The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Israel vs. Iran, Immigration News, and A Mascot Love Triangle

Episode Date: June 13, 2025

Israel launched strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, killing at least three of Iran's top military leaders. We look at why Israel took these actions now, what Iran might do next, and how the conflict complicates President Trump's efforts to be a dealmaker and a peacekeeper. Also, the dramatic removal of a U.S. Senator from a Homeland Security press conference capped off a week of aggressive immigration moves by the Trump administration. How are Americans responding to Trump's shows of force? This episode: political correspondent Sarah McCammon, senior political editor and correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and national security correspondent Greg Myre. This podcast was produced by Bria Suggs and edited by Lexie Schapitl. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.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

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Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McKammon. I cover politics. I'm Greg Myrie. I cover national security. And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. Last night, Israel launched strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, killing at least three of Iran's top military leaders. These attacks came days before international talks to address Iran's nuclear program were planned for Sunday. Greg, let's start with the basics.

Why did Israel launch these strikes and why now? Yeah, this is something Israel has been talking about forever. When I was based in Israel in the early 2000s, they were talking about this. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken about it for years, but it was always considered too risky. It could ignite a regional war. Israel could suffer heavy losses. Often the U.S. was opposed to it. But a lot of factors seem to come together right now, really dating back to the Hamas attack in October of 23, when since then Israel has systematically

devastated its rivals. Hamas has, blah, and Iran has been very weakened, and in particular when Israel and Iran were trading missiles last October, Israel inflicted great damage on Iran's air defenses. So Iran has been very, very vulnerable. Israel felt it could carry out an attack like this at a much lower risk, and in fact that seems to have happened. They apparently used up to 200 planes in this attack. No reports that any of them were lost. They hit this wide range of targets, nuclear facilities, missile facilities, killing military leaders, politicians who were involved in the nuclear talks, nuclear scientists.

So a devastating and widespread attack by Israel, something that they had just been planning, gathering intelligence, thinking about for many, many years. And this seemed, in the view of Israeli leader Netanyahu to be the right moment. And as we alluded to a moment ago, you know, the timing is interesting because President Trump has been urging Iran to make a deal regarding its nuclear program. Of course, the context there is that Trump during his first term in office pulled out of the last Iran deal, which had been reached under President Obama. So what does Trump want from a new deal and what does Trump want from a new deal and what does Iran

want? Yeah, Trump seemed to be asking for more concessions than Iran made under the original deal back in 2015 under President Obama. Iran was allowed to keep its nuclear program and enrich uranium, which it could use for a civilian nuclear plant. But it enriched uranium way beyond that level of the, say, 4% enrichment you need for a nuclear or civilian plant, up to 20%. And then 60%, which gets very close to the 90% you would need for nuclear weapons. So Trump wanted to basically end Iran's enrichment program. And Iran has

always said that's non-negotiable. We're allowed to have a civilian nuclear program and we can enrich. So they seem to be stuck on that point. They've had five rounds of talks. The talks seem to have been serious. This sixth round was planned on Sunday, but they hadn't had a breakthrough. So Trump was pushing a very hard line. Iran was holding its ground. It didn't seem like they were going to get past that or it was going to be hard to get past this. And then boom, kind of out of nowhere

comes this Israeli strike. And, you know, Domenico, of course, we want to get to the politics of this. As is often the case, I think it's safe to say, President Trump's messaging on all this has been a little mixed. You know, he posted on Truth Social about the strikes this morning and basically said that he had warned Iran that this would happen if they didn't reach a deal. These are the consequences. At the same time, he has also said that he did not want Israel to take military action while these negotiations were ongoing.

So what do you make of all this? I mean, is this a setback for Trump? Yeah, it's not clear at this point. Certainly seems like it. You know, the White House appeared to have at least some prior knowledge that this was going to happen. But is this Trump playing good cop, bad cop? Or is this Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, flouting Trump? And you know, because Trump has said he wants peace and he wants to have this deal with Iran. Iran of course didn't appear to agree to what Trump wants and so maybe Trump felt like this isn't gonna go anywhere and allowed Israel to do what it wants to do but this has not really been a you know MAGA priority. Foreign policy has ranked very low on the list of things for most

voters and certainly for Trump's base It's really been all about Culture war issues, of course Trump really wants these deals that have really eluded him so far when it comes to Gaza Ukraine and Iran all things that he seemed to have simple solutions for and have all turned out to be way more complicated Domenico you mentioned that for Trump's base, foreign policy isn't a huge priority. At the same time, white evangelicals who are an important part of Trump's base have been staunchly supportive of Israel.

And then there's sort of the America first isolationist contingent that doesn't want to see the US involved in more foreign wars. How does Trump sort of navigate those competing ideas within his base? Well, I think the bridge there between those things is that everyone in the Republican Party strongly supports Israel. And whether or not you're committing more time, energy, money, troops to something, that's where things get a little messy because obviously the Republican Party previous to Trump was more interventionist.

Trump is certainly more isolationist and that's been a bit of a rift within the party, but he's gotten most of the party to kind of come around to his position. So you know, the thing is with Trump is his foreign policy is transactional. We saw that in his Middle East trip that he took last month where he was more concerned about, you know Getting these financial deals done than it was about pushing American democracy or ideology And Greg a moment ago Domenico mentioned that we don't really know what went on between Trump and Netanyahu Other than sort of the public statements, but what does this move by Israel against Iran despite Trump's calls for a diplomatic solution? What does that say about the relationship between Netanyahu and Trump?

Well, it was very good the first term. It's been much more difficult this time around. Trump has been doing what he wants to do. He started these negotiations with Iran. Netanyahu has always opposed them, never been a fan of them. We saw the Trump administration negotiate with Hamas for the freedom of an American Israeli hostage being held in Gaza. So Trump has kind of done the things he wanted to do. I'm not sure he was necessarily trying to go against the wishes of Netanyahu, but he pursued his own America First policies, and they were not what Netanyahu wanted him to do. So it's going to be very interesting to see how much coordination

there was with this strike. Were they actually saying very different things and wanting very different things or was it sort of an orchestrated campaign where Trump was pushing a hard line on negotiations, say you better do this or something terrible is going to happen. And that being a coordinated effort with Netanyahu to go ahead and carry out the strikes. But we just, we don't know which scenario was the accurate one at this point. And Trump has kind of continued on with that ominous tone. He wrote on Truth Social this morning. He said, Iran must make a deal before there is nothing left and save what was once known as the Iranian Empire.

And he said they should do it before it's too late. Is there still a chance for a deal here or is the region just kind of gearing up for more escalation? At the moment, it's really hard to see that. Iran has already stated that it won't take part Sunday in the talks that were planned for Oman. Not clear if Trump will continue to pursue those or not. You have to think that this military action by Israel is

going to have to play out first, and perhaps an Iranian response, before there's really a possibility of the talks resuming. And I would certainly consider it likely that Israel is going to continue with these attacks, and as long as those are ongoing, hard to see that they're going to get together or let alone make any progress in negotiations. And we're going to take a quick break. When we get back, we'll round up the latest immigration news and look ahead to Trump's military parade.

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That's where the Up First podcast comes in. Every morning in under 15 minutes, we take the news and pick three essential stories so you can keep up without getting stressed out. Listen now to the Up First podcast from NPR. And we're back. We talked earlier this week about the protests in Los Angeles after a series of ICE raids there. And yesterday, a judge ruled that President Trump had overstepped his authority by federalizing the National Guard, again, calling in the Guard kind of over the head of the governor to respond to these protests.

Greg, what do we know about that court decision? That's right. So a district court ruled that President Trump overstepped his authority by calling in the National Guard without coordinating with the governor of California, Gavin Newsom. But shortly afterward, an appeals court has stayed that ruling, so this is going to have to play out and quite likely will go to the Supreme Court before we get a final decision. You know, Trump also sent a few hundred Marines to Los Angeles this week. Is he on sturdier legal ground with that?

Well, probably not. I mean, I think that the National Guard is called in. We've seen that in many cases to deal with things like a natural emergency, when there's a flood, a tornado, a hurricane. Occasionally they're called in when there's massive civil unrest on a very large scale. The scale that we've seen in Los Angeles, Gavin Newsom has said that's not necessary to call in outside forces, and so the U.S. does have a history of having a very firm line of not using uniformed military to deal with domestic civil unrest. It has happened very rarely. I believe the last time it happened was in

the 1992 LA riots when police were acquitted in the beating of a black motorist, Rodney King. President George Bush called in about 1,500 Marines, but he did so under the Insurrection Act and with the cooperation or at the request from the LA mayor and the California governor. So a very different situation when you have the mayor and the governor saying, we don't need them and the Insurrection Act has not been invoked. Okay. Meanwhile, there was also this really dramatic moment yesterday when federal agents forcibly removed a U.S. senator from a Homeland Security press conference with Secretary Christy

Noem. The video shows California Democrat Alex Padilla being brought to the ground and handcuffed. I'm Senator Alex Padilla. I have a question for the secretary because the fact of the matter is a half a dozen violent criminals that you're rotating on your... Hands off!

Now, Domenico, you've been following this this week. What do you make of the politics of that situation? Well, what we've seen right now that the polls are pretty mixed on a lot of this. You know, there was a CBS poll out this week that showed 54% approve of Trump's deportation policies, but that was taken before what was happening in Los Angeles. There was another poll from Quinnipiac that showed the opposite, 56% disapproving of Trump's deportation policies. There was a Reuters poll that was out just yesterday that showed by a 50 to 35 margin

that people disapproved of Trump's response to these protests so far, even though you had a plurality also saying that they thought Trump should deploy the military to bring order to violent protests. So I think that the issue here is the fact that we're seeing so much volatility in the numbers means that there's a lot of potential to win people over or lose them based on whatever the messages that goes out or whatever the circumstances are that play out. And what we've seen with the, you know, the Senator Padilla situation, I mean, somebody

who, you know, a United States Senator said he was a United States Senator, whether or not you think it was a stunt, having a United States Senator handcuffed, put on the floor forcibly, is not the kind of image that most people probably think is something that's appropriate overall. And, you know, we've also seen people say that they're less likely to be in favor of deporting people who are cooks and day laborers and farm workers, as opposed to those hardened criminals who the White House and President Trump had said that they were going to be focusing on.

At the same time that we're seeing these really aggressive moves from the administration, Trump posted this week that he could be changing his immigration policy to protect farmers and hotels that employ undocumented workers. Now that feels like a backpedal. How do you square that? Well, it's what he said. It's certainly a change in tone. But we should say there hasn't been a policy change so far. But Trump is clearly responding to the politics of this. He is at risk of going too far. If you look heavy handed in who you deport and you see moms arrested by plainclothes

officers and thrown into unmarked vans, these are the kinds of things that Republicans are telling Trump to be careful of. Look at people in competitive districts. They're pretty good bellwethers when it comes to the politics of things usually. And David Valadeo is a Republican from California. He's one of those people. And he said he's warning Trump not to, you know, go after people like farm workers and

to stick to criminals because he thinks it's the wrong thing to do. Tony Gonzalez is another Republican from Texas. He chairs the Congressional Hispanic Republican Conference. And he, you know, essentially said, don't go after the guy milking cows, you should be going after criminals. So the message is pretty clear, at least from Latino Republicans. But it's going to be hard to meet the goal of the White House wanting 3,000 deportations a day without going after people beyond the

quote unquote hardened criminals. I think what we have seen with Democrats though is a little bit of coalescing on a message that's opposing Trump, not necessarily laying out a vision for immigration in the future. That's something that Remzi Kossam told me this week. He worked in the Biden White House on immigration policy and now teaches law at the City University of New York. The Democrats haven't yet figured out how to tell a compelling, affirmative story around immigration.

And I think that's been the downfall of the Democratic Party on this issue. And certainly we saw during the campaign, people trusted Republicans more, trusted Trump more, because those southern border encounters had been as high as they were, you know, the highest since 2001. So the administration clearly has signaled a willingness to use force to achieve policy goals, at least when it comes to immigration. Meanwhile, this weekend Trump will be hosting a military parade in Washington, D.C. to commemorate the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army. This is the first military parade of its kind in more than 30

years. What will you be watching for? Well, one of the things I'm going to be looking for is Trump's body language. You know, it is his birthday. So is he going to, you know, have happy birthday sung to him or is he going to be focused on the army and its 250th birthday? I think that's a, you know, kind of an important thing, especially for Democrats who think of this as some kind of authoritarian play. And speaking of Democrats, by the way, you know, there's going to be a bunch of protests. And I think it's really interesting that right now we're starting to see the left find its voice a little bit against Trump.

When there had been really a lot of silence in the first few months, not totally sure how to attack Trump, how to go after him, how to pick and choose rather than getting flooded by the deluge. And it does seem that they're starting to find their voice a little bit, especially with some of these harsh immigration policies and the like. We're going to take another quick break. And when we get back, it's time for Can't Let It Go. Hey, everybody, it's Ian from How to Do Everything. On our show,

we attempt to answer your how to questions. We don't know how to do anything. So we call experts. Last season, both Tom Hanks and Martha Stewart stopped by to help. Our next season is launching in just a few months. So get us your questions now by emailing howto at npr.org or calling 1-800-424-2935. The best kind of celebrity interview is one where you find out that the person who made a thing you love also thinks in a way that you love. Nothing is more foreign than when Ariel says in The Little Mermaid, I want to be where the people are. I don't want to be where the people are. I just don't.

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Listen in the NPR app wherever you get your podcasts. Support for NPR and the following message come from the Lemelson Foundation, dedicated to improving lives through invention, innovation, and climate action. And we're back. And it is Friday, so it's time for Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things that we just can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Greg, I'm going to start with you. What can't you let go? I can't let go the NBA Finals. The NBA playoffs last forever. It seems like they go on and even after you know who's going to win. This year, the level of play has just been so dramatic

and it's the Indiana Pacers and the Oklahoma City Thunder in the finals. Two teams that have never won an NBA title before. Oklahoma City had this fantastic year, won 68 games. Indiana has been an underdog and defeated several teams that they probably shouldn't have beat to get to the finals. Indiana is now up 2-1 in the finals and has a home game tonight. So if they win they'll be up 3-1, one victory away from their first championship and the overall level of play again, just fantastic. And, and stars who casual basketball fans probably haven't heard of. Shay Gilgis Alexander for Oklahoma city and Tyrese Halliburton for Indiana.

So really riveting stuff for me. Yeah. And the politics podcast, you've heard of Halliburton for other reasons, but no relation. Do you have a rooting interest in this, Greg? Not really. Other than Oklahoma City has said it's a great year. I think they kind of deserve to win. But both teams have just, they're just fun to watch. The play just flows and if you turn away or blink, you miss three baskets up and down the court.

So just really exciting, flowing play to watch. I am not a sports ball person as we all know, but I have to root for Indiana because my mother's family is from Indiana and I know that basketball is almost a religion there. I think I'm rooting for Oklahoma City because I was there in Oklahoma City last year and there was a Thunder game playing and the fans are just so, they love their team. And I think it would be good for them. It's kind of, kind of cool, even though Indiana is a great basketball state. And by the way, Greg played at a little school in New Haven. I don't think many have heard of it. Wow. Wow. Sarah, what can't you let go of? So we often talk about animals, I feel like, in this part of the podcast, and this week

will be no different. You all, surely you saw that viral video of the zebra, right? The zebra rescue. I don't think I have. Yes, I saw it. Yes, being lifted. Yes, it was amazing. Okay, because I feel like it was all that my algorithm was feeding me, but maybe that's

just because it knows what makes me happy. OK, if you haven't seen it, you need to see it, because it's just hilarious. So this zebra named Zeke had escaped from his private owners. This happened in Tennessee. And I guess he escaped for like eight days. This family had just gotten a zebra as a pet. He gets out, they're very worried about him,

a search ensues. And the video that went viral was just this amazing clip of basically a zebra like kind of in a bag being like airlifted by a helicopter back to wherever he's supposed to go. And I had to investigate more about what happened here. And my favorite part of the story, there are many details, there are many layers, but the owner, Taylor Ford, said, he told the Tennessean that his wife was not enthusiastic about this idea in the first place, that she had gotten a bad feeling about getting a family zebra.

And he said, quote, it turns out she was more right than ever. That's what he told the Tennessee. Here's your random fact. Do you know why zebras have stripes? Evolution? Well, yes, they've evolved to deter biting flies, specifically horseflies. That's the most logical explanation, according to science and my 15-year-old son.

SONIA DARA So I need like zebra striped pants in the summer because I get bitten up by like mosquitoes. Anyway, I just love it that the moral of the story was that he should have listened to his wife. SONIA DARA Oh, that's always the case. SONIA DARA Yeah, yeah, that's a- SONIA DARA That's tried and true. SONIA DARA Domenico, what can't you let go? SONIA DARA All right, I can't let go, and we're going to go back to sports ball here.

Apologies, Sarah, but this is beyond sports. Not only is it just that people know I'm a Mets fan, and it's not that I can't let go of the fact that the Mets are right now have the best record in baseball. That's not it at all. That's not what I'm trying to boast about here whatsoever. What I can't let go of is the Mascots. And the Mets have two Mascots, Mr. Met and Mrs. Met. Yeah, they're kind of a goofy couple, whatever. The Mets were playing in Colorado, and Colorado's not having a very good year. Their Mascot is Dinger, Dinger the Dinosaur.

He's a Triceratops, so he's a little, you know, heavier set, let's say. Um, and he put up a sign where he said to Mrs. Mett, call me. I've never seen this before. Creeping in on Mrs. Mett? Yeah. Take a listen to Sports New York with announcers, Gary Cohen and former New York Mets pitcher Ron Darling.

I mean, come on, Dinger. Hey, York Mets pitcher Ron Darling. And Mrs. Mett had a response. She held up a sign in the outfield next to her husband, Mr. Mett, and said, my husband has bigger biceps. Take a hike, Barney. Called him Barney? You know what? I bet Mr. Met listens to Mrs. Met when she gives him advice. I bet that's true. Absolutely. She sounds pretty tough.

All right. We're going to leave it there for today. Our executive producer is Mathony Maturi. Casey Morll edits the podcast. Our producer is Bria Suggs. Special thanks to Lexi Schepitl and Krista DeVe Kalamer. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Greg Meyry. I cover national security.

And I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.