Latest / The President's Daily Brief / September 22nd, 2026: Trump Calls Off Major Attack Against The Houthis & Chinese Ships Near Alaska

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September 22nd, 2026: Trump Calls Off Major Attack Against The Houthis & Chinese Ships Near Alaska · The President's Daily Brief

0:12
It's Tuesday,
0:13
the 22nd of September.
0:15
Welcome to the President's Daily Brief.
0:17
I'm Mike Baker,
0:18
your eyes and ears on the world stage.
0:21
All right,
0:22
let's get briefed.
0:23
First up,
0:24
President Trump reportedly came within minutes
0:27
of ordering US strikes on Yemen's Houthis
0:30
before calling the operation off as their offensive toward the Bab al Mandeb
0:35
continues.
0:36
Later in the show,
0:37
Chinese research vessels are operating near Alaska,
0:40
and the Coast Guard
0:42
says that it's watching closely over concerns about
0:44
what Beijing may be up to.
0:47
Plus,
0:48
well,
0:48
the suspense is over.
0:50
Wait,
0:50
no,
0:51
sorry,
0:51
there was no suspense.
0:52
To the surprise of absolutely no one,
0:55
Putin's ruling party has tightened its grip on Russia's parliament.
0:59
Securing another commanding majority after 3 days of voting,
1:03
which isn't hard to do when
1:05
there's no opposition to speak of.
1:07
And in today's back of the brief,
1:08
Washington wants a new hotline of sorts with Beijing
1:12
this time for national security incidents
1:14
involving artificial intelligence.
1:17
But first,
1:18
today's PDB spotlight.
1:20
President Trump reportedly came within minutes of opening
1:23
another front in the Middle East this weekend.
1:25
Targets had been selected by the Pentagon.
1:27
American aircraft were being prepared for a
1:29
wave of strikes against Yemen's Houthis,
1:32
and according to a New York Times report cited by Reuters,
1:35
bombs were already being loaded onto some of those aircraft
1:39
when then suddenly
1:40
President Trump called the operation off.
1:43
The strikes never happened,
1:44
but the fact that they came that close tells you
1:46
just how quickly the situation in Yemen is changing.
1:49
And how concerned Saudi Arabia has become
1:52
about a Houthi offensive now threatening one
1:55
of the world's most important shipping routes.
1:57
Does that sound familiar?
1:58
Saudi Arabia had been pressing Washington for help as
2:01
Houthi forces made a rapid advance along Yemen's Red Sea coast and
2:05
toward the Bab al Mandeb Strait,
2:07
that's the narrow waterway connecting the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden.
2:11
Axios reports that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had first
2:15
asked Trump for American military intervention roughly 10 days ago.
2:20
Trump initially declined,
2:21
as we've reported here on the PDB,
2:24
although Washington agreed to continue
2:25
providing intelligence and targeting assistance.
2:29
The Saudis' own efforts to halt the offensive have been struggling,
2:32
and a counterattack by Saudi-backed Yemen forces
2:34
had reportedly been delayed several times.
2:37
CETCOM commander Admiral Brad Cooper then prepared strike options that
2:41
were presented to the Defense Secretary over the weekend.
2:44
President Trump considered them and ultimately then decided not to proceed.
2:50
Yemen's internationally recognized president Rashad al-Alimi
2:53
also spoke with Trump on Sunday
2:55
and sought American support against the Houthis.
2:58
Reuters reports that
2:59
Trump discussed the situation with him
3:01
but made no pledge to send US forces into the fight.
3:05
A lightning offensive this month has brought the Iranian-backed Houthi
3:09
forces into key areas around the Bab al-Mdeb Strait,
3:12
and now they're working to seize the
3:15
strategic high ground behind those coastal gains.
3:18
Fighting today was focused around the Qaboub
3:20
Mountains in Yemen's Taiz and Lahee provinces.
3:23
The geography here is important,
3:25
and the basic military logic is relatively simple.
3:28
The Houthis took key positions along the coast.
3:31
Now they want the mountains behind them.
3:33
If they secure that high ground.
3:35
Well,
3:35
it becomes much harder for Saudi-backed forces to push them back and much easier
3:39
for the Houthis to protect their new positions around the Red Sea
3:43
and as an aside,
3:44
much easier to target
3:46
and disrupt commercial shipping.
3:49
As we've discussed here on the PDB,
3:50
the Bab al Mandeb is one of the world's critical maritime waterways.
3:54
Saudi Arabia relies on its Western Red Sea infrastructure
3:58
as an alternative route for oil exports
4:01
when the Strait of Hormuz is threatened.
4:03
And as you may have heard,
4:04
the Strait of Hormuz is indeed
4:06
threatened.
4:07
It's under pressure because of the war,
4:09
of course,
4:09
with Iran.
4:10
Now an Iranian-backed force is at the same time
4:13
as the Strait of Hormuz is under pressure,
4:15
gaining leverage around the other major shipping route
4:18
on the opposite side of the Arabian Peninsula.
4:21
According to Axios,
4:22
one concern in Washington
4:24
was that US strikes
4:26
could provoke the Houthis into expanding their campaign
4:29
against shipping through the Bab al-Mandeb.
4:31
A senior Houthi official
4:33
now has told the Associated Press.
4:35
That the group has assured the Trump administration
4:38
it does not intend to attack American vessels in the Red Sea
4:41
and still considers its previous ceasefire with Washington to be in effect,
4:46
which of course
4:47
is what the Iranian regime
4:48
wants their proxy group the Houthis to tell the US
4:52
At the same time,
4:53
the Houthi official warned other countries against
4:56
joining Saudi Arabia in the war,
4:58
saying the Houthis were prepared to fight what he described
5:01
as
5:02
an international conflict if necessary.
5:05
The simplistic message crafted by the Iranian regime and their proxy the Houthis
5:10
to Washington is essentially stay out
5:13
and this does not have to become America's war,
5:16
which
5:17
is moronic because it already.
5:20
Is America's war.
5:21
The Houthis are Iran's proxy,
5:23
as I've already mentioned a few times.
5:26
They're acting at the behest of the Iranian regime.
5:29
There's no separation between the U.S.Iran conflict
5:32
and the current actions and situation involving the Houthis.
5:35
The Houthi offensive is still underway as they try to
5:38
consolidate control around a waterway critical to global trade,
5:41
and this is part of the Iranian regime's continued aggressive response
5:45
to the conflict with the US
5:47
Putting the Bab al-Mdeb Strait under increasing pressure
5:50
and gaining further territory in Yemen
5:52
puts the Iranian regime in a stronger position.
5:55
If Saudi-backed forces cannot halt the Houthi advance,
5:59
which they seem incapable of doing on their own,
6:02
President Trump inevitably will have to revisit the decision
6:05
on whether to get involved against the Houthis.
6:08
Staying out of the situation may sound attractive
6:11
to those who worry about broadening the conflict,
6:13
but the reality is
6:15
staying out of the situation will very likely result
6:18
in the Iranians expanding their leverage in the region
6:21
through control of not only the Strait of Hormuz,
6:24
but the Bab al Mandeb Strait as well,
6:26
and there is no way for the White House
6:28
to then spin that as a win.
6:31
The question is not really whether Washington is willing to broaden the conflict.
6:35
Tehran has already broadened the conflict by utilizing the Houthis
6:39
to do their bidding in Yemen and the Babo Mandeb
6:42
by targeting the Saudis.
6:44
That's why they've spent years building their proxy network.
6:48
The question is whether Washington
6:50
will play into the Iranian regime's strategy
6:52
by staying out of the fray.
6:55
All right.
6:56
Coming up next,
6:57
Chinese research ships operating near Alaska draw scrutiny from the Coast Guard
7:02
while Putin's ruling party
7:03
tightens its hold on Russia's parliament.
7:06
I'll be right back.
7:09
Hey,
7:09
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Welcome back to the PDB.
8:15
We're getting another look at how the security threat
8:18
posed by China extends far beyond the Western Pacific,
8:21
with Chinese research vessels,
8:23
that's what they're calling them,
8:24
now operating just off Alaska.
8:27
The latest warning comes from Rear Admiral Bob Little,
8:29
commander of the US Coast Guard's Arctic District,
8:32
who told Reuters that
8:34
Washington is watching Beijing's growing presence in the region
8:38
very closely.
8:39
Now this isn't the first time that we've
8:41
discussed encroachment in the Arctic from Beijing.
8:44
Already this year alone,
8:46
4 Chinese research vessels have conducted work across the region,
8:49
nearly matching the five recorded during all of 2025.
8:54
Those ships have traveled around the Aleutian Islands,
8:56
through the Bering Strait,
8:57
and as far north as the North Pole.
9:00
For Admiral Little,
9:01
the concern begins when they approach areas where the US holds sovereign rights.
9:06
He said,
9:06
quote,
9:07
Where I have responsibility,
9:08
interest,
9:09
and concern
9:10
is when they're operating in and around US sovereign space.
9:14
That includes America's exclusive economic zone and extended continental shelf.
9:19
Now the vessels in question did remain
9:21
this time in international waters,
9:23
but Admiral Little says the Chinese ships
9:26
failed to notify Washington of their presence
9:28
through diplomatic channels beforehand,
9:30
something he described as the
9:32
usual practice.
9:33
The Chinese routinely describe their ships as research vessels engaged in
9:38
peaceful pursuit of scientific research.
9:41
For American military analysts and officials,
9:43
the concern
9:44
is what that research could actually produce.
9:48
The first possibility involves valuable resources beneath the water.
9:52
Admiral Little
9:53
says China may be studying mineral deposits on portions of the seabed
9:57
where the US holds sovereign rights.
9:59
The second concern
10:00
it would appear to be more serious.
10:02
Little warns that those vessels could be conducting work that might
10:06
provide them with a military advantage
10:08
or pose a security threat to the US
10:11
Beijing may call these scientific missions,
10:13
but Washington has to consider
10:15
how the information collected just off Alaska's coast
10:18
could eventually be used by the Chinese military,
10:21
and none of this is happening in isolation either.
10:25
China has spent years trying to establish itself as a major Arctic power
10:29
even though its territory
10:30
sits well south of the Arctic Circle.
10:33
Beijing calls itself a near Arctic state
10:37
and wants to establish what it described
10:39
as a polar silk Road across a region becoming
10:42
increasingly important for shipping,
10:44
natural resources,
10:45
and military competition.
10:48
Sometimes China appears alone.
10:50
Other times it conducts joint operations in the area with Russia.
10:54
That cooperation places two of America's most powerful strategic rivals
10:58
in a region
10:59
right on America's doorstep.
11:02
Admiral Little compared notes with international partners dealing with
11:05
similar activity by Russian research vessels in the Barents Sea
11:08
and Baltic Seas.
11:10
He said it's easy to find examples of hybrid
11:12
threats and other suspicious activity in both regions.
11:17
Now,
11:17
and this will surprise you,
11:19
Moscow,
11:20
like Beijing,
11:21
denies that its research vessels are
11:23
operating illegally or threatening American interests.
11:26
It's just one big community of nations.
11:29
Everybody just out there
11:31
doing peaceful scientific research.
11:33
Nothing to see here.
11:35
Speaking of Russia,
11:36
President Putin's ruling party United Russia is celebrating what it calls
11:41
a record victory in the first parliamentary election
11:44
since Putin's 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
11:48
With more than 95% of polling stations reporting and
11:51
the final results due Friday,
11:52
how do they do their elections so quickly?
11:55
The outcome is clear
11:56
and clearly unsurprising.
11:58
Russia's Central Election Commission says United Russia won
12:01
just under 58% of the party list vote.
12:04
That translates
12:05
into a projected 355 of the state Duma's 450 seats.
12:11
Now,
12:12
for those of you not experts in Russian politics,
12:15
the State Duma is the lower chamber of Russia's national parliament.
12:19
The closest comparison in the US would be the House of Representatives,
12:24
but with less insider trading.
12:26
But that's only a structural comparison.
12:28
The US Constitution gives Congress powers separate
12:31
from the presidency,
12:32
while Russia's Duma has spent years
12:34
reliably approving all the Kremlin initiatives.
12:38
Putin's party will therefore control nearly 80% of the chamber,
12:41
up from the 324 seats
12:44
that United Russia won back in 2021.
12:47
More importantly,
12:48
that leaves the party above the 2/3
12:50
threshold required for a constitutional majority.
12:53
It can pass legislation and initiate constitutional amendments
12:57
without support from anyone else.
12:59
So you might well ask
13:01
how does just under 58% of the party vote
13:04
become nearly 80% of parliament?
13:07
Well,
13:07
the answer is Russia fills the Duma through two different systems.
13:12
Half of its 450 seats are distributed through nationwide party voting,
13:16
while the other half are decided through individual constituency races.
13:21
United Russia dominated those contests as well.
13:23
Oh,
13:23
that's shocking,
13:24
with its candidates leading in 208 of the 225 races,
13:29
but the parliamentary math only tells part of the landscape.
13:33
To understand why this was never much of a contest,
13:35
you have to look at who
13:36
Russian voters were actually allowed to choose from.
13:40
Long before the polls opened,
13:41
the Kremlin had narrowed that field.
13:44
Most openly anti-war candidates were excluded.
13:46
Opposition politicians were imprisoned or forced abroad,
13:49
and a massive state media campaign
13:52
ensured that the Kremlin's message dominated the political environment.
13:56
By the time the 3 day vote began,
13:58
Russia's only registered party openly opposing the war,
14:01
that would be Yabloko,
14:03
had already been removed from the nationwide ballot.
14:06
Russia's Supreme Court barred that party last month.
14:09
A limited number of its candidates could still compete individually,
14:12
but none
14:13
won a seat in the national parliament.
14:15
A senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia
14:17
Eurasia Center summarized the result bluntly.
14:20
She said the government conducted the campaign and vote
14:23
the way it wanted
14:24
with the most optimal output.
14:27
So what about the other parties besides Putin's United Russia
14:31
that did actually win seats?
14:33
Do any of them represent a serious challenge to Putin's agenda?
14:37
Well,
14:38
that would be a fairly resounding
14:40
yet.
14:41
The Communist Party is projected to receive 40 seats.
14:44
It occasionally
14:45
criticizes domestic government policy,
14:47
but it has carefully avoided challenging Putin,
14:50
and they support the war in Ukraine.
14:52
The ultra nationalist Liberal Democratic Party is projected to take 25 seats
14:57
now.
14:57
Despite its name,
14:58
it is not a liberal counterweight to the Kremlin.
15:01
They also strongly support the war.
15:04
The New People Party is projected to receive 20 seats.
15:07
The party presents itself as a
15:09
younger,
15:09
more technocratic,
15:10
and somewhat more moderate party,
15:12
but it has joined United Russia on major parliamentary votes
15:16
and stopped well short of becoming a genuine anti-war opposition force.
15:21
A handful of additional seats are projected to go to unaffiliated candidates
15:25
running in individual constituency races.
15:29
So Russians will not see an organized parliamentary bloc willing or able
15:32
to challenge Putin over the war,
15:34
even if one existed.
15:36
United Russia's constitutional majority
15:38
means that the ruling party would not need its votes.
15:42
Then there are the questions swirling in Western
15:44
capitals surrounding how the election itself was conducted.
15:47
Electronic voting was encouraged.
15:49
Some of you may have seen the clips on social media
15:52
of Putin casting his ballot online,
15:55
but despite the theatrics of showing how easy voting supposedly is there,
15:59
the system makes the process less transparent
16:02
and easier,
16:03
of course,
16:03
for the Kremlin to control.
16:06
All right.
16:06
Coming up in the back of the brief,
16:08
the US and China discuss a new mechanism for warning
16:11
each other when an AI incident threatens national security.
16:15
Hm,
16:15
you have to wonder if the mechanism will involve a human.
16:18
All right,
16:18
more on that when we come back.
16:22
Hey,
16:22
Mike Baker here with a tip on maintaining good health.
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Hey,
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Mike Baker here.
17:51
Now let me take just a moment
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to talk about good health and taking care of yourself.
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In today's back of the brief,
19:23
if you think back to the Cold War,
19:25
one of the enduring images
19:27
is that red phone sitting on the president's desk
19:29
connecting Washington and Moscow,
19:31
the emergency line
19:33
that American and Soviet leaders could use to
19:35
keep a crisis from spiraling into nuclear war.
19:38
That was the image that Hollywood made famous.
19:41
The real hotline worked differently,
19:43
but the idea behind it was simple.
19:46
When two nuclear superpowers were staring each other down.
19:49
There needed to be some way to quickly say,
19:51
here's what's happening,
19:52
here's what we intended,
19:53
don't misread this.
19:55
More than 60 years later,
19:57
Washington and Beijing are now talking about building
19:59
something similar for a very different threat.
20:03
And that would be artificial intelligence.
20:05
Treasury Secretary Scott Besson says the US and China
20:08
have agreed to establish a formal dialogue on AI safety
20:12
that would include what he calls an
20:14
incident line.
20:16
The idea is to give the two governments a direct
20:18
way to communicate if an AI incident threatens national security,
20:22
and you can imagine why that might become necessary.
20:26
American and Chinese security experts have
20:28
been studying scenarios involving autonomous AI systems
20:31
interfering with military networks,
20:33
launching cyber operations,
20:35
or
20:35
behaving in ways their operators did not expect or intend.
20:40
Imagine a major cyber attack suddenly hits
20:42
an American military network or critical infrastructure.
20:45
Perhaps Washington believes it came from China,
20:48
but Beijing says it never ordered the attack.
20:51
Maybe an autonomous system exceeded its instructions.
20:54
Maybe somebody lost control of it.
20:56
Maybe a third party compromised the system
20:58
and tried to make the attack look Chinese.
21:01
In that situation,
21:02
both governments could make decisions very quickly
21:05
without knowing exactly what's happened.
21:08
Thus,
21:08
the AI hotline concept.
21:11
One side may some day need to tell the other,
21:13
Look,
21:13
we see the attack.
21:14
We didn't authorize it.
21:15
We're trying to stop it.
21:16
Please don't retaliate.
21:18
Besset says officials are already discussing
21:20
risks involving uncontrollable AI agents,
21:23
cyber threats,
21:24
and rogue actors,
21:25
with another round of talks expected in China
21:27
in roughly 2 months.
21:29
Of course,
21:30
having a hotline and actually using it are two very different things.
21:34
Washington and Beijing already have military communications channels,
21:38
and those have not always worked particularly well
21:41
during moments of tension.
21:43
But still,
21:43
the logic,
21:44
the concept is familiar.
21:46
During the Cold War,
21:47
it was missiles and bombers and nuclear armed submarines.
21:51
Now
21:52
it's the threat of rogue AI agents.
21:55
Now the threat may have changed,
21:56
but the need for a fail-safe system hasn't.
21:59
A mechanism to allow for immediate communication.
22:02
Just don't let the AI systems know about it.
22:05
And that,
22:06
my friends,
22:06
is the President's Daily Brief for Tuesday,
22:08
the 22nd of September.
22:10
If you have any questions or comments,
22:12
please reach out to me at PDB@thefirstv.com.
22:16
And just in case you're jonesing for an ad-free PDB,
22:19
well,
22:19
no worries.
22:20
Just become a premium member
22:21
of the President's Daily Brief
22:23
by visiting PDBpremium.com.
22:26
I'm Mike Baker and I'll be back later today with the PDB
22:29
afternoon bulletin.
22:30
Until then,
22:31
stay informed,
22:32
stay safe,
22:34
stay cool.