Podcasts about state department

There are some headlines that truly make me laugh. Here's one:IB Times: Donald Trump reportedly ‘twitching in anger' while calling undocumented migrants, “the worst people”.In case you missed it, the US left Iraq. And no Marines were harmed in the exit strategy. The State Department has revoked more than 250,000 visas since President Donald Trump took office, as the administration continues to crack down on unlawful immigration and increase vetting of who is allowed to visit the United States.When have you ever heard of this happening, except under Trump. The fact that we haven't should trouble you.The revocations were for a variety of violations, including visa holders who violated the terms of their visas, committed crimes, called for violence against the U.S. or Americans, defrauded Americans, abused the immigration system, and endangered national security, a State Department official told Fox News Digital.Among the visas revoked were 2,300 in connection with birth tourism, the practice of pregnant foreign nationals traveling to the U.S. specifically to give birth so their child automatically receives citizenship.Source: FOX NewsWhat number of people have we given visas to over the past decade? The idea that they are all good is ridiculous, particularly when we see what Leftists have allowed some of them to do.How can you get a visa to a country to attend college, then trash the country? Kevin Jackson has been called, the "white-collar" Joe Rogan. Given their similar backgrounds in TV, comedy, and martial arts, it's easy to see why people enjoy Kevin's show so much. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A Tennessee execution was stopped Wednesday night after Christa Pike, a convicted murderer, remained alive after being injected with two doses of a drug meant to end her life. Pike was taken to a medical facility as the state now investigates what went wrong.President Donald Trump kicks off a 32-day campaign blitz across the country, traveling to Texas and Oklahoma Thursday as he seeks to rally supporters to vote in the November midterm election. The president also made a stop at Peterbilt Motors Factory in Denton, Texas, highlighting his administration's efforts to increase domestic manufacturing.The State Department revoked more than 250,000 visas under Trump's second term in office as the administration aims to crack down on foreign nationals who have violated their visa terms and strengthen the vetting process to identify criminals who attempt to enter the United States.

Brazil votes this Sunday, and the Trump administration has spent months trying to tilt the outcome toward far-right presidential candidate Flávio Bolsonaro. Tariffs. Terrorist designations. Revoked visas. Frequent meetings with the Bolsonaro family. Taken alone, each move looks random. Put the pieces together, and a picture emerges: U.S. interference in Brazil's 2026 elections. Over the last year, Trump has met frequently with members of the Bolsonaro family. In June, the State Department put two Brazilian gangs on the terrorist list. Just a few weeks later, Trump shared an article on Truth Social that said Brazil was his next big challenge. Less than a month later, in July, Trump imposed new 25% tariffs on Brazilian goods. In August, Trump revoked the U.S. visa of the Brazilian ambassador. The Brazilian Intelligence Agency recently raised the risk of external influence and interference by the United States in Brazil's 2026 elections to a quote, “critical level.”This is Episode 15 of Under the Shadow, Season 2. Under the Shadow is an investigative narrative podcast series that walks back in time, telling the story of the past by visiting momentous places in the present. Season 2 responds in real time to the Trump administration's onslaught on Latin America.Follow Under the Shadow on Spotify and Apple PodcastsHosted by Latin America-based journalist Michael Fox. This podcast is produced in partnership between The Real News Network and NACLA. It is supported, in part, by Global Exchange.VOTE by October 15: Under the Shadow has been nominated for three podcast Signal Awards. Please consider voting for Under the Shadow and The Real News:https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/craft/best-host-documentaryhttps://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/individual-episodes/craft/most-innovative-audio-experiencehttps://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/individual-episodes/genre/activism-public-service-social-impacthttps://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting#/2026/shows/genre/documentaryPanamerican Dispatch You can check out Michael Fox's new reporting project on Brazil, Panamerican Dispatch. It's a project of The Real News in partnership with Global Exchange. The website is www.panamericandispatch.org.You can also follow us on social media below:Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/padispatch.bsky.socialX x.com/PAdispatchIG instagram.com/padispatchTiktok www.tiktok.com/@padispatchTheme music by Michael Fox's band, Monte Perdido. Monte Perdido's 2024 album Ofrenda is available on Spotify, Deezer, Apple Music, YouTube or wherever you listen to music. Other music from Blue Dot Sessions and Epidemic Sound. Script editing by Heather Gies. Hosted, written, produced, mixed, and edited by Michael Fox.Guests: Alexander MainMaria Martha BrunoIgor FuserResources: Visit Panamerican Dispatch for all of the latest news on BrazilYou can visit Agencia Public for their reporting and analysis about Brazil. Here is Agencia Publica's investigación, Digital Militia. Many thanks to Jake Johnston from the Center for Economic and Policy Research and Maria Martha Bruno, from Agencia Publica, for taking the time to speak with me and for their excellent analysis and insight.You can visit CEPR's Live Tracker on Latin America.You can check out Michael Fox's Patreon.More background… The Beginning: Monroe and migration | Under the Shadow, Episode 1Panama. US Invasion. | Under the Shadow, Episode 13The legacy of Monroe | Under the Shadow, Bonus Episode 4 Support Under the Shadow Please consider supporting this podcast and Michael Fox's reporting on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures, video, and interviews. You can subscribe to Michael Fox's new free speech podcast, The Battle for Free Speech  On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/033olXvh3dLzQFJc1HSd6O?si=7eda46a92fe14894 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-battle-for-free-speech/id1896829044 Or wherever you get your podcasts.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-real-news-podcast--2952221/support.Help us continue producing radically independent news and in-depth analysis by following us and becoming a monthly sustainer.Follow us on:Bluesky: @therealnews.comFacebook: The Real News NetworkTwitter: @TheRealNewsYouTube: @therealnewsInstagram: @therealnewsnetworkBecome a member and join the Supporters Club for The Real News Podcast today!

On this episode of The Table, host Dr. Rick Morton and the full panel, Chelsea Sobolik, Emily Chapman Richards, and Herbie Newell, welcome Lauren McAfee, founder and CEO of Life Collective, PhD student in ethics and public policy, and adoptive mom of three. Lauren shares how her passion for life and adoption began at a family birthday dinner, where an empty seat at the table prompted her and her sister to ask their parents about adopting. That prayerful nudge led to her youngest sister joining the family from China and eventually to Lauren and her husband, Michael, adopting three daughters from China, India, and the U.S. She also recounts how the Hobby Lobby Supreme Court case drew her into national pro-life leadership and inspired the founding of Life Collective. The panel explores the power of collective impact, why unity among like-minded ministries matters, and how churches can build networks that wrap holistic support around vulnerable women, children, and families. Lauren unpacks the Imago Dei as the foundation for both human dignity and our need for community, and she challenges Protestants to think more carefully about the ethics of reproductive technologies. With the State Department reporting intercountry adoption at an all-time low of roughly 800 in FY25, the group tackles the "PR problem" facing international adoption. Drawing on Chelsea's perspective as both an adoptee and adoptive mom, they discuss how Christians can hold grief and hope together, honor adult adoptee voices, and advocate well ahead of the 2027 Hague Special Commission on intercountry adoption. Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and panel introductions 03:40 Lauren's story: adoption, Hobby Lobby, and Life Collective 12:40 Collective impact and unity in the pro-life movement 17:14 The church as a community that lives out the call 21:50 Bioethics, reproductive technology, and the Protestant church 28:01 Intercountry adoption hits an all-time low 34:46 International adoption's PR problem 41:23 Laying down agendas for the bigger vision 47:18 Adult adoptee voices and the 2027 Hague Special Commission 49:51 Closing thoughts Pull up a chair, and subscribe, rate, and review The Table wherever you listen or watch.

What if the biggest stories are the ones nobody in the media wants to touch? Brett Fritz is back with Chad, and this one goes everywhere. A new State Department report on Cuba. Fauci's pardon. The midterms. Election integrity. Gavin Newsom. Tim Walz. Jimmy Kimmel. Celebrity influence. The deep state. The Illuminati. And Brett's belief that what America is watching might be a carefully controlled movie. Chad wants to know whether Donald Trump can actually finish what he started, whether exposing corruption means anything without consequences, and whether rising fuel prices and the cost of living could decide what happens next. Then the conversation leaves politics and heads straight into sports. Transgender athletes in women's competition, Caitlin Clark and the WNBA, the decline of baseball, the steroid era, and why Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens and Pete Rose still belong in Cooperstown. Brett has theories. Chad has questions. As usual, neither one is holding back. This episode features an open conversation about current events and disputed topics. The opinions expressed belong to the individual speakers and may not represent the views of our sponsors or partners. This episode is presented by Jack Daniel's Tennessee Whiskey and brought to you by Mickey Thompson Tires & Wheels, Corning Ford, CamoSpace, GATR Coolers & Drinkware, Jack Link's Protein Snacks, Demerbox, Resistol Hats, Bodyguard Bumpers, Bedslide and ZLINE Appliances.

Alex Snider spent fifteen years inside federal work, in domestic policy, at the State Department, at the World Bank and in the Senate. Then a bicycle accident stopped him, and he came out of it having written a book arguing that you should sometimes be late on purpose.He is careful about what that does and does not mean. He is not a productivity guest, he does not do tips, and when Bart asks him for the one thing people should do to slow down, he says he cannot answer that and will not try. His argument is that how you receive an idea is so different from how anyone else does that handing out instructions is the problem rather than the fix.What he offers instead is a distinction. Speed is not the enemy and slowness is not the goal. The question is whether you slow down enough to notice which one a moment is actually asking for. He calls the other half of it emotional punctuality: the difference between having shown up for the meeting on time and having actually been present for the person in it.The most useful thing he says is also the most uncomfortable. He says he is not a good person when he is rushing, and that the book is about the kind of people all of us become under a sense of scarcity and urgency. Then he says the part most authors leave out, which is that he still loses to it. He names another writer whose success makes him feel behind, by name, and says he gets dragged into comparison every single day.Bart matches him, with a story about scrolling LinkedIn on a family holiday in Hawaii, seeing another speaker with more bookings than he had, and his daughter asking him why he was even looking at that now.In this episode:Why he turned down the show's signature question before answering itLearning to skip things rather than add themWhy he refuses to tell anyone how to slow downWhat he noticed about the way Bart filled in, and did not fill in, his own preparationHis brother at the train station, and a phrase worth stealing about tangled netsEmotional punctuality, and what it costs to confuse it with being on timeWhere he politely disagrees with being where your feet areFifteen years in government, and why none of it was mindfulThe bike accident, and what a forced pause actually isThe gap between the person we say we want to be and the person we areABOUT ALEX SNIDERWriter, facilitator and meditation teacher, and a former government strategist. Author of Sometimes You Should Be Late: The quiet rebellion of slowing down in a world obsessed with speed, published by Practical Inspiration Publishing with a foreword by Diana Winston. Co-founder of Mindful Fed, the first government-wide mindfulness community. He writes the Human Bureaucracy column for Psychology Today.Website: https://www.slowmindfulness.comMost People Don't... But YOU Do! is hosted by Bart Berkey, who spent 16 years as a global executive with The Ritz-Carlton and now builds HUMANALITY(tm), a system for making people feel cared for, valued, seen and heard rather than processed.Listen, subscribe and share: https://www.bartaberkey.com/podcast

Matt Brown spent his career inside the national security world without ever wearing a uniform. He came up through grad school and think tank work in DC, earned a TS/SCI clearance, and landed in the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Policy working the counter-WMD mission. From there he moved to the State Department. In August 2023 he walked into a Senate committee, signed his real name, and became a whistleblower on UAP. His report on a program called Immaculate Constellation was later entered into the congressional record. Today he co-runs Vanguard Enterprise, a nonprofit built to support the people who came forward after him. This conversation covers what pushed him over the edge. He says he saw transcripts showing the director of the Pentagon's UAP office was not telling senators the truth. He explains how the counter-WMD mission gave him a legitimate reason to see collection on objects around nuclear assets, and what he saw on those systems, from small orbs going in and out of water to a large triangle and a boomerang that disappeared behind its own light.  We cover the reality of blowing the whistle inside the IC, the retaliation he describes, and the questions he thinks Congress should be asking now.  Today's Sponsors:  Toehold: https://www.shoptoehold.com Use code "Andy" for 15% off at checkout   Ethos:  Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://www.ethos.com/clearedhot. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. Trustpilot rating as of 6/1/2025.

Today on the show: Tyler Kendall from Bloomberg live at The White House recapping yesterday's big A.I. meeting. Political Analyst Stephen Lawson live in studio. Shannon Kingston from ABC News at The State Department previewing Sec. Hegseth's speech. Plus Jim Ryan on the drop in charitable giving. 9am-noon on 95.5 WSB.

Today on the show: Tyler Kendall from Bloomberg live at The White House recapping yesterday's big A.I. meeting. Political Analyst Stephen Lawson live in studio. Shannon Kingston from ABC News at The State Department previewing Sec. Hegseth's speech. Plus Jim Ryan on the drop in charitable giving. 9am-noon on 95.5 WSB.

Today on the show: Tyler Kendall from Bloomberg live at The White House recapping yesterday's big A.I. meeting. Political Analyst Stephen Lawson live in studio. Shannon Kingston from ABC News at The State Department previewing Sec. Hegseth's speech. Plus Jim Ryan on the drop in charitable giving. 9am-noon on 95.5 WSB.

CannCon and Ashe kick off Ash Wednesday joking that they have spent more time together this week than with anyone else, then dive into a college athletics fight that turns into a real discussion about federal overreach and the Commerce Clause. From there it is a genuinely fun segment on the State Department rolling out an at home passport application, complete with Rubio demoing the process and a new gold box that CannCon suspects will troll a lot of people. The heart of the show is CISA releasing its first public election security plan since much of that work was frozen, with a detailed walk through of patching failures, insider risk, and NGO access to voter rolls in real time. They also cover Hegseth trimming senior headquarters positions and a caravan story with an election angle.  

Good afternoon, I'm _ with today's episode of EZ News. Tai-Ex opening The Tai-Ex opened down 150-points this morning from last Thursday's close, at 47,873 on turnover of 13.6-billion N-T. The market lost ground last Thursday - the last day of trading prior to the four-day holiday weekend - as investors digested recent swings in oil prices and ahead of talks between U-S Presidents Donald Trump and China's Xi Jinping at the White House Lai marks Teachers' Day by touting AI teacher training plan President Lai Ching-te has marked Teachers' Day by touting his administration's plans to invest 11-billion N-T by 2029 to strengthen educators' digital and artificial intelligence skills. Taking to Facebook, Lai said the Ministry of Education has launched the "AI Talent Ark Program" to build teaching capabilities and AI-enabled learning environments in elementary and secondary schools. Lai also said his administration will continue listening to educators, improve teaching conditions, and ensure teachers receive the respect and support they deserve (應得) so they can focus on teaching. The Ministry of Education has said its "AI Talent Ark Program" is aimed at enhancing digital teaching materials and developing next-generation A-I learning systems. MOJ admits over 40% of those investigated for human trafficking are not indicted The Ministry of Justice says just over 40-per cent of individuals investigated for human trafficking-related crimes between 2021 and 2025 were indicted. According to a recent ministry report, of the 3,401 people investigated, 1,914 were alleged to have been involved in labor exploitation (剝削), 1,281 in sexual exploitation and 147 in organ harvesting. The report also noted that the number of people investigated for sex trafficking rose from 168 in 2021 to 309 in 2025, while the number of people indicted in organ-harvesting cases remained below 70 each year. Of those investigated, 41-per cent were indicted, 41.4-per cent were not indicted and 0.8-per cent received deferred prosecution. TRUMP DENIES OFFERING ARMS TO CHINA, CONTRADICTING HIS OWN AMBASSADOR'S ACCOUNT US President Donald Trump has denied offering to sell American weapons to China, directly contradicting his own ambassador, who said on Sunday that the president had raised the prospect of arms sales during last week's summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Speaking in the Oval Office on Monday, President Trump said he had never heard of such a proposal (提議) — but then added that China would probably like to buy US equipment because America makes better military hardware. The State Department has issued a formal denial, saying US law prohibits arms sales to China and that no such offer or plan exists. Kate Fisher reports from Washington. Argentina Threatens Legal Action to stop UK Oil Project Off Falkland Islands Argentina is threatening international legal action to stop an oil project off the disputed Falkland Islands. President Javier Milei's office said Monday that the United Kingdom has two weeks to halt work on the Sea Lion development. Otherwise, Argentina says it will ask an international maritime court for an emergency order stopping the project. The court's orders are legally binding, but it cannot force the U.K. to comply (遵守). Britain controls the islands, which Argentina also claims. Oil production is expected to begin in 2028. Milei's push comes as his popularity slips and U.S. President Donald Trump suggests reconsidering U.S. neutrality in the sovereignty dispute. That was the I.C.R.T. EZ News, I'm _. －－－－以下為 SoundOn 動態廣告－－－－ 大人放鬆，小孩開心玩!即刻安排好全家週末。11/1跟中友百貨走進森林，聽戴愛玲現場開唱、玩自然體驗，全程專車輕鬆來回，整天從音樂到森林都充滿新鮮感，把週末升級成親子小旅行。10/31還有民歌重返青春。 立刻點擊「千年之戀」享早鳥優惠再抽來回機票 https://sofm.pse.is/9p3js3 -- Hosting provided by SoundOn

We are letting people in from countries that hate us and letting them be our doctors. A new report shows that 98% of the residency slots went to visa workers — mostly from countries with documented United States Medical Licensing Examination cheating. It makes you wonder why we're importing so many people into our schools. Turns out that the State Department has a program called EducationUSA, which incentivizes foreigners to come and study in America, taking spots away from Americans. Your tax dollars are being used to fund your replacement. It seems like there are only a few people who are willing to rise to the occasion and tackle visa abuse. Senator Tommy “Coach” Tuberville (R-Ala.) is one of them. He put forward a bill called the Americans First Immigration Act; he joins me to talk about how beneficial it will be for the country. American workers are being replaced, and the Democrats are OK with it because it just means more voters for them. Just a couple of weeks until the midterms, and queue the migrant caravan on its way to our country to pack out the Democrat voter base. This is exactly why we need to continue mass deportations. Also a case in point: An illegal immmigrant who overstayed his tourist visa, Chukwunonso Uzoma David Uzoma Eze, stabbed two football players over the weekend. This illegal alien was shielded from being deported. We cannot just focus on illegal aliens with criminal records. They all have to go. ► Watch my newest H-1B investigation here:https://youtu.be/zL7JuOk4nBQ ► Watch my original video featuring Nagarjuna: https://youtu.be/2vVn35456P4?si=WKMmZdkhJpMTquyh ► Catch up on all my H-1B visa investigations: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkJEwf2wliqrtNlYs9D78nmE_Gnja_PpC  ► Email me at saratips@blazemedia.com if you have uncovered potential fraud in your area. ► Subscribe to my second YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/@SaraGonzalesTX?sub_confirmation=1   ► Patriot MobileGo to PatriotMobile.com/SARA and use promo code SARA for a FREE MONTH of service.Timestamps:  00:00 - Untrained Doctors in YOUR Hospitals 07:20 - Importing Foreign Students on Your Dime 15:41 - Shut Down Importing Workers 33:16 - Migrant Surge Just in Time for Midterms Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

An undercover investigation in Mexico City leads to an extraordinary claim about a new way of getting into the United States.Larry Taunton joins Eric to share what he says his investigators recently discovered while looking into changing migrant routes after the U.S. border crackdown. Taunton says an undercover operative was told he could obtain an authentic U.S. biometric visa for $3,000 in just three days and even pay after the visa was issued. Taunton explains why he stopped the operation before putting his source at greater risk and says he intends to pass the information to the State Department for investigation.Eric and Larry also discuss migrant camps in Mexico, Venezuela, Taunton's field reporting in Israel and Gaza, an invitation to embed with Jerusalem police, October 7, Charlie Kirk's memorial, and the danger of accepting sensational conspiracy claims without evidence.⭐ ORDER NOW:Revolution: The Birth of the Greatest Nation in the History of the World

A.M. Edition for Sept. 28. OpenAI models target a U.N. website in the latest incident of autonomous agents gone rogue. Plus, British authorities arrest five men over an alleged plot to attack a U.S. air base. And an Iran stalemate sends oil prices and bond yields surging - we look at how some of the world's best bond investors see the treasury selloff. Daniel Bach hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A former Cornell University student is suing the university and others alleging that she was drugged and sexually assaulted by members of the Chi Phi fraternity. The Tompkins County District Attorney has now reopened the criminal investigation. We break down what the lawsuit actually alleges, why criminal charges weren't filed originally, what changed, Cornell's response, and the legal questions surrounding the university's potential liability. Then, we explain the Supreme Court's latest ruling involving the federal SAVE voter-verification database, the State Department wanting to expand the use of passport data for voter-eligibility checks, the U.S. military planning for potential action involving Cuba, and President Trump's pocket rescission of $810 million. Today's episode: 1. Everything You Need to Know About the Cornell Lawsuit (0:31) 2. Supreme Court's SAVE Voter-Verification Ruling (~27:57) 3. State Department Proposes Using Passport Records for Voter Verification (~36:47) 4. U.S. Military Plans for Possible Action in Cuba (~43:48) 5. Trump's $810M "Pocket Rescission" Explained (~47:57) 6. Quick Hitters (~56:30) 7. Critical Thinking (~1:01:41) ⁠Watch⁠ this episode on YouTube. Follow Jordan on ⁠Instagram⁠ and ⁠TikTok⁠. All sources for this episode can be found ⁠here.⁠  PilePad: Get 10% off and FREE Shipping at ⁠PilePad.com⁠. Use promo code UNBIASED. Incogni: Scammers are everywhere! But they can't harm you, if they can't find you! Use code JORDAN at ⁠https://incogni.com/jordan⁠ and get 60% off an annual plan! Bombas: Get 20% off your first purchase by going to Bombas.com/UNBIASED and using code UNBIASED at checkout. Quince: Quince.com/UNBIASED for FREE Shipping and 365-day returns. Monarch: Use code UNBIASED at Monarch.com com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. Rocket Money: Join at RocketMoney.com/UNBIASED. Cozy Earth: Please let them know you heard it here on UNBIASED POLITICS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Lavinia Taumoepeau joins Dr. Sandie Morgan as they trace how three young women who left Tonga for what they thought was a new life in China, and walked into marriages they never agreed to, became a viral video, then a police investigation, then a week of trafficking policy meetings across an entire country.Chapters(00:00) - Why It Was Called a Marriage Dispute (01:31) - Three Women, a Viral Video, and an Embassy Call (04:51) - Trafficking Indicators and an Open Investigation (09:27) - Bride Trafficking and Why Social Media Mattered (14:48) - Royal Support, the Five Ps, and Gaps in the Law (19:07) - Helping Media Report Without Doing More Harm (23:03) - Training Counselors and the Technical Working Group (28:12) - Referral Pathways and What Success Looks Like About Lavinia TaumoepeauLavinia Taumoepeau has served as Political Assistant in the POL/ECON section at the U.S. Embassy in Nukuʻalofa since February 2025, researching Tongan domestic politics and supporting embassy engagement with local authorities and NGOs. She writes the embassy's congressional reporting on trafficking in persons, and served as control officer for this visit. Before the embassy, she spent nearly two years as Tonga's first Safety and Protection Cluster Coordinator at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, building the standard operating procedures for disaster cluster response and managing $300,000 in international recovery funding. She holds a master's degree in international emergency and disaster management from Georgetown University, and two bachelor's degrees from the University of Utah in political science and international studies. She is a U.S. Fulbright Alumni Ambassador, has trained with UN Women and UNITAR on gender and disaster response across the Pacific, and contributed research for a Parliament for Women report through the Office of the Legislative Assembly of Tonga.Key Points• Framing a case as a transnational marriage dispute instead of trafficking moves the blame onto the women. In Tonga it produced open victim-blaming until people learned the legal definition.• Run the action-means-purpose test before arguing about labels. Recruiting and obtaining the women was the action, fraud about a new life and money sent home was the means, and servile marriage was the purpose.• A relative's social media post can do what official channels do not. An aunt went online asking for help, and the video broke a silence that had held for years, pulling in the embassy, the State Department and the police.• Prevention training belongs with migrant workers before they travel. Tongans work abroad in large numbers, and the diaspora is the practical safety net in countries where few Tongans are around to help.• An investigation stalls where the law is narrower than the facts. Tonga's case is still open partly because what was identified as trafficking has to be matched to policy and legislation that still has gaps.• Brief journalists on how to cover a case without interviewing survivors. Tonga's reporters shifted to the people who assisted, which let the coverage create no harm while still moving public understanding.• Ask who is missing from the table. That one prompt in the first policy roundtable sent the technical working group looking for stakeholders it had not yet connected with.• A national action plan does not fund itself. Until each ministry writes trafficking into its own annual plan it stays an afterthought, and referral pathways stay unclear to everyone outside the technical working group.Resources• U.S. Embassy in Tonga• Women and Children Crisis Centre (WCCC) Tonga• Tonga Launches First National Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Persons with IOM Support• 2025 Trafficking in Persons Report: Tonga (U.S. Department of State)

We are breaking down the absolutely explosive, no-holds-barred finale of Reacher Season 4, 'MAKE ME'! Did Jack Reacher provide the definitive, brutal justice we were waiting for? From the massive tactical raid on the abandoned restaurant to the final confrontation with the corrupt State Department officials, Gemini and Stephen deep dive into every action sequence, plot twist, and dramatic beat of the final episode. We recap the highlights of the second half of the season, discuss the massive conspiracy, rank the best fights, and analyze what that final scene means for the future of the series. Join Michael & Stephen for the ultimate Reacher discussion. Don't forget to hit like and subscribe for more TV and movie breakdowns!

J. Henry Tate is an author, former private investigator, and longtime North Alabama resident whose debut novel, Echoes of Betrayal: Protocol Clean Slate, draws inspiration from an extraordinary chapter of his own life.Before becoming an author, Tate worked as a private investigator in Huntsville, Alabama, during the 1980s. What began as a seemingly routine domestic investigation unexpectedly developed into something much larger—an international espionage case that ultimately involved the U.S. State Department. For decades, Tate considered telling the story as nonfiction, but the complexities surrounding the real events made that difficult. After retiring from the mortgage industry, he ultimately decided to transform those experiences into fiction.The result is Echoes of Betrayal: Protocol Clean Slate, a mystery, espionage, and suspense thriller centered on Jack Campbell, an African American private investigator based in Alabama. Campbell's life is turned upside down when his boss and best friend, Daniel Draper, is shot in front of his family. What initially appears to be an isolated act of violence soon connects back to a previous investigation involving an Army captain and his Air Force wife—and ultimately pulls Campbell into a dangerous world of international espionage, government secrets, hidden identities, betrayal, and threats to national security.Published in 2024, Echoes of Betrayal: Protocol Clean Slate is Tate's first published novel. The 242-page thriller combines elements of mystery and espionage with questions surrounding loyalty, morality, relationships, technology, and the difficulty of knowing whom to trust when appearances can be deliberately deceiving.Tate's influences include authors such as John Grisham, Lee Child, Mark Dawson, and Cindy Dees. He has also indicated that Echoes of Betrayal may not be the end of Jack Campbell's story, with another installment involving the character among his planned writing projects.Beyond writing, Tate has had a varied professional career that has included private investigation and many years in the mortgage industry. He has also been involved in his North Alabama community, including serving as a longtime volunteer and former board member with Habitat for Humanity of Madison County.In this episode of Our Town, Troy sits down with J. Henry Tate to explore the remarkable true experiences that inspired Echoes of Betrayal: Protocol Clean Slate, his years as a private investigator in Huntsville, how an ordinary case reportedly escalated into an international espionage investigation, and why it took decades for Tate to finally turn the experience into a novel.Their conversation also explores the line between fact and fiction, the challenge of fictionalizing events involving real people and government agencies, Tate's transition from investigator and businessman to published novelist, and the creation of Jack Campbell and the world of Echoes of Betrayal.Host/Interviewer: M. Troy Bye, Owner, Our Town with Troy Bye, a brand of the Our Town Company, LLC Watch on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCP5NjTsQ72k00C5n7ghLapAWatch on Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/0JwD62zXPncMeFeQdTVomHAudio only available in all other platforms where you get your podcastsFollow us on social media: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/our-town-w-troy-bye-50033a234/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ourtownpodcast

What's up, everybody? It's Tom Bilyeu here:Want my help starting a business? Join me here inside Zero To FounderSign up for my AI Masterclass: AI MasterclassFollow Me:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tombilyeu/Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tombilyeu?lang=enTwitter: https://twitter.com/tombilyeuYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TomBilyeuTailor Brands: Check out Tailor Brands to get started with your business today: https://bit.ly/TailorBrandsSeptQuince: Free shipping and 365-day returns at https://quince.com/impactpodElevenLabs: Book your demo at https://elevenlabs.io/impactpodCash App: Download Cash App Today: https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/v6nymgjl #CashAppPod*Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partner(s). Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa® Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and The Bancorp Bank, N.A., pursuant to a license from Visa U.S.A. Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card, and Bancorp debit flex card. Cash App Green features, Savings, Direct deposit, Round ups, Overdraft coverage and Discounts provided by Cash App, a Block, Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosure.Ketone IQ: Visit https://ketone.com/IMPACT for 30% OFF your subscription order.ATT Business: Switch to AT&T Business at https://business.att.comIncogni: Take your personal data back with Incogni! Use code IMPACT at the link below and get 60% off an annual plan: https://incogni.com/impact Quo: ​​Try for free PLUS get 20% off your first 6 months at https://quo.com/impactPipedrive: Get more leads and grow your business. Go to https://www.pipedrive.com/impact and get started with a 30-day free trial.Netsuite: For the first time ever you can try NetSuite Next for free. If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to https://NetSuite.ai/Theory.Butcherbox: Go to https://ButcherBox.com/IMPACT to get $20 off your first box, plus your choice of free ribeye, new york strip, or filet mignon in every box for a year — with free shipping alwaysThe team breaks down a real and fast-moving shift in the AI industry: open-weight models, which were a rounding error (~7% of traffic) back in December, have exploded—accounting for 56% of tokens generated by August, with Vercel CEO Guillermo Rauch reporting a single-day record of 78.4% on September 19th, and spending on three Chinese labs (Moonshot, DeepSeek, z.ai) on that day topping spend on OpenAI. The host walks the money: open-weight share of dollars on the Vercel gateway went from under 4% in June to 8.6% in July to 14% in August, average price per token fell 23% in August alone, and developers are splitting the workload—hard, high-stakes work still goes to Anthropic (which has held 61%+ of gateway spend every month since December), everything else goes to whatever's cheapest. His read on what's breaking: not the frontier, but the low end of the big players—OpenAI's and Google's cheap "gateway" models are getting obliterated as people conclude "you're not as good as Anthropic, so I'll either pay for the best or use the cheap stuff." The real winners, he argues, are the chipmakers and cloud/inference providers (like Vercel), because value is shifting from owning the model to just providing access to the compute—the commoditization of intelligence. He frames the optimistic upside: companies will increasingly host their own open-weight models to keep their work proprietary and build a real edge, rather than everyone using the identical public tool. Ryan pushes the counter-thesis—that if OpenAI had stayed the 2015 nonprofit and gone all-in on open source (his analogy: how OBS open-sourced screen recording and dominated), the US might be further ahead of China. Tom steelmans it but argues the fatal flaw: someone has to build the "brains," the data centers are staggeringly expensive, and there's still no observed ceiling to how much smarter models get with more compute—so without the profit incentive to aggregate that capital, AI would have stalled out entirely. His synthesis lands close to the Musk-era idea: keep the frontier model paid to fund the enormous buildout, let older generations go open source to drive sub-frontier innovation, and don't let the government kill open weights. They also dig into China's logic—giving models away free as an authoritarian-enabled disruption play they can clamp down on later once they're manufacturing their own chips—and the cynical data angle that free Chinese models feed usage data straight back to labs that can close them off anytime. A sharp, first-principles look at where the AI value—and the risk—is actually moving.The team steps back from any single flashpoint to map how the world's conflicts are increasingly linking into one interconnected crisis. The weekend's near-escalation—a Houthi missile barrage on Riyadh, an Aramco depot fire, a State Department warning to reconsider travel to the entire region, and Trump briefly in "deciding mode" before reportedly backing off—is treated as just one node in a much larger web. The host lays out the loosely-sourced but growing hypothesis tying it all together: a China-Russia-Iran-North Korea alignment whose logic is to keep the US bogged down in as many places as possible—so China can move on Taiwan (possibly accelerating a 2027 timeline if it feels cornered on AI and chips), Russia can test whether NATO's guarantees mean anything while a wartime economy gives Putin every incentive to keep the Ukraine stalemate going, and Europe openly tells its citizens to prepare for war, with Germany talking about the biggest military on the continent. Threaded through every conflict is the same economic engine: the disruption of the Strait of Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb has pushed shipping costs from roughly $6–7 to $23+ per barrel, and that slow-building penalty cascades into fuel, food, and fertilizer crises—potentially a hard-winter scenario that pushes Europe to "escalate to de-escalate." The host's synthesis: calling it World War III is overstated, but these conflicts are genuinely connected and waiting on a spark. He traces the root cause to the erosion of the US as the "monolithic keeper of global peace"—a decline he pins on internal division and a watershed in Russia's Ukraine invasion—and argues America is now in a "Suez Canal moment": if it can't reopen Hormuz by force, the world's near-universal "back down when America says so" reflex collapses, and the US has to actually fight every skirmish at an unaffordable cost, on top of staggering debt. He frames it as a once-in-a-century shift in great-power politics unfolding at the exact moment AI emerges as the defining strategic technology, and closes on his recurring warning: regulating AI to death would hand China the opening to corner "intelligence itself." (A chat-prompted aside, which the host flags as a troubling hypothetical, entertains whether a large-enough war could be used to justify postponing an election—landing on Congress as the necessary check.)The team breaks down Trump's declaration of an "ultimate deal" with Denmark over Greenland—and separates the victory lap from the substance. The host's read: much of what Trump is trumpeting was already in place under the 1951 US-Denmark agreement (which lets the US operate military bases there), and he's taking a modest update and blowing it up for low-information voters who only hear the headline. But there is a genuinely new and strategically significant element—Greenland can no longer allow foreign-adversary infrastructure, specifically shutting China out. He explains why that matters: China has been insinuating itself into the Arctic (icebreakers, a new shipping route, calling itself "Arctic-adjacent"), and Chinese-built infrastructure/tech has a documented pattern of quietly sending data home (he cites a Nordic test where an isolated Chinese car kept pinging China), so keeping Chinese equipment out of a territory that sits on the direct line of any Russian attack on the US—and any future "golden dome" early-warning/defense system—is a real national-security win, one he says Denmark, Greenland, the UK, and the US all seem to accept. His broader points: this is smart strategy people miss because they hate Trump, and he argues there's a real shift toward Americans who no longer believe the US has moral standing to be the strongest power—a view he rejects, favoring a US that reestablishes its moral core but refocuses on hemispheric defense rather than policing the world. His sharpest criticism is Trump's method: publicly humiliating counterparts ("be the little bro, pat them on the head") breeds the exact resentment now visible with Canada and Europe, when the same wins could be gotten privately while letting the other side save face. On the forward look, he frames Greenland's real friction as a potential US-Europe proxy fight, notes that Europe won't fully hitch itself to China because China is aligned with Russia (a "suicide mission" militarily), and addresses a viewer point that America is rapidly losing soft power—arguing the only durable way to bring allies back is genuine economic and military strength (people getting richer by aligning with America), not threats, which produce brief compliance and permanent option-seeking. His path: stabilize Iran, lean into the Abraham Accords and hemispheric energy (Venezuela + US), stop policing the world, calm the violent left-right whipsaw, and grow the economy through AI.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory claims that powerful elites are deliberately replacing white populations through immigration. Under the second Trump administration, people who speak its language are representing the United States abroad. Josef Burton returns to QAA for a tour of the increasingly pilled world of American diplomacy. He explains how the department actually works, then looks at the officials and political appointees bringing white nationalist conspiracism into its public messaging and immigration policy. Along the way, we discuss “remigration,” an ambassador whose online antics have caused diplomatic headaches in Belgium, and the truth behind State Department's traditionally staid image Bruce Oreck's Holiday Card https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/first-read/diplomatic-muscle-yes-ambassador-finlands-holiday-card-n282181 Josef Burton on Twitter https://x.com/PinstripeBungle Subscribe for $5 a month to get all the premium episodes: www.patreon.com/qaa Click here to become a subscriber to Cursed Media today to get access to new episodes of Raising Hell releasing right now, plus our other exclusive Cursed Media series: https://cursedmedia.net Produced by Liv Agar & Corey Klotz. Theme by Nick Sena. Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Theme Vocals by THEY/LIVE (instagram.com/theyylivve / sptfy.com/QrDm). Cover Art by Pedro Correa: (pedrocorrea.com) qaapodcast.com QAA was known as the QAnon Anonymous podcast.

This week, President Trump welcomed China's president Xi Jinping to Washington, D.C. for a two-day summit. Knox Thames joins to discuss Chinese religious liberty violations and why the two world leaders will most likely avoid the issue. Then, President Trump signed an agreement with Denmark and Greenland regarding the US's military presence in Greenland. We re-air a segment in which Noah Rothman, Mike Cosper, Russell Moore, and Clarissa Moll discuss Trump's comments from January about wanting to claim Greenland, and the harm that those comments may have caused. Finally, amidst the AI alarmism in the media cycle, we re-play a conversation featuring Meghan Sullivan from Notre Dame's Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. She discusses some ways we can approach the AI issue, and what is in store for our work. REFERENCED IN THE SHOW: The Other Victims of China's Church Crackdown - Vivian Wang DBU Center for Global Religious Freedom Resources Jensen Huang Thinks A.I. Alarmism Has Gone Too Far - The Ezra Klein Show GO DEEPER WITH THE BULLETIN: Join the conversation at our Substack. Find us on YouTube. Rate and review the show in your podcast app of choice. ABOUT THE GUESTS: Knox Thames is a diplomat and international human rights lawyer who served for 20 years in the US government across multiple administrations, most recently in the Obama and Trump administrations as a State Department special envoy for religious minorities in the Middle East and South/Central Asia. He is the executive director of the new Center for Global Religious Freedom, an initiative of Dallas Baptist University. Noah Rothman is a senior writer with National Review and a contributor to MSNBC. He is the author of Unjust: Social Justice and the Unmaking of America and The Rise of the New Puritans: Fighting Back Against Progressives' War on Fun. Meghan Sullivan is a professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. She serves as director of the ethics Initiative and is the founding director of Notre Dame's Institute for Ethics and the Common Good. She is the author of Time Biases, and The Good Life Method based on a popular introductory philosophy course she developed at Notre Dame called “God and the Good Life.” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On the Power Vertical Podcast this week, host Brian Whitmore hosts an all-start lineup of guests to break it all down: Michael Carpenter, who served as the U.S. National Security Council's Senior Director for Europe, US Ambassador to the OSCE, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia; and Max Bergmann, a former U.S. State Department official who served, among other posts, as a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff and as a speechwriter for former Secretary of State John Kerry. 

GET HEIRLOOM SEEDS & NON GMO SURVIVAL FOOD HERE: https://heavensharvest.com/wam USE Code WAM to save 25% plus free shipping! USE Code WAM50 for 50% off on select items like the #10 cans & MRE packs! GET CHLORINE DIOXIDE SOLUTIONS HERE: https://frontierpharm.com?sca_ref=11953077.06TP4RWJ73 Use code WAM to save on your order! Pledge here! Just a dollar a month can help keep us alive! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2652072&ty=h&u=2652072 EXCLUSIVE replays of hour plus long live shows are available here at $5 a month or more! BUY GOLD HERE: https://firstnationalbullion.com/schedule-consult/ Avoid CBDCs! DONATE HERE: https://gogetfunding.com/help-keep-wam-alive/# Help save WAM! Josh Sigurdson reports on the protests in Venezuela supporting Maria Corina Machado rather than Delcy Rodriguez following the arrest in January of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. While Maduro was clearly a scumbag and did horrific things to the people of Venezuela for more than a decade, replacing him with the CIA which does horrific things to people worldwide is not an actual solution to the problem. How did this work out in Iraq? In Libya? Millions died. And this is only the beginning of the conquest in Latin America. Machado was denied the Presidency by the CIA initially, so she gave her Nobel Peace Prize to President Trump who quickly changed his position on her. To be clear, the Nobel Peace Prize has previously been given to war architect Henry Kissinger and drone bomber Barack Obama. Delcy Rodriguez is also clearly a CIA plant as she supported the deal over Maduro and massive amounts of oil are stolen from the country to sidestep Russia and China at the behest of Israel who initially claimed Venezuela had Hezbollah fighters training their cartels on the Island of Margarita which was blatantly false. If we look back at who the previous hopeful was during the attempted coup some years ago in Venezuela, it was Juan Guaido. This man was heavily funded by USAID and worked with the CIA. Two wrongs don't make a right. Maduro was bad, yes. The CIA is also bad and one may say worse when considering the international picture and history of the CIA. This will continue to stem further Middle East level instability in Latin America as the United States looks to go after Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico and several other Latin American countries next. This isn't some theory. It is proclaimed by the State Department. Stay tuned for more from WAM! GET 10% OFF ON SHILAJIT FROM DR. KAUFMAN WHEN YOU USE CODE WAM10 HERE: https://medauthentica.com/discount/WAM10?redirect=/products/authentica-shilajit%3Fsca_ref=10867124.wrNV3jkYSaMg9 GET YOUR WAV WATCH HERE: https://buy.wavwatch.com/WAM Use Code WAM to save $100 and purchase amazing healing frequency technology! Get Your SUPER-SUPPLIMENTS HERE: https://vni.life/wam Use Code WAM15 & Save 15%! Life changing formulas you can't find anywhere else! Get local, healthy, pasture raised meat delivered to your door here: https://wildpastures.com/promos/save-20-for-life/bonus15?oid=6&affid=321 USE THE LINK & get 20% off for life and $15 off your first box! DITCH YOUR DOCTOR! https://www.livelongerformula.com/wam Get a natural health practitioner and work with Christian Yordanov! Mention WAM and get a FREE masterclass! You will ALSO get a FREE metabolic function assessment! GET YOUR APRICOT SEEDS at the life-saving Richardson Nutritional Center HERE: https://rncstore.com/r?id=bg8qc1 Use code JOSH to save money! PayPal: ancientwonderstelevision@gmail.com FIND OUR CoinTree page here: https://cointr.ee/joshsigurdson PURCHASE MERECHANDISE HERE: https://world-alternative-media.creator-spring.com/ JOIN US on SubscribeStar here: https://www.subscribestar.com/world-alternative-media For subscriber only content! BITCOIN ADDRESS: 18d1WEnYYhBRgZVbeyLr6UfiJhrQygcgNU World Alternative Media 2026

A few months ago, when President Donald Trump began floating the idea of taking over Cuba using military force, many people were understandably surprised. Since then, however, the State Department has put out reports and statements making the case for why Cuba is such a threat to the United States, calling the regime “an espionage superpower.”A recent report says the Cuban regime has waged a 70-year-long war against the United States—not with kinetic weapons of course, but instead by using the dark arts of sabotage and subversion, including by propping up anti-U.S. socialists in central and south America and sending over spies who then spent decades hidden inside America with top security clearances. And then, there's what the State Department calls Cuba's greatest weapon: the ability to control people in our cities and towns through ideological alignment. It's the old Soviet tactic of, “If you hate American imperialism, work for Cuba behind the scenes.”Apparently, it's been effective—so let's go through it together.

In this episode of The Fearless Mindset Podcast, host Mark Ledlow is joined by a former State Department and Diplomatic Security Service official Christopher Stitt, who describes transitioning from 28 years in federal service to entrepreneurship. Chris discusses building three efforts: Crisis Lead (risk navigation and preparedness), his book “Scaling Pyramids: Leadership Lessons from a Mid-Level Bureaucrat” as the basis for a leadership development platform, and keynote speaking focused on developing entry- and mid-level leaders. He explains how earning an executive MBA from Quantic helped with business structure, marketing, and communicating with C-suites, and emphasizes mentorship and “return on network investment” through conferences and relationships. The conversation broadens to concerns about anti-capitalism, leadership gaps for younger generations, misinformation-driven polarization, media bias, and how COVID-era remote work and doomscrolling may have accelerated societal divides.Learn about all this and more in this episode of The Fearless Mindset Podcast.KEY TAKEAWAYSTrue leadership doesn't require being at the top — you can lead from anywhere in an organizationTransitioning from government to entrepreneurship requires unlearning institutional mindsets and building business acumen from scratchAn MBA's greatest hidden value is giving you the language and cultural literacy to communicate with C-suitesNetworking ROI (RONI — Return on Network Investment) matters more than direct conference deal-closingWriting a book accelerates your credibility and opens unexpected speaking and leadership development opportunitiesSocietal polarization is being deepened by algorithm-driven echo chambers, disrupted workplace relationships (remote work), and 24/7 opinion-based mediaYoung generations need leaders who extend purpose, hope, and inspiration — not political tribalismRisk management philosophy differs sharply between government (risk-averse) and corporations (risk transfer/acceptance) — understanding that gap is critical for security professionalsQUOTES"I knew a whole lot about security, didn't know a whole lot about running a security business." — Chris Stitt"I don't wanna be the lowest bidder, I wanna be the highest quality bidder and have them take my price anyway." — Chris Stitt"RONI — Return on Network Investment. I don't know that I will generate any business directly... but I'm gonna strengthen relationships and find ways to provide value to others." — Chris Stitt"I have never yet been the Secretary of State — but you can have formal leadership positions and informal leadership impact from wherever you are in that organization." — Chris Stitt"You can't even have a conversation around the dinner table anymore without ending up in a screaming match." — Chris Stitt"News is a business. Their goal is to get more viewers, more subscribers." — Chris Stitt"Remote work fractured the natural rhythms of relationship that would normally challenge your perspective — and that really accelerated the polarization." — Chris StittGet to know more about Christopher Stitt through the link/s below.https://www.linkedin.com/in/christopherstittcem/To hear more episodes of The Fearless Mindset podcast, you can go to https://the-fearless-mindset.simplecast.com/ or listen on major podcasting platforms such as Apple, Google Podcasts, Spotify, etc. You can also subscribe to the Fearless Mindset YouTube Channel to watch episodes on video.Upcoming Event: Executive Protection & FIFA World Cup 2026As the FIFA World Cup 2026 approaches, join leading security professionals for a live session on executive protection and risk management for this global event.April 29 | 6:00 PM ESTRegister here: https://bit.ly/Webinar_WorldCupSecurity

Zipline has drawn attention for its record of success delivering life-saving medical products by drone through its expanding network across key African partner countries, including Cote d'Ivoire, Ghana, Nigeria, and Rwanda. Its on-demand supply chain approach has expanded access to vaccines, emergency blood products, and other treatments, especially in hard-to-reach rural areas, contributing to dramatic gains in reaching zero-dose children, treating severe malaria, and reducing maternal mortality. The company has also been a subject of interest following its $150 million award from the U.S. Department of State, as a model for the innovative, public-private partnerships that are a stated priority of the America First Global Health Strategy, and its new approach to commercial diplomacy. Please join the CSIS Bipartisan Alliance for Global Health Security for a discussion reflecting on Zipline's work to expand its delivery network, the evolution of its partnership with African partner governments and the U.S. State Department, and what the company has learned about the potential for emerging technologies to increase health access and outcomes. J. Stephen Morrison, Senior Vice President and Director of the CSIS Global Health Policy Center will moderate the discussion with Caitlin Burton, CEO of Zipline's International Business.

This week, Chinese President Xi Jinping is in Washington to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump. Trade, technology, and Taiwan are all expected to be on the agenda. It's the two leaders' second meeting in less than six months, as they try to stabilize the future of U.S.-China relations. Many fear tensions are brewing, but with their tariff war in the past, could it be possible for the world's two biggest economies to work together? Welcome to Counterpoint, where we take one big question facing world leaders and look at it from opposing points of view. In this episode, we're asking: Can the United States and China build a stable relationship? Arguing in favor is Jessica Chen Weiss, a professor of China studies at Johns Hopkins University and a former senior advisor at the U.S. State Department. Arguing against it is Zack Cooper, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he studies U.S. strategy in Asia and U.S.-China competition. He is also a former staffer at the U.S. National Security Council. Counterpoint is a production of Foreign Policy, in partnership with the Doha Forum. The show is hosted by FP deputy editor Nick Danforth. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Daniel Jiwani moved to Saudi Arabia to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers, but eight months later he was abducted by Saudi authorities, taken to a black site, and falsely accused of terrorism based on a coworker's joke found on his phone. After three weeks in a black site and over a month in a maximum security prison alongside Al-Qaeda and ISIS members, the FBI and State Department secured his release—only for him to endure six more days in a nightmarish deportation facility where he contracted COVID and slept on a concrete floor. He returned home to find his assets frozen, his career destroyed, and his employer potentially complicit in covering up his disappearance. Rather than succumb to despair, Daniel rebuilt his life using the same wealth principles he'd spent years researching—positive thinking, relentless action, and learning to handle pressure. In this episode, he shares his full story and the key lessons from his new book, The 52 Laws of Wealth, on what real financial resilience looks like when theory meets the worst possible reality. Chapters 0:00 Cold Open: Accused of Terrorism & Detained at a Black Site 1:10 Welcome to Finding Freedom 2:53 Abducted in Saudi Arabia 5:49 Inside the Black Site 6:37 Did PwC Help Cover Up His Disappearance? 10:08 Inside a Maximum Security Prison with Al-Qaeda & ISIS 12:47 Release & the Deportation Facility Nightmare 15:40 Returning Home: Homeland Security Debrief 18:06 Coming Home Jobless and Broke 19:28 The Power of Positive Thinking 23:27 From Dreaming to Doing: Taking Action 25:04 Handling Setbacks & Pressure 27:32 Financial Independence & the 52 Laws of Wealth 35:34 The #1 Lesson & Where to Find Daniel Get Daniel's book The 52 Laws of Wealth on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4jgwAgb  Support us on Patreon: ⁠https://patreon.com/lionsofliberty⁠ Support us on Locals: ⁠https://lionsofliberty.locals.com/⁠ Subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen – it makes a huge difference! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

//The Wire//2300Z September 21, 2026// //ROUTINE// //BLUF: BALTIC STATES ISSUE WARNINGS CONCERNING ALLEGEDLY IMMINENT RUSSIAN HYBRID WARFARE ATTACKS. NEWARK ATC SECTOR SHUT DOWN DUE TO CUT CABLE THIS AFTERNOON. UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY BEGINS IN NEW YORK.// -----BEGIN TEARLINE-----  -International Events-Europe: Tensions are escalating between NATO and Russia, after Lithuania and Latvia have released alleged Russian plans to conduct more active "hybrid war" targeting within the Baltic states, as major military exercises continue around the region. In Lithuania, the STRONG GRIFFIN 2026 large scale military exercise came to a close after running for two weeks near the Belarussian border. Separately, a larger exercise (Perkūno Griausmas 2026) is currently underway, which seeks to test Lithuania's ability to shift from peacetime, to a wartime footing. As a result of both major defense initiatives, tensions have risen as both Belarus and Russia react to wartime preparations on their borders.Against the backdrop of these major exercises, other developments took place over the past few days which have complicated the situation further. On Thursday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk stated that Poland had intelligence indicating that Russia will seek to escalate "hybrid warfare" tactics throughout Europe over the next few weeks, to include within Poland. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kęstutis Budrys also confirmed that Lithuania had the same intelligence, and concurred with Poland's assessment. Similar concurrences were issued by the Czech Republic, France, Estonia, and Latvia.-HomeFront-New York: This morning the United Nations General Assembly began, which notably included appearances by Iranian officials, which were allowed to enter the United States to attend the proceedings at the UN. President Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Araghchi arrived this morning, and so far have been confined to the United Nations building as the United States has not issued visas for their free travel around New York.Washington D.C. - On Saturday the State Department issued a worldwide travel warning for Americans abroad, warning of increased potential for attacks as the wars in the Middle East and Europe are expected to escalate. The American Embassies in all Middle Eastern nations also issued similar warnings, reemphasizing the risks to Americans abroad.Analyst Comment: The United States had originally planned to conduct strikes on the Houthis in Yemen, but President Trump decided against the operation at the last minute. This was possibly due to the UN summit today, or more specifically, to prevent the White House from having to deal with another escalation of the war while key leaders and diplomats are located within the US for the summit.Northeast: This morning ground stops were issued for several airspace sectors throughout the region, after a series of mechanical issues resulted in communications systems going offline. The FAA stated that a contractor working on an Amtrak line accidentally cut into a series of underground communications cables at a critical juncture, which resulted in a loss of radar systems throughout the Newark sector. Newark Liberty, JFK, Teterboro, LaGuardia, and dozens of other airports nationwide experienced ground stops and delays while the cable was fixed.-----END TEARLINE-----Analyst Comments: Going back to the height of the Cold War, the nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia have been some of the most vocal NATO members concerning Russian aggression in the region, purely due to where they are located. To put it bluntly, these three nations tend to freak out quite often anytime Russia sneezes in their direction, simply due to geography....if Russia is to launch a Cold-War-style ground invasion of Europe, she will probably do so via the Suwałki Gap separating Kaliningrad from mainland Russia. As a result of this extreme closeness to Russia, NATO tends to rather unceremoniously treat these three nations as a "speed bump" for Russian tanks, which is intended to buy NATO some time to activate their true defensive line...which is mostly in Poland.Nearly all serious land-based defenses are in Poland and Germany, and have been for a long time. In nearly all defensive drills Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia are unfortunately expected to fall to Russia nearly immediately, in the event that war were to break out. These concepts are certainly outdated based on the technological advances that drones bring to modern warfare, but this has been the training assumption for several decades. All three of these nations suffer from unfortunate geography and very small military forces (Estonia's entire national army, for example, is smaller than the Arkansas National Guard). This is why any reports of "imminent war" from these three nations in particular, must be viewed with a giant heaping of salt.However, all of this history does not automatically mean that the claims of increased Russian "hybrid war" are not true; in the boy-who-cried-wolf story, the boy eventually does see the actual wolf one day. That might be what's happening in Europe, when viewed in the wider context of the tensions that have been building; Russia probably does seek to increase their own probing "incidents", after NATO has helped Ukraine carry out attacks on Russia. Helping Ukraine defend their terrain is one thing, but allowing Ukraine to carry out offensive attacks deep into Russia is being perceived by Russia as being a direct attack by NATO. It doesn't make it morally right or fair, but that's the reality of the situation. Now that NATO has been supporting Ukraine for so long, NATO has been slowly creeping toward a more direct confrontation with Russia...and the Balkan states are now concerned that this might be starting to happen.How this will develop over the next few days will be telling. Right now there are no major Russian troop movements within the border regions, and there is no threat whatsoever of a ground offensive through Lithuania. Mysterious drone sightings continue to plague European airports, and probably will remain constant for some time. Drone flights through Lithuanian airspace to Kaliningrad are probably going to increase over the next few weeks as well, which will impact commercial aviation mostly in the form of aircraft being grounded during the incursions and drone sightings. Otherwise, sabotage attacks in Europe will probably escalate over the next few weeks, as tensions remain high throughout the continent.Analyst: S2A1 Research: https://publish.obsidian.md/s2underground NomadNet: 5fa68c88be727a0e1a250a75e5e79269 Disclaimer: No LLMs were used in the writing of this report. //END REPORT//

Garrett Berntsen was last seen on ChinaTalk in his role as Deputy CDAO at the State Department. He then went to the Department of Defense for a little bit, and now makes a return in his new role as Chief AI Officer at Accenture Federal Services. We're going to talk about what the national security community needs — beyond just API access to wonderful models — in order to really change how it does its mission. Our conversation covers: Why the U-2 spy plane offers a surprisingly useful lesson for AI: The hardest part of adopting transformative technology isn't building it, but redesigning the institutions, workflows, incentives, and decision-making systems around it. The government's need to manufacture its own “forcing functions”: How carrots, sticks, budget cuts, and a willingness to create winners and losers could help bureaucracies move faster. Giving the troops the tools and getting out of the way: Why Berntsen thinks the U.S. military's greatest AI advantage may come from empowering service members to experiment, improvise, and “figure it out.” Will AI eventually negotiate with AI? We debate whether models can move beyond advising diplomats and executives to actually conducting negotiations. Plus, cyber challenges, a chat app for government, and book recs. Thank you to Accenture Federal Services for bringing us this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

**In this solo episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we explore Srinath Raghavan's brilliant *India's War: The Making of Modern South Asia, 1939–1945* – a book that places India at the centre of the Second World War, rather than at its margins.**India is frequently overlooked in histories of the Second World War. When it appears at all, it is as a source of manpower for the British Empire – a vast reservoir of soldiers and labourers to be deployed in the Middle East, Asia and Europe. But as Raghavan demonstrates, India was not simply a British asset. It was the engine of the Allied war effort in the East – and the war transformed it in ways that would lead, inexorably, to independence.By December 1941, when Nehru emerged from prison, India stood at the intersection of two major theatres of war: the Mediterranean and North Africa on one side, and South Asia, China and the Pacific on the other. The defence of India was no longer a British prerogative; it had become a focal point of Allied grand strategy. Indian politics could not be insulated from the pressures emanating from Britain's key wartime allies.Drawing on Raghavan's narrative, we trace the debates within the Congress Party as it wrestled with the question of whether to cooperate with the British war effort. Gandhi insisted on non-violence and non-participation; Nehru advocated non-participation for political reasons; a third group, led by Rajagopalachari, believed that cooperation was available – if the British did the right thing. The compromise resolution that emerged was, as Gandhi observed, "like the Indian dish *khichri*" – a mixture of pulses, rice, salt, chilli and spices.We also examine the American perspective on India, which was shaped by a mixture of exotic fantasy, missionary prejudice and strategic calculation. By 1941, the State Department had concluded that the situation in India was "very serious indeed" and that the Viceroy, Lord Linlithgow, was "a man of small vision." American officials took a sympathetic stance towards Congress demands, reporting that the British were following a policy of "divide and rule." Even the conservative *Reader's Digest* carried a favourable profile of Nehru. The British cabinet, alert to American opinion, took hardly any major decision on India without reference to its impact on public opinion in the United States.**Topics covered:**- India's central role in the Second World War- The Congress Party debates on cooperation and non-participation- Gandhi, Nehru and Rajagopalachari- The "Quit India" campaign and the refusal of Indian soldiers to serve- American perceptions of India and the British Raj- The strategic importance of India to the Allied war effort- The beginning of the end of the British Empire in India---*If you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us – we are migrating from Patreon to Substack. Details in the show notes.*Explaining History helps you understand the 20th Century through critical conversations and expert interviews. We connect the past to the present. If you enjoy the show, please subscribe and share.▸ Support the Show & Get Exclusive ContentBecome a Patron: patreon.com/explaininghistory▸ Join the Community & Continue the ConversationFacebook Group: facebook.com/groups/ExplainingHistoryPodcastSubstack: theexplaininghistorypodcast.substack.com▸ Read Articles & Go DeeperWebsite: explaininghistory.org Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Daniel Jiwani moved to Saudi Arabia to work for PricewaterhouseCoopers, but eight months later he was abducted by Saudi authorities, taken to a black site, and falsely accused of terrorism based on a coworker's joke found on his phone. After three weeks in a black site and over a month in a maximum security prison alongside Al-Qaeda and ISIS members, the FBI and State Department secured his release—only for him to endure six more days in a nightmarish deportation facility where he contracted COVID and slept on a concrete floor. He returned home to find his assets frozen, his career destroyed, and his employer potentially complicit in covering up his disappearance. Rather than succumb to despair, Daniel rebuilt his life using the same wealth principles he'd spent years researching—positive thinking, relentless action, and learning to handle pressure. In this episode, he shares his full story and the key lessons from his new book, The 52 Laws of Wealth, on what real financial resilience looks like when theory meets the worst possible reality. Chapters 0:00 Cold Open: Accused of Terrorism & Detained at a Black Site 1:10 Welcome to Finding Freedom 2:53 Abducted in Saudi Arabia 5:49 Inside the Black Site 6:37 Did PwC Help Cover Up His Disappearance? 10:08 Inside a Maximum Security Prison with Al-Qaeda & ISIS 12:47 Release & the Deportation Facility Nightmare 15:40 Returning Home: Homeland Security Debrief 18:06 Coming Home Jobless and Broke 19:28 The Power of Positive Thinking 23:27 From Dreaming to Doing: Taking Action 25:04 Handling Setbacks & Pressure 27:32 Financial Independence & the 52 Laws of Wealth 35:34 The #1 Lesson & Where to Find Daniel Get Daniel's book The 52 Laws of Wealth on Amazon: https://amzn.to/4jgwAgb  Support us on Patreon: ⁠https://patreon.com/lionsofliberty⁠ Support us on Locals: ⁠https://lionsofliberty.locals.com/⁠ Subscribe, rate, and review wherever you listen – it makes a huge difference! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The secret to the State Department's AI success by The Daily Scoop Podcast

Garrett Berntsen was last seen on ChinaTalk in his role as Deputy CDAO at the State Department. He then went to the Department of Defense for a little bit, and now makes a return in his new role as Chief AI Officer at Accenture Federal Services. We're going to talk about what the national security community needs — beyond just API access to wonderful models — in order to really change how it does its mission. Our conversation covers: Why the U-2 spy plane offers a surprisingly useful lesson for AI: The hardest part of adopting transformative technology isn't building it, but redesigning the institutions, workflows, incentives, and decision-making systems around it. The government's need to manufacture its own “forcing functions”: How carrots, sticks, budget cuts, and a willingness to create winners and losers could help bureaucracies move faster. Giving the troops the tools and getting out of the way: Why Berntsen thinks the U.S. military's greatest AI advantage may come from empowering service members to experiment, improvise, and “figure it out.” Will AI eventually negotiate with AI? We debate whether models can move beyond advising diplomats and executives to actually conducting negotiations. Plus, cyber challenges, a chat app for government, and book recs. Thank you to Accenture Federal Services for bringing us this episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

“Democracies don't die silently, sleepwalking. Democracies die by going through periods of pretty serious political violence.” — Robert Pape Forget all the long-term civil war scenarios of everyone from Kurt Andersen to Stephen Marche. Today's guest Robert Pape has spent the last thirty years at the University of Chicago studying political violence, and his warning is about the next six weeks rather than the next ten years. In his new book, Our Own Worst Enemies, Pape argues that tens of millions of Americans, on both left and right, now support political violence. When it comes to an American age of violent populism, his comparison is 1968 rather than 1861. What produced that era of assassinations, violent protest, and state violence, Pape argues, was rapid social change outpacing the political system. Back then, it was fueled by the gap between the Great Migration of African-Americans and the absence of political representation, and a military draft falling hardest on the unrepresented. And it only ended in the early Seventies, with the end of the draft in 1973 and the arrival of Black mayors and the Congressional Black Caucus. Today, rapid social change is once again outpacing the political and economic system. On the one hand, America is a country moving from white-majority to white-minority — with its non-Hispanic white population dropping from 76% in 1990 to 57% today. On the other, America is experiencing a dramatic economic transformation that has moved something like a tenth of American wealth from the bottom 90% to the top 1%. The details of Pape's observations are unsettling. Only one in ten of the 1,575 people prosecuted for the January 6 insurrection belonged to a militia, with 45% being doctors, lawyers, CEOs or government employees. While five to seven per cent of the George Floyd protests turned violent. But social media, he insists, is the gasoline, not the fire, of this crisis. So at least we can't blame the internet for everything. Pape does, however, offer a couple of glimmers of hope. Firstly, he reminds us that 70% of Americans still abhor political violence. Secondly, he notes that all gaps eventually close, and that we should expect American government to eventually address economic inequality. But that won't happen before the November 2026 midterms which, he warns, might be a return of the political violence of 1968. Five Takeaways •       Democracies Don't Sleepwalk. Pape's opening correction: the danger isn't a civil war five or ten years out, it's the next few months. Democracies don't die silently — they die through periods of serious political violence, and America is in one now. He calls it the era of violent populism, and what makes it different from the familiar extremism of recent decades is that political violence has moved from the fringe to the mainstream: tens of millions of Americans on both sides of the aisle now support it. His image is a layer cake — bottom-up violence from the left in the George Floyd protests, bottom-up violence from the right on January 6, and violence by the state, with a whole chapter on ICE and the two protesters killed in Minneapolis. Conversations about this era usually seize on one layer as though it were the whole thing. And the state violence isn't a few rogue agents: tens of millions of Americans support the president using force against Democratic protesters.•       The 1960s Rhyme. Not since the 1960s, Pape says, has political violence run this high — and that decade is the book's best evidence, because it both began and ended. The late sixties brought assassinations (King, Robert Kennedy), hundreds of Black riots across five years, anti-war violence and the Weather Underground's twenty bombings; Gallup surveys from the period, which Pape has collected, show millions supported it. Two social changes drove it: the Great Migration, the largest internal population movement in American history, which delivered Black populations to northern cities without political representation — by the mid-sixties Chicago had no Black mayor and two Black aldermen, the context for Malcolm X's “The Ballot or the Bullet” — and Vietnam, where the draft fell hardest on those same unrepresented Americans. And it ended when the gap closed: the draft was abolished in 1973, the Congressional Black Caucus formed, and Black mayors took office in Atlanta, Detroit and elsewhere.•       Two Social Changes. The present era began about ten years ago, and rests on two shifts. First, demography: America is moving from a white-majority to a white-minority democracy. It was 76% non-Hispanic white in 1990 and is 57% today, and the tipping point was 2012, the first year most children born were not non-Hispanic white — which is Pape's answer to why this didn't erupt under Obama, along with an immigration policy he rates the best of any modern president: keep it going, keep it moderate, deport the worst of the worst. Second, wealth: since the late 1980s roughly a tenth of American wealth has moved from the bottom 90% to the top 1%, producing what he calls a negative-sum society in which even a household on $100,000 loses ground year by year. Put the two together and you get the poisonous cocktail. Andrew's challenge — what about the internet? — got a flat answer: social media is gasoline on a fire, not the fire. The average January 6 defendant was 42, not 22.•       Not the Proud Boys. The book's most counterintuitive finding, drawn from research teams reading all 100,000 court documents behind the 1,575 January 6 prosecutions: only one in ten belonged to the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers or any militia — including one in ten of those who assaulted police. Who did storm the Capitol? Forty-five per cent were doctors, lawyers, CEOs, State Department employees and intelligence executives. Dentists, too, Andrew noted. And since Andrew told him the show's audience skews left, Pape supplied the other half of the ledger: five to seven per cent of the George Floyd protests turned violent — some six hundred protests across the top hundred cities, out of 28 million people — with looting and smash-and-grabs tracked separately; and the post-October 7 campus protests, which hit nearly a hundred universities and were, by his $300,000 survey of 5,000 undergraduates, about 75% from the left.•       The 70%. Then the hopeful half. Against the substantial minorities who support violence stands the 70% of Americans who abhor it, and who have never been mobilized — which is why he wrote the book for the mainstream rather than for the academy. His mechanism is unglamorous: politicians respond to squeaky wheels, and right now the squeaky wheels are billionaire donors on both sides. His example of what the 70% might demand is a flat tax above $30,000 with no deductions at all — Warren Buffett would stop paying less than his cleaner. (Andrew raised his University of Chicago colleague Eric Zwick, on the show last week: tax the three million millionaires too, not just the billionaires. “He's exactly right.”) And the danger ahead is specific: the November midterms, six weeks away, with gas at $5 in Chicago after the Iran crisis, and...

Trump just put the Iran question on the table in language nobody in Washington wanted on tape: “When do I blow the entire nation up?” The options he named are not think-tank fog. Make a deal. Let Iran rot under the naval blockade. Or wipe the regime out. Last week, he told Axios a big decision was coming on whether to annihilate Iran's government. Now he's saying very big things are coming in the not-so-distant future — and he cut Camp David short, coming back to the White House a day early to sit with it. Iranian officials are headed to New York for the U.N. General Assembly. Trump says he'd probably be open to meeting President Masoud Pezeshkian. He also says Tehran keeps sending people who cannot close a deal, and some of them are “hiding like rats.” Meanwhile the blockade is still squeezing a battered economy, CENTCOM has escorted a billion barrels of crude through the Strait of Hormuz, Houthis fired a ballistic missile toward Riyadh, and the State Department quietly warned Americans about sudden escalation and airspace closures. Pat also covered: CENTCOM moved one billion barrels through the Strait of Hormuz. Iran exported zero. Did Ed Sheeran just bend the knee to the rage mob? UFO over Tehran. Is America flying tech we won't admit we have? Karl Rove gets the state of the Republican Party wrong. Again. Talarico is up six on Paxton. Is Texas about to send a beta male to the Senate? Would you take a deal with this regime after that warning? If Trump picks “wipe them out,” is that strength — or a war you actually want? If you want unfiltered truth and commonsense analysis that cuts through the noise, hit subscribe and turn on notifications. 00:00 Pat Gray UNLEASHED! 00:21 BYU News 08:37 Trey Yingst on Trump's Words regarding Iran Yesterday 12:39 Election in Russia Amidst Conflict with Ukraine 14:30 Are We in World War III? 16:13 One Billion Barrels of Oil Pass Through the Strait of Hormuz 17:05 Gas / Oil Prices 18:51 ~40% of American Men are Not Looking for a Job?! 21:04 Political Ads: Ken Paxton VS. James Talarico 30:51 Will Republicans get Steamrolled in the Midterms? 34:08 Fat Five 43:04 Bill Maher VS. Ana Kasparian on Islam 50:26 Barack Obama on the White House Banning CNN 51:41 FLASHBACK: Brian Stelter on White House Access in 2013 55:07 FLASHBACK: Brian Stelter on White House Access in 2021 56:26 Montage of People Wanting Trump Banned from Twitter / X 1:04:45 Rainbow Lights Spotted in the Skies above Iran? 1:12:18 Karl Rove on the State of the Republican Party 1:23:13 George W. Bush on Islam & 9/11 1:27:18 President Trump's Busy Schedule 1:30:52 Maura Healey on New Parents Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As the war in Iran nears its seventh month, new developments over the past week have prompted concerns about a widening conflict in the Middle East. On Saturday, the State Department warned Americans in the Middle East to “exercise heightened vigilance” and prepare for potential travel disruptions, and President Donald Trump returned from a weekend trip to Camp David a day early. Separately, Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have launched significant attacks against Saudi Arabia and seized key Red Sea territory. Ad-free podcasts are here!Get 20% off your first year of ad-free episodes, exclusive interviews, and deep dives with Tangle's podcast membership!The DSA debate.On Friday, Ross Barkan authored a guest column making the case for the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The piece has generated over 500 comments and a robust debate over Barkan's arguments and the DSA's merit. Check out the piece and join the conversation here.You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠ and today's “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Take the survey: How long do you think the war will last? Let us know.Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast written by: Will Kaback and audio engineered and edited by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Audrey Moorehead, and Carina Pacheco. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode of GREAT POWER PODCAST, host Ilan Berman speaks with Melinda Haring and Daniel Kimmage of Kensington Global, authors of a recent piece on emerging powers, about their concept of “new Spartas” and what it means for today's global order. MATERIALS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:-- “Rise of the New Spartas,” Jerusalem Strategic Tribune, July 2026, https://jstribune.com/rise-of-the-new-spartas/BIOS: Melinda Haring is CEO of Kensington Global LLC, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council's Eurasia Center, and a senior advisor at Razom for Ukraine. Daniel Kimmage is a former senior official at the State Department, and currently President of Kensington Global.

September 20, 2026; 7am: Iranian-backed Houthi rebels say they fired a barrage of missiles and drones at Riyadh and Saudi oil facilities, landing the first strikes on the Saudi capital in months. This comes on the heels of President Trump telling Axios he faces a big decision on Iran, "Do I want to go in and annihilate them, or do I not?" Axios says the president was referring to the Iranian regime. This question comes just days before he meets with Gulf leaders, including Saudi Arabia, at the UN General ­Assembly. The State Department is reportedly granting Iran's leaders travel documents to attend UNGA, even as the U.S. and Iran remain officially at war. Richard Haass, President Emeritus at the Council on Foreign Relations, joins “The Weekend” to discuss.For more, follow us on social media:Bluesky: @theweekendmsnow.bsky.socialInstagram: @theweekendmsnowTikTok: @theweekendmsnow To listen to this show and other MS podcasts without ads, sign up for MS NOW Premium on Apple Podcasts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In the deserts of western China sit 320 brand-new missile silos, and for a while, by the Pentagon's account, some of them simply didn't work. The gap between the PLA on paper and the PLA in practice is where Gerald C. Brown has spent his career. Gerald is two weeks out of government, where he covered Chinese nuclear strategy and the PLA Rocket Force at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Now a visiting fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, he joins Jordan and WarTalk's Tony Stark, Justin McIntosh, and Bryan Clark. We discuss… Why 2027 is not a go date — the three "strategic capabilities" the PLA pulled forward from its 2035 goals, and why a capability milestone says nothing about intent What the Iran war taught Beijing — day-one decapitation and the heaviest firepower campaign in decades still didn't deliver the political outcome, and PLA journals noticed The purges are what they look like — Occam's razor on PLA corruption, "fake combat capabilities," and why joint fires fail when artillery support runs on connections The nuclear shield — early-warning counterstrike, low-yield options, and why a thousand more US warheads would buy less deterrence than a thousand more boats Beijing's Japan fixation — the Chinese nuclear strategy text with a chapter on every nuclear state, plus Japan Inside vs. outside — what you can know about the PLA without a clearance, the mirror-imaging trap, and the pitch to undergrads who read Chinese Plus: the PLA's corruption tip line, Polymarket odds on the next purge, and where an escaped POW should beg for food. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Cubans are living through near-constant blackouts after an executive order that called the Cuban government an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to U.S. national security and blocked their fuel imports. A hundred-page State Department report describes Cuba as the puppeteer behind everything from the George Floyd protests to what it calls the rise of antifa. We talk to historians Michael Bustamante and Alexander Hall about the day to day effects of U.S. pressure, why this crisis is old and new at the same time, and why Black Cubans are absorbing the worst of the crisis.Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show's perks include sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

A UN fact-finding mission on Iran says there are reasonable grounds to believe the United States was behind two military strikes on a school and sports facility in Iran in February, and that these constituted war crimes. A State Department official said the US did not give credibility to the findings in the report. The UN experts also accused Tehran of violent repression of anti-government protesters. Also: Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, tells the BBC the Russian President, Vladimir Putin, is becoming increasingly desperate. Our health reporter finds out what caffeine does to the body. The melting of ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica is raising sea levels - and endangering coastal communities. A new species of cat is discovered in Bolivia. And Dolly Parton, who died last month, gets a posthumous music award.The Global News Podcast brings you the breaking news you need to hear, as it happens. Listen for the latest headlines and current affairs from around the world. Politics, economics, climate, business, technology, health – we cover it all with expert analysis and insight. Get the news that matters, delivered twice a day on weekdays and daily at weekends, plus special bonus episodes reacting to urgent breaking stories. Follow or subscribe now and never miss a moment.Get in touch: globalpodcast@bbc.co.ukPhoto: The Minab school, which was damaged by a strike on February 28, in Minab, Iran, August 27, 2026. Credit: Reuters

In a shocking development that has radio hosts and political commentators buzzing, the State Department has approved UN General Assembly visas for top Iranian officials—including President Masoud Pezeshkian! We break down the high-stakes controversy, the outrage over foreign plot threats, and a wild, bold proposal to turn the tables at the airport. Plus, Dr. Steve Nail weighs in on South Carolina's $1.8B surplus and gas tax debates, alongside a breakdown of the Senate showdown over big tech AI data center energy costs!

Trump says he is banning CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the White House, effective immediately. The U.S. State Department has approved a $24 billion dollar sale of fighter jets to Saudi Arabia, while China is pressing Iran to rein in the Houthis as they close in on one of the world's most critical shipping lanes. Germany's far-right AfD party talks of restarting Russian oil shipments. And as the International Space Station winds down, drugmakers want to head into orbit. Podcasts, breaking news, and video analysis from the source. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download the Reuters app here.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Listen to the Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get our book → https://israelguys.link/facing-jerusalem-816 The U.S. State Department has finally dropped sanctions against leaders of the Palestinian Authority and the PLO. On September 16th they notified Congress of the action, citing the PA's continued support for terrorists and an attempt to internationalize their conflict via the ICC and ICJ. Is it just a coincidence that Hamas, and domestic American groups like BLM and ANTIFA seem to be working hand in glove?  It's about time Americans understand who their friends are and who their enemies are. Is Israel America's true friend or is it the PA and PLO? Joshua Waller breaks it down for you on today's video. Source Links: State Department sanctions Palestinian officials https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesman/2026/09/sanctioning-officials-of-the-palestinian-authority-and-members-of-the-palestine-liberation-organization-2/ GWU report on Hamas networks https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs5746/files/2023-10/hamas-networks-final.pdf Regavim report on PA showcase homes https://www.regavim.org/the-showcase-homes-the-world-doesnt-want-you-to-see/ Long War Journal on West Bank groups https://www.longwarjournal.org/westbankterrorgroups Al Jazeera report on US anti-Muslim complaints https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/11/anti-muslim-hate-hits-new-high-in-us-advocacy-group  #IsraelWar #Hamas #WestBank #PalestinianState #Settlers #IsraelNews #Trump #Bibi #Netanyahu #Gaza #Antifa #PoliceBrutality #USSanctions #PLO #PalestinianAuthority #BLM  

At 48 years old, John Graham has already lived more lives than most. Formerly of the US Foreign Service and State Department, he's now working as a lecturer aboard a cruise ship - the MS Prinsendam. But on the night of his first talk, a fire tears through the commercial liner and more than 500 people are forced overboard. To make matters worse, a typhoon is on its way… A Noiser podcast production. Hosted by John Hopkins. Written by Rhys Bevan | Produced by Ed Baranski | Assistant Producer: Luke Lonergan | Production Assistant: Chris McDonald | Exec produced by Joel Duddell | Sound Supervisor: Matt Peaty | Sound design by Jacob Booth | Assembly edit by Rob Plummer | Compositions by OliverBaines, Dorry Macaulay, Tom Pink | Mix & mastering: Cody Reynolds-Shaw. For ad-free listening, bonus material and early access to new episodes, join Noiser+. Click the subscription banner at the top of the feed to get started. Or go to noiser.com/subscriptions If you have an amazing survival story of your own that you'd like to put forward for the show, let us know. Drop us an email at support@noiser.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

It's a dark moment in American history that leads to a lot of what-ifs. By the spring of 1963, eight years into the Vietnam War, two opposing factions across the CIA and the State Department had President John F. Kennedy's ear. One side wanted to keep South Vietnam's first president, Ngô Đình Diệm, in power. The other wanted to see him removed. Then, unrest in Saigon caught the CIA by surprise, and the rift in Washington grew deeper. Author Jack Cheevers spent a decade piecing together and writing Kennedy's Coup, which lays out the grave decision to oust Diem, a move that led to his death and, arguably, escalated the war. The first U.S. combat troops deployed two years later. Subscribe to Sasha's Substack, HUMINT, to get more intelligence stories: https://sashaingber.substack.com/ and https://www.youtube.com/@sasha-ingber For more information about the International Spy Museum, visit: https://www.spymuseum.org/ And if you have feedback or want to hear about a particular topic, you can reach us by email at spycast@spymuseum.org. This show is brought to you by N2K Networks, Goat Rodeo, and the International Spy Museum in Washington, DC. This episode was produced by Flora Warshaw and the team at Goat Rodeo. At the International Spy Museum, Mike Mincey and Memphis Vaughan III are our video editors. Emily Rens is our graphic designer. Joshua Troemel runs our SPY social media. Amanda Ohlke is our Director of Adult Education and Mira Cohen is the Vice President of Programs.

1900 KABULTragic Abbey Gate Bombing Ends WithdrawalJerry Dunleavy and James Hasson, Part Two: US Marines and 82nd Airborne soldiers manage overwhelming, hazardous crowds at Hamid Karzai International Airport's perimeter gates. State Department delays and shifting visa guidelines create immense confusion, prompting the CIA to utilize Afghan National Strike Units (NSU) to secure the airfield. On August 26, 2021, freed ISIS-K terrorist Abdul Rahman al-Logari detonates a suicide bomb at Abbey Gate, despite Marine snipers previously spotting a suspect matching intelligence descriptions. The tragic blast kills 13 USservice members and roughly 170 Afghan civilians, concluding a turbulent withdrawal marked by significant intelligence warnings and procedural failures. (2)

1842 KABULMilitary Warnings Unheeded Before Kabul EvacuationJerry Dunleavy and James Hasson, authors of Kabul: The Untold Story of Biden's Fiasco and the American Warriors Who Fought to the End, Part One: Diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad negotiates the 2020 Doha agreement with the Taliban, marginalizing the Afghan national government. Although military leaders strongly urge retaining Bagram Airfield as a defensible hub for evacuation, President Biden enforces a strict 600-troop limit, forcing Bagram's abandonment. Administration officials repeatedly promote an inflated figure of 300,000 Afghan security forces, disregarding widespread corruption and non-existent "ghost units." Consequently, closing Bagram releases thousands of Taliban, al-Qaeda, and ISIS-K prisoners. Delays by the State Department in declaring a Non-combatant Evacuation Operation (NEO) trigger catastrophic chaos at Hamid Karzai International Airport as Kabul falls. (1)