A Forced Retreat for Trump and Hegseth, and What to Know About the Russia Plague Scare

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Thursday, October 8th. Here's what we're covering. [APPLAUSE] How we doing, sailors? 265 continuous days without a port call. Two times extended. When you thought you were going home and we-- Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln is scheduled to dock back home in San Diego after a near-record length deployment during which the crew faced food shortages and logistics issues. You finished the mission nonetheless. Yes, it's hard. That's why you're here. You do difficult and hard things. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth landed on the ship this week to thank the sailors for their service, which ran for much longer than expected in order to support President Trump's campaign against Iran. When reports emerged the summer of supply shortages and multiple suicide attempts among the crew, Hegseth and Navy leaders downplayed them, calling them overblown, something Hegseth repeated when he was on the Lincoln. But experts say the problems the aircraft carrier faced speak to enormous American vulnerabilities that have been exposed by the ongoing war. Part of the reason the Lincoln ran into supply troubles is because many of the 13 main military bases in the Middle East, the U.S. used to use in Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and more have been severely damaged by Iranian attacks. They're uninhabitable now. The troops have been moved out and some operations, like resupplying ships, are now being run from thousands of miles away. The same thing applies to the air, with the retreat from the damaged Middle East bases and the recent rushed withdrawal of U.S. planes from an airbase in Britain. American bombers can still reach their targets, but now from much farther away, requiring more flight time and refueling. Looking ahead, it could take billions of dollars to rebuild the damaged facilities, and overall, the pullback of U.S. forces may have taught Iran and potentially other American adversaries that they can chase out a superpower. A new Times investigation has found that a top official at the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem has suppressed and altered communications that were critical of Israel. The official, David Milstein, is the de facto chief of staff for the U.S. Ambassador to Israel. He's also the stepson of the prominent right-wing radio host, Mark Levin, a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In his role, Milstein is in charge of reviewing information that gets passed up the chain to the White House and the State Department. The Times interviewed 15 U.S. officials who worked with Milstein and obtained diplomatic documents he reviewed, and found that he has actively reframed the situation on the ground in Gaza and the West Bank to portray the Israeli government in a positive light. For example, last summer, after dozens of gossens were killed trying to get food at a U.S.-Israeli-backed aid site, Milstein rewrote a report about the incident, calling the humanitarian operation a success, while overlooking the casualties. And this spring, when settler violence in the West Bank surged, Milstein's stymied embassy communications that suggested the Israeli government was not taking action to stop the violence. Instead, the embassy sent a cable to Washington that praised Israel for cracking down on the attacks. While it's not clear if Milstein's interventions have had an impact on White House policy, multiple officials the Times talked to said they were speaking out because they were concerned that Washington has been getting a distorted view of Israeli actions. Milstein declined a request for an interview, and the U.S. ambassador to Israel wrote in a statement that the Times reporting was, quote, "lacking in fact," and that he personally and categorically refuted the claims about his staffer. You can find the full investigation in the Times app, or at nytimes.com. In Tennessee. Our understanding was the first thing she said was, "Where am I and who are you?" Lawyers for Christa Pikes say they were shocked to learn that she has woken up in the hospital after becoming the first death row inmate to survive lethal injection. Pikes had been on life support and presumed to be brain dead since the attempted execution last week, but her lawyers announced yesterday that she had suddenly regained consciousness and even started talking. She has wanted to know what's happened, and she's asked about several people. She's asked about her team. She's asked about the victim's family. I think she is angry and confused about everything right now. Her legal team said her condition remains severe. She can't move her arms. Her hands are massively swollen. She has pneumonia and she can't swallow. And even though doctors have worked to remove the drug, Pento Barbertall, from her system, she could face serious long-term complications. The update on her condition came on the same day as a judge granted a request by Pikes lawyers to order the state of Tennessee to preserve all records and evidence related to what happened during the botched execution. What happens next to Pike is unclear. Now 50 years old, she's been on death row since she was a teenager, when she was convicted of luring her classmate into the woods and murdering her. The state has not said whether it will try again to execute her, though Tennessee's governor has paused all executions there while an investigation is underway. I think it's incumbent upon Russia to obviously share more information with the world. That's what they should do, that's what we hope they will do. The U.S. and other countries are pushing for more details after the death of a worker in a Siberian research lab set off concerns about the plague. We're watching it very closely, our buyer. We have multiple agencies, not just in the United States, but internationally, that are watching it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Russia needs to be more transparent about the mysterious death. There's a lot we don't know at the moment, but here's what we do. A 28-year-old woman who worked at the anti-plague Institute of Siberia and the Far East died earlier this month of what Russian officials say was pneumonia. The rumors and speculation started swirling once the lab was locked down and health officials quarantined employees and patients at the hospital where she died, along with others who came into contact with her. While hundreds of cases of plague are reported around the world each year, part of what's fueling concerns now is that the Soviet Union had a long history of advanced bio-weapons research, which led to outbreaks of other diseases like anthrax and smallpox. For their part, Russian officials have said tests did not show the lab worker had been infected with any pathogen related to her work, and that no emergency situation has been identified at the facility. But they've supplied few other details. As one epidemiologist told the Times, "Young people can die from pneumonia. That's not what's concerning." Quote, "What I do think is concerning is the Russian reaction so far." Still, health experts say that even if the woman did die of plague, there's no need to panic. They say the risk of widespread contagion would likely be limited and in its early stages, plague can be successfully treated with antibiotics. And finally, Sunday, July 20, 1969, the moment the lunar module touched down on the moon's surface and men were forever remembered. When NASA pulled off the first ever moon landing, the success of the Apollo mission came down to a lot of carefully crafted code. I was not concentrating on the mission per se. I was concentrating on the software. All of a sudden it was like, my God, look what happened, we did it. It worked. Margaret Hamilton, the woman who led the team that wrote much of that code, has died at 90 years old. She joined the Apollo project as a young mathematician back in the 1960s. As a side note, she's actually credited with popularizing the term "software engineering." For the lunar mission, Hamilton led a team that wrote a lot of code, so much so there's a photo of her from the time standing next to a printed out stack of it, and it's almost taller than she is. She was also working on machines that were so old school it's stunning to imagine. For comparison, the iPhone can have 7 million times more storage than the computer on the lunar module, which ran programs stored on hand-woven copper wires. After the first moonwalk, Hamilton went on to work on more lunar missions, and her programming went into the first US space station and the early design of the space shuttle. For her contributions to American science, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom. But she got an arguably even greater, though physically smaller honor a few years ago, when she was immortalized by a Lego, which issued a miniature Margaret Hamilton figurine, complete with a teetering stack of computer code. Those are the headlines. Tracey Mumford, we'll be back tomorrow with the latest and the Friday news quiz.