The NPR Politics Podcast - Sources & Methods: Trump's DC takeover, Ukraine, fired spy chief

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

Today, we're excited to share an episode from NPR's newest podcast, Sources & Methods. Each Thursday, host Mary Louise Kelly breaks down the week's biggest national security news with NPR's team of reporters covering the military, State Department, and spy agencies. NPR correspondents stationed around the world also join the conversation. This episode: Moscow bureau chief Charles Maynes and national security correspondent Greg Myre unpack the war of attrition in Ukraine, a spate of firings and security clearance revocations in the intelligence community, and President Trump's use of police and the National Guard in D.C. Find new episodes of Sources & Methods on the NPR App or wherever you listen to podcasts. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org. It's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Diva Shivaram. I cover the White House. Here with a special bonus episode for you, the first episode of NPR's newest podcast, sources and methods, where NPR's team covering the military, State Department, and intelligence agencies break down the biggest national security news of the week. It's a lot like our show, which is why we think you'll like it. And it's hosted by NPR's Mary Louise Kelly, a legend on the NADSEC beat, who knows

that world inside and out. New episodes drop every Thursday, and you can follow the show wherever you listen to this one. We're off on Monday for the Labor Day weekend, but back in your feed with a new episode as usual on Tuesday. Until then, thanks for checking out sources and Methods, the new national security podcast from NPR. Mass government security officials, detaining people in vans, no immediate form of ID, no idea where the detainees are headed. And yet, life goes on. It does look like something out of Minsk or Moscow.

And what's strange is the normalcy of it all. A spy chief fired. A former national security advisor targeted by the FBI. And the National Guard on the streets in New York. As President Trump pushes the limits of his power at home, he has nothing to show for his efforts abroad to end the war in Ukraine. At least, not yet. This is sources and methods from NPR. I'm Mary Louise Kelly.

Thank you for checking out our very first episode. Every Thursday, we discuss the biggest national security stories of the week. I'll do that with my colleagues from NPR's NADC team covering the military, the State Department, intelligence community, and sometimes we will rope in our international correspondence stationed around the world, too. That is what we have done today with Charles Mains, our Moscow Bureau Chief. Hey, there, Charles. Hi there. Hi. And also Greg Myrie, who covers national security with a focus on the spy beat. He's usually here in Washington, but we have shipped him out for the month of August to report on the ground in Ukraine. Hey, Greg. Hi, Mary Louise. Okay, so again,

I am in Washington. It is one, just a little past 1 p.m. here. How's Thursday night in Eastern Europe going for you, too? Well, it's sundown on a lovely summer's day, and I can't stress this enough because I've been seeing it for several years now. Many parts of Ukraine have a normal rhythm of life during the day. You see families in the park, kids playing and eating ice cream, but when night comes, that means you have to think about Russian airstrikes. Kiev got hit very hard last night. We'll have to see what tonight brings. Very hard.

It was a bad night in Kiev last night, yeah. Yes. Charles, how about in Moscow? Well, Moscow is kind of the same. It's sort of a beautiful summer day here. It's the end of summer, the light, gets kind of a nice tilt to it. And the difference here with Greg is that we don't have these drones coming into Moscow every night, although it has been enough to interrupt sort of daily life in the sense of travel, trains, delayed, airplanes, delayed, things like that. But still, it's a different scene, certainly than what Greg is experienced. So many cities having beautiful summer days, even as so much news, the news Avaland. should never stop. So we are going to explain the name of the show. So stick around everybody for that. We will explain why we are going by sources and methods. Let's dive into all the news we have to

talk about this week. And I want to start us here in Washington, where yesterday the Trump administration said it will take control of Union Station, which to explain that is the big train hub, the bus hub here in D.C. It's, I don't know, 10 minutes walk from where I'm sitting right now. I actually came into Union Station earlier this week. This was Tuesday. I had made a quick work trip to New York. And as I was getting out of the train, trying to find my way to my Uber out on the curb, the people who stepped right in front of me and were walking along were three National Guard members, very visibly armed, uniformed firearms strapped to their thighs. So that's just a picture of what daily life here is looking like.

This is all part of the president's crackdown on crime here in D.C. We're now halfway through what the administration is calling the emergency 30-day control of the D.C. police force. We don't know if Congress will extend that next month. I wonder, Charles and Greg, what you two both make of it, watching events in America from your purchase overseas. Well, I have to say that seeing these images, for example, of the ice raids in the last several weeks, as well as these federal authorities in D.C., you know, it does look something like something out of the capital of Minsk or Moscow, mass government security officials, detaining people in vans, no immediate form of ID, no idea where the detainees are headed, at least initially.

And even the idea of a National Guard, you know, loyal to the president patrolling the capital, you know, that happens here in Russia. Roscovojia, the Russian National Guard, was formed in, I think, 2015. But it was really a reaction to large protests that were here. in the years prior, and they've really become sort of the collective bodyguard for the president, which implies a really inherent distrust of the citizenry of Moscow. I mean, you just touched on a couple of big differences, obviously. Protests are alive and well here in Washington and elsewhere in the states.

The media is allowed to freely report under the Constitution as protected by the First Amendment and tell everybody what we see and where we're seeing it. Greg, what resonates for you watching all this from Ukraine? Yeah, I think sitting here and seeing that there's a bigger troop presence on the streets of the U.S. Capitol than the Ukrainian capital for the past couple weeks. You know, Ukraine did have a lot of troops in the city in the early days of the war, but now you can really walk around the center of the city throughout the city and not really see any troops. Occasionally you'll see some here or there, but

no, no, don't really have checkpoints or even just see troops walking around. That's fascinating. for a country that's been at war for three and a half years, you don't see troops regularly out and about on the street? Not in civilian areas. You know, I've been to three cities this week. Keeve, the capital, Nipro, sort of south central, 60 miles from the front line, and now Lviv. And you just don't see that many. It was, you know, several hundred miles driving from Kiv to Lvivi yesterday. There were about two or three places along the highway where you kind of get a friendly wave over. Our driver would flash his driver's license. and they would just wave you on. So the security is there, but it's not visible in ordinary

civilian setting. I do want to note because it feels important to report on what is not happening as much as what is happening. And one of our colleagues, Tom Bowman, who covers the Pentagon, has word from a U.S. Army official. We will not give the name of the official because they were not authorized to speak publicly. But saying so far from where they sit at the Army, they are not seeing any orders to deploy the guard or active duty military to any other American city. So right now we're watching what we're watching in D.C. They are very visible and out in about in quite a few neighborhoods now in Washington. But so far there had been reports maybe Chicago would be next. We're not seeing any imminent moves of that here. But Charles, I wonder

at listening from Moscow just hearing me raise the prospect of this, what goes through your mind. Well, you know, Mary Louise, you've been here in Moscow. We've reported. together from here. And you know the city. It is a beautiful city. And what's strange is the normalcy of it all. You know, you can have Rusk Vardia, these National Guard troops patrolling the streets. You can have a quasi-repressive environment. And yet life goes on. Restaurants are full. People are enjoying cafes and coffees and all the rest. And so I think, I suspect that as sort of Washington tries to get a handle on where things lie with what's happening there, I imagine they're confronting some of those strange dissonance of it.

So as we talk about the president testing the limits of his power, I want to mention a couple of national security officials who were in the headlines here in the states. Well, former officials, I should say, one very recently former, Lieutenant General Jeffrey Cruz was director of the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, which is part of the Pentagon. And a few days ago, we got word he is out of a job. There are plenty of details we don't know yet that we're trying to get. We do know and can say that it was his agency, the DIA, that produced an Intel report that got leaked about Iran, specifically about the impact of those U.S. airstrikes this summer against Iranian nuclear facilities. And we know that this DIA report directly contradicted claims that President Trump had made. Greg, how do you connect those dots? Well, since the Trump administration didn't give a reason for this dismissal, it leaves the obvious one, the DIA report that you mentioned.

It said Iran might be able to repair, rebuild its nuclear program in a matter of months, but it wasn't expressing certainty because this was done very shortly after the U.S. bombing there. But it was at odds with Trump, who said then and keep saying that the Iranian nuclear program was obliterated. And in this case, Lieutenant General Cruz was fired by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who's fired other senior officials without really offering a reason? Well, that's the thing. I mean, I think that's the thing that's so striking. Cruz is not a household name. But the Trump administration, since President Trump came back for the second term, has also fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the head of the National Security Agency, the chief of naval operations, the commandant of the Coast Guard, the acting chair and the deputy chair of the national.

intelligence counsel. I mean, it is a long list of intelligence officials who are no longer current intelligence officials. Yeah. And in some cases, you can make the link, the Iran report in this case. There was a report about Venezuela that said that the government there didn't seem to be orchestrating gang activity, Venezuelan gang activity here in the U.S. as opposed to what Trump is saying. And then obviously anybody who's had some link, however tenuous, to the 2016 investigation about Russian meddling in the U.S. election, not Trump, possible Trump collusion, but Russian meddling, which was confirmed in a number of separate investigations, we've seen people current and former, current who've been stripped of a security clearance,

which effectively ends their job, or people who've left the government years ago, stripped of security clearances, they may or may not have. So it's really just sort of to press open the point because of many of these cases, it's actually a pretty meaningless distinction. Yeah, I want to stay on this for a minute. I am pulling up on my phone and looking at the memo that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, posted on X, posted publicly on August 19th, subject line. And I'm reading decision, revocation of security clearances, as you said, then there were that 37 names. Very interesting. One of them, this is per reporting. by the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and others, a current CIA officer, a top Russia expert, was undercover. The name is now out there because this list has been published and had been working to brief President Trump and his team in the run-up to the Alaska Summit, which was what, not even two weeks ago, now fired clearance revoked. So this list continued, like the fallout from this list is continuing of current people losing clearances. And then, you know, to bring you back into this, Charles. Last Friday, we had the FBI searching the home and office of John Bolton, who was Trump's first-term national security advisor. He's on NPR and on TV and all over the place these days criticizing his former boss. Is any of this getting much coverage in Russia?

Well, the Bolton raid got coverage because Bolton's a well-known figure here. He is seen as the architect of first under George W. Bush and under Trump's first term decisions to withdraw from two key arms control treaties. The irony, though, is that those decisions have fed this new version of a nuclear arms race, and Russia's unveiling new generation of weapons, some of which have been put to use in Ukraine to deadly effect. The other point I would make here, though, is that, you know, when you talk about disloyalty in the ranks, you know, Russia is a step beyond what you're describing in Washington.

You know, you don't challenge Putin because of where it could land you, whether that's out of a job in jail or exile or worse. as critics would point out. And I think what we've seen is that the Russian government security apparatus is full of yesmen, who tell the president mostly what he wants to hear. Loyalty is most valued. That's the characteristic that matters most to Vladimir Putin. To the point that those who do fail on the job who make mistakes, public mistakes,

they're not fired. They're usually promoted and given soft landings to keep them sort of within the sort of the family. And in a way, I think it's how bad decisions, such as maybe the, the invasion of Ukraine begin. Well, and I will just say as someone sitting in Washington listening to you momentarily confuse the names of Putin and Trump there, a lot of this sounds familiar where loyalty is rewarded by these presidents in both these capitals. One of the thought that occurs to me, just to bounce off you, Charles, is President Trump is term limited by the U.S. Constitution. He's got to get everything he wants to get done in the next three and a half years. Whereas Putin, you know, have a whole generation of young Russians who've never known anyone else.

Nobody else has been running the country in their entire lifetime. It's a quarter century and counting. He doesn't appear to be going anywhere soon. He does not. I think, though, you know, one thing that maybe doesn't get stressed enough in Russian politics is that, you know, President Putin is 72 years old. Nobody's around forever. And I think in some ways what we're seen in Ukraine and sort of his mission in sort of geopolitics. I think there is a sense that there's only so much time that he has to accomplish the goals that he has.

And so that's something to keep in mind. He is placing time. Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org. Okay, let's pivot to the other big news of the weak Ukraine. We are almost two weeks to the day now since the big Putin-Trump summit in Alaska. I was there, along with a few hundred other American and Russian reporters.

We all raced there, very little notice, to capture and record the first sit-down summit between these two guys and seven years. And we came away having drunk a lot of coffee, having watched the Russian journalists smoke all, a whole lot of cigarettes and with very little in the way of concrete progress to report on ending the war in Ukraine. So let me start there. Are Ukraine and Russia any closer to peace than when we watched Vladimir Putin walk that red carpet in Anchorage? Greg Myrie.

Short answer is no. The slightly longer answer is neither Russia nor Ukraine has budged from any of their basic core fundamental demands. And Ukrainians, I'll speak about it from this end, were not that enthusiastic. They didn't think something was going to happen. They're four negotiations. They're exhausted after this length of war. They would like to see the war end with negotiations. They're not ready to give away their territory.

So the fact that it doesn't seem to be going anywhere, and the fighting continues on as it was, is not really a surprise. That's what Ukrainians expected. If you ask them to put an end date on this war or when a deal might be made, they would say not soon. It's going to be a long time. I can't even predict when that will be. Well, and to remind people what you said at the very beginning, if anything, the fighting seems worse. Last night, Keev got hit with the worst air attack since the summit in Alaska a couple of weeks ago, Charles. What does this look like from Russia's point of view?

How is this understood in Moscow? Well, I think, first of all, Russia came away from the summit very pleased with the optics of it, the idea of a red card. A literal red carpet welcome by Trump for Vladimir Putin in Alaska was just beamed everywhere all with the television on social media. And I think there's a sense that it ended Russia's isolation or at least the West's attempt to isolate since Russia's always rejected the idea. I think the key question here that came out of the summit is this idea that's been teased of security guarantees for Ukraine. Trump's team seemed to suggest there was a breakthrough from the Russian side that there have been ideas that have come up in discussions. with the Europeans and... Well, and wasn't Russia's reaction in a nutshell, yeah, we'd love security guarantees and we'll be part of it.

Exactly. It's like the definition of the fox guarding the henhouse. Exactly. And so when these sort of proposals were put forth, at least aired publicly, you know, I mean, just every single one of them I heard in this, well, those are all Russian red lines. Outwardly, Moscow's demands haven't changed at all. Could something be happening behind the scenes? It's possible. But even then, I guess there's a sense that Trump is always rushing ahead.

to say we got this deal done and it's dusted and we're ready to move on. You know, Vladimir Putin doesn't work that way. He burrows in on details. He lays future traps. And I suspect we're seeing more of that. Have we heard from him directly at all since the summit from Vladimir Putin? You know, he hasn't talked about the Ukrainian peace deal or whatever negotiations are ongoing. What he has done is praise Trump, saying that he thought that under Trump there could be this kind of normalization of U.S. Russian relations, that there was light at the end of the tunnel.

was the phrase he used. And basically, there's been this kind of ongoing Russian attempt to peel Trump away with sort of sweetheart deals involving, you know, whether it's middle rights in the Arctic or perhaps some kind of nuclear arms deal that they could cut. But something that just sort of appeal to Trump's larger agenda with restoring relations with Russia and not making it all about whether or not there's peace in Ukraine. So as you try to put questions to the Kremlin and people around the Kremlin, do you get any sense of what was the phrase you just used late at the end of the tunnel, that there's any interest in that? Well, I think that they have a sense that Donald Trump is the best bet they will have for

something like this. And they know that, you know, administrations change, policies change. We've seen the swing from just Joe Biden to Donald Trump. And so I think they're eager to make as many moves as fast as they can. I want to bring us down from the policy level and what is happening or not at the presidential level to the real people who are still. getting hit, who are dying, who are fighting this war. Greg, you just visited a Ukrainian hospital. This was near Nipro, near the front lines. How did you get there? What'd you see? Sure. So driving,

we just drove down the Nipro River from Kiev to the city of Nipro. It went to a place called Metschnikov Hospital. Mary Louise, it is like walking into a Soviet time capsule. It is 1975 there. Everything is gray and brown. It's absolutely Spartan. And yet in that hospital are these pretty amazing neurosurgeons doing absolutely cutting-edge work, literally and figuratively, in dealing with traumatic brain injuries. Two reasons for this. One is just the vast experience they've been forced to acquire because of the war. And the second reason is the first-rate equipment that they have now to carry out these operations, which may look a little out of place, but it was done with the help of a retired U.S. Army neurosurgeon, a guy named Dr. Rocco Armanda.

He served in Iraq, and then at Walter Reed National Medical Center. He started coming there to help a couple years ago. He thought he was coming to teach. The way he put it was, two days in that hospital was like a month in Iraq. So they have excellent equipment, excellent doctors in a hospital. that looks like it hasn't been touched in the past 60 years. What about the forces fighting this war? Charles, there have been questions on both sides about just how much manpower both countries can throw at this.

That has seemed to be a bigger challenge for Ukraine, but how's that looking from Russia? Well, it's been an arc from the very beginning. So you have, you know, think back to the beginning of this war and you have friends and I know Russians who fled this country. For example, a friend who traded a car for a bicycle and peddled out of Russia. to Georgia out of fear being drafted. I've talked to Russian civilians who are mobilized for war in 2022, and the government has never demobilized them. They're still in the front lines, and their families are really desperate to get them

home. They're being harassed by the authorities for doing so. But you also have, of course, victims of convicts. These were people that are prisoners who were recruited to go fight in Ukraine and offered their freedom to do so. And then you get back to what really the Russian government is settled on, which is money. There is a kaleidoscope of offers to Russian men to go fight in Ukraine, whether it's signing bonuses or guarantees for salary that are just absorbent. These are life-changing salaries for young Russian men. And it's how they've managed to keep people returning to the front lines and going to fight in Ukraine despite these terrible losses, which number in the hundreds of thousands. I mean, Russia has a population much, much bigger than Ukraine. So more people to throw at this. But to be clear, when you walk around,

around Moscow. Greg was saying, you don't really see that many soldiers on the streets in Kyiv. What about Moscow? Do you see young men, 20, 30-something-year-old men, just, you know, in suits going to work, not involved? No, you don't. Would you see a recruitment poster is in every window of every shop? But clearly, most of the young men going to fight in Ukraine are from Russia's poor regions. And just to give a sense, not everybody is willing to make that trade of cash, putting their life in the line to go fight.

just for money. I recently met a soldier who was enlisted in the army. He was in from Volgagrad and we struck up a conversation. He was telling me that you have all these friends who were coming back with missing an arm, a leg, or someone was killed. And he sees these extra bonuses that are being floated to him to go fight. And he says, it's just not worth it. Yeah. When you said the money, that the money is a serious incentive, how much are we talking? Well, the signing bonus is really shift from region to region. But you've seen this kind of competition between some of the governors to sweeten the pot, as it were, to try and get their region to contribute more soldiers to the war effort, which puts them in good stead with the Russian president. But we're talking about tens of thousands of dollars.

Tens of thousands of dollars, which is significant to any young man in any country and certainly in Russia. And particularly for young Russian men from smaller villages, from smaller towns, where, you know, the local prospects are essentially to work in a local factory, salaries are depressed. The difference between that and going to fight in Ukraine is just, you know, heaven and earth. And just out of curiosity, young women, or is this all aimed at young men? Because in Ukraine, we've seen a lot of female fighters. There are some women recruits. I don't mean to ignore them. They're not the majority, clearly, and they're not sort of heavily focused on, but they are certainly integrated into the army.

So just to close out this topic by looking at what may be coming next, the summit in Alaska ended with President Trump previewing a second meeting, saying we need to get President Zelensky of Ukraine and President Putin of Russia in a room. Any sign either of you are picking up on that that is in the works, that that may be imminent? Not from here. The Ukrainians are endorsing it. They've been pretty willing to go along with Trump's suggestions. When he called for a ceasefire, they said, yeah, we'll do that. You know, will you meet with Putin? Yes, we'll do that. But I don't see it happening. So I think even as the Ukrainians say that, they're just trying to put the onus on Russia as being the party that rejects it. And it doesn't seem like there's any momentum that's

been gained from this flurry of diplomacy the past couple weeks. You know, and from the Russian perspective, they seem to be slowing down the prospects of some kind of summit. Officially, they say they're not opposed to it, although they've questioned legitimacy of Vladimir Zelensky many, many times over the past year. But essentially what they're saying is that before, there's a presidential summit. Some decisions have to be made. Agreements have to come to. And that's just not going to happen anytime soon. And I agree with Greg that we've also seen this kind of prolonged game of trying to deflect Trump's ire over who's responsible for a lack of a peace deal or a lack in this case of a summit, with a hope that that eventually impacts the outcome on the battlefield that somehow Trump shifts U.S. policy. Fascinating. So we had the summit in Alaska. We had the summit at the White House with Zelensky and other European leaders. And it sounds very much like we're the summer as we began with a very little sign of war coming to an end in Ukraine. As we wrap the show, our very first show, let's take a minute to explain the name, sources and methods. This is a term that folks in the military and in intelligence circles know very well.

It refers to how a government collects information, collects secrets. Who is telling them? How are they sharing what they know? Greg, since you cover the intel beat for us, explain what sources and methods are in national security circles. Well, I think they like to use it as a term that sounds bigger and more meaningful than good old basic spying, which is essentially what it is. Magicians don't tell you how they do their magic tricks and spies don't tell you about their sources and methods. You know, was that secret of information gathered by a well-placed human spy? Was it electronic eavesdropping? Was it a cyber hack?

You know, intel agencies aren't going to tell you because if they did, the target might figure it out and figure out how to prevent it in the future. So the sources and methods keep getting bigger and broader and wider as technology expands, and there's still a lot of good old human spying. And all of that together is sources and methods. Sources and methods, and I will inject with a note of playfulness that I like it as a name for our podcast because while we are journalists, not spies, we work our sources for info too to help listeners, to help readers understand what is happening in our communities and in the world. And then we also have to work to protect our sources, particularly if they may face retribution for sharing what they know. Charles, what resonates to you about sources and methods?

Well, that's really an important point you make about protecting your sources here in Russia. a web of new laws that have been introduced, essentially criminalizing criticism of the government. So when you're talking to people, you know, I'm trying to either get a line in on sort of government thinking, in other words, trying to get illicit pro-government views. But when I'm talking to people that are more critical of the government, often we have to take extra steps to protect them, to avoid trouble for them and to a degree for me. Absolutely. All right, we're going to wrap up with what I hope is going to become a tradition for this show, which is a which is a morsel or two of Ocent. Now, if you track the intelligence world, you probably know human, human intelligence. You may know SIGINT, signals, intelligence. Ocent is open source intelligence, meaning it is publicly available. It is not classified, but you might miss it if you're not looking. Greg, what struck you this week?

Two words, salt typhoon. This is, according to the U.S. government, a Chinese espionage campaign that was absolutely massive. It started around 2019 as the Chinese allegedly began hacking into big U.S. phone companies, AT&T, Verizon, and others, looking apparently to get information from a few key people. Now, this came out publicly, the U.S. law enforcement, and intel agencies started talking about it last fall shortly before the 24 elections and said that Donald Trump and Kamala Harris were among those being targeted. So we knew this was going on. It was not clear that it had been stopped. In fact, it seemed that the Chinese were continuing to do it, even after all these years and even after the U.S. was talking about it publicly, FBI came out this week, said that actually more than 80 countries worldwide have been targeted as part of this program. It's much broader than initially thought. More than 80 countries? Same operation? That's huge. No, they figured out, and you could see how easily it would

be to repeat it. If you figured out a way to hack into the big telecoms company in one country in the U.S., you could probably do it in other countries as well. Salt Typhoon. Okay, Charles, can you top it with one word? Max. This is the Russian state-backed messaging application. It's a rival to WhatsApp, which has been banned here recently. So, for example, you can no longer make phone calls or video calls and WhatsApp. It comes up all scrambled. Now, Max, this is the Russian-backed version. It's a Kremlin-backed version.

It would be pre-installed on all electronic devices in Russia starting in September. Now, critics would say that's also used to track users. In other words, we can track what we're saying, what we're doing. And for those who would say, well, look, I'll just keep it off my device. Well, they're also planning to kind of integrate it with all sorts of e-government service. So it seems like eventually somehow Max will get you. Sounds like so many things in the tech world that if the world were run by a benign dictator, it would be such a good idea. By a benign, benevolent dictator, however, I'm not sure I have great faith that you won't be tracked everywhere you go come September.

We'll see. All right. I will throw in the thing that got me curious and wondering this week, which is a renaming, a possible renaming. We know that President Trump likes to rename things. We saw that with various military bases here in the U.S. We've seen it with the Gulf of Mexico, which he's directed the U.S. government, called the Gulf of America going forward. And now he is expressing interest in renaming the Department of Defense, the Pentagon. He would like it to go back to being called the Department of War.

I went back and looked because I knew it had been called the Department of War, indeed, for many, many years. It was President Truman, who changed it, came along at the end of World War II and said, you know, among other things, maybe we should have an institution that's focused more on keeping the peace and try to avoid war going forward. So it was renamed the Department of Defense. And so I am interested in and I'm going to be asking some questions and trying to report on why a president who is openly campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize wants to have a Department of War. All right, that is it for our inaugural episode, Greg Myrie Charles Mains. Thank you so much for being here for round one. Thank you. Hey, my pleasure.

I will say good night to you both in Lviv in Western Ukraine and in Moscow in Russia. For the rest of you listening, a little bit of housekeeping, first our email, you can find it in our episode notes. Our email is Sources and Methods at NPR.org. we would so love to hear from you. Feedback, ideas, send them our way. Second, these days, a lot of folks ask how they can support NPR. And one totally free, easy thing you can do right now, it will literally take you two minutes, is rate and review this show on your podcast platform of choice. In a world of algorithms, that goes a long way toward helping new listeners find us, which matters a lot for any new podcast. Another really great way to support. us is NPR Plus. Now, the way that works is NPR Plus supporters. Here, every episode without sponsor messages. That means more, NatSac News, and Analysis in less time. And you get to unlock access to our complete archive. Just to spell that one out, the four most recent episodes of this show will always be free, always be available in your feed. After that, they're going to go

into our archive where supporters can hear them anytime. So I would encourage you, please sign up for NPR Plus, you can explore all the perks. There are a lot of them for all kinds of NPR shows, not just this one, at plus.npr.npr.org. That link is in our episode. Notes, we will be back next Thursday, a new episode. I'm Mary Louise Kelly. Thanks so much for listening to sources and methods from NPR. Support for NPR and the following message comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. RWJF is a national philanthropy, working toward a future where health is no longer a privilege but a right. Learn more at RWJF.org.