War Moves Closer to Home, Ebola Spreads, and Trump's Political Tightrope

MayaGood morning and welcome to the morning rundown. Big show today, David.

DavidYeah, no kidding. Like, where do we even start?

MayaOkay, so foreign policy first. Ukraine's drones are hitting inside the Moscow region now. AP News is reporting Russian civilians are actually feeling this war in their daily lives. That's a shift.

DavidAnd meanwhile, Putin's heading to Beijing to meet Xi right after Trump was just there. Reuters has that story. China's playing all sides.

MayaVery busy week for Xi's guest bedroom.

DavidRight. Then we've got health news that's not great. The Ebola outbreak in Congo has crossed 100 deaths, according to the BBC. Six Americans exposed, one medical missionary already evacuated to Germany.

MayaThat one's serious. The CDC also put out 30-day travel restrictions. We'll get into what that actually means for compliance and government authority.

DavidAnd on the politics side, Trump dropped a $10 billion IRS lawsuit in exchange for a $1.8 billion DOJ fund. The Guardian also has his approval rating hitting 37%, a second term low.

MayaThat's wild, right? And six states are voting today.

DavidLot to get into. Let's do it.

MayaAll right, starting with the foreign policy

Speaker 3Yes.

Mayafront, here we go. Good morning and welcome to the morning rundown. I'm Maya here with David, and we are jumping straight in today because this is not a slow news day.

DavidNot even close. So we'll start with something that felt almost cinematic when I first read it. Drones over Moscow this past weekend.

MayaLike actual Moscow, the Russian capital.

DavidExactly. And AP News had a piece on this that really laid out what's happening. Three people killed in the Moscow region during a massive Ukraine. The Ukrainian drone attack. The Victory Day parade this month was scaled down because of it. Internet disruptions. This is not a distant front anymore for Russian civilians.

MayaRight. And NPR had reporters in both Kyiv and Moscow on this, noting that it's been over four years since the full-scale invasion, and the battle lines haven't shifted dramatically. But something about the mood is shifting. Russians are starting to feel it.

DavidThat's the tell, right? When the war comes to your suburb, it stops being something you watch on state TV. State TV. Zelenskyy, according to AP, called the Moscow attack justified retribution. Ukraine's drone technology has just gotten that good.

MayaHere's the thing, though, and I think this is worth sitting with. That escalation cuts both ways. Ukraine hitting deeper into Russia is a sign of resilience, sure, but it's also unpredictable territory. Nobody has a clean map of where this goes.

DavidYeah, I mean, you cheer the capability and then you go, Okay, what does Moscow... What does Moscow do next?

MayaExactly.

DavidAnd then, not even a week later, Putin is on a plane to Beijing.

MayaYeah, and the timing is so deliberate, Right? Reuters reported that Xi is hosting Putin as this, quote, old friend just days after Trump made his own trip to court Xi. So China is basically rotating heads of state like they're running their own foreign policy conference.

DavidVery efficient diplomatic scheduling.

MayaI mean, come on. She gets Trump and Putin in the same week, and he gets to bill himself as... Elf is the steady hand in a chaotic world.

DavidDW had a piece on this framing-Beijing positioning itself as a stabilizing force globally-but I'd push back a little on how pure that is." Bloomberg noted that Putin is also trying to unlock a gas pipeline deal with China during these talks, so there's a lot of mutual interest wrapped up in that handshake.

MayaRight, there's always something underneath the symbolism-and

Speaker 4Always.

Mayaspeaking of multiple things burning at once. BBC reported that the death toll from Israeli strikes in Lebanon has now passed 3,000, that's since March, despite what was supposed to be a ceasefire.

DavidA nominal ceasefire is what they called it.

MayaNominal, yeah. Which is a nice word for not really working.

David3,000 is a number that deserves a pause.

MayaYeah.

DavidAnd it just adds to this picture of multiple conflicts running hot at the same time, each one demanding attention, and the world kind of struggling to hold the

Speaker 5f***.

Davidhold the thread on all of them.

MayaThat's the thing that gets me. It's not one crisis, it's like five, and the bandwidth is finite.

DavidYeah, diplomatically, militarily, in terms of public attention.

MayaAnd here's what I keep coming back to: when war stops feeling distant for the people living inside it, whether that's Russians hearing drones over their capital or Lebanese civilians counting losses through a broken ceasefire, the pressure to do something builds. The question is what that something ends up being.

DavidAnd who's in position to shape it? Right now that answer is complicated.

MayaReally complicated.

DavidSo same theme, different continent. When a disease outbreak that starts far away suddenly has American names attached to it, how does that change the response and does it change it fast enough?

MayaShifting gears to something closer to home, the Ebola outbreak in the Congo is getting worse and Americans are now directly in the picture.

DavidYeah, and the numbers, according to BBC reporting, are grim. At least 100 deaths. One province alone has logged 390 cases. Six Americans exposed, one of them a medical missionary doctor, tested positive and is being flown to Germany for treatment.

MayaWait, 390 cases in one province?

DavidYeah. Yeah.

MayaFriends, that's a lot for a region that doesn't exactly have a robust health infrastructure.

DavidRight. And here's the thing about those numbers. NPR raised this too. The case counts suggest this outbreak might have been smoldering for weeks before anyone identified it.

MayaSo the official death toll could be...

DavidThe floor, not the ceiling. That's always the concern with outbreaks in areas with limited surveillance. What's confirmed is almost certainly an undercount.

MayaAnd the U.S. response? CDC moved on this.

DavidPolitico reported the CDC put a 30-day travel restriction in place, which, look, that's the right call. You've got Americans exposed, a confirmed case being evacuated, and real questions about how early this started. Moving fast matters.

MayaI've said it before with hantavirus, public health moves when it has to.

DavidMm-hmm.

MayaThe question is whether it moved fast enough this time.

DavidThat's where it gets uncomfortable. If this was burning quietly for weeks before detection, the response timeline shifts. And that's a legitimate question worth asking, not a political one.

MayaNo one likes admitting the fire started before the alarm went off.

DavidExactly.

MayaOkay, so speaking of people resisting the alarm, there's a separate story that kind of rhymes with this, the quarantined hantavirus patient trying to leave containment.

DavidWait, what happened there?

MayaThe New York Times reported a patient ordered into quarantine actually tried to leave. A court had to step in; they were ordered to stay put.

DavidI mean, the individual impulse makes some sense. Nobody wants to be locked down. But from a public health standpoint, that's exactly how outbreaks spread.

MayaIt connects to something bigger, though: the CDC travel restriction, the quarantine order. Both of these are government authority being exercised. over individual movement for public safety, and both are getting pushback.

DavidThere's always tension there. Nobody questions it when the threat feels abstract. The second it's personal, people want out.

MayaAnd the Andes strain situation we've talked about makes that worse. Human-to-human transmission is documented with that strain. Compliance isn't optional when the stakes are that high.

DavidRight, right. And the broader pattern here, whether it's Ebola in Congo. Or Hantavirus on the West Coast is that the response only works if the infrastructure holds and people cooperate with it.

MayaWhich is a pretty good segue, actually, because the question of government authority, what it can demand, what it can enforce, and what the political cost is for doing it, that's the thread running straight into our next story.

DavidYeah, and this next one is very much about political cost. Trump just dropped an IRS lawsuit in exchange for a one-point- One point eight billion dollar DOJ fund framed around fighting government weaponization. His approval rating just hit a second term low and Tuesday primaries are today.

MayaOh, that's a full plate.

DavidVery full. Let's get into it.

MayaShifting gears to domestic politics, and there's a lot moving this week.

DavidYeah, let's start with this IRS deal. Reuters reported Trump dropped a $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS in exchange for a $1.8 billion DOJ fund framed around fighting government weaponization.

MayaAnd look, for his base, that framing lands. The whole deep state targeting conservatives narrative. This gives them something concrete to point to.

DavidOn its own terms, it makes sense as a political play. You trade a lawsuit. lawsuit you may not win for a funded mechanism that carries your message forward.

MayaDemocrats are already calling it a corruption fund. The Hill quoted them saying it raises, quote, the specter of corruption unparalleled.

DavidOf course they did, and critics are going to scrutinize every dollar that comes out of it, but the administration gets to say, look, we built something.

MayaRight, so that's a win column item. Now here's where it gets harder for the White House.

DavidThe approval numbers.

MayaYeah, the Guardian reported Trump's approval hit its second-term low, 37%. Because

DavidHmm,

Maya:

Davidthat's a data point, not a verdict. Second terms have ebbs and flows, but the timing matters.

MayaPrimaries are happening right now. NPR has a piece out saying six states are holding primaries today, May 19th, and the results could shift the balance of power in Congress.

DavidSo you've got a president at a polling low exactly when his party needs turnout energy. That's not ideal.

MayaNo, and then on top of that, the abortion pill situation.

DavidYeah, the New York Times piece lays it out pretty clearly. There's a lawsuit moving through the courts over Mifepristone access, and there's no clean answer for Trump politically.

MayaWalk me through it.

DavidIf he sides with the pro-life wing, he alienates the suburban voters his party has been trying to win back since 2022. If he distances himself, his base feels abandoned. Both options hurt somebody. And heading into midterms, that's the last thing you want hanging over you.

MayaThe Times framed it as a bind, and honestly, that's the right word. There's no path through that doesn't cost something. So you've got a new DOJ fund that plays well with the base, an approval dip at a sensitive moment, and a legal fight that has no good side to land on.

DavidIt's a complicated week to be running the country. Or, you know, any week lately.

MayaFair point. A lot of pieces on the board right now. All right, that's a wrap on a pretty heavy one today.

DavidYeah, I mean, from drones over Moscow to Ebola numbers that are probably just the floor and not the ceiling, a lot to sit with.

MayaThe through line for me, government authority being tested everywhere, public health, geopolitics, domestic politics, all at once.

DavidRight, and nobody has a clean map of where any of it goes.

MayaNobody. So David, thanks for keeping it real today, as always.

DavidAlways. If you're listening, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a review. It genuinely helps.

MayaIt really does. We'll be back tomorrow with more. Thanks for starting your morning with us.

DavidTake care, everyone.