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      Ukrainians Blindsided by Deal’s Breakdown and by Trump’s Actions

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      Some said they felt the U.S. president was disrespectful and that they were proud of their leader for standing up to him.Liudmyla Shestakova has lost a lot to this war — her son, and his wife, who died together on the front lines. But she’s a realist, like many in this mining region in central Ukraine. And ever since President Trump suggested it, she has thought that her country should sign a proposed deal that would give America some profits from mining in Ukraine.Ms. Shestakova, 65, who works with an environmental group called Flora in the city of Kropyvnytskyi, had hoped a deal between the U.S. and Ukraine on critical minerals could bring much-needed investment to the region.But on Friday night, Ms. Shestakova, like many people in Ukraine, was shocked and blindsided at how the deal fell apart and how she felt that President Trump treated Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, almost like a serf who didn’t bow and kiss the ring quite enough.“With a trustworthy partner, this could have been a beneficial deal for everyone,” said Ms. Shestakova, who once ran Flora and now sits on its supervisory board. “But with a partner like Trump, it could actually be dangerous.”Across Ukraine, people said they were upset Friday night. They also said they wouldn’t stop fighting, even if America walked away.“It will be hard, but we will survive,” said Iryna Tsilyk, 42, a poet and film director in the capital, Kyiv, whose husband serves in the army. “Today, I was not ashamed of my president and my country. I am not sure that the Americans can say the same.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Former Defense Secretaries Call Trump’s Firing of Military Leaders ‘Reckless’

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      Five former defense secretaries condemned President Trump’s firing last week of senior military leaders as “reckless” and urged Congress not to confirm their successors.In an extraordinary letter to lawmakers on Thursday, the five men — including one who served under Mr. Trump during his first term — asked that the House and the Senate hold “immediate hearings to assess the national security implications of Mr. Trump’s dismissals.”The letter is signed by defense secretaries who served under both Democratic and Republican presidents since 1994: William J. Perry, Leon Panetta, Chuck Hagel, Lloyd J. Austin III and Jim Mattis, Mr. Trump’s first defense secretary.In a purge of the military’s senior ranks last Friday, Mr. Trump fired Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., a four-star fighter pilot who was only the second African American to be the Joint Chiefs chairman, saying he would be replaced by a little-known, retired three-star Air Force general, Dan Caine. In all, six Pentagon officials were fired, including Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the chief of Naval Operations, and Gen. James Slife, the vice chief of the Air Force; and top lawyers for the Army, Navy and Air Force.“Mr. Trump’s dismissals raise troubling questions about the administration’s desire to politicize the military and to remove legal constraints on the president’s power,” they said in the letter. “Talented Americans may be far less likely to choose a life of military service if they believe they will be held to a political standard.”Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said the firings are within the president’s right to choose who he wants in these positions.The five former defense secretaries urged Congress to “hold Mr. Trump to account for these reckless actions and to exercise fully its constitutional oversight responsibilities.” More

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      Oil Companies Wanted Trump to Lower Costs. Tariffs Are Raising Them.

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      President Trump’s promise during last year’s election to make it far easier to drill for oil and gas thrilled energy executives who believed his policies would lower their costs and help them make a lot more money.Those hopes are now fading. Thanks to Mr. Trump’s tariffs, the oil and gas industry is contending with rising prices for essential materials like steel pipes used to line new wells.That has not yet translated into a meaningful change in U.S. drilling activity or production expectations, but companies have begun revising budgets to reflect higher materials costs. Decisions made today about which wells to drill will affect production many months from now.Oil refineries are separately bracing for a tariff on Canadian oil, which some of them need to produce gasoline, diesel and other fuels.At the same time, consumers have grown jittery about the economy and the price of oil has fallen about 10 percent since just before Mr. Trump took office, to around $70 a barrel. Oil companies tend to drill less when prices fall.The combination could complicate Mr. Trump’s stated desire to juice U.S. oil and natural gas production, which are already at or near record highs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      How Consumers Can Protect Themselves With the CFPB on Pause

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      Rules on bank and credit card fees, medical debt and payment apps are in limbo. One thing you can do is carefully check your financial statements, one expert says.With the government seemingly stepping back from regulatory duties, consumers may have to act as their own financial watchdogs.The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the independent federal agency created after the 2008 financial crisis to shield people from fraud and abuse by lenders and financial firms, has been muzzled, at least temporarily.“Everything is on pause right now,” said Delicia Hand, senior director of digital marketplace with Consumer Reports. “So it’s back on consumers to be extra diligent.” Ms. Hand previously spent nearly a decade in a variety of roles at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, including overseeing complaints and consumer education, before departing in 2022.In early February, the Trump administration ordered the consumer bureau to mostly cease operations. It closed its Washington headquarters, fired some employees and put most of the rest of the staff on administrative leave, and opted not to seek funding for its activities. Several lawsuits are challenging the administration’s actions. On Feb. 14, a federal judge in Washington ordered the bureau to halt firing workers and not to delete data, pending a hearing scheduled for Monday.The administration, however, has already dialed back enforcement — dropping, for instance, a suit accusing an online lender of promoting free loans that actually carried high interest rates. On Thursday, the bureau dismissed a lawsuit that it had brought in January accusing Capital One of cheating customers out of some $2 billion in interest.It’s a stark change for an agency that had been energetic in adopting rules and filing lawsuits aimed at aiding consumers. Under the Biden administration, the bureau moved to reduce or eliminate various fees charged by banks and other financial firms and to remove unpaid medical debt from credit reports, and it fined a major credit reporting bureau for misleading consumers about credit freezes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Paramount’s Shari Redstone Wants a Resolution on President Trump Lawsuit Ahead of Skydance Merger

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      Redstone, who controls Paramount, has been trying to close a merger with the Hollywood studio Skydance. President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS News is complicating matters.Shari Redstone, the controlling shareholder of the entertainment giant Paramount, delivered a crucial message to her board a few weeks ago.For months, Paramount’s lawyers had been jousting with representatives for President Trump, who had sued the company’s CBS News network over its segment on former Vice President Kamala Harris. Mr. Trump accused the network of deceptively editing the interview; CBS said Trump’s lawsuit was without merit.But when the board gathered this month, Ms. Redstone was clear: She was in favor of resolving the issue, two people familiar with the matter told DealBook’s Lauren Hirsch and The New York Times’s Ben Mullin.As Paramount executives weighed the best course of action, Ms. Redstone said she was in favor of moving forward in a way that would lead to some form of conclusion, including mediation.It was the first time that Ms. Redstone made her wishes known to the full board. Many at CBS News and “60 Minutes,” where Ms. Harris’s interview aired, strongly opposed a settlement.Further complicating the matter: The Federal Communications Commission is reviewing Paramount’s pending deal with Skydance. Some executives said that a settlement would smooth the way to closing the merger, even as others worried that a settlement could be interpreted as bribery for the F.C.C. to clear the Skydance deal. Mr. Trump, for his part, told reporters on Wednesday that the two were not linked.National Amusements, Paramount’s parent company, declined to comment, and Paramount has said that its legal battle with Mr. Trump is unrelated to its deal with Skydance.Ms. Redstone’s carefully written statement did not mention Paramount’s deal with Skydance — but it did underscore the fact that a pending multibillion-dollar lawsuit from the president made it difficult for Paramount to do business. She also said that she was removing herself from day-to-day discussions about the lawsuit.This week, The Times reported that Paramount had agreed to bring in a mediator.Any settlement could be perceived as the latest corporate concession to the White House, including Disney’s $15 million settlement in December and Meta’s $25 million settlement last month. The possibility of a settlement, which is likely to further embolden Mr. Trump’s crusade against the media, has been met with a strong backlash within the CBS ranks and outside the company.Though Ms. Redstone didn’t mention the Skydance deal in her remarks, people familiar with her thinking believe she’s focused on closing the deal.Paramount is also navigating the consequences of doing business under a retributive president. Beyond the Skydance deal, Mr. Trump has made clear his willingness to exact revenge when it comes to companies.“Corporations — particularly these days are often in the cross hairs of policymakers — and they have to navigate that,” Jill Fisch, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, told DealBook. “And that’s not easy.” More

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      Number of Trans Troops Far Lower Than Estimated, Pentagon Figures Show

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      The Defense Department said 4,240 service members, or about 0.2 percent of those in uniform, have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria. Previous estimates had put the number at triple that figure.The military released on Thursday the number of transgender troops currently serving in the armed forces, revealing a population much smaller than recent estimates. Currently, according to those figures, 4,240 people in the military — about 0.2 percent of the 2 million people in uniform — have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria.That diagnosis is the best way the military has of tracking the number of trans troops in the force. Previous estimates usually put the number of trans troops at about 15,000.The Trump administration has implemented new policies that bar trans troops from serving, citing disruption in the ranks and the cost of medical care as primary reasons. President Trump has characterized the cost of providing care as “tremendous.” And in an executive order last month, the administration asserted that being transgender “conflicts with a soldier’s commitment to an honorable, truthful and disciplined lifestyle.”The military also released for the first time figures on the cost of providing gender-affirming medical care for trans troops. They show that since 2015, when trans troops were first allowed to serve openly, the military has spent $52 million on their care, including psychotherapy, hormone therapy and surgery, or about $9,000 per trans service member. The total is a fraction of the $17 billion annual budget for the Defense Department’s health agency.The Defense Department data shows that about half of the troops diagnosed with gender dysphoria required no medical care at all. About a quarter required surgery.For years, the military insisted that it had no way of tracking figures related to transgender troops. The Pentagon released the numbers after a federal judge ordered the Defense Department on Thursday to provide data on trans service members, ruling in a lawsuit filed by a group of trans service members who challenged the Trump policies barring them. More

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      S.E.C. Declares Memecoins Are Not Subject to Oversight

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      The agency said the novelty digital assets were not securities, a month after President Trump issued his own memecoin.The Securities and Exchange Commission said on Thursday that so-called memecoins — novelty digital assets — are not subject to regulatory oversight because they are not considered securities.The determination could have big ramifications for the crypto industry and President Trump, who issued his own memecoin days before his inauguration.The S.E.C.’s policy on memecoins is consistent with the light regulatory approach that Mr. Trump promised to take toward the crypto industry during his campaign.Mr. Trump and his family firmly embraced digital currencies last year by teaming up with a new digital assets company, World Liberty Financial. The memecoin the president introduced during pre-inaugural festivities in January, called $Trump, spurred controversy because it swung wildly in value and generated hefty trading fees for Mr. Trump.The S.E.C.’s policy statement did not refer to Mr. Trump’s memecoin or any other specific digital novelty item. But the commission clearly acknowledged the risk to investors who put money into such products, even as it said it would not regulate them.“Although the offer and sale of memecoins may not be subject to the federal securities laws, fraudulent conduct related to the offer and sale of memecoins may be subject to enforcement action or prosecution by other federal or state agencies,” said the statement, from the S.E.C.’s division of corporation finance.In reaching its conclusion, the S.E.C. employed a nearly century-old Supreme Court decision to determine that a memecoin should not be considered an investment contract and therefore subject to regulatory oversight.Under Gary Gensler, who served as S.E.C. chair under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the regulator had used that same Supreme Court case to argue that most digital assets are securities and subject to regulation.The S.E.C., apparently worried that traders and speculators could use its rationale to evade regulation, said it would look closely at any new product that tried to label itself a “memecoin.”The agency has moved quickly to dismantle the aggressive approach taken by Mr. Gensler in regulating cryptocurrencies. His enforcement actions angered the crypto industry and led many of its investors to contribute mightily to the campaign of Mr. Trump, who at one time was a crypto critic.Also on Thursday, the S.E.C. officially moved to dismiss its enforcement lawsuit against Coinbase, one of the nation’s largest crypto firms. The S.E.C. also has told a number of crypto companies that it was ending investigations into their activities.The S.E.C. also said in a court filing this week that it was trying to reach a settlement in a civil fraud case it filed against Justin Sun, a crypto investor. Mr. Sun also is an adviser to World Liberty and a significant investor in its digital token. The charges against him do not involve his investment with World Liberty. More

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      Stunned U.S.A.I.D. Workers Return to Clean Out Their Desks

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      Democrats said a review mandated by executive order was “not a serious effort or attempt at reform.”Workers for the U.S. Agency for International Development who had been fired or placed on leave returned to their offices on Thursday to retrieve personal belongings, many still dumbfounded by the Trump administration’s sudden dismantlement of the 63-year-old aid delivery agency.Hundreds of workers who just one month ago never imagined that they would soon lose their jobs en masse returned to the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington.They were given just 15 minutes each to clear out their old desks.The somber return came a day after the Trump administration revealed in court documents that it had completed a review of all U.S. foreign aid programs and was canceling nearly 10,000 contracts and grants, eliminating about 90 percent of U.S.A.I.D.’s work.The agency’s annual budget of about $40 billion pays for the distribution of food and medicine, as well as disaster relief, disease monitoring, development work, and pro-democracy and civil society programs. Its work has been heavily concentrated in poor and developing countries in Africa and Asia.Foreign aid makes up less than 1 percent of the federal budget.Supporters offered boxes and packing supplies to help fired U.S.A.I.D. workers clean out their desks on Thursday. Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesIn a joint statement, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee denounced the canceled funding, calling the foreign aid review — mandated by an executive order President Trump signed shortly after taking office last month — “not a serious effort or attempt at reform but rather a pretext to dismantle decades of U.S. investment that makes America safer, stronger and more prosperous.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More