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  • Venezuela opposition leader Machado says she ‘presented’ her Nobel Peace Prize to Trump

    WASHINGTON — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said Thursday that she “presented” her Nobel Peace Prize medal to President Trump during a private meeting at the White House, but he has not changed his view that she does not have the support to lead her country.

    Machado, who won the prize last year for her work to promote democracy in Venezuela, said she presented the 18-carat gold medal to Trump as a “recognition of his unique commitment to our freedom.” It is unclear whether the president, who has been fixated on getting the prize in recent year, accepted it. The Nobel Peace Center has maintained the award cannot be transferred.

    The gesture was made on the day the two leaders met for the first time at the White House. The highly anticipated get-together came as the United States has allowed top deputies of deposed president Nicolás Maduro’s regime to remain in charge as Trump oversees the transition of power.

    White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that Trump went into the meeting without any expectations, other than to have a “frank and positive discussion about what’s taking place in Venezuela.”

    Leavitt added that Trump continues to assert that Machado does not have the “support” or “respect” to lead Venezuela, an assessment he first made on the day of Maduro’s capture to the surprise of many Venezuelans.

    “At this moment in time, his opinion on that matter has not changed,” Leavitt said at a news briefing.

    While Leavitt described Machado as a “remarkable and brave voice for many of the people in Venezuela,” she also said the United States had found an “extremely cooperative” partner in Maduro’s handpicked vice president, Delcy Rodríguez, who is serving as acting president of Venezuela.

    “They have met all of the demands and requests of the United States and the president,” Leavitt said, noting that the Venezuelan government already agreed to release political prisoners and reached a $100-billion deal to rebuild Venezuela’s energy sector.

    As Machado left the White House, the scope of the discussions between her and the president remained unclear. She did not take questions from the reporters, but a few of them were able to capture a moment on video when she was greeted by supporters outside the White House. She told them: “Know that we can count on President Trump for Venezuela’s freedom.”

    She then left to meet with a bipartisan group of U.S. senators on Capitol Hill. It was after this meeting that Machado told reporters she had presented the medal to the president.

    Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) was one of 14 senators who met with Machado. After the meeting Scott said Machado was “very appreciative of the U.S. military” capturing Maduro and was pushing for “free and fair elections and free press.”

    “We have got to continue to understand that Delcy Rodriguez is not the leader, she was never elected as a president, she is still the leader of drug cartels,” Scott said. “We need to make sure we hold her accountable.”

    It appears unlikely that much will change for Machado after meeting with Trump, who largely has sidelined her and Edmundo González Urrutia, the opposition candidate who won the 2024 presidential election that was stolen by Maduro.

    Days after Maduro was captured, Machado told CBS News the people of Venezuela had “already chosen” González Urrutia as the rightful leader of the country and that they were “ready and willing to serve our people, as we have been mandated.”

    Trump, however, has maintained that before elections can take place in Venezuela, the United States needs to “fix” the country.

    Asked if the president was committed to holding elections in Venezuela, Leavitt said Trump hopes to see “elections in Venezuela one day” but did not have a timeline for them yet.

    Trump says he is happy with his administration’s working relationship with Rodríguez. At a White House event Wednesday, Trump called Rodríguez a “terrific person.”

    The praise came after Trump said he had a “very good call” with her that morning that left him feeling hopeful that the United States and Venezuela could have a “spectacular” working relationship.

    Rodriguez, in turn, used her first state of the union address Thursday to promote oil industry reforms that would drawn in foreign investment, which is in line with the Trump administration’s goals. She also criticized the Washington officials and said there was a “stain on our relations” but said she was open to strengthening the relationship.

    “Let us not be afraid of diplomacy,” with the U.S., Rodriguez said in Venezuela.

    Ana Ceballos

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  • How cocaine and corruption led to the indictment of Maduro

    A newly unsealed U.S. Justice Department indictment accuses captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of running a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by an extensive drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S. with thousands of tons of cocaine.The arrest of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a stunning military operation early Saturday in Venezuela sets the stage for a major test for U.S. prosecutors as they seek to secure a conviction in a New York courtroom against the longtime leader of the oil-rich South American nation.Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on X that Maduro and Flores “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”Here’s a look at the accusations against Maduro and the charges he faces:Drug and weapons chargesMaduro is charged alongside his wife, his son and three others. Maduro is indicted on four counts: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.Maduro is facing the same charges as in an earlier indictment brought against him in Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency. The new indictment unsealed Saturday, which adds charges against Flores, was filed under seal in the Southern District of New York just before Christmas.Maduro is due to make his first appearance Monday in federal court in Manhattan. A video posted Saturday night on social media by a White House account showed Maduro, smiling, as he was escorted through a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in New York by two federal agents grasping his arms. He was expected to be detained while awaiting trial at a federal jail in Brooklyn.’Cocaine-fueled corruption’ flourishedThe indictment accuses Maduro of partnering with “some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world” to allow for the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S.Authorities allege powerful and violent drug-trafficking organizations, such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Tren de Aragua gang, worked directly with the Venezuelan government and then sent profits to high-ranking officials who helped and protected them in exchange.But a U.S. intelligence assessment published in April, which drew on input from the 18 agencies that comprise the intelligence community, found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government.Maduro allowed “cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit, for the benefit of members of his ruling regime, and for the benefit of his family members,” the indictment alleges.U.S. authorities allege that Maduro and his family “provided law enforcement cover and logistical support” to cartels moving drugs throughout the region, resulting in as much as 250 tons of cocaine trafficked through Venezuela annually by 2020, according to the indictment.Drugs were moved on go-fast vessels, fishing boats and container ships or on planes from clandestine airstrips, the indictment says.”This cycle of narcotics-based corruption lines the pockets of Venezuelan officials and their families while also benefiting violent narco-terrorists who operate with impunity on Venezuelan soil and who help produce, protect, and transport tons of cocaine to the United States,” the indictment says.Successive U.S. administrations have warned about Venezuela’s role as a transit point for cocaine and a haven for criminal gangs, terrorist groups and drug-smuggling leftist rebels from neighboring Colombia. While reliable data is hard to ascertain, the vast majority of cocaine departs South America from Colombia and Ecuador, making its way northward through the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.Allegations of kidnappings and murders orderedThe U.S. accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders “against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation.” That includes the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas, according to the indictment.Maduro’s wife is also accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between “a large-scale drug trafficker” and the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office. In a corrupt deal, the drug trafficker then agreed to pay a monthly bribe to the director of the anti-drug office as well as about $100,000 for each cocaine-carrying flight “to ensure the flight’s safe passage.” Some of that money then went to Maduro’s wife, the indictment says.Nephews of Maduro’s wife were heard during recorded meetings with confidential U.S. government sources in 2015 agreeing to send “multi-hundred-kilogram cocaine shipments” from Maduro’s “presidential hanger” at a Venezuelan airport. The nephews during the recorded meetings explained “that they were at ‘war’ with the United States,” the indictment alleges. They were both sentenced in 2017 to 18 years in prison for conspiring to send tons of cocaine into the U.S. before being released in 2022 as part of a prisoner swap in exchange for seven imprisoned Americans.Rubio calls operation a ‘law enforcement function’During a news conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cast the military raid that captured Maduro and his wife as an action carried out on behalf of the Department of Justice. Caine said the operation was made “at the request of the Justice Department.”Rubio, as he responded to a question about whether Congress had been notified, said the U.S. raid to get the couple was “basically a law enforcement function,” adding that it was an instance in which the “Department of War supported the Department of Justice.” He called Maduro “a fugitive of American justice with a $50 million reward” over his head.

    A newly unsealed U.S. Justice Department indictment accuses captured Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro of running a “corrupt, illegitimate government” fueled by an extensive drug-trafficking operation that flooded the U.S. with thousands of tons of cocaine.

    The arrest of Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, in a stunning military operation early Saturday in Venezuela sets the stage for a major test for U.S. prosecutors as they seek to secure a conviction in a New York courtroom against the longtime leader of the oil-rich South American nation.

    Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a post on X that Maduro and Flores “will soon face the full wrath of American justice on American soil in American courts.”

    Here’s a look at the accusations against Maduro and the charges he faces:

    Drug and weapons charges

    Maduro is charged alongside his wife, his son and three others. Maduro is indicted on four counts: narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy, possession of machine guns and destructive devices and conspiracy to possess machine guns and destructive devices.

    Maduro is facing the same charges as in an earlier indictment brought against him in Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency. The new indictment unsealed Saturday, which adds charges against Flores, was filed under seal in the Southern District of New York just before Christmas.

    Maduro is due to make his first appearance Monday in federal court in Manhattan. A video posted Saturday night on social media by a White House account showed Maduro, smiling, as he was escorted through a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration office in New York by two federal agents grasping his arms. He was expected to be detained while awaiting trial at a federal jail in Brooklyn.

    ‘Cocaine-fueled corruption’ flourished

    The indictment accuses Maduro of partnering with “some of the most violent and prolific drug traffickers and narco-terrorists in the world” to allow for the shipment of thousands of tons of cocaine into the U.S.

    Authorities allege powerful and violent drug-trafficking organizations, such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Tren de Aragua gang, worked directly with the Venezuelan government and then sent profits to high-ranking officials who helped and protected them in exchange.

    But a U.S. intelligence assessment published in April, which drew on input from the 18 agencies that comprise the intelligence community, found no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government.

    Maduro allowed “cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit, for the benefit of members of his ruling regime, and for the benefit of his family members,” the indictment alleges.

    U.S. authorities allege that Maduro and his family “provided law enforcement cover and logistical support” to cartels moving drugs throughout the region, resulting in as much as 250 tons of cocaine trafficked through Venezuela annually by 2020, according to the indictment.

    Drugs were moved on go-fast vessels, fishing boats and container ships or on planes from clandestine airstrips, the indictment says.

    “This cycle of narcotics-based corruption lines the pockets of Venezuelan officials and their families while also benefiting violent narco-terrorists who operate with impunity on Venezuelan soil and who help produce, protect, and transport tons of cocaine to the United States,” the indictment says.

    Successive U.S. administrations have warned about Venezuela’s role as a transit point for cocaine and a haven for criminal gangs, terrorist groups and drug-smuggling leftist rebels from neighboring Colombia. While reliable data is hard to ascertain, the vast majority of cocaine departs South America from Colombia and Ecuador, making its way northward through the eastern Pacific Ocean, not the Caribbean.

    Allegations of kidnappings and murders ordered

    The U.S. accuses Maduro and his wife of ordering kidnappings, beatings and murders “against those who owed them drug money or otherwise undermined their drug trafficking operation.” That includes the killing of a local drug boss in Caracas, according to the indictment.

    Maduro’s wife is also accused of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in 2007 to arrange a meeting between “a large-scale drug trafficker” and the director of Venezuela’s National Anti-Drug Office. In a corrupt deal, the drug trafficker then agreed to pay a monthly bribe to the director of the anti-drug office as well as about $100,000 for each cocaine-carrying flight “to ensure the flight’s safe passage.” Some of that money then went to Maduro’s wife, the indictment says.

    Nephews of Maduro’s wife were heard during recorded meetings with confidential U.S. government sources in 2015 agreeing to send “multi-hundred-kilogram cocaine shipments” from Maduro’s “presidential hanger” at a Venezuelan airport. The nephews during the recorded meetings explained “that they were at ‘war’ with the United States,” the indictment alleges. They were both sentenced in 2017 to 18 years in prison for conspiring to send tons of cocaine into the U.S. before being released in 2022 as part of a prisoner swap in exchange for seven imprisoned Americans.

    Rubio calls operation a ‘law enforcement function’

    During a news conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, cast the military raid that captured Maduro and his wife as an action carried out on behalf of the Department of Justice. Caine said the operation was made “at the request of the Justice Department.”

    Rubio, as he responded to a question about whether Congress had been notified, said the U.S. raid to get the couple was “basically a law enforcement function,” adding that it was an instance in which the “Department of War supported the Department of Justice.” He called Maduro “a fugitive of American justice with a $50 million reward” over his head.

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  • Zelensky works yet again to break Putin’s hold on Trump

    WASHINGTON — Standing alongside President Trump at his Palm Beach estate, Volodymyr Zelensky could only smirk and grimace without overtly offending his host. “Russia wants to see Ukraine succeed,” Trump told reporters, shocking the Ukrainian president before claiming that Vladimir Putin is genuine in his desire for peace.

    It was just the latest example of the American president sympathizing with Moscow in its war of conquest in Europe. Yet Zelensky emerged from the meeting Sunday ensuring once again that Ukraine may fight another day, maintaining critical if uneasy support from Washington.

    Few signs of progress toward a peace agreement materialized from the meeting at Mar-a-Lago, where Zelensky traveled with significant compromises — including a plan to put territorial concessions to Russia before the Ukrainian people for a vote — in order to appease the U.S. president.

    But Zelensky won concessions of his own from Trump, who had for weeks been pushing for a ceasefire by Christmas, or else threatening to cut off Ukraine from U.S. intelligence that would leave Kyiv blind on the battlefield. “I don’t have deadlines,” Trump said Sunday.

    Over the course of Trump’s first year in office, Zelensky and other European leaders have repeatedly worked to convince Trump that Russia’s President Putin is, in fact, an aggressor opposed to peace, responsible for an unprovoked invasion that launched the deadliest conflict in Europe since the Second World War.

    Each time, Trump has come around, even going as far over the summer as to question whether Ukraine could win back the territories it has lost on the battlefield to Russia — and vowing to North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies, “we’re with them all the way.”

    Yet, each time, Trump has changed course within a matter of days or weeks, reverting to an embrace of Putin and Russia’s worldview, including a proposal that Ukraine preemptively cede sovereign territories that Russia has sought but failed to occupy by force.

    Zelensky’s willingness to offer concessions in his latest meeting with Trump has, at least temporarily, “managed to keep President Trump from tilting further towards the Russian position,” said Kyle Balzer, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “But Trump’s position — his repeated insistence that a deal is necessary now because time is not on Ukraine’s side — continues to favor Putin’s line and negotiating tactics.”

    U.S. intelligence agencies have assessed that Putin’s revanchist war aims — to conquer all of Ukraine and, beyond, to reclaim parts of Europe that once were part of the Soviet empire — remain unchanged.

    Yet Trump’s director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, whose own sympathies toward Russia have been scrutinized for years, recently dismissed the assessments as products of “deep state” “warmongers” within the intelligence community.

    On Monday, hours after speaking with Trump, Putin ordered the Russian military to push toward Zaporizhzhia, a city of 700,000 before the war began. The city lies far outside the Donbas region that Moscow claims would satisfy its war aims in a negotiated settlement.

    “Trump’s instincts are to favor Putin and Russia,” said Brian Taylor, director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University. “Ukraine and its European partners still hope to convince Trump of the obvious fact that Putin is not interested in a deal that doesn’t amount to a Ukrainian surrender.

    “If Trump was convinced of Putin’s intransigence, he might further tighten sanctions on Russia and provide more assistance to Ukraine to try to pressure Putin into a deal,” Taylor added. “It’s an uphill battle, one might even say Sisyphean, but Zelensky and European leaders have to keep trying. So far, nearly a year into Trump’s second term, it’s been worth it.”

    On Monday, Moscow claims that Ukraine orchestrated a massive drone attack targeting Putin’s residence that would force it to reconsider its stance in negotiations. Kyiv denied an attack took place.

    “Given the final degeneration of the criminal Kyiv regime, which has switched to a policy of state terrorism, Russia’s negotiating position will be revised,” Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister since 2004, said in a Telegram post.

    Another senior Russian official said the reported attack shocked and infuriated Trump. But Zelensky, responding on social media, said that Russia was “at it again, using dangerous statements to undermine all achievements of our shared diplomatic efforts with President Trump’s team.”

    “We keep working together to bring peace closer,” Zelensky said. “This alleged ‘residence strike’ story is a complete fabrication intended to justify additional attacks against Ukraine, including Kyiv, as well as Russia’s own refusal to take necessary steps to end the war.”

    “Ukraine does not take steps that can undermine diplomacy. To the contrary, Russia always takes such steps,” he added. “It is critical that the world doesn’t stay silent now. We cannot allow Russia to undermine the work on achieving a lasting peace.”

    Frederick Kagan, director of the Critical Threats Project, which collaborates with the Institute for the Study of War to produce daily battlefield assessments on the conflict, said that the meeting did not appear to fundamentally shift Trump’s position on the conflict — a potential win for Kyiv in and of itself, he said.

    “U.S.-Ukraine negotiations appear to be continuing as before, which is positive, since those negotiations seem to be getting into the real details of what would be required for a meaningful set of security guarantees and long-term agreements to ensure that any peace settlement will be enduring,” Kagan said.

    Gaps still remain between Kyiv and the Trump administration in negotiations over security guarantees. While Trump has offered a 15-year agreement, Ukraine is seeking guarantees for 50 years, Zelensky said Monday.

    “As Trump continues to say, there’s no deal until there’s a deal,” Kagan added. “We’ll have to see how things go.”

    Michael Wilner

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  • Orlando Dreamers make Orlando pitch at MLB Winter Meetings

    The Orlando Dreamers group, which has spent years pushing for MLB expansion or relocation to the region, is using the high-profile gathering to continue its pitch.The meetings, which conclude Thursday, bring together team executives, owners and league officials from across baseball.The group shared on social media that its representatives were on site this week, including Hall of Famer Barry Larkin, who serves as a partner and ambassador for the Dreamers.“Since they were in our backyard, we thought it would be a good idea to get our information out there,” Larkin told WESH 2 News.Larkin said he spent the past several days meeting with team owners, fans and MLB executives, stressing that Orlando is prepared should the league decide to expand or relocate a franchise. He added that many around baseball are noting how seriously Orlando is positioning itself.“I wasn’t really surprised by how many people didn’t realize Orlando was a true player in all of this,” he said. “It’ll be interesting now to see what cities are a potential for expansion or relocation.”Larkin said the group’s financing model could also set Orlando apart.“Another thing about this that’s very unique is that there’s financing in place, where an ownership group will not be encumbered with providing financing for a stadium,” he said.Earlier this year, the Dreamers attempted to pursue ownership of the Tampa Bay Rays before the franchise was sold to a Jacksonville-based group. Larkin said the Dreamers have continued to make progress behind the scenes as they wait for the right opportunity.“There’s only so many things that we can control,” he said. “And what we can control, I think we’ve done a pretty good job of pushing that forward.”Dreamers co-founder Kim Schnorf said conversations at the winter meetings reinforced the group’s belief that it’s now a matter of when — not if — the league is ready to move forward with expansion.For now, the group says it will continue its push as MLB weighs its next steps.

    ORLANDO, Fla. —

    The Orlando Dreamers group, which has spent years pushing for MLB expansion or relocation to the region, is using the high-profile gathering to continue its pitch.

    The meetings, which conclude Thursday, bring together team executives, owners and league officials from across baseball.

    The group shared on social media that its representatives were on site this week, including Hall of Famer Barry Larkin, who serves as a partner and ambassador for the Dreamers.

    “Since they were in our backyard, we thought it would be a good idea to get our information out there,” Larkin told WESH 2 News.

    Larkin said he spent the past several days meeting with team owners, fans and MLB executives, stressing that Orlando is prepared should the league decide to expand or relocate a franchise. He added that many around baseball are noting how seriously Orlando is positioning itself.

    “I wasn’t really surprised by how many people didn’t realize Orlando was a true player in all of this,” he said. “It’ll be interesting now to see what cities are a potential for expansion or relocation.”

    Larkin said the group’s financing model could also set Orlando apart.

    “Another thing about this that’s very unique is that there’s financing in place, where an ownership group will not be encumbered with providing financing for a stadium,” he said.

    Earlier this year, the Dreamers attempted to pursue ownership of the Tampa Bay Rays before the franchise was sold to a Jacksonville-based group. Larkin said the Dreamers have continued to make progress behind the scenes as they wait for the right opportunity.

    “There’s only so many things that we can control,” he said. “And what we can control, I think we’ve done a pretty good job of pushing that forward.”

    Dreamers co-founder Kim Schnorf said conversations at the winter meetings reinforced the group’s belief that it’s now a matter of when — not if — the league is ready to move forward with expansion.

    For now, the group says it will continue its push as MLB weighs its next steps.

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  • Portland Street Response Team Hosting Town Hall Tuesday – KXL

    PORTLAND, Ore. — A town hall is being hosted by the Portland Street Response Team Tuesday, November 18 from 6-7:30 p.m. at the East Portland Community Center on SE 106th Ave.  It’s designed to be attended in person or online here.

    The City of Portland calls the Portland Response Team an important resource.  They say there will be time for the community to ask questions and provide perspectives.

    More about:

    Brett Reckamp

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  • U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visits DMZ ahead of security talks with South Korean officials

    U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas on Monday as he began a two-day visit to ally South Korea for security talks.Hegseth and South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back received a briefing from military officials at Observation Post Ouellette, a site near the military demarcation line that past U.S. presidents, including Donald Trump during his first term in 2019, had visited to peer across the border into North Korea and meet with American soldiers.Hegseth and Ahn also visited the Panmunjom border village, where an armistice was signed to pause the 1950-53 Korean War. Ahn’s ministry said the visit “reaffirmed the firm combined defense posture and close coordination” between the allies.Hegseth did not mention North Korea, which has ignored Washington and Seoul’s calls for dialogue in recent years while accelerating the expansion of its nuclear weapons and missile programs.South Korea’s military also said Monday that the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Jin Yong-sung and his U.S. counterpart, Gen. Dan Caine, oversaw a combined formation flight aboard South Korean and U.S. F-16 fighter jets above a major U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek.The flight, conducted for the first time, was intended to demonstrate the allies’ “ironclad combined defense posture” and the “unwavering” strength of the alliance, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said.Hegseth and Ahn, who previously met on Saturday at a defense ministers’ meeting in Malaysia, will attend the allies’ annual defense talks in Seoul on Tuesday.The talks are expected to cover key alliance issues, including South Korea’s commitment to increase defense spending and the implementation of a previous agreement to transfer wartime operational control of allied forces to a binational command led by a South Korean general with a U.S. deputy.There are also concerns in Seoul that the Trump administration may demand much higher South Korean payments for the U.S. military presence in the country or possibly downsize America’s military footprint to focus more on China.Hegseth’s visit comes days after Trump traveled to South Korea for meetings with world leaders, including South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju.During his meeting with Trump on Wednesday last week, Lee reaffirmed South Korea’s commitment to increase defense spending to reduce the financial burden on America and also called for U.S. support in South Korean efforts to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.Trump later said on social media that the United States will share closely held technology to allow South Korea to build a nuclear-powered submarine, and that the vessel will be built in the Philly Shipyard, which was bought last year by South Korea’s Hanwha Group. The leaders also advanced trade talks, addressing details of $350 billion in U.S. investments South Korea committed to in an effort to avoid the Trump administration’s highest tariffs.

    U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited the Demilitarized Zone separating the two Koreas on Monday as he began a two-day visit to ally South Korea for security talks.

    Hegseth and South Korean Defense Minister Ahn Gyu-back received a briefing from military officials at Observation Post Ouellette, a site near the military demarcation line that past U.S. presidents, including Donald Trump during his first term in 2019, had visited to peer across the border into North Korea and meet with American soldiers.

    Hegseth and Ahn also visited the Panmunjom border village, where an armistice was signed to pause the 1950-53 Korean War. Ahn’s ministry said the visit “reaffirmed the firm combined defense posture and close coordination” between the allies.

    Hegseth did not mention North Korea, which has ignored Washington and Seoul’s calls for dialogue in recent years while accelerating the expansion of its nuclear weapons and missile programs.

    South Korea’s military also said Monday that the country’s Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Jin Yong-sung and his U.S. counterpart, Gen. Dan Caine, oversaw a combined formation flight aboard South Korean and U.S. F-16 fighter jets above a major U.S. military base in Pyeongtaek.

    The flight, conducted for the first time, was intended to demonstrate the allies’ “ironclad combined defense posture” and the “unwavering” strength of the alliance, Seoul’s Defense Ministry said.

    Hegseth and Ahn, who previously met on Saturday at a defense ministers’ meeting in Malaysia, will attend the allies’ annual defense talks in Seoul on Tuesday.

    The talks are expected to cover key alliance issues, including South Korea’s commitment to increase defense spending and the implementation of a previous agreement to transfer wartime operational control of allied forces to a binational command led by a South Korean general with a U.S. deputy.

    There are also concerns in Seoul that the Trump administration may demand much higher South Korean payments for the U.S. military presence in the country or possibly downsize America’s military footprint to focus more on China.

    Hegseth’s visit comes days after Trump traveled to South Korea for meetings with world leaders, including South Korean President Lee Jae Myung and Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the sidelines of this year’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Gyeongju.

    During his meeting with Trump on Wednesday last week, Lee reaffirmed South Korea’s commitment to increase defense spending to reduce the financial burden on America and also called for U.S. support in South Korean efforts to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

    Trump later said on social media that the United States will share closely held technology to allow South Korea to build a nuclear-powered submarine, and that the vessel will be built in the Philly Shipyard, which was bought last year by South Korea’s Hanwha Group. The leaders also advanced trade talks, addressing details of $350 billion in U.S. investments South Korea committed to in an effort to avoid the Trump administration’s highest tariffs.

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  • News Analysis: Trade deal or trade truce? Questions remain as Trump meets with China’s Xi

    WASHINGTON — President Trump faces the most important international meeting of his second term so far on Thursday: face-to-face negotiations with Xi Jinping, who has made China a formidable economic and military challenger to the United States.

    The two presidents face a vast agenda during their meeting in Seoul, beginning with the two countries’ escalating trade war over tariffs and high-tech exports. The list also includes U.S. demands for a Chinese crackdown on fentanyl, China’s aid to Russia in its war with Ukraine, the future of Taiwan and China’s growing nuclear arsenal.

    Trump has already promised, characteristically, that the meeting will be a major success.

    “It’s going to be fantastic for both countries, and it’s going to be fantastic for the entire world,” he said last week.

    But it isn’t yet clear that the summit’s concrete results will measure up to that high standard.

    Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Sunday that the two sides have agreed to a “framework” under which China would delay implementing tight controls on rare earth elements, minerals crucial for the production of high-tech products from smartphones and electric vehicles to military aircraft and missiles. He said China has also agreed to resume buying soybeans from U.S. farmers and to crack down on fentanyl components.

    In return, Bessent said, the United States will back down from its stinging tariffs on Chinese goods.

    Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador in Beijing under then-President Biden, said that kind of deal would amount to “an uneasy trade truce rather than a comprehensive trade deal.”

    “That may be the best we can expect,” he said in an interview Monday. Still, he added, “it will be a positive step to stabilize world markets and allow the continuation of U.S.-China trade for the time being.”

    But U.S. and Chinese officials have been close-mouthed on what, if anything, has been agreed on regarding Xi’s other big trade demand: easier U.S. restrictions on high-tech exports to China, especially advanced semiconductor chips used for artificial intelligence.

    Burns said the two superpowers’ technology competition is “the most sensitive … in terms of where this relationship will head, which country will emerge more powerful.”

    Giving China easy access to advanced semiconductors “would only help [the Chinese army] in its competition with the U.S. military for power in the Indo-Pacific,” he warned.

    Other former officials and China hawks outside the administration have said, even more pointedly, that they worry that Trump may be too willing to trade long-term technology assets for short-term trade deals.

    In August, Trump eased export controls to allow Nvidia, the world leader in AI chips, to sell more semiconductors to China — in an unusual deal under which the U.S. company would pay 15% of its revenue from the sales to the U.S. Treasury.

    Matthew Pottinger, Trump’s top China advisor in his first term, protested in a recent podcast interview that the deal risked trading a strategic technology advantage “for $20 billion and Nvidia’s bottom line.”

    Underlying the controversy over technology, some China watchers warn, is a basic mismatch between the two presidents: Trump is focused almost entirely on trade and commercial deals, while Xi is focused on displacing the United States as the biggest economic and military power in Asia.

    “I don’t think the administration has a strategy toward China,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund of the United States. “It has a trade strategy, not a China strategy.”

    “The administration does not seem to be focused on competition with China,” said Jonathan Czin, a former CIA analyst now at Washington’s Brookings Institution. “It’s focused on deal making. … It’s tactics without strategy.”

    “We’ve fallen into a kind of trade and technology myopia,” he added. “We’re not talking about issues like China’s coercion [of smaller countries] in the South China Sea. … China doesn’t want to have that bigger, broader conversation.”

    It isn’t clear that Trump and Xi will have either the time or inclination to talk in detail about anything other than trade.

    And even on the front-burner economic issues, this week’s ceasefire is unlikely to produce a permanent peace.

    “As with all such agreements, the devil will be in the details,” Burns, the former ambassador, said. “The two countries will remain fierce trade rivals. Expect friction ahead and further trade duels well into 2026.”

    “Buckle up,” Czin said. “There are likely more sudden moves from Beijing ahead.”

    In the long run, Trump’s legacy in U.S.-China relations will rest not only on trade deals but on the larger competition for economic and military power in the Pacific Rim. No matter how this week’s meetings go, those challenges still lie ahead.

    Doyle McManus

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  • Former professor sues Auburn employees over firing tied to post on Charlie Kirk’s death

    A former educator at Auburn University and the University of Alabama is suing several school leaders over her firing, which she says occurred due to a statement she made on social media regarding the assassination of conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.Candice Hale, formerly a lecturer in Auburn’s College of Liberal Arts, argues her comments about Kirk’s death were constitutionally protected speech on matters of public concern and that the university’s decision to fire her was a violation of her First Amendment rights.”Such retaliation cuts to the heart of democratic principles, where open discourse and the free exchange of ideas are essential to the preservation of liberty and justice,” the complaint reads.The statement that allegedly led to Hale’s firing was posted to Facebook on Sept. 11, the day after Kirk was killed.On Sept. 17, Auburn University released a statement announcing the termination of employees who had made “social media posts that were hurtful, insensitive and completely at odds with Auburn’s values of respect, integrity and responsibility in violation of our Code of Conduct.”While Kirk’s death was not mentioned in the statement, U.S. Senator and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville attributed the move to comments about the assassination.”Thank you, @AuburnU, for taking action and FIRING these sick people who mocked the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” Tuberville posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Wednesday. “They have NO PLACE in our state’s public education system.”That same day, Hale alleges that she was asked to join an online meeting with Scott Forehand, Director of Compliance, Investigations, and Security at Auburn University, and Chris Hardman, a Behavioral Threat Assessment Coordinator.Hale says she was asked several questions regarding her post, including:”How students who were in the University’s Turning Point USA chapter would feel about her comments.””How she would interact with white male students if they identified themselves with Kirk’s views.””If she had access to firearms or had any intent to harm anyone in the Turning Point USA chapter at Auburn.”Hale said that, following the meeting, Forehand and Hardman found her not to be a threat to the safety of those on campus.However, two days later, Hale was requested for another meeting, this time with Tami Poe, Senior Manager of Human Resources in the Dean’s Office, and Jason Hicks, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Ahead of the meeting, Hale was told that she was being placed on paid leave and would not be allowed to contact her students. On Sept. 22, Hale alleges she was told by Poe that she could not have legal counsel during the meeting. Hale joined the second online meeting the next day and was told they planned to fire her and offered her a severance agreement.Poe, Hicks, Forehand, Hardman and Auburn President Christopher Roberts are all named in the suit, which seeks both monetary compensation and job reinstatement, along with measures to prevent future retaliation.Hale said she is also pursuing legal action against leadership at the University of Alabama, where she was employed in an adjunct position and allegedly fired for her comments on Kirk’s death as well.”Both institutions have tried to silence my voice,” she said in a Facebook post Thursday. “I reject these efforts. I remain steadfast in defending my right to speak truth to power and to challenge white supremacy, misogyny, and injustice — especially within academic spaces.”

    A former educator at Auburn University and the University of Alabama is suing several school leaders over her firing, which she says occurred due to a statement she made on social media regarding the assassination of conservative activist and Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk.

    Candice Hale, formerly a lecturer in Auburn’s College of Liberal Arts, argues her comments about Kirk’s death were constitutionally protected speech on matters of public concern and that the university’s decision to fire her was a violation of her First Amendment rights.

    “Such retaliation cuts to the heart of democratic principles, where open discourse and the free exchange of ideas are essential to the preservation of liberty and justice,” the complaint reads.

    The statement that allegedly led to Hale’s firing was posted to Facebook on Sept. 11, the day after Kirk was killed.

    On Sept. 17, Auburn University released a statement announcing the termination of employees who had made “social media posts that were hurtful, insensitive and completely at odds with Auburn’s values of respect, integrity and responsibility in violation of our Code of Conduct.”

    While Kirk’s death was not mentioned in the statement, U.S. Senator and former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville attributed the move to comments about the assassination.

    “Thank you, @AuburnU, for taking action and FIRING these sick people who mocked the assassination of Charlie Kirk,” Tuberville posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Wednesday. “They have NO PLACE in our state’s public education system.”

    That same day, Hale alleges that she was asked to join an online meeting with Scott Forehand, Director of Compliance, Investigations, and Security at Auburn University, and Chris Hardman, a Behavioral Threat Assessment Coordinator.

    Hale says she was asked several questions regarding her post, including:

    • “How students who were in the University’s Turning Point USA chapter would feel about her comments.”
    • “How she would interact with white male students if they identified themselves with Kirk’s views.”
    • “If she had access to firearms or had any intent to harm anyone in the Turning Point USA chapter at Auburn.”

    Hale said that, following the meeting, Forehand and Hardman found her not to be a threat to the safety of those on campus.

    However, two days later, Hale was requested for another meeting, this time with Tami Poe, Senior Manager of Human Resources in the Dean’s Office, and Jason Hicks, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts. Ahead of the meeting, Hale was told that she was being placed on paid leave and would not be allowed to contact her students.

    On Sept. 22, Hale alleges she was told by Poe that she could not have legal counsel during the meeting. Hale joined the second online meeting the next day and was told they planned to fire her and offered her a severance agreement.

    Poe, Hicks, Forehand, Hardman and Auburn President Christopher Roberts are all named in the suit, which seeks both monetary compensation and job reinstatement, along with measures to prevent future retaliation.

    Hale said she is also pursuing legal action against leadership at the University of Alabama, where she was employed in an adjunct position and allegedly fired for her comments on Kirk’s death as well.

    “Both institutions have tried to silence my voice,” she said in a Facebook post Thursday. “I reject these efforts. I remain steadfast in defending my right to speak truth to power and to challenge white supremacy, misogyny, and injustice — especially within academic spaces.”

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  • Trump and Hegseth declare an end to ‘politically correct’ leadership in the US military

    President Donald Trump revealed that he wants to use American cities as training grounds for the armed forces and joined Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Tuesday in declaring an end to “woke” culture before an unusual gathering of hundreds of top U.S. military officials who were abruptly summoned to Virginia from around the world.Hegseth announced new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness, while Trump bragged about U.S. nuclear capabilities and warned that “America is under invasion from within.”“After spending trillions of dollars defending the borders of foreign countries, with your help we’re defending the borders of our country,” Trump said.Hegseth had called military leaders to the Marine Corps base in Quantico, near Washington, without publicly revealing the reason until this morning. His address largely focused on his own long-used talking points that painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies, and he said military leaders should “do the honorable thing and resign” if they don’t like his new approach.Meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, but the gathering had fueled intense speculation about the summit’s purpose given the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it.Video below: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gives remarks in QuanticoAdmirals and generals from conflict zones in the Middle East and elsewhere were summoned for a lecture on race and gender in the military, underscoring the extent to which the country’s culture wars have emerged as a front-and-center agenda item for Hegseth’s Pentagon, even at a time of broad national security concerns across the globe.‘We will not be politically correct’Trump is used to boisterous crowds of supporters who laugh at his jokes and applaud his boasts during his speeches. But he wasn’t getting that kind of soundtrack from the generals and admirals in attendance.In keeping with the nonpartisan tradition of the armed services, the military leaders sat mostly stone-faced through Trump’s politicized remarks, a contrast from when rank-and-file soldiers cheered during Trump’s speech at Fort Bragg this summer.During his nearly hour-long speech, Hegseth said the U.S. military has promoted too many leaders for the wrong reasons based on race, gender quotas and “historic firsts.”“The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.That was echoed by Trump, who said “the purposes of America military is not to protect anyone’s feelings. It’s to protect our republic.″″We will not be politically correct when it comes to defending American freedom,” Trump said. “And we will be a fighting and winning machine.”Loosening disciplinary rulesHegseth said he is loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections, putting a heavy focus on removing many of the guardrails the military had put in place after numerous scandals and investigationsHe said he was ordering a review of “the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”The defense secretary called for “changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable, earnest, or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.”“People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career,” Hegseth said. “Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes.”Bullying and toxic leadership has been the suspected and confirmed cause behind numerous military suicides over the past several years, including the very dramatic suicide of Brandon Caserta, a young sailor who was bullied into killing himself in 2018.A Navy investigation found that Caserta’s supervisor’s “noted belligerence, vulgarity and brash leadership was likely a significant contributing factor in (the sailor)’s decision to end his own life.”Gender-neutral physical standardsHegseth used the platform to slam environmental policies and transgender troops while talking up his and Trump’s focus on “the warrior ethos” and “peace through strength.”Hegseth said the department has been told from previous administrations that “our diversity is our strength,” which he called an “insane fallacy.”“They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQE+ statements. They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they’re females is totally normal,” he said, adding the use of electric tanks and the COVID vaccine requirements to the list as mistaken policies.Hegseth said this is not about preventing women from serving.“But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender neutral,” he said. “If women can make it excellent, if not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result.”Hegseth’s speech came as the country faces a potential government shutdown this week and as Hegseth, who has hammered home a focus on lethality, has taken several unusual and unexplained actions, including ordering cuts to the number of general officers and firings of other top military leaders.Hegseth has championed the military’s role in securing the U.S.-Mexico border, deploying to American cities as part of Trump’s law enforcement surges, and carrying out strikes on boats in the Caribbean that the administration says targeted drug traffickers.

    QUANTICO, Va. —

    Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth summoned hundreds of U.S. military officials to an in-person meeting Tuesday to declare an end to “woke” culture in the military and announce new directives for troops that include “gender-neutral” or “male-level” standards for physical fitness.

    Hegseth and President Donald Trump had abruptly called military leaders from around the world to convene at the Marine Corps base in Quantico, near Washington, without publicly revealing the reason until this morning. Hegseth’s address largely focused on his own long-used talking points that painted a picture of a military that has been hamstrung by “woke” policies, and he said military leaders should “do the honorable thing and resign” if they don’t like his new approach.

    Meetings between top military brass and civilian leaders are nothing new, but the gathering had fueled intense speculation about the summit’s purpose given the haste with which it was called and the mystery surrounding it.

    Admirals and generals from conflict zones in the Middle East and elsewhere were summoned for a lecture on race and gender in the military, underscoring the extent to which the country’s culture wars have emerged as a front-and-center agenda item for Hegseth’s Pentagon, even at a time of broad national security concerns across the globe.

    Video below: Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gives remarks in Quantico

    During his nearly hour-long speech, Hegseth said the U.S. military has promoted too many leaders for the wrong reasons based on race, gender quotas and “historic firsts.”

    “The era of politically correct, overly sensitive don’t-hurt-anyone’s-feelings leadership ends right now at every level,” Hegseth said.

    He said he is loosening disciplinary rules and weakening hazing protections, putting a heavy focus on removing many of the guardrails the military had put in place after numerous scandals and investigations

    Hegseth said he was ordering a review of “the department’s definitions of so-called toxic leadership, bullying and hazing to empower leaders to enforce standards without fear of retribution or second guessing.”

    He called for “changes to the retention of adverse information on personnel records that will allow leaders with forgivable, earnest, or minor infractions to not be encumbered by those infractions in perpetuity.”

    “People make honest mistakes, and our mistakes should not define an entire career,” Hegseth said. “Otherwise, we only try not to make mistakes.”

    Bullying and toxic leadership has been the suspected and confirmed cause behind numerous military suicides over the past several years, including the very dramatic suicide of Brandon Caserta, a young sailor who was bullied into killing himself in 2018.

    A Navy investigation found that Caserta’s supervisor’s “noted belligerence, vulgarity and brash leadership was likely a significant contributing factor in (the sailor)’s decision to end his own life.”

    Hegseth used the platform to slam physical fitness and grooming standards, environmental policies and transgender troops while talking up his and Trump’s focus on “the warrior ethos” and “peace through strength.”

    Hegseth said the department has been told from previous administrations that “our diversity is our strength,” which he called an “insane fallacy.”

    “They had to put out dizzying DEI and LGBTQE+ statements. They were told females and males are the same thing, or that males who think they’re females is totally normal,” he said, adding the use of electric tanks and the COVID vaccine requirements to the list as mistaken policies.

    Hegseth said this is is not about preventing women from serving.

    “But when it comes to any job that requires physical power to perform in combat, those physical standards must be high and gender neutral,” he said. “If women can make it excellent, if not, it is what it is. If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it. That is not the intent, but it could be the result.”

    Hegseth’s speech came as the country faces a potential government shutdown this week and as Hegseth, who has hammered home a focus on lethality, has taken several unusual and unexplained actions, including ordering cuts to the number of general officers and firings of other top military leaders.

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  • Both sides dig in ahead of threatened government shutdown

    WASHINGTON — Washington is barreling toward a government shutdown Tuesday night, with few signs of an off-ramp as Democrats and Republicans dig in for a fight over government spending.

    Democratic leadership on Capitol Hill is insisting on an extension of Affordable Care Act tax credits as part of a package to fund the government. At least seven Democratic votes are needed in the Senate to pass a seven-week stopgap bill that cleared the House last week.

    But Republican lawmakers and the White House have dismissed the proposal, with senior officials in the Trump administration threatening to use unique legal authorities granted during a government shutdown to conduct yet more mass firings of federal workers.

    Bipartisan congressional leadership met with President Trump at the White House on Monday afternoon in a last-minute effort to avert the crisis. But neither side exited the meeting with expectations of a breakthrough. On the contrary, Republican leaders in the House told the GOP caucus to plan to return to work next week and said they would hold a news conference on Wednesday anticipating the government’s closure.

    “We are not going to support a partisan Republican spending bill that continues to gut the healthcare of everyday Americans, period, full stop,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Monday.

    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer talk to reporters outside the White House.

    (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

    Vice President JD Vance said he thought the country was “headed to a shutdown,” labeling Democratic calls for healthcare tax credits an “absurd” demand that amounts to an “excuse for shutting down the people’s government.”

    “You don’t use your policy disagreements as leverage to not pay our troops,” Vance said. “That’s exactly what they’re proposing out there.”

    When the government shuts down, the law requires all nonessential government services to cease, requiring most federal workers to go on furlough or work without pay. Essential services — such as national security functions and air traffic control — are not affected.

    Ahead of the meeting, Trump told reporters he hoped Democrats would agree to “keeping our country open,” before proceeding to criticize their proposals.

    “They’re going to have to do some things, because their ideas are not very good ones,” Trump said. “They’re very bad for our country. So we’ll see how that works out.”

    But Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he thought his message was beginning to resonate with the president after their meeting Monday afternoon.

    “We have very large differences, on healthcare, and on their ability to undo whatever budget we agree to, through rescissions and through impoundment,” Schumer said. “I think for the first time, the president heard our objections and heard why we needed a bipartisan bill. Their bill has not one iota of Democratic input. That is never how we’ve done this before.”

    “We’ve made to the president some proposals,” Schumer added. “Ultimately, he’s a decision-maker.”

    Schumer faced widespread ridicule from within his party in March after reversing course during the last showdown, choosing then to support the Trump administration’s continuing resolution to fund the government at the height of an aggressive purge of the federal workforce.

    At that point, Schumer feared a shutdown could accelerate the firings. But Schumer is now defiant, despite the renewed threat of layoffs, after the White House Office of Management and Budget circulated a memo last week directing federal agencies to relieve workers on discretionary projects that lose funding after Oct. 1.

    “This is an attempt at intimidation,” Schumer said in response to the memo. “Donald Trump has been firing federal workers since day one — not to govern, but to scare. This is nothing new and has nothing to do with funding the government.”

    Vice President JD Vance talks to reporters as House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune listen.

    Vice President JD Vance talks to reporters as House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune listen.

    (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

    Still, Schumer began gauging his caucus Monday afternoon on the prospects of a continuing resolution that would in effect delay a shutdown by a week, briefly extending government funding in order to continue negotiations.

    Betting markets had chances of a shutdown soaring above 70% by the end of the day on Monday.

    Speaking to Fox News on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the president’s position was “the reasonable and commonsense thing to do,” calling on Democrats to continue funding to the military and its veterans.

    “All we are asking for is a commonsense, clean funding resolution — a continuing resolution — to keep the government open,” Leavitt said. “This is a bill that keeps the government funded at the exact same levels as today, just adjusted for inflation.”

    “So there is zero good reason for the Democrats to vote against this,” she added. “The president is giving Democrat leadership one last chance to be reasonable.”

    But Jeffries dismissed Leavitt as “divorced from reality” in a podcast interview.

    “In what world will any rational American conclude, after we’ve been lectured throughout the year about this so-called mandate that the Republican Party has in this country, and their complete control of government in Washington, that because Democrats are unwilling to gut the healthcare of the American people as part of the Republican healthcare crisis, that it’s us shutting the government down?” Jeffries said.

    “Nobody’s buying that,” he continued, “outside of the parts of the MAGA base who basically, seemingly, will buy anything that Donald Trump has to peddle.”

    Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) said he would call a vote on funding the government Tuesday afternoon.

    “This is purely and simply hostage-taking,” Thune said Monday. Whether it passes or fails, he said, is “up to the Democrats.”

    Michael Wilner

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  • Jimmy Kimmel ‘Incredibly Pissed’ Like Never Before After ABC Meeting – And ‘Could Quit’! – Perez Hilton

    It doesn’t sound like Jimmy Kimmel is going to give in anytime soon!

    The late night host is furious over being pulled from the air “indefinitely.” He doesn’t believe his comments about MAGA exploiting Charlie Kirk‘s death were wrong — and reportedly refuses to apologize, not even to save his show.

    According to Puck News, Jimmy had a video call on Thursday with Rob Mills, head of late night at ABC, and Disney TV boss Dana Walden (reportedly the one who made the call to suspend him, along with Disney CEO Bob Iger). Not only was it not in person, he was calling in from his lawyer’s office — if you want to know how adversarial it was. Not surprisingly, they didn’t come to a deal. Might have something to do with ABC affiliate Sinclair demanding both an apology AND a hefty donation to Kirk’s business. A source told The New York Post he was also explicitly asked to back off on his Donald Trump criticism.

    Video: What Did Kimmel Actually Say?

    Well, that was a red line. Because the insider said afterward:

    “Jimmy is incredibly pissed, and he’s a guy who never gets angry.”

    No, we’ve only ever heard about what a nice and generous guy Kimmel is. So he must really believe he’s in the right. So… if neither side backs down, what happens?

    Surprisingly, the source actually thinks ABC and Disney will cave — but it may not be in time with how offended Jimmy is by the whole thing:

    “I think they will reinstate him, but Jimmy could quit.”

    Wow. What do YOU think will happen? What should Disney and ABC do??

    [Image via Starpress/WENN/Jimmy Kimmel Live/YouTube.]

    Perez Hilton

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  • RKF Jr.’s hand-picked committee changed its recommendations for key childhood shots

    A key committee of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention voted Thursday to alter its recommendation on an early childhood vaccine, after a discussion that at times pitted vaccine skeptics against the CDC’s own data.

    After an 8 to 3 vote with one abstention, the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices will no longer recommend that children under the age of 4 receive a single-shot vaccine for mumps, measles, rubella and varicella (better known as chicken pox).

    Instead, the CDC will recommend that children between the ages of 12 to 15 months receive two separate shots at the same time: one for mumps, measles and rubella (MMR) and one for varicella.

    The first vote of the committee’s two-day meeting represents a relatively small change to current immunization practices. The committee will vote Friday on proposed changes to childhood Hepatitis B and COVID vaccines.

    But doctors said the lack of expertise and vaccine skepticism on display during much of the discussion would only further dilute public trust in science and public health guidance.

    “I think the primary goal of this meeting has already happened, and that was to sow distrust and instill fear among parents and families,” said Dr. Sean O’Leary, chair of American Academy of Pediatrics’ Committee on Infectious Diseases, during a Zoom press conference Thursday.

    “What we saw today at the meeting was really not a good faith effort to craft immunization policy in the best interest of Americans. It was, frankly, an alarming attempt to undermine one of the most successful public health systems in the world,” O’Leary said. “This idea that our current vaccine policies are broken or need a radical overhaul is simply false.”

    Giving the MMR and chickenpox vaccines in the same shot has been associated with a higher relative risk of brief seizures from high fevers in the days after vaccination for children under 4 — eight children in 10,000 typically have febrile seizures after receiving the combination shot, compared with four out of 10,000 who receive separate MMR and chickenpox shots at the same time.

    Distressing as they are for family members to witness, seizures are a relatively common side effect for high fevers in young children and have not been associated with any long-term consequences, said Dr. Cody Meissner, a former pediatric infectious diseases chief at Tufts-New England Medical Center who is serving on ACIP for the second time (he previously served under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama).

    The problem with splitting vaccines into multiple shots is that it typically leads to lower vaccine compliance, Meissner said. And the risks of not vaccinating are real.

    “We are looking at a risk-benefit of febrile seizures … as compared to falling below a 95% coverage rate for herd immunity, and the consequences of that are devastating, with pregnant women losing their babies, newborns dying and having congenital rubella syndromes,” said Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist and another current ACIP member.

    Meissner, Hibbeln and Hilary Blackburn were the only three members to vote against the change.

    The meeting ended with a vote regarding continued coverage of the MMRV shot under the CDC’s Vaccines for Children Program, a publicly-funded service that provides immunizations to nearly half of the nation’s children. VFC currently only covers shots that ACIP recommends.

    As chair Martin Kulldorff called the vote, several committee members complained that they did not understand the proposal as it was written. Three abstained from the vote entirely.

    As the meeting broke up, members could be heard trying to clarify with one another what they had just voted for.

    The committee also spent several hours debating whether to delay the first dose of the Hepatitis B vaccine, a shot typically given at birth, until the child is one month old. They will vote on the proposal Friday.

    The medical reason for altering the Hepatitis B schedule was less clear.

    “What is the problem we’re addressing with the Hepatitis B discussion? As far as I know, there hasn’t been a spate of adverse outcomes,” said pediatrician Dr. Amy Middleman, one of several people to raise the point during the discussion and public comment period.

    Committee member Dr. Robert Malone replied that changing the recommendation for when children should get vaccinated for hepatitis B would improve Americans’ trust in public health messaging.

    “A significant population of the United States has significant concerns about vaccine policy and about vaccine mandates, [particularly] the immediate provision of this vaccine at the time of birth,” Malone said. “The signal that is prompting this is not one of safety, but one of trust.”

    Hepatitis B is often asymptomatic, and half of infected people don’t know they have it, according to the CDC. Up to 85% of babies born to infected mothers become infected themselves, and the risk of long-term hazards from the disease is higher the earlier the infection is acquired.

    Infants infected with the hepatitis B virus in the first year of life have a 90% chance of developing chronic disease, and 25% of those who do will die from it, according to the the American Academy of Pediatrics.

    Since the vaccine was introduced in 1991, infant hepatitis B infections have dropped by 95% in the U.S. Nearly 14,000 children acquired hepatitis B infections between 1990 and 2002, according to the CDC; today, new annual infections in children are close to zero.

    This week’s two-day meeting is the second time the committee has met since Kennedy fired all 17 previous ACIP members in June, in what he described as a “clean sweep [that] is necessary to reestablish public confidence in vaccine science.”

    The next day, he named seven new members to the committee, and added the last five earlier this week. The new members include doctors with relevant experience in pediatrics, immunology and public health, as well as several people who have been outspoken vaccine skeptics or been criticized for spreading medical misinformation.

    They include Vicky Pebsworth, a nurse who serves as research director for the National Vaccine Information Center, an organization with a long history of sharing inaccurate and misleading information about vaccines, and Malone, a vaccinologist who contributed to early mRNA research but has since made a number of false and discredited assertions about flu and COVID-19 shots.

    In some cases, the new ACIP members also lack medical or public health experience of any kind. Retsef Levi, for example, is a professor of operations management at MIT with no biomedical or clinical degree who has nonetheless been an outspoken critic of vaccines.

    “Appointing members of anti-vaccine groups to policy-setting committees at the CDC and FDA elevates them from the fringe to the mainstream. They are not just at the table, which would be bad enough; they are in charge,” said Seth Kalichman, a University of Connecticut psychologist who has studied NVIC’s role in spreading vaccine misinformation. “It’s a worst-case scenario.”

    Though ACIP holds three public meetings per year, it typically works year-round, said Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and a former ACIP member in the early 2000s.

    New recommendations to the vaccine schedule are typically written before ACIP meetings in consultation with expert working groups that advise committee members year-round, Offit said. But in August, medical groups including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics and Infectious Diseases Society of America were told they were no longer invited to review scientific evidence and advise the committee in advance of the meeting.

    That same month, Kennedy fired CDC director Dr. Susan Monarez — who had been appointed to the position by President Trump and confirmed by the Senate. This past Wednesday, Monarez told a Senate committee that Kennedy fired her in part because she refused to sign off on changes he planned to make to the vaccine schedule this month without seeing scientific evidence for them.

    She did not specify during the hearing what those changes would be.

    ACIP’s recommendations only become official after the CDC director approves them. With Monarez out, that responsibility now goes to Health and Human Services deputy secretary Jim O’Neill, who is serving as the CDC’s acting director.

    Asked by reporters on Wednesday whether the U.S. public should trust any changes ACIP recommends to the childhood immunization schedule, Sen. Bill Cassidy (Rep. – LA) was blunt: “No.”

    Cassidy chairs the Senate committee that oversees HHS, and cast the deciding vote for Kennedy’s nomination. Before running for office, Cassidy, a liver specialist, created a public-private partnership providing no-cost Hepatitis B vaccinations for 36,000 Louisiana children.

    He cast his vote after Kennedy privately pledged to Cassidy that he would maintain the CDC immunization schedule.

    As public trust in the integrity of CDC guidelines wobbles, alternative sources for information have stepped up. Earlier this year, the American Academy of Pediatrics announced that it would publish its own evidence-based vaccination schedule that differs from the CDC’s on flu and COVID shots. And on Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law giving California the power to establish its own immunization schedule, the same day the state partnered with Oregon and Washington to issue joint recommendations for COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccines.

    On Tuesday, an association representing many U.S. health insurers announced that its members would continue to cover all vaccines recommended by the previous ACIP — regardless of what happened at Thursday’s meeting — through the end of 2026.

    “While health plans continue to operate in an environment shaped by federal and state laws, as well as program and customer requirements, the evidence-based approach to coverage of immunizations will remain consistent,” America’s Health Insurance Plans said in a statement. The group includes major insurers like Aetna, Humana, Kaiser Permanente, Cigna and several Blue groups. UnitedHealthcare, the nation’s largest insurer, is not a member.

    It’s unclear what will be covered after 2026.

    Corinne Purtill, Jenny Gold

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  • Sacramento parents, students protest replacement of teacher over carpet removal

    Nearly 100 parents and students gathered at Thursday’s Sacramento City Unified School District board meeting to protest the removal of Jeanine Rupert, a sixth-grade teacher at Phoebe A. Hearst Elementary School.The removal comes after an incident at the end of last school year, when Rupert and her students removed old carpeting from her classroom, which may have contained asbestos. “She was removed from the classroom without due process, without cause. And secretly!” James Frazee, a parent at the meeting, said. “This was done on a Friday before a three-day weekend, and told she can’t show up. And this is allegedly over pulling up carpet.”Parents and students spoke in support of Rupert, describing her as an incredible teacher and role model.”I think it’s a horrible loss for our school to lose her,” one student said.”Mrs. Rupert has been the leader. She’s been an absolute joy to the school,” a parent added. “She’s been somebody who’s constantly helping our students, not just in the classroom, but outside the classroom.”Another student expressed deep admiration for their teacher.”I personally think that Mrs. Rupert was just one of the most magical teachers, maybe in the history of the world,” they said.The district claims Rupert was removed after the carpet was taken out, but stated: “The District’s fact-gathering and investigation into the matter were just completed earlier this week. The determination was made that none of the asbestos tiles underneath the classroom carpet had been damaged when students were present. The removal of the carpet did not cause a disturbance that would cause exposure to asbestos.Nonetheless, now that the investigation is complete, District staff will begin the process of reaching out to individual families to reassure them of their student’s safety and provide any necessary support.”Rupert’s father attended the meeting, sharing that his daughter has been devastated by her removal. “She tried to get it replaced for five years, and she decided to take it on her own. She’s torn up. She’s given her life to Phoebe Hearst,” said Tim O’Brien, Rupert’s father.Many families are confused by the district’s handling of the situation. “It blows the mind to think that somebody would be removed for something like that. She has a track record of excellence in the classroom,” one parent said.”I can’t believe that she’s getting fired for one carpet. That doesn’t make any sense to me,” a student added.Community members organized quickly after the district changed Thursday night’s meeting time. Organizers were expected to give public comment at 6 p.m.”It was around 4 o’clock when it was supposed to be at 5,” one attendee said.”It was a complete lack of transparency because it was unclear when we were supposed to be able to come and speak,” another person at the meeting added.The district stated that Rupert was not fired and remains employed, but parents reported receiving an email from Principal Brooke Fahey indicating she has been replaced by another teacher set to start on Sept. 8. The district says, “Mrs. Rupert will be teaching at a different school this year.” KCRA posed multiple follow-up questions to the district regarding the situation, including where Rupert will be teaching, and has yet to hear back. See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

    SACRAMENTO, Calif. —

    Nearly 100 parents and students gathered at Thursday’s Sacramento City Unified School District board meeting to protest the removal of Jeanine Rupert, a sixth-grade teacher at Phoebe A. Hearst Elementary School.

    The removal comes after an incident at the end of last school year, when Rupert and her students removed old carpeting from her classroom, which may have contained asbestos.

    “She was removed from the classroom without due process, without cause. And secretly!” James Frazee, a parent at the meeting, said. “This was done on a Friday before a three-day weekend, and told she can’t show up. And this is allegedly over pulling up carpet.”

    Parents and students spoke in support of Rupert, describing her as an incredible teacher and role model.

    “I think it’s a horrible loss for our school to lose her,” one student said.

    “Mrs. Rupert has been the leader. She’s been an absolute joy to the school,” a parent added. “She’s been somebody who’s constantly helping our students, not just in the classroom, but outside the classroom.”

    Another student expressed deep admiration for their teacher.

    “I personally think that Mrs. Rupert was just one of the most magical teachers, maybe in the history of the world,” they said.

    The district claims Rupert was removed after the carpet was taken out, but stated:

    “The District’s fact-gathering and investigation into the matter were just completed earlier this week. The determination was made that none of the asbestos tiles underneath the classroom carpet had been damaged when students were present. The removal of the carpet did not cause a disturbance that would cause exposure to asbestos.

    Nonetheless, now that the investigation is complete, District staff will begin the process of reaching out to individual families to reassure them of their student’s safety and provide any necessary support.”

    Rupert’s father attended the meeting, sharing that his daughter has been devastated by her removal.

    “She tried to get it replaced for five years, and she decided to take it on her own. She’s torn up. She’s given her life to Phoebe Hearst,” said Tim O’Brien, Rupert’s father.

    Many families are confused by the district’s handling of the situation.

    “It blows the mind to think that somebody would be removed for something like that. She has a track record of excellence in the classroom,” one parent said.

    “I can’t believe that she’s getting fired for one carpet. That doesn’t make any sense to me,” a student added.

    Community members organized quickly after the district changed Thursday night’s meeting time. Organizers were expected to give public comment at 6 p.m.

    “It was around 4 o’clock when it was supposed to be at 5,” one attendee said.

    “It was a complete lack of transparency because it was unclear when we were supposed to be able to come and speak,” another person at the meeting added.

    The district stated that Rupert was not fired and remains employed, but parents reported receiving an email from Principal Brooke Fahey indicating she has been replaced by another teacher set to start on Sept. 8.

    The district says, “Mrs. Rupert will be teaching at a different school this year.”

    KCRA posed multiple follow-up questions to the district regarding the situation, including where Rupert will be teaching, and has yet to hear back.

    See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel

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  • Johnson faces escalating pressure as House GOP prepares for Epstein vote

    On his first full day back in Washington, House Speaker Mike Johnson sat for hours in a closed-door interview with six women who say they were abused by the late Jeffrey Epstein.Johnson’s presence in the room on the first day of a frenetically busy September on Capitol Hill underscores how significant the issue of Epstein’s past crimes has become within the GOP.Within days, House Republicans are expected to take their first major floor votes on forcing President Donald Trump’s administration to release more records related to the case. And Johnson — like his members — is under intense pressure to meet the base’s demands for transparency without going against the wishes of the president, whose inner circle has attempted to quiet this summer’s political firestorm over Epstein.“The fact that Mike Johnson sat there for two and a half hours — we’re serious about this,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer told reporters after leaving the meeting Tuesday. “We’re going to do everything we can to make this right.”Johnson himself told reporters the testimonials he heard were “heartbreaking and infuriating” and said “there were tears in the room. There was outrage.”Five weeks ago, Johnson and his leadership team had hoped that sending lawmakers home early to their districts for their August recess would defuse tension around the issue. But the return of Congress to Washington showed that the pressure on GOP leaders has only continued to build.That pressure on Republicans will dramatically increase on Wednesday, when Rep. Thomas Massie and his Democratic counterpart in the effort, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, will hold a press conference in which some of Epstein’s survivors are expected to speak publicly for the first time.Massie and Khanna are leading a push to force the full House to vote on a resolution that would require Trump’s Justice Department to turn over all documents related to Epstein or his crimes. Under their maneuver, known as a discharge petition, Massie would need just five more Republicans to force the bill to the floor since every Democrat is expected to sign on.So far, two other Republicans have signaled they’ll support it: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Other Republicans who have supported the bill itself — including Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Eli Crane of Arizona and Tim Burchett of Tennessee — were either noncommittal or suggested they would not support the discharge petition when asked by CNN on Tuesday.The House Oversight Committee has been leading an investigation into Epstein after some Republicans joined with Democrats to compel a subpoena to the Justice Department for records. The panel on Tuesday night released more than 33,000 pages related to the case – all of the subpoenaed documents the panel had obtained earlier this summer.But the public release of information has not stopped the push for more transparency that has ratcheted up the pressure on Johnson. Massie and Democrats said nearly all of those documents had already been made public as part of various court cases and that it did not alter their push for their own Epstein measure.As part of its investigation, the Oversight Committee hosted a meeting on Tuesday with several survivors who are planning to speak at Wednesday’s press conference. In that closed-door meeting, several of them shared chilling stories of abuse. GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the lawmakers in the room who has spoken out about being raped at age 16, left the meeting in tears.Inside the room, one survivor said the women had been told by Epstein that they were disposable and threatened against coming forward, according to a person in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The women were told if they went to police that Epstein had powerful friends, that person said.If the bipartisan Epstein resolution does pass the House, its fate is unclear in the Senate. But it would be an extraordinary move by a GOP-controlled Congress to take against a president of its own party.To prevent such an escalation, Johnson and the White House are attempting to sell their GOP members on an alternative path. They have backed a non-binding resolution that encourages the Oversight Committee’s investigation. And Johnson stressed the importance of the work of that panel, in part by sitting in on one of the sessions himself.“I sat by him in our meeting and listened to his compassion for these survivors. I listened to his questions,” Greene said of Johnson as she left the meeting. “I’ve listened to some of his plans that he has going forward. I do think he’s doing a great job there.”Even so, Greene is one of the three Republicans so far willing to buck her leadership on the discharge petition. She said it was nothing against Johnson personally, but that she decided: “I just think we need to do everything we can to bring it out.”Inside the House GOP conference, some Republicans are privately dreading weeks of questions about the Epstein matter and would rather move onto issues like appropriations, tariffs or Russian sanctions, according to multiple lawmakers and senior aides. But many of those GOP lawmakers also realize that there is a small but vocal faction of their party that is deeply invested in getting more answers on Epstein and that they can’t be seen as dropping the issue.Democrats, meanwhile, are accusing Johnson of attempting to stonewall further investigations in Congress.Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico told reporters after the meeting that Johnson was advocating that the investigation should remain within the Oversight panel — rather than expanding the probe to include more committees.“In the room with six victims of sexual violence by Jeffrey Epstein, it was suggested by Democrats that this be investigated using the full force of every committee here in Congress. And the speaker ended by saying he didn’t think that was necessary. He’d like to just keep it in the Oversight Committee,” Stansbury said. “That is where the speaker actually chose to end this conversation.”Johnson, speaking after the Tuesday meeting, vowed “transparency” in releasing information to the public, and said that Trump shares the same perspective.“That’s his mindset. And he wants the American people to have information so they can draw their own conclusions. I’ve talked with him about this very subject myself.. He also, just as we do, is insistent that we protect the innocent victims, and that’s what this has been about,” he said.

    WASHINGTON —

    On his first full day back in Washington, House Speaker Mike Johnson sat for hours in a closed-door interview with six women who say they were abused by the late Jeffrey Epstein.

    Johnson’s presence in the room on the first day of a frenetically busy September on Capitol Hill underscores how significant the issue of Epstein’s past crimes has become within the GOP.

    Within days, House Republicans are expected to take their first major floor votes on forcing President Donald Trump’s administration to release more records related to the case. And Johnson — like his members — is under intense pressure to meet the base’s demands for transparency without going against the wishes of the president, whose inner circle has attempted to quiet this summer’s political firestorm over Epstein.

    “The fact that Mike Johnson sat there for two and a half hours — we’re serious about this,” House Oversight Chairman James Comer told reporters after leaving the meeting Tuesday. “We’re going to do everything we can to make this right.”

    Johnson himself told reporters the testimonials he heard were “heartbreaking and infuriating” and said “there were tears in the room. There was outrage.”

    Five weeks ago, Johnson and his leadership team had hoped that sending lawmakers home early to their districts for their August recess would defuse tension around the issue. But the return of Congress to Washington showed that the pressure on GOP leaders has only continued to build.

    That pressure on Republicans will dramatically increase on Wednesday, when Rep. Thomas Massie and his Democratic counterpart in the effort, Rep. Ro Khanna of California, will hold a press conference in which some of Epstein’s survivors are expected to speak publicly for the first time.

    Massie and Khanna are leading a push to force the full House to vote on a resolution that would require Trump’s Justice Department to turn over all documents related to Epstein or his crimes. Under their maneuver, known as a discharge petition, Massie would need just five more Republicans to force the bill to the floor since every Democrat is expected to sign on.

    So far, two other Republicans have signaled they’ll support it: Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Other Republicans who have supported the bill itself — including Reps. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida, Eli Crane of Arizona and Tim Burchett of Tennessee — were either noncommittal or suggested they would not support the discharge petition when asked by CNN on Tuesday.

    The House Oversight Committee has been leading an investigation into Epstein after some Republicans joined with Democrats to compel a subpoena to the Justice Department for records. The panel on Tuesday night released more than 33,000 pages related to the case – all of the subpoenaed documents the panel had obtained earlier this summer.

    But the public release of information has not stopped the push for more transparency that has ratcheted up the pressure on Johnson. Massie and Democrats said nearly all of those documents had already been made public as part of various court cases and that it did not alter their push for their own Epstein measure.

    As part of its investigation, the Oversight Committee hosted a meeting on Tuesday with several survivors who are planning to speak at Wednesday’s press conference. In that closed-door meeting, several of them shared chilling stories of abuse. GOP Rep. Nancy Mace, one of the lawmakers in the room who has spoken out about being raped at age 16, left the meeting in tears.

    Inside the room, one survivor said the women had been told by Epstein that they were disposable and threatened against coming forward, according to a person in the room who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a private meeting. The women were told if they went to police that Epstein had powerful friends, that person said.

    If the bipartisan Epstein resolution does pass the House, its fate is unclear in the Senate. But it would be an extraordinary move by a GOP-controlled Congress to take against a president of its own party.

    To prevent such an escalation, Johnson and the White House are attempting to sell their GOP members on an alternative path. They have backed a non-binding resolution that encourages the Oversight Committee’s investigation. And Johnson stressed the importance of the work of that panel, in part by sitting in on one of the sessions himself.

    “I sat by him in our meeting and listened to his compassion for these survivors. I listened to his questions,” Greene said of Johnson as she left the meeting. “I’ve listened to some of his plans that he has going forward. I do think he’s doing a great job there.”

    Even so, Greene is one of the three Republicans so far willing to buck her leadership on the discharge petition. She said it was nothing against Johnson personally, but that she decided: “I just think we need to do everything we can to bring it out.”

    Inside the House GOP conference, some Republicans are privately dreading weeks of questions about the Epstein matter and would rather move onto issues like appropriations, tariffs or Russian sanctions, according to multiple lawmakers and senior aides. But many of those GOP lawmakers also realize that there is a small but vocal faction of their party that is deeply invested in getting more answers on Epstein and that they can’t be seen as dropping the issue.

    Democrats, meanwhile, are accusing Johnson of attempting to stonewall further investigations in Congress.

    Rep. Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico told reporters after the meeting that Johnson was advocating that the investigation should remain within the Oversight panel — rather than expanding the probe to include more committees.

    “In the room with six victims of sexual violence by Jeffrey Epstein, it was suggested by Democrats that this be investigated using the full force of every committee here in Congress. And the speaker ended by saying he didn’t think that was necessary. He’d like to just keep it in the Oversight Committee,” Stansbury said. “That is where the speaker actually chose to end this conversation.”

    Johnson, speaking after the Tuesday meeting, vowed “transparency” in releasing information to the public, and said that Trump shares the same perspective.

    “That’s his mindset. And he wants the American people to have information so they can draw their own conclusions. I’ve talked with him about this very subject myself.. He also, just as we do, is insistent that we protect the innocent victims, and that’s what this has been about,” he said.

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  • ‘Constructive’? Look again at the smoke and mirrors of the Trump-Putin summit

    We’ve read quite a bit about President Trump’s “hot mic” comment, during a meeting with European leaders about the Russian war against Ukraine, that Vladimir Putin “wants to make a deal for me, as crazy as it sounds.”

    Pundits debated whether this was an embarrassment for Trump; they wondered why he would say such an important thing in a whisper to French President Emmanuel Macron — as if Trump’s verbal goulash were something new. Headlines were full of the word “deal” for a while, including three days later, when they were reporting that Trump said Putin might not want “to make a deal.” And, of course, there is no deal.

    The press coverage of the meeting in Alaska said there were lots of “constructive” conversations. Putin spoke about “neighborly” talks and the “constructive atmosphere of mutual respect” in his conversations with Trump. There were reports about agreements “in principle” on various things under discussion, although there were no details about what they might be.

    I covered more than a few superpower summits, first as a reporter for the Associated Press and later for the New York Times. Although that was more than 30 years ago, the smoke and mirrors nonsense usually produced by meetings like these has not changed. Verbal gas is abundant and facts almost nonexistent. Trump’s comments were worth about as much as anything else he has said on the subject, which is almost nothing. And yet, they were reported and parsed endlessly as if they had the same meaning as other presidents’ words had in the past.

    I had a powerful sense of deja vu from a five-day trip to Afghanistan in January 1987. The Kremlin had finally agreed to let a group of Western journalists visit Kabul and Jalalabad to witness the “cease-fire” that had been announced a few days before we arrived. The visit was billed as an Afghan government tour, which nobody — especially the Afghan government — believed.

    We saw no fighting, although we could see artillery fire in the hills at night. Some of the “specials,” as we wire service correspondents called the major media then, reported that we were fired on. We were not.

    Mostly, we shopped for rugs and drank cold Heinekens, which were unavailable in Moscow but mysteriously well stocked at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kabul. We were ushered to various peace and unity events between the Afghan and Russian peoples and toured the huge Soviet military camps just outside Kabul with a U.S. official (allegedly a diplomat from the Embassy, but we knew from experience that this person was from the Central Intelligence Agency).

    On Jan. 19, we were taken (each reporter in an individual government car with a minder) to a news conference by Mohammad Najib, the Afghan leader whose name had been Najibullah until he changed it to make it sound less religious for his Bolshevik friends. Najib said that Afghanistan and the Soviet Union had agreed “in principle” on a “timetable for withdrawal” of Soviet occupation forces.

    At that point, the Reuters correspondent, who was fairly new to Moscow still, bolted from the room and raced back to our hotel, where there was one Telex machine for us all to send our stories back to Moscow. He filed a bulletin on the announcement. When the rest of us made our leisurely return, we were greeted with messages from our home offices demanding to know about the big deal to end the war in Afghanistan.

    We wrote our stories, which were about a business-as-usual press conference that yielded no real news. We each appended a message to explain why the Reuters report was just plain wrong. Talk of Soviet withdrawal was common, and always wrong. The very idea that the puppet government in Kabul had something to say about it or was a party to any serious discussions about ending the war was absurd. The most pithy comment came from the Agence France-Presse reporter, who told her editors that the Reuters story was “merde.” The Soviet military did not withdraw until February 1989, more than two years later, following its own schedule.

    Much of the recent coverage about Russia and Ukraine reminds me of that Afghan news flash in 1987. The Kremlin has never been, was not then and is not now interested in negotiation or compromise. Under Soviet communism and under Putin, diplomacy is a zero-sum game whose only goal is to restore Russian hegemony over Eastern Europe. And yet, for some reason, the American media and the country’s diplomats seem as oblivious today as they always were. After the summit, they announced breathlessly that there was no peace deal out of the summit, although they all knew going in that there was no deal on the table and there never was going to be one.

    But of course Putin wants a “deal” on Ukraine. It’s the same deal he has wanted since he violated international law (not for the first time) and invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022. He wants to redraw the boundaries of Ukraine to give him even more territory than he has already seized, and he wants to be sure Ukraine remains out of NATO and under Moscow’s military thumb as he has done with other former Soviet regions, like Georgia, which he invaded in 2008 as soon as the country dared to suggest it might be interested in NATO membership. His latest nonsense was to demand that Russia be part of any postwar security arrangements. He wants the NATO allies to stop treating him like the war criminal that he is and to be seen as an equal actor on the international stage with NATO and especially the United States.

    That he got, in abundance, from Trump in Alaska, starting with the location. Trump invited Putin to the United States during a period of travel bans to and from Russia, immediately giving the Russian dictator a huge PR win. It also, conveniently, put him in the only NATO country where he is not wanted on charges of crimes against humanity.

    As for peace talks, check the headlines from Ukraine before, during and after the Alaska summit: The Russians have stepped up their killing and destruction in Ukraine with new ferocity and have been grabbing as much land in eastern Ukraine as they can. Every square inch of that land — and more the Kremlin has not yet occupied — will be part of any “deal” that Putin will accept. Trump himself has been talking about “land swaps” (as he has from the start of the war, by the way) — a nonsensical idea when you consider the land Ukraine holds is its sovereign territory and the land Russian holds was stolen.

    The brilliant M. Gessen, perhaps the leading authority on dictatorship, published an essay in the New York Review, “Autocracy: Rules for Survival,” shortly after the 2016 election. “Rule #2: Do not be taken in by small signs of normality,” they wrote.

    A U.S. president and a Russian leader sitting down to talk and emerging with bluster about progress seems normal enough, perhaps encouraging when American-Russian relations have been at a historic low. Just remember that coming from these two men, the comments signify nothing — or, worse, make us wonder what Trump has given away to Putin with his talk of land swaps.

    Andrew Rosenthal, a former reporter, editor and columnist, was Moscow bureau chief for the Associated Press and Washington editor and later editorial page editor for the New York Times.

    Andrew Rosenthal

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  • Moscow noncommittal on Trump proposal for Zelensky-Putin meeting

    The presidents of Russia and Ukraine may finally meet to discuss peace after 3½ years of war, President Trump said Monday, hosting European leaders at the White House in a push to resolve the conflict.

    But it is unclear whether the Kremlin has agreed to the proposal, telling reporters only that Russian President Vladimir Putin would consider “raising the level” of negotiations between Russia’s and Ukraine’s representatives.

    Trump proposed that Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky meet one-on-one “at a location to be determined,” taking a call with the Russian leader in the middle of a high-stakes meeting with Zelensky and his European counterparts.

    “After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself,” Trump wrote on social media. “Again, this was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years.”

    The president’s statement came after European leaders urged Trump to “put pressure” on Russia, after his meeting with Putin in Alaska last week sparked widespread fears over the fate of U.S. support for security on the continent.

    The meeting had a historic flavor, with six European heads of government, the NATO secretary general and the president of the European Commission all converging on Washington for discussions with the president.

    Trump first met with Zelensky in the Oval Office, striking an affable tone after their last, disastrous meeting in the room in February. This time, Trump emphasized his “love” for the Ukrainian people and his commitment to provide security guarantees for Kyiv in an ultimate peace settlement with Russia.

    Zelensky offered only praise and gratitude to Trump, telling reporters that they had their “best” meeting yet.

    But an expanded meeting with Zelensky and the chancellor of Germany, the presidents of France and Finland, the prime ministers of the United Kingdom and Italy, and the heads of NATO and the European Commission hinted at a more challenging road ahead for the burgeoning peace effort.

    President Trump speaks to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, left foreground, as French President Emmanuel Macron listens during a meeting at the White House on Aug. 18, 2025.

    (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

    “The next steps ahead are the more complicated ones now,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said. “The path is open — you opened it, but now the way is open for complicated negotiations, and to be honest, we would all like to see a ceasefire, at the latest, from the next meeting on.”

    “I can’t imagine the next meeting would take place without a ceasefire,” Merz added. “So let’s work on that. And let’s put pressure on Russia.”

    Emmanuel Macron, the French president, sat sternly throughout the start of the meeting before echoing Merz’s call.

    “Your idea to ask for a truce, a ceasefire, or at least to stop the killings,” Macron said, “is a necessity, and we all support this idea.”

    Trump had been in agreement with his European counterparts on the necessity of a ceasefire for months. Zelensky first agreed to one in March. But Putin has refused, pressing Russian advantages on the battlefield, and in Anchorage on Friday, he convinced Trump to drop his calls for an immediate halt to the fighting.

    “All of us would obviously prefer an immediate ceasefire while we work on a lasting peace. Maybe something like that could happen — as of this moment, it’s not happening,” Trump said at the meeting. “But President Zelensky and President Putin can talk a little bit more about that.”

    “I don’t know that it’s necessary,” Trump added. “You can do it through the war. But I like the ceasefire from another standpoint — you immediately stop the killing.”

    The European leaders all emphasized to Trump that they share his desire for peace. But the president of the commission, Ursula von der Leyen, called for a “just” peace, and Zelensky would not engage publicly with reporters on Putin’s central demand: a surrender of vast swaths of Ukrainian territory to Russian control.

    Putin first invaded Ukraine in 2014, occupying the Crimean peninsula in a stealth operation and funding an attack on the eastern region of Donbas using proxy forces. But he launched a full-scale invasion of the entire country in 2022, leading to the bloodiest conflict in Europe since World War II.

    In a hot mic moment, before the media were ushered out of the expanded meeting with European leaders, Trump told Macron that he believes the Russian president and former KGB officer would agree to a peace deal because of their personal relationship.

    He “wants to make a deal for me,” he said, “as crazy as it sounds.”

    ‘Article 5-like’ guarantees

    European leaders said that detailed U.S. security guarantees — for Ukraine specifically, and more broadly for Europe — were at the top of the agenda for Monday’s meetings, including the prospect of U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine to enforce any future peace settlement.

    Asked whether U.S. forces would be involved, Trump did not rule it out, stating, “We’ll be talking about that.”

    “When it comes to security, there’s going to be a lot of help,” he said in the Oval Office. “It’s going to be good. They are first line of defense, because they’re there — they are Europe. But we’re going to help them out, also. We’ll be involved.”

    Von der Leyen, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer praised the Trump administration for discussing what it called “Article 5-like” security guarantees for Ukraine, referencing a provision of the North Atlantic Treaty Organizaton charter that states that an attack on one member is an attack on all.

    But the provision also provides countries in the alliance with broad discretion on whether to participate in a military response to an attack on a fellow member.

    Starmer and Macron have expressed a willingness for months to send British and French troops to Ukraine. But the Russian Foreign Ministry said Monday that Moscow would oppose the deployment of NATO troops to the country as “provocative” and “reckless,” creating a potential rift in the negotiations.

    A dark-bearded man, in dark suit, walks with another man, in suit and red tie, and a woman in a white suit

    President Trump walks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and White House protocol chief Monica Crowley in the White House on Aug. 18, 2025.

    (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

    Despite the gulf between Europe and Russia, Trump expressed hope throughout the day that he could schedule a trilateral meeting with Putin and Zelensky.

    He planned on calling Putin shortly after European leaders left the White House, he told reporters, only to interrupt the meeting to call the Russian leader with the proposal for bilateral talks.

    Trump’s team floated inviting Zelensky to attend the negotiations in Alaska on Friday, and Zelensky has said he is willing to participate in a trilateral meeting. He repeated his interest to Trump on Monday and asked him to attend.

    It is unclear whether Moscow will agree to a summit involving Zelensky in any capacity. Ahead of Friday’s meeting, Russian officials said that conditions weren’t right for direct talks between Putin and the Ukrainian president. The Russian leader has repeatedly questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy and has tried to have him assassinated on numerous occasions.

    Quiet on territorial ‘swaps’

    In the Oval Office, a Fox News reporter asked Zelensky whether he was “prepared to keep sending Ukrainian troops to their deaths,” or whether he would “agree to redraw the maps” instead. The Ukrainian president demurred.

    “We live under each day attacks,” Zelensky responded. “We need to stop this war, to stop Russia. And we need the support — American and European partners.”

    Trump and his team largely adopted Putin’s position Friday that Russia should be able to keep the Ukrainian territory it has occupied by force — and possibly even more of Donetsk, which is part of the Donbas region and remains in Ukrainian control — in exchange for an end to the fighting. But European officials were silent on the idea on Monday.

    The Ukrainian Constitution prohibits the concession of territory without the support of a public referendum, and polls indicate that 3 in 4 Ukrainians oppose giving up land in an attempt to end the war.

    Steve Witkoff, the president’s envoy for special missions, said Sunday that Putin agreed to pass legislation through the Kremlin that would guarantee an end to wars of conquest in Ukraine, or elsewhere in Europe.

    But Russia has made similar commitments before.

    In 1994, the United States and Britain signed on to a agreement in Budapest with Ukraine and Russia that ostensibly guaranteed security for Kyiv and vowed to honor Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In exchange, Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.

    Michael Wilner

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  • On Putin’s advice, Trump launches assault on mail-in ballots and voting machines

    President Trump said Monday he would renew his assault on mail-in voting after Russia’s autocratic leader, Vladimir Putin, told him to do so at their meeting in Alaska last week.

    The president provided few details, but wrote on social media that he would “lead a movement to get rid of MAIL-IN BALLOTS, and also, while we’re at it, Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES.”

    Already in March, Trump had issued an executive order directing the Justice Department to “take all necessary action” to prevent mail-in ballots received after election day from being counted. The order also attempted to impose a proof of citizenship requirement for voter registration.

    Those portions of the executive action has been enjoined by courts over constitutional concerns. But another provision, directing the independent U.S. Election Assistance Commission to shift its guidance on voting machines banning the use of certain bar codes and quick-response codes, has been allowed to proceed.

    The U.S. Constitution states that the timing, place and manner of elections “shall be prescribed in each state” by local legislatures, and that Congress has the ability to pass laws altering state election regulations. The president is given no authority to prescribe or govern election procedures.

    Nevertheless, Trump wrote Monday that states “are merely an ‘agent’ for the Federal Government in counting and tabulating the votes.

    “They must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them, FOR THE GOOD OF OUR COUNTRY, to do,” he wrote.

    Trump’s action comes on the heels of his meeting with Putin in Anchorage, where the Russian leader told him that mail-in ballots led to his electoral defeat in 2020, according to the president.

    The U.S. intelligence community has assessed that Putin attempted to influence the last three U.S. presidential elections in Trump’s favor.

    Trump blamed his 2020 election loss to President Biden on a conspiracy of voter fraud. But independent analysts, state attorneys general and every court that reviewed the matter found no evidence of fraud that altered results in the race.

    “Vladimir Putin said something — one of the most interesting things. He said, ‘Your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting,’” Trump told Fox News in an interview.

    Trump has criticized mail-in voting since entering politics in 2015. But his presidential campaign embraced the practice leading up to the 2024 election, encouraging his supporters — especially those affected by Hurricane Helene in North Carolina — to take advantage of mail-in voting opportunities.

    “Absentee voting, early voting and election day voting are all good options,” Trump said at the time. “Republicans must make a plan, register and vote!”

    But on Monday, Trump wrote that voting machines “cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.”

    “With their HORRIBLE Radical Left policies, like Open Borders, Men Playing in Women’s Sports, Transgender and ‘WOKE’ for everyone, and so much more, Democrats are virtually Unelectable without using this completely disproven Mail-In SCAM,” Trump wrote.

    “I, AND THE REPUBLICAN PARTY, WILL FIGHT LIKE HELL TO BRING HONESTY AND INTEGRITY BACK TO OUR ELECTIONS,” he added. “THE MAIL-IN BALLOT HOAX, USING VOTING MACHINES THAT ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER, MUST END, NOW!!!”

    Trump said he would take additional executive action before the 2026 midterm elections, but provided no details on timing.

    In the Oval Office yesterday for a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump said his lawyers were currently in the process of drafting an order. “It’s time that the Republicans get tough and stop it,” he said.

    “Mail-in ballots are corrupt. You can never have a real democracy with mail-in ballots. And we as a Republican Party are going to do everything possible to end mail-in ballots,” Trump said. “They’re corrupt.”

    Michael Wilner

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  • After welcoming Putin, Trump appears to adopt his goal, agreeing to cede land for peace

    ANCHORAGE — President Trump made his expectations clear entering a summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday: “I won’t be happy if I walk away without some form of a ceasefire,” he said aboard Air Force One.

    Yet he did, emerging from their meeting in a diplomatic retreat, endorsing Russia’s territorial ambitions and adopting Putin’s position that would put off ceasefire negotiations in favor of more comprehensive talks.

    Trump told his European counterparts he had agreed with Putin’s demand that Ukraine make territorial concessions to end the conflict, a painful prospect for Ukrainians at the heart of the war, a European official told The Times on Saturday.

    Trump also wrote on social media that he would adopt the Kremlin line deferring talks on an imminent ceasefire.

    “It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up,” Trump wrote on social media. “If all works out, we will then schedule a meeting with President Putin. Potentially, millions of people’s lives will be saved.”

    It was a remarkable success for Putin, who sees a Russian edge on the battlefield and has put off discussions of a ceasefire for months as Russian forces press their advantage along the Ukrainian front lines.

    Putin was greeted on the tarmac of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson with applause and smiles from the American president and offered a ride in his iconic vehicle. After years in isolation over his repeated invasions of Ukraine, facing an indictment from the International Criminal Court over war crimes, a red carpet awaited Putin on U.S. soil.

    Landing in Washington, Trump spoke with Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as well as the secretary-general of NATO and other European leaders. A follow-up meeting with Zelensky is scheduled for Monday in Washington.

    But achieving a peace agreement is an even higher bar than the ceasefire that has eluded the Trump administration in recent months, requiring comprehensive, often protracted negotiations that, in the meantime, will allow Russia to continue its battlefield offensive.

    The New York Times first reported details of Trump’s conversations with European leaders.

    Details of the meeting are still unclear. In Alaska, both men referenced “agreements” in statements to reporters. But Trump acknowledged the question that matters most — whether Russia is prepared to implement a ceasefire — remains unresolved.

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    “We had an extremely productive meeting, and many points were agreed to. There are just a very few that are left,” Trump said. “Some are not that significant. One is probably the most significant, but we have a very good chance of getting there.”

    In a follow-up interview on Fox News, Trump said the meeting went well. “But we’ll see,” he said. “You know, you have to get a deal.”

    Trump’s failure to secure a ceasefire from Putin surprised few analysts, who see Putin with the military initiative, pushing forward with offensive incursions along the front, and offering no indication he plans to relent.

    The question is whether Putin will be able to sustain Trump’s goodwill when the war continues grinding on. On Friday alone, hours before the summit began, Russian forces struck a civilian market in the Ukrainian city of Sumy.

    The Russian delegation left immediately after the press availability, providing no comments to the press corps on how the meetings went behind closed doors. And after sitting down with Fox, Trump promptly left Anchorage for Washington. The White House issued no statements, readouts or fact sheets on the summit. Administration officials fell silent.

    “Putin is going to have to give Trump some kind of concession so that he is not completely embarrassed,” said Darren Kew, dean of the Joan B. Kroc School of Peace Studies at the University of San Diego, “probably a pledge of a ceasefire very soon — one of Trump’s key demands — followed by a promise to meet the Ukrainians for talks this fall.”

    “Both serve Putin’s goals of delay and appeasing Trump, while allowing more time for Russian battlefield victories,” Kew added, “since ceasefires can easily be broken, and peace talks can drag on for years.”

    In brief remarks of his own, Putin said that points of agreement reached with Trump would likely face opposition across Europe, including from Ukraine itself, warning continental allies not to “torpedo nascent progress” in follow-up talks with the White House.

    “I would like to hope that the agreement that we have reached together will help us bring us close to that goal, and will pave the path toward peace in Ukraine,” Putin said. “We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively, and that they won’t throw a wrench in the works.”

    It was an acknowledgment that whatever terms agreed upon bilaterally between Putin and Trump’s team are almost certainly unacceptable to Ukraine, a party to the conflict that has lost hundreds of thousands of lives fighting Russia’s invasion since February 2022.

    The Financial Times reported Saturday that Putin had demanded Ukraine cede two eastern administrative divisions at the heart of the conflict — Donetsk and Luhansk — in exchange for Moscow agreeing to freeze the rest of the front line.

    Trump told Fox that a Russian takeover of Ukrainian lands was discussed and “agreed upon,” pending Ukrainian approval — an unlikely prospect given vocal opposition from Zelensky and provisions in the Ukrainian Constitution that prohibit the concession of territory.

    “Those are points that we negotiated, and those are points that we largely have agreed upon, actually. I think we’ve agreed on a lot,” Trump said. “I think we’re pretty close to a deal. Now, look. Ukraine has to agree to it. Maybe they’ll say no.”

    Europe and Ukraine have argued that conceding land to Putin is not enough. After invading Crimea in 2014, and successfully holding it, Putin came back for more territory in the eastern Donbas — only to launch a full-scale invasion of the country in 2022.

    The Russian Foreign Ministry said this week that its war aims remain unchanged.

    “We’re convinced that in order to make the settlement last in the long term, we need to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of that conflict,” Putin said, “to consider all legitimate concerns of Russia, and to reinstate a just balance of security in Europe, and in the world on the whole.”

    “The root causes of the conflict,” he added, “must be resolved.”

    Michael Wilner

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  • Putin and Trump conclude ‘productive’ summit but provide no details

    ANCHORAGE — Three hours of negotiations with Vladimir Putin over Russia’s war in Ukraine were “extremely productive,” but only Kyiv can decide whether a deal toward a ceasefire is possible, President Trump said Friday, capping a historic summit with the Russian leader.

    At a news conference at a U.S. air base in Alaska, the two men alluded to agreements made, but offered no details and took no questions. “We didn’t get there,” Trump said.

    “I believe we had a very productive meeting. There were many, many points that we agreed on,” Trump said, adding: “There’s no deal until there’s a deal. I will call up NATO in a little while. I will call up various people.

    “It’s ultimately up to them,” he added.

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    Standing alongside Trump, Putin warned Europe not to “torpedo the nascent progress” of “the agreement that we’ve reached.”

    “We’re convinced that, in order to make the settlement last in the long term, we have to eliminate all the primary roots, the primary causes of the conflict,” Putin said. “Naturally, the security of Ukraine should be ensured as well.”

    The talks were the first high-level negotiations in Russia’s years-long military campaign, a war of conquest that has resulted in Europe’s bloodiest conflict since World War II.

    Trump had said before the summit he would know if Putin was serious about peace within minutes of their meeting. Yet, before the talks began, the Russian leader, a global pariah since launching his full-scale invasion of Ukraine three years ago, received a red carpet arrival on American soil and a greeting of applause from the U.S. president.

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    It was an extraordinary welcome for Putin, whose government has called the United States an “enemy state” and who faces an arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court over war crimes in Ukraine. Putin’s war has led to 1.4 million casualties, according to independent analysts, including 1 million dead and wounded among Russian soldiers alone.

    At the end of their news conference, Putin suggested Trump visit Moscow for their next summit. Trump said he would consider it.

    The high-stakes summit came amid ongoing Russian strikes on civilian targets. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, condemned Russian forces for striking a market in Sumy mere hours before the Alaska summit.

    “On the day of negotiations, the Russians are killing as well,” Zelensky said in a statement. “And that speaks volumes.”

    Zelensky was not invited to the Anchorage negotiations. But Trump said he hoped his meeting Friday would lead to direct talks “very shortly.”

    The Ukrainian president met with Britain’s prime minister in recent days, and planned to meet with French President Emmanuel Macron after the Alaska summit.

    Speaking with reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to Anchorage, Trump suggested he had planned to take a tougher line with Putin, threatening to walk if he didn’t see immediate progress.

    “I want to see a ceasefire,” Trump said. “I don’t know if it’s going to be today, but I’m not going to be happy if it’s not today.”

    The two men were scheduled to meet privately, accompanied only by interpreters, before joining their aides for a working lunch. But in-flight, Trump’s plans changed to include his secretary of State and national security advisor, Marco Rubio, as well as his special envoy to the conflict, Steve Witkoff.

    Whether Putin is ready to implement an immediate ceasefire is far from clear, with the Russian Foreign Ministry stating this week that the Kremlin’s war aims are “unchanged.” Over the past week, with the presidential summit scheduled, the Russian army launched an aggressive attempt to breech the Ukrainian front lines.

    Trump’s deference toward Putin has been a fixture of his time in office, with the president often refusing to criticize the Russian leader. But his tone began to shift toward Putin at a NATO summit in June, held in The Hague, where European leaders agreed to significant defense spending commitments in a bid to keep Trump on their side.

    Since then, Trump has repeatedly expressed “disappointment” with Putin’s refusal to heed his calls for a ceasefire, authorizing the deployment of Patriot missiles in Ukraine and the shipment of other U.S. military equipment.

    The Trump administration set a deadline of Aug. 8 for Putin to demonstrate he was seriously committed to peace negotiations, or otherwise face a new round of sanctions, this time targeting its trading partners. Witkoff, a real estate investor with no experience in the region and no diplomatic background, was dispatched to Moscow for meetings with Kremlin leadership.

    Within hours of Witkoff’s departure, White House planning for the summit was underway.

    The summit came together with so little time that the White House and the Kremlin struggled to secure hotels and venue spaces across Anchorage. The Kremlin press corps, comprising roughly 50 journalists, found itself sleeping on American Red Cross cots on the floor of a University of Alaska sports center.

    President Trump meets with Russia's President Vladimir Putin. Secretary of State Marco Rubio sits to the side of Trump.

    President Trump meets with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. At right is Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

    (Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)

    Trump received Putin on the tarmac of the U.S. air base with a U.S. stealth bomber flying overhead, flanked by U.S. fighter jets and Air Force One. The two men then entered the “Beast,” the official presidential vehicle, for a short ride that included no aides or translators.

    On his way to Anchorage, Trump said that Putin would face “economically severe” consequences if the negotiations failed to yield progress toward peace. He said that only Ukraine could decide whether to cede territory to Moscow. And he expressed support for U.S. security guarantees for Ukraine in any future peace agreement, so long as they fall short of NATO membership for the beleaguered nation.

    “Yes, it would be very severe,” Trump said. “Very severe.”

    Putin brought several Russian business leaders along with him from Moscow, according to the Kremlin, a sign he had hoped to begin discussions on normalizing relations with Washington. But Trump said he would not discuss business opportunities until the war is settled. Despite bringing his Treasury and Commerce secretaries to Alaska alongside him, a lunch scheduled to include an expanded circle of their aides, to discuss matters other than Ukraine, did not appear to go forward.

    European leaders have urged Trump to approach Putin with a firm hand after months of applying pressure on Zelensky to prepare to make concessions to Moscow.

    Trump had said in recent days that a peace deal would include the “swapping” of land, a prospect roundly rejected in Kyiv. But the Ukrainian constitution prohibits territorial concessions without the support of a public referendum.

    He seemed to soften that stance ahead of the Friday meetings.

    “They’ll be discussed, but I’ve got to let Ukraine make that decision,” the president said of land swaps. “I’m not here to negotiate for Ukraine. I’m here to get them to the table.”

    The summit is the first of its kind between a U.S. and Russian president since 2021.

    Michael Wilner

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  • Universal City hotel expansion project clears early approval hurdle

    Universal City hotel expansion project clears early approval hurdle

    Construction of a new high-rise addition to the Hilton hotel in Universal City was approved by the Los Angeles Planning Commission, clearing a major hurdle for the long-planned expansion.

    The decision comes as Universal Studios and other popular tourist destinations in the region shine for hoteliers even as other properties in California’s urban centers struggle to fill their rooms.

    The commission recommended last week that the City Council approve construction of an 18-story addition to the 24-story Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City hotel, which opened in 1984. The addition would have 395 rooms, bringing the total between the two structures to 890 rooms, putting that Hilton among the ranks of the largest hotels in Los Angeles County.

    Hotels near popular leisure destinations such as Disneyland and Universal Studios Hollywood are outperforming California hotels that are intended to serve business travelers and meetings, said hotel consultant Alan Reay, president of Atlas Hospitality Group.

    “Big full-service hotels have been really impacted by the work-from-home movement and the pullback of the convention and meeting business,” Reay said.

    Universal City is “a little island that is doing phenomenally well,” he said, with average occupancy at the Hilton there at 92% last year.

    “I don’t know any other hotels that are running that kind of occupancy” at a similar price point, he said. “That really tells you the strength of the location and the strength of the brand.

    “It makes sense to add the rooms,” said Reay, who is not involved in the planned development.

    The addition would include, three restaurants, two swimming pools and an expansion of the existing three-level parking garage.

    (Ankrom Moisan)

    The expansion is proposed by Sun Hill Properties Inc., which owns the Universal City hotel operated by Hilton.

    Sun Hill President Mark Davis said the company is “immensely gratified” to have the Planning Commission’s endorsement.

    “We still believe in the future of L.A. and the continued growth of our primary demand driver, Universal Studios Theme Park, the key magnet to attract tourism to the City of Angels,” he said in a statement.

    If approved by the City Council, construction would take about 30 months, according to city documents recommending development. An expansion of the Hilton was first proposed in 2017 by a previous owner of the property, who estimated at the time that more than 70% of guests were there to visit the Universal Studios Hollywood theme park that features the $500-million Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

    The design of the addition by architecture firm Ankrom Moisan also calls for a spa, three restaurants, an indoor-outdoor bar, two swimming pools, a lobby connecting to the existing hotel building and an expansion of the existing three-level parking garage.

    The planned expansion, which Sun Hill intends to complete in time to serve the 2028 Olympics, comes as hotel sales are flagging in Los Angeles County and throughout the state amid high interest rates and as smaller-sized deals have been a drag on the market, according to a recent report from Atlas Hospitality.

    Times staff writer Caroline Petrow-Cohen contributed to this report.

    Roger Vincent

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