The Trump Family’s Saudi Business Ties, and Hundreds of Gazans on Mystery Flights

0:02From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, November 18th. Here's what we're covering.

0:14This morning at the White House, President Trump is rolling out the red carpet for the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who's making his first visit to the U.S. in seven years. Back in 2018, Mohammed bin Salman became a global pariah after Saudi agents killed and dismembered the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. A U.S. intelligence assessment later found that bin Salman had likely ordered the killing himself, though the Saudi government forcefully denied that. Since then, the crown prince has leveraged Saudi Arabia's vast wealth and the kingdom's sway over oil markets to get back on the world stage.

0:52When bin Salman and Trump meet today, the two are expected to discuss a number of diplomatic and corporate deals, including a mutual defense agreement, a potential transfer of American nuclear technology, and new collaboration around AI. What's at stake during this visit is obviously billions of dollars in potential deals between the two countries. But it's hard to ignore that President Trump's family business also has profit-making and personal interests in Saudi Arabia. Vivian Niraim is the Times Gulf Bureau chief. She says plans for multiple Trump-branded developments in Saudi Arabia have been announced, including a Trump Tower in Jeddah and two projects in Riyadh.

1:36That's all through the Trump Organization, which is run by the president's sons Eric and Don Jr. There are also other Trump family members who have close business ties with the kingdom, including the president's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who's been involved in billion-dollar deals with the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, which manages the government's money. These are just the deals that we know about. A lot of things have yet to be disclosed publicly. I spoke late last month to a Saudi executive who told me that the Trump organization is actually in potential talks to bring another Trump-branded development to a major Saudi government real estate project that's overseen by the crown prince himself.

2:15In the Gulf, where hereditary ruling families hold nearly absolute power, this kind of mingling of politics and business is normal. But for the United States, it's really shattered, you know, decades of norms and raised concerns among ethics experts. Essentially, it just presents a lot of questions around potential conflicts of interest. Meanwhile. Are you planning to sell F-35s to Saudi Arabia? I mean, and also are you looking at doing a similar security trade? Yeah, no, I am planning on doing it. They want to buy. They've been a great ally. They've got to like us very much. Ahead of the crown prince's visit, President Trump announced that he's planning to sell F-35 fighter jets to the kingdom.

2:59The planes feature some of the U.S.'s most sensitive stealth technology. And his decision comes despite a recent report from the Pentagon that raised concerns that this kind of sail could give China access to the tech. Saudi Arabia and China have a security partnership.

3:20In Congress today, the House is expected to vote on a measure demanding the release of the Epstein files. At one point, it seemed like a long shot to pass. Now, it's expected to have unanimous bipartisan support. Many Republicans got on board in the face of pressure from their constituents, who've demanded transparency in the case. And some lawmakers have been warning the president in private that they could no longer hold out, saying the longer the opposition to releasing the files lasted, the more it seemed like there was something to hide. After those conversations, Trump himself reversed course.

3:55He's now also supporting the release, a rare case of the president bending to political pressure since he spent most of his term ruling over his party with an iron grip. Notably, Trump's newfound support for the measure has raised the question, if the president wants the files to be released, why doesn't he just do it himself? He has the power. Earlier this year, for example, the president ordered the release of documents related to Martin Luther King Jr. and John F. Kennedy. And just a few days ago, the government released thousands of declassified documents related to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart after Trump said they should be unsealed.

4:41Thank you for joining us in charting a new course in the Middle East for Israelis and Palestinians and all the people of the region alike. In a major breakthrough at the United Nations yesterday, the Security Council approved President Trump's peace plan for Gaza, endorsing the White House's vision for the future of the territory. The plan includes a so-called Board of Peace, which Trump says he will lead, to oversee Gaza for at least the next two years. And, among other provisions, calls for an international stabilization force to demilitarize and govern the territory. The U.N. vote is part of an effort to move into a new second phase of the ongoing ceasefire between Hamas and Israel.

5:27As discussions about Gaza's future continue, the Times recently got access to the American-run base in Israel, where some of the planning is underway. It's a repurposed warehouse known as the Civil Military Coordination Center. And people involved say it feels like a frenzied, chaotic startup, with U.S. and Israeli troops, foreign diplomats, and aid workers all gathered around whiteboards and laptops and big-screen TVs. Some of them have years of experience in the region. Others have little to none. There was a session at one point for newcomers titled, What is Hamas? Looking at the schedule, some of the meetings at the base have surprisingly light names for the topics.

6:10There's Wellness Wednesdays for discussions about health care and education in the territory, and discussions about water infrastructure have been called Thirsty Thursdays. The center has also been doing some planning for what it calls alternate safe communities, which are residential compounds that the Trump administration is considering building in parts of Gaza controlled by Israel. The thinking is that by offering new housing options, civilians could be drawn away from areas Hamas controls, weakening the group. Despite the flurry of planning happening at the base, there is no formal Palestinian representation there.

6:47That's prompted criticism from some diplomats and aid workers who say that any long-term plans for the future of Gaza's 2 million residents are unlikely to be successful without significant input from Palestinians themselves. Meanwhile, thousands of miles away from Gaza, a pair of mysterious recent flights is drawing scrutiny after the planes dropped off hundreds of Gazans in South Africa. A group called Almage Europe, which barely has any public profile, arranged the flights, promising to shuttle Gazans out of the territory and give them temporary accommodations in South Africa. But the flights caught the South African government by surprise.

7:29Yesterday, the country's foreign minister suggested that Israel was behind them, saying the flights are part of a, quote, clear agenda to cleanse the Palestinians out of Gaza. Israel has denied the accusation. organization, the Almagy group has not responded to requests for comment. The Times talked with a man who was on one of the flights, a 37-year-old father of two. He said he'd gotten a call out of the blue from a man who said he worked for a humanitarian organization and promised to get the family out of Gaza for$1 ,600 a person paid in crypto. He said he was told to tell anyone who asked that they were part of a French embassy evacuation, and the family had no idea where they were being sent.

8:09In South Africa, the man said his young kids are discovering what life outside a war zone is like. His four-year-old daughter has been amazed that she can walk into a store to buy food or plug a cell phone into the wall to charge it, things she'd only seen in videos. He said, quote, The other day she was telling me, Dad, we are living like the YouTube life. For now, South African officials have given permission for the Palestinians to stay in the country for 90 days.

8:47And finally, monarch butterflies are the snowbirds of the insect world. Where people's grandparents might go from Minnesota down to Florida for the winter, monarchs fly thousands of miles from as far north as Canada all the way to central Mexico. Exactly how they're getting there, though, has mostly been a mystery until now. Researchers have a new tool for tracking individual monarchs on their journey. A company in New Jersey developed tiny solar-powered radio tags that weigh just 60 milligrams, so like three grains of rice. And thanks to tricks like a little bit of eyelash glue, this year hundreds of butterflies set off on their migration with those tags attached.

9:31The new data has revealed that their routes can be very different, especially if one gets blown out to sea by a strong wind, which happened to specimen CMP-032. Don't worry, it kept flying south. The tags mean that butterfly fans can follow along with the insect's progress in an app. One researcher who has studied Monarch's declining population in the U.S. said, There's nothing that's not amazing about this. The hope is that learning more about how and where the insects travel could provide answers about how to help more of them survive the journey. Right now, no more than one in four monarchs makes it to the end due to sheer exhaustion, getting hit by traffic, and what we all fear, hungry birds.

10:20Those are the headlines. Today on The Daily, the story of how China has become the world's clean energy superpower. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.