Reuters World News - Hegseth, Texas, Eurovision and women deacons

Episode Date: December 5, 2025

U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth faces scrutiny as questions mount over the Pentagon’s strikes on suspected drug boats. The Supreme Court greenlights a new Texas map with big implications for the 2026 midterms. Israel is cleared to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest. And the Vatican rules out women deacons for now. Plus, we visit the Somali community in Minnesota after Trump's "garbage" comment.  Listen to Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠here⁠⁠. Find the Recommended Read 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

Hi, I'm Kim Vinal in New York. It's Friday, December 5th. Today, the Pentagon hits another boat in international waters as questions mount over the legality of the attacks. The Supreme Court greenlights Texas to use a new map that favours Republicans. Israel is cleared to compete in Eurovision and four countries pull out. And the Vatican says no to women deacons. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week.

The US military says it's killed four men in a fresh strike on a suspected drug boat, a statement on X saying, Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was carrying illicit narcotics and transiting along a known narco-trafficking route in the eastern Pacific. This latest attack comes as lawmakers are split. after a classified briefing from Admiral Frank Bradley about another US strike on a suspected drug boat in the Caribbean that killed 11 people in September.

Democrats on the Intelligence and Armed Services Committee say they're horrified by footage showing two survivors of an initial strike, then being killed in a second strike by the US, a violation of war rules, while Republicans are defending the strike, saying the video shows the survivors, could have potentially handed drugs over to other boats in the area. Pentagon reporter Idris Ali says the scrutiny over the strikes legality

comes at a delicate time for Defense Secretary Pete Hegsef. This comes at a time when the Pentagon's Inspector General just released a report on the use of the signal messaging app by him a few months ago. And so it's a key moment for Pete Hexette. And people are watching closely whether President Trump, who is his boss, still has confidence in him. For his part, Trump has said he backs Hexat. But it's really an interesting time because during the initial phases of the controversy around the Caribbean strike, even Republican lawmakers questioning what happened and what legal authorities went into the strike. And so I think the

context these military officials provided with the strike that took place on September 2nd have really helped allay some of the concerns for Republican lawmakers. We're not seeing some of those heavy hitters questioning Hexette in the same way, of course. The broader context, is still important, right? The United States has carried out about 20 strikes, killed more than 80 people, and President Trump himself has said land strikes in Venezuela are next. So we've zeroed in on the September 2nd strike, but there have been questions about the legality of all the strikes that have taken place. The U.S. Supreme Court has revived a redrawn congressional map in Texas, giving Republicans a major boost ahead of the 2026 midterms. The justices have lifted a lower court's

block on the Trump-backed map, which could flip up to five Democratic seats. That lower court had ruled the map likely violated constitutional protections against racial discrimination. Republicans hold narrow majorities in Congress, so this decision matters. It strengthens Trump's push to keep control and underscores a nationwide fight over gerrymandering and voting rights. The FBI has arrested a suspect in one of the most notorious unsolved, cases from January 6th, the person accused of planting pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters the night before the Capitol attack. The arrest of 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr. comes nearly four years after a massive manhunt that included a half-million

dollar reward and hundreds of tips. It also comes just months after the president pardoned nearly everyone charged in the Capitol riot itself. And find out what's happening. in the markets today. We've got Morning Bids. Peter Devlin. Peter, what do we need to know? Morning Kim. Today on MorningBid, we talked about Netflix and Warner Brothers. The bidding war could be coming to close and Netflix is eking ahead according to sources. As well, we look to the PC numbers for the Fed could be critical in terms of a Christmas cuts. And finally, Zuckerberg could be scrapping the metaverse in terms of funding and not great news for those looking for AI wearables. Please listen to more on Morning Bids.

Peter. You can ask your smart speaker for Royce's morning bid, listen to it on your favourite podcast player, or watch it on Spotify. Anna Frioli reacting to the news that the Vatican has overwhelmingly voted against women serving as deacons, saying, even our Lord had women who followed him, so we are not inferior to men, adding she wishes the Catholic Church would do more for inclusion in the 21st century. discussions about women deacons in the 1.4 billion member church have been ongoing for the last decade. Deacons are ordained and can help with church services but cannot celebrate mass, and the Commission has recommended further study of the issue. A warning that ice fans have been spotted near Carmel Mall, also known as Somali Mall, in Minneapolis. Minnesota is home to more than 70,000 Somali Americans, and now many of them are staying inside.

fearing they could be detained by ICE agents after President Trump called Somali immigrants garbage at a White House cabinet meeting on Tuesday. The Somalian should be out of here. They've destroyed our country. City councilman Jamal Osmond says that ice are going door to door and stopping people in the streets. They're not just targeting undocumented.

They're targeting every Somali person. It feels like we are in I don't know how to explain it, a war zone. Inside the Carmel Mall, the emptiness is haunting. Shop owner, Mohamed Amman Sharif, says the Somali community is fearful. You could see around the mall a lot of vacant stores, a lot of closed stores, and no foot traffic. People are hiding in their homes. Baja Ali owns a cafe in the mall that just last week was buzzing.

They don't want to come out, and a lot of businesses are closed. Now, Donald Trump is no stranger to putting his name on buildings. The latest to get a Trump rebrand is the United States Institute of Peace in Washington. Yusip is a government-founded non-profit that the Trump administration tried to seize control of earlier this year. On Thursday, the State Department said on X it had renamed it to the Donald J. Trump Institute of Peace, to quote, reflect the greatest deal maker in our nation's history. And thank you for putting a certain name of that building. I said, boy, that is beautiful.

That blew up last night. The rebranding came ahead of the signing of the Congo-Rwanda peace deal, which Trump held at the Institute. Here's White House reporter Trevor Hunnicott. So we're seeing ongoing clashes right now between M23. That's a rebel group that's operating in eastern Congo and the Congolese army. and that fighting continued the same day that we saw this peace deal signed in Washington. So there's clearly a disconnect between what's happening diplomatically and what's happening on the ground.

The Eurovision Song Contest has cleared Israel to enter the 2026 competition, prompting Ireland, Spain, the Netherlands and Slovenia to withdraw, citing the death count in Gaza and accusing Israel of flouting rules meant to guard the contest's neutrality. Israel accuses its critics of mounting a global smear campaign against it. Olivia Le Pue d'Ewan in Geneva says it's unprecedented for the European Broadcasting Union. It has not faced an issue of this scale before in terms of the number of countries asking for another country, in this case Israel, to be excluded from the competition of which is said to be non-political. It should be a competition which unites the world through. cheesy pop music.

This would run quite contrary to that. And for today's recommended read, Assad's exiled spy chief and his billionaire cousin are spending millions plotting Syrian revolts from their exile in Russia. And Syria's government has deployed another ex-Assad insider, a childhood friend of the new president, to neutralize them. There's a link to that story in the podcast notes. Plus, a recommended listen. This weekend, Christopher Waljasper takes us on assignment to Kenya,

with a real-world impact of the Trump administration's cuts to US aid are hitting hard. That pod drops on Saturday. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget follow us on your favourite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week. We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.