted for his services to sport and charity, and he had this to say after the ceremony. One of the things I recognized when I was very young is, you know, because I had a successful career, I was able to implement change with the things that I said and the things that I got involved in.

1:27:31And I think that's why the charity work that I do is so important to me. But, you know, the 14 year old boy from East London standing here in the castle with his majesty, the king. It's a very proud moment for me and my family. Thank you, Sir David. And thank you to Nancy Youssef, Indira Lakshman, and Kriti Gupta. 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 Humphreys is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. And Barbanguiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson and Zoe Kazanzidis for their help every week.

1:28:11This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. This is 1A.