Latest news with #TheExcerpt
USA Today
a day ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Israel says it killed Iran commander as both sides attack
On Saturday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: European foreign ministers are working to establish a path to diplomacy in Geneva. Lawmakers propose prohibiting masked agents. Plus, pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil has been released. And USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes discusses how the Trump administration is doubling down on immigration enforcement. President Trump is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate his false 2020 election claims. Millions of Americans will feel a heat wave this weekend. Find out where. USA TODAY Senior Reporter Jessica Guynn tells us how some fear anti-DEI fervor could drive openly gay, trans and nonbinary executives back into hiding. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Saturday, June 21st, 2025. This is USA TODAY's The Excerpt. Today, we check in on Israel and Iran, plus how the Trump administration is leaning in on immigration enforcement and some fear that anti-DEI backlash could drive openly LGBTQ+ executives back into hiding. Israel said earlier today, it had killed veteran Iranian commander Saeed Izadi. That came as the countries continued to trade strikes. Iran's foreign minister said yesterday, there was no room for negotiations with the US until Israeli aggression stops, but he arrived in Switzerland for talks with European foreign ministers. Europe hopes to form some diplomatic path. For his part, President Donald Trump reiterated that he would take up to two weeks to decide whether the US should enter the conflict on Israel's side, enough time to see whether or not people come to their senses, he said. You can stay up on all the latest throughout the weekend on ♦ Two California lawmakers are pushing legislation that would prevent law enforcement from covering their faces when making arrests in the state. The No Secret Police Act introduced by two Democrats in the California Senate is a reaction to immigration sweeps across the country by masked agents in plain clothes who are increasingly refusing to identify themselves by name or the agency they work for. Meanwhile, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate held for months in connection with his pro-Palestinian activism was released yesterday. A US district judge said the thirty-year-old lawful permanent resident was neither a flight risk nor dangerous and his prolonged detention since March was potentially punitive. Amid some of the recent news on the immigration front, I caught up with USA TODAY National Correspondent Trevor Hughes for a step-back look at how the Trump administration is not backing down on immigration enforcement. Hiya, Trevor. Trevor Hughes: Hey, how's it going? Taylor Wilson: Good. Good. Thanks for hopping on, Trevor. So you're right about escalating efforts to deport undocumented immigrants. So how is this administration really doubling down? Trevor Hughes: The president ran for and was elected on a platform of increased immigration enforcement, right? And he's been talking about doing a million deportations a year. He has not stopped that. That is a thing he campaigned on, it's what he won on. We're starting to see a lot of push back across the country. You saw these huge protests, the No Kings rallies, in which many people carried signs opposing this enhanced immigration enforcement, and the president is showing no sign of backing down. Right? In fact, in some cases we're seeing more enforcement in California, places where people have been protesting. So the president really is showing that he is undeterred at this point. Taylor Wilson: Well, even beyond the protests and folks taking to the streets in this way, Trevor, how else is resistance really spreading on this issue, in particular? Trevor Hughes: I've been getting social media posts from friends who are saying, well, here's how coffee shops are sharing details about how to keep their workers safe, or even vineyards talking about the frustration they've had of longtime workers being deported. I have been struck by this sort of language of resistance, and in some cases actual resistance that we're starting to see. People are blocking in ICE agents with their vehicles. There was a very tense situation in LA where some immigration officials were in the Dodgers parking lot and they were sort of blocked in and it sounds like the LAPD ultimately had to come in and let them out a back way. Taylor Wilson: Well, as you mentioned, Trevor, Trump on the campaign trail talked about a lot of this. He said he would target violent criminals and gang members. Is that still his argument in this moment and is that who he's actually targeting? Trevor Hughes: Yeah, so the president repeatedly talks about targeting violent criminals, gang members, that kind of thing. And then we see enforcement that has actually been going after roofing contractors, people who work in vineyards, folks who are not violent criminals, even if they have broken the law in coming to the United States improperly. But the president the other week seemed to back down on enforcement for agricultural workers and for hospitality workers, and then a couple of days later reversed course again and said, "No, no, we're going to continue these deportations everywhere." It's one of those situations where some of the president's most vocal supporters are very much looking forward to seeing these enhanced deportations and detentions. The question is, does the president respond when the middle of the country starts to say, "Hey, I don't feel comfortable about masked men who won't identify themselves grabbing brown people off the street." The president has said he wants to target criminal offenders, violent criminals, gang members, and statistics show that a very large number of the people who are being detained do not have a criminal record, aside from the argument that they have broken the law in coming to this country. Now, there's a whole question about whether people broke the law in coming to this country under Biden era rules that the president has now revoked, but at the end of the day, there are a lot of folks in detention centers or being targeted for deportation who have not committed any violent crimes. Taylor Wilson: Well, Trevor, despite seeing resistance and huge numbers of people take to the street, is it also fair to say that polling tells us most Americans actually support at least some form of these immigration actions? Trevor Hughes: Yes, that's right. I mean, again, the president ran on this platform; this is not a surprise to people. But what I think we're starting to see perhaps is folks saying, "Wow, this went further than I thought it would." Those of us who paid attention to this are sort of saying, oh, this is in fact what the president said he would do, and if you aim to deport a million people a year, you are going to have to target people who are not violent criminals. You're going to have to target people who are married, have lived in this country for 20 years, who have committed no crime other than violating immigration laws. It will be interesting to see over the coming months if American sentiment moves away from this aggressive enforcement and says, "That's more than I signed up for." There was a poll that came out recently that NBC News did that showed that 51% of Americans support what the president is doing on immigration. Those polls were taken right as or right before some of these big protests and some of these more attention grabbing raids in Los Angeles. So it'll be interesting to see if the sentiment shifts over the coming weeks and months because the majority of Americans don't support the president as a whole when it comes to his popularity, but immigration enforcement is actually one of the strongest things the President is being rated on right now. Taylor Wilson: And, Trevor, in this piece, you also talk about some of these just broader concerns about broken trust with authorities, especially in this moment, right? Can you talk through some of those worries? Trevor Hughes: I have a lot of friends who are police officers. I have been covering police issues for many, many years, and one of the challenges in this country is getting people to call police for help. And so what we're starting to see is a concern among the migrant rights community, among the law enforcement community, that if immigrants feel like they will be deported for reporting crimes, that they wouldn't call in child abuse, that they wouldn't call in domestic violence, or they wouldn't call in to be a witness in some of these crimes. And so it raises questions about pushing people further into the shadows of our society. Taylor Wilson: Trevor Hughes is a national correspondent with USA TODAY. Great insight as always, Trevor. Thanks so much. Trevor Hughes: You bet. ♦ Taylor Wilson: President Trump is calling for a special prosecutor to investigate his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen, continuing to press an issue that resulted in an attack on the U.S. Capitol and his impeachment. Trump wrote on social media yesterday that the 2020 election was a total fraud. His efforts to challenge his 2020 election loss to former President Joe Biden already failed in court, and independent reviews and leading members of his own administration dismissed his fraud claims. ♦ Millions of Americans are in for a weekend of baking heat. According to AccuWeather, up to 170 million people across the country are expected to experience temperatures at or above 90 degrees during a heat wave over the next few days. You can check out how hot things are forecast to get in your backyard with a link in today's show notes. ♦ Some fear that anti-DEI backlash could drive openly gay, trans and non-binary executives back into hiding. I discussed with USA TODAY senior reporter Jessica Guynn. Thanks for joining me, Jessica. Jessica Guynn: Thanks for having me, Taylor. Taylor Wilson: So, Jessica, after years of civil rights advances and wins in the workplace, being openly gay, trans, or non-binary in corporate America just got tougher as you write, especially at the top. How so? Jessica Guynn: Well, in recent years, and particularly as the 2024 presidential election heated up, attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion spiked, and companies facing this kind of sharp criticism and consumer boycotts from anti-DEI activists really began to retreat from public expression of support for gay, trans and non-binary rights. Now in his second term, President Trump has signed a series of executive orders that take aim at LGBTQ+ issues, and we have seen corporations basically take evasive action to avoid becoming a target of the administration. And that's included stepping back from some of these long time commitments. Taylor Wilson: Do some LGBTQ+ corporate leaders fear this DEI backlash will drive more professionals even back into the closet, Jessica? Jessica Guynn: It's only in recent years that the doors of the C-suite have really begun to crack open for executives from diverse backgrounds, including those who are openly LGBTQ+. For decades, these executives have often hidden their sexual orientation or their gender identity at work because of discrimination, harassment, or they've just simply avoided rising into positions of power that come with that level of scrutiny. It's instructive to remember that it was only just over a decade ago that Apple CEO Tim Cook declared that he was gay. Taylor Wilson: So, Jessica, what do some of the numbers tell us about out LGBTQ executives? Jessica Guynn: Well, nearly one in 10 adults in the United States and almost a quarter of adults in generation Z, so ages 18 to 27, identify as LGBTQ+. LGBTQ+ people have an estimated 1.4 trillion in annual spending power, so that's a very lucrative and growing market that corporations really can't afford to overlook or neglect. But at the same time, there are very few openly gay, non-binary, trans people serving in the executive suite and on boards of directors. And it's noteworthy that while there's been more significant progress for women and people of color in the upper ranks of companies, the representation of openly gay, trans and non-binary executives has been pretty anemic, particularly relative to their participation in the workforce. If you look closely at the numbers, what you'll see is that there are less than a dozen LGBTQ+ executives who hold the top jobs in the nation's 1,000 largest companies, and their ranks are really sparse at the board level as well; they occupy about 1% of board seats in the S&P 500. And that figure has barely budged in five years, even as companies have been pushing to diversify their leadership following George Floyd's murder. And LGBTQ+ executives say increasing representation was never the priority it should have been for corporations, and now what they fear is that they may lose any momentum they had to change that. Taylor Wilson: Well, Jessica, in reporting this piece and some of the conversations you had, what did you hear from LGBTQ+ executives and how they're really approaching this moment? Jessica Guynn: I think this period is the most challenging for trans and non-binary executives who have been really singled out by the Trump administration and by anti-DEI activists. For example, I spoke with a technology executive who landed a board seat five years ago when the nation was obviously a lot less polarized over DEI. They identify as a person of color and non-binary, and they were really thrilled that their company touted their identity to the world. But that changed in recent months as the political winds shifted, and now that executive said they can no longer be out at work because they said it's dangerous to be who you are now. And many LGBTQ+ leaders in the corporate world fear that more people will be forced to make this kind of difficult decision, but they said they're determined to keep fighting for diverse leadership teams because they say those are essential to the success of their businesses. And their hope is that while they may not move forward as quickly as they once hoped, that the business world will not move backwards on this issue. Taylor Wilson: All right. We have a link to Jessica's full piece in today's show notes. Jessica Guynn is a senior reporter with USA TODAY. Thanks, Jessica. Jessica Guynn: Thanks so much for having me, Taylor. ♦ Taylor Wilson: And coming up tomorrow morning, this summer music takes center stage on screen. From iconic comebacks to behind the scenes revelations, music documentaries are making noise. USA TODAY national music reporter Melissa Ruggieri got an early look at the most anticipated releases, including the upcoming Miley Cyrus film. Melissa Ruggieri: She really, really is getting creative with this release, and she wanted to make it more than just a concept album. She wanted to make it a concept visual album, and she talked to me actually about how it was influenced by Pink Floyd's The Wall. Taylor Wilson: Melissa joins my colleague Dana Taylor to break down the biggest music docs hitting your screen this summer and the surprising stories behind them. You can catch that conversation tomorrow beginning at 5:00 AM Eastern Time, right here on this feed. ♦ Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. As always, you can email us at podcasts@ I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back Monday with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
USA Today
2 days ago
- Science
- USA Today
Record heat, a climate reckoning: How will humans respond?
On a special episode (first released on June 25, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: As the earth continues to warm, how will mankind respond? Is it in our nature to act? Author and climate scientist Kate Marvel joins USA TODAY's The Excerpt to discuss her new book 'Human Nature,' which explores how emotions may be key to our survival. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello, I'm Dana Taylor, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Climate change, global warming, we've all heard this steady drumbeat of doom. But a recent five-year forecast by the World Meteorological Organization and the UK Meteorological Office puts it starkly. The world will likely soon break another annual temperature record, and according to The Associated Press, the heat will be deadly. What would happen if we embrace the idea that the future still rests firmly in our hands? Is it in our nature to learn, adapt, and change? And equally important, is there still time? Author and climate scientist Kate Marvel dives into those questions in her new book, Human Nature, on bookshelves now. Thanks for joining me, Kate. Kate Marvel: Oh, thank you so much for having me. Dana Taylor: In your work, you manipulate climate models to gauge the impacts of climate change. In the simplest terms, can you briefly walk us through the creation of one of these models and how you've used them to glean data? Kate Marvel: So a climate model is basically a toy planet on a computer that we can do experiments on that would be impossible or unethical to do in the real world. We can't gauge human influence on the climate by asking everybody to go live on another planet for a couple of hundred years, but we can do that in the safe digital confines of a climate model. Now, what a climate model is is basically the encapsulation of everything we know about the physics and chemistry of how the world works, written down in equations and then translated to code. Dana Taylor: The most startling moments I experienced while reading your book are when you were expressing your anger regarding gaslighting by climate change deniers. Was there a specific tipping point for you here? And how did you grapple with how you would express anger in your writing? Kate Marvel: Yeah. I mean, I struggled a lot with expressing anger. I actually struggled a lot with expressing any emotions. Because scientists, we're supposed to be neutral, we're supposed to be objective, we're supposed to have no feelings whatsoever. And I was worried that if I expressed anger or if I expressed fear or grief or even hope, I would be taken less seriously as a scientist or maybe my science would be seen as a little bit less credible. But then I realized that we don't make ourselves more credible when we lie about not having feelings. I am a scientist, but I'm also a human being and I'm a human being who lives on this planet. And that means I feel things when I study the planet that I live on and that everybody I love lives on. So yeah, rage. I do feel incredible anger when I think about the history of climate science. None of this stuff is new. We've known about the greenhouse effect for more than 100 years and the history of climate science, scientists finding things out, is intertwined with the history of people pushing back on this and lying about it. So you can't really look at the history of climate science without looking at the counterbalancing history of climate denial. And I'm really mad about that. Dana Taylor: In your book you wrote that, "Weather is what we humans experience over our short lives and that climate is a matter for the Gods." What did you mean by that? And are you worried that some readers will walk away thinking there really isn't much that humans can do at this point? Kate Marvel: I wrote that because I wanted to include it in the context of, I talk about climate models in the context of Greek mythology, especially the myth of Cassandra, who famously was cursed to be able to see the future, but nobody would believe her. And so oftentimes climate scientists are called Cassandra's because we're making these projections about dire futures, but it seems like nobody's listening to us. So that was the context of things that I was playing with a little bit where I really wanted to bring that in. I think my colleague Dr. Marshall Shepherd at the University of Georgia puts it excellently that weather is your mood and climate is your personality. So climate is essentially the background conditions under which all weather can occur. It's not supposed to change this fast, but human beings, because we have changed the chemical composition of the atmosphere, are indeed changing the climate. But when I look at it, I think, wow, wouldn't it be scarier if we didn't understand what was causing climate change? Wouldn't it be scarier if this were some meteor heading toward us that we didn't know how to stop? But the fact that we understand exactly what is causing climate change, it's humans doing things that emit greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, that means we know exactly how to stop it. So I think it's really important for scientists to stress that there are things that we can do. We are not doomed to inevitable, catastrophic climate change. We can still avoid the worst impacts. Dana Taylor: I want to stick with that in talking about the weather. You also said that all weather is formed in a changing climate. Can you help us understand the weather through the eyes of a climate scientist? Kate Marvel: There is no weather now that's not happening against the backdrop, like you pointed out, of this changed climate. So I cannot tell you what the weather is going to be like in New York City where I live 10 years from now on June 1st. But what I can tell you is that it's likely to be warm. I can tell you some of the basic contours of what it's likely to be because I know that New York City is on the East Coast of a large landmass. I know what the prevailing winds look like. I know the factors that shape the climate of New York City. Dana Taylor: Clearly humans, Homo sapiens, have adapted to life on this planet for roughly 300,000 years. Is it correct to say that based on your climate models, mankind will not be able to adapt quickly enough? Kate Marvel: I don't know because people are very, very, very difficult to put in a climate model. I am a physicist, I know exactly what water droplets and air molecules are going to do because those things obey the laws of physics. You push them, they always move in exactly the same way. Human beings are much more difficult to predict. So what human beings are going to do in response to the changing climate, are we going to take sensible science-based decisions and mitigate the change climate and adapt to the changes that have already occurred? That's a possibility. But are we going to panic and blame each other and have scapegoats? That's also a possibility. So I have learned as a physicist to actually be very, very humble about what I don't know. And the thing that I really don't know is what human beings are going to do. Dana Taylor: Well, the warning in your book that climate change is unlikely to dole out one disaster at a time is something that really struck me. I want you to help us understand what you call the misery index. Have humans survived worse than what we're experiencing now or worse than what your models predict we will experience in the near future? Kate Marvel: So one of the scariest things about climate change is that obviously it increases the risk of heat waves. But at the same time, it changes the humidity of the atmosphere. And I think we've all experienced it, that dry heat is very different from humid heat. A lot of people say, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity." And there is actually a threshold, what we call the wet bulb temperature, which is basically a measure of the combined heat and humidity. There's a point where that exceeds a value so that the human body cannot cool itself off by its natural response, which is sweating. And when the wet bulb temperature, that index, exceeds this particular critical threshold, if you go outside, even if you're young, even if you're healthy, even if you're not moving around very much, you will die. Now, that's not happening with any regularity right now, but we have seen in a couple isolated cases that threshold being exceeded. And for me, that's something that's very frightening because that is a little glimpse of possibly a world, particularly in the tropics, particularly in the Global South, where human beings are essentially no longer welcome. Dana Taylor: What would a reverse Ice Age look like? And are we at risk? Kate Marvel: Let's think about what the Ice Age was. Ice Ages are caused by little tiny wobbles in the Earth's orbit as it goes around the sun. The last Ice Age was around 21,000 years ago, scientists call it the last glacial maximum. And during the last glacial maximum, the temperature was between five and six degrees Celsius colder than it was now. And just to put that in perspective, what we could be looking at under an absolute worst case scenario is warming of about five to six degrees Celsius by the end of the century. So when you think about it, when you think about the difference between now and the last Ice Age, the planet looks very, very, very different back then. Human beings are surviving, there are species that are surviving, but it is a completely foreign planet to us. And when you look forward into the future, if it does warm by five degrees, six degrees Celsius, that is a planet that is also completely alien to us, completely foreign to us. And that could be the planet that we're sending our children to go live on. Dana Taylor: You wrote that you grew up wanting to make bad movies. Do you feel like a scientist in a bad movie? And what can that scientist do to save the day? Kate Marvel: I often feel like a scientist in a bad movie. And what makes a movie a disaster movie is usually when the scientist gets ignored. So I think it is very important that we not be ignored. The problem that I have with bad movies and good movies too, is that they tell the story of a single person. Movies usually have a hero. And that is not what's going to happen with climate change. There is no single hero. There's no one person who's going to come along and save all of us. We are all going to have to work together. We are all going to have to do this ourselves. And for me, that's almost comforting. It means that I don't have to be the star, I don't have to carry this picture on my shoulders because I am not capable of doing that. But it's knowing that I am in this with essentially all of humanity. And as a result, there are so many heroes of this story. There's so many people working on various aspects of this enormous problem to do something that humanity has never done before. And for me, that's what happens in a good story, is people do something that they didn't think they could do. Dana Taylor: Finally, you lean into human emotions like fear, guilt, and wonder. What do you hope readers might better understand about human civilization and climate change after reading your book? Kate Marvel: I hope they see themselves somewhere in the book. I hope they understand that climate change is important, not because it's affecting a planet necessarily, but because it's affecting our planet. I get really annoyed when I see these headlines that say, "Scientists concerned about climate change, or "Scientists worried about melting glaciers." Because I think, honestly, where do the rest of you live? What planet is everybody else on? And I want to make it very clear that scientists care about this because we're human beings and all human beings should care about this. This is not a scientific problem, it's not something that only scientists should be worried about, and it's certainly not something that all scientists can solve. And so I think that if we want to address the magnitude of this problem, one of the best ways to get started is to talk about it, to talk about it to ourselves, to talk about it with each other. And what I really hope is that people read this book and come away thinking, hey, I see myself in this picture. That to me will make it a success. Dana Taylor: Human Nature is available on bookshelves now. Thanks so much for being on The Excerpt, Kate. Kate Marvel: Oh, thank you so much. It was lovely. Dana Taylor: Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts@ Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.
USA Today
4 days ago
- Politics
- USA Today
Does the US need a Golden Dome air defense system?
On a special episode (first released on June 23, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: How might the Golden Dome missile defense system proposed by President Donald Trump protect the US from missile strikes? Tom Karako with the Center for Strategic & International Studies joins The Excerpt to discuss air defense systems. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Dana Taylor: Hello and welcome to USA TODAY's The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. In May, President Donald Trump shared his vision for protecting the US from the threat of nuclear strikes by drones and ballistic cruise and hypersonic missiles. The idea, a Golden Dome, which would cover the country with three layers of air defenses following the launch of missiles in Iran. The idea of having a robust defense system here at home is getting more attention. Here to share his insight on missile defense and nuclear deterrence is Tom Karako, senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Thanks for joining me, Tom. Tom Karako: Great to be with you. Dana Taylor: What is the architecture of a national missile defensive system or Golden Dome look like? Would this be primarily space-based technology or is there more to it than that? Tom Karako: Yeah, there's certainly more to it than that. And again, it's important to keep in mind that we have a handful of systems already in place today to defend the United States against, especially the rogue state ICBM threat in particular. That's called the ground-based midcourse defense system. But you specifically asked about the architecture, so I think it's important to recognize there that there's a number of sensors, there's space sensors, there's lots of ground-based radars, and the very beginning of the kill chain here is the first, the detection of a missile launch. The tracking of that, the figuring out, is this a threat and where is it going, that's primarily a sensor and computing a problem. Then figuring out, okay, we have certain interceptors, how does one create a fire control solution? How does one tell them where to go at what moment to be at a particular point in space to kill this thing? And then of course, we have the ground-based interceptors up in Alaska that are there to kill this. But as you note, this is not just about the rogue state ballistic missile threat. As we've seen in Ukraine and the Middle East, there's all kinds of other threats. So I would say that the Golden Dome Initiative that was in that executive order from January is long overdue. These are weapons of choice, as we see again on a daily and weekly basis in these various global conflicts, and so the cruise missiles, the forthcoming, and really the present, hypersonic missile threats and other things perhaps space to ground fires, lots of these things in addition to the UAVs that are plentiful and proliferated, all of these things are threats that we have become accustomed to seeing over there. But these are things that are going to unfortunately be coming to a theater near you to us in our homeland as well. And so the operation Spiderweb thing that Ukraine did, putting things into Russia, we have to imagine it's not going to take a whole lot of imagination to imagine those kinds of attacks applied to, for instance, our military bases or our ports, our airfields, things like that. So everybody has to look up. We can't take air superiority for granted anymore and so it's going to be a spectrum air and missile defense capabilities to contend with this spectrum of air and missile threats. Dana Taylor: I was going to ask, are there specific current or projected threats that justify the need for a Golden Dome missile shield? Tom Karako: I think we see them in the headlines every day. The very robust, say Russian and Chinese, first and foremost, cruise missile threats, ballistic missile threats. Why are we concerned about them? Why can't we just rely upon nuclear deterrents? The answer is the availability of non-nuclear strategic attack, the kinds of things that a country might think they can get away with short of a nuclear reprisal. That's a big problem now and again, the last several national defense strategies for both the Biden Administration and the previous Trump Administration identified China and Russia as our principle challenges. We're not dealing with the rogue states first and foremost. Counterterrorism is not our top priority at the moment. It is fundamentally the major peer, near peer threats from the bigs, that we have to worry about. And again, missiles are weapons of choice. They're not a boutique problem, they're not a future problem. It's very much a today problem. Dana Taylor: The idea of mutually assured destruction rose during the Cold War between the US and Russia. The theory that should either side strike first, they too would be annihilated proved to be effective. How much of a deterrent is American might? Tom Karako: The paradigm that I think serious defense planners, again on a bipartisan basis, really over the past decade plus, have come to is that while it's important to have that deterrence by punishment, whether nuclear punishment or otherwise, that the threat again of that non-nuclear strategic attack is so significant based on the supply and the demand globally for these precision guided munitions that can have very serious effects without any nuclear weapons at all. That problem set also requires the prospect of deterrence by denial, which is to say, denying an adversary their objectives, not just blustering or threatening to respond if they should attack. Dana Taylor: We've recently seen the limitations of Israel's Iron Dome. Some Iranian missiles have successfully pierced Israel's air defense systems. Can you break down how the Iron Dome works, what went wrong, and if the proposed Golden Dome can mitigate those risks? Tom Karako: So I think you're probably talking about the many, many hundreds of missiles that have been coming in to Israel in the first instance over the past week, but also of course, those really big attacks on April 14 and in October of 2024. No weapons system is perfect, no weapons system is non-finite in its capacity in its numbers. So I think the beginning of wisdom here is to recognize that there will always be a leaker. That's just in the nature of things. There's no perfect tactical aircraft. There's no perfect sidearm that is not going to fail occasionally. What I would say actually is that in the 400 or so ballistic missiles that have been fired in the last week here in June of 2025, it's been remarkably good shooting. It's been astonishing to me that so few have gotten through. Then likewise on April 14 of last year, when something like 550 plus projectiles coming at Israel simultaneously from multiple trajectories from Yemen, and from Iran, from other places, UAVs, cruise missiles and ballistic missiles all designed to arrive simultaneously. It was, I think, nothing short of a miracle that as many were intercepted last year as they were. So what I would say is that Israel's layered defense, of which the Iron Dome system is just one layer, in fact, the lowest layer, most of the big things are either going to be caught by the family of interceptors, they are 2 Arrow 3 or David's Sling for some of the medium range stuff. The Iron Dome system, per se, is not going to be engaging the long-range threats. It's also important to note that the United States has been engaged in the Red Sea operations and in the direct defense of Israel. The United States has two THAAD batteries deployed in Israel right now, and they have been busy. They have been busy shooting down a number of these threats so it's a very much a combined operation between the United States and Israel in terms of taking out these longer range threats. But you're right. There was a couple weeks ago, I think, at least one major missile that got through before the current kerfuffle. And again, I see that as primarily in the nature of things. Nothing is perfect. The good news is, of course, that we're talking about the non-nuclear attack as opposed to nuclear attack and so that's, I think, is important to put that in context. Dana Taylor: To what impact could the creation of a missile shield have on our relationships with both our allies and adversaries or their takeaways here from Israel's Iron Dome? Tom Karako: Yeah. Here again, I think it's important to contrast, especially the caricatures of the Cold War about, let's just say, Reagan's aspirations on SDI, Strategic Defense Initiative. In that context, there were some allies that were hypothesizing, well, what if the United States comes up with some impenetrable shield? What's their interest and commitment going to be on an extended deterrence level for coming to the aid of say, the European allies? Well, there's a couple of problems with that. One is nothing is perfect, and I think those kind of assumptions get way ahead of the capability gap. What I would say is, in practice, the prospect of even a limited degree of protection, say for the US homeland is first and foremost bolstering American and allied broad defense and deterrence commitments. If you're able to be blackmailed, if you're able to be coerced, if you're able to have your military forces decapitated because you don't have any deterrence by denial act of missile defenses, that's a problem. hat's a problem for your deterrence and extended deterrence commitments globally. This is why the demand signal for active air missile defense, this is no longer an American idiosyncrasy by any means, putting in addition to the Russian and the Chinese significant investments here. Just take a look at what all of our allies are doing. There's a massive rush for air missile defense capability in Europe led by Germany called the Skyshield Initiative, but to Poland, Sweden, the Swiss, and probably the United Kingdom here soon as well. So it's not an American idiosyncrasy. Everybody kind of realizes that you need to have some kind of defense, albeit limited, to slow things down, because ultimately it contributes to deterrence. It contributes to nuclear deterrence, it contributes to conventional deterrence so that the bad guys don't get an idea pop into their head, that they can come up with something like a fait accompli and get away with it very easily. So it raises the threshold for aggression by making it harder for them to do something at a lower level. Dana Taylor: As you know, the President has set an ambitious timeline. Trump has said the system, "...should be fully operational before the end of my term," which would be in 2029. Is that realistic? Tom Karako: Here's where I am going to make a comparison to SDI and to Reagan, which was that Reagan said that this is something that might not be accomplished in his lifetime. And yay verily, we are over 40 years later now, and it has yielded very significant results, but it has taken time. So I think that it's important to see the Golden Dome Initiative, not as a program, not as a system, but rather as an umbrella for a lot of initiatives and a lot of efforts to get after these various weapons of choice. And so it's going to be an ongoing thing. You'll probably see them snap the chalk line and say at the end of the term that there's some kind of defensive capability. Some things can be accomplished in the near term, I think they will be. But there's going to be a lot of things that are going to take longer, and that's okay. Dana Taylor: I want to turn now to the price tag. In May, a report from the Nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that a bare-bones version capable of intercepting one or two ballistic missiles would cost at least $161 billion over two decades. How much might a fully realized Golden Dome cost, and do you see this as a good allocation of available defense spending? Tom Karako: So I think it's real important to understand what the Congressional Budget Office report did and what it didn't do. They were not tasked to cost the Golden Dome Initiative at all. What they were asked to do by Congress was to update a previous estimate of what a particular set of assumptions for space based interceptors might be. And so that is a particular component, a particular piece of a potential future architecture for Golden Dome, and there's a number of different assumptions in terms of what the interceptors cost on that. The only variable that they updated on that was the launch cost. The good news is that launch costs have come down dramatically for space. That's why you see thousands of Starlink satellites and lots of other companies, Amazon, et cetera, that have thousands of satellites and so that's the number, that's the scope that one might need for a space-based interceptor layer, an overlayer, as it were for the other things. But I think it's real important to understand what those numbers are and what they're not, and that that's probably not the best guide to what we're going to be spending on this. The president said in his Oval Office remarks... He threw out the number 175 billion, but the question is over how many years? That could be over 10 years. If it was over five years, that would be 35 billion a year and it just depends on what is being counted and what is not. So I think it's real important to take a look at what Congress is actually authorizing and appropriating and not kind of, I would say, pie-in-the-sky numbers that don't necessarily correspond with reality. The good news is you can do a lot for $25, $35 billion a year. $25 billion is the number that's in the reconciliation bill working its way through Congress. And you can do a lot for that to address all these disparate threats, and frankly, we should be. Dana Taylor: Finally, we live in a world with increasing threats running the gamut from pandemics to foreign disinformation campaigns. Do you have any concerns that a Golden Dome may give Americans a false sense of security? Tom Karako: First of all, we're not going to be able to defend everything, and it's going to require senior military and political leaders to be upfront about the fact that the threat is so wicked. The threat is so difficult that you're not going to have a perfect Astrodome to defend everything. And it's about picking and having a preferential defense. Think about the Super Bowl. Every year, the Super Bowl gets a special bubble of air defense over it. And I think what I would say is that where we're heading is a handful domes over a handful of places persistent throughout the year as opposed to just for the big game. So keeping expectations in check is going to be important, and again, as we see on a daily and weekly basis in the headlines, these are weapons of choice. These are what our adversaries and frankly we reach for first in a conflict is long-range standoff capability. And so I think understanding that is going to help to make sure that we don't have a false sense of security because it's a tough world. Dana Taylor: It's good to have you on The Excerpt, Tom. Thank you. Tom Karako: Thank you. Dana Taylor: Thanks for our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistant. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcasts at Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor, Taylor Wilson, be back tomorrow morning with another episode of USA TODAY's The Excerpt.
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- Politics
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Trump to decide on US role in Israel-Iran conflict within 2 weeks
Trump to decide on US role in Israel-Iran conflict within 2 weeks | The Excerpt On Friday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: President Donald Trump will decide on the U.S. role in the Israel-Iran conflict within two weeks. USA TODAY White House Reporter Davis Winkie discusses how the Trump administration's National Guard immigration enforcement could divide states. Plus, a court lets Trump keep control of California's National Guard for now. The Los Angeles Dodgers say they denied federal agents access to Dodger Stadium parking lots. Trump signs an executive order delaying a ban on TikTok - again. USA TODAY National Correspondent Marco della Cava looks back on the phenomenon that was 'Jaws' on its 50th anniversary. Plus, how locals made up much of the film's cast. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@ Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text. Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here Taylor Wilson: Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Friday, June 20th, 2025. This is USA TODAY's The Excerpt. Today, when might we get a decision on the US approach to Iran and Israel? Plus, how Trump's National Guard immigration enforcement could divide states. And it's been 50 years since the release of Jaws. ♦ President Donald Trump will decide in the next two weeks whether the US will get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran. That's what the White House said yesterday. Trump continues to keep the world guessing on his plans. He had proposed a diplomatic solution, but has also suggested the US might join the fighting on Israel's side. Iran has said it won't negotiate under duress. The conflict has killed at least 240 Iranians and 24 Israelis in a week. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt declined to say if Trump would seek congressional authorization for strikes on Iran. ♦ The possibility of the Trump administration sending National Guard troops on immigration raids outside their own state could cause a legal clash between states and with the federal government. I spoke with USA TODAY White House reporter Davis Winkie for more. Davis, thanks for joining me today. Davis Winkie: It's good to be back. Taylor Wilson: Davis, starting here, the Pentagon is weighing a request from the Department of Homeland Security to call up members of the National Guard under state authority. What did you find taking a closer look at this memo? Davis Winkie: The way that the administration wants to bring the National Guard into immigration enforcement really diverges from the ways in which the National Guard has previously been used on this front. There have been border efforts that have really sparked professionalization and even reforms of the National Guard when necessary. But each of those missions to include ones under Obama, Biden, and Trump were focused on border security rather than interior immigration enforcement. And that's what stands out, is that now the Trump administration wants 20,000 guardsmen to participate in interior immigration enforcement rather than just border security as they have in the past. Taylor Wilson: Well, putting just slightly a tighter lens here, Davis, what is the 287(g) program and how would it be used here? Davis Winkie: It's named after a section in the federal law that authorizes a lot of immigration enforcement. It's a vehicle by which local and state law enforcement agencies can enter formal partnerships with ICE and DHS. One of the ways in which this can be done is by serving warrants or by doing jailhouse cooperation, where if somebody that a local sheriff's office brings in, for example, has an ICE detainer, then they will coordinate with ICE to give that person over to them when it's appropriate to do so. But the Trump administration has revived a old version of 287(g) called the task force model that actually involves taking law enforcement officers from local and now even state agencies and deputizing them with immigration enforcement powers that lets them go forth and detain people on suspicion of not being lawfully in the United States for example. What it also does is it allows these individuals from participating agencies to go out and about as part of ICE-led task forces or other federal law enforcement task forces that seek to enforce immigration laws. It's basically a way for the immigration enforcement apparatus to widen its reach around the country. Taylor Wilson: Well, I know a big question here is what this means for crossing state lines and the differences from one state to the next. I mean, can task force participants under 287(g) operate across state lines? Davis Winkie: Well, Taylor, that's the big question, and it's one that, according to CNN, officials in the administration and DHS and in the Pentagon are asking. The reason why the administration is likely exploring this possibility is that National Guard troops under state authority are not subject to the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act, which is a law that forbids active-duty US military personnel from directly enforcing civilian laws. That's a law that has limited exceptions, but the biggest one is those guard troops on state duty can enforce laws. And by bringing guard troops on state duty onto immigration task forces, you've theoretically then expanded those task forces with a lot more manpower. But the question remains, can those troops go across state lines? The experts that I talked to for this story, Taylor, just don't know. Taylor Wilson: And as you outlined in this piece, Davis, this could potentially mean just broader clashes between red states and blue states. Is that a fair way to look at this? Davis Winkie: I think so. There's been, in recent years, a increasing pattern of clashes between states and the federal government over control and use of the National Guard. The modern examples start with more recently in the first Trump administration when the news of family separations came to light. A lot of democratic governors withdrew their consent for their personnel who were on state duty at the border under a federally-organized task force. So there have been concepts like this before that haven't been doing direct interior immigration enforcement that have had political issues rend the working relationships there. You also saw during the COVID pandemic some red state governors fight against the Biden administration trying to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for troops in their National Guard. And then what we're seeing right now out in California with the administration federalizing the 4,000 members of the California National Guard against the consent of Governor Gavin Newsom out there. It's a different legal authority than the one that would be in play for the DHS request, but it just goes to show that there are a lot of traditional limits and boundaries with this relationship over the guard between states and the federal government that's taken it from a largely cooperative one in the modern era to one where now you've got people looking to score political points on each other. Taylor Wilson: All right. Another great piece from you, Davis. Folks can find the full version with the link in today's show notes. Davis Winkie covers the White House for USA TODAY. Thank you, Davis. Davis Winkie: Thanks for having me. Taylor Wilson: The US appeals Court let President Trump retain control yesterday of California's National Guard, while the state's Democratic governor proceeds with a lawsuit, challenging Trump's use of the troops amid protests and riots in Los Angeles. ♦ Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Dodgers said yesterday that immigration and customs enforcement agents were denied entry to the stadium grounds. While ICE says the agency was never there. And the Department of Homeland Security claims, the masked agents were with Customs and Border patrol. You can read more about that with a link in today's show notes. ♦ President Trump has again extended the deadline for a TikTok ban to go into effect, allowing the Chinese-owned social media platform to continue operating for the next 90 days. Trump had said earlier in the week that he planned to give TikTok a third extension and signed an executive order yesterday making it official. It was the third time that Trump authorized a delay. The social media app's parent company, ByteDance, now has until September 17th to secure a deal that satisfies a legal requirement. Lawmakers ordered TikTok to divest from its Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States over national security concerns. Former President Joe Biden signed the bipartisan legislation into law and the Supreme Court held the ban. But since returning to office, Trump has directed the Department of Justice not to enforce it. ♦ It's been 50 years since an iconic movie and theme song kept beachgoers out of the water for a summer and even longer. I spoke with USA TODAY national correspondent Marco della Cava on the anniversary of Jaws. Marco, I always appreciate you stopping by. How are you today? Marco della Cava: I am great. Thanks for having me. Taylor Wilson: Thanks for having on. Really fun story. I cannot believe it's the 50th anniversary of Jaws. So let's just first go back to 1975. How big of a phenomenon was Jaws that summer? Marco della Cava: One way to answer that is one of the gentlemen I interviewed said he finally got to see it in 1979 because he was old enough, four years later, and the line was still around the block in 1979. So you can imagine 1975. Taylor Wilson: Wow. And I know you hear stories about folks not wanting to go into the water for that entire summer. In some cases, years. In some cases, an entire lifetime, right Marco, after seeing this movie. How badly did it scare people? Marco della Cava: Yeah, I mean it terrified folks, young and old. And I was happy to learn interviewing people that I was not alone in not wanting to go in the water and being very scared for years. In fact, I was even scared of going into a pool. And apparently, that phenomenon affected other people as well. As crazy as it sounds, there's no sharks in pools, but any kind of situation where you're in water and you're not sure what's out there, your mind can get ahead of yourself quickly. And Spielberg did an amazing job because as you remember in the opening scene in the first shark attack, you don't see a shark. And that sort of stayed with people, that, here I am bobbing in the water and yet who knows what's beneath me. Taylor Wilson: Well, you mentioned Spielberg. He went on to have this massive career, but this was early on in his career. And you're right that Jaws was both his origin story and almost his career killer. How so? Marco della Cava: Absolutely. He was under pressure to deliver a blockbuster, ideally, under budget. This was a very, very popular novel at the time, and they wanted it out for summer. And he was having massive problems with the mechanical shark. Obviously, he had insisted on shooting it, as you know, in Martha's Vineyard and also with a real mechanical shark out in the ocean. And that caused all sorts of problems that he felt were just going to be his undoing. He felt he might get kicked off the project. And in the end of course it was, as he said in a documentary I watched, the movie that gave him final cut for the rest of his life. So it made him in a huge way. Taylor Wilson: So many of the iconic scenes were filmed off the coast of Massachusetts around the island of Martha's Vineyard, a place I know well and have spent a lot of time. Most Jaws cast members were locals from the island, Marco. Tell us about some of these folks and also their memories from the Jaws production. Marco della Cava: Yeah, that's quite the amazing thing. They came to Martha's Vineyard with, I think, it was eight professional actors. And everyone else was cast locally. And that is what gives the movie its real genuine flavor. And a lot of these folks have since turned up at Jaws festivals that are happening. Different years they've happened, but they're going to happen this summer at the 50th anniversary on Martha's Vineyard. And those who are still alive, who were probably in their 20s, I think the gentleman who plays the college kid at the opening scene, he's often spotted talking to Jaws fans on the island. So that's a big part of the success of the movie, was the fact that it felt real because it really kind of was real in many ways. Taylor Wilson: And Martha's Vineyard local, Jeff Voorhees, played one of the Jaws victims as a kid. He spoke to the Cape Cod Times part of the USA TODAY network. Let's hear what he had to say. Jeff Voorhees: The third victim to get eaten by the shark in that movie back 50 years ago. Day two, we tried. Your leg came out of the water. Day three, your arm came out of the water. And then day five, Spielberg finally goes, "This is taking too long." He goes, "This time we got a different plan." He goes, "We got two guys in wetsuits. They're going to be underwater. When that thing explodes, each going to grab one of your legs, lift you in and out of the water a few times, and then pull you under and give you air." Taylor Wilson: It's the 50th anniversary of this summer. How are fans, how are former, you mentioned part of this, but former cast members and members of this production marking the 50th anniversary? Marco della Cava: In terms of how the cast is marking it, it's a good question. I mean, Richard Dreyfus famously doesn't like talking about Jaws. Spielberg rarely talks about Jaws. It was a long time ago, but I think it's mostly the fans, young and old, and therefore you're going to see Jaws on television quite often over the next few months. There's going to be a re-release of the actual movie, I believe in August. And there are lots of documentaries as well coming out. So anyone who likes the movie is going to be able to learn a lot more about it. Taylor Wilson: And Mark, are you still staying away from the ocean all these years after seeing Jaws? Marco della Cava: I don't stay away from it, but as one of the people I interviewed said, "I don't turn my back to the horizon." Taylor Wilson: Fair enough. Marco della Cava is a national correspondent with USA TODAY joining us here on the 50th anniversary of Jaws. Thanks, Marco. Marco della Cava: Thank you. ♦ Taylor Wilson: Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. We're produced by Shannon Rae Greene and Kelly Monahan, and our executive producer is Laura Beatty. You can get to podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. As always, you can email us at podcasts@ I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.
