--:-- Tracy Mumford: From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, August 13th. Here's what we're covering.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Just two days before ceasefire negotiations are set to resume, the Times has learned that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has insisted on conditions that his own negotiators think could be obstacles to a deal.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Together with my colleagues, Patrick Kingsley and Adam Rasgorn, we got access to documents from the inner circle of the negotiation that clearly shows that during the last rounds of the negotiation, Israel has inserted new terms and additions that are making the negotiation much harder.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Times reporter Ronan Bergman has been covering the talks over how to end the war in Gaza and secure the release of hostages. He says Israel proposed a deal in May with conditions that were mostly accepted by Hamas.
--:-- Ronan Bergman: But Netanyahu then added new conditions in a July draft. The details are sometimes very complicated, but there are at least two sticking points of the new obstacles that were introduced by Israel.
--:-- Ronan Bergman: One of them suggests that Israeli forces should remain in control of Gaza's southern border. This is a detail that was not included in Israel's proposal in May.
--:-- Ronan Bergman: And also, it showed less flexibility about allowing displaced Palestinians to return to their home in northern Gaza once fighting is halted.
--:-- Ronan Bergman: Many high-ranked Israeli officials with whom we spoke believe that these are new obstacles inserted by Mr. Netanyahu to sabotage the deal.
--:-- Ronan Bergman: They think that he is afraid that if he agrees to a deal the ultra elements of his coalition who already threatened to disassemble the government if a ceasefire is accepted by Israel they will go for it
--:-- Ronan Bergman: And high-rank Israeli defense officials believe that Mr. Netanyahu is putting his own political survival on a higher priority than the life of the hostages.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: In a statement to the Times, Netanyahu's office denied that the prime minister added new conditions. It said that he was adding, quote, essential clarifications to the proposal.
--:-- Ronan Bergman: Ronan says the obstacles to a deal aren't only on Israel's side. Hamas has also shown an unwillingness to compromise.
--:-- Ronan Bergman: And taken together, Ronan says the chance of a breakthrough at this week's meeting is very low.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin vowed to push back the Ukrainian offensive that's currently underway inside Russia.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Ukrainian troops are holding nearly 400 square miles of Russian territory after launching a surprise attack last week.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Putin's remarks came in a tense televised address that showed the Kremlin's been unsettled by the new offensive.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: More than 100,000 Russians have had to flee the region, And it's the first time since the beginning of the war that Ukrainian troops have had a foothold in Russian territory.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: Yesterday, the Times' Kiev bureau chief, Andrew Kramer, traveled to the area where Ukrainian forces punched through the Russian defenses.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: We saw a Russian border post that had been destroyed in fighting.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: There was extensive damage from shelling or from explosions.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: The sheet metal construction was banging in the wind.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: And this scene of destruction really indicated that the Russians had not been prepared for a major fight at this location.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: The fighting is now deeper inside Russia, perhaps five or ten miles or more in some locations.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: So it was fairly calm right at the border
--:-- Andrew Kramer: There were soldiers recovering Russian dead and packing them into body bags and securing the area
--:-- Andrew Kramer: I spoke with some residents of Ukrainian border villages and they were hopeful that Ukraine might push the Russian army far enough from the border that they would be out of range for artillery to shell their villages
--:-- Andrew Kramer: There was also a sense of some payback.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: One Ukrainian woman who had been evacuated from a border village was saying that it was time now for the Russians to feel what war is like.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: And she said, let them try being occupied, being invaded, to hear how children cry in bomb shelters, to see how old people suffer.
--:-- Andrew Kramer: She was saying that, at least in this one area, tables had turned for Russians.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: All right. Hello, everyone. So my apologies for the late start.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: We unfortunately had a massive distributed denial of service attack against...
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Last night, Elon Musk hosted Donald Trump for a live-streamed interview on X, formerly known as Twitter, and it got off to a glitchy start, kicking off 40 minutes late.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Donald, great to speak. Trump was once banned from Twitter after the platform ruled that his posts surrounding January 6th incited violence.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: But when Musk bought the company in 2022, he reinstated the former president's account.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And last night, Musk said he was hosting the chat not to ask tough questions, but so people could, quote, catch a vibe of what Trump is like in conversation.
--:-- Donald Trump: It's nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length.
--:-- Donald Trump: And by the way, you think Biden could do this interview?
--:-- Donald Trump: Do you think that Kamala could do this interview?
--:-- Donald Trump: They would take a pass on you?
--:-- Tracy Mumford: No, they cannot.
--:-- Donald Trump: Trump repeated false claims that the 2020 election was rigged and that the criminal charges against him are a conspiracy.
--:-- Donald Trump: He also hit familiar baseless talking points about border security and crime.
--:-- Elon Musk: They taking their criminals their murderers their rapists and they delivering them into
--:-- Elon Musk: Musk largely agreed with his points and let Trump talk for over two hours reaching what X said was an audience of a million people
--:-- Tracy Mumford: And it was a much smaller scale
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Previously, Musk spent years being critical of Trump, but he's now aligned himself with the former president and endorsed him last month.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Musk has co-founded a super PAC that plans to spend millions of dollars on canvassing efforts to get Trump re-elected.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Meanwhile, a New York judge has dealt a blow to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s presidential campaign, ruling that Kennedy can't be on the state's ballot because he filed election paperwork using what the judge called a sham address.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Kennedy spends most of his time in Los Angeles, but earlier this year, the petitions he circulated to get on the ballot in New York listed an address in a small town upstate.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: A group of New York residents, backed by a political action committee aligned with Democrats, challenged that.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: During the trial, the group's lawyers called the owner of the house Kennedy listed as his address to testify.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She said Kennedy sometimes stayed in a spare bedroom there, but the judge said it was, quote, highly improbable, if not preposterous, that Kennedy could live in that one room with his wife, multiple pets, and all his personal belongings.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: She concluded that Kennedy had a long-standing pattern of borrowing addresses to make it seem like he lived in New York.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Kennedy has said he will appeal the ruling.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: If he loses, his eligibility in other states could be endangered, since he used the same address on petitions to get on those ballots, too.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Those are the headlines.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: Today on The Daily, Times chief political analyst Nate Cohn breaks down how voters feel about Kamala Harris.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: You can listen on The Times audio app or wherever you get your podcasts.
--:-- Tracy Mumford: I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.
