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Gideon Resnick
Good morning. Both sides hint at progress in talks
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to end the war with Iran.
Gideon Resnick
But as the Wall Street Journal tells us, lasting peace is far from certain.
National Security Analyst
Trump and the US May have won the military aspect of the war with Iran, but right now they're on the battlefield of diplomacy and Trump is not winning the peace. I think it's fair to say it.
Gideon Resnick
Texas decides whether to fall behind Trump's
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pick for the Senate. And what we know and don't know about the controversial new DOJ fund.
Gideon Resnick
It's Tuesday, May, 26. I'm Gideon Resnick in for Shamita Basu.
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This is Apple News. Today,
Gideon Resnick
The contours of an agreement to
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end the U. S. Israeli conflict with Iran appear to be emerging.
Gideon Resnick
But a holiday weekend that began with positive updates has ended with more questions
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and plenty of skepticism.
Gideon Resnick
On Saturday, President Trump suggested an agreement
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had been largely negotiated.
National Security Analyst
In effect, he was announcing a deal to set up the talks.
Gideon Resnick
That's Alex Ward, national Security reporter at
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the Wall Street Journal.
National Security Analyst
So phase one would have been something like the strain of Hormuz reopens and the US Lifts its blockade on Iran. Then they set the terms and it ultimately ends down the line with Iran having no ability to make a nuclear weapon.
Alex Ward
But by Monday, the momentum had stalled. The Iranian Foreign Ministry acknowledged understanding on, quote, a large portion of the issues, but said a deal was not imminent.
National Security Analyst
It turns out that the president might have spoken too soon. In fact, the sides were not that close. There are many points of disagreement, one of them as basic as Iran would like some money up front to continue talking, whereas the US does not want to provide Iran with any sanctions relief. And it looks like Trump is trying to sell something that wasn't nearly complete.
Gideon Resnick
According to the ap, officials say a
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draft deal includes an end to the war between Israel and Hezbollah and a commitment to avoid interfering in the domestic affairs of the region. Taken to mean Iran's proxies, the Strait
Gideon Resnick
of Hormuz would gradually open up and there would be sanctions relief in exchange
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for the regime giving up its uranium stockpile to be negotiated over 60 days.
Gideon Resnick
But as those details dripped out, some
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Republican lawmakers were quick to warn against giving too much away.
Gideon Resnick
The Republican Chair of the Senate's Armed
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Services Committee, Roger Wicker, suggested the rumored 60 day timeline would, quote, be a disaster.
Gideon Resnick
On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio
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sought to ease those concerns.
Marco Rubio
The idea that somehow this president, given everything he's already proven he's willing to do, is going to somehow agree to a deal that ultimately winds up putting Iran in a stronger position when it comes to nuclear ambitions is absurd.
Gideon Resnick
Ward told us the toughest parts of
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a deal remain unresolved, in particular, Iran's ultimate nuclear ambitions, or exactly what happens to the Strait of Hormuz.
Gideon Resnick
And Trump surprised many yesterday when he
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suggested that more nations join the Abraham
Gideon Resnick
Accords, a treaty between a small number
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of countries to normalize relations with Israel.
Gideon Resnick
It was a flagship achievement of Trump's
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first term, and linking the accords to any Iran deal would please some within his own party.
National Security Analyst
So if all these countries were to sign on, it would signal greater integration of the Middle east, sort of less of at least official antagonism. But we're in a different world now, right? Gaza and Iran have happened and there are a lot of countries that don't want to do that, namely Saudi Arabia, until there is sort of a clear pathway towards a Palestinian state and the issues in Gaza are resolved.
Gideon Resnick
Talks are expected to intensify this week. Tehran's top officials arrived in Qatar on
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Monday for indirect negotiations.
Gideon Resnick
And for now, the ceasefire remains formally in place.
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But last night, U.S. central Command also
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said it carried out what it called
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defensive strikes in southern Iran, targeting missile sites and boats that it said were attempting to place mines.
Gideon Resnick
Republican primary voters in Texas will decide
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today if they're going to stick with John Cornyn, who has held his Senate seat since 2002, or go with their Attorney General, Ken Paxton.
Gideon Resnick
That choice could not only shape the
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future of the state, but also the makeup of the Republican Party in Congress going forward.
Gideon Resnick
That's because President Trump backed Paxton at the last minute.
Stephen Sloan
The president has been on this decade long project of making the Republican Party more to his liking.
Alex Ward
Stephen Sloan is a Washington correspondent for the Associated Press.
Stephen Sloan
Well, it's a real short term, long term kind of calculus that he's making here. In the long term, for a president who is trying to build a legacy, cement a legacy, this could be, in his mind, an upside.
Gideon Resnick
The downside is that Republicans have slim
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margins in the House and Senate.
Gideon Resnick
And even as Trump has had success
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backing primary challengers against incumbents, those people still have months left of their terms
Gideon Resnick
which they can use to be a
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thorn in the side of the administration, or as Sloan called it, a kind of YOLO caucus.
Gideon Resnick
That philosophy of you only live once
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is coming into play more for these Republicans who feel like they have less to lose.
Stephen Sloan
Now we have like seven months or so before this new Congress has sworn in, right? And there's a lot that has to happen in that time. And we saw this really kind of blow up in Washington Last week, senators
Gideon Resnick
left town without passing a bill to
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fund immigration priorities because they were frustrated with the White House push to establish a new anti weaponization DOJ fund. And also Trump's endorsement against Cornyn.
Stephen Sloan
This is somebody who raises a lot of money for his Republican colleagues. He's somebody who's really liked among his colleagues. And for the President to come out against that, I think it really kind of pulled the rug out on a lot of stuff that's been festering for months.
Gideon Resnick
Trump has recently said that Cornyn is, quote, very disloyal, in part because he
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had previously suggested that it'd be difficult for Trump to win in 2024. And stylistically, Paxton has appealed to Trump with his firebrand approach and support of false claims about the 2020 election.
Gideon Resnick
But in the final days of the
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campaign, Cornyn has emphasized his close work with the President and argued that he is the only candidate who could win in November.
James Comey
And I know the Attorney General thinks all the scandals that he's brought with him over the years are already baked in the cake and people don't care, but I guarantee you I care and I believe you care.
Gideon Resnick
Paxson has been at the center of
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several controversies in recent years.
Gideon Resnick
He was impeached by the Texas house in 2023, though acquitted by the Senate, indicted on felony securities fraud charges. And he's in the middle of a bitter divorce, all of which Cornyn and
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his allies have used to suggest that the race could become a test of character.
Gideon Resnick
On Fox over the weekend, Paxton argued
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that Cornyn hadn't been sufficiently loyal to Trump.
Ken Paxton
He fought him in 2024, said his time had passed, and he fought him in 2016. So this is not a pro Trump guy. I don't know if we could be more different on the Republican issues than John Cornyn and me. So there is a vast difference between the two of us.
Gideon Resnick
If defeated, Cornyn could be tempted to
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join the growing list of lame duck Republicans already making an impact.
Gideon Resnick
Senator Bill Cassidy, who recently lost the
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primary, joined Democrats to vote to rein in Trump's war powers.
Gideon Resnick
And Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who lost
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last week, has hinted that he could throw some wrenches into Trump's agenda as well.
Stephen Sloan
Maybe over the long term, this will work out to accomplish what the President wants. But the next few months are pretty hard.
Gideon Resnick
President Trump's friends and foes alike have
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already begun eyeing up a part of the $1.8 billion so called anti weaponization fund.
Gideon Resnick
The money was set aside as part
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of Trump's settlement with the irs, and
Gideon Resnick
it's designed for those who feel they
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were unfairly treated by the Justice Department.
Gideon Resnick
The Wall Street Journal reports that high
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profile names have already started expressing their interest. Some are Trump allies, like MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, who lost defamation cases for spreading voter fraud conspiracies, or Roger Stone, who Trump pardoned after being convicted for lying to Congress. Others, though, are names that Trump might not welcome.
Brian Schwartz
People like Michael Cohen, the president's longtime former attorney and fixer who was picked up in the Robert Mueller probe. He told us he's looking to get involved with this and make an application for it.
Gideon Resnick
That's Brian Schwartz, a reporter at the Journal. Cohen is now a vocal critic of Trump, but he pled guilty in 2018
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to a number of charges stemming from investigations into the president.
Gideon Resnick
And Schwartz told us that he's not
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the only Trump critic who might get involved. Protesters in Chicago, for one, who were targeted by the administration for prosecution and recently had their charges dropped.
Gideon Resnick
And then there's former FBI Director James
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Comey, who's been indicted twice by the DOJ since the start of Trump's second term.
Gideon Resnick
He was asked about the fund on
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CNN and initially said he thought it was a headline from the Onion.
James Comey
It's to compensate people who've been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say, personal, political or ideological reasons. So I'm guessing I'll be in line. I hope I'll be ahead of those who savagely beat police officers and sack the Capitol.
Gideon Resnick
Schwartz said that the cases will be
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decided by a five member panel whose
Gideon Resnick
membership will be selected by Trump's Attorney
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General, Todd Blanch, and who Trump can fire without cause if he chooses.
Gideon Resnick
It's unclear for now who Blanche will appoint or exactly what the criteria would
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be to get access to the funds.
Gideon Resnick
The DOJ says the fund will be
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nonpartisan and that anyone can apply. And the money comes from a broader taxpayer pot that's been used to cover US Government legal settlements.
Gideon Resnick
But to use the money like this is unprecedented, and it drew a bipartisan
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firestorm on the Hill last week.
Gideon Resnick
Because Trump will have the power to
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remove members from the panel at will, it could be motivated to make decisions that appease him.
Brian Schwartz
The president himself is clearly hinting that it is, in fact the president's allies who are set to benefit more potentially from this fund and not necessarily Democrats as well.
Gideon Resnick
Schwartz says a likely pool of applicants are people who faced legal charges related
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to the 2020 election.
Gideon Resnick
Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader
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who was sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy, told Reuters that he plans to apply.
Gideon Resnick
And Schwartz reports that many of the
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January 6th rioters who were charged or convicted but later pardoned by Trump for their roles in the insurrection are talking with lawyers about applying as well.
Brian Schwartz
There's no rule stopping people who assaulted police officers that day and were convicted of that from submitting for funds.
Gideon Resnick
Blanche told lawmakers that he plans to
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appoint the panel that will judge the applications within the next month.
Gideon Resnick
The fund already faces several challenges in federal court, and both Democrats and some
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Republicans are questioning its legality.
Gideon Resnick
Last week, lawmakers in the House introduced
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a bipartisan bill to prohibit the fund
Gideon Resnick
drawing from taxpayer dollar. And finally, here are a few other stories we're following. The risk of a major chemical tank
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explosion that prompted mass evacuation orders in Southern California has passed, but the danger
Gideon Resnick
is not over yet, officials said.
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The threat of a smaller scale explosion remains.
Gideon Resnick
Last week, inspectors discovered a crack in
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a 34,000 gallon tank that was storing chemicals used in the production of plastics and resinstein.
Gideon Resnick
Governor Newsom declared a state of emergency
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as fears grew of devastating contamination at a facility about 30 miles from Los Angeles.
Gideon Resnick
But while firefighters had managed to cool
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the temperature down and to lessen the risk, officials warned that evacuation orders were still in place.
Gideon Resnick
At the Vatican, Pope Leo weighed in
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on one of the defining technologies of the moment yesterday.
Marco Rubio
Let's not fear artificial intelligence, but constantly keep the question of the human in play. We cannot be careless with our most powerful technical instruments.
Gideon Resnick
It was part of his first Papal
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Encyclical, a 42,000 word open letter that he presented alongside Chris Ola, a co founder of Anthropic.
Gideon Resnick
AI is one of the first issues
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the pontiff spoke about after being elected,
Gideon Resnick
saying it's the biggest challenge facing humanity today. In this letter, he framed AI as
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a new industrial revolution, said that it should be removed from military and economic interests, and that concentrating the power of AI in the hands of a few big tech leaders could have negative consequences. Pope Leo also used the encyclical to
Gideon Resnick
apologize for the Vatican's past role in
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legitimizing slavery, saying it was, quote, a wound in Christian memory.
Gideon Resnick
And as airline prices fly ever higher,
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one viral video claimed to have the the public library.
Gideon Resnick
According to the video, computers at your
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local branch are a blank slate. They're free of your search history and cookies that many believe affect the price that you see.
Gideon Resnick
The video also claims that airlines can
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determine your fare in a predatory manner,
Gideon Resnick
but the Washington Post tried to see
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if that was the case, and they tested the theory out the short answer they found was a resounding no.
Gideon Resnick
The Post's Natalie Compton searched for the same flights on her personal devices like
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phones and laptops, then went to the library to try it.
Natalie Compton
We looked directly on the airline websites and through their apps. I even went back to a different library on a second day to repeat the test again. We all got the same results. If a fare fluctuated, it fluctuated for all of us and not just on a particular device. This was disappointing. We wanted the hack to work, but it didn't.
Gideon Resnick
Those viral videos Airfare experts also told
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the Post that they were skeptical and that airlines are constantly updating fares in real time to account for demand and
Gideon Resnick
how many tickets are left, no matter if you're at the library or at home. You can find all these stories and
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more in the Apple News and app.
Gideon Resnick
And if you're already listening to the News app right now, we have a
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narrated article coming up next. Rolling Stone reports on Colossal Biosciences, the company that claims it can de extinct animals.
Gideon Resnick
It's had successes like resurrecting dire wolves, and now it's hoping to create artificial wombs. If you're listening in the podcast app, you can follow Apple News plus narrative
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to find that story. And I'll be back with the news tomorrow.
Sam
Sam.
Date: May 26, 2026
Host: Gideon Resnick (in for Shumita Basu)
Episode Theme:
The episode dissects the latest developments in U.S.-Iran peace negotiations amidst renewed military action, examines high-stakes Texas Senate primaries, discusses controversy surrounding a new DOJ “anti-weaponization” fund, and quickly breaks down trending news on chemical plant risks, AI at the Vatican, and viral airfare hacks.
Overview
Selected experts and journalists explore the mounting complexity of diplomatic efforts to end the war involving the U.S., Israel, and Iran. Optimism after initial announcements is tempered by deep skepticism as negotiations snag on major sticking points.
Key Insights & Discussion Points
Notable Quotes
Military Strikes Amid Talks
Overview
A pivotal Republican primary in Texas pits longtime Senator John Cornyn against Attorney General Ken Paxton, with Trump’s last-minute endorsement of Paxton shaking up the party.
Key Discussion Points
Quotes & Moments
Broader Implications
Overview
A new $1.8B DOJ fund, theoretically for victims of perceived Justice Department overreach, draws bipartisan fire and an array of high-profile applicants, allies and critics alike.
Key Points
Memorable Quote
Southern California Chemical Plant Risk
Pope Leo’s AI Manifesto
Airfare ‘Library Hack’ Debunked
| Timestamp | Speaker | Quote | |-----------|---------|-------| | 00:13 | National Security Analyst | “Trump and the US may have won the military aspect... but... Trump is not winning the peace.” | | 01:31 | National Security Analyst | “The president might have spoken too soon... there are many points of disagreement.” | | 02:31 | Marco Rubio | “The idea that somehow this president... winds up putting Iran in a stronger position... is absurd.” | | 03:09 | National Security Analyst | “We’re in a different world now... a lot of countries don’t want to do that, namely Saudi Arabia...” | | 05:29 | Stephen Sloan | “For the President to come out against [Cornyn]... I think it really kind of pulled the rug out...” | | 06:46 | Ken Paxton | “I don’t know if we could be more different on Republican issues than John Cornyn and me.” | | 08:57 | James Comey | “I hope I’ll be ahead of those who savagely beat police officers and sack the Capitol.” | | 09:49 | Brian Schwartz | “It is, in fact, the president's allies who are set to benefit more... from this fund.” | | 11:46 | Pope Leo | “Let's not fear artificial intelligence, but constantly keep the question of the human in play.” | | 13:12 | Natalie Compton | “We wanted the hack to work, but it didn’t.” |
For a complete news roundup and more detailed reporting, visit Apple News or the Apple News app.