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Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start. Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to don't know the difference between matte paint, finish and satin or what that clunking sound from your dryer is. With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro, you just have to hire one. You can hire top rated pros, see price estimates and read reviews all on the app. Download Today the guy thought he had a good thing going, a good job and two lovers. That is, until this triangle got complicated and somebody had to go. I'm Josh Mankiewicz and this is Deadly Engagement, an all new podcast from Dateline. It's a story that's sure to keep you guessing as lovers turn on each other in a desperate bid to avoid prison. All episodes are available now. To listen ad free. Subscribe to Dateline Premium on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or Dateline premium.com foreign.
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Welcome to.
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Here'S a scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vesugin. It is day 15 of the government shutdown and Washington's staring contest is still going strong. Republicans and Democrats haven't so much as blinked while tens of thousands of federal workers, everyone from TSA agents to law enforcement, start missing paychecks. And now the president's upping the ante, warning that he's drafting a hit list of government programs and jobs to cut for good by week's end. Russ Vogt, the White House budget director, was on the Charlie Kirk show today.
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We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding, but the bureaucracy.
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That we now have an opportunity to.
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Do that, and that's where we're going.
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To be looking for our opportunities. So you're saying there's been a snapshot of 4,000 jobs cut?
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Correct.
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Is there a special but but it could grow much higher. I think we'll probably end up being north of 10,000.
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But as the administration issues threats, a federal judge has put in place a temporary restraining order blocking these layoffs during the shutdown, saying she believed they were illegal. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is growing concerned over the fragile cease fire between Israel and Hamas, Israel accusing Hamas of breaking the deal and threatening to withhold aid. Under the US Brokered peace plan, Hamas was to return the remains of 28 hostages. Eight bodies have been handed over, and Israel says one does not match any known hostage. Hamas says remains are difficult to find due to the destruction in Gaza. Both Israel and Hamas have acknowledged there are additional provisions in place aimed at recovering these bodies. Joining me now is NBC News foreign correspondent Matt Bradley, who's on the ground for us in Israel. Hey, Matt.
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Hi, Matt.
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There's been some back and forth as to whether or not Israel is getting the deceased hostages in the time period in which they want, and if they don't get them, whether or not they're going to withhold humanitarian aid. What is Israel saying now?
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Well, now it looks as though the Israelis have said that they are opening the Rafah border crossing, which is one of the main conduits for aid going into the Gaz. This because they have got the bodies or at least a couple more of them that they asked for. And now it looks as though they're also, according to Reuters, going to be allowing in the full 600 truckloads of aid on a daily basis. And that's crucial. They had said that they were going to be docking the number of truckloads of aid by half, so they were only going to let in 300 a day. Now the hallmark is 500 to 600 trucks a day. That was what humanitarian groups had told me was what they were bringing in during the last ceasefire back in February and March. It looks as though this dispute is over for the moment, but that could change at any time. And it also, according to Israeli media, looks as though that Hamas is going to be giving over another couple of bodies tonight. So it looks as though despite this massive hiccup and the concerns that it raised, for the moment, there's confidence building when it comes to exchanging these bodies. Truckloads of aid going in. And the Israelis themselves are also giving over, as of today, 45 bodies of Palestinians into the Gaza Strip.
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So let's take a step back for a moment. This has all happened overnight in which at one point Israel said, we're not getting the bodies, we're going to withhold aid. Now they're saying, no, we'll bring aid in because we are getting more bodies. How many hostages have they gotten? How much has actually been exchanged?
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So we're standing at eight bodies, seven of them are hostages. And then now tonight, we could probably expect a few more. Another thing we need to remember here is that all of this had been sort of telegraphed beforehand. Hamas had informed the negotiators and everybody else involved that they were going to really struggle to find these bodies. Why? Well, one of the main reasons is because a lot of the bodies were buried by Hamas operatives and fighters who had since been killed in the war. So some of these bodies, they don't know where they are because the people who buried them have died.
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I think that's an important point that you just made. So during the negotiations, the indirect talks between Hamas and Israel, Hamas had said at the time that they would have difficulty in finding some of these dead hostages.
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Yes, that was something that was raised. I know that the negotiators and the people involved understood this. They appreciated it. And there were plans that were being made, and I'm not sure if they were actually going through with this to convene an international group of experts who would go and help Hamas exhume these bodies. That was part of the plan. That was something that was stated at the time. So there was a broad understanding about this, that this was not going to be an easy task for Hamas. When we talk about whether or not this could scuttle the deal or complicate the deal, it has already.
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The President has said we're in phase two. He said that in Egypt, whereas we're still exchanging the dead hostages and Palestinians, which is part of phase one. But part of phase two is the disarmament. Part of phase two is the establishment of a governing body inside Gaza. What are the plans from your reporting as to how to disarm Hamas?
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The fact is, we don't even know what the definition of disarmament is in this case. And we have not seen anybody laying out terms for how this would happen. Hamas hasn't said that they're planning on disarming. When they said that they agreed to this deal back a week or two ago, they didn't mention disarmament. And that was one of the main points. And remember, this all started with President Trump's 20 point plan. That was one of the points in the 20 point plan was that Hamas must disarm. Well, we heard on Monday from Israel, Katz, he's the Minister of Defense of Israel, he came out and he said that disarmament means destroying all of the tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip. Now, if you can imagine disarmament would mean laying down your weapons by these Hamas fighters, that's a pretty big deal in itself. But for Israel to go back into the Gaza Strip while it's under ceasefire and destroy all of these tunnels, which, by the way, according to people that I've been speaking to in the security establishment here, they've only so far identified and destroyed about 30% of the tunnels underneath the Gaza Strip. That means there's an enormous number of tunnels that are under Gaza that haven't even been discovered yet. So to go in and do that. If that's what disarmament means, and the Israelis have made clear that that they think is disarmament, that means getting rid of all the tunnels, then that will be a logistical and military and practical nightmare for everybody involved.
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And what is the feeling on the ground in Israel as to whether or not this plan is going to stick?
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I think a lot of people are a little skeptical. I think there's a lot of hope, there's a lot of joy. Obviously, we've been seeing people dancing in the streets, but among the public, that's hard to read. Among the security establishment, there is a lot of pessimism that this is going to work out. The way that Donald Trump did this deal, which worked, was that he basically railroaded it through with the engine behind the railroading through the deal was just incredible optimism and a desire to avoid any details. When I talk about how we don't know what the definition of disarmament is, we don't know what the definition of Gaza giving up power. We haven't even seen those really being discussed, though President Trump had said those are currently under negotiation. We don't know what the phase two looks like. So to say that we're now in phase two is a bit confusing because we don't know what this is and it hasn't been nailed down in terms of what the terms are, in terms of what each party has to do to fulfill these terms. Remember this phase one, the terms were very specific. 72 hours in order for Hamas to surrender the hostages and for. And dead and alive, for Israel to release all of these prisoners, as many as 2,000 of them, from Israeli jails, and also to cease firing. For the rest of it, we don't have any specifics like that.
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Matt Bradley, thank you. So, given this fragility of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, we wanted to talk to someone who understands the intricacies of these peace deals and then what it really takes to make sure they can actually hold. I want to turn now to Aaron David Miller, who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Welcome, Aaron.
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It's great to be here with you.
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Great to have you on. So we saw celebrations on Monday, culminating obviously in that peace summit in Egypt, where the President essentially said this was a major breakthrough.
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The momentous breakthrough that we're here to celebrate tonight is more than the end of the war in Gaza. It's with God's help, it'll be the new beginning for an entire beautiful Middle East.
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What do you make of this?
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It's extraordinary that you actually even have an agreement between Israel and Hamas. Let's be clear what we have here and what we don't have. This is not a peace agreement. This is not even a roadmap that has an inexorable or inevitable guarantee that the war in Gaza will end. However, it is an extraordinary moment delivered by an American president who showed an incredible force of will and focus particularly on an Israeli prime minister who was resistant and has managed to put together a coalition of key Arab states that persuaded the external leadership, who persuaded the internal leadership that releasing the hostages could be an asset, not a liability. Just make one other point about Trump. Trump has twice now authorized his negotiators to meet directly with Hamas. I think was critically important to Hamas's saying yes to this plan because Trump gave his personal assurances that he would enforce this ceasefire.
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Do you think that was a smart move?
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I think it was critically important to getting this deal. And I bet you that you're going to end up with a US Hamas channel going forward, which will drive the Israelis absolutely crazy.
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How do Israel, Hamas and the US how do they get to any further phases in this deal and remain at peace?
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I attended a lot of peace conferences in my time, and the most difficult question that is asked is the Monday morning question, what do we do now? How do we make this work? And I don't want him to take any credit away from him, because no president I ever worked for exerted the kind of pressure essentially on an Israeli prime minister or on key Arab states that Trump managed to do. But it can't be one and done right. And the four issues that need to be addressed. You can't do this with two people. I mean, you can't solve the decommissioning demilitarization of Hamas with Witkoff and Kushner. You can't create a technocratic, capable, legitimate, authoritative Palestinian governance with two people. This is a huge lift. He did something remarkable. There's no question about it. To make it work, he's going to have to do even more remarkable things.
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Aaron, David Miller, thank you.
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I appreciate it.
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All right, we are going to take a quick break. When we're back, the new US Military strike off the coast of Venezuela.
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Who's ready for some football?
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All season, the Today show takes you inside the game.
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We are going to get this party started.
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Join us every week as we go behind the scenes with your favorite NFL teams for the biggest stories on and off the field. Big game tonight, plus game day recipes that dial up your tailgate Football food, soup to nuts. From from stadium lights to game day bites, the Today show is your home for all things football every morning on NBC. This week on Meet THE press, as Israel and Hamas make progress toward a peace deal and tensions rise over the National Guard in Chicago and the continued government shutdown, Kristen Welker sits down with Vice President J.D. vance, Senator Lindsey Grabb and Senator Mark Kelly this week on MEET THE Press. Listen to the full episode now, wherever you get your podcasts.
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And we are back with Here's a scoop from NBC News. President Trump announcing yesterday that US Forces had struck a vessel off the coast of Venezuela. He said it was trafficking narcotics. And the action is part of a string of US Military strikes on boats in the Caribbean, allegedly smuggling illicit drugs to the states. Trump has ordered at least five such attacks since September, and officials say 27 people have been killed. But there are questions about the strategy and the legality of these attacks. And members of Congress, they're getting frustrated by the lack of information from the administration. According to six sources who spoke with NBC News, Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth have released grainy footage on Truth Social. But that's really about it. So I want to bring in correspondent Courtney Kuby. She covers national security and the military for us. Hey, Court.
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Hi.
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Let's walk through some of these strikes. Five in about six weeks. What exactly is the administration's strategy from their perspective?
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So they are claiming that these are all boats that have left Venezuela. They are have large loads of drugs on them that will ultimately make their way to the United States and that for that reason they are an authorized military target. The administration has told Congress that they are in an armed conflict with the drug cartels. But it's causing a lot of questions, particularly the legality of these strikes.
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And especially after last week when we heard from the Colombian president who essentially said, you hit a Colombian boat and it wasn't in fact, drug cartels, it was Colombians, people that were traveling. Yeah, civilians really.
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And that opens up the whole question of does the administration actually know the identities, the names of some of the people who are on these boats? And it's not clear that they do. There have been briefings, classified briefings on Capitol Hill. But we know that members of Congress are saying they are not getting enough information that they feel satisfies the questions they have about does the administration, are they confident in this intelligence? How are they gathering the intelligence? How do they know who's on these boats? How do they does the administration really justify these actions legally?
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Who's carrying it out. Where are they originating these strikes? From what base? And is Hegseth the one that's saying go for it?
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So the, the US Military in the last two months or so maybe a little bit more than that, has flooded the region with additional resources. There's at least eight ships in there, including a submarine. They've sent additional fighter aircraft into Puerto Rico. They've sent additional marines into the area. So they have all the capability they need to to carry out these strikes from right there within the region. The problem is the military won't tell us. They won't tell us what platforms they are using. They won't tell us what you know. There's been some reporting that at least one or maybe more of the strikes were carried out by drones, but we don't know for sure if that's the case. We don't know if that's been the case in all of them. We don't know if, if these strikes are potentially putting men and women in military in harm's way, then they're car when they're carrying it out. We just don't know any of that.
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What does the lack of transparency court suggest to you? Have you ever seen anything like this before?
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We've had airstrikes that the military doesn't want to talk about where they originate from. Specifically when you're talking about strikes in the Middle East. There are certain locations that the US Bases people and aircraft that they don't want to talk about for host nation sensitivities. That absolutely has been the case in the past.
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But eventually they release the information. They release satellite images, whether it's before or after. Maybe it's a trickle, but it happens eventually.
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And that's been one of the big questions that we're hearing more and more about on Capitol Hill is they're asking just for the unedited videos that the administration is putting on Truth Social. So you've noticed each of these cases. They've put up in many cases a pretty grainy video showing just an explosion, a boat in the water and an explosion. And then we're left to what the administration tells us about the details of what's just occurred there.
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Courtney Kuby, thank you. All right, let's get to some headlines. The Supreme Court is once again hearing a case that could have significant, significant implications for the Voting Rights Act. It involves a challenge to Louisiana's redrawn congressional map, which created a second majority black district to comply with the act. A group of white voters subsequently sued, arguing that the map was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander. If the court finds in favor of the white voters, it could potentially weaken or even strike down Section two of the Voting Rights act, which prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color or membership in minority groups. President Trump's immigration crackdown touched off tense clashes yesterday. Los Angeles county declared a state of emergency and approved financial aid for people affected by ICE raids. While in Chicago, a crowd confronted federal officers after the Department of Homeland Security said its agents were being targeted.
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He's a citizen. He's a citizen.
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Officials say a pursuit began when an undocumented immigrant rammed a Border Patrol vehicle. Agents stopped the car, arrested suspects, and objects were thrown at federal officers. Federal agents deployed tear gas on the protesters and DHS posted a video touting more than 1500 immigration related arrests in the Chicago area since early September. And they warned that Mexican drug cartels are offering cash bounties for kidnapping, assault or assassination of ICE personnel. Chicago's deputy mayor for immigrant rights warned this type of escalation is what is going to cause harm. And DHS Assistant Secretary Trish McLachlan said, quote, Our message to cartels, we are not backing down. A new study in the BMJ Evidence Based Medicine Journal is throwing cold water on the idea that a glass of wine a day keeps the doctor away. Researchers found that any level of alcohol consumption may increase the risk of dementia, challenging long held claims that moderate drinking could be good for brain health. The analysis combined data from more than half a million adults and genetic information from 2.4 million people, revealing a clear pattern. The more you drink, the higher your risk for dementia. Alright, I got a question. Have you ever washed a banana? Yeah, me neither. Well, experts say you should wash your bananas, yes, the ones that you peel, because dirt, bacteria and the occasional fruit fly egg can hitch a ride on the outside. Real simple points out that a quick rinse under cool water keeps those freeloaders from transferring to your hands or the fruit itself. Just give them a 30 second shower, focus on the stem and then pat it dry. Think of it as personal hygiene for your produce because nobody likes a dirty banana. All right, that is going to do it for us. For here's the scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasmin Vestigin. Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow with whatever the day may bring. And if you like what you heard, then like us, back wherever you get your podcasts. See you tomorrow.
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Hanaday presents in the red corner, the undisputed undefeated Weed.
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Whacker guy.
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Champion of hurling grass and pollen everywhere. And in the blue corner, the challenger. Extra strength patinay eye drops that work all day to prevent the release of histamines that cause itchy allergy eyes. And the winner by knockout is Pataday Patinaday. Bring it on.