Independent News Drop

KELI From Inkwell, this is the Independent News Drop. It's Sunday, November 8. I'm Keli, with Hast.

KELI We have six stories today. We'll start in Washington, move to the Middle East, then to Israel, then FIFA, and close on water in the American West.

KELI First, the United States domestic picture after this week's midterm elections. According to reporting from Mother Jones, President Trump spent the first several days after the Republican Party's midterm losses largely avoiding public comment on the results. The day after the election, Trump took journalists on a surprise tour of his under-construction White House ballroom, where he gave only a brief answer to a question about Vice President JD Vance's statement that the Iran war had hurt Republicans. Trump said, quote, "I think it's largely true because it drove the gasoline up a little bit short term," but added that if he had it to do over, he would make the same decision, saying, quote, "You can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon." As of this weekend, Trump has moved into what Mother Jones characterizes as an anger phase publicly responding to the losses. The scale and cause of the Republican losses, and what the results mean for the administration's second-term agenda, remain subjects of ongoing coverage and dispute.

HAST The structural thing to note here is the sequencing. The White House ballroom tour happened the day after the election. It was not a press conference. It was a setting Trump controlled, with limited question access. The one on-the-record exchange we got from that moment was on Iran and gas prices, not on the electoral map. What the White House's internal assessment of the results looks like has not been made public.

KELI Staying in Washington. Former Trump administration adviser Calley Means, who had served under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., appeared on CBS's Face the Nation Sunday morning and made a series of claims about how White House staff has managed President Trump. Host Margaret Brennan confronted Means with allegations that Trump personally pressed the FDA for policies more favorable to tobacco companies after those companies made millions of dollars in donations to a Trump-backed super PAC ahead of the midterms. Means did not directly rebut those allegations. He separately attacked former White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, whom he had already called corrupt earlier this week on Joe Rogan's podcast, and argued that staff had, in his characterization, used the president. Means said White House aides treat Trump, quote, "like a baby." These are Means's claims. The White House has not publicly responded to them as of this report. The underlying tobacco and FDA allegation is sourced to reporting Brennan cited, not independently confirmed in this drop.

HAST What's notable structurally is what Means represents at this moment. He is a former insider making these statements on a Sunday flagship program within days of a significant electoral loss. Former insiders making these claims immediately after a political reversal is a recognizable pattern. That does not make the claims false. It is context a listener should have.

KELI Now to U.S. foreign policy and a diplomatic expulsion. The Trump administration has ordered Lebanon's consul-general in Detroit, Ibrahim Charara, to leave the United States immediately, according to reporting from the Washington Free Beacon, as relayed by Mediaite. The State Department's action follows the Free Beacon's publication of social media posts Charara made on Twitter in October 2021. In one post from October 23rd of that year, Charara wrote, quote, "On this day, the heroic resistance to the American military occupation of Beirut ended with a single strike that documents the defeat of neocolonialism on our land." In an earlier post from October 20th, he wrote, quote, "From the Marines barracks in Beirut to the Al-Tanf base, we will reject the occupi—" the post as published is cut off at that point in the available text. The 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut killed 241 Americans. Lebanon has not issued a public statement on the expulsion order as of this report, and it is not yet known whether Charara has departed.

HAST A consul-general holds a formal diplomatic post. The mechanism here is persona non grata, which is a standard tool governments use to expel foreign diplomatic staff. What is less standard is that the triggering material consists of social media posts made in 2021 — five years before the expulsion order. Whether the posts were known earlier and not acted on, or only surfaced through the Free Beacon's reporting now, is a question the available material does not answer.

KELI Now to Israel. Israel's president has formally tasked opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot with attempting to form a new coalition government, according to Al Jazeera. Eisenkot has signaled openness to a government that could potentially include outgoing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, though the terms and composition of any such coalition remain unsettled. The political context is a significant shift in Israel's governing landscape, though the precise circumstances that led to this presidential tasking — including what triggered the fall or transition of the previous government — are not fully detailed in the available reporting. Coalition negotiations in Israel are typically complex and can extend for weeks. No timeline for a completed coalition agreement has been set.

HAST The framing worth naming is that Eisenkot is described as the opposition leader being asked to form government. That is a meaningful constitutional moment — it means the sitting government has either fallen or lost its mandate. Whether this represents a full break from the Netanyahu era or a possible continuation of it in altered form depends entirely on what coalition Eisenkot is able to assemble. That question is open.

KELI Now to international sports governance. Kozo Tashima, a Japanese football official and challenger to Gianni Infantino in the upcoming FIFA presidential election, told Al Jazeera that he believes he has a, quote, "20 to 30 percent" chance of defeating the incumbent. Tashima's candidacy marks a rare instance of a formal challenger entering the FIFA presidential race against Infantino, who has held the position since 2016. Tashima did not elaborate publicly on a detailed electoral strategy, and the specific date of the FIFA presidential election was not included in the available reporting. Infantino has not publicly responded to Tashima's comments. The election will be decided by member associations of FIFA's 211 member federations.

HAST The number Tashima cited — 20 to 30 percent — is worth sitting with for a moment. He is not claiming he will win. He is claiming a credible chance of an upset. In FIFA's history, incumbents at this level of the organization rarely lose contested elections. What Tashima's candidacy does, regardless of outcome, is put a formal opposition voice on the record inside a governance body that has had persistent transparency and accountability questions for over a decade.

KELI We close today with water. Record rainfall in October and November has sent significant water through normally dry creek beds and into reservoirs across the American Southwest, according to the Christian Science Monitor. Lake Powell, one of the largest reservoirs in the United States and a critical source of water and hydroelectric power for the region, has risen approximately 20 feet as a result. The Southwest has faced prolonged drought conditions and severely depleted reservoir levels for several years. Officials and water managers have not characterized this as a resolution to the region's long-term water deficit, and it is not yet known how much of the recent rainfall total will be retained in reservoir storage versus lost to runoff. What is on record is that the short-term relief is real and measurable.

HAST Lake Powell at 20 feet of rise is not Lake Powell recovered. The reservoir has at points in recent years sat well below levels needed to sustain full hydroelectric generation. A good storm cycle is genuine news. It is not the same as a structural change in the region's water supply situation, and the coverage should probably make that distinction clearly each time it covers a story like this one.

KELI Before we close, a word from Inkwell. Over at Gil's Intelligent Version there's a piece on what the original words of scripture actually say about the Trinity — before any translation decided for us.

HAST Six words, examined in Hebrew and Greek. It's at inkwell dot wiki, slash trinity.

KELI That is the drop for Sunday, November 8. From Inkwell, I'm Keli.

HAST And I'm Hast. We'll be back with the next drop.