{"id":237573,"date":"2025-10-20T02:11:10","date_gmt":"2025-10-20T02:11:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/237573\/"},"modified":"2025-10-20T02:11:10","modified_gmt":"2025-10-20T02:11:10","slug":"live-updates-trump-administration-latest-as-government-shutdown-drags-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/237573\/","title":{"rendered":"Live updates: Trump administration latest as government shutdown drags on"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n As President Donald Trump\u2019s Middle East special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner head back to Israel<\/a> this week, they appeared on CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes\u201d on Sunday to share behind-the-scenes details on how the Israel-Hamas ceasefire agreement came to be.\n <\/p>\n

\n Part of the success of the ceasefire deal was convincing Hamas that keeping hostages was more of a liability than a gain and that Israel would not resume the war after the hostages were returned, they told Lesley Stahl.\n <\/p>\n

\n To do so, Trump gave Kushner and Witkoff permission to speak directly with Hamas, breaking long-standing diplomatic protocol. Kushner and Witkoff met in Egypt with Khalil al-Hayya, Hamas\u2019 main negotiator. Witkoff told Stahl that he was able to connect with al-Hayya about the deaths of their sons (Witkoff\u2019s from an overdose in 2011 and al-Hayaa\u2019s from Israel\u2019s strike in Qatar<\/a> last month).\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cIt turned from a negotiation with a terrorist group to seeing two human beings, kind of showing a vulnerability with each other,\u201d Witkoff said.\n <\/p>\n

\n Asked by Stahl whether it was true Israelis and Qataris hugged once the deal was reached, Witkoff said, \u201cAbsolutely, and I thought to myself, I wish the world could\u2019ve seen it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n After the ceasefire deal was settled, Kushner and Witkoff traveled to Gaza, which Kushner said \u201clooked almost like a nuclear bomb had been set off in that area \u2026 and it\u2019s very sad because you think to yourself, they [Palestinians] really have nowhere else to go.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Both Kushner and Witkoff declined to call the war a genocide after visiting Gaza. \u201cAbsolutely not, no,\u201d Witkoff said. \u201cThere was a war being fought.\u201d\n <\/p>\n

\n Kushner said that \u201cthe biggest message that we\u2019ve tried to convey to the Israeli leadership now is that, now that the war is over, if you want to integrate Israel with the broader Middle East, you have to find a way to help the Palestinian people thrive and do better.\u201d\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As President Donald Trump\u2019s Middle East special envoy, Steve Witkoff, and son-in-law Jared Kushner head back to Israel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":237574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":{"0":"post-237573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-breakingnews","10":"tag-headlines","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/237574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}