WSJ What’s News - The U.S. Military Leaves Iraq

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

A.M. Edition for Sept. 30. After more than 23 years and $1.7 trillion, America is winding down its war in Iraq, closing the last major U.S. military base today. WSJ’s Jared Malsin went to Iraq and reports that while Baghdad has undergone a renaissance, behind the scenes, Iranian-backed militia groups have gained a lot of power. Plus, a state judge in New York rules that mayor Zohran Mamdani must redo the rollout of his pied-à-terre tax. And WSJ’s Aaron Zitner details our latest poll, showing Americans want populist policies that defy traditional political labels. Daniel Bach hosts. Sign up for the WSJ’s free What’s News newsletter. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

After more than two decades, the U.S. military is closing its last base in Iraq. Plus, Americans, of all political stripes, want more government intervention to ease the cost of living. So these are all ideas that I think you could put in the bucket of populism in which regular people, consumers, average folks, are pitted against the elites, whether those are corporations or the wealthy and try to rebalance power to have. help regular folks. And Robin Hood says AI agents will soon be able to trade on behalf of users 24-7. It's Wednesday, September 30th. I'm Daniel Bach for the Wall Street Journal, filling in for Luke Vargas. And here's the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. We begin with some breaking news as a fly Dubai flight traveling from the United Arab Emirates to Israel has made an emergency landing in Saudi Arabia after the plane

went through an extreme descent and rise in flight. Fly Dubai didn't explain what happened in the flight for the Boeing 737 aircraft, only saying that it experienced an incident while on route. The plane landed in Tabook in Western Saudi Arabia, and all passengers are safe and accounted for. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu held an emergency meeting with security officials over the incident, and the Israeli Air Force initially dispatched fighter jets toward the aircraft over security concerns. What happened is not yet clear, but we will continue to update you on this developing story on WSJ.com. After more than 23 years and at a cost of $1.7 trillion, America is winding down its war in Iraq, closing the last major U.S. military base today. Our correspondent Jared Malson went to Iraq to report on the transition and told us while Baghdad has undergone a renaissance, behind the scenes, Iranian-backed militia groups have gained a lot of power.

and are emboldened by the war in Iran. These paramount military groups have placed their loyalists in security institutions, in ministries. They hold seats in parliament, which means they have political power and a role in choosing the prime minister, which means that that war has kind of already been won. And what the Trump administration is doing now is they are relying on Iraq's new prime minister, a la Zaid, to try to crack down. on these militia groups. And that's happening at the same time

when the U.S. military is pulling most of its forces from the country. And so it's a very uncertain picture. And I think that's really the concern right now is that the administration is saying it wants to put pressure on Iran, to try to roll back Iranian influence in the region.

And what our reporting shows what we found in Iraq is that Iran has really already won that war in the sense, of gaining influence over Iraqi institutions and making sure that these militias, which were set up years ago by the IRGC Kuds Force, that they are a tool at their disposal that they can use to attack the U.S. and its allies, to threaten Americans that are in Iraq, and to destabilize Iraq again, if they want to. And we ourselves experienced this because after being in Iraq for about

two days we had to abruptly leave after a security threat that we later learned from the U.S. government was a kidnapping threat by one of the militias against me and my team. A U.S. defense officials said the military is airlifting equipment and personnel out of the last U.S. military base in Erbil in time to meet today's deadline. Some U.S. Marines will remain to protect American diplomatic missions, along with contractors to maintain Iraq's fleet of F-16 jet fighters and American. made tanks. One year after the Pentagon began striking boats suspected of ferrying drugs, the U.S. military operations in Latin America are expanding rapidly, using advanced military technology

and counterterrorism tools to combat illicit trafficking networks. In an exclusive interview, top Southern Command General Francis Donovan said the goal is to help regional partners step up anti-drug efforts, backed by recent U.S. supported operations in Ecuador, Venezuela, and Colombia. officials plan to roll out this new operational model across the region, marking a major shift for Southern Command. The Navy has chosen Boeing to build its next-generation fighter jet in another contract win for the aerospace company's military unit. The deal is worth more than $20 billion, and we'll see Boeing develop plans to replace the carrier-launched F.A. 18 Super Hornet in the 2030s. Boeing beat out Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin for the deal, which will make it the sole provider

of six-generation tactical fighters for both the Navy and the Air Force, after President Trump awarded it an additional Air Force contract last year. China's economy showed signs of improvement at the end of the third quarter with official and private gauges of factory, services, and construction activity all rising. Headline readings from four economic indexes all point to resilient demand, even as the war in the Middle East continues to disrupt supply chains and drive-up costs. analysts say today's PMI prints show Beijing's fiscal support is starting to kick in. Robin Hood says it will soon allow 24-7 trading hours for a select group of U.S. stocks,

with its AI agents being able to create investment strategies and execute trades for users while they sleep. Dressed like Captain Kirk and speaking during a space-themed presentation at the company's annual event in Houston, CEO Vlad Tenev said so-called agentic trading tools would eventually give everyday traders capabilities previously reserved for hedge funds and other Wall Street pros. You know, ever since my younger days as a cadet at the Academy, I've dreamed of equity markets going truly 24-7. And I'm proud that the Starship Robin Hood is the first one to make this dream a reality. Earlier this year, Robin Hood allowed users to connect third-party AI assistance to investing accounts, including clawed and open-claw. That was part of an industry-wide push to embed

AI tools in how retail investors research plan and execute their investments. Company executives say the agents will be like the driverless cars of Wall Street, allowing trades on stocks, options, Bitcoin, and prediction market contracts even when they are not paying attention. A state judge in New York has ruled that Mayor Zoran Mamdani must redo the rollout of his PETA tear tax. Justice Wayne Ozzy of Staten Island wrote that the rollout of the tax on second homes unlawfully put the burden on homeowners to prove their residency status when city officials should have verified the information themselves. The ruling blocks the city from taking action on notices sent to 17,000 residents and forces it to take down the tax rule of about 900,000 properties

that it published online. Ozzie didn't strike down the tax itself, and the city is expected to appeal his decision. A spokesman for the mayor didn't immediately respond to our request for comment. Coming up, we'll dig into the journal's latest poll, which shows more Americans are backing ideas from outside the political mainstream to make life more affordable. That's after the break. As November's midterms draw closer, a new Wall Street Journal survey has found overwhelming support for more government intervention to lower the cost of living. Aaron Zittner leads our polling coverage and is here to dig into the findings. Aaron, you write that these are more populist ideas. And the first thing that jumps out here is that sentiment comes from right across the political spectrum.

Well, that's right. This is a new Wall Street Journal poll. We talked to 1,500 voters. And it was our attempt to get at something that's puzzled us at the Wall Street Journal for several years now, which is the economy's doing pretty well by standard economic metrics. Inflation is certainly not where the Fed wants it, but it's way down from the COVID period. Unemployment is looking pretty good. Stock market is hitting highs. and yet people feel lousy. Economic sentiment is terrible. So we set out to ask, what do they want from government? And that's what this poll tries to do, is what policies are popular. Daniel, have you ever heard of the Horseshoe Party? I have to say I haven't.

The Horseshoe Party. It's called the Horseshoe Party because the fringes, the ideological edges of the Democratic Party and the Republican Party kind of come together and meet as almost as horseshoe, far left and far right, around a set of policies. And they're policies that have traditionally been outside the mainstream. In this poll, they really come together around a set of ideas for the government to intervene in the markets and in the economy in ways that both parties really were uncomfortable with in the past. A lot of them are price caps. Almost nine and ten people in our poll support the idea of the government setting price caps, a maximum price on prescription drugs.

We find almost eight and ten people would cap credit card interest rates at 10%. We find about three-quarters of people saying that they would cap child care costs for working families. We find support for the government barring big institutional investors from buying up single-family homes. That was included in a bill that passed with large margins in Congress recently, the idea being don't let big investors crowd out individuals in the marketplace for homes and have them drive up costs. We found pretty good support, although less so among Republicans, for raising taxes on the wealthy, a core populist idea. So these are all ideas that I think you could put in the bucket of populism in that, if you define populism, as a set of ideas in which regular people, consumers, average folks are pitted against the elites. whether those are corporations or the wealthy and try to rebalanced power to help regular folks.

And how does that gel with what the government has already been doing? Well, yes. Given that some of these things are getting, you know, two-thirds, 75, even 80 percent support, you'd ask, well, if this is what voters want, why isn't government giving it to them? Well, a couple of these things the government has responded to. One of the very top things we found in our poll, 90 percent of people want to ban. insurers from what we call surprise medical bills. That's where you go to the emergency room and you come out with a crazy larger bill that you didn't expect. Government did act on this a couple of years ago, but Democrats are running in some places saying that the government needs to do more.

And you tested ideas from other policy spheres too, right? We tested more than 30 policy ideas here. And I'll just say that of the 16, I would say, that you could call populist ideas, ideas, either intervening in the economy to help folks or they have to do with taxation. 14 of them got majority support. The only ones that didn't were President Trump's idea that he launched to send $5,000 checks to people that drew less than a quarter of people. And our version of Mayor Mamdani's idea in New York of having the government run grocery stores, that drew less than 40% support.

But everything else people liked. And what was interesting is we found areas of agreement, say, In voting, it's a very popular idea to require voter ID. That's popular across the political spectrum. But some of these Republican ideas, like banning mail and ballots, that was a step too far for everyone other than Republicans in the poll. Immigration similarly, very strong support for securing the border, very strong support for a pathway to citizenship. That was the top thing in our poll. But when you go to the program of ICE detentions and arrests, when you go to the Republican idea that President Trump has pushed to eliminate or restrict birthright citizenship, that's a bridge too far for people.

On the Democratic side, the idea of expanding the Supreme Court to add new members because many Democrats think the court has been stacked in favor of the Republican Party and conservative ideas, that's a bridge too far for voters overall, according to our citizens. survey. That's the journal's Aaron Zittner in our Washington Bureau. Aaron, thank you for this. Sure. Good to be with you. One thing our poll also asked about was people's growing anxiety over AI, finding that almost two-thirds of respondents want a pause in AI development and the construction of data centers. Despite those concerns, there is one generation that appears to be all in on turning to chatbots in their day-to-day. My mom has always been quite a proud lot of I, but in recent months she's discovered Claude and she's now really taken with it. She calls it the polite man who answers all my questions. Columnist Jamie Waters recently wrote about a family holiday in which his

parents brought along an uninvited guest. Jamie and his fellow millennial sister found there was a generational split when it came to the use of AI. While the two millennials were having an analog trip reading the paper and playing Sudoku, their boomer parents were asking Claude for tips on where to go and what to do. So it was kind of this role reversal from what you would typically expect. For the article, I spoke to the sociology professor Alison Pugh about what she had observed. And she said that while younger generations use AI the most, when older people do use it, they seem to really take to it.

And she said that that's because LLMs are far more user-friendly than a lot of tech. And so what Pugh said is that of all the generations, older people seem to be the ones who use AI with glee. And that certainly was what I noticed on my family vacation with my parents and my mom's new best friend, Claude. And it's something that Open AI has jumped on in their recent advertising campaign for ChatGPT Voice. Can you send an email to the Fairfield Marina requesting a sailboat rental for this afternoon? Sure thing. I'll send an email. The ad shows grandmothers using the hands-free AI chatbot to help them with their daily and not-so-daily tasks.

Now, how do you sail a boat? And that's it for what's news for this Wednesday morning. Today's show was produced by Hattie Moyer. Our supervising producer is Sondra Kilhoff. And I'm Daniel Bach for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back tonight with a new show. Until then, thanks for listening.