The News Roundup For December 13, 2024
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Hey, it's Nyla. I'm your host for this edition of the News Roundup. Just a quick heads up before we start the show. The news is rapidly changing and things may have changed by the time you hear this episode. Stay up to date with news by listening to your local NPR member station and visiting NPR.org for all the latest. Thanks for listening and enjoy the show.

You're listening to the 1A Podcast. I'm Nailah Boodoo, and it's time for the News Roundup. We have so much news to catch up on, from a high-profile arrest in Pennsylvania to a succession courtroom battle in Nevada and a mysterious story in the skies above New Jersey. People have been spotting suspicious drones overhead for weeks, and while at least one senator is saying it's time to shoot them down, state and federal officials still say they're clueless.

With us this week to explain what's often unexplainable, Amanda Becker, Washington correspondent at The 19th. Hi, Amanda. Hello. Josh Wingrove, White House reporter with Bloomberg News. Josh, happy to have you back with us. Thank you for having me. And also in studio with us, Margaret Tulliv, senior contributor at Axios and the director of Syracuse University's Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship. Margaret, thanks for being here. Thank you, Nyla.

Police arrested Luigi Mangione on Monday, first on firearm charges and then later charged him with murder in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, who was fatally shot in Manhattan last week. The 26-year-old is being held near Altoona, Pennsylvania, after an employee at a local McDonald's thought he looked suspicious and called police. Here's Luigi Mangione's attorney, Thomas Dickey. Hello.

Like I said earlier, and I wasn't kidding around, a couple of things. If you're going to report something, report it accurately. And remember, and this is not just a small thing, the fundamental concept of American justice is the presumption of innocent. And until you're proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt. And I've seen zero evidence at this point. Josh, everyone, I think, has heard a lot about this story over the past two weeks. But what do we actually know about the suspect and the evidence made public so far?

Yeah, I mean, this one has captivated tremendous attention, you know, taking place where it did a couple of blocks from Rockefeller tree lighting about to happen. On the day of the tree lighting. That's right, right. So it has really become this high profile thing and

Right now, the legal fight is just in its first steps, in part over whether he will be taken from Pennsylvania back to New York. Found with evidence on him, it appears that they're preparing to perhaps dispute that, such as including this ghost gun that allegedly was used in the shooting. The New York police have been...

reportedly also picking up other evidence throughout the city that he or the shooter may have abandoned over the course of it. More is coming out also of his own story, and it's as captivating as this has been, and it just has torn up X, formerly known as Twitter, for instance. It looks like a sad story of this kid that's accused in this, this 26-year-old man,

who had dropped off the radar from family for months, who had been dealing potentially with complications from a back surgery, but also had reportedly not even been a client of UnitedHealth. Of course, the CEO of UnitedHealth said,

was the one who shot and killed in this scenario. So it's an unusual one that has also left some politicians in knots about how to talk about it, particularly Democrats who are trying to balance demands and anger over the broader health care system when trying to respond to what happened here, you know.

It's just it's there are so many elements. You can see why it has captivated so many so much attention. Yeah. Joshua, let's start picking that apart and let's talk about you said in terms of Democrats as well. What we heard from Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro on Tuesday, who was pushing back against

Luigi Mignone being lionized as a martyr by some on social media. Here's what Governor Shapiro had to say. In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice. In some dark corners, this killer is being hailed as a hero. Hear me on this. He is no hero. Margaret, how else are we hearing lawmakers respond to this here?

Well, I'm looking at lawmakers and I'm looking at the executives themselves. In the healthcare industry. Yeah, that's right. And I think there are two kind of parallel track ways to look at this. And one is the idea of personal safety footprints. And so we're seeing with executives something that we actually saw earlier.

a little bit more of with lawmakers after violence at a baseball game or even after January 6th, which is, is their personal security profile well protected? And we've seen all of the major healthcare companies and CEOs look to security firms to say, do our CEOs have the right amount of protection? Should we be disclosing fewer details about where

you know, investor meetings are being held. People are talking about taking down pictures of executives on websites. And their children and their personal information and just making it a little bit more opaque so that people can be harder to find in a moment by a deranged person who's moved to violence. But there is a second, there is a parallel piece to this, Nyla, and I think it is that if you are, let's say you're in the communications industry, if you do comms for a healthcare company,

Or if you are in legislative affairs for a healthcare company and you're already seeing a big part of the electorate kind of treating health insurers as the bad guys, you are looking, aside from the safety of your CEOs, you're looking at this from a communications crisis perspective and saying,

Whether you like it or not, there are an awful lot of Americans who are either cheering on or expressing indifference to this sort of violence or saying, well, I don't like violence, but the industry sort of brings these kind of sentiments on themselves. And so one of the big questions that is emerging is, is there going to be either a recalibration of the actual policies? Is this a moment for –

health insurance companies to say, are we denying too many claims or should we make more transparency around this process, or at least the way they communicate to the public. And I want to be really careful about my words here. I'm not saying that I think that it's okay for someone to do something violent in order to create change, but I am saying that the industry right now is looking both at whether they have enough

actual physical and digital security protections around their CEOs and their business, but also at the political climate and the climate of the electorate, the anger and the frustration about both how much health insurance costs and then whether you can get benefits

whether you're able to get the benefits that you thought you were going to get. Right. Margaret, understanding that nuance and also knowing that there has been such an outpouring, Amanda, what interest are we seeing in the new Congress possibly to perhaps deal with some of this, particularly when it comes to the rising costs of health care? Yeah, it's a mixed bag. So, you know, pretty much immediately, Elizabeth Warren and Josh Hawley led a bipartisan effort in the Senate to

to reintroduce legislation to break up healthcare conglomerates that also own pharmacies and really kind of target the regulation of this entity known as pharmacy benefit managers or PBMs. You know, I watch all my TV streaming. There's so much commercials about that in the Washington area. Every commercial, I kept hearing PBM, PBM, PBM. So I actually Googled it the other day to see what it was.

And so that legislation is related to that. You know, and I do think we could see some like specific targeted bipartisan action, particularly kind of in this breaking up conglomerate antitrust space.

You know, what is broader, though, that could have a broader impact is, you know, the incoming Trump administration and the Congress, which is completely controlled by Republicans now, are expected when they push to renew the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that they enacted in 2017 to cut Affordable Care Act spending and also Medicaid spending, which could imperil the Medicaid expansions in up to nine states from what I've read from experts.

And so I think it's really going to be a mixed bag in terms of cutting costs. I think we could see some targeted bipartisan action, but more broadly, some of the policies that they're looking at and acting could actually do very little to reduce health care costs and could actually increase it for a number of Americans. Yeah, I mean, I think what you're talking about here is a real potential clash between what the public is saying they want, which is fulsome health care coverage and the ability to get medicine and treatment for ills that they have, um,

bumping up against a culture that the Republican Party has been opposed the Affordable Care Act. And you're seeing a lot of talk now around the sort of Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk

kind of universe around the idea of maybe you could just save a lot of money from healthcare costs if people stop trying to use health insurance as the way to finance medicines and treatments that they want and use it for catastrophic coverage. That all seems disconnected from an individual's act of violence against an individual healthcare executive. But where the rubber meets the road really is how the American electorate is experiencing their healthcare coverage in

And as a result, how they feel about all these people in power. Before we go to the break, I want to get to one last point about political violence with Robert Pape, who studied political violence in the U.S. for decades at the University of Chicago. This is what he told The New York Times on Thursday.

The more political violence is spreading in America, the more we're seeing the wider profile of individuals who are committing political violence. And that wider profile starts to look like America itself.

Margaret, before we head to a break, I wanted you to weigh in. I know part of what led you to take up your role at Syracuse was to examine trends showing up in our politics. How accurate is it to say that we're seeing more support for the use of political violence? It's still not a majority of support, still a minority, but there is some indication that support for

under some threshold that's very hard to pin down, like when necessary, is an idea with some increasing support among some Americans. I see this as something that's actually part of a much larger trend, which is the declining trust in institutions, right?

people's declining trust in the idea that institutions are going to protect them and therefore they should place trust in other people. When the electorate turns to a place where they say, break up the status quo, let's do something drastic, that's when this becomes increasingly common, even if it's still a real minority of people. We're going to head to a quick break. Stay with us. The News Roundup is just getting started.

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As Trump's cabinet picks for his second term in office continue to take shape, we know who won't be around come January. FBI Director Chris Wray announced this week he's resigning and will step down with the administration change. He's seven years into a 10-year term. USA Today's Josh Meyer joined us this week to talk about Christopher Wray's decision to resign.

It's extraordinary. It's part of a broader effort by Trump that he campaigned on and that he was elected on to basically deconstruct what he calls the deep state, which is the national security bureaucracy. And one of the biggest components of that is dismantling the FBI, at least as it's known right now. So, you know, we're in for a lot of turbulence here. Josh, how much political pressure was Wray under here to resign?

Wow. I mean, there's writing on the wall and then there was what was staring down Chris Wray. I mean, it was pretty clear what was going to happen to him on inauguration day, maybe within minutes of that. So he chose to jump rather than be pushed, essentially, here. And he said he did it for the good of the agency and to try to minimize the fallout of it. It should be noted and emphasized, I should say, that

This is Trump's guy. He's there because Trump put him there in his first term. Or was Trump's guy, I guess we could say. Was Trump's guy, yeah, is a better way of putting it. It's kind of like when we were deciding or all trying to chase who Trump's pick for vice president.

And we sort of skipped over often why it was Trump wasn't running with Mike Pence again, you know, and so it's Trump has moved. And so, too, is his desire for an FBI director. And Kash Patel is the sort of loyalist. I think you could fairly call him like an ultra loyalist, very much a state of the critic of the deep state, like you heard from that clip before.

and really wants to completely remake the FBI, talking about sending people out of the headquarters in Washington, you know, into the field or,

Any way you slice it would be a substantial deviation from where the FBI is right now. So, you know, it looks like Chris Wray is trying to essentially manage the fallout of that. But this is going to be a bumpy ride no matter what. And I should note, it looks like Kash Patel, one of the people whose nomination has been a little bit in question, is going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the one who's going to be the

And things seem like they're shaping up better than they might initially have seemed for him. There's a lot of support rallying for him. And as support consolidates around Pete Hegseth, it does look like Republican senators are less and less willing to stick out their neck and oppose some of these nominees.

Trump also sat down with NBC News' Kristen Welker for his first televised interview post-election, which aired this week. He was pressed on his plans to carry out mass deportation, his promises to seek revenge on his political enemies, and more. Here's a little bit of that conversation. You campaigned on destroying the deep state. Do you want Kash Patel to launch investigations into people on that list? No. I mean, he's going to do what he thinks is right. Do you think that's right? Do you think that's right, sir? Um,

If they think that somebody was dishonest or crooked or corrupt politician, I think he probably has an obligation to do it. But are you going to direct him to do it? No, not at all. Amanda, what else stood out to you from that interview?

You know, he really hammered home several of the things he was saying throughout the end of his campaign, which is that he's going to move on immigration right away. He said, you know, it will be the first signal that we're not playing games. He said another day one priority was pardoning the January 6th convicts and the people who rioted at the Capitol that day.

So, you know, he chose to highlight that again in his interview. He also expressed that he still had confidence in one of those other kind of beleaguered picks, Pete Hegseth, that Josh just mentioned.

And so, you know, he said he still had confidence in them. And, you know, even since the interview, things are kind of looking up for him after kind of a pressure campaign from Trump supporters against some of the senators they thought might not support him. So, you know, to me, that interview, he was really just kind of doubling down on themes from the end of his campaign and, you know, saying that he meant business. I want to get back.

to the January 6th pardon question in a minute. But Margaret, I wanted to ask you about, he was also honored, the president-elect, as Time's Person of the Year. And in his interview with Time magazine, he said cutting food costs, a key campaign promise, would be, quote, very hard.

Yes. You know why? Because it will be very hard. And let's maybe not overstate it by saying Donald Trump is a student of history, but we all remember George H.W. Bush and the no new taxes pledge. Donald Trump was actually pretty explicit. The president-elect was explicit in this interview at a couple of points, said things like, I don't want to get boxed in. Like, it

I'm going to tell you something. It's what I think, but, you know, might not be what I think later. And on this question about prices, it was interesting that he's saying he thinks prices are going to come down, but they might not, and that it's very hard for things to come down once they've gone up. He didn't make that point when Joe Biden was campaigning. But also, I think it's fair to say that it's also hard for prices to come down when there are tariffs. So there are a number of

Trump policies that may take effect, that also may impact prices. I think what we're seeing here is him try to create a starting point to say, look, this is what I've inherited and I can't promise the speed at which I'll do it. I also think, to me, what stood out about this interview is something that we kind of already know, which is

You can listen to a Trump interview and it can be fascinating and you'll think he said a lot and you'll realize that he left himself wiggle room in almost every place. So on the one hand, he's saying, no, he doesn't think that he would necessarily send Kash Patel out on a revenge tour. And then, you know, within the same interview, he's saying that he thinks every member of Congress who was involved in the January 6th committee should be reelected.

So I think you can derive a limited amount of hard and fast knowledge out of these interviews, but they do give you a sense of what he's thinking in the moment and how he intends to

to frame issues. Our friends Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman of The Times have a smart piece out saying that it actually may be the stock market and TV audiences that serve as the guardrails where the House and the Senate and other institutions may not. Hmm.

This week, we also saw Trump tap Kerry Lake to be the next director of The Voice of America, which is the state-funded U.S. government broadcaster. Kerry Lake is a former news anchor as well as an election denier. Josh, what do you make of Trump picking Kerry Lake for this role? Picking up a thread that he latched onto in the end of his first term or throughout his first term of criticizing VOA, he wanted to be

more favorable. Lake is a staunch loyalist. She's also an avowed critic of the mainstream media, despite not too long ago being

a member of it. She's quite combative. Trump likes that. She's pugnacious in interviews. Trump likes that. There are some questions about whether he can install her that former Congressman Tom Malinowski has been raising. So it's a bit of maybe an open question about how quickly or how permanently she will take that role. But I think expectations are that she will bend VOA or try to bend VOA in Trump's image in pretty quick and frenzied form.

As we're seeing the basically most of these nominations come together, what else this week stands out to you all in terms of notable appointments that we should talk about? Kimberly Guilfoyle is one nominated to be ambassador to Greece, will require Senate confirmation. She, of course, was it seems formerly now romantically linked to a son of Donald Trump.

And, you know, I think it just shows that he's really filling a lot of these positions. You know, she was ubiquitous on the campaign trail. She was always with the family. You know, he's choosing to reward kind of members of his inner circle that have been really loyal to him. So that's just, you know, another nomination that kind of stood out to me personally. It's...

It's interesting to see what some of these folks weren't nominated for as well as they were nominated for. I mean, we know that Carrie Lake wanted to— Ambassador to Mexico was one of these ideas that had been floated. The VOA, which either may not happen or may be a slow roll or may be boxed in now by some of the other laws in place to protect what the mission of the VOA truly is, maybe that wasn't her first choice. Josh? Yeah, I think I'd also point out that he's continuing to really appoint

not only friends, but some of the wealthiest people in America. The Billionaires Club. Right, the Billionaires Club, including Tom Barak, who's been tapped for ambassador to Turkey as well, ambassador to Italy, or Margaret and I's friend and colleague Jennifer Jacobs scooped that one as well. This, I think, has flown a little bit under the radar, but to the extent to which it makes his first term just pale enough

In comparison, the wealth and power of these people that are taking either explicit cabinet nominations or appointments or nominations to be ambassadors is jaw-dropping, as is the link I would add to television. Many of these people are simply people that Trump likes and sees on television. So he's going with what he knows. He's going with...

You know, star power, I guess, is how we phrase it. And that I think has been kind of rippling through some of the most recent picks as well. Margaret, I get also to your point of like what the president-elect values in terms of what you were saying with our former colleague Jonathan Swann's reporting on TV maybe being more of a guardrail. Yeah, I think—

What Donald Trump values in a nominee is loyalty and someone who agrees that not just presidents in general, but this particular president-elect should have as much power as legally possible to execute the decisions he wants to make. And if they happen to be well-liked with core audiences on TV, all the better. To Josh's point about the billionaires, this was last week's stat. I think it was U.S. News & World Report.

Some smart reporter calculated the estimated net worths of the billionaires so far named to Trump's nominees in cabinet posts and concluded that they added up to numbers that exceeded the GDP of 169 countries. So I'm not going to claim my own reporting for that, but it definitely gives you a very clear picture of the wealth. Yeah.

Let's turn now to news from the White House. On Thursday, President Biden pardoned 39 people convicted of nonviolent crimes and commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 others. The move is the largest grant of clemency in a single day by a U.S. president. Pardons expunge a conviction while commutations leave the guilty verdict but reduces the sentence amount.

Josh, earlier this month, Biden was criticized for partying his son Hunter. What's the response been to this series of pardons? More muted, for sure. But...

This is not going to be the last tranche, or at least it doesn't seem like they're going to be. Of pardons. Of pardons, that's right. So these ones are less controversial, although there's not to say there aren't some that are eyebrow raisers in there. The 1,500 by and large are people who have been serving their sentence at home under COVID-era regulations and, you know, in the eyes of the administration themselves.

you know, are no longer a threat or what have been, you know, no one's really lighting their hair on fire over these 1500 in the way that the Hunter Biden part had really raised a lot of questions. But one thing the White House did not rule out yesterday at all,

and frankly kept the door wide open to was the notion of preemptive pardons of Democratic allies who they think Trump might go after or other more controversial ones that might come, you know, in the coming weeks or in particular sort of on the 19th of January. So I think Biden is saying specifically, quote, I will take more steps in the week ahead. He's not

He has found the pardon pen in his drawer somewhere and he's going to town. We just don't know how far that's going to go. And I should note some of those preemptive pardon candidates have themselves said they don't want it. So it's a tricky one. President-elect Trump said he would pardon people convicted of federal crimes connected to the January 6th attack on the Capitol in that interview with Time magazine we've been talking about. And he said this in an interview with Meet the Press on Sunday. I'm going to be acting very quickly.

Within your first 100 days, first day? First day. First day? Yeah, I'm looking first day. You're going to issue these pardons? These people have been there, how long is it? Three or four years. Amanda, assuming that Trump follows through with these promises, what's the significance of these pardons?

Well, you know, these kind of would be his Hunter Biden pardon in terms of the level of the response he would get from the other side. Of controversy. Yeah, of controversy. And, you know, we are seeing signs in the Republican-controlled Senate next time, you know, when they come back in January that, you know, they will not stand in his way by and large.

You know, they are, you know, after Trump said this and Biden had already pardoned his son, you saw a lot of Republican senators saying things. And, you know, these are paraphrases along the lines of like, well, he pardoned Hunter. So, you know, of course, you know, every president is going to use their authority to pardon who they'd like.

even if the other side, quote unquote, doesn't agree. So we aren't seeing too many signs that the Senate would stand in his way or Congress would try to stand in his way to any serious degree. They have, the senators, that is, disagreed when Democrats have pushed back about this. Trump has called them hostages. You don't see a lot of pushback against that anymore.

And so, you know, I really think that, you know, if he chooses to do this on day one, there's going to be very little anyone can do in Washington to stop it. We've heard incoming Senate Majority Leader John Thune, other GOP senators say they will not stop Trump from issuing these pardons. Thune also didn't push back on Trump's remark that members of the House committee that investigated January 6th should go to jail. Margaret, how does or doesn't this response from Senate Republicans, particularly Thune, align with what we expected? Yeah.

So I think we're all waiting to see how Senator Thune is going to execute his leadership role, his new leadership role. He's, relatively speaking, a bit of an institutionalist compared to someone like Senator Rick Scott, who was edged out for that job. And so I think one of the big questions is, is he going to allow the president-elect to do whatever he wants to do? Or

Are we seeing here a style where publicly he is not going to have those fights? He's going to have the conversation behind closed doors. When it comes to January 6th, folks, I think one line we're seeing being drawn now among senators is whether or not any of these folks attacked police officers or law enforcement or not. And I think that's going to be at least behind closed doors, one of the areas where there's a real push on President-elect Trump to be careful who he pardons.

Before we go to the break, let's take a moment to remember iconic poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, who died on Monday. Giovanni was a star of the Black Arts Movement of the 60s and 70s, known for her civil rights activism and for speaking out against the machismo she and other women saw by men in the movement. But Giovanni was also a public figure in her own right as an artist and intellectual.

When she was just 29, she sold out the Lincoln Theater to perform her poems alongside the New York Community Choir. Here's what she said at the National Book Festival in 2021. What I know is that I will not let the world change me. I think that whatever it is that I have to give, I have some truths to give. I have...

There's some laughter. I'm a Black woman. And Black women, despite all of it, we still find a way to laugh. Nikki Giovanni was 81 years old. We'll be back with more of the News Roundup in just a moment. Stay with us.

I'm Lakshmi Singh. Public radio reminds us of our shared humanity, even at our darkest hours. Like with a story of an artist couple who make beautiful spaces for communities to grieve. We found that people will usually stop by and just feel a little bit more open and willing to talk and share. Help us make room for light in the dark. Give before the end of the year at donate.npr.org. How much can one person change in four years? The answer comes down to who he puts in charge.

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Back now to more of The Roundup. On Wednesday, the House passed the annual defense policy bill known as the National Defense Authorization Act. The more than $883 billion package includes pay raises for junior enlisted service members. It also contains restrictions on using funds from a health care program for active duty service members for gender affirming care for children under 18. Amanda, what else is in this bill and how likely is this to pass in the Senate?

Yeah. So a couple other things I think people might be interested in are it does guarantee that they will fully fund child care assistance programs. You know, this is a population that has to move around a lot. Securing child care is always difficult. Waiting lists are long. It's expensive. So that's very important for military families.

It also eliminates co-pays on contraceptives and establishes kind of a three-year program where they're testing that and also includes coverage for cryopreservation and storage. Now, this is different than IVF. So this would pay for the storage of preserving sperm and preserving eggs. And the idea is, you know, people sometimes have to deploy last minute. You know, this will allow them to kind of protect their fertility in that time. Okay.

You know, in terms of passage, I do expect it to pass. They're teeing up a vote in the Senate early next week.

You did mention kind of at the last minute how Speaker Mike Johnson inserted a provision that would block gender-affirming care for service members' children that could result in sterilization is the wording. Now, what could result in sterilization is kind of open to interpretation. That's what you said. Okay. Yeah. And so, you know, there's worries that this would be kind of like very broad language that could block a lot of forms of care.

And, you know, even some of the House members, the Democrats that negotiated this package voted against it at the last minute because of this provision. You know, there are other ways that I expect the administration to kind of move forward and kind of block various forms of gender affirming care. So I wouldn't be surprised if kind of that ends up being removed from the NDAA and they deal with it in another way.

With other congressional news, on Tuesday, Arkansas' Tom Cotton blocked a law known as the PRESS Act. The act would have given journalists greater federal protections, including preventing journalists from being forced to disclose personal information about their sources. The law would have also restricted the seizure of journalist data without their knowledge.

Margaret, most states already have some sort of shield law like this. There's no federal one. What are the implications of this being blocked? It means it's going to be very hard to get a federal shield law. So when what you heard Cotton say, he said, quote, the press badge doesn't make you better than the rest of America or put you above the law. So I'd say that was directed...

on some level to an audience of one, the president-elect, and on another level to a large swath of the public that doesn't see the press as an extension of them, that doesn't see the purpose of a free press as to be a voice of people and to be able to be a flow of information to hold power accountable. That is, of course, what the press is supposed to do. Those are the reasons to have a federal shield law.

I think in the absence of one, what will happen is we will continue and maybe even a ramped up fashion to see civil contempt cases as well as a threat potentially of jailing as well as the potential seizure without bail.

reporters' knowledge or efforts to force reporters to turn over information. Reporters don't have to do that, but they could face penalties or potentially jail time. So if they work for organizations that don't support them or if they are independent, it puts them in a really precarious situation. And this is all as we enter a period where the incoming administration has shown a desire to fight

fight with the press or to weaponize the public against the press, to turn the press into an enemy. So I think it just makes it a hostile climate for reporters, but wasn't totally unexpected development.

Let's turn to the court starting in New York. On Monday, a jury found Daniel Penny not guilty of criminally negligent homicide and the death of Jordan Neely, a homeless man he put in a chokehold on a New York subway last year. Last week, the jury deadlocked on the charge of manslaughter. Neely's father, Andre Zachary, spoke at a press conference after the verdict. I miss my son. My son didn't have to go through this. I didn't have to go through this either.

Josh, can you remind us about this case and how much it captured national attention also at the time? There's some parallels in terms of the high-profile nature of this case and the one we started this conversation talking about, where there's an element of

I don't want to say vigilante, but like citizen involvement here in the Daniel Penny case, who is intervening in his argument to stop a hostile act by Jordan Neely, but then was captured on video implementing that chokehold for a long period of time. The case hinged in part on dispute over what the cause of death was.

The prosecution, of course, arguing that it was the chokehold and the defense arguing that it was pre-existing conditions or medical conditions that contributed to the death. It was a lightning rod case. It is a lightning rod case. J.D. Vance today announced that he was bringing Daniel Penny with him to the Army-Navy game. It's been kind of latched on to, in particular by conservatives who see this as a pretty clear-cut case of, you know, a disruptive person

And for lack of a better phrase, in their words, a good guy intervening to stop it. And so that this case was very high profile, remains high profile. And it's but it's it's a fraught one, obviously.

In other court news, the satirical news website The Onion is not going to buy Alex Jones' InfoWars yet. We talked about this on The Roundup a few weeks ago. The conspiracy theorist's platform was for sale as part of his bankruptcy case. Jones owes nearly $1.5 billion to the families of the children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting. Amanda, The Onion had won the bankruptcy option for control of the platform in November. Why did

bankruptcy judge Christopher Lopez stop the sale? Essentially two reasons. The judge said that, A, you know, the deal wasn't made in a sufficiently transparent fashion. You know, the onion had been in talks with the Sandy Hook families. And two, that it didn't produce as much money as it could have.

because they had kind of worked out a deal. Now, this doesn't mean that the onion won't be able to complete this transaction. You know, they could, you know, submit a different offer. There could be a different deal worked out that was more transparent and that perhaps involved some more money, you know, or, you know, Jones could figure out a way to hold on to the site and use the proceeds as, you know, going forward to pay down kind of his bill. Or, you know, the trustees involved in the case could figure out a different path forward.

And so, you know, those are the three kind of things that could happen going forward. This doesn't mean that the sale won't happen to the onion, but it's on hold for now. Let's go to one final court story, which is about media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who really wants his oldest son to inherit his media empire. But as part of his divorce proceedings decades ago, control is set to be split equally between his four children.

This week, a Nevada commissioner ruled against Murdoch's attempts to change his line of succession. Josh, why did this happen? I mean, this case is hinged in part on the allegation that Murdoch is trying to basically enshrine power in one child's hands to maintain the sort of right slant of his empire, which of course includes chiefly Fox News, but other elements of

As well, it is straight out of succession. It's wild. It's just incredible. But right now, this ruling will leave open the question of the future of the empire and whether he can try other tactics, other maneuvers to consolidate power in Lachlan Murdoch's hands or not. And if not, that throws into future the question of this sort of, you know,

conservative mainstream media ecosystem at a time when, of course, many of Trump's allies are

I'm the only person in America who has not watched Succession, but yes, Margaret.

I'm the other person because it's like we're living it every day. Why do we need to watch it? So, but yes, this seems like big, dramatic ideas. Who's going to control the, does Rupert Murdoch himself get to redirect the political lean of Fox News or ensure it remains how he wants it to? But in the end, it really comes down to legal matters. And this was, the New York Times originally obtained sealed documents related to this finding. This is an irrevocable trust issue.

And what the reporting found is that the probate commissioner said that Murdoch was acting in bad faith and trying to change it. An irrevocable trust means you can't change it. Irrevocable. Yeah. So you can give – when you're initiating a decision with a trust, you can give control to one of your kids or direct whatever you want to. But once you enter into an irrevocable trust –

What it said is that there are four children involved in this, and when you try to steer it to one, this is where the pushback comes in. So what is going to happen to the future of Fox News and in the entire Murdoch media empire? Some of that may depend on the outcome of this case. Some of it may depend on viewers' habits on streaming. We're seeing a lot of news this week and the week before about

how parent companies are splitting control of linear and streaming. Some of this is even bigger than any one man. But the ultimate outcome of this case could have immediate, short, and near-term implications for the political lean of Fox News. Okay, all hour I've been waiting to talk about this story about the drones in New Jersey.

We are going to talk about this where suspicious drones are still flying, have been seen since mid-November. On Wednesday, a New Jersey state lawmaker was briefed by defense officials about the mysterious drones. Amanda, what do we know about this? And apparently they're also maybe even spotted over Connecticut now, too?

Yeah, so we don't know what 10, and I actually didn't know until recently this had been going on, like you said, for weeks. It's just, it's starting to come into the national consciousness, I guess, in the next, in the last week or so. But yeah, so people in Connecticut have spotted them. People in Pennsylvania have spotted them as well. They're apparently about the size of cars, or that's what they appear to be. Now, you had the national security... It's not your drone that you can buy on Amazon. Yeah, exactly. National security spokesman John Kirby said this week, you know, that...

These are all being flown lawfully. They're actually manned aircrafts.

You have local lawmakers who aren't as convinced and are saying they need more information and they still see it as a threat. It's kind of a mixed bag in Congress. You know, there's a couple senators who have started asking for more information. But this is just, you know, a story that's, again, kind of capturing the national consciousness because there are apparently dozens of flying objects that are quite large above New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut.

that people haven't been told what they are. And I think in the absence of information and confirmation, you know, people start to come up with theories on their own. Josh, did you have Senator Blumenthal on your bingo card for saying these drones should be shot down? Uh,

for 2020? No, this whole story, it's like, I love it. It's like straight out of Scorsese. It's incredible. And, you know, we've also had Democrats calling for the feds to do something. And I have to say, it really wasn't on the radar at the start of the week. We started asking about it

And there was just not, it just had not reached. You were asking at the event. Okay, folks about it. Yeah, the press had been asking, sort of poking around about it this week on it. And there's a couple elements here. One is the question of whether these are going near restricted areas. Trump has a property in New Jersey. So that's like one element of it. So is there a foreign involvement here? The NSC said yesterday there's no, quote, foreign nexus that

that they know of here and also that it doesn't appear that these are launching from ships offshore that might confuse sort of the origin on it. They basically really downplayed it and called it essentially some sort of conspiracy theory. Like mass hysteria. Right, right, right. And so now, you know, but now everyone's going outside every night because it's a thing and they're looking up in the sky and they're seeing planes that might have been there anyway. And, you know, it's feeding its own thing here. So it's...

It is amusing, and as of now, authorities are saying that it is precisely that. But, of course, the reason why people are so invested is the question of if it's more than that. And it does bring up little issues. Kirby has said that the legislation is out of date in terms of how the feds can respond to things like that if it was, let's say,

A drone either operated by a foreign power or even made in a place like China, for instance, where the data being sucked up by the drone might itself be a threat. And we haven't even talked about UFOs. Well, I actually was just going to say, Josh said he's thinking of Scorsese. I've been thinking of Close Encounters and of the tones. You're going to go out and play the music to them, Margaret? Yes, all day. But

Look, I think there are, yes, there are a lot of Americans who are interested in UFOs and believe they've seen UFOs. There was the whole Chinese spy balloon thing. But there's something else, too, which is that drones are an increasing everyday part of our lives. Not drones the size of cars, not as far as we know. But if a local mayor in New Jersey can't get his police helicopter up in the sky and figure out whose drone it is,

maybe we actually do have a problem. Like, even if this isn't a problem, and maybe we don't know if it's a problem or not, but even if this isn't, the fact that there's that much mystery about something that...

Look, Americans in local jurisdictions and in national jurisdictions, authorities, the systems that are meant to protect us, they should have knowledge of what's in the sky at any given point in time. And if this story is illustrating that they don't and that there's no way to quickly find out, I actually think we do have a problem. Well, and also there's the communication, right, between local officials, state officials, security officials. Josh, I see you nodding your head. Maybe that's not quite established well at this point.

Unestablished. It's not even established. It's hot potato right now. And I mean, that's maybe a bad analogy. It seems like no one had their hand on the potato at all. And just no one could figure out whose authority it was. You had the governor speaking out publicly. I should note, some things, like Trump is a bit unpredictable sometimes, to say the least. So this could be something that ends up on his radar. He likes Jersey. He thinks he can win Jersey. Who knows if he'll take it up?

All right. We'll have to end the hour on that with our wonderful panel. Thanks to Josh Wingrove, White House reporter with Bloomberg News, Amanda Becker, Washington correspondent at The 19th, and Margaret Tallev, director of Syracuse University's Institute for Democracy, Journalism, and Citizenship. Thank you all for joining us. We'll be back with the Global Edition for the News Roundup after this quick break. Stay with us.

On the Embedded Podcast from NPR, what is it like to live under years of state surveillance? So many people have fear, fear of losing their families. For years, the Chinese government has been detaining hundreds of thousands of ethnic Uyghurs. This is the story of one family torn apart. Listen to The Black Gate on the Embedded Podcast from NPR.

Every weekday, Up First gives you the news you need to start your day. On the Sunday story from Up First, we slow down. We bring you the best reporting from NPR journalists around the world, all in one major story, 30 minutes or less. Join me every Sunday on the Up First podcast to sit down with the biggest stories from NPR.

And now let's turn to headlines around the globe with the international portion of our roundup. Here in studio, Joyce Cottam is senior news editor at Al Monitor and author of the China Middle East newsletter. Hi, Joyce. Hi, Naila. Great to be with you. Indira Lakshmanan, ideas and opinions editor, U.S. News & World Report. Thanks also for being here, Indira. Great to be here. Joining us from Dubai, Greb Kralstrom is Middle East correspondent for The Economist. Hi, Greg. Good to be with you again.

Let's start where much of the world's attention has been this week, Syria. On Sunday, the Islamist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, also known as HTS, made their final lightning march to Damascus after claiming Aleppo, Hama, and Homs. And in a matter of hours, the capital was theirs. The fall of Assad has brought uncertainty, but in Syria, also joy. I can't stop crying of joy. I can't stop crying.

Three days I'm crying. Our feeling is a feeling of relief, of freedom. The people, the population are very relieved.

After more than five decades, the country is no longer ruled by the Assad dynasty. Bashar al-Assad and his family are in Russia, have been granted political asylum. And the country that has been torn apart by civil war since the 2011 uprising is now facing immense uncertainty about its future and place in the region. Syria is now under a caretaker prime minister, Mohammad al-Bashir.

We're joined now by special correspondent for the PBS NewsHour, Leila Milana Allen, who's joining us live from Aleppo, Syria. Hi, Leila. Hi. Can you tell us what the past few days in Damascus and now Aleppo, where you are, have been like? What are you hearing from Syrians?

Everyone is pretty overwhelmed because, of course, people who were in the northwest, in the rebel-held area, knew this was coming. I was speaking to an HDS fighter yesterday. They'd been planning this for several years, but it really came as such a shock to everyone else.

The fact that this country was liberated from the Assad regime in 12 days after nearly 14 years of a civil war. And people are bewildered and utterly overjoyed. What that woman was saying just there, that's what you hear from everyone. Just shock and joy. People can't stop crying. They can't quite believe it.

they're so keen to run up to you, to tell you their full name, to get their picture taken, to hug you. Which was not the case before, Leila, in terms of sharing full names. Which was absolutely not the case before. So I managed to get into regime health Syria undercover last year. And the entire reporting process is about keeping everybody as secret as you possibly can, never releasing anybody's name, their location, protect

everyone you speak to whispered phone calls in the middle of the night. That couldn't have changed more now. Everybody has an opinion. Everyone wants to tell you their story. They're so delighted to see foreigners in the country again, people swarming on the streets and really just so delighted at the prospect of

a free Syria now. Now, that's not to say that people don't understand that there are a lot of problems here. You know, first off, services. I mean, the country's in dire straits. The economy is in complete chaos. Sanctions have been such a disaster for years and they haven't really impacted the government. They have impacted

acted, the people. When I was here last year, they were saying to me, why do people hate us so much? What have we done to them that they wouldn't allow us to make a living, the West? They wouldn't allow us to rebuild our homes after this war. So that needs to be fixed as quickly as possible. They need investment. They need to rebuild. So much of this country is devastated. I've been walking through the Damascus suburbs, the Homs suburbs, the Aleppo suburbs. I mean, just miles and miles of complete destruction.

concrete with wires hanging out of it. These were people's homes. Hundreds of thousands of people who want to return home. We've seen them flooding across the border from Lebanon, flooding across the border from Turkey. They're desperate to come home, Syrian refugees, but they need a country they can return to. Services need to get up and running quickly. Those were all linked to the government, of course. So electricity is a problem. Internet's a problem. Power's a problem. There's no petrol in the country. So it's just selling. It sounds like, Leila, yeah, all of the basic legal

All of the sort of the everyday, day-to-day living is a challenge. I want to ask you, a lot of people have heard this week about said Naya prison, the notorious prison. You were able to be there. Can you share with our listeners what you took away from your visit?

So, Sednaya is infamous for people who know about Syria, people who've reported on Syria. It is the network of these secret prisons where the Assad regime carried out torture, where they would detain people and disappear them and their families would never hear from them again, or they sometimes would, but it would be used as a kind of mechanism to manipulate the family, essentially.

But Sednaya is sort of the most famous and the most terror striking into people's hearts. Going into this compound,

It's just clear the sheer level of horror, of degradation of human lives. You walk around this place. It's several floors high. It's got three branches. It's got basements. You can see from the number of blankets and food items and medical equipment. I mean, clearly people who were injured were here all over the floor in these cells. How many people were being held in?

There are marks inside the solitary confinement cells, tiny cells in the basement where people have tried to keep track of the days. They tried to give themselves a sense of the outside world. Multiple different torture rooms where you can see implements that were used to torture people, where you can see the remnants of people who were held in these places, a wall full of nooses where public executions took place. And the most horrific of all, we found the bodies of

multiple inmates which had been stored at the hospital next door to Saniya and were moved to a Damascus hospital where families were coming to try and claim their dead. These thousands of families who are looking for detainees who haven't been released in these prison releases, who they believe are still somewhere, they're praying they're alive in a prison that hasn't been discovered. But the reality, of course, is that many of them will have been killed and some families now are simply hoping to at least find a body that they can bury. Mm-hmm.

Laila, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. You can catch all of her incredible reporting from Syria on the PBS NewsHour. Laila, do take care. Please stay safe. Thank you. Joyce, you've covered Syria since the war began in 2011. We were just hearing Laila talk about the refugees, six million refugees living outside the country. What are you hearing from people this week? How are you reflecting on all of this?

To be honest with you, Naila, it's still there's a feeling of immense shock that this has happened, that a regime... It's just been a week.

just collapsed, disintegrated over the course of 14 days of fighting. So what we're seeing, what we're hearing from Syria, from refugees, from others is there are two pictures here. There is, yes, a sense of immense joy, of jubilation, of celebration that, you know, free at last people can go to the squares of

Damascus of Homs, of Daraa can dance in the street, can just, you know, say whatever they want politically for now. But there's also another picture, and that's when you talk to minorities in Syria. And some in the, you know, in Damascus neighborhoods, some haven't left their homes yet.

They're afraid of what's going to come next. There is a sense of uncertainty. There is a sense of vulnerability that is this going to be an Islamic theocracy or are we really going to build a liberal civilian order? So we don't know yet. And that, in a sense, is what's keeping...

Some refugees from returning. Right. Because it's just been a week. And I think people are trying to assess the situation. It's just been a week. And then you have also a flow of refugees in the other directions. There are some Syrian military, Assad military forces that have escaped Iraq. Some are coming to Lebanon because they're also afraid of retribution or what might happen to them next.

Greg, as we're hearing Joyce talk about how fast these massive gains happened, we know longtime Syria watchers were caught off guard. It was a huge shock for a regime that once held steadfast support from Iran and Russia. Greg, can we get to what went wrong for the Assad regime and what went right for the HTS rebels?

The way I'm thinking about it is what went right for the rebels was they were prepared. First of all, they've invested a lot in building up their military capabilities in recent years and in training for a big offensive. But beyond that, they were motivated, right? They were motivated to overthrow this regime that has done all of these atrocious things for many years. They were motivated to go back home. Many of the rebels fighting with HDS had been displaced from other parts of Syria and they haven't been able to go back to their homes yet.

And then on the other side, you had a Syrian army that just didn't want to fight anymore, that has not seen any sort of peace dividend from Assad surviving the civil war of a decade ago.

that is treated very badly. The Syrian army barely paid, barely fed. And then when you finish your military service, you go back into civilian life in a country where the economy is ruined and it's very, very hard to try and make a living. So they didn't want to fight. When it came down to it, as the rebels pushed into Aleppo, many Syrian soldiers made what was a very logical, self-interested decision, just not to fight on behalf of this regime and to say,

Whatever misgivings they may or may not have about the idea of a revolution, the idea of rebel governance, it couldn't be any worse than what they had lived with the regime.

Within hours of the regime collapse, U.S. CENTCOM announced airstrikes of more than 75 ISIL targets across Syria. President-elect Trump has said the U.S. should stay out of the war in Syria. Indira, does this situation present here this geopolitical problem for the U.S. because the U.S. has long supported Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces in the country? As we're talking about this power vacuum and what comes next,

What moves do you anticipate a new and incoming Trump administration making, even though right now Trump is saying the U.S. should stay out of this? Right, Nyla, as everything in the Middle East and especially everything in the Middle East when it comes to a new administration, it's complicated. President-elect Trump, as you said, he posted on his true social network in all caps, the United States should have nothing to do with it. This is not our fight. Let it play out. Do not get involved.

But what he says rhetorically is not the same as what he has done in practice. And partly this was true in his first administration because even though he had the same isolationist, anti-interventionist rhetoric, which had appealed to many Trump voters who just wanted the U.S. out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, out of foreign crises, at the same time he has surrounded himself, at least in the past,

with pretty conventional military and foreign policy leaders who did want to keep U.S. hands and interests involved in what was happening in the Middle East. So don't forget that back in 2017, it was Trump who

who diverged from this non-interventionist point of view by launching 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian airfield after Assad allegedly ordered a chemical weapons attack that killed scores of civilians. And, you know, he said he wanted to take U.S. forces out of Syria. Right now, the United States has 900 troops in Syria whose main mission it is to counter Islamic State

in their degraded desert camps. But in practice, U.S. presence on the ground has gone beyond this, helping to block a weapons transit route for Iran, which used Syria as a way to ship weapons to Hezbollah. We'll talk about that, I'm sure, but that has certainly weakened Iran now that that is going to dry up.

and also helping, as you say, the Kurds, the Syrian Democratic Forces, the Kurdish and Arab allies of the U.S. who control that territory. So I

I don't think it's going to be as simple as him pulling out those 900 troops. Again, he said all through his four years in office, I want to pull out those troops. He never actually pulled out the troops. I think listeners may remember that he had an incredibly denigrating thing that he used to say about Syria in his first term. He called it a land of sand and death.

you know, very dismissive. But I think the people around him, including Marco Rubio, his nominee for secretary of state, are going to remind him that it's a very important diplomatic route, trade route, and a way to try to stabilize relations in the region.

Joyce, as we're talking about just sort of what remains now in Syria, we've talked about Kurdish forces bordering Turkey, HTS, the rebels, and the Alawite forces we have not talked about. Those are the sort of three major groups.

What does a power vacuum mean for these three players inside Syria? So I would add two groups to that. The southern rebels, those are near Jordan, near Israel.

These are believed to be less Islamist than than HDS. And they're the ones who took over initially over Damascus and part of this coalition with HDS, part of this coalition. And then you have, of course, the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Forces affiliated with the U.S., with the Kurdish forces against ISIS.

Those are in the northeast and in the northwest. So all these groups are now trying to move from, you know, military victories to politics. How is that going to happen? Are they getting along? Not exactly. There are different asks on the table. There are negotiations that are happening. Turkey is mediating. The U.S. is mediating, too, between the SDF and

and HTS to avoid more fissures and to avoid just more divide within the rebel group. We saw yesterday that the SDF agreed to the new Syrian flag that the rebels have. But in the way forward, and as a new prime minister takes office,

a charge in Syria of the transition government, Mohammed al-Bashir. He's with HDS. He was the head of their salvation government in the north. We're going to see what many hope is a smooth transition to elections in March.

And you think it could be as soon as March? They're saying, they're hoping it could be as soon as March. Others are saying, no, it's going to take 18 months. But what we're hearing from HTS now, it's in power, is very different from HTS that was announced

a jihadist movement in Idlib. What you're hearing from Bashir himself is we want to assure minorities this is not going to be a forced Sharia law. We're not going to force you to cover your head. We're not going to...

force you to go to schools on a certain day or enforce a certain weekend. So in theory, it's... That's what they're saying now. That's what they're saying now. It's reassuring for the different mosaic that's in Syria. But we'll have to wait. We'll have to wait and see. The political dimension might be harder to bring the southern rebels on the same par with HTS and

Jordan is holding a meeting on Saturday with different Arab counterparts and Turkey in order to just help with this roadmap and help with a smooth transition forward for Syria. But a lot of things have to be figured out first.

As we talk about the broader ramifications, we saw reporting from The Washington Post this week that found Syrian rebels who toppled Assad received drones and other support from Ukrainian intelligence operatives. Greg, Ukrainian intelligence are believed to have sent about 20 experienced drone operators. About 150 first-person view drones to the rebel headquarters.

quarters four or five weeks ago. That's not a massive number, but it's notable. What does this mean for Ukraine and Russia, Greg?

It's notable, and not just the number of drones, but the drone operators and perhaps the training and the expertise they might have provided. I mean, one of the things that was striking watching this rebel offensive unfold was the way they did seem to be making good use of drones, both for surveillance of regime positions and also for...

combat. So it did seem like they were getting some help, some expertise from outside with drones. But I think, as you say, it's not just about the direct support that's being provided. It's a sign of how interlinked this conflict and the war in Ukraine have become. I mean, one of the reasons why Russia wasn't able to provide more support for the Assad regime in the way that it helped

nine years ago when it intervened to really save the Assad regime in 2015 and push back rebels, was because Russia has drawn down its military position in Syria since it invaded Ukraine in 2022. It's pulled by various estimates between 1,000 and 2,000 troops.

out of Syria, the air wing that it had based at an air base near the Syrian coast, that has shrunk because some of those planes had to be sent to fight in Ukraine as well. So there was a diminished Russian military presence on the ground there and it left

Russia in a worse position to help Assad respond to this offensive. And clearly, Ukraine thought it would be beneficial for them to provide some support and to do something that has now really diminished Russia, I think, has been a huge blow to Russian prestige in the Middle East. We're also wondering what the implications are for Lebanon. Syria under President Bashar al-Assad was part of the connection between the Iranians and the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group.

Syria was, as we've been talking about, a key player for the transfer of weapons and ammunition from the group. So how could Iran's power in the region shift now? Here's Nanar Hawash, senior analyst for Syria at the Crisis Group, speaking to 1A on Monday. I would say Iran came to peace with the fact that it's going to lose Syria and Iran.

The Assad survival is going to be extremely costly for Iran and it cannot continue doing that anymore.

Indira, where are we seeing Iran here? What are some potential moves we should be watching for? Well, no question, first of all, that the loss of Syria out of the hands of Bashar al-Assad is a big loss for Iran. And remember that Iran was pumping tons of money and support towards Assad for the last, you know, more than a decade.

So this is a huge loss for Iran. Their supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, actually spent an hour talking on Wednesday to people in Tehran, listening to an address in which he complained that the fall of the Assad regime was the direct result of blows from Israeli forces, which Israel dealt to Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran. He also blamed the United States for

It was interesting because it's sort of like a mirror of the talking points that Israel itself gave. But, you know, essentially they're not happy about it. And going forward, they might look to building up their nuclear capability because they've lost their lifeline to Syria.

The fall of President Assad has renewed the search for American freelance journalist Austin Tice, a former Marine. He was detained at a checkpoint in a suburb of Damascus in August of 2012. Here's Austin's brother, Jacob Tice, on all things considered earlier this week.

Well, the latest information that we have is that Austin is alive. He is in Syria. And we are advocating, as we have been doing these last couple of days, that anyone who can help bring him home, who can help get him back to his family, do whatever they can to make that happen.

In 2022, U.S. President Joe Biden accused Syria of holding Tice and demanded that the government of Assad release him. Another American was found this week, initially thought to be Austin, but he was later identified as Peter Travis Timmerman, a Christian pilgrim from Missouri who was in captivity for seven months.

Joyce, I had a chance to meet with some of the Tice siblings. They've been here in Washington all week advocating for their brother. It is heartbreaking to hear the anguish in their voice when they talk about what they have gone through. We did hear new leadership in Syria comment on Austin Tice. What did they say?

They said they're ready to help. They're ready to cooperate and coordinate in efforts to find him, which is really the best point we've been at for the Tice family, for all the efforts to find Austin. Our reporter Elizabeth Hagerdurn is

just reporting today that the U S envoy for hostages is in Beirut following Austin, uh, Tyson's, uh, case trying to, to just look as these prisons are being emptied, just to leave no, uh, stone unturned as to, to find, uh, Austin Tyson. Uh, the other thing you have separate groups, including the Syrian emergency task force are on the ground in, uh,

And in Syria, they helped yesterday identify Travis Timmerman, the guy from Missouri who was found. So there is hope. There is no sign that Austin could have been transferred out of Syria, which is very good, too. We know from his family, from U.S. intelligence, that they believe he is alive. So we are really hoping for good news in the coming days.

Let's move to Israel, the country's domestic political drama that was center stage before the October 7th attacks is back in the news. That's because Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu took the stand in his criminal corruption trial on Tuesday. The trial was moved from Jerusalem to a special underground courtroom in Tel Aviv because of fears of security threats. Greg, what did Netanyahu say during his time on the stand? And how extraordinary was this to have a sitting prime minister taking the stand in his own trial?

It's a case that has gripped Israelis for years now. It's been going on since 2019. There are three separate cases against Netanyahu. Two of them are almost too Byzantine to explain, but they're basically cases involving the media and allegations that

Netanyahu offered favors to media moguls in Israel in exchange for favorable coverage. And then the third case is a more conventional, grubby corruption case where he accepted cigars and champagne and jewelry and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from wealthy benefactors also involved.

in exchange for favors. When he took the stand, you know, predictably, he denies all of these charges. He says, as he has said for many years now, that this whole thing is a witch hunt and the deep state is out to get him. And he sounds very Trumpian when he talks about these cases. And at times, his testimony, it ventured into the surreal. You know, he has spent months

trying to avoid taking the stand. First, he claimed that he couldn't because there were security concerns. As you say, they had to move it to this courtroom because he said if he took the stand in a regular courtroom, Iranian-backed militias might try to attack the court with drones. The court found an accommodation for that. Then Netanyahu tried to say he didn't have time to take the stand. He would love to testify, but he

you know, I'm very busy running the country, so I can't make time for this. The court rejected that. He spent months trying to avoid this moment. When he finally did take the stand on Tuesday earlier this week, he said, you know what, I've been waiting for eight years for this, and I'm happy to be here to clear my name and

He wasn't happy to be there. He desperately wanted to avoid being there. But now that he's there, he's going to make this into something about how everyone is out to get him. Prosecutors, police, the entire Israeli state is trying to undermine his rule. Greg, what are the potential outcomes here?

I think it's going to be some time before there is an outcome. When you talk to legal experts in Israel, they say, you know, it has taken five years to get to this point where he's on the stand. It's probably going to be another year or two, at least, before this case is

comes to a resolution, he could face jail time for these charges. And more importantly, these are considered sort of serious corruption offenses in Israel, where if a prime minister is convicted of these sorts of charges, he can't run for office again. He can't run for the Knesset in Israel again. So if he is convicted, this is likely to mean the end of his political career. But before we get to that point, he's likely to face a much more immediate question of

his right-wing coalition partners threatening to leave the coalition, questions around whether or not he's going to accept the ceasefire in Gaza. That's the more immediate political problem for him. This is still, I think, several years off. National security officials from the outgoing Biden administration flew to the Middle East this week. We saw Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Jordan and Turkey for talks around Syria's

We also saw National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan visiting Israel, which a spokesperson said was for meetings about the release of hostages and a ceasefire deal for Gaza. Indira, as we are in these final few weeks of the Biden administration, what are their main goals before Donald Trump takes office?

Look, not surprisingly, the Biden administration wants to have some final wins on the board. And a clear one would be getting a hostage release deal in Gaza and Israel and trying to bring a ceasefire or a permanent ending to Israel's 14-month war in the Gaza Strip.

You know, I think there's no reason they feel that that should wait until Donald Trump takes office. If you look back to Jimmy Carter, you know, who right after Ronald Reagan was sworn in, suddenly the Iranian hostages, the U.S. hostages in Iran were released. Obviously, that wasn't done by Reagan, but it happened earlier.

once Reagan was taking power. So I think, you know, the Biden administration has been working on this for more than a year. They want to get it done. You mentioned Tony Blinken being in Jordan and Turkey. The Secretary of State also today is in Iraq. That was a visit that hadn't been announced in advance. But I think...

you know, he and Jake Sullivan, the national security advisor, are tag teaming through the Middle East, trying to, you know, get things into as clean a position as possible, particularly with Syria, you know, exploding and trying to make sure that there is a clean follow-up. They want Syria to be as democratic and peaceful as possible. So they're trying to line up all their allies from Jordan, Turkey, Syria,

You know, Lebanon, you know, Iraq, of course. So I think, you know, the main question is a hostage deal to release those remaining hostages. There's some 100 of them, about 60 of them are thought to be alive. Get those people out.

of Gaza and that war. But for sure, they're also trying to follow up on what is going on with Syria and Israel. Let's not forget, we didn't talk about this, but Israel has sent troops into Syria and seized a former buffer zone that was demilitarized since 1974. So there are a lot of pieces moving around on the chessboard right now.

Let's have one final headline from the region. On Thursday, Israel killed at least 43 Palestinians in airstrikes across Gaza. A strike on a post office in a displaced persons camp in central Gaza killed at least 30 people and wounded 50 more. And two Israeli airstrikes near aid convoys killed 15 people.

Israel said those people were Hamas militants targeting a humanitarian aid shipment, while Hamas and medics in Gaza said those killed were part of a force meant to guard aid trucks that have been repeatedly attacked by armed gangs. Meanwhile, the U.N. General Assembly voted to approve a resolution for an immediate, unconditional, and permanent ceasefire in Gaza. The resolution is not binding, and this time the U.S. was the only G7 country to oppose the vote.

Now to two stories we're following up on the African continent. The war in Sudan between the army and the RSF, Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group, worsened this week. Dozens of people were killed, including 100, by an army air raid attack on a market the army says it was targeting the RSF.

And Ghana voted in a new leader in an election focused on the country's cost of living crisis. Former President John Mahama won a landslide victory against a vice president of the current ruling party. More than 100 people were arrested after the election for looting and vandalism, many of them supporters of the new president. This week, 1A recapped many of the democratic elections that happened around the world in 2024, including Ghana. You can find that discussion online at the1a.org.

Let's turn to South Korea. On Thursday, embattled President Yoon Suk-yool took a defiant tone after surviving an impeachment vote over his short-lived martial law declaration. We must prevent the forces and criminal groups that have led the paralysis of government administration and disorder of national constitution from taking over the state administration and threatening the future of the Republic of Korea no matter what. I will fight to the end.

This change in tone comes after Yoon apologized last week for his martial law declaration. Protests against the president are growing. His own ruling party has said he should resign or be impeached. The opposition Democratic Party is calling for another impeachment vote on Saturday. Greg, what's the likelihood Yoon survives that?

It's looking unlikely. I mean, he made it through this first vote earlier this week because his own People's Power Party boycotted the vote. There weren't enough members to approve it. But the party, as you say, called for a transition of power, called for him to step down. And so you have this very bizarre situation where he is still technically the president, but he doesn't have any political authority. No one takes you seriously as the president if your own party

thinks that you should step down. And he gave a very bizarre speech yesterday accusing the opposition Democratic Party of trying to turn South Korea into a drug den and a paradise for foreign spies. And he accused them of running what he called a parliamentary dictatorship. It was a very...

odd sort of ranting and raving speech. And so we have this call for another impeachment vote tomorrow. There's not only political pressure on him, but there have been protests. There has been popular mobilization in favor of impeachment as well. So it does seem like

Whereas he managed to get through the first vote by the skin of his teeth, he's less likely to do so this time just because he has ended up making his presidency and making the country somewhat of a laughingstock with this failed coup attempt. And that is not a position you want to be in as a head of state.

We've been talking about Antony Blinken. He's been all over, including at defending President Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan during a hearing before the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee this week. Let's hear what he had to say. I firmly believe the president's decision to withdraw from Afghanistan was the right one. American troops are no longer fighting and dying in Afghanistan.

The American people are safer and more secure. In September, the committee voted along party lines for Blinken to be held in contempt of Congress after a standoff over his appearance before the panel. Indira, in September, the Foreign Affairs Committee released a report stating the Biden administration had misled the American public about the withdrawal from Afghanistan. What stood out to you about what happened this week now that the hearing has happened?

Yeah, well, first of all, it was striking and unusual for the Secretary of State to be heckled by members of the public who were watching this hearing in the public hearing room. Protesters who were, you know, of course, rightfully upset about U.S. service members who died during the pullout, not to mention all the Afghans who died and the crisis of what happened there in Afghanistan in August 2021. At the same time,

He said he held a very firm line. And remember, Antony Blinken is a long, long time advisor to President Biden, including when he was vice president for eight years under President Obama. And he said, you know, President Biden didn't really face a choice.

It was a choice between ending the war and pulling out or escalating us. Don't forget that the Taliban had been increasing in power and, you know, basically swept through. This was the country's longest war that the United States had been engaged in. And he said we didn't have a choice. And he also pointed out that the first Trump administration was the one who made the deal with the Taliban for the pullout.

and that the Taliban was not abiding by the conditions of that Doha agreement that they had signed with the Trump administration. They weren't abiding by those conditions. So Blinken said, therefore, it was impossible to do it in an orderly fashion that they wished could have been done. Well, we're talking about Taliban control of Afghanistan, which continues a new order from the Taliban, bans women from studying or working in the medical field,

Greg, what does this latest phase of Taliban control look like for the people of Afghanistan?

It keeps getting more and more restrictive for women. There was a briefing yesterday from the UN special representative for Afghanistan who was going through, she was speaking to ambassadors at the Security Council and going through all of the restrictions that have been imposed over the past few years. It's been more than 1,200 days, she said, since girls have been able to access opportunities.

education beyond sixth grade in Afghanistan. There have been so-called vice inspectors who have been sent by the government not just into public spaces, but into private businesses, into mosques, into shopping areas,

to look for women who aren't dressed properly or considered to be behaving improperly. There was this bizarre edict that came down a few weeks ago telling women not to raise their voices in public. So the space for women, both in public and in private, to have any sort of a normal life continues to shrink in ways that, you know, I'm not sure anyone could have imagined a few years ago.

Joyce, as we're talking about Afghanistan, what are you seeing here as we're talking about this new face of the country? No, I would totally agree. It's a miserable record on human rights and women's rights. But when you look regionally, when you look at how international actors are addressing Taliban, the Taliban have won.

And we're seeing more acceptance of the Taliban regionally. They've been traveling to—they go to Qatar regularly, to the UAE, to Russia. The Chinese are talking to them. They've immensely cut down on corruption in the country, on the level of terrorism, on drug trafficking. So while we see, yeah, of course, you know, the women's rights records and everything is just terrible—

The other side of things point to, you know, a government that is slowly gaining legitimacy. And diplomacy, it sounds like, opening up diplomatic ties and relationships. Especially with China, too, that's just opening to them. They've appointed an ambassador and they've met with the members of Taliban on several instances in Kabul.

Let's move to Europe. History was restored in Paris this week as the 19th century Notre Dame de Paris reopened after a devastating fire destroyed the medieval cathedral in 2019. Prince William, President-elect Donald Trump, First Lady Joe Biden, and Ukraine's President Zelensky were among the thousands that witnessed the opening ceremony. Reservations are estimated to have cost more than $760 million.

Also this week, a new prime minister in France, President Emmanuel Macron named Francis Bayrou to the post earlier today. Bayrou, a longtime politician and ally in Macron's centrist coalition, is France's fourth PM this year and will form a new government. The previous prime minister, Michel Barnier, resigned last week after a no-confidence vote for his coalition, the first such vote in 60 years.

Okay, we've got a few minutes before we are wrapping up this hour where we have covered lots of things. Joyce, what is in your notebook? What stories did we miss? What do you want to talk about? I mean, obviously the situation in Syria, but one thing we're looking at is Lebanon and the aftermath of Syria. There is a feeling of euphoria in Lebanon. You're seeing a lot of people

even with the Israel war, everything happening, booking their tickets, wanting to go there on holiday. So we're following that side of the story and how things could look better for Lebanon as Assad is gone, as Hezbollah is weakened in the country, and there's a push for reconstruction.

Yeah, I am looking at the sort of overlap between what's happening in Syria and what's happening in Europe. Let's not forget that Europe opened its doors to Syrian refugees, particularly Germany. And there are 975,000 Syrian nationals living in Germany right now, a country of 83 million people.

And immediately as soon as Assad was out, you had right-wing German politicians saying that all these Syrians should go home. Well, you know, more than 75,000 of them became German citizens last year. They naturalized Germany as now their home. And we also don't know what the future is going to be, particularly for minority groups in Syria. So I'm looking at how that is going to affect –

politics in the EU and particularly in Germany, which is home to so many of the refugees. Greg, we really have done a world roundup in this hour, but I want to let you have the last word here about what you're watching or what we missed. And it's Syria for me as well. I think there are some big economic questions in the days and weeks ahead. And Leila alluded to this at the beginning of the hour. One question is basic commodities, things like grain and oil. Syria got those from Russia and Iran, respectively.

during the Assad regime. But those shipments have now been suspended. There are some questions about how Syria is going to pay for wheat, is going to pay for oil, pay for basic essentials. And then there's a big question around sanctions. You talk to experts on sanctions and there's this overwhelming body of sanctions, U.S. sanctions, European sanctions, U.N. sanctions,

many of which should be obsolete now because they were meant to target an Assad regime that is no longer in power. But it's very difficult to remove those once they've been implemented. And as long as they are in effect, they're going to have a really negative effect on Syria's ability to attract aid, to attract investment, to start rebuilding after this long, long war.

Well, a big thanks to all of our panelists today. That was Greg Karlstrom, Middle East correspondent for The Economist. We also were with Joyce Cottom, senior news editor at El Monitor, author of the China Middle East newsletter, and Indira Lakshmanan, ideas and opinion editor for U.S. News and World Report. Mike Kidd is our sound designer and engineer. Chris Castano is our digital editor.

Maya Garg is our senior managing producer. Amanda Williams is our special projects editor. Aileen Humphries is the editor and producer of 1A On Demand. Barb Anguiano produces our podcast. And we thank Matthew Simonson for all his help with the podcast and our on-demand audio. This program comes to you from WAMU, part of American University in Washington, distributed by NPR. I'm Nyla Boudou. Thanks for listening. This is 1A.

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