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• India and Pakistan announced a ceasefire Saturday, after days of fighting along their shared border and in the contested region of Kashmir. While the agreement between the two nuclear powers appeared to be holding, both sides blamed the other for violating the deal. The latest conflict was ignited by a terrorist attack last month in the section of Kashmir controlled by India, but the two countries have been fighting over the disputed region for decades, since the end of British rule and the 1947 partition. Joshua Keating, senior correspondent for Vox covering national security and foreign policy, explains why this latest round of conflict is different.
• And in headlines: President Donald Trump ordered pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily lower their U.S. drug prices, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley blasted his party over its plans to slash hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid, and the U.S. and China agreed to temporarily slash their tariffs.

• Check out Joshua’s article – www.vox.com/world-politics/412332/india-pakistan-crisis-escalation
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TRANSCRIPT

Jane Coaston: It’s Tuesday, May 13th. I’m Jane Coaston, and this is What a Day, the show that is excited to learn about our new friendly relationship with China. You know how it works. When you turn the tariffs on, it’s to save Main Street. And when you turn the tariffs off, partly, it’s the art of the deal. Rinse and repeat. [music break] On today’s show, President Donald Trump orders drugmakers to consider thinking about maybe lowering their U.S. drug prices. And Republicans unveil hundreds of billions of dollars in proposed cuts to Medicaid, naturally. But let’s start with the conflict between India and Pakistan. On Saturday, the Indian and Pakistani governments announced a ceasefire. It came after days of fighting on the border between the countries and in the contested territory of Kashmir. But as the weekend progressed, some reports indicated that the ceasefire wasn’t holding. One Indian official told the New York Times that Pakistani drones had been seen over the Indian state of Punjab. In response, the Pakistani foreign ministry said it was India who had broken the cease fire. While the cease-fire announcement is welcome, the rising tensions between the world’s first and fifth most populous countries, both nuclear powers, are um not ideal. The current fighting stems from the killing of 26 people. Almost all Hindu tourists, in a terrorist attack in the India controlled section of Kashmir last month. But the conflict is decades old, dating back to the partition of India. So yes, there’s an argument that this is actually all Britain’s fault. When the states of India and Pakistan were initially created in 1947 after the end of British rule, India with a Hindu majority and Pakistan with a Muslim majority, Kashmir was left unclaimed. Fighting over the region has been cropping up pretty much ever since. And while both sides have exchanged drone and missile strikes in this latest round of conflict, there’s also been a propaganda war playing out on social media. Twitter reported that the Indian government demanded it block roughly 8,000 accounts or risk the imprisonment of local employees. Twitter agreed to block those accounts in India alone. So to find out what’s actually going on and what the Trump administration is doing about it, I spoke to Joshua Keating. He’s a senior correspondent for Vox, where he covers national security and foreign policy. Josh, welcome to What a Day.

Joshua Keating: Thanks for having me.

Jane Coaston: So India and Pakistan have been fighting over Kashmir for decades, basically since partition. What makes this most recent conflict different?

Joshua Keating: Well, I’d say one is just the scale of it when it’s the largest number of casualties we’ve seen probably dozens on each side, uh, since at least 1999, when there was a full scale war. And two, I would say it’s related to that its just the level of risk tolerance, especially from the Indian side, seems to be going up. I mean, we saw, you know, in 2001 when the Indian parliament was attacked or in 2008, there was the terrible terrorist attacks in Mumbai. India sort of contemplated military action, but didn’t take any. Then subsequently in 2016 and 2019, we saw sort of larger skirmishes where India did launch brief attacks into Pakistan in retaliation for militant attacks. And now this is something much larger. And what it suggests to me is that the sort of threats that we hear from the Pakistani side around their nuclear arsenal, which Prime Minister Modi refers to as nuclear blackmail. This just isn’t as effective as it used to be that they’re willing to take on a lot more risk when it comes to escalation.

Jane Coaston: Yeah, let’s talk about Prime Minister Modi for a minute, because I think that that seems to me to be the thing that’s changed a lot here, which is, you know, his BJP party has moved the country in a very right wing populist Hindu nationalist direction. To what extent is the BJP pushing India towards war?

Joshua Keating: You know, I think Modi has portrayed himself as a very tough on terrorists leader, a very uh you know national security hawk, you could say. And he’s sort of wedded that to, as you said, this Hindu nationalist ideology. And that’s just sort of a recipe for tension with neighboring Pakistan. The position of the Indian government, the allegation they have, is that these groups that carry out attacks in India are not just tolerated by the Pakistani government, but actually supported by them. And so that means, you know, from their perspective, when one of these attacks happens, it’s not just this group that’s responsible, it’s the Pakistani state itself.

Jane Coaston: Let’s talk about Pakistan. Its de facto leader is the chief of the military, General Asim Munir, though he’s much more behind the scenes than Modi. You mentioned how the Indian government perceives that the terrorist attack in Kashmir was the fault in some part of the Pakistani state. First, how has General Munir been shaping Pakistan’s response to this conflict? And second, is there any truth to that?

Joshua Keating: Well you know, in some ways Munir is kind of a mirror image of Modi. He’s, you know, the most overtly, openly religious, uh, military chief Pakistan has had. So you really kind of have Hindu nationalism on one side and Muslim nationalism on the other side, which sort of contributes to this really sort of bitter sectarian dynamic that we’re facing here. The Pakistani government denies having any links to these groups that have carried out the attacks. You know, in terms of the specific incident. India hasn’t actually presented publicly any evidence of the Pakistani state’s involvement in this attack. There is a fairly well-established pattern going back years of the Pakistani government and particularly Pakistan’s powerful intelligence services at least turning a blind eye to militant groups that operate on its territory. So, you know, it’s difficult to establish culpability in any one case, but you know, this would not be totally out of character, that there would there would at least be some knowledge of what was going on and of this group.

Jane Coaston: Now, the two countries reached a ceasefire agreement over the weekend, but there’s been fighting going on since then. So what needs to happen to make sure a cease fire can actually take place?

Joshua Keating: It does seem likely that this ceasefire will hold there. There have been violations, but you know, it’s important to remember that, you know sort of small scale exchanges of fire across the border actually aren’t that unusual. Um. But in terms of sort of the large scale fighting the artillery, the drones, the missile strikes I would expect that to die down. I mean, both sides have kind of established the point they were trying to make. Um, for India. They can say there was a strong military response to this attack on the Pakistan side. They can that in the process, they inflicted some damage on the Indian military. They say they downed five Indian fighter jets. The Indian side denies that. Seems like they at least downed one or two. But both sides has something they can call a victory here, which suggests to me that there’s some incentive for them to de-escalate at this point.

Jane Coaston: You’re based in the US, so you’re not on the ground in the region, but based on my own little bit of Googling, it seems like both countries’ respective governments are pushing this conflict in the media in their own specific directions. So what do we know about how India and Pakistan are portraying this conflict to the media and how it’s shaping sentiment on the ground?

Joshua Keating: Well, I mean, this is a perfect encapsulation of 21st century warfare, which means we’re seeing a lot of drones and a lot social media. Those are both very important. On the social media side, you know there’s a ton of misinformation, a ton of propaganda. You know the nationalist fervor on both sides is really high. And that’s sort of necessitated the strong military response that we saw. But in a weird way, it sort of made that easier for them to deescalate as well. Because uh you know if both sides are kind of living in their own social media reality, that also means it’s sort of easier for each government to claim victory. They can just sort of deny the casualty reports coming from the other government and say, you know we’ve inflicted you know this huge amount of damage on our enemy and so this is a victory and we can stop fighting now. Um. And in a weird way, it sort of both drove these two countries into this war, but also made it easier for them to get out of it.

Jane Coaston: What role is the US playing in all of this? Because when the conflict first broke out last month, the Trump administration kind of dismissed it as not a problem for the US. Vice President J.D. Vance literally said the conflict was, quote, “none of our business.” But then a few days later, he was also the one who called Prime Minister Modi to encourage ceasefire talks, according to reporting from CNN. Now, like the Indian government and the Trump Administration, this has been an ongoing relationship for going on now for two terms. But what is the Trump administration actually doing here?

Joshua Keating: Yeah. I mean, traditionally the U.S. has played in several of the previous incidents that I mentioned, the 1999 Kargil war, these 2016, 2019 crises, it’s often been U. S. mediation that sort of led both sides to deescalate. So that’s sort of a traditional role for the U.S. to play. You know, um, one thing that’s changed, I think, you know, the, the Indian government under Modi has gotten much, much closer to the U.S., um that’s happened a lot under Trump, happened a fair bit under Biden as well. And what’s motivating that is not so much the Pakistan issue, but their sort of mutual distrust of China. Uh, and meanwhile, you know, the Pakistani U.S. Relationship has always been extremely complicated, extremely fraught, but particularly since the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, it’s just, Pakistan is just less of a priority for the U.S. now. And meanwhile, Pakistan, has also been getting closer with China. And a lot of the weapons and fighter jets they were using in this conflict were purchased from China. So that’s, you know, there’s sort of an interesting superpower conflict dynamic um happening in this sort of smaller conflict as well.

Jane Coaston: Yeah, I think it really goes to how President Trump campaigned on a platform of isolationism and moving away from the idea of the U.S. as kind of a world police. But it seems like the world keeps getting complicated. And given what we just saw with the terrorist attacks in Kashmir and the conflict that’s followed and, is any is that kind of isolationism at all possible? I feel like this is a good example of how isolationism, it’s a great idea for some people, but then then the world happens.

Joshua Keating: Yeah, I mean it’s, you know, it’s a weird thing to say, but in some ways like India and Pakistan have some practice at this at this point. Like they, they sort of know how to fight these small scale wars without it escalating into a full scale war, which in this case could mean a nuclear war. These countries have over 300 nuclear warheads between them. So, you know, it’s one thing to say this isn’t our responsibility. We don’t have a dog in this fight, as as JD Vance did, but you know, if you’re getting intelligence about this thing is, um, escalating out of control, you know, that’s something the U.S. by necessity has to get involved with and, and to their credit did in this instance, they do seem to have played some role. Uh, it was interesting to note the Pakistani statement about the ceasefire mentioned and credited the U.S. role, the Indian side did not. And it seems as if the Indians may not have wanted it to appear as if they were being restrained by the U.S. side, as if they were being sort of pulled back by pressure by the U.S.

Jane Coaston: Josh, this has been so helpful. Thank you so much for joining us.

Joshua Keating: Thank you anytime.

Jane Coaston: That was my conversation with Joshua Keating, senior correspondent for Vox, covering national security and foreign policy. We’ll link to his work in our show notes. We’ll get to more of the news in a moment, but if you like the show, make sure to subscribe, leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts, watch us on YouTube, and share with your friends. More to come after some ads. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: Here’s what else we’re following today.

[sung]: Headlines.

[clip of Scott Bessent]: We do want trade. We want more balanced trade. And I think that both sides are committed to achieving that.

Jane Coaston: Feel the excitement. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that the U.S. and China have agreed to temporarily slash their tariffs on each other for 90 days. The U.S. will lower its tariffs on Chinese goods to 30 percent, down from 145. And China will lower its tariffs on U.S. goods to 10 percent, down from 125. This comes after a weekend of trade negotiations between U. S. and Chinese officials in Switzerland. Bessent detailed the agreement Monday at a press conference in Geneva with his textbook flair.

[clip of Scott Bessent]: The consensus from both delegations this weekend is neither side wants a decoupling and what had occurred with these very high tariffs as Ambassador Greer said was the equivalent of an embargo and neither side wants that.

Jane Coaston: The very high tariffs Donald Trump put in place? Neither side wanted those? Huh. The reduced tariffs will take effect Wednesday. But much to the dismay of frequent online shoppers like me, Monday’s agreement does not reinstate the de minimis exemption for e-commerce packages from China. That’s the provision that allows small, low value goods into the U.S. without tariffs. Online foreign retailers like Sheein and Temu relied on that loophole to sell goods to Americans for cheap. But Trump ended it for Chinese goods earlier this year. A White House official told Axios Monday that small packages from China will still be subject to a 120% tariff.

[clip of President Donald Trump]: Starting today, the United States will no longer subsidize the health care of foreign countries.

Jane Coaston: President Trump signed an executive order Monday aimed at reducing the cost of prescription drugs for Americans. Sort of. I think most of us here in the U.S. can agree. We pay a lot more than we probably should for prescription drugs. But this order is little more than a pretty please to drug makers asking them to voluntarily lower their prices in the next 30 days. Good luck with that Mr. President, and I genuinely mean that. If drug companies don’t lower their prices, the order directs administration officials to create a new rule to tie drug prices in the US to lower prices other countries pay, kind of like price matching. But that falls way short of actually instituting that policy, as Trump said he would do in a Truth Social post this weekend. The president warned of other consequences if drug makers don’t comply with the order during a speech at the White House Monday.

[clip of President Donald Trump]: If necessary, we’ll investigate the drug companies and we’ll, in particular, investigate the countries that are doing this and we will add it onto the price that we charge them for doing business in America. In other words, we will add it onto tariffs if they don’t do what is right.

Jane Coaston: When is this man going to learn that tariffs aren’t the solution to everything he doesn’t like? It’s also very unclear if the administration has the legal authority to enforce the order. Plus, Trump tried and failed to institute a similar policy to lower some drug prices during his first term. The courts blocked it. In statements Monday, lobbying groups that represent drug makers largely dismissed the White House order as bad for patients. Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley has a lot to say about the ongoing talks over Trump’s big, beautiful spending bill, specifically proposed cuts to Medicaid. Hawley wrote an op-ed titled, Don’t Cut Medicaid, that appeared in the New York Times on Monday. He wrote a wing of his party, quote, “wants Republicans to build our big, beautiful bill around slashing health insurance for the working poor. But that argument is both morally wrong and politically suicidal.” This is a real worst guy you know has a great point moment for me. Medicaid is a health insurance program run by the federal government and states that covers more than 70 million Americans, mainly poor people. Hawley’s criticism comes after House Republicans released a plan late Sunday. The House Energy and Commerce Committee has been tasked with removing $880 billion in funding for programs it overseas. The lion’s share of that reduction was taken from healthcare programs, an estimated $715 billion. But why? For tax breaks, of course. An analysis from the Congressional Budget Office says it estimates the legislation would, quote, “reduce the number of people with health insurance by at least 8.6 million in 2034.” Hawley echoed this issue. He says about a fifth of the people in his state benefit from Medicaid and another insurance program for lower-income children. And if Congress implements the cuts, Missourians will lose their health care and hospitals will close. And of course, cuts to Medicaid would impact the entire American health care system. Still, Republicans are working to pass their spending bill for President Trump’s sweeping agenda by Memorial Day. But Trump has promised not to make cuts to Medicaid. The panel is set to discuss the proposal today. [clip of people talking indistinct] Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American who was held hostage by Hamas, was reunited with his family on Monday. Head to our YouTube channel to see Alexander and his family happily reunited. Hamas abducted Alexander on October 7th and released him after more than 19 months in captivity. The Israel Defense Forces said it was a result of successful negotiations between the U.S. and Hamas. Alexander is the last known living American hostage that was held in Gaza. In a statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed Alexander’s return home. [clip of Benjamin Netanyahu speaking plays] He says there, quote, “this was achieved thanks to our military pressure and the diplomatic pressure applied by President Trump.” This is a winning combination. The release of Alexander, a dual Israeli-American national who was serving in the Israeli army, came just before President Trump’s trip to the Middle East. Hamas said in a statement Monday night, it’s ready to re-up negotiations to reach a ceasefire. Some people have criticized the Israeli government for its handling of negotiations and expressed concern for the other hostages. They suggested Alexander was released because the U.S. advocated specifically for its own citizen. Israel says Hamas still has more than 50 hostages. About half are believed to be living. And that’s the news. [music break] One more thing. Let’s talk about words. Specifically, one word, obscenity. Sometimes when we’re talking about obscenities, we’re taking about swearing. Other times we’re talk about art, film, music, or you guessed it, pornography. Yes, I’m discussing pornography on the podcast again. Famously, what counts as obscene is really hard to determine. Like, really hard. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart said in a 1964 case aiming to determine whether or not a French film was obscene that with obscenity, I know it when I see it. But Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee says he knows what obscenity is, and he thinks you should just let him determine what’s obscene and what’s not. Last Thursday, Lee and Illinois Republican representative Mary Lee unveiled the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act because as he said in a statement, quote, “obscenity isn’t protected by the First Amendment. But hazy and unenforceable legal definitions have allowed extreme pornography to saturate American society and reach countless children.” In general, I find that a what-about-the-children act of Congress rarely ends well for children or adults. Currently, we use something called the Miller test to determine whether or not a piece of content is obscene, stemming from the 1973 Supreme Court case Miller v. California. Per the Miller test, obscene content needs to appeal to quote, “prurient interests,” as in the content is for horny purposes. Obscene content also needs to depict or describe sexual acts in a, quote, “patently offensive way.” And the content needs to let, quote “serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” How do courts determine what content has or doesn’t have serious literary artistic or political value? The law asks whether or not the average person, using, quote, “average community standards” would find the content to be obscene or not. The Supreme Court argued that what people in Las Vegas think is fine and cool might not fly with people in, say, Biloxi, Mississippi, but Senator Mike Lee thinks he knows better than the Supreme Court, or you for that matter. In his proposed legislation, the community standard test is gone, and obscenity doesn’t need to appeal to prurient interests to be obscene anymore. Instead, the new law would argue that anything that, quote, “depicts, describes, or represents actual or simulated sexual acts. With the objective intent to arouse, titillate, or gratify the sexual desires of a person is obscene and thus can be targeted by law enforcement.” As Senator Lee has made clear, the aim of the bill is to destroy the online pornography industry. And maybe you think that’s a good idea, but I don’t, not because online pornography is always awesome, it isn’t, but because this legislation is, to put it bluntly, broad as hell. For one thing, what is an objective intent to arouse? Did Game of Thrones’ nude brothel scenes have an objective intend to arouse? I don’t know, maybe. Should the makers and producers and actors of Game of Throne’s go to prison for selling and distributing the show? No matter how bad the series finale was, no. And let’s be real here. As Ricci Joy Levy, president and CEO of the Woodhull Freedom Foundation, which focuses on sexual rights and freedoms, told Reason Magazine, this legislation would most likely be used to go after people who make content about LGBTQ people. Because if we’ve learned anything from the recent fights over movies and library books, there are many people who think an LGBTQ person doing anything ever counts as obscene. So no, I do not think that a Republican Congress led by a Utah Republican should get to determine what obscenity is. And personally, I can think of a few obscenities I’d use for someone who does. [music break]

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Jane Coaston: That’s all for today. If you like the show, make sure you subscribe, leave a review, read more books, and tell your friends to listen. And if you’re into reading, and not just about how seriously, Americans broadly say they want to read more books but just 51% of Americans have read a book in the last month, like me. What a Day is also a nightly newsletter. Check it out and subscribe at Crooked.com/subscribe. I’m Jane Coaston, and read a book. It won’t yell at you in a tab on your laptop you can’t find. And it might make you mad, but in a longer form, easier to digest kind of way. [music break] What a Day is a production of Crooked Media. It’s recorded and mixed by Desmond Taylor. Our associate producers are Raven Yamamoto and Emily Fohr. Our producer is Michell Eloy. We had production help today from Johanna Case, Joseph Dutra, Greg Walters, and Julia Claire. Our senior producer is Erica Morrison, and our executive producer is Adriene Hill. Our theme music is by Colin Gilliard and Kashaka. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America East. [music break]

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