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Benjamin Netanyahu Accepts Donald Trump's Gaza Plan As Hamas Yet To Respond; Lawmakers Unwilling To Budge As Shutdown Looms; Volodymyr Zelenskyy Proposes Joint Defense Shield With European Allies; Beijing Begins New Visa Program For Tech Workers This Week; U.S. Has Frozen Research Grants, Pushed For Large Cuts To Federal Research Budgets; Beijing Begins New K Visa Program For Tech Workers This Week; Study Finds Anti-Semitism On X Is Rampant, Reaches Millions; Elon Musk Says Community Notes Adequately Address Concerns; Retrospective Honoring Virgil Abloh Opens In Paris. Aired 2-2:45a ET

Aired September 30, 2025 - 02:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[02:00:36]

IVAN WATSON, CNN SENIOR INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Hello and welcome to our viewers joining us from all around the world. I'm Ivan Watson.

Ahead on CNN NEWSROOM, the pressure is on for Hamas to accept a new Gaza peace deal. Otherwise, Israel says it will finish the job by itself.

A government shutdown looms in the U.S. as Democrat and Republican leaders remain at odds over funding the government beyond today.

And China seeks to attract the best and brightest minds in tech with a new visa program. Could it cause a brain drain in the U.S.? We'll discuss.

ANNOUNCER: Live from Hong Kong. This is CNN NEWSROOM with Ivan Watson.

WATSON: All right, the U.S. President Donald Trump, he says he's close to a peace agreement that will end the war in Gaza and secure the release of all the hostages. The Israeli Prime Minister says he has agreed to the 20-point plan. The clock is already ticking for a sign off from Hamas as the proposal calls for the release of all remaining hostages within 72 hours of Israel accepting the agreement, Benjamin Netanyahu warned of dire consequences if Hamas rejects the plan.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: If Hamas rejects your plan, Mr. President, or if they supposedly accept it and then then basically do everything to counter it, then Israel will finish the job by itself.

This can be done the easy way, or it can be done the hard way, but it will be done.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WATSON: In the meantime, Qatar says Israel apologized for its attack on Doha during a phone call with President Trump. Qatar's prime minister says his country is still willing to continue engaging in efforts to reach an end to the war in Gaza.

CNN's Kristen Holmes has more from the White House

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying that he agreed to President Trump's plan to end the war in Gaza. But of course, there is one major caveat, Hamas has to still agree.

Now, when it comes to Hamas and whether or not they get on board with this deal, we heard from both Netanyahu and President Trump on this. Netanyahu saying, if they did not agree, that they would finish what they started, saying they could do this the easy way or the hard way, and President Trump saying that if Hamas did not agree that Israel would have the full backing of the United States of the president to do whatever it was that they needed to do.

So, just a couple of points of what we saw in this 20-point plan that the White House circulated. They would call -- it would end the war in Israel. It would return all of the hostages within at least 72 hours. The original points that we had seen, or the original plan we had seen said 48 hours, this gave more time to Hamas to actually return those hostages.

It said that there would immediately be a troop withdrawal, except there was a little bit of an ambiguous part of that, which was what the timeline on that troop withdrawal would look like, the attacks would stop, but President Trump saying essentially all the sides would have to agree on what the timeline for Israeli withdrawal of troops would actually look like.

It also said that Israel would not annex any part of Gaza, that they would not control any part of Gaza, and it certainly felt as though there was some finality in this proposal that we hadn't really seen before.

Of course, we have seen and reported on time and time again this idea that White House officials saying that they were closer than ever to coming to a deal, a cease fire deal, an end to the war, only to have the talks fall apart. But this time seemed much more serious.

Now interestingly, the first draft, or the first part of the plan that we had seen was a 21-point plan. This is what was circulated among world leaders at the United Nations General Assembly. And there had been, as we said, 21-points on that.

In the plan that was proposed today, that was released publicly by the White House, there were only 20-points. I bring that up for one reason, one of the things that was missing from that 20-point plan was the idea that Israel would not attack Qatar anymore. It would not launch any attacks into Qatar.

[02:05:00]

Of course, as we've been reporting, the negotiations between Hamas and Israel that were being really mediated by Qatar came to a standstill after Israel launched attacks on Hamas leadership in Qatar, Qatar condemning the act.

So, that was a missing from this document, but the White House announcing right before it released this 20-point plan that there had been a trilateral phone call between the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, President Donald Trump, and the Prime Minister of Qatar, in which Netanyahu apologized for what happened and said he would not do it again. Qatar also putting out a statement reiterating that Netanyahu essentially promised that he would not launch strikes into Qatar again.

So, while it was not in that document, clearly they're making a paper trail of promises that they are saying, Qatar and the United States are saying that Netanyahu made. Again, nothing is a done deal until Hamas signs off.

Kristen Holmes, CNN, the White House.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATSON: I want to bring in Alon Pinkas. He's the former Israeli Consul General in New York now speaking on the line from Tel Aviv. Alan, great to see you. I'd like to get your read on the situation in Israel right now, can Prime Minister Netanyahu count on the support from his cabinet for this 20-point peace deal?

Notably, some far right members of his cabinet were calling for the establishment of Jewish settlements in Gaza not long ago. Are they a hundred percent behind him in this latest initiative?

ALON PINKAS, FORMER ISRAELI CONSUL GENERAL IN NEW YORK: No, they're not behind him at all, Ivan. And in fact, if he brings the entire 20- point plan for the cabinet to approve, which is, by the way, what he is required to do, then the cabinet will not support him, and that that could very well mean the end of his coalition.

But this is -- this is political speculation. What is probably more important is to look at how he presents it. Don't worry about these articles, you know, three to seven it won't happen. Don't worry about the Palestinian Authority's involvement. That requires reform. We all know they'll never reform. Don't worry about the mention of a Palestinian state. I had to go along with President Trump on this, but it won't happen. Don't worry about the redeployment in Gaza. We're going to stall for time. Don't worry about Hamas agreeing to this. They will renege on it pretty soon.

If he -- if he presents this to them as, look, guys, I had to do this because I was cornered, I was pressured. I was put under -- in fact, I did it under duress. Then they will buy into that. But here's the problem, Ivan. This is not a -- this is not a secret

deliberation. Things are going to come out from the -- from that cabinet meeting, and Mr. Netanyahu has reached a crescendo, in which he can't lie to both sides anymore. He's either lie -- he's either going to mislead, misinformed and lie to his cabinet. Or conversely, he's going to do the same to President Trump. He can't keep on doing both, which is why I think he's going to stall for time.

He's going to say that that we need to study the exact details and timetables of Israeli withdrawal. We need to first wait for a full and, you know, an unmitigated Hamas agreement to this, and he's going to hope that, you know, a week goes by, two weeks go by. No one remembers this. Trump is back dealing with Ukraine, Portland, Oregon, or Greenland for that matter, and no one's going to care anymore.

If this is how he sells this to his cabinet, then his cabinet will support this. But we don't have a deal, so it's either or.

WATSON: So, we see, on the one hand, how complicated this is politically back home for Mr. Netanyahu, what about the other side of the coin? And that is Hamas, which, not too long ago, saw its negotiators targeted by Israeli and Israeli strike in the Qatari capital. Do you have any sense of how Hamas may respond to this proposal?

PINKAS: Well, there are two ways of looking at a Hamas proposal. The first is they're going to have to agree to this. They're going to do this, you know, whining, complaining, bitching and kicking. But they have to agree to this because Qatar and Egypt are going to lean on them heavily, because the Saudis will threaten them, because they know the war needs to end right now, and because they have been degraded or even decimated militarily, and they understand that if they want to survive as a political organization, they need to agree to this.

But there is an exact opposite interpretation or analysis, and that is that they couldn't care less anymore, that they don't think this is going to happen, that they don't want to give up the only assets that they have, tragically, the hostages and that whatever misery and devastation comes to the Palestinian people, they couldn't care less because they haven't in the last two years.

[02:10:13]

So, they will find a way to say, no, I don't know which of the two is going to happen. They too, like Netanyahu, it's a mirror image of sorts. They too will say yes, but we have reservations about this. We have stipulations about that.

And the question is, what happens then? Because Netanyahu would love nothing more than for Hamas to come up with remarks and stipulations and request that some wording be changed, because that serves his interest.

So, between Mr. Netanyahu and Hamas, the chances of this being implemented fully are slim. I'm not saying zero. I hope they're not zero, but they don't look very good. WATSON: All right. Well, with that assessment, Alon Pinkas in Tel Aviv, thank you very much for sharing your analysis and experience on this matter.

PINKAS: Thank you, Ivan.

WATSON: OK, now let's look to another big story of the day. There's less than 24 hours until the U.S. government is expected to shut down. Republican lawmakers have been pushing Democrats to pass a stop gap bill to temporarily fund the government until a new deal can be reached, but top Democrats have no interest in delaying issues they want addressed now.

CNN's Manu Raju has more from Washington D.C.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: There is now growing fear on Capitol Hill that a government shutdown is all but unavoidable, because the two sides, Democrats and Republicans, are nowhere near reaching an agreement on how to fund the federal government.

Democrats want to include as part of the bill to keep the government open new health care policy, specifically to reverse cuts that were enacted to the Medicaid program as part of Donald Trump's signature domestic policy achievement, the one Big, Beautiful Bill Act.

They also want to extend expiring subsidies under the Affordable Care Act. Those Obamacare subsidies are set to expire at the end of the year. They want to include that in this proposal.

They also want to constrain Donald Trump's ability to cut federal spending without the consent of Congress. There's a problem. Republicans who control the House and the Senate and the White House say that is absolutely a non-starter as part of this negotiation.

Instead, Republicans are pushing for a straight extension of government funding up until November 21st, seven weeks, and they say they can negotiate all those other matters over that seven-week time frame. Democrats say, no way, because they have leverage. They have votes in the United States Senate, where they need to provide at least seven Democratic votes in order to overcome a filibuster in advance legislation.

That will not happen at this moment because of the position of Democratic leaders and most of the members of their caucus.

There's one outspoken member, Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, who is making clear he does not agree with his party's position.

SEN. JOHN FETTERMAN (D-PA): Right now, it's like you're running the risk of plunging our nation into chaos. Millions and millions of lives will be upended, and now that's the kinds of message -- what kind of message does that send to our country and to our allies and to our enemies?

REP. HAKEEM JEFFRIES (D-NY): When they're asking for things to be added on.

RAJU: The health care.

JEFFRIES: We are working on dealing with an issue health care that is central to the quality of life of the American people.

RAJU: That last comment coming from Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic leader, who is on the same page at the moment with Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader. The question is going to be, can they maintain that unity if there is a prolonged government shutdown.

Because we saw what happened back in March when we were on the eve of a government shutdown. Back then, Chuck Schumer ultimately relented, agreed with Republicans to extend government funding until the end of September. Jeffries House Democratic leaders were furious at Schumer's position. Schumer is trying to make sure that does not happen again, but that could mean they agreed to block this Republican spending bill and ultimately see the consequences, which is a government shutdown which could last for some time and could be very painful for millions of Americans.

Manu Raju, CNN, Capitol Hill.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATSON: Thanks, Manu. Still to come, Volodymyr Zelenskyy says Russia's goals for domination do not end in Ukraine. We're going to hear more on his offer to help Europe develop a defense system against that threat. Stay with CNN.

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[02:19:15]

WATSON: Welcome back to the broadcast. Moldova's pro-Western, pro-E.U. ruling party has won a fresh majority in parliament. The country which borders Ukraine, gave the party more than 50 percent of the vote despite alleged Russian interference. The party's leader, Moldovan President Maia Sandu, favors joining the E.U. in the next five years, and she warned of dangerous consequences if Russian influence prevails.

Authorities also warned of potential disruption and violence by anti- Western elements in the country. The leader of opposition party, the patriotic bloc, which won less than 25 percent of the vote, has called for protests to be held against the result.

[02:20:01]

Ukraine's president is warning other European nations that they may be the next target for Russia's violent ambitions, and that its recent jet and drone incursions into European airspace are a prime example. Speaking at the Warsaw security forum, Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Russia

is, "Testing how far it can go." CNN's Clare Sebastian has the details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARE SEBASTIAN, CNN CORRESPONDENT: There's a couple of key themes that I think Zelenskyy really wanted to emphasize today in his virtual address to this Warsaw Security Forum. He obviously has been warning since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion, that Russia, if not defeated, would not stop at Ukraine.

And he is essentially citing as evidence these incursions into NATO airspace by drones and jets, which Russia, of course, continues to deny. He said, Russians never just stop at one country. History has shown this many, many times.

And there's a secondary point that I think is critically important that he really wanted to hammer home, is that, given these incursions, these threats, as NATO sees it to its security, Ukraine possesses the expertise and experience that NATO and European allies need at this point. And this is something that he also wanted to emphasize in his address today. Take a listen.

VOLODRYMYR ZELENSKYY, UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT: Ukraine proposes to Poland and all our partners to build a joint truly reliable shield against Russian aerial threats. And this is possible, Ukraine can counter all types of Russian drones and missiles, and if we act together in the region, we will have in our weapons and production capacity for these. If Russia loses the ability to strike in disguise, it will be unable to continue the war.

SEBASTIAN: So, this argument that he has again been using, really since the beginning of the war, that giving Ukraine aid will lead to it having these battle tested expertise will essentially pay this dividend, really now coming into sharp focus, and especially as we see in Europe, European countries coalescing around the idea of a drone wall. This is something that 10 E.U. countries signed on to last week. I think these arguments are particularly powerful.

And we're going to see European Leaders meeting later this week in Copenhagen, a Summit that has been given greater urgency, of course, by these threats which have affected Danish airspace.

And so, I think Zelenskyy really wanting to emphasize this point that supporting Ukraine really does pay back in terms of this expertise that Europe and NATO allies now so sorely need.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

WATSON: And now to Madagascar. Madagascar's president says he is dissolving his country's government after a series of youth led protests. The island nation ended -- the Indian Ocean has seen days of turmoil. At least 22 people were killed and more than a hundred injured amid demonstrations against recurring water and power cuts. Students are said to have taken the inspiration from the gen z protests that took place in Kenya and Nepal recently. The president said he acknowledged government failures and wants to create space for dialog with young people.

Now, coming up ahead, the competition to attract the world's sharpest minds. Why a U.S. brain drain could be China's game.

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[02:28:00]

WATSON: Welcome back. This week, China kicks off a new visa program. It's meant to attract the world's smartest minds, including up and coming tech and science talent from other countries.

China's new K visas are being launched as the Trump administration cuts research funding, restricts student visas and hikes the cost of its visas for specialized foreign workers.

At least 55 established and rising researchers in fields like A.I. and neuroscience have left the U.S. for full time positions in China in recent months. The so-called reverse brain drain is a brain gain for Beijing.

CNN's Senior China Reporter Simone McCarthy is with us from Hong Kong. Good to see you, Simone. Can you tell us a little bit more about the people that are leaving the U.S. to China? What is the scale of this reverse brain drain?

SIMONE MCCARTHY, CNN SENIOR CHINA REPORTER: Well, Ivan, you gave the number just there in terms of those 55 rising and prominent scientists who have left American universities in order to take up these full- time positions at Chinese research institutions. That's according to a CNN tally, which is just over 2025.

We also looked back to the start of 2024 and that number is around 85. I mean, of course, we may just be capturing a certain percentage of which we're not sure of the greater scale of this trend. You well know that China has long been seeking to recruit overseas talent. That's including the many researchers who are originally from China and then went overseas to pursue their education and continue their careers, including in the United States.

And China has been successful in welcoming back a growing number of these researchers in recent years, but now it's really hoping to expand that trend as it watches these changes in the United States, the pushes to slash research funding, the frozen grants, and as you just mentioned, the changes to the H-1B program.

I mean, scientists are making these decisions for a range of reasons, some of them may be personal, some of them may be professional. There are also concerns and anxieties around increased suspicion of researchers in the United States with ties to China. We saw the first Trump administration has launched the China initiative, and now there are lawmakers in Washington calling for its return. [02:30:15]

So, all of this is part of a Nexus that is encouraging, that is, you know, the backdrop of these decisions that are being made. And certainly, this all plays out well for Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who really believes that his country's ability to innovate is core to both its economic and national security.

WATSON: Right. So it sounds like there's a bit of a push phenomenon coming from the part of the U.S. and the U.S. government. What about China? Can you tell more about these "K visas" and how else Beijing might be trying to poach some of this talent?

MCCARTHY: Well, I'm glad that you asked about the pull phenomenon, Ivan, because that's really a key part of this too. I mean, on the one hand, I should just lay the baseline, is that China has significantly ramped up its scientific and technological prowess in recent decades. When many researchers who are from China left the country decades ago, there was very few resources and opportunities, and that's a completely different situation now. And so, China just in its own right, has a number of opportunities for innovation and for innovators.

But certainly, China is doing things to act on these changes in the United States, and we see this happening at a number of levels. There's the "K visa", as you mentioned, and that's targeting those young science and technology talents. That's launching this week. We're still waiting on some of the details. We're still waiting to see how well received that is. It does have a significant difference versus the H1-B visa, and that's that those applicants, as far as we understand, do not need to have a job offer in hand in order to apply for that. So that'll be very interesting to see how that unwinds.

But that's also not the only thing that China's doing. We've also heard in our reporting that there are extensions on application timelines for scholarships as well as recruitment programs that are targeting overseas talents. And then additionally, professors are telling us that their departments are reaching out with offers and spreading the message that China is seeking to expand. They want to build out their faculty and build out their scientific prowess.

WATSON: Great. And I would urge viewers, if you want to learn more, read Simone's excellent article on cnn.com with a lot more details about this whole phenomenon. Simone McCarthy, thank you very, very much for this update.

MCCARTHY: Thanks, Ivan.

WATSON: All right. Now, a new study says Elon Musk's X is now the go- to platform for anti-Semitism. How some accounts even profit off of their hateful content, that is coming up after the break.

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[02:37:12] WATSON: A new study says that Elon Musk's X has become the go-to platform for anti-Semitism. Researchers found hateful content is spreading widely and the company's own tools are failing to stop it. Some accounts are even profiting from anti-Semitic posts. CNN's Hadas Gold has the details.

HADAS GOLD, CNN MEDIA CORRESPONDENT: This was a year-long study conducted by the Center for Countering Digital Hate and the Jewish Council for Public Affairs. And what they found is that not only is anti-Semitism really flourishing on X, but the crowd-sourced community notes that are supposed to help sort of moderate and fact-check things are barely making a dent. And that certain accounts, certain influencers are even known to make anti-Semitic posts and in some cases, they're able to even profit off of it thanks to X's subscription features.

Now according to the study, they identified more than 679,000 posts that they said were viewed more than 190 million times. Now of these posts, they said 53 percent of them had to do with Jewish conspiracy theories such as that Jews controlled the government. Another 41 percent of them had to do with anti-Semitic abuse, sometimes even calls for violence. And at least six percent of them had to do with Holocaust distortion or Holocaust denial.

Now, when it came to Community Notes, this is something that X's owner Elon Musk has pushed as a way to actually specifically deal with anti- Semitism on the platform and things like Holocaust denial. And he said, well, if somebody posts something about Holocaust denial, readers can answer, put a correction in a reply, and they can apply a Community Note. Well, the researchers found that in the top-300 anti- Semitic posts, only one percent of them had a Community Note applied for them.

They also found that they are -- there are sort of these influencers that post anti-Semitic content and they found that a third of the likes for the top anti-Semitic posts over this year that they studied were all related to these 10 specific accounts. Some of them have millions of followers on them, and in some of the cases, these accounts are verified, meaning that they pay for a verification badge, but that means that their content gets boosted to other X users. And in some cases, not all of them, but a few of them, they even are able to have subscriptions on their accounts, meaning users can pay to get special content from these accounts that this study says push out sometimes anti-Semitic content.

Now, X did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but X has tangled with one of these groups that did the study, the Center for Countering Digital Hate in the past. They once sued the group for previous research saying that it cost them millions of dollars. A judge throughout that lawsuit, X is appealing that. But the Center for Countering Digital Hate is standing by its research, noting that Elon Musk's X Company never sued them for defamation. They say they simply sued them for doing research and there must be a reason why they didn't want that research to be out there.

Hadas Gold, CNN, New York. [02:40:00]

WATSON: OK, Paris is paying tribute to the late designer Virgil Abloh. The retrospective coincides with Paris Fashion Week and features an extensive display of Abloh's Nike sneakers. Abloh was one of fashion's highest profile black designers. He founded his Off-White label in 2013 and went on to become Creative Director of Louis Vuitton menswear. Abloh studied engineering and architecture, driving his interest in how things operated rather than their facade or finish.

Thanks for joining us. I'm Ivan Watson. "World Sport" is up next. And then, I'll be back in 15 minutes with more "CNN Newsroom."

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