The News Roundup For September 5, 2025

26:08Let's get back to this conversation with this email from Jean. Can Congress impeach RFK Jr. on the grounds that he blatantly lied to Congress on what he would and would not do during his confirmation hearing? He intentionally lied and misled them, so would that not be grounds for impeachment and removal? Can I add in my question on this? Can you impeach a cabinet official? So the answer is yes, Congress does have that right for treason, bribery, high crimes or misdemeanors, which you would obviously it's a case by case basis for what would fall under that. Right. And we don't know if lying is lying to Congress considered a high crime.

26:42That I don't know off the top of my head, but I will point this out. Perjury. Perjury. And there there's two recent examples of this. In Thursday's hearing, the top Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, Ron Wyden, a senator from Oregon, actually asked if Secretary Kennedy could be sworn in under oath because Wyden alleged that during his confirmation hearings, as this listener pointed out, he was not truthful when he was talking about not making changes to vaccine advisory boards and vaccine regulations and all of that. The Republican chairman of the committee, Mike Crapo, senator from Idaho, said we're not going to get into that.

27:14It's customary that for standard congressional hearings, cabinet members are not sworn in under oath. So we weren't even going to take that up. And is that customary? Yes. For most hearings that I've covered, that is pretty normal because the cabinet member is acting as a representative of the president. And it's usually not as tense as we saw play out in this hearing. I did just look up, though, and I was reminded that the House of Representatives did impeach one of President Biden's cabinet members, the Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, in 2024. But because the Senate was controlled by Democrats at the time, they did not take that up.

27:45So there is precedence for this. The question is whether or not Republicans would want to do that for one of President Trump's cabinet members. I could guarantee you the answer is no, at least right now. And so it's more of a show, but it was really telling that Democrats were trying to say, hey, we feel like we were duped during your confirmation hearing, Secretary Kennedy, and we want to put you under oath now. And the Republicans didn't even want to touch that. OK, let's get back to another cabinet official, Jeff. Secretary Besant, you spoke with this week. He was saying the markets have not reacted to what everything we were talking about with the Fed.

28:19Wendy, can I just ask you with what we've seen, especially with the bond markets this week? Is that an accurate assessment? As we're looking at, we were talking about stock markets. I wanted to ask you how bond markets have been reacting to all of this news. Right. So the stock market tends to price in things that they know might happen. They've been pricing in a September rate cut, and this jobs report sort of helps that along, and that has sort of kept them straight. Bond markets, however, this morning are telling a slightly different story in that the yields on the two-year Treasury note, which is the most sensitive to jobs reports, dropped 12 basis points to 3.47%.

28:57And there were a nine point drop, nine basis point, excuse me, drop in the 10-year yield. And this is the lowest since April, which is notable because that's when the tariff regime was first announced. And so this is a steep reversal that has been fueled again, like I said before, by the uncertainty that businesses are facing on tariffs, imports, and trade. And this is happening all over the world, partly because of persistent inflation and greater government borrowing, which the U.S. is doing right now as they're waiting for tariff income to start paying for some of the upcoming tax cuts and the current spending.

29:39One last economic headline I wanted to get to, which is related to what you were talking about, Wendy, with tariffs. Trump's saga over that continued this week. He asked the Supreme Court to quickly rule on the legality of his ability to impose sweeping tariffs under federal law. The administration is hoping to get a reversal on an appeals court ruling, which found that the majority of Trump's tariffs are in illegal use of his emergency powers. The court has left the tariffs in place for now. This week, President Trump reaffirmed his intention to send National Guard troops to other cities outside of Washington, D.C., including Chicago.

30:19We're going in. I didn't say when we're going in. Taylor, Governor Pritzker of Illinois has been outspoken in response to the president's threats. He's not the only leader now on high alert. You posted on X that from the Oval Office, the president also said this week he could go into other cities like New Orleans. What did you hear from the president? Yeah, that was really surprising because the whole administration has been focused on Chicago after what they view as a successful takeover of the local police here in Washington, D.C. But then President Trump said, and I wonder if it's in part because of kind of the united response in opposing this from Illinois' leaders, from Governor Pritzker, from Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

30:59They've held press conference after press conference, basically saying, here's everything we know. We want people to be informed. And we also want to publicly push back on this more so than really any other leader that we've seen, save for California Governor Gavin Newsom. But then the president, while sitting next to the president of Poland in the Oval office, said that, oh, we might go to New Orleans and I might send troops there because Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, who's a Trump Republican, told me that he would welcome the federal resources to fight crime in New Orleans, in Shreveport, and other Democratic-leaning cities in this very red state.

31:30But that stood out because this was the first time that President Trump floated the idea of sending troops to a Republican-leaning state. He has so far been focused on blue-leaning states like California, Illinois. He's brought up Maryland and sending troops to Baltimore and New York City. And Landry immediately posted on XM response and said, we would welcome it as much as possible. I think the irony is that Landry was one of the first Republican governors who dispatched or deployed some of his own National Guard troops here to Washington, D.C. when that takeover started in August. So it's odd that he's asking for federal support while also deploying some of his own Louisiana National Guard troopers.

32:04I think it was 135 of them here to Washington. But what was interesting is President Trump seemed to imply that maybe we'll hold off on Chicago for a bit and will focus on New Orleans now and then another city after that, while also insisting that he has the power to do this, even if governors and local mayors say otherwise. Right. We should note that this week, a federal judge ruled that Trump's deployment of National Guard troops and Marines to L.A. in July was illegal. Troops were sent in response to protests over the immigration crackdown in the city. The president has appealed the ruling.

32:36Wendy, what did the federal judge say in saying that the president was illegal in his actions here? What the president said, I mean, excuse me, what the judge said was that this violated posse comitatus, which is a 19th century law that basically says the U.S. military cannot be used against American citizens. Flat out, period. And so what he did by putting the National Guard in a crime-fighting role was putting them against American citizens. And you just, you know, it's simply against the law. You can't do that. It'll be interesting. It is limited to California at the moment. I think the D.C.

33:20Attorney General has been talking about suing. Mariel Bowser, the mayor of D.C., has been sort of discouraging her attorney general from doing that. because she really doesn't want the situation, in her view, to get any worse than it is. She's trying just to work quietly with Trump. And D.C., of course, is in a unique situation being a federal district. But other judges in the Supreme Court should be able to see this as a straight-up black-letter law question. I want to ask a question about federal resources. We got this email from Dell in New Hampshire, Jeff. Jeff, Dell says he's seen reporting it will cost some half a billion dollars if Trump sends National Guard to three to four more cities.

34:04And Dell wants to know, where is this money coming from? It's a great question. And as part of my answer, I'll say that this is ironic because President Trump, part of the legacy that he wanted to create with his DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency Agency, was to cut government spending. and he has slashed it in areas including public health, including vaccines that we were talking about earlier, but is spending more on issues like this. Directly to Del's question, I mean, it must come from the budget and the budget that is slated for the National Guard, but that's a lot of money. It's a lot of money, and it's not something that seems to be hurting the president politically in terms of the financial responsibility because crime largely is a topic that polls well for him, certainly among Republicans, and is considered a political weakness for Democrats.

35:05To build off of Jeff's point real quick, I thought it was really interesting when Governor Pritzker in Illinois and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson held one of their press conferences this week talking about the Guard potentially coming there. Mayor Johnson specifically outlined where there have been cuts to federal dollars that were supposed to go to Chicago to fight gun violence and to help out local policing that the Trump administration has cut that Johnson, who is a very liberal Democrat, said we were welcoming that because we do have a gun violence problem. We do want federal resources to go after gun traffickers who are sending guns illegally into the city, often from Republican leaning states.

35:42And he said the Trump administration has done away with that. And they're instead saying we're going to send in the National Guard. And Johnson is saying we don't want that. We want those other federal resources. So that's Democrats are also starting to focus on that because there have been cuts that this administration has put in place that you could say is cutting policing. But they're saying instead we're going to send the military in. And as Jeff alluded to, taxpayers are likely picking up that cost. Right. Let's go back to D.C. for a minute. Wendy, I believe the D.C. attorney general did sue the Trump administration this week over National Guard.

36:12So I wanted to bring that up. But the president also gave some misleading information this week saying the district was 100 percent crime free. I will just say as a matter of common sense, everyone knows that cannot be accurate. But what do we know about the effect of National Guard on the streets of the nation's capital? Well, first of all, the National Guard is not in all the areas in D.C. where crime occurs. They have not been seen in sort of the lower income, higher crime sections of the city. They are largely... They're in very high income neighborhoods. I've seen them. Very high-income neighborhoods near the White House, near where all our offices are in sort of that downtown area where there just isn't...

36:57Around the Tidal Basin, yes. Yes, yes, exactly. So they're not there. But there is, I mean, Muriel Bowser, the mayor, has acknowledged that crime is down. The question is, what happens when the National Guard troops leave? I mean, sure, people might be intimidated from, you know, snatching my purse on K Street because there's a National Guardsman there. But when the National Guard is gone, Muriel Bowser still doesn't have the, I think it was several thousand officers that she has asked the federal government to fund for her to hire to protect us from street crime. So it's a temporary fix, I think, unless he plans to challenge, unless he gets permission from the Supreme Court to have a military armed force in the city at all times.

37:42Let's take a few minutes to leave D.C. for New York. where reporting this week suggests the Trump administration has been meddling to influence the outcome of the mayoral election. Taylor, what are we seeing the White House trying to do? So this is really, really fascinating. The New York Times and Politico led with that reporting. My colleagues at New York One are also matching a lot of it that essentially it seems that the Trump administration is trying to get current New York City Mayor Eric Adams to drop his bid for reelection and potentially push the Republican candidate for Mayor Curtis Sliwa out of the race so that all that support that is against Zoran Mamdani can go behind former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo.

38:18What's, of course, intriguing is Cuomo is a career Democrat, but he has a longstanding relationship, a personal relationship with President Trump. And the Trump administration seems to be implying that they would much rather work with a Mayor Cuomo rather than Mayor Mamdani, who's 33 years old, a Democratic socialist, has become a quick progressive rising star. The Times had reported that Mayor Adams was considering dropping his bid in exchange for an administration position in some way. Politico then reported that it was maybe for the Department of Housing and Urban Development HUD. Adams denied that.

38:50But then the New York Times reported that Adams had flown to Florida earlier this week and met with one of President Trump's top administration officials, Steve Whitcoff, who seems to have kind of a hand in every single pot for this White House. But it seems like there are active conversations underway. And President Trump on Thursday night, as he was hosting a bunch of tech CEOs at the White House, was asked about this. And he didn't get too much into the details, but he said, I would love if one or two of the four major candidates dropped out in the coming days so that we could just have a one-on-one race.

39:18Because he said he views Mamdani as a communist. Those are his words. And he says we don't need a communist in New York City. So it's really fascinating because, one, you don't often see a White House dabbling in a mayoral race. Obviously, New York City is the biggest city in the country, and it's substantial. So it warrants a lot more attention. But you also have the president seemingly trying to uplift a Democrat in order to take down another Democrat and trying to help out Mayor Adams, who doesn't really have a path to reelection because of corruption allegations and his closeness with the Trump administration.

39:49So we've got a few minutes left. There are a couple of stories we didn't get to. Wendy, Jeff, I'm going to start with you all. What else do you want to talk about about what we've missed so far in this hour's conversation of news of this week that you wanted to highlight? Jeff, can I start with you? Yeah, I would start with this is something we did talk about. And I think it's just the the impact that the vaccine issue is going to have politically for President Trump. I asked him last night in the tech meeting that Taylor was just referring to for his reaction to Florida's decision this week to get rid of all vaccine mandates.

40:27And he said that's something I'll address another time. But it is coming in the context of Secretary Kennedy's sort of assault on vaccines and questioning about vaccines broadly. To see that trickle down in such a major way in Florida, it'll be just really interesting to watch the impact that that will have on health and the impact that it will have on politics if there's an outbreak. And the president hasn't addressed that yet. Wendy. Well, I'm at the moment just absolutely fascinated with the state of the federal judiciary. We have one judge after another ruling against the Trump administration, saying that his actions are illegal.

41:13And then they leave his policies in place until appellate courts or the Supreme Court rules. And I think the entire nation should be waiting with bated breath for John Roberts and the Supreme Court to actually decide whether the Trump administration can carry out these rather unusual, one might say extreme policies, or whether they're going to pull back, and then most importantly, what the president does about it. Real quick on the foreign policy front, what does President Trump do with Russia and Ukraine? He continues to be frustrated with Vladimir Putin, trying to figure out how to help Volodymyr Zelensky, and he keeps hosting a bunch of foreign leaders at the White House to discuss it, but there hasn't been a lot of progress since that big Alaska summit.

41:57Thanks very much to our expert panel this week. That was Taylor Pumbelar's national political reporter based at the White House for Spectrum News. I want to thank Jeff Mason, White House correspondent for Reuters, and Wendy Benjaminson, senior editor at Bloomberg News. Let's take a quick pause here. We'll be back with the global edition of the News Roundup in just a moment. Stay with us.

42:20Welcome to the international edition of the 1A News Roundup. This week's experts, Kreeti Gupta. She's an anchor and correspondent at Bloomberg TV and radio. Kreeti, welcome back. Thank you for having me. Jack Dadge, defense reporter at Politico. Hello, Jack. Good to be here, Nyla. And James Kipfield, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of this Presidency in Congress and author of In the Company of Heroes, the inspiring stories of Medal of Honor recipients from America's longest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. James, always great to have you. Great to be with you. Have an economic summit and a military parade signaled a new global geopolitical shift?

42:57That's where we are going to start this week's roundup in China. On Tuesday, the leaders of China, Russia, and India, the three largest powers not aligned with the West, met in Tianjin at the gathering of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, a Eurasian security group led by China and Russia. James, can we start a little bit here with the optics of this meeting? We saw more than 20 leaders from mostly Central Asian and South Asian countries, I'm thinking Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Pakistan, all gathering, but all eyes were on Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

43:35What did we see from them? Well, it was the bonfire of the autocrats and the strongmen. And what was interesting was that we've known that there's a strategic partnership ever since the Ukraine war, for sure, between Russia and China. China has been Russia's basically lifeline against sanctions from the West. But India is the new member of this club, and that's extremely, extremely worrisome. It's a democratic country. Presidents going back to decades in America have have courted India as a democracy as a very major power the most pop one of the most populous places on the world if not the most populous and all that's going up in smoke because of President Trump's really rough handling of India especially on you know putting on crippling 50 percent sanctions I mean I'm sorry tariffs on Indian goods.

44:31So India is looking for new friends, and these two are very happy to welcome them to the club. And it's a direct challenge at the rules-based order that we have been the leader of ever since World War II. Right. China's clearly looking to seize on the unpopularity of America's trade policies, the Trump administration's tariffs. I just want to remind everyone that just last week, Donald Trump slapped India with 50 percent import tariffs among the harshest of the U.S. president's trade penalties. Kriti, how is China presenting itself to this bloc as a more stable global leader? Well, they're kind of the almost identical to the United States economically in that they have a lot of people, they have a massive industrial complex, they have a huge capital market system, which is what the U.S.

45:19has been boasting about for decades, if not longer.

45:26offer purchases of goods. They can offer investment into other countries. They can offer everything that the United States can, including defense, but can do it as a, if they're not going to be your friend, we will. And this is an approach we've seen, not just with India, but we've seen it with a lot of countries in the continent of Africa. We've seen it in Latin America as well, that if the United States isn't able to provide that aid, or excuse me, I should say that aid or that investment, China absolutely is. And I think this was so prevalent when it came to things like the Belt and Road Initiative, among others.

45:57They've consistently proven that they are a reliable investment partner over decades when the U.S. hasn't been. Jack, less than a year ago, I think it would be difficult to imagine scenes of war between Modi and Xi. The two countries were in a military standoff until last year after China's troop incursions along India's Himalayan border. That led to a violent clash. There's certainly anti-China sentiment rampant in India. TikTok is among the hundreds of Chinese apps banned. What changed here? Well, I don't think anything's changed, Naila, in terms of the plate tectonics of the relationship between Modi and Xi.

46:37You still have those Chinese troops facing off against Indian troops high up in the Himalayas. The tensions that erupted in early 2020 when you almost saw Chinese troops basically flinging Indian soldiers off of those mountaintops are still there. But money talks here and that's good enough to make this a shotgun marriage. Modi basically wants to make sure he can buy Russian oil at a discount despite the war in Ukraine. He wants to continue buying Russian weapons. That's not okay for Trump, but it's fine by Xi. Let's talk about the bromance, if that's the word we want to use, burrowing between Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin.

47:14The Indian prime minister joined the Russian leader for a drive in the back of Putin's armored limo, spending more than an hour in talks. James, what's happening with these two? Yeah, I mean, that hour talk in the back limousine was just them and their interpreters. I think that was really telling. I think that there is a marriage of convenience here. And it comes when And President Trump has put these, you know, really crippling tariffs on India to get it to quit buying Russian oil. And that was just a clear sign from Modi that he's not going to do that. So it's pushback. And, you know, I think the message was really, you know, clearly understood in Washington that India is not going to be bullied the way some smaller countries have been.

48:04And that it's saying, basically, if you keep this up, we have other strong friends that we can get chummy with. So there was that meaning that on Wednesday in China's capital, Beijing was transformed into a stage for one of the most elaborate military parades in recent memories, marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II.

48:28This parade was an absolute spectacular display of military might jack. Also in attendance, Iran's President Massoud Pazeshkian joining Russian in North Korea in what some have dubbed the axis of upheaval. In the parade, some very clear messaging for audiences in Washington, in Taiwan. What did we see? What were you watching for, Jack, as a defense reporter? As you saw all of those different pieces of military equipment and people be paraded by. Yeah, I mean, Naila, this was basically a menu of Chinese options to deter the United States. You saw three intercontinental ballistic missiles rolled out, one of them capable of carrying nuclear warheads, specifically something that could cut into the U.S.

49:14nuclear edge, one missile that's specifically designed to target U.S. military bases in Guam that would feed a U.S. military response in the region, hypersonic anti-ship missiles. So you're thinking about scenarios in Taiwan and elsewhere if U.S. ships were to try to arrive in the region. And China also showing off that it's ahead of the game with AI and drones, an area where the Pentagon has really struggled to try and keep up. So this is a clear signal to the United States from Beijing that they're ahead of the game when it comes to denying the U.S. from even entering the region if it comes to a conflict.

49:53President Trump, of course, reacted to this big show in Beijing in a truth social post. He wrote, may President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un as you conspire against the United States of America. James, what do you make of this message? Well, I guess we're all getting used to the commander in chief being sort of an internet troll. and that was an internet troll if I ever saw one. But he's not wrong. That was those three countries conspiring against us, essentially. And I just want to reiterate what Jack said.

50:29That military parade is making the point of a very real problem, which is that we've basically exported manufacturing to China over the last 20 years. It's become an adversary, and it has leapt ahead of us in many critical military manufacturing genres, including missiles. They could much more, much quicker, can build up their missile and manufacture missiles, drones, biggest commercial maker of drones in the world. China, shipbuilding, it's outrageous how far ahead of us they are now, 200 times our shipbuilding capacity. So they have jumped ahead of us in a lot of military areas in terms of manufacturing.

51:11And this parade was just a very, very interesting display of that. Kriti, the EU's foreign policy chief said the meeting of the leaders was, quote, a direct challenge to the international system built on rules. What more can you tell us about the reaction from Europe about this? I mean, I think just the images struck a lot of fear into Europeans' hearts because individually, these countries, I think, weren't seen as an entire threat. Russia, Europe has, of course, been on guard since, extra on guard, or to say since the war in Ukraine began. But that was really a defense conversation. China was really an economic conversation more than anything else.

51:51India was how do you access, you know, the over one billion people that live there. and protectionism has been a key sticking point between Europe and India. But altogether, when you have Russia, China, and India all partnering, that is a triple threat that Europeans really don't have the manpower, the economic power, or even, frankly, the defense to deal with. So these images were fairly scary, but the focus for Europeans is still how to get on Trump's good side, given that now you've seen Narendra Modi really take a step towards China and Russia and away from the West. Jack, just a minute before the break, I want to ask you one last question here.

52:31There are very profound differences among these nations that we are talking about. They are not joined by trust or common values or a common vision, as we've been even talking about the military things that are happening. Do you see this alliance going anywhere? I think it all depends on where Trump goes, right? I mean, we're seeing kind of the Trump bump phenomenon that we saw among U.S. allies. Canada, of course, with the liberals holding out into power because of the 51st state rhetoric. In Australia, you had sort of a similar landslide victory for Anthony Albanese, not a particularly popular prime minister, but won because of concerns of Trump.

53:04Now you sort of see this team up with Modi and Xi and Putin, primarily because of Trump. So we'll all see where this goes in terms of U.S. foreign policy. If it reverts back, could be a major difference in potentially keeping this axis together or tearing it apart. While several nations are showing support for China and Europe this week, a coalition of the willing, on Thursday, France President Emmanuel Macron said 26 of Ukraine's European allies have pledged to deploy troops as a, quote, reassurance force for Ukraine after the war is over. Today, 26 countries have formally agreed and some others still have to confirm their position.

53:4826 countries have agreed to deploy troops as security guarantees, troops in Ukraine, which will be present on the ground, at sea, and in the skies, to bring that reassurance to Ukraine the day after a ceasefire or peace deal. James, what else do we know about this security agreement? well i mean we that is a huge development with that you know basically europe has really stepped up and and pursued this reassurance force now you have 26 nations buying in saying they put their troops on the ground um but they're all waiting to see what the united states is going to do they're going to before that happens they would have to have some assurances you know they'll put their troops on the ground won't be on the front lines but they'll be in country as sort of a trip wire and with real capability in terms of air defense, et cetera.

54:43But they're not probably going to move without the United States backstopping them. And that is something that so far the Trump administration has not been willing to lay out that they will do that. We also know that Mr. Putin from Russia has said that he will accept no foreign troops in Ukraine as part of a cease fire deal and a peace deal. So a long gap between where we stand and where Russia stands, but I give the Europeans credit. They have really stood up and have kept at this. You mentioned Putin this week. He said to Kiev there's a chance to end the war in Ukraine via negotiations, quote, if common sense prevails, but that he was ready to end it by force.

55:26If that was the only way, to your point, James, he did say any foreign troops in Ukraine would be considered, quote, legitimate targets. Just a reminder, on the ground in Ukraine, Russia's nightly drone and missile attacks continue, with most jammed or shot down by air defense systems. Just over a week ago, Russian attacks on Kiev killed at least 23 Ukrainians. Here's Putin speaking in Beijing on September 3rd. It's a path to nowhere to meet with the current head of administration, to put it carefully. It's possible. I never rejected it. If this meeting is well prepared and will lead to some positive possible results.

56:04Donald asked me if it is possible to hold such a meeting. I said, yes, it is possible. If Zelensky is ready, he should come to Moscow and the meeting will take place. Jack, we heard Putin reference Donald Trump there. I wonder if you can just catch us up on any movement that's happened since the big summit. What reaction that's gotten, what Putin said this week has gotten from Zelensky? Well, there's been essentially no movement. They've talked about potential meeting sites, Budapest being one of them. Now, of course, Putin putting Moscow on the table, which would be ironic for Zelensky, of course, to go and meet the man in the Kremlin who tried to have him assassinated multiple times at the outset of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

56:52Although, of course, Putin promising him 100 percent security. So it seems like a stalling, delaying tactic from Putin and the Kremlin, basically calling out Zelensky saying, make him come to Moscow. Zelensky dismissing the idea he's going to come to Moscow, but saying that if Putin's willing to raise talks, it's certainly not a bad development here. Kritti, what do we know about if going back to this idea of this coalition of the willing that Europe proposed this week? We know that Steve Whitcoff was there to James's point. Has the U.S. said anything about the role it might play in this? They've offered security guarantees.

57:31They're on board with the idea, but it's still unclear what that actually looks like. And I think it's purposely vague. The idea of American troops on the ground has been a nonstarter for a very long time, dating back to the Biden administration as well, and a view that carries on under the Trump administration as well. That being said, the pressure here is coming from the idea of economic pressure more so than defense aid. And there was also reporting that suggested that there were starting to even be security aid cutbacks from defense funding to countries that bordered Russia. And that was a really crucial development when it came to the states in terms of the fact that they're backing this plan, this reassurance force.

58:14But again, at the moment, it feels like in name only. James, last month, Donald Trump said he would give Putin a couple of weeks to take serious steps towards ending the war. He imposed penalties. The two leaders met face to face. What happens next here, especially with what we think Trump will do with the deadlines he has imposed? It's the million-dollar question. They have, you know, he has announced potential sanctions and secondary sanctions that would be very, very powerful and a big blow to Russia. There is a lot of concern that he's not serious about that. He has made some comments in recent days saying that, you know, we'll know in a couple of days exactly what Russia is up to.

58:58I mean, what Russia is up to is what it's been up to. It's stringing him along because they think they're winning in Ukraine. And until that dynamic changes, there's going to be no big breakthrough. And, you know, so at some point, Trump has painted himself into a corner here. He either has to impose some sanctions on Russia to try to get them to understand that they're not going to win this war militarily, or he'll keep getting played by Putin, and that'll be a very bad look for him. Before we move on to the war in Gaza, I wanted to spend a few moments on U.S. forces destroying what they said was a boat carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the U.S.

59:38At least 11 people were killed. It's a story actually 1A listener, Deb Broad, wanted to know about. Here's U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaking to journalists in Mexico City on Wednesday about what happened and why the U.S. administration took the step. So they were designated as what they are. They are narco-terrorist organizations. So the same information and the same intelligence mechanisms with maybe a higher focus was used to determine that a drug boat was headed towards eventually the United States. And instead of interdicting it on the president's orders, he blew it up. And it'll happen again.

1:00:13Maybe it's happening right now. I don't know. But the point is, the way the president of the United States is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations. This one was operating in international waters, headed towards the United States to flood our country with poison. And under President Trump, those days are over. The action was a dramatic escalation for the U.S. in its fight against drug traffickers. Lawmakers and legal analysts have questioned the legality of launching a lethal strike against civilians and international waters outside of an armed conflict. Jack, what else are you hearing about this incident?

1:00:48Yeah, I mean, this would be a dramatic expansion of presidential powers to do this in terms of Trump's war powers. Of course, he has the ability to declare strikes in terms of self-defense of the United States, but we don't even know if these drug traffickers were armed as they were transporting narcotics to the United States. We know very, very little about the strike. And do we know that they were drug traffickers? I'm sorry? Do we know that they were drug traffickers? At this point, we're taking the administration's word for it. We've seen no proof from the administration of drugs on this boat, of the identities of these people.

1:01:26We don't even know the nationalities of these people at this point. So we're left with a lot of missing details here and a huge expansion of presidential power in the Western Hemisphere. And what have we heard from leaders in the region about this? It's been a muted response. The community of Latin American and Caribbean states, a 33-member bloc, was ready to go with a statement expressing profound concern about this, according to Colombian President Gustavo Petro. But it was nixed, especially by Trump's allies in the region, including Argentinian President Javier Malay, El Salvadoran President Naya Bukele.

1:02:04And if you read in between the lines, the statement is actually very, very interesting. It cites an extra regional presence, which is ironic, of course, because the United States has been a regional security guarantor. Now you see concern in the region that the U.S. military is firing hellfire missiles at drug runners in the Caribbean, a huge expansion of force here. Right. We did see applause from Trinidad's leader about this happening. So So that's an interesting note to that. Let's go to Gaza. Israel's nearly two-year assault on Hamas and the territory and people they govern has killed more than 64 ,000 Palestinians.

1:02:40That tally on Thursday is from Gaza's health ministry, which says about half the dead are women and children. Israel has long disputed these numbers but has not provided a separate toll. Israel's latest target is the densely populated Gaza city, home to about a million people who are facing famine and bombings. Jenna Radwan was severely injured in one of the strikes. We were going back home, going to my grandfather's house, when bombing began. We fell to the ground, stones falling all around. I want my mother. I want her here with me. That was Radwan speaking to Al Jazeera. The Israeli military said it now controls 40 percent of Gaza City.

1:03:18Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli settlers have reportedly expanded their presence in the Palestinian city of Hebron, And Israel's radical far-right finance minister, Bezalel Smotrik, says Israel should annex more than 80 percent of the territory. Smotrik said his plan is a defense of increasing calls by Israel's allies to recognize a Palestinian state. He said Wednesday, quote, the main goal is to remove once and for all this idea of a Palestinian state. But the UAE warned Israel on Thursday that an annexation of any part of the West Bank would be a, quote, red line and undermine the Abraham Accords.

1:03:56Kriti, can you remind us of the main players in the Abraham Accords and why this agreement signed almost five years ago is so significant to this conversation? This is such a key pillar of Donald Trump's first term and his overall approach when it came to the Middle East. ahead of Donald Trump, there was a real resistance to even recognize Israel or normalize Israeli relations. And Saudi Arabia was a key player in terms of reluctance to do that. The Abraham Accords brought everyone to the table and brought that conversation a few steps forward. And to your point, the UAE is a key, key player of the Abraham Accords because first off, even though they are physically a small nation, they are very involved, of course, in OPEC.

1:04:43They're a key oil exporter as well. And they are kind of seen as being the canary in the coal mine for the broader region. So if the UAE makes a step, then it kind of opens the doors and opens the path for everyone else in the region to follow suit, arguably even Saudi Arabia and the behemoth that it is. So the Abraham Accords to get even that recognition or the path to recognition was really crucial. But why this particular red line is so significant is because if the UAE were to suspend the Abraham Accords, again, it kind of validates some of the thinking across the region about making those positive steps towards normalizing Israel, an issue that's very contentious at the moment, not just in the Middle East, but in Europe as well.

1:05:27Right. And we saw French President Emmanuel Macron announce this week that he and the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, will co-chair a conference on a two-state solution later this month in New York. James, what effect is this external pressure having on Prime Minister Netanyahu, if any? It's continuing to isolate him. I mean, Israel is basically in danger of becoming a pariah state. I noted this week that two U.S. senators who visited Israel for a week came back and said, based on our conversations and observations, we came away with the inexplicable conclusion that Netanyahu's government is engaged in a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Gaza and slow motion ethnic cleansing in the West Bank.

1:06:15Those are war crimes. So there is a basic feeling Netanyahu's had his whole life against having a two-state solution. But this conflict has brought it to the fore. You can't ignore what comes the day after in Gaza. It's either a Palestinian or an Arab civilian authority or it's going to be the Israeli military. And the sort of future of Israel and its relationship with its neighbors is going to depend on how that goes. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio last week revoked the visa of Palestinian Authority President Mahoun Abbas and 80 other officials to prevent them from attending the UN General Assembly this month.

1:06:57Kriti, as these battle lines are being drawn before these meetings in New York, what are you going to be watching for in the lead up until then? Whether some of these countries that have promised to recognize Palestine actually will, that is the key piece of the September UNGA meeting. And Canada, France, the UK, several others around the world have said that this was going to be the summit where they really change their tune on that kind of recognition. And that would firmly put them or therefore foreign policy in direct conflict with that of the United States, despite them being close allies.

1:07:34So that's going to be a really crucial piece. And especially as France and Saudi Arabia get closer in terms of this two-state push, does that create even more tension between the United States and, again, some of its key allies? This week, we also learned about one vision for a post-war Gaza, the U.S.-backed Great Trust would take Gaza, quote, from a demolished Iranian proxy to a prosperous Abrahamic ally, end quote. The Washington Post published the 38th plan that reportedly is circulated in the White House. Jack, what do we need to know about this plan? Yeah, this would essentially give the U.S.

1:08:14carte blanche in Gaza for a 10-year period. They would have trusteeship and basically turn it into sort of the the ribiera that trump promised during netanyahu's visit earlier this year it would almost kind of look like a gulf state under this plan so you'd be looking at tourism resorts high-tech manufacturing technology hubs similar to the plans that saudi arabia has rolled out for their own economic cities of course the major problem with this is you're already dealing with a humanitarian crisis in gaza of epic proportions This would call for the relocation of basically the entire population of Gaza, 2 million people.

1:08:53And the countries in the region haven't been keen to receive them. So you're talking about Egypt, Jordan, Syria, probably can't care for them or keep them long term. So it just really seems like something that's potentially a nonstarter. And on top of that, of course, in the very short term, you have half a million people in Gaza already facing famine. Before we go to the break, on Wednesday, a documentary chronicling the final moments of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by Israel, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. On January 29, 2024, Hind, her aunt, uncle, and three cousins were fleeing from Gaza City when an Israeli army tank began firing at their car.

1:09:34The film focuses on the phone operators from the Palestinian Red Crescent Society who were on the line for hours with the five-year-old as she awaited rescue in a vehicle where her relatives lay dead. The Israeli Defense Force originally said their tank was not in firing range of Hind's family car. A July 2024 UN report said the IDF had destroyed Rajab's car and killed the two medics who were trying to save her. The documentary, titled The Voice of Hind Rajab, premiered this week at Venice to a 24-minute standing ovation.

1:10:17Let's go to Afghanistan, which suffered a magnitude 6.0 earthquake on Sunday. The ruling Taliban says at least 2 ,200 people are dead and more than 3 ,000 injured, but rescuers are still digging out rubble from villages in the mountainous eastern provinces. The Taliban has appealed for aid from the international community. Kriti, what kind of aid response have we seen this week? I mean, not enough. We've seen lots of countries reach out. The UAE, for example, has been a key provider of aid. We've seen the UK provide aid as well, but not directly to the Afghan government, to the Taliban. It's gone through nonprofit organizations, the very few that are still there.

1:11:02On Wednesday, 1A spoke with Susanna Walden. She's the Kabul Bureau Chief for Ajahn's France Press. She explained to us what it's like on the ground. The biggest challenge is the terrain. Qunar province is in the east. It's in the mountains. And it's usually really difficult to access these places. It's not like there are concrete highways that wind up the mountain paths. You know, they're already pretty bare bones roads. And then on top of that, all of the aftershocks, which our reporters who were in Qunar in the past two days said were really constant. You can listen to the rest of that discussion at our website at the1a.org.

1:11:45Jack, how does the Taliban being in control of the country affect humanitarian aid and what's being sent as well as received? It has a huge effect, Naila. What U.S. investigators are saying, specifically the Special Investigator General for Afghan Reconstruction, which is being sunset, has indicated that Taliban is using every means at their disposal, use of force, diversion, to try and get the aid for themselves. They use significant regulatory powers to try and determine how NGOs can operate, even running them through Taliban-affiliated businesses and trying to get kickbacks from the United Nations.

1:12:25So it seems like it's going to be an enormous challenge in a situation like Kumar, where you're trying to get the aid into this region. It's mountainous. It's already difficult to pass. The U.S. had a lot of trouble, of course, during the war in Afghanistan in this region. It'll be difficult for people to get in, and you have the Taliban potentially in the way. only about 30 to 40 percent of donated funds getting into Afghanistan reaches the Afghan population even in good times. And now you're talking about an earthquake. James, I wonder if you can put in perspective what you think this disaster might mean for Afghanistan longer term, since we're thinking about the earthquake that already happened in 2023, the ongoing economic crisis, the Taliban in control of the country.

1:13:12Yeah, so this increases the spiral to being a totally a failed state. I mean, anyone who's seen Afghanistan, as I have and others reporters who have reported from there during the war, it was already, you know, 23 million Afghans depended on humanitarian assistance just to get by every day. So now you've got a terrible government that wants, as Jack said, really wants to sort of get advantage out of this. And you have us freezing USAID, which would be the organization and the money that would normally be there for a disaster like that. And it's been frozen. So it's a horrible situation. And I just remind our listeners that, you know, we have some complicity in this where Afghanistan is today.

1:13:58No one's forgotten that horrible sort of retreat we did when the Taliban took over. That was the biggest black mark on the Biden administration's whole term, I think. And, you know, we need to try to step up and help these people because they need help and we have a role in where they are today. Have we heard anything from the White House on that this week, James? I have not seen anything from the White House on this yet. I mean, it's a fluid situation. So maybe behind the scenes there is planning to reach out and to get aid there. But I have not heard anything. Maybe my colleagues have. Jack, anything you want to – have you heard anything?

1:14:37No radio silence so far. And the point about U.S. aid is a good one. We saw, of course, earlier this year, earthquakes in Southeast Asia. The U.S. very much late to the game. And China's been backfilling that role in terms of getting aid into these places. That's something to watch in Afghanistan as well. Let's talk about another region, another natural disaster in the midst of political turmoil. In Sudan, a landslide Sunday destroyed an entire village in the Darfur region after heavy rains and all around 1 ,000 people were killed. A rebel group that controls the area called for international aid to help with rescue efforts.

1:15:14Jack, if you can remind us, Sudan's been in a civil war since 2023 between the country's military and multiple paramilitary groups. People may recall the RSF, Rapid Support Forces. Just like we're talking about with governments in Afghanistan, how does the war in Sudan complicate the ability to provide international humanitarian aid to people suffering from this natural disaster? It's extremely complicated, Naila, because you have a situation in Sudan where basically the entire country is riven with different front lines and aid groups have to try and cross them. They're basically bartering with rival commanders.

1:15:53In the case of the rapid support forces that you mentioned, they're relying on many youth soldiers, factions from different regions and sometimes different countries. So you're talking about bartering people across languages, people who might not be rational. This is a very difficult situation. And you have already 10 million people who have been displaced in the two-year war. And these floods that you're talking about are causing the spread of cholera because they've made the drinking water basically unpotable. So this is just a huge, enormous problem. And this disease continues to spread, too, as you see people grouping up together in refugee camps.

1:16:31So it just seems another situation that's making the humanitarian crisis in Sudan just even worse. Kreeti, Jack mentioned that we've seen China stepping in in terms of international aid as we've seen USAID completely dismantle the Trump administration pulling back on foreign aid spending. Are we seeing Europe or other countries trying to help fulfill the aid gap here as we're talking about these natural disasters, whether it's Sudan or Afghanistan? I mean, we've seen some help. But look, these are European governments that are also facing pressure among their own people. That if the U.S. isn't helping a much larger, a much richer country, why should we?

1:17:12So you are starting to see that pressure come down. The U.K., however, is still sending aid to both Afghanistan and Sudan as well. But just I think for our audience, we should talk about some of these numbers. I mean, I was digging into this ahead of the show. So just in terms of the change in aid when it came to Afghanistan, in 2022, it was about$3.8 billion. That was a report coming out of Reuters. This year, it's about$767 million. So it's really taken a hit when it comes to Afghanistan. In Sudan, 80 % of the emergency kitchens were opened for U.S. aid and are now no longer functioning. So this has really taken an impact when it came to that decision from the White House.

1:17:52Kritsi, I wanted to just ask you, as you are in D.C. this week, we have a little bit of time here and I want to get to everyone's reporter's notebook, but can I start with you being based in London, coming to D.C., what your observations have been being back in the States and what your reporting has sort of shown this week? It's a wild experience. I'm not going to lie. I feel like I'm drinking out of a fire hose and I already thought I was doing that in London. It's a really interesting game of catch-up, which I think a lot of D.C. reporters are very familiar with in terms of finding out what the White House is going to say next.

1:18:27But the way that foreign policy is showing up in terms of who's actually making the decisions at the end of the day. Venezuela is a great example. We've been speaking to a lot of congressmen and senators this week who were saying, we're not even brief. We're on the intelligence committees. We're supposed to be briefed before these actions are taken. we're not even clued into any of this. So some of this ripple effects that I've gotten used to viewing from my perch in London, to know that the decision-making is very much on the whim, I think has been a shock and a whirlwind, I have to say. Let's move, before I get to Jack and James and your reporter's notebook and what you want to talk about, I just want to read one more headline.

1:19:10Let's move south as south as you can get, which is Antarctica. The world's largest iceberg is, quote, rapidly breaking up into large chunks, according to scientists from the British Antarctic Survey. The iceberg known as A23A has held the largest current iceberg title several times since its discovery in 1986. It started out slightly bigger than Rhode Island at about 1 ,400 square miles. Now it's around 650 square miles. Okay, Jack, James, we have a little bit of time to talk about other stories that we've missed, what you wanted to get to. James, let's start with you. Two things. I mean, Critty mentioned earlier, but there has been – I'm hearing from our allies that DOD has announced that they're stopping security assistance funding to many of our European allies immediately.

1:19:59Not sure what that means, but, you know, as has been mentioned on this show, we're kind of in a dark forest here because there is just not the normal announcements of these things. sort of in a well-thought-out policy way. So this is a terrible time to be causing our European allies to be questioning whether we are backstopping them, you know, certainly vis-a-vis Ukraine. And also Trump said this week that after meeting with the Polish president that he would put more troops, be willing to put more U.S. troops in Poland. If that's actually true, and I hope it is, then that would be a very welcome sign that we, despite all this disruption in our U.S.-European relations, that we have their back.

1:20:44So I'm going to be watching both those things. Jack, before we get to your notebook, can I ask you this question? And Jack, if you don't know this answer, if maybe, James, you could weigh in. We got this email from Marion in Michigan. And Kreeti, it's to your point about what you were talking about earlier. This is the question. Why is Laura Loomer preventing Senator Mark Warner from doing his job as vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee by banning him from meetings with officials at an intelligence agency. Jack, can you answer that? It's been interesting to see Laura Loomer just emerge as a major locus of power within the Trump administration.

1:21:20Of course, she was responsible for several of the perches at the National Security Council. Now it appears trying to consolidate power within the intelligence community as well. So it certainly seems part and parcel of Loomer's moves. to try and make herself a power epicenter within the administration. Jack, what other stories were in your notebook for this week? What did we miss or what do you want to talk about you're looking forward? Well, the coming change in DOD strategy, first with the rebranding, of course, the Department of War going back to the name from the founding, of course. Is that official, by the way?

1:21:55But this is keeping with Trump's basically—I'm sorry? Is that official that we're going to be calling it the Department of War? It seems like it's going to be handed down today in an executive order. It's going to be curious to see if the administration tries to ram it through Congress and how Congress responds or whether this is going to be an executive order. But it's in keeping with an overall change in strategy from the Pentagon to focus on homeland security, hemispheric defense, and perhaps an expansion of these National Guard deployments across blue cities across the United States. Kriti, what's in your notebook?

1:22:28I feel like the story around sanctions on Iran is not getting enough love this week. Naturally, lots of things going on. But European leaders, the UK, France, and Germany, have basically invoked these snapback provisions when it comes to sanctions on Iran. And what that means is that at the end of September and after these meetings at UNGA, the sanctions on Iran are likely to be put back on. And that does two things. One, it creates, in theory, more economic pressure on Iran on top of that. It also pushes Iran closer to China and Russia, two countries that have made statements against the snapback provisions that are coming up.

1:23:08So something I'd keep an eye on is something that the markets aren't really talking about as much. But even more pressure on Iran has likely has the ability to move oil prices and I think make a lot of people angry around the world. Kriti, as you mentioned, Anga, and that coming up, we started talking about just, for example, the visa situation, who's not going to be there. But what are you looking for at this U.N. General Assembly that will be so different from last year at this time? I kind of want to, I mean, the statements are great and the press conferences are great. I kind of want to know if we're going to see more of these kind of clicks forming.

1:23:51So, for example, I think this week just the imagery of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi hand in hand, talking to each other, laughing, joking. Do we see more of that emerge with other countries that we're maybe not paying attention to right now? And I think that that closeness is really something I'm going to be keeping an eye on, especially when it comes to Latin American leaders that are probably still trying to figure out that if the global South is really kind of face this choice between the U.S. versus the rest, where does that fall? Do you follow India's lead? Do you stay close to the states?

1:24:25That's kind of what I'm interested in. Jack, we're almost out of time. I wonder if you want to quickly weigh in here about UNGA, what you're watching for. Yeah, it's going to be fascinating, too, to just see the relationship between the European countries and Israel. There's been a push, of course, to try and get Palestinian statehood on track and pressure the Israelis. That's going to be a big focal point when Netanyahu rolls through the conference. OK, before we go, one final story out of the U.K. about a Labrador named Logi, who has gone viral for diving into the sea and collecting litter. Loji's owner, James Westgate, talked to the BBC about his pup's special skills.

1:25:03As soon as he sees a bit of litter, he just lights up. Sometimes I have to be like, OK, chill, dude, because he'll go for things like traffic cones, which are like the size of him. I'm hoping in the background of people's consciousness is they're going to realize that, OK, wow, that's actually horrible that all this litter's in the sea. Maybe I won't chuck it away or chuck it outside. We are at the end of our hour. A big thank you to our panel, Krithi Gupta, anchor and correspondent at Bloomberg TV and Radio, Jack Datch, defense reporter at Politico, and James Kittfield, a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress and author of In the Company of Heroes, the inspiring stories of Medal of Honor recipients from America's longest wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

1:25:47Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor. Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Alexandra Boti is our senior supervising producer. Aileen Humphreys is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. And Barb Anguiano produces our podcast. Special thanks to Matthew Simonson, Allison Brody, and Chris Castano for additional podcast and On Demand support this week. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Naila Boodoo. Thanks for listening. Let's talk more soon. This is 1A.