The Daily

Yesterday on “The Daily,” we met Kamalle Dabboussy, who said his daughter had been tricked by her husband into joining the Islamic State. His daughter and three grandchildren are being held in a Syrian detention camp for the relatives of ISIS fighters.

When we left off, Mr. Dabboussy had just received a call from a journalist that suggested his family’s situation was about to become far more precarious. President Trump had announced that he would withdraw U.S. troops from the Syrian border, and Kurdish forces who had been guarding the prisons were expected to abandon their posts, leaving the detainees’ lives in imminent danger.

Today, we follow Mr. Dabboussy’s struggle to convince the Australian government that his daughter and her children are worth saving — despite their ties to the Islamic State.

Guest: Livia Albeck-Ripka, a reporter for The Times in Melbourne, Australia, spoke with Kamalle Dabboussy, whose daughter Mariam is trapped in Syria with her children. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background coverage:

• Here’s the first episode in this two-part series, in which we introduced Kamalle Dabboussy and his fight to bring his family home from a war zone.
• Mr. Dabboussy is one of a cohort of parents in Australia lobbying the government to help release their loved ones from detention camps in northern Syria.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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Since the fall of the Islamic State, many of the group’s fighters and their families have been held in prison camps controlled by U.S.-allied Kurdish forces. Parents around the world have been trying to get their children and grandchildren out of the camps and back to their home countries. Now, the fate of those detainees has become an urgent question after President Trump’s abrupt recall of American troops from the Syrian border.

We follow one father as he fights to get his daughter, a former ISIS bride, and her children back to Australia.

Guest: Livia Albeck-Ripka, a reporter for The Times in Melbourne, Australia, spoke to Kamalle Dabboussy, whose daughter Mariam is trapped in Syria with her three children. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background coverage:

• “There will be ethnic cleansing of the Kurdish people from Syria, and the American administration will be responsible for it,” said Mazlum Kobani, a Kurdish military commander, when asked about a full American withdrawal from northern Syria.
• President Trump is now said to be considering leaving a few hundred troops in eastern Syria to defend against an ISIS resurgence.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Members of the American diplomatic corps testified about the state of U.S. foreign policy in private hearings on Capitol Hill this week. According to our national political correspondent, their testimonies revealed “a remarkably consistent story” about the ways in which career diplomats have been sidelined to make room for Trump administration officials. The conduct of those officials, and the nature of the directives they received, is at the center of the House impeachment investigation.

We look back at a week inside the U.S. Capitol as that inquiry enters a pivotal phase. Guest: Nicholas Fandos, who covers Congress for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background coverage:

• Gordon D. Sondland, the U.S. ambassador to the European Union, told impeachment investigators on Thursday that President Trump delegated Ukraine policy to his personal lawyer Rudolph Giuliani.
• Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, threw Washington into turmoil on Thursday when he first confirmed, then retracted, that Mr. Trump had withheld military aid to pressure Ukraine.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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The presence of U.S. troops in northern Syria was designed to protect America’s allies and keep its enemies there in check. President Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the region quickly, and predictably, unraveled a tenuous peace on the volatile border between Syria and Turkey. His decision handed a gift to four American adversaries: Iran, Russia, the Syrian government and the Islamic State. David E. Sanger of The Times explains why “the worst-case scenario is even worse than you can imagine.” Guest: David E. Sanger, a national security correspondent and a senior writer at The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background coverage:

• President Trump lashed out in defense of his decision to remove U.S. troops from northeastern Syria in response to rare bipartisan condemnation from Congress.
• Russian troops have already occupied abandoned American outposts in Syria as Moscow moves to fill the power vacuum.
• “Don't be a fool! I will call you later.” Read the letter President Trump sent to Turkey’s leader.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Last night in Ohio, The New York Times co-hosted a presidential debate for the first time in more than a decade. Marc Lacey, The Times’s National editor, moderated the event with the CNN anchors Erin Burnett and Anderson Cooper.

It was also the first debate since Democrats started an impeachment inquiry into President Trump and his efforts to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. Candidates denounced the president, calling for his impeachment, without wading into the specifics of the investigation. Instead, moderates focused on winning over Biden voters by differentiating themselves from more progressive candidates. Guests: Alexander Burns, who covers national politics for The Times, and Maggie Haberman, who covers the White House. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background coverage:

• Senator Elizabeth Warren was the primary target of moderates’ attacks, illustrating her status as an emergent front-runner. Candidates avoided criticism of Joe Biden, wary of echoing President Trump’s attacks on his family.
• Here are six takeaways from the debate.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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This week, we’re producing episodes of “The Daily” from The New York Times’s Washington bureau.

The impeachment inquiry is entering a pivotal phase as Congress returns from recess. The White House’s strategy to block the investigation is beginning to crumble, with five administration officials set to testify before House investigators.

On Monday, those committees heard testimony about why the president removed the longtime ambassador, Marie L. Yovanovitch, just two months before the call in which he asked the Ukrainian president for a favor. Today, we look at how Ms. Yovanovitch ended up at the center of the impeachment process.

Guests: Sharon LaFraniere, an investigative reporter based in Washington, and Rachel Quester and Clare Toeniskoetter, producers for “The Daily.” For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background coverage:

• Marie L. Yovanovitch told House investigators that she was removed from office on the basis of “false claims by people with clearly questionable motives.”
• The effort to pressure Ukraine so alarmed John Bolton, then the national security adviser, that he told an aide to alert White House lawyers. “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” an aide quoted him as saying of President Trump’s personal lawyer.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Turkey has invaded Kurdish-controlled territory in Syria, upending a fragile peace in the region and inciting sectarian bloodshed. The Trump administration has ordered a full evacuation of the 1,000 American troops that remain in northeastern Syria, leaving Mazlum Kobani, the commander of the Kurdish-led militia, and his forces to rely on Russia and Syria for military assistance.

Who are the Kurds? How is it that Kurdish fighters came to be seen as allies to the United States and terrorists to Turkey? And what would the fall of Kurdish territory in northeastern Syria mean for the region?

Guest: Ben Hubbard, Beirut bureau chief for The New York Times. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background coverage:

• Turkey’s invasion upended a fragile peace and risks enabling the resurgence of the Islamic State.
• American troops who fought alongside Kurdish allies have expressed regret after the U.S. abandoned posts in northeastern Syria. “It’s a stain on the American conscience,” one Army officer said.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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Today on “The Daily,” we present Episode 5, Part 2 of “1619,” a New York Times audio series hosted by Nikole Hannah-Jones. You can find more information about it at nytimes.com/1619podcast.

The Provosts, a family of sugar-cane farmers in Louisiana, had worked the same land for generations. When it became harder and harder to keep hold of that land, June Provost and his wife, Angie, didn’t know why — and then a phone call changed their understanding of everything. In the finale of “1619,” we hear the rest of June and Angie’s story, and its echoes in a past case that led to the largest civil rights settlement in American history.

Guests: June and Angie Provost; Adizah Eghan and Annie Brown, producers for “1619”; and Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard University and the author of “The Condemnation of Blackness.”

Background reading:

• “The number of black sugar-cane farmers in Louisiana is most likely in the single digits,” Khalil Gibran Muhammad writes in his essay on the history of the American sugar industry. “They are the exceedingly rare exceptions to a system designed to codify black loss.”
• The “1619” audio series is part of The 1619 Project, a major initiative from The Times observing the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. Read more from the project here.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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A seven-word tweet in support of Hong Kong’s antigovernment protests by Daryl Morey, general manager of the Houston Rockets, triggered a furor in both China and the United States. The ensuing controversy revealed the unspoken rules of doing business with Beijing. Guest: Jim Yardley, the Europe editor of The New York Times and author of “Brave Dragons: A Chinese Basketball Team, an American Coach, and Two Cultures Clashing.” For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background coverage:

• An exhibition game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Brooklyn Nets in Shanghai this week was nearly canceled because of China’s dispute with the league. At the game, even longtime fans said they would choose patriotism over the N.B.A.
• President Trump declined to criticize China’s handling of the controversy, instead opting to publicly condemn two basketball coaches who have spoken out against him in the past.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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The White House response to the impeachment inquiry has been to dismiss the allegations, deflect the facts and discredit the Democrats. It’s the same approach that Republicans used in 2018 to push through the Supreme Court nomination of Brett M. Kavanaugh.

The New York Times reporters Kate Kelly and Robin Pogrebin, the authors of “The Education of Brett Kavanaugh,” talk to the Republican strategist who wrote the political playbook used — then and now.

Guest: Kate Kelly, a reporter for The Times covering Wall Street and Robin Pogrebin, a reporter on The Times’s Culture Desk, spoke to Mike Davis, a Republican strategist. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily.

Background coverage:

• The White House’s declaration of war against the House impeachment inquiry this week has set the stage for a constitutional clash with far-reaching consequences.
• Mr. Davis crafted a “brass knuckles” approach to help confirm conservative Supreme Court justices.
• Here’s the latest on the impeachment inquiry.

For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app.

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