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Texas just flipped blue for the first time in a generation — and Jack McPherson says the real lesson isn't about either party. In this episode of The Greater Loop, host Maryanne Maldonado sits down with McPherson, co-founder of the Emerging Leaders Program and development manager at Convention of States, the morning after Texas elected a Democratic senator and governor for the first time in decades. They dig into what actually drove the shift — cost of living, a demand for authenticity over "hot air," and growing skepticism that either party can fix the country's core problems — and why McPherson believes the answer lies outside the ballot box entirely: a constitutional Article V convention. Plus: the case for federal term limits (backed by 88% of Americans across party lines), what a new generation of "statesmen" could look like, and why McPherson teaches his students 2,000 years of Western political thought before ever getting to modern-day Washington.

Hosted by Maryanne Maldonado | The Greater Loop — A podcast of the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
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What's Covered

• Texas's historic election flip — a Democratic Senate seat and governorship for the first time in a generation
• Why McPherson believes voters rewarded candidates who "appeared more just," regardless of party
• The GOP's stalled momentum since the first six months of the Trump administration, and what it signals for 2028
• Cost of living as the defining issue in Texas politics — and McPherson's doubts about whether policy promises will deliver
• What Convention of States is actually proposing: reducing federal government, imposing term limits, and restraining federal spending through an Article V convention
• The Emerging Leaders Program — a paid, year-long work-study program training the next generation of "new American statesmen"
• Why McPherson argues that relying on federal elections alone hasn't solved the debt crisis or runaway bureaucracy
• A 14-week curriculum spanning Plato to Hayek, and what McPherson wants young leaders to take from Western political history
• McPherson's core leadership principle: liberality, or "self-gift," over self-interest

About Convention of States
Convention of States is a nationwide organization working to amend the U.S. Constitution through the Article V convention process — a mechanism that allows two-thirds of state legislatures to call a convention without relying on Congress. Its three goals are reducing the size and scope of the federal government, imposing term limits on federal officials, and restraining federal spending. Its Emerging Leaders Program, co-founded by Jack McPherson, trains college students and young professionals through a year-long paid internship combining hands-on policy work with mentorship and coursework in Western political thought. Learn more at COSinternship.com.

About the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
The World Affairs Council of Greater Houston believes that understanding the world isn't optional, it's essential. For more than 50 years, the Council has brought the diplomats, journalists, experts, and world leaders who shaped global events for honest, unfiltered conversations about what's really happening globally. Learn more at wachouston.org.

#TheGreaterLoop #WorldAffairsCouncil #TexasPolitics #ConventionOfStates #ArticleV #CivicEngagement #EmergingLeaders #Houston #Election2026 #AmericanDemocracy

A student movement he once helped lead toppled Milosevic in 2000 — now a new, unaffiliated student movement has toppled his successor’s party, and Srdja Popovic says he saw it coming. In this episode of The Greater Loop, host Maryanne Maldonado and Eli Quezada sit down with Popovic, co-founder of Otpor and the Center for Applied Nonviolent Actions and Strategies (CANVAS), just 48 hours after Serbia’s student-backed list swept the ruling coalition from power. They unpack the parallels and differences between the 2000 revolution and today’s election-driven movement, why participation is “the white blood cells of the organism against autocracy,” and how the government’s attempt to suppress the diaspora vote backfired spectacularly. Plus: what comes next for judiciary reform, local elections, and Serbia’s fraught relationships with Kosovo, Russia, and the EU.

Hosted by Maryanne Maldonado | The Greater Loop — A podcast of the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
Subscribe for global affairs content that connects the world to your world.

What’s Covered

• How Serbia’s student-led list wiped out the political establishment just two years after the deadly Novi Sad railway station collapse
• Parallels and key differences between Otpor’s 2000 movement against Milosevic and today’s student-backed election win
• Why Popovic distinguishes a “protest” from a “movement” — and how the students shifted strategy from street demonstrations to electoral organizing
• The numbers game behind defeating a semi-authoritarian regime: turnout, phantom voters, and the math of 4.2 million ballots
• The government’s failed attempt to suppress the diaspora vote — and the viral, pajama-clad 2 a.m. polling parties it provoked instead
• What reform will actually require: judiciary and law enforcement, local municipalities, and untangling decades of “partocracy”
• Vucic’s foreign policy balancing act between Russia, China, the EU, and a Trump hotel deal
• Why Popovic says Serbia must “clean its own house” before tackling Kosovo and regional geopolitics
• CANVAS’s shift toward AI tools for nonviolent movements worldwide — and why Popovic says his organization stays out of Serbian domestic politics

About the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
The World Affairs Council of Greater Houston believes that understanding the world isn’t optional, it’s essential. For more than 50 years, the Council has brought the diplomats, journalists, experts, and world leaders who shaped global events for honest, unfiltered conversations about what’s really happening globally. Learn more at wachouston.org.

He sat across from Saddam Hussein in a bare room in Iraq and had to answer one question first: was this actually him?

John Nixon was the CIA officer who confirmed it, and the first to interrogate Saddam Hussein after his December 2003 capture. What Hussein told him in those sessions didn’t match the man Washington thought it had been fighting.

Nixon’s memoir, Debriefing the President, is now the inspiration for a TNT limited series, High Value Target: The Hunt for Saddam, starring Joel Kinnaman as Nixon and Waleed Zuaiter as Hussein.



About the Speaker:
John Nixon was a senior leadership analyst with the CIA from 1998 to 2011. Over a thirteen-year Agency career, Nixon specialized in the leadership of Iraq and Iran and did several tours in Iraq and was recognized by a number of federal agencies for his contribution to the war effort. During his time with the CIA, Nixon regularly wrote for, and briefed, the most senior levels of the US government. He also taught leadership analysis to the new generation of analysts coming into the CIA at the Sherman Kent School, the Agency’s in-house analytic training center.

Following his 2011 departure from the CIA, Nixon worked until 2015 as an international risk consultant based in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, advising on political and security risk in the Middle East.. “Debriefing the President: The Interrogation of Saddam Hussein,” was his first book. John has begun researching his next book, a biography of Saddam Hussein, the first biography of the Iraqi dictator in more than 20 years.

John received critical acclaim for his book, “Debriefing the President.” James Risen in the New York Times Book Review described Nixon’s book as “refreshingly candid.” The Times of London called it, “A damning indictment of the perversion of a major intelligence service.” John has appeared in several documentaries, including the BAFTA-winning “Once Upon a Time in Iraq,” which won the award for Best Factual Series in 2021.

John’s work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Cipher Brief, and he has been a commentator on CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, FoxNews, Al-Jazeera English, SkyNews Arabia, Al-Arabiya, CGTN, BBC, NPR, C-SPAN, Business Insider, Slate, PBS, The National Interest. John has spoken at the Brookings Institute, the Oxford Union, Rice University, Columbia University, the Houston World Affairs Council, Northrup-Grumman, and Microsoft.

John Nixon has a BA degree in history from Hofstra University, an MA degree in history from New York University, and a MA degree in national security studies from Georgetown University.



About the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston:
The World Affairs Council of Greater Houston believes that understanding the world isn't optional, it's essential. For more than 50 years, the Council has brought the diplomats, journalist, experts, and world leaders who shaped global events for honest, unfiltered conversations about what's really happening globally. Learn more at wachouston.org

What does it actually look like when the most powerful office in the world operates without the guardrails that once defined it?

From two of the reporters who have covered him more closely than perhaps anyone else over the past decade comes this insider portrait of Donald Trump in the White House. Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan pull back the curtain on the second Trump presidency; a term unlike anything that has come before it. The generals who once said no are gone. The lawyers who remain have learned to choose their battles carefully. What’s left is a presidency operating almost entirely on instinct, willing to take risks that have rattled global markets, challenged long-standing democratic norms, and forced world leaders to fundamentally reconsider what American power means.

Based on hundreds of interviews and reporting from deep within the administration’s most closely guarded spaces, Haberman and Swan will take us inside the Situation Room deliberations, the Oval Office decisions, and the moments that have defined this unprecedented term. They’ll discuss how a presidency shaped by indictments, convictions, and four years of exile emerged not weakened but emboldened — more powerful, more consequential, and more willing to push boundaries than any administration in modern history.

This conversation goes beyond the daily headlines to examine the deeper forces reshaping American governance and its place in the world. How has the Justice Department been transformed? How are world leaders recalibrating their relationships with Washington? Who has tried to stop this shift and why have so many failed? And what does all of this mean for the future of American institutions, alliances, and global stability? These are the questions that Haberman and Swan will be exploring at the event.

About the Speaker:
Maggie Haberman is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. A New York City native, Haberman worked at the New York Post, New York Daily News, and Politico, before joining the Times in 2015. She has covered six US presidential elections and several gubernatorial and New York City mayoral races. She was part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for reporting on President Trump’s advisers and their connections to Russia. In 2021, she was part of a team that was a Pulitzer finalist for coverage of President Trump’s handling of the coronavirus. She has received the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award, as well as the Newswomen’s Club of New York’s Front Page Award for Journalist of the Year. She is the author of Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America. She lives in New York City with her husband and their three children.

Jonathan Swan is a White House correspondent for The New York Times. Originally from Sydney, Australia, he has reported on Donald Trump since 2015, covering all three of his campaigns and his first term in office. Previously at Axios and The Hill, he won an Emmy Award for his 2020 interview of then-President Trump and received the White House Correspondents’ Association’s Aldo Beckman Award. He began his career as a teenage copy boy at a Sydney newspaper and later covered federal politics in Australia’s capital for The Sydney Morning Herald. He became a US citizen in 2024 and lives in Virginia with his wife and two children, with a third on the way.

About the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston:
The World Affairs Council of Greater Houston believes that understanding the world isn't optional, it's essential. For more than 50 years, the Council has brought the diplomats, journalist, experts, and world leaders who shaped global events for honest, unfiltered conversations about what's really happening globally. Learn more at wachouston.org

A humanitarian crisis doesn’t announce itself — but Ciaran Donnelly, Senior Vice President for Crisis Response, Recovery and Development at the International Rescue Committee, sees the warning signs before most of the world looks up. In this episode of The Greater Loop, host Maryanne Maldonado sits down with Donnelly to tour the IRC’s 2026 Emergency Watch List, from the collapsed peace deal driving renewed conflict in South Sudan to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis unfolding in Sudan itself. They cover the IRC’s work in Gaza, the gang-controlled collapse of state authority in Haiti, and the frontline support keeping Ukrainian communities through another hard winter. Plus: the overlooked crises in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Ethiopia that rarely make headlines, and what keeps Donnelly hopeful after 25 years in the field.

Hosted by Maryanne Maldonado | The Greater Loop — A podcast of the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
Subscribe for global affairs content that connects the world to your world.

What’s Covered

• The IRC’s annual Emergency Watch List and why it ranks crises by risk of deterioration, not just severity
• South Sudan’s collapsed 2018 peace deal and the return to conflict driving a worsening humanitarian emergency
• Sudan’s civil war as the world’s largest ongoing humanitarian crisis, and its spillover into neighboring countries
• The IRC’s work in Gaza since December 2023 — malnutrition services, mental health support, and water delivery under severe constraints
• How humanitarian neutrality works in practice when operating alongside the Israeli government and other state and non-state actors
• Haiti’s collapsed state authority, gang control of Port-au-Prince, and famine-level food insecurity
• The IRC’s early, preemptive response in Ukraine and its ongoing work near the front lines ahead of winter
• Dangerously overlooked crises — Afghanistan, Yemen, and a resurging conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region
• Why Donnelly believes the world has entered an era of permanent humanitarian crisis, and where he finds hope anyway

About the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
The World Affairs Council of Greater Houston believes that understanding the world isn’t optional, it’s essential. For more than 50 years, the Council has brought the diplomats, journalists, experts, and world leaders who shaped global events for honest, unfiltered conversations about what’s really happening globally. Learn more at wachouston.org.

A single state election result put a number on Germany's anxiety — 44 percent — but says former European Parliament President Hans-Gert Pöttering, the real story is what comes next. In this episode of The Greater Loop, host Maryanne Maldonado sits down with Pöttering, who led the European Parliament from 2007 to 2009 and spent four decades at the center of European politics, to unpack the AfD's rise in Saxony-Anhalt, what's driving support for the party in the former East, and why he insists the numbers shouldn't be exaggerated even as he takes the threat seriously. Plus: the fraying trust in the US-Europe relationship, what a stronger AfD could mean for German support of Ukraine, and Pöttering's case for why nationalism, in the end, always means war.

Hosted by Maryanne Maldonado | The Greater Loop — A podcast of the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
Subscribe for global affairs content that connects the world to your world.

What's Covered

• The AfD's 44 percent showing in Saxony-Anhalt — and why Pöttering says context matters before conclusions
• Why Eastern Germany's post-reunification experience shapes AfD support and skepticism toward backing Ukraine
• The erosion of transatlantic trust — from Eisenhower and Dean Rusk to today's tensions
• What an AfD role at the federal level could mean for the EU and the euro
• A tour of Europe's right-wing landscape: Meloni's Italy, Orbán's Hungary, and the shifting French right
• Germany's energy dependence on Russia and the case for closer US-German cooperation on LNG
• The unfinished project of European integration — and the European Parliament's growing power under the Treaty of Lisbon
• Pöttering's closing message to Americans: support freedom in Europe, and be wary of nationalism's costs

On the morning of September 11th, 2001, only minutes after the first plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower, former FBI Special Agent in Charge (SAC) Christopher Combs was racing to the airport to fly to and assist in New York. As an FBI Counterterrorism leader, he was needed immediately at the Twin Towers; but he received another urgent message – a massive explosion had just hit the Pentagon. Combs quickly rerouted.

He arrived at the devastation and chaos at the Pentagon, only 6 minutes after the attack. The world’s largest office building was ablaze, unknown numbers had been killed and many more were injured – and trapped inside. While overseeing the immense investigation and enormous, ongoing rescue operations, Combs also had to content with the imminent threat of a major structural collapse of the western side of the Pentagon and a new alert that 4th hijacked plane was only minutes away from Washington D.C. – a possible 2nd strike on the Pentagon.

For the next many tense and harrowing weeks following 9/11, Combs served as the FBI On-Scene Commander at the Pentagon and then as the FBI representative to Unified Command for the duration of on-scene operations. In addition to his work on-site at the Pentagon, Combs was part of the FBI’s leadership that would uncover and thwart numerous terrorist attacks orchestrated to kill Americans across the U.S. and abroad.

In commemoration of the 25th anniversary of 9/11, Combs presents a unique, expert and first-hand account of Al Qaeda’s attack on the Pentagon and the U.S.’s ensuing counterterrorism decisions and actions, which have shaped not just our nation, but much of the world, since 2001.

About the speaker:
Christopher Combs is Chief Security Officer at Phillips 66 and a retired FBI Special Agent in Charge with 26 years of federal law enforcement experience. Prior to joining Phillips 66, he led the FBI’s San Antonio Field Office and held senior leadership roles in counterterrorism, crisis response, and national security operations. Throughout his career, Combs directed responses to major national incidents, including the 9/11 Pentagon attack, the 2001 anthrax attacks, the Sutherland Springs church shooting, and the Austin serial bombing investigation. He is also a Senior Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center.

About the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
The World Affairs Council of Greater Houston believes that understanding the world isn't optional, it's essential. For more than 50 years, the Council has brought the diplomats, journalist, experts, and world leaders who shaped global events for honest, unfiltered conversations about what's really happening globally. Learn more at wachouston.org

Ask an American diplomat what he'd tell the next president, and the answer isn't policy — it's relationships. In this episode of The Greater Loop, host Maryanne Maldonado sits down with Tom Selinger, Executive Director of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training and a 27-year Foreign Service veteran, to trace 250 years of American diplomacy — from Benjamin Franklin's fur-cap debut at the French court to today's era of great power competition. They dig into what made Franklin's diplomacy revolutionary, the 1924 reform that professionalized the Foreign Service, the unseen embassy staff who keep the mission running, and the diplomatic wins and failures that shaped the modern era. Plus: what young Foreign Service officers need to succeed today, and why Selinger insists diplomacy is nothing like a business transaction.

Hosted by Maryanne Maldonado | The Greater Loop — A podcast of the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
Subscribe for global affairs content that connects the world to your world.

What's Covered

• Benjamin Franklin's unconventional diplomacy in Paris and how he won French support for the Revolution
• The Rogers Act of 1924 and the birth of a professional, nonpartisan Foreign Service
• What actually happens inside an embassy — from local staff and medical teams to security specialists
• Untold diplomatic successes, including the evacuation of 2,500 Americans from Sierra Leone and James Baker's role in German reunification
• A candid look at diplomatic failure: the early US response to the Balkans crisis
• How career diplomats balance professional continuity with implementing a new administration's policy
• The skills the next generation of diplomats will need — curiosity, flexibility, and resilience
• Selinger's advice for the next US president: diplomacy is relationship-building, not a transaction

Trade wars are rarely about trade alone — the real question, says Johns Hopkins SAIS trade expert Dr. Christopher Sands, is whether either side can afford to keep digging in. In this episode of The Greater Loop, host Maryanne Maldonado sits down with Sands to unpack how the US-Canada relationship went from decades of stable alliance to full-blown tariff escalation in just eighteen months, what's really driving Trump's approach to Canada, and whether Carney's "no deal is better than a bad deal" stance can hold. Plus: the ripple effects on American households and small businesses, the political theater behind the Lake Ontario renaming, and what's actually at stake for USMCA's future.

Hosted by Maryanne Maldonado | The Greater Loop — A podcast of the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
Subscribe for global affairs content that connects the world to your world.

What's Covered

• How eighteen months of tariffs, IEEPA rulings, and Section 122 and 338 actions took the US-Canada relationship from USMCA cooperation to open trade war
• Trump's long game: reshoring industry, "Buy America," and why he views Canada as free-riding on US defense
• Mark Carney's political comeback — uniting Canada's provinces and opposition around a hardline stance
• The Lake Ontario/"Lake America" flashpoint and what it reveals about Trump's negotiating style
• Why small and mid-sized businesses are absorbing the brunt of retaliatory tariffs, and what it means for inflation
• Canada's September 8th retaliation and the looming January 2027 US counter-retaliation
• The future of USMCA: can a 16-year renewal survive this level of legal and political friction
• Sands' case for what a real North American trade bloc could still become — if both sides can find their way back to the table

Fear of a wider war is easy — the harder question, says defense strategist Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution, is how this one actually ends. In this episode of The Greater Loop, host Maryanne Maldonado sits down with O'Hanlon, six months into the US-Iran conflict, to unpack why "short war" predictions almost always fail, what's really happening in the Strait of Hormuz, and whether Iran is betting it can outlast Washington politically. Plus: the strain in the US-Israel relationship, what role China and Russia are playing behind the scenes, and O'Hanlon's blunt definition of what "winning" should actually mean.

Hosted by Maryanne Maldonado | The Greater Loop — A podcast of the World Affairs Council of Greater Houston
Subscribe for global affairs content that connects the world to your world.

What's Covered

• Why leaders who promise short wars are almost always wrong — and how overconfidence shaped the US-Iran conflict
• Iran's Strait of Hormuz strategy: wearing down the US economy ahead of the midterms
• Is diplomacy still realistic? What has to happen before talks can actually work
• The strained state of US-Israel alignment and Netanyahu's influence on Trump's decision-making
• How China and Russia are indirectly propping up Iran's ability to withstand the war
• Why the Gulf states are stuck between fear of Iran and fear of all-out confrontation
• Succession inside Iran's leadership — and why the next generation may be even harder line
• O'Hanlon's case for what "winning" should really mean: reopening the Strait, ending the violence, and curtailing Iran's nuclear ambitions