Katie Zacharia Is Out as White House Press Secretary

Katie Zachariah is out as press secretary. Plus, as Russian attacks encroach on NATO territory, the alliance has to walk a tightrope. NATO political leaders are trying to find measures that Russia will pay attention to, but that are, one, within the laws of war, but also kind of steps on its toe in a way that it notices and says, hmm, OK, we need to back off. And high fuel prices aren't hitting Americans equally, with potentially big implications for the midterms. It's Friday, October 16th. I'm Alex Osele for The Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. Katie Zachariah's time as White House press secretary. The press secretary has come to an end just a week after President Trump announced her appointment to the role. That's according to people familiar with the matter. Earlier today, before leaving the White House for a rally in Georgia, President Trump told reporters that he had talked to Zachariah. And I just spoke to her about it. I said, Katie, is this for you? Because, you know, she's been treated very rough. And she's a nice person, very nice person. I've watched her for years on television. But I said, is this for you, Katie? Because honestly. Zachariah's first press briefing Tuesday was shaky. And earlier this week, the Journal reported that Zachariah isn't a licensed lawyer and didn't pass the bar exam, even though she repeatedly referred to herself as a lawyer and Trump called her an attorney in announcing her appointment. A White House official said the president hadn't hired Zachariah to work on legal matters. A person familiar with the plans said Zachariah will be transitioning to a new role that will be announced at a later date. Separately, a federal judge has dismissed, a lawsuit from the Trump administration looking to block New York City's sanctuary laws. A U.S. District Court judge in Brooklyn rejected a Trump administration lawsuit looking to force local law enforcement to transfer detained migrants directly into federal custody. The judge ruled that forcing local officials to assist in federal immigration enforcement would violate federalism and the 10th Amendment by illegally taking control of city agencies. The Justice Department didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on the ruling. The ruling bolsters New York City mayors around the country. border the Black Sea, Turkey, Romania, and Bulgaria. But a huge part of the Black Sea is Ukraine and Russia. So one of the first things NATO can do is increase its monitoring of the Black Sea to be able to call out Russia on what it does and maybe stop some things from happening. I'm curious what the sort of stakes are here and with this tightrope that NATO is walking. In your story, you describe this sort of boiling frog situation. Something that Russia, people say, does a lot is gradually increase the pressure in a way that normalizes behavior that otherwise would be unacceptable. So one violation here, another violation there. If we read about this, we see it on the news, see it everywhere around us. After a while, it becomes old. It becomes boring and we kind of forget about it. So the fear is that it's the old society. It's saying about if you, you know, if you boil the frog slowly, it won't realize it's being boiled until it's too late. And that is the fear of people who think about, especially European strategy, but not only, that Russia is struggling against Ukraine on the battlefield in Ukraine. It hasn't made progress. So instead, it's trying to undermine support, especially in Europe for Ukraine among European allies. And the way you do that is by inflicting more and more pain on the European allies in the hope that they will say, wait a minute, supporting Ukraine is hurting us. We don't want to do that. What does all of this mean for the U.S.'s involvement in this conflict? I mean, especially because it seems like the relationship between Trump and Zelensky is hitting kind of a low point at the moment. Today, Zelensky was here in Brussels at a meeting of the European Union, and he addressed this. He tried to downplay it. But the U.S. has tried and continues to try under the Trump administration to be almost a neutral intermediary between Russia and Ukraine. That hasn't worked so far, in large part, because Russian President Vladimir Putin hasn't wanted to do a deal. He doesn't want to stop the war in Ukraine because he hasn't achieved what he wants to achieve: control of Ukraine and essentially the elimination of Ukraine as a sovereign country. That was Brussels Bureau Chief Dan Michaels. Thank you, Dan. Thank you. And that's what's news for this week. Tomorrow, you can look out for our weekly markets wrap-up, What's News in Markets. Then on Sunday, with midterm elections right around the corner, we'll be discussing how the Democratic Party is trying to reclaim young voters in the hopes of delivering a blue wave. That's in What's News Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show was produced by Anthony Bansi, with supervising producer Melanie Roy. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Ayesha El-Muslim is our development producer. Chris Zinsley is our deputy editor. Leetal Malad is our senior director of shows. And Samantha Hennig is The Wall Street Journal's head of multimedia. I'm Alex Osola. Have a great weekend, and thanks for listening.