Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said on Thursday that Iran will not negotiate under “intimidation” as he held crunch talks with the UN nuclear chief weeks before US President-elect Donald Trump takes office.

International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Rafael Grossi said achieving “results” in nuclear talks with Iran was vital to avoid a new conflict in the region already inflamed by Israel’s operations against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon.

His visit comes just days after Israeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said Iran was “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities” giving Israel “the opportunity to achieve our most important goal”.

Grossi said Iranian nuclear installations “should not be attacked” but Trump is expected to give Israel a far freer rein after he takes office in January. The IAEA chief described his meeting with Araghchi as “indispensable” in a post on X.

Araghchi was Iran’s chief negotiator in talks that led to a landmark 2015 nuclear deal with major powers, abandoned three years later by Trump.

Araghchi posted that their meeting was “important & straightforward”. He said Iran was “willing to negotiate” based on the “national interest” and “inalienable rights,” but was not “ready to negotiate under pressure and intimidation”.

“We agreed to proceed with courage and goodwill. Iran has never left the negotiation table on its peaceful nuclear programme,” he said. Grossi also met the head of Iran’s atomic energy organisation, Mohammad Eslami.

Eslami told a joint news conference that Iran would take “immediate countermeasures” against any sanctions from the IAEA’s board of governors. “Any interventionist resolution in the nuclear affairs of the Islamic Republic of Iran will definitely be met with immediate countermeasures,” Eslami said.

Grossi’s visit is his second to Tehran this year but his first since Trump’s re-election.

During his first term in the White House from 2017 to 2021, Trump adopted a policy called “maximum pressure” which reimposed sweeping US economic sanctions that had been lifted under the 2015 deal.

Search for solutions

In response, Iran started to gradually roll back its commitments under the deal, which barred it from enriching uranium to above 3.65 per cent.

The IAEA says Iran has significantly expanded its stocks of uranium enriched to 60pc, a level that has triggered international alarm as it is much closer to the 90pc level needed for a nuclear warhead.

Iran has blamed the incoming US president for the standoff. “The one who left the agreement was not Iran, it was America,” government spokeswoman Fatemeh Mohajerani said on Wednesday. “Mr Trump once tried the path of maximum pressure and saw that this path did not work.”

Trump’s looming return to the White House in January has only added to international fears of an all-out conflict between Israel and Iran after the archfoes exchanged unprecedented direct attacks earlier this year.

“The margins for manoeuvre are beginning to shrink,” Grossi warned in an interview with AFP on Tuesday, adding that “it is imperative to find ways to reach diplomatic solutions”.

President-elect Donald Trump returned to the White House on Wednesday for the first time since winning last week’s election and sat down for talks about the looming transfer of power with longtime political rival President Joe Biden.

“Welcome, welcome back,” Biden told Trump at the start of their meeting in front of a roaring fireplace.

He promised Trump a smooth transition of power and to do all he could “to make sure you’re accommodated.”

“It’ll be as smooth as it can get,” Trump said.

It was a sharp contrast to the criticism the two men have hurled at each other for years. Their respective teams hold vastly different positions on policies from climate change to Russia to trade.

Biden, 81, has portrayed Trump as a threat to democracy, while Trump, 78, has portrayed Biden as incompetent. Trump made false claims of widespread fraud after losing the 2020 election to Biden.

Trump’s motorcade rolled through the heavily guarded White House gate and the former and future Republican president was greeted in the Oval Office by Biden, a Democrat who defeated him in the 2020 election.

Outside on the White House driveway, a massive crowd of journalists gathered in anticipation of the big event.

Trump celebrated his victory earlier in the day with Republicans in the House of Representatives who have a good chance of maintaining control of the chamber as Nov. 5 election results trickle in.

“Isn’t it nice to win? It’s nice to win. It’s always nice to win,” Trump said. “The House did very well.”

Biden, who initially ran against Trump in the 2024 election before stepping aside and endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee, will welcome the former and future president into the Oval Office, a traditional courtesy by outgoing presidents that Trump, a Republican, did not extend when Biden won in 2020.

“He believes in the norms, he believes in our institution, he believes in the peaceful transfer of power,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said of Biden’s decision to invite Trump. She spoke at a briefing for reporters on Tuesday.

Outside the White House gates, signs of the impending power transfer were evident with construction already under way for the stands for VIP guests to sit during the parade that will take place after Trump is inaugurated on Jan. 20.

Although Biden intends to use the meeting to show continuity, the transition itself is partially stalled.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has outlined a number of promises to “Make America Healthy Again” under President-elect Donald Trump, vowing to combat an “epidemic” of chronic diseases that he has described as an “existential” threat to America’s future.

All are under the banner of fighting what Kennedy sees as a common thread behind a broad swath of ailments: that Americans have been “mass poisoned by big pharma and big food,” and that federal agencies have failed to stop it. In response, he has also floated a number of specific policy ideas to remake the federal government’s public health institutions. 

“[Trump] asked me to end the chronic disease epidemic in this country. And he said, I want to see results, measurable results in the diminishment of chronic disease within two years. And I said, Mr. President, I will do that,” Kennedy said on Nov. 2. 

Authority for a MAHA agenda

Kennedy’s allies say Trump’s election is also a mandate for their platform of health proposals, which they say delivered key votes for the president-elect. Trump has promised to let Kennedy “go wild” on health issues.

“The American people re-elected President Trump by resounding margins because they trust his judgement and support his policies, including his promise to Make America Healthy Again alongside well-respected leaders like RFK Jr.,” Karoline Leavitt, Trump-Vance Transition spokeswoman, told CBS News in a statement.

Some ideas in Kennedy’s wide-ranging platform have evolved since his original longshot presidential campaign. He has acknowledged Trump does not agree with him on every policy.

The president-elect has listed oil and gas as one off-limits issue for Kennedy. In the past, Kennedy has been critical of “big oil” and natural gas, over the fatal toll of fossil fuel pollution and climate change.

Several of Kennedy’s ideas would require presidential or congressional action to implement, though it is possible that they could be supercharged by emergency powers.

“I’m going to urge President Trump on day one to do the same thing they did in COVID, which is to declare a national emergency, but not for infectious disease, but for chronic disease,” Kennedy said on Sept. 26.

Staff changes at federal agencies

Kennedy claims a number of health issues have worsened due to federal inaction, including autism, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, sleep disorders, infertility rates, diabetes and obesity.

He aims to address that by replacing many staff throughout the agencies, which Kennedy has accused of being too sympathetic to large food and drug companies. As a co-chair of Trump’s transition, Kennedy has been vetting a slate of staffers who could fill top positions throughout the Trump administration. 

Kennedy has said Trump tasked him with returning agencies “to their rich tradition of gold-standard, evidence-based science.” He has also said “medical expertise” is not the priority for all staff picks.

“What we don’t really need at HHS is more medical expertise. What we need is an expertise on decoupling the agency from institutional corruption. Because it’s the corruption that has distorted the science,” Kennedy said on Sept. 30. 

Kennedy has said he hopes “to have every nutritional scientist” across the Department of Health and Human Services and U.S. Department of Agriculture “fired on Day One.”

Kennedy himself has been floated to head the Department of Health and Human Services, though some allies say he could be more effective in a “czar” type role out of the White House.

“Get the chemicals out” of food

When talking about his platform, Kennedy often lampoons products like McDonald’s French fries or Fruit Loops cereal as examples of how foods sold in the U.S. are made with ingredients that are banned or discouraged abroad, or have changed for the worse.

“It’s easy to fix. We have a thousand ingredients in our foods that are illegal in Italy and other countries in Europe,” he said on Oct. 29.

Trump agrees with his plans to “get the chemicals out” of America’s food supply, Kennedy says, which also includes upending the use of common pesticides and herbicides by American farmers.

Kennedy has described the food in the U.S. as “just poison,” citing his own anecdotal experience with his son struggling with eczema while eating pasta in the U.S. 

“When he ate any kind of pasta in this country, he would get these terrible, terrible outbreaks, you know, really agonizing. And he moved to Italy and he lived off of pasta for a year and a half and he never got a case,” Kennedy said on Sept. 19.

Kennedy suspects that was caused by glyphosate, used in Roundup brand weed-killers, which Italy moved to start restricting in 2016. Italy’s decision was over worries that it could pose a cancer risk, and some advocacy groups in the U.S. have also voiced similar concerns.

Agricultural trade associations have defended glyphosate as “one of the safest, most effective” tools farmers have to manage weeds and support “important conservation practices.”

Kennedy’s plea to crack down on food additives and chemicals comes as the FDA is in the middle of launching its own new effort — and is calling on Congress to step up funding for — scrutinizing chemicals currently allowed in foods.

Food industry groups have generally voiced support for the FDA to step up its vetting of chemicals in food, in hopes that it “negates the ill advised and disruptive state by state patchwork” of legislatures drawing up their own restrictions.

Reducing unhealthy and processed foods in federal programs

Kennedy has also promised to “get processed food out of school lunch immediately” and voiced frustration over the amount of federal food assistance for low-income Americans that goes towards sugary drinks and processed food.

One way Kennedy could try to get at this issue is through the federal dietary guidelines process, jointly run by the USDA and HHS, which is in the final stages of crafting the next edition of recommendations that influence a broad range of government nutrition programs. 

“Kids shouldn’t be eating grains. They should definitely not be eating seed oils. And they for sure should not be eating sugar. And yet that is what we’re forcing them to eat,” he said on Sept. 26. 

On seed oils, Kennedy has claimed that the switch away from oils like beef tallow which were high in saturated fats in favor of vegetable oils was a mistake, and is to blame for a rise in obesity rates. That puts him at odds with longstanding recommendations to limit saturated fats.

“The guidance around this has been reviewed many times since, and has only become stronger in its conclusion for the role of saturated fat, particularly in its relationship with higher risks of cardiovascular disease,” Deirdre Tobias, a researcher on this year’s Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, said last month. 

Grains have been more divisive at this year’s committee and the broader scientific community, which has debated setting lower limits to overall grain consumption alongside recommendations to switch from refined to whole grains. 

Setting new limits is difficult, scientists on the panel have said, because the only source of some key nutrients for many Americans is cereals and breads fortified with vitamins.

Kennedy has also been critical of the panel of outside researchers put together to create the scientific report underpinning the recommendations, but acknowledges broader changes will also be needed to move the needle.

While Kennedy says he personally would “never eat anything in a package” as a rule of thumb, he acknowledges “most people don’t have access to the resources I have.”

“We need to start forcing these companies to internalize their costs. So the illusion of cheap food goes away, right? Because if you’re drinking Coke and it seems cheap and it gives you diabetes over the long run, that’s not very cheap,” he said on Sept. 30.

Curbing the influence of drugmakers

Kennedy has called for a “review” of guidelines that govern advertising by pharmaceutical companies.

The FDA currently regulates advertising about prescription drugs, going after drugmakers that misrepresent their products. Responsibility for some other medical products is shared between the FDA and the Federal Trade Commission. 

Kennedy has urged Trump to go further, saying he is advising the president-elect to “ban pharmaceutical advertising on TV” over concerns that it is influencing news coverage of health issues. 

He has also urged reform of the Prescription Drug User Fee Act, which charges pharmaceutical companies millions of dollars for the cost of the FDA vetting their applications to decide whether to approve new drugs.

“We need to end the corruption. 50% of FDA’s budget comes not from the taxpayer, but from the pharmaceutical industry,” he said on Sept. 26.

Kennedy has not said how Congress or the Trump administration would make up the difference from the fees if they were cut, which amount to around $3 billion out of FDA’s budget.

Undoing the fees could leave taxpayers effectively subsidizing a hefty bill previously paid for by drugmakers — or a return to the significant delays for new medications that initially spurred the creation of the fees.

Promoting alternatives to drugs

Kennedy has accused the FDA of waging a “war on public health” which he says includes “aggressive suppression” of anything “that advances human health and can’t be patented by Pharma.”

In his view, that includes treatments like psychedelics, which recently fell short of FDA approval, and foods like raw milk, which officials have stepped up warnings against amid this year’s unprecedented bird flu outbreak on dairy farms. 

Kennedy has also praised the dietary supplement industry for a court win against the FDA, after the agency tried to take action against what it said was an illegally marketed anti-aging drug.

Also on Kennedy’s list are things like “clean foods” and exercise, which he wants to allow Medicare and Medicaid to cover. 

The promise has echoes of the “food is medicine” initiative, which has called for the health care system to offer more financial support for healthier lifestyle habits.

“If a doctor’s patient has diabetes or obesity, the doctor ought to be able to say, I’m going to recommend gym membership, and I’m going to recommend, good food and Medicaid ought to be able to finance those things the same as they would Ozempic,” Kennedy said on Sept. 30.

Kennedy has also promised to promote healthier lifestyles in other ways, ranging from requiring nutrition classes in federally funded medical schools to reviving the presidential fitness test in schools.

“Informed choices” on vaccines

Kennedy has a long record criticizing the safety of vaccines, including recent misleading claims that shots have an “exemption from pre-licensing safety testing” before they are approved. 

In fact, the FDA requires new vaccines be studied for their safety and efficacy in large trials, results of which are published in peer-reviewed journals and publicly disclosed.

His activism on the issue dates back decades, including a now-retracted article he published in Rolling Stone in 2005 claiming a link between autism and an ingredient called thimerosal that had been used in vaccines before 2001 — which medical research has disproven. His focus has broadened since then. 

“This doesn’t mean vaccines is the only cause of autism. Our kids today are swimming around in a toxic soup coming mainly from their foods that operate along the same biological pathways. But some of it’s coming from pharmaceutical drugs,” Kennedy said on Sept. 19.

Kennedy has insisted that is not “anti-vaccine” and would not seek to ban them under Trump, instead saying he wants to “restore the transparency” around them — echoing lawsuits by the group he chaired, Children’s Health Defense, over its Freedom of Information Act requests.

“[Trump] doesn’t want me to take vaccines away from people. If you want to take a vaccine, you ought to be able to take it. We believe in free choice in this country. You ought to know the risks and benefits of everything you take,” Kennedy said on Nov. 2. 

But Kennedy has also asserted “there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective,” and encouraged people to “resist” CDC guidelines on vaccines for kids — raising concern among public health officials, who point to the success of vaccination in saving millions of children worldwide from debilitating illness or premature death from preventable diseases.

Opposing water fluoridation

Ahead of the election, Kennedy said one of Trump’s first acts in the White House would be to “advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water.” 

While a number of health risks have been tied to higher levels of fluoride, most are extremely rare in the U.S. and involve far greater exposure than what is added to drinking water.

Fluoride has been incorporated into a majority of U.S. water systems for decades. The American Dental Association estimates that the practice has reduced tooth decay by about 25%, though some research suggests modern use of toothpaste with fluoride has reduced the policy’s benefits.

Kennedy’s announcement does come as the Environmental Protection Agency is now under a federal court order to take action over one specific risk: the concern that fluoride might lower children’s IQ “at dosages that are far too close to fluoride levels in the drinking water of the United States,” stemming in large part from a report published by the National Institutes of Health.

Beyond influencing what rule the Trump administration’s EPA ends up pursuing in response to the order, Kennedy could also take aim at fluoride through another route: changing the CDC’s widely-cited statement about the practice, which hails water fluoridation as one of the greatest “public health achievements of the 20th century.” 

Kennedy himself has described fluoride as “a poison” and praised the nonprofits for suing over the issue.

“The simple answer is I don’t like it,” Kennedy said on Sept. 30.

What Trump’s Cabinet picks signal so far

President-elect Donald Trump is expected to name Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida as his nominee for secretary of state, though the pick is not a done deal, two sources familiar with the talks tell CBS News. 

The expected nomination represents a long road from the time Trump and the Florida senator were rivals in the 2016 Republican primaries, when Trump referred to Rubio as “Little Marco” and Rubio made insinuations about Trump’s manhood in a presidential debate. The two have since repaired the relationship, and Rubio campaigned with the former president this year. 

The New York Times first reported that Trump appears to be settled on Rubio for the post. A spokesperson for Rubio did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

GOP Sen. Bill Hagerty of Tennessee has also been under consideration for secretary of state, a source with knowledge of the discussions previously told CBS News. 

Rubio, 53, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, is a China hawk with extensive foreign policy experience. Republicans will control the Senate in January, giving Rubio a likely easy path to confirmation, buoyed by his Republican colleagues. 

In Florida, the governor appoints a temporary replacement for open U.S. Senate seats, meaning Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would have the ability to select Rubio’s successor if the nomination goes through.

Trump has announced a slew of nominees and appointments since winning a second term last week, with more expected to come in the weeks ahead.

Fin Gómez

Fin Gómez is the political director for CBS News. Fin oversees the day-to-day political coverage for CBS News. He has covered five presidential political cycles and multiple presidential campaigns. He was formerly a member of the CBS White House unit.

With Republicans edging closer to gaining control of Congress, millions of Americans may be at risk of losing enhanced subsidies that currently underwrite the cost of health insurance bought through the Affordable Care Act’s marketplaces, according to industry experts and the Congressional Budget Office. 

The November 5 election gave control of the Senate to Republicans, while control of the House remains in limbo Monday as votes in several critical races continue to be tallied. Currently, Democrats are projected to win at least 210 House seats and Republicans 215 seats, with a party needing 218 seats in order to have the majority. 

If Republicans gain control of Congress, they are widely expected to allow the enhanced ACA subsidies to expire at the end of 2025, depriving many people who buy coverage through the ACA and who currently receive these subsidies of that financial assistance, according to health care policy experts.

So-called enhanced Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies, which lower the cost of health plans for millions of Americans and were passed under the Biden administration, will expire unless lawmakers renew them. During his first term in office, President-elect Donald Trump backed efforts by Republican lawmakers to repeal the ACA, but hasn’t yet revealed his plans for the program, commonly known as Obamacare, for his second term in office.

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said at a campaign stop last week just before the Nov. 5 election that “the ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we’ve got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”

Who is eligible for enhanced ACA subsidies?

Americans with incomes over 400% of poverty — those who make just above four times the poverty level, or $103,280 for a family of four — are eligible for the enhanced ACA insurance subsidies. They also increase financial help for those who were already eligible for assistance under the ACA.

KFF, an independent health policy nonprofit, estimates the subsidies have cut premiums for eligible enrollees by 44%, or $705 annually. The organization says that if the tax credit expires, average premiums for subsidized enrollees in 12 states would at least double.

In 2024, of the 21.6 million Americans who purchased health insurance plans from ACA marketplaces, 20.1 million received enhanced subsidies, according to the CBO. 

People most at risk of losing ACA coverage if the enhanced subsidies lapse are those who live in states where health insurance premiums are particularly high, including in rural parts of the U.S. Middle-income households that depend on the enhanced subsidies could see a sharp rise in premiums, Cynthia Cox, vice president and ACA policy researcher at KFF, told CBS MoneyWatch. 

“They could go from paying no more than 8.5% of their income to easily paying 20% or more,” she said. “I imagine a lot of those folks would drop coverage.”

Without enhances subsidies, many middle income ACA Marketplace enrollees with incomes just above four times poverty would be priced out of health insurance coverage, according to Cox. 

Subsidies remain for 2025

Louise Norris, a health policy analyst at healthinsurance.org, noted that 93% of people who buy health insurance through ACA marketplaces receive enhanced subsidies. A sharp increase in their premiums would lead many to drop their coverage, leaving them uninsured, she said.

The CBO estimates that 22.8 million total Americans will enroll in ACA marketplace health insurance plans in 2025. The agency expects enrollment to drop sharply, from 22.8 million to 18.9 million, in 2026 if the subsidies are not renewed. By 2030, enrollment could dip to 15.4 million people without the enhanced subsidies. 

For now, the subsidy enhancements will remain in place through the end of 2025.

“If people are signing up now during open enrollment, their coverage will take effect in January, and it will cover them for the whole year. Their premiums won’t change — they’re good for 2025,” Norris said.

The enhanced subsidies, which were first passed in 2021 as part of the American Rescue Plan Act, will have been in place for roughly five years when they expire in 2025, or about half as long as the ACA marketplace has existed, Cox said. 

Enrollment in ACA plans has roughly doubled since the enhance subsidies have been in place, she noted, with most of that growth coming from low-income enrollees. “That’s one group you might expect to see, if they have to start making a higher premium payments, would drop their coverage,” she said. 

Making the enhanced subsidies permanent would cost $335 billion over 10 years, according to the CBO. 

The Kremlin has denied reports that claimed the US President-elect Donald Trump has spoken with Russian President Vladimir Putin where the American leader reportedly urged Putin to not escalate the war in Ukraine.

Casting the media reports as “pure fiction”, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on Monday said Putin has no specific plans to speak to Trump at the present.

“This is completely untrue. This is pure fiction, it’s just false information. There was no conversation,” Peskov told reporters.

“This is the most obvious example of the quality of the information that is being published now, sometimes even in fairly reputable publications,” Peskov said.

Asked if Putin had plans for any contacts with Trump, Peskov said: “There are no concrete plans yet.”

The Washington Post first reported that Trump held the call from his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida on Thursday, just days after his stunning election victory over Democratic rival Kamala Harris.

The Post, quoting several people familiar with the call who spoke on the basis of anonymity, reported that Trump reminded Putin of the US military’s sizeable presence in Europe. They said he also expressed an interest in further conversations to discuss “the resolution of Ukraine’s war soon”.

Reuters news agency also said the call took place, citing sources who were not authorised to reveal their identities to the media.

Steven Cheung, Trump’s communications director, did not confirm the exchange, telling the AFP news agency in a written statement that “we do not comment on private calls between President Trump and other world leaders.”

Meanwhile, authorities in Ukraine on Monday issued a countrywide alert and introduced preventative power blackouts across several cities over threats of a new large-scale Russian attack.

“Attention! Missile danger throughout Ukraine! MiG-31K takeoff,” Ukraine’s air force said in a post on Telegram. “The air alert is related to the launch of cruise missiles from Tu-95MS strategic bombers,” it added.

Capital Kyiv’s military administration ordered an emergency blackout for the city, saying the power outages were due to imminent missile attacks. Ukrainian media reported similar orders for Mykolaiv, Cherkasy, Sumy, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad, and Kharkiv.

Social media footage showed large numbers of people gathering in the city’s metro stations, which have served as bomb shelters since the start of Russia’s war on Ukraine in February 2022.

However, by 06:30 GMT, the missiles had not arrived. According to some Ukrainian military bloggers, the Russian bombers performed flights imitating the launch of missiles.

Monday’s air alerts wailed after Russian air attacks killed at least six people in southern Ukraine, and a day after Moscow and Kyiv launched record overnight drone attacks on each other.

Five people were killed in the southern city of Mykolaiv, according to the regional governor. About 300km (186 miles) to the east in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine’s state emergency services agency said Russia carried out three air attacks that killed another man, wounded more than a dozen people and damaged multiple buildings.

Trump’s election is set to have a major bearing on the almost three-year Ukraine conflict, as he insists on a quick end to the fighting and casts doubt on Washington’s multi-billion-dollar support for Kyiv.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky spoke with Trump on Wednesday, with the Republican’s billionaire backer Elon Musk also notably joining them on the call.

The outgoing Democratic administration of President Joe Biden has confirmed that it will send as much aid as possible to Ukraine before Trump’s inauguration on January 20.

On Sunday, Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the White House aims “to put Ukraine in the strongest possible position on the battlefield so that it is ultimately in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table”. This would include using the remaining available $6bn of funding for Ukraine, Sullivan said.

While Trump has not gone into detail on how he plans to end the conflict, his incoming Vice President JD Vance has offered a rough vision.

“What it probably looks like is the current line of demarcation between Russia and Ukraine, that becomes like a demilitarised zone,” Vance said on the Shawn Ryan Show podcast in September.