2 Israeli embassy staff members fatally shot near Jewish museum in DC | The Excerpt
On Thursday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Two Israeli embassy staff members were fatally shot Thursday night in Washington. Republican holdouts appear to have a deal with House GOP leadership to advance President Donald Trump's tax policy bill. Paste BN White House Correspondent Bart Jansen breaks down the news that the Department of Justice has abandoned police reform settlements over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The Pentagon has accepted a $400 million jet from Qatar for President Donald Trump. Paste BN National Columnist Suzette Hackney tells us about the Nooksack 306, who lost their tribal membership and their homes. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending an email to podcasts@usatoday.com.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Thursday, May 22nd, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today, the latest. After two Israeli embassy staff members were killed in Washington. Plus, Republican holdouts appear to have a deal with House GOP leadership to advance Trump's tax policy bill. And now a group of Native Americans in the northwest lost their tribal membership and their homes.
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Two Israeli embassy staff members were shot and killed last night as they exited the Capitol Jewish Museum according to authorities. The Israel Foreign Ministry named the victims as Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim. And Israel's Ambassador to the US, Yechiel Leiter said they were a young couple about to be engaged.
Yechiel Leiter:
The young man purchased a ring this week with the intention of proposing to his girlfriend next week in Jerusalem. They were a beautiful couple who came to enjoy an evening in Washington's cultural center.
Taylor Wilson:
Metropolitan Police Department, chief Pamela Smith said a 30-year-old suspect has been named Elias Rodriguez. The suspect was observed pacing back and forth outside the museum before the shooting, police said. And he then approached a group of four people and opened fire striking the two victims. The suspect later entered the museum and was detained by event security according to police. And they said that when taken into custody, he shouted, "Free Palestine" Stick with usatoday.com throughout the day for continuing coverage of this breaking news.
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Republican holdouts appear to have a deal with House GOP leadership to advance president Donald Trump's sweeping tax policy bill. The changes hit on several outstanding policy demands that Republicans had been debating in meetings for days.
Republicans introduced the amendment and passed it through a key committee shortly before 11:00 last night while Democrats protested that they had not had a chance to review the deal. According to a released amendment, the legislation will be tweaked to move up the implementation of Medicaid work requirements from 2029 to December of 2026 would cut off many green energy tax credits for projects beginning 60 days after the bill passes. Change the name of new savings accounts from MAGA accounts to Trump accounts, and raise a state and local tax deduction cap to $40,000 for people who make less than $500,000 per year.
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Department of Justice is abandoning police reform settlements in a pair of cities over the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. I spoke with Paste BN White House Correspondent Bart Janssen to learn more. Thanks for joining me, Bart.
Bart Janssen:
Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Bart, what is the DOJ formally dropping here as it pertains to police reform settlements? And really, what are these settlements?
Bart Janssen:
The headline news is that they're dropping negotiations that were aimed at reaching court approved settlements with the police departments in Minneapolis and Louisville, which had been investigated because of the deaths of a couple of people in interactions with police. The cases involved victims, who your listeners might recognize. One is George Floyd, who was murdered in Minneapolis by a police officer in May of 2020 when the officer kneeled on his throat and he complained for several minutes that he couldn't breathe and he died. The other case involved Breonna Taylor, who was shot to death in her apartment in Louisville during a no-knock police raid. In both of these cases, the Justice Department investigated and they were trying to negotiate agreements called consent decrees that are enforced by the courts to basically have police departments change their hiring policies, their training and recruitment to basically try to weed out bad cops and not hire any more of them. But in this case, the new head under President Trump of the Civil Rights Division named Harmeet Dhillon has decided to abandon those negotiations and retract the accusations that officers had violated the victim's civil rights.
Taylor Wilson:
So Bart, how did officials defend this decision this week?
Bart Janssen:
Dhillon said that basically the department had been aiming at micromanaging police departments and basically going too far in to try to police the police officers. And so in addition to dropping the negotiations for consent decrees for Minneapolis and Louisville, they also closed investigations and retracted findings of wrongdoing against police departments in six other cities, Phoenix, Memphis, Tennessee, Trenton, New Jersey, Mount Vernon, New York, Oklahoma City, and the Louisiana State Police. So it's basically a change in strategy, a change in position to say that they don't think the department should be micromanaging these local police forces. Derrick Johnson, the president of the NAACP, said he was disappointed that Congress hasn't done more to overhaul police reform, but that it's spent five years since Floyd's death not changing how police are regulated through legislation.
Taylor Wilson:
Bart, what did we see from the Biden era when it comes to these consent decrees?
Bart Janssen:
Congress authorized the Justice Department to conduct these kinds of civil investigations of police departments in 1994, in the aftermath of the beating of Rodney King, which sparked riots in Los Angeles. During Biden's presidency, the Civil Rights Division lost 12 of these kinds of investigations that are called pattern or practice investigations, which means they're looking at how agencies conduct themselves routinely over a period of time rather than specifically looking at a single event like the deaths of Floyd or Taylor. And so the problem is that during the four years of the Biden administration, the department didn't complete any of these court binding consent decrees, and so that leaves the negotiations open to whoever is in charge of the department. So the change in administration led to them abandoning these kinds of investigations and negotiations in the eight cases that were listed
Taylor Wilson:
Bart, under Dhillon's leadership, we've seen the Justice Department Civil Rights Division lose a slew of attorneys in recent weeks. What can you tell us here and why has this been happening?
Bart Janssen:
Yeah, there's been a lot of turnover. The Trump administration would say that these are simply people who were politically motivated when they were in office, and so they're not sorry to see them go. Of course, several of them have argued that they were simply seeking fair adjudication of cases based on the facts and the law, but that they couldn't deal with the new leadership in the department. Something like a hundred attorneys in the civil rights division have left through deferred resignation agreements or demotions or other resignations. In addition, Dhillon has demoted senior attorneys who used to handle police abuse investigations and sent them to other low level assignments. So there's been quite a turnover and civil rights advocates are concerned about what that might mean for the remainder of the four years of the Trump administration.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, Bart Janssen covers the White House for Paste BN. Thanks, Bart.
Bart Janssen:
Thanks for having me.
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Taylor Wilson:
The Pentagon has accepted a luxury Boeing 747 jet from the nation of Qatar, and it will be used as Air Force One, the president's plane. According to the Defense Department, the unprecedented $400 million gift, which President Donald Trump has said will transfer to his library after his term ends will require major renovations to become what's known as the flying White House. Replacements for the current Boeing 747s used as Air Force One are already years behind schedule. For more on President Trump's acceptance of the plane, you're going to want to hear my colleague Dana Taylor's conversation airing later today. Her guest is Richard Briffault, professor of legislation at Columbia Law School who laid out the issue at the root of the DOD's acceptance of the plan.
Richard Briffault:
The key problem here is that whether it's a gift to the president as opposed to a gift to the United States.
Taylor Wilson:
You can hear that episode right here beginning at 4:00 PM Eastern time.
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A group of Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest lost their tribal membership and their homes. I spoke with Paste BN National Columnist, Suzette Hackney for more. Hello, Suzette. Thanks for joining me today.
Suzette Hackney:
Thank you so much.
Taylor Wilson:
So let's just start with this, Suzette, who are the Nooksack 306 and why have they been stripped really of their tribal citizenship and benefits?
Suzette Hackney:
They're a group of Native Americans based in the state of Washington, really close to the Canadian border. Initially there were 306 people. They range from very young to the age of 88, and they were disenrolled from the Nooksack tribe. They've been raised as Nooksack, they self-identify as such, but they were officially stripped in 2016 of their tribal membership because tribe leaders believe they were mistakenly enrolled in the 1980s and they have not been able to prove their Nooksack ancestry. And so tribal leaders said that they needed to get them off the roll, so to speak.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, one of these folks is Elizabeth Oshiro, who you met with. Can you tell us a little bit about her story and what was this knock that she got in April?
Suzette Hackney:
So Elizabeth is the last of this group to be evicted from her home. It was her mother's home for so many years, about 25 years I believe. She inherited the home from her mom, but they told her that because she was disenrolled, she had to leave. I happened to be there on April 1st to see this play out. She and her husband were packing up her mother's home. There was a knock on the door from Nooksack folks saying, you have to get out.
Taylor Wilson:
Wow. And this concept, this idea of disenrollment, have we seen this play out at other tribes? How specific is this to this region and this tribe?
Suzette Hackney:
It's really become prevalent in the last 20 years, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, but in other tribes around the country as well. California is another one. Numerous tribes have been disenrolling people for various reasons. If you can't prove your bloodline, if you can't prove that you are at least 1/4 Indian, then they disenroll you, which means you lose everything. You lose all of those benefits that come with being a member of a tribe, be it you get paid for being a member and not just paid for being a member, but meaning they offer you financial support. If you're low income, they help you with tuition, they help you to buy holiday gifts, they help with the cost of healthcare. These tribes are historically very financially strapped. Reservations are some of the poorest and underserved communities in this country. And so when these tribes were being developed, they wanted to help family. So they decided we will help financially as well. But once you're stripped of that, you get none of those benefits anymore.
Taylor Wilson:
Well, Suzette, you bring up some of those financial aspects. How do casinos enter this conversation?
Suzette Hackney:
So casinos have brought to many tribes around this country jobs and economic opportunities. I can be a construction worker and I can help build a casino and get paid for that. Some tribes pay a per diem, meaning that each member gets proceeds from the profits of the casinos just for being a member. Nooksack does not operate that way, but many tribes do.
Taylor Wilson:
What have evicted people like Elizabeth who we spoke with and whose eviction unfortunately you saw firsthand, where have they ended up? What's next for them? And is there any recourse in the courts?
Suzette Hackney:
They've been fighting in the courts for over 10 years and it's been a losing battle. Part of the problem has been that their tribe has determined that there's no court system that can really intervene. Like you can try to go to state court, which their attorney did. You can go to the state Supreme Court, which their attorney did. But because tribes are allowed to function independent of our government, of our court system, they were not able to make any gains there. So they were ultimately evicted. And so what happened is their sister tribe in Canada, they decided we were not going to allow these people to be displaced and have nowhere to live. And so they bought land in Washington and they built homes for these people who were evicted. It's a new life for them and they're making the best of it, but there is a lot of sorrow about the loss of culture and belonging and family. They're really still struggling with the emotional toll of this. But as they've constantly told me, we'll always be Nooksack.
Taylor Wilson:
Suzette Hackney is a national columnist for Paste BN. Thank you, Suzette.
Suzette Hackney:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're using a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. As always, you can email us at podcasts@usatoday.com. I'm Taylor Wilson. I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.