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Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Live from NPR News, I'm Lakshmi Singh.
Chapter 2: What are the implications of the federal government shutdown on food benefits?
A month into the federal government shutdown, tens of millions of people are at risk of losing federal food and nutrition benefits. The Secretary of Agriculture, Brooke Rollins, accuses congressional Democrats of jeopardizing continued funding of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP.
We are here today because SNAP benefits run dry tomorrow. So the truth has finally revealed itself, hasn't it? Democrat support for programs like SNAP is now reduced to cynical control over people's lives. This last month has shown that the party who constantly says it puts people over politics does the complete opposite.
Democrats blame the shutdown on President Trump, saying he has refused to meet them to talk about extending health care subsidies. Millions of low and middle income Americans are set to lose at the end of the year. The White House appears to have identified additional funding for military paychecks, according to reports that an Office of Management and Budget spokesperson has confirmed.
The spokesperson says the agency is using roughly $5 billion from a military housing fund, a military research and development fund, and a Defense Department account used for building ships. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth met his Chinese counterpart in Malaysia today. They talked about Taiwan and the South China Sea, where NPR's Emily Fang reports the Philippines, a U.S.
ally, has been trying to boost its defenses against China.
Hegseth met with Dong Jun, China's defense minister. He also met with the Philippines' defense secretary. And on the same day, China's Coast Guard sailed a patrol around the disputed Scarborough Shoal, one of the many areas of contention between the Philippines and China, who both claim the waters around this reef as theirs.
Dong Jing, the Chinese defense minister, told Hegseth that he hoped the U.S. would honor its commitment not to contain China and wanted the two countries to build off of a high-profile meeting between President Trump and China's top leader, Xi Jinping, just the day prior. Hegseth said in a statement on X that he told Admiral Dong the U.S.
would ensure it has capabilities to defend its interests in the region. Emily Fang, NPR News.
Fifty-eight years after Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Latouille died. The South African government is now ruling that the anti-apartheid leader was beaten to death by police. Until now, authorities had been claiming he was accidentally struck by a train.
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