Chinese President Xi Jinping is expected to make stronger, more-nationalistic demands of President Trump at their upcoming meeting, expected to be held on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in South Korea beginning on Oct. 31. National Security Correspondent Bill Gertz offers a deep dive featuring an exclusive interview with Frank Miller, a former Defense Intelligence Agency specialist on China.

Mr. Miller, who spent time inside China as a military attache, says Mr. Trump should not try to force the Chinese Communist Party chief on issues such as trade, tariffs and Taiwan, noting that Mr. Xi is “in a position now where he’s got the best military any Chinese leader has ever had.”

But the former DIA officer assesses that China can be deterred from attacking Taiwan and says Mr. Trump could convince the Chinese leader there is still time to seek peaceful solutions. Mr. Trump is constrained, however, by the mistakes of previous administrations — particularly the Obama administration’s failure in 2012 to confront China in the Spratly Islands. The lack of U.S. pressure opened an island-building campaign that led to Chinese military bases on several islands in the South China Sea that are now being used to promote Beijing’s sovereignty assertion over 90% of the strategic waterway.

Moscow is helping fuel a wave of illegal migrants trying to gain entry to the European Union as part of a campaign to undermine EU leaders and distract Ukraine’s NATO allies, say intelligence officials and analysts following Europe’s growing immigration crisis.

From high above the Arctic Circle south to the Sahara, Russia has engaged in operations designed to inundate Europe with asylum-seekers from third-party countries. Washington Times special correspondent Joseph Hammond offers a deeper look at the situation. He also presents an exclusive video examining how EU nations are responding to sticky immigration politics.

The video explains how several EU governments are trying to deport asylum seekers and have them processed in third countries or to send them back to where they came from. A “one-in-one-out deal” between France and the United Kingdom focuses on people attempting to cross the English Channel in small boats. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has a deal with Albania in which Albanian authorities would process tens of thousands of illegal migrants on behalf of the Italian government.

Reporters won’t need military officials’ formal approval before they are permitted to publish articles, according to a revised Pentagon memorandum circulated this week, significantly walking back what had been a slate of proposed restrictions on journalists that had triggered media freedom concerns.

Tuesday’s memorandum softens language from an earlier version that would have required journalists covering the Pentagon to sign a pledge acknowledging that they won’t use any information that hasn’t been formally cleared for release.

The revised version says journalists aren’t required to submit their writings to the Defense Department before approval. And the Pentagon will begin issuing new identification cards that will have “PRESS” prominently imprinted on them in red ink to assist in identifying members of the press within the Pentagon.

Clifford D. May writes in an op-ed in The Times that “the terrorists in the tunnels under Gaza City may be asking themselves: ‘Should we release the hostages we kidnapped from Israel and have been torturing for the past two years? If we do, under Trump’s plan, the Israelis will guarantee us safe passage to a country of our choosing. That would be a nice break.’”

Mr. May, opinion contributor to Threat Status, is the founder and president of the nonprofit Foundation for Defense of Democracies. He writes that Hamas members may be thinking: “‘If we don’t release the hostages, Trump will let the Israelis hunt us down. We’ll die as martyrs. Isn’t that our religious obligation? And don’t we want to be celebrated by Islamist revolutionaries and their leftist buddies around the world?’

“Whatever happens,” writes Mr. May, “President Trump deserves praise for his 20-point plan. Most significantly, he managed to get the backing of the Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians and even the Turks and Qataris, the last two long-standing and fervent Hamas supporters.”

The sun is rising again over “The Land of the Rising Sun,” Donald Kirk writes in an op-ed in The Times. “The impending elevation of 64-year-old Sanae Takaichi to the leader of Japan signals a rightward shift in a society that is increasingly restive under the constraints of 80 years of peace enforced by a constitution that outlaws going to war again.

“It’s not that Ms. Takaichi is about to become the first female prime minister in an irredeemably male chauvinist society that’s so novel,” writes Mr. Kirk, a former Far East correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and the now-defunct Washington Star. “Rather, politically, professionally and socially, the deeper significance of her election as president of the long-ruling, corrupt and divided Liberal Democratic Party, to be followed by her election as prime minister by the parliament, or Diet, is that she will be the most hawkish figure to rule Japan since the war.”

• Oct. 9 — How Promoting Freedom in North Korea Makes America Safer and Stronger, Hudson Institute

• Oct. 9 — Countering the Axis of Aggressors with Retired Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster and Retired Gen. Laura Richardson, Foundation for Defense of Democracies

• Oct. 13-15 — AUSA 2025 Annual Meeting & Exposition in Washington, Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA)

• Oct. 21-22 — Missile Defense Agency Small Business Conference, Tennessee Valley Chapter of the National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA)

• Oct. 22 — Europe’s Energy Transition: From Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine to Trump’s ‘Energy Dominance’ Agenda, Brookings Institution