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Stunning Signal leak reveals depths of Trump administration’s loathing of Europe
If Europe wasn’t already on notice, the extraordinary leak of deliberations by JD Vance and other top-level Trump administration officials over a strike against the Houthis in Yemen was another sign that it has a target on its back.The administration officials gave Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic a front-row seat to the planning for the strike against the Houthis – a stunning intelligence leak that has caused anger against Republicans who called for criminal investigations against Hillary Clinton and others for playing fast and loose with sensitive information.On the face of it, the strike against the Houthis had far more to do with the administration’s policies on protecting maritime trade and containing Iran than its concerns about Europe freeloading on US defense spending and military prowess.But Vance appears determined to push that angle as a reason to postpone the strike.“I think we are making a mistake,” wrote Vance, adding that while only 3% of US trade goes through the Suez canal, 40% of European trade does. “There is a real risk that the public doesn’t understand this or why it’s necessary,” he added. “The strongest reason to do this is, as [Trump] said, to send a message.”Vance was contending that once again the United States is doing what Europe should be. It is consistent with his past arguments that the US is overpaying for European security and the derision he displayed toward European allies (almost certainly the UK and France) when he described them as “some random country that hasn’t fought a war in 30 or 40 years”. (Both fought in Afghanistan and the UK fought alongside the US in Iraq).It was during this policy discussion, Goldberg wrote, that he was convinced that he was reading remarks by the real Vance, as well as defense secretary Pete Hegseth, national security advisor Michael Waltz, and senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller.Then Vance went a step further. He tacitly admitted a difference between his foreign policy and Trump’s saying that the strike would undermine the president’s Europe policy – one that has been led by Vance in his divisive speech at the Munich Security Conference where he accused European leaders of running from their own electorates and of his Eurosceptic comments on Fox News.“I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now,” Vance wrote. “There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.”Those designated on the call also reflect the vice-president’s growing clout in foreign policymaking circles. Vance named Andy Baker, his national security advisor who helped lead the transition team at the Pentagon, as his representative. Hegseth named Dan Caldwell, a leading proponent of “restraint” in the exercise of US foreign power abroad to protect Europe and counter rivals like Russia, indicating the Vance team’s presence at high levels of the Pentagon as well.At heart, the disagreement indicated that Vance’s views of foreign policy are not quite aligned with Trump. Trump broadly sees the world as transactional and optimists in Europe have claimed he could force a positive outcome by forcing those nations to spend more on defense budgets. But Vance appears far more confrontational and principled in his antipathy toward the transatlantic alliance, and has attacked European leaders for backing values that he says are not aligned with the US.That makes Vance even more of a concern for Europe. Kaja Kallas, the European foreign policy chief, accused Vance of “trying to pick a fight” with European allies. Another European diplomat said: “He is very dangerous for Europe … maybe the most [dangerous] in the administration.” Another said he was “obsessed” with driving a wedge between Europe and the US.Back on the chat some sought – carefully – to talk Vance down. Hegseth said the strike would promote “core” American values including freedom of navigation and pre-establish deterrence. But he said the strikes could wait, if desired. Waltz, a foreign policy traditionalist, said: “It will have to be the United States that reopens these shipping lanes.” But he agreed that the administration sought to “compile the cost associated and levy them on the Europeans”.“If you think we should do it let’s go. I just hate bailing Europe out again,” Vance replied. Hegseth agreed that “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s PATHETIC.” But, he added, “we are the only ones on the planet (on our side of the ledger) who can do this.”Miller, the Trump confidant, effectively ended the conversation by saying that the president had been clear. “Green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return.”Broadly, the administration’s policies on Europe are coming into focus. And there are few stepping up to voice backing for Nato or for Europe writ large. On a podcast interview this weekend, the senior Trump envoy Steve Witkoff mused about the potential for the Gulf economies to replace those of Europe. “It could be much bigger than Europe. Europe is dysfunctional today,” he said.Tucker Carlson, the host and another Trump confidant, agreed. “It would be good for the world because Europe is dying,” he said. More
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European universities offer ‘scientific asylum’ to US researchers fleeing Trump’s cuts
Laced with terms such as “censorship” and “political interference”, the Belgium-based jobs advert was far from typical. The promise of academic freedom, however, hinted at who it was aimed at: researchers in the US looking to flee the funding freezes, cuts and ideological impositions ushered in by Donald Trump’s administration.“We see it as our duty to come to the aid of our American colleagues,” said Jan Danckaert, the rector of Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), in explaining why his university – founded in 1834 to safeguard academia from the interference of church or state – had decided to open 12 postdoctoral positions for international researchers, with a particular focus on Americans.“American universities and their researchers are the biggest victims of this political and ideological interference,” Danckaert said in a statement. “They’re seeing millions in research funding disappear for ideological reasons.”The university is among a handful of institutions across Europe that have begun actively recruiting US researchers, offering themselves as a haven for those keen to escape the Trump administration’s crackdown on research and academia.Since Trump took power in late January, researchers in the US have faced a multipronged attack. Efforts to slash government spending have left thousands of employees bracing for layoffs, including at institutions such as Nasa, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US’s pre-eminent climate research agency. The government’s targeting of “wokeism” has meanwhile sought to root out funding for research deemed to involve diversity, certain kinds of vaccines and any mention of the climate crisis.In France, the director of the prestigious Pasteur Institute in Paris, Yasmine Belkaid, said it was already working to recruit people from across the Atlantic for work in fields such as infectious diseases or the origins of disease.View image in fullscreen“I receive daily requests from people who want to return: French, European or even Americans who no longer feel able to do their research or are afraid to do it freely,” Belkaid told the French newspaper La Tribune. “You might call it a sad opportunity, but it is an opportunity, all the same.”The sentiment was echoed by France’s minister for higher education and research, Philippe Baptiste, in a recent letter that called on research institutions to send in proposals on how best to attract talent from the US. “Many well-known researchers are already questioning their future in the US,” he said. “Naturally, we wish to welcome a certain number of them.”On Thursday, the Netherlands said it was aiming to swiftly launch a fund to attract researchers to the country.While the fund would be open to people of all nationalities, the country’s education minister, Eppo Bruins, hinted at the tensions that have gripped US academia in announcing the plans.“There is currently a great global demand for international top scientific talent. At the same time, the geopolitical climate is changing, which is increasing the international mobility of scientists,” Bruins said in a letter to parliament.“Several European countries are responding to this with efforts to attract international talent,” he added. “I want the Netherlands to remain at the vanguard of these efforts.”The Dutch effort comes after France’s Aix-Marseille University said it had set up a programme – titled Safe Place for Science – that would put aside funding for more than two dozen researchers from the US for three years.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We wish we didn’t have to do this,” said Éric Berton, the university’s president. “We’re not looking to attract researchers. But we were quite indignant about what was happening and we felt that our colleagues in the US were going through a catastrophe … we wanted to offer some sort of scientific asylum to those whose research is being hindered.”Two weeks after the programme was launched there have been about 100 applications, with researchers from Yale, Nasa and Stanford among those who have expressed interest. The university continues to receive about 10 applications a day, said Berton, many of them from researchers involved in studying climate, health or social sciences.Berton said he hoped universities across Europe would join his in providing a safe space for researchers. “I think that we need to realise the historic moment we’re living through and the serious, long-term consequences this could have,” he said. “Europe must rise to the occasion.”At VUB, the opening of the 12 postdoctoral positions was also aimed at acknowledging the global impact of Trump’s crackdown. Two research projects in which the university was involved – one delving into youth and disinformation and another investigating the transatlantic dialogue between the US and Europe – had been cancelled due to “changed policy priorities”, it said.For the university in Brussels, the openings were also a vindication of sorts. In a 2016 interview with Fox News, Trump had sought to characterise life in Brussels as akin to “living in a hellhole”, falsely accusing migrants in the city of failing to assimilate.“At the time, the statement elicited many emotional reactions in Europe,” the university said. “This gives additional symbolic meaning to the VUB initiative.” More
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National security council investigating after Trump officials accidentally text journalist top-secret Yemen war plans – live
Members of Congress and national security staffers have been left stunned after top Trump administration officials, including the vice-president and the defense secretary, discussed war plans on Signal – and mistakenly added a journalist to the group chat.Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic, wrote:
The world found out shortly before 2pm eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44am. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing. This is going to require some explaining.
He goes on:
I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior US officials, up to and including the vice president.
The National Security Council confirmed it was real and said it was investigating. Democrats are already demanding hearings as concerns arise about the security of classified communications.Democratic senator Jack Reed, the ranking member of the senate armed services committee, said in a statement:
If true, this story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen. Military operations need to be handled with utmost discretion, using approved, secure lines of communication, because American lives are on the line. The carelessness shown by President Trump’s cabinet is stunning and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the Administration immediately.
Democrat Pat Ryan an Army veteran who also sits on the armed services committee, wrote on X:Marine veteran and Democratic Arizona senator Ruben Gallego said: “If I handled classified and sensitive information in this way when I was in the Marines … oh boy … ”Donald Trump will nominate Dr Susan Monarez, the acting director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to permanently lead the agency, the White House said on Monday.The announcement came after the president earlier this month abruptly pulled the nomination for his first choice, David Weldon, a 71-year-old doctor and former Republican Florida congressman who was closely scrutinized for anti-vaccine views. Monarez has been acting director of the CDC since January and previously worked at the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, another federal agency, the AP reported.The president said in a post on Monday: “As an incredible mother and dedicated public servant, Dr Monarez understands the importance of protecting our children, our communities, and our future … Americans have lost confidence in the CDC due to political bias and disastrous mismanagement.”A federal judge has ruled that the US government cannot remove two transgender men from the Air Force, the latest courtroom victory for LGBTQ+ rights advocates challenging Donald Trump’s executive order banning trans people from military service, the AP reports.On Monday, Christine O’Hearn, a US judge in New Jersey, issued a two-week restraining order barring the enforcement of Trump’s policy on the impacted plaintiffs. O’Hearn’s ruling comes days after a similar ruling by a federal judge in Washington DC.O’Hearn said the trans plaintiffs, Master Sgt Logan Ireland and Staff Sgt Nicholas Bear Bade, had shown that their removal from service would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations, the AP reported. The judge said they were likely to prevail on equal protection grounds as they had been singled out due to their sex, and that the US could not justify the discriminatory treatment. The restraining order said, in part:
The loss of military service under the stigma of a policy that targets gender identity is not merely a loss of employment; it is a profound disruption of personal dignity, medical continuity, and public service.
Last week, Judge Ana Reyes of Washington DC sharply criticized Trump’s executive order, saying the ban on trans service members was “soaked in animus,” adding: “Its language is unabashedly demeaning, its policy stigmatizes transgender persons as inherently unfit, and its conclusions bear no relation to fact.”The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, subsequently mocked Reyes and subjected her to personal attacks.Donald Trump has now been asked about his cabinet members accidentally leaking war plans to an Atlantic journalist who was mistakenly copied on a Signal group chat.“I don’t know anything about it,” he responded at a briefing, before criticizing the Atlantic as a magazine “going out of business”. The president reiterated that he was not aware of the story, saying: “You’re telling me about it for the first time.”The use of Signal, a private commercial app, to discuss highly sensitive national security matters and war plans – and the undetected inclusion of a journalist – has sparked widespread, bipartisan outrage. More on the White House response from the Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon:
The White House confirmed the leak. National Security Council spokesperson Brian Hughes told the Guardian: ‘This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.’
But the White House attempted to defend the communications, with Hughes describing the messages as an example of ‘deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials’.
‘The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security,’ Hughes said.
The White House’s shocking leak of secret military plans to a journalist, who was accidentally included in a group chat, has sparked widespread, bipartisan outrage.The Atlantic magazine’s editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, revealed in a stunning story today that he had been inadvertently invited into a chat group on Signal, a private messaging app, that included vice-president JD Vance, secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth and other high-profile figures in Donald Trump’s administration. Goldberg was apparently undetected in the chat as cabinet members discussed upcoming attacks on the Houthi armed group in Yemen.Elected officials are expressing disbelief and anger at the extraordinary security blunder, the Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon reports.Delaware senator Chris Coons said: “Every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime – even if accidentally.” Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: “This administration is playing fast and loose with our nation’s most classified info, and it makes all Americans less safe.”Republican senator John Cornyn called it “a huge screw-up” and said it was being investigated. New York Republican representative Mike Lawler said: “Classified information should not be transmitted on unsecured channels – and certainly not to those without security clearances. Period.” More reactions here:A spokesperson for the US state department has repeatedly refused to comment on the administration’s extraordinary blunder of discussing secret military plans on a chat that included a prominent journalist.Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic magazine, revealed today that key figures in Donald Trump’s cabinet – including vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio, and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – used the commercial chat app, Signal, to discuss plans for US attacks on the Houthi armed group in Yemen. The chat inadvertently included Goldberg, who was added by one of its members and apparently was unnoticed by the rest of the group.At a briefing, a reporter pressed Tammy Bruce, state department spokesperson, about the scandal, asking, “Why was the cabinet … discussing a potential military operation on Signal, which is a public app, and why didn’t they notice a phone number that was not part of their group, and how concerned is the secretary about the implications of this?”Bruce responded: “We will not comment on the secretary’s deliberative conversations … You should contact the White House.” Bruce continued to refuse to comment as the reporter asked for the perspective of Marco Rubio, the secretary of state. The national security council has said it is investigating the matter.More background here:The US treated alleged Nazis better during World War Two than the Trump Administration treated Venezuelan migrants last week, a federal appeals judge told a Justice Department lawyer during a contentious court hearing. “There were plane loads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people,” US circuit judge Patricia Millett said. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here.
It came hours after US federal judge James Boasberg ruled that the migrants deserved to have a court hearing before their deportations to determine whether they belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang. He thwarted the Trump administration’s bid to vacate restraining orders protecting Venezuelans accused of gang ties from deportation, instead insisting on due process for those contesting the allegations. “The named Plaintiffs dispute they are members of Tren de Aragua; they may not be deported until a court decides the merits of their challenge,” Boasberg wrote.
A law firm will present a habeas corpus lawsuit to El Salvador’s supreme court in defense of 30 Venezuelan citizens jailed in the Central American nation’s so-called “mega-prison” after being deported there by the US. The lawsuit, which will seek to question the legality of their detention, comes after the US sent some 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, accusing them of being members of Tren de Aragua.
In an extraordinary blunder, the White House accidentally texted top-secret military plans for recent US attacks on the Houthi armed group in Yemen to a journalist. Key figures in the Trump administration – including vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – used the commercial chat app Signal to convene and discuss plans – while also including a prominent journalist in the group. The breach was revealed by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic magazine, who discovered that he had been included in the chat. The National Security Council said: “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”
Trump announced that any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela will pay a 25% tariff on trades made with the US. This “secondary tariff” will take effect on 2 April, the president said in a Truth Social post. He cited “numerous reasons” for the move, including his baseless repeated claim that “Venezuela has purposefully and deceitfully sent to the United States, undercover, tens of thousands of high level, and other, criminals, many of whom are murderers and people of a very violent nature”. China is the largest buyer of Venezuelan oil, with Spain, Italy, Cuba and India also consumers.
On the issue of tariffs, Trump said he will in the very near future announce tariffs on automobiles, aluminum and pharmaceuticals. The president said the US would need all those products if there were problems including wars.
Greenlandic leaders criticised an upcoming trip by a high-profile American delegation to the semi-autonomous Danish territory that Trump has suggested the US should annex. The delegation, which will visit an American military base and watch a dogsled race, will be led by Usha Vance, wife of vice-president JD Vance, and include White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and energy secretary Chris Wright. Greenland’s outgoing prime minister Mute Egede called this week’s visit a “provocation” and said his caretaker government would not meet with the delegation. “Until recently, we could trust the Americans, who were our allies and friends, and with whom we enjoyed working closely,” Egede said. “But that time is over.”
The agency responsible for unaccompanied migrant minors will be allowed to share sponsors’ immigration status with law enforcement agencies under a regulatory change, a move critics say could discourage families from claiming their children. The US Office for Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which cares for the children until they can be released, will also scrap regulatory language that had prohibited it from denying release solely based on a sponsor’s immigration status.
Trump appointed his former lawyer Alina Habba, who was previously sanctioned for filing a frivolous lawsuit, to serve as interim US attorney for the district of New Jersey. Habba represented Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case, which he lost, and again in the civil case against the Trump Organization’s civil fraud case, which he also lost. She said she looks forward to “going after the people we should be going after – not the people that are falsely accused”, but declined to elaborate further.
That’s all from me, Lucy Campbell, for today. But stay tuned, my colleague Sam Levin is here to steer you through the rest of the day’s developments.Here’s more from my colleague Peter Beaumont on the White House adding a journalist to a top-secret Yemen war group chat by mistake.Senior members of Donald Trump’s cabinet have been involved in a serious security breach while discussing secret military plans for recent US attacks on the Houthi armed group in Yemen.In an extraordinary blunder, key figures in the Trump administration – including vice-president JD Vance, defense secretary Pete Hegseth, secretary of state Marco Rubio and the director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard – used the commercial chat app Signal to convene and discuss plans – while also including a prominent journalist in the group.Signal is not approved by the US government for sharing sensitive information.Others in the chat included Trump adviser Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief of staff Susie Wiles and key Trump envoy Steve Witkoff.The discussions seen by Jeffrey Goldberg include comments from Vance, who appeared unconvinced of the urgency of attacking Yemen, as well as conversations over what price should be expected of Europeans and other countries for the US removing the threat to a key global shipping route.Security and intelligence commentators in the US described the breach of operational security as unprecedented – both for the use of a commercial chat service and for the inclusion of Goldberg.Read the full story here:Members of Congress and national security staffers have been left stunned after top Trump administration officials, including the vice-president and the defense secretary, discussed war plans on Signal – and mistakenly added a journalist to the group chat.Jeffrey Goldberg, editor of the Atlantic, wrote:
The world found out shortly before 2pm eastern time on March 15 that the United States was bombing Houthi targets across Yemen. I, however, knew two hours before the first bombs exploded that the attack might be coming. The reason I knew this is that Pete Hegseth, the secretary of defense, had texted me the war plan at 11:44am. The plan included precise information about weapons packages, targets, and timing. This is going to require some explaining.
He goes on:
I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the national-security leadership of the United States would communicate on Signal about imminent war plans. I also could not believe that the national security adviser to the president would be so reckless as to include the editor in chief of The Atlantic in such discussions with senior US officials, up to and including the vice president.
The National Security Council confirmed it was real and said it was investigating. Democrats are already demanding hearings as concerns arise about the security of classified communications.Democratic senator Jack Reed, the ranking member of the senate armed services committee, said in a statement:
If true, this story represents one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen. Military operations need to be handled with utmost discretion, using approved, secure lines of communication, because American lives are on the line. The carelessness shown by President Trump’s cabinet is stunning and dangerous. I will be seeking answers from the Administration immediately.
Democrat Pat Ryan an Army veteran who also sits on the armed services committee, wrote on X:Marine veteran and Democratic Arizona senator Ruben Gallego said: “If I handled classified and sensitive information in this way when I was in the Marines … oh boy … ”The US treated alleged Nazis better during World War Two than the Trump Administration treated Venezuelan migrants last week, a federal appeals judge told a Justice Department lawyer during a contentious court hearing on Monday.“There were plane loads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people,” US circuit judge Patricia Millett said at the hearing in Washington. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here.”Judge Millett noted that alleged Nazis were given hearing boards and were subject to established regulations, while the alleged members of Tren De Aragua were given no such rights.
There’s no regulations, and nothing was adopted by the agency officials that were administering this. They people weren’t given notice. They weren’t told where they were going. They were given those people on those planes on that Saturday and had no opportunity to file habeas or any type of action to challenge the removal under the AEA. What’s factually wrong about what I said?
Deputy assistant attorney general Drew Ensign responded: “We certainly dispute the Nazi analogy.” He argued that some of the men were able to file habeas petitions.Prior to the Trump administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, the law had been used just three times in US history, most recently to intern and remove Japanese, German and Italian immigrants during the second world war.It comes hours after US federal judge James Boasberg ruled that the migrants deserved to have a court hearing before their deportations to determine whether they belonged to the Tren de Aragua gang.The election to fill a Wisconsin supreme court seat is quickly becoming a referendum on the Trump administration and a test of enthusiasm on both sides, the Associated Press reports.For national Republicans, the race is all about Donald Trump. But Democrats are trying a new tactic, focusing their fire on Elon Musk, the billionaire who is the race’s biggest donor, by far.The vote on 1 April will be the first major test of US politics since the president secured a second term in November, serving as an early barometer of how voters feel about the direction Trump is taking the country in one of the most contested battleground states (which Trump won by less than a percentage point).It’s also a test for Musk himself. His nascent political operation, which spent more than $200m to help Trump win in November, is canvassing and advertising in Wisconsin on behalf of the Republican-backed candidate, Brad Schimel. A win would cement his status as a conservative kingmaker, while a loss could give license to Republicans distancing themselves from his efforts to stymie government functions and eliminate tens of thousands of federal jobs.The contest will determine the court’s ideological balance for the second time in two years, and likely the future of several issues related to abortion rights, unions and congressional maps.Musk, the race’s biggest donor by far, has helped make the race the most expensive judicial election in the nation’s history, with nearly $67m spent so far. He held a get-out-the-vote event on his X platform on Saturday, writing:
It might not seem important, but it’s actually really important. And it could determine the fate of the country. This election is going to affect everyone in the United States.
Schimel has openly courted Trump’s endorsement, which he received on Friday night, as he campaigns against Dane county judge Susan Crawford, the Democrat-backed candidate. He attended Trump’s inauguration in January, has said that he would be part of a “support system” for Trump. Earlier this month, he attended a “Mega MAGA rally” where he posed for a picture in front of a giant inflatable version of the president, which had a “Vote Brad Schimel Supreme Court” poster plastered on its chest. Schimel has also resurfaced long-debunked conspiracies about voter fraud that Trump has embraced.Crawford campaign spokesperson Derrick Honeyman said:
This race is the first real test point in the country on Elon Musk and his influence on our politics, and voters want an opportunity to push back on that and the influence he is trying to make on Wisconsin and the rest of country.
State Democrats have hosted a series of anti-Musk town halls, including one featuring former vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, and featured Musk heavily in ads. Crawford has also seized on Musk, going as far as to refer to her opponent as “Elon Schimel” during a recent debate. “Don’t let Elon buy the Supreme Court,” read billboards paid for the state Democratic party that depict Musk as Schimel’s puppeteer.“There’s so many people who are desperate for a way to fight back against what Trump and Musk are doing nationally,” said Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic party chair, and see the race as an “opportunity to punch back”. He said the party had seen an “explosive surge” in grassroots and small-donor fundraising from across the country tied to Musk’s involvement:
Most voters still don’t know who Crawford and and Schimel are, but they have extremely strong feelings about Musk and Trump.
This report is from Reuters:The agency responsible for unaccompanied migrant minors will be allowed to share sponsors’ immigration status with law enforcement agencies under a regulatory change, a move critics say could discourage families from claiming their children.The US Office for Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which cares for the children until they can be released, will also scrap regulatory language that had prohibited it from denying release solely based on a sponsor’s immigration status, according to a Federal Register notice due to be published on Tuesday.From ORR custody, children are released to sponsors – usually parents or relatives – as immigration authorities weigh their cases.ORR argued that existing regulations put in place under former president Joe Biden conflicted with federal law, which it said prohibited government agencies from withholding any individual’s citizenship or immigration status.Critics, however, say that sharing sponsors’ information with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) could make parents and other relatives reluctant to come forward to claim their children due to fear they could be detained or deported.An Ice official in 2018 estimated that 80% of sponsors and family members lacked legal immigration status.Migrant advocacy groups said the Trump administration last week largely shuttered a federal program that provided legal representation to unaccompanied children in court. They urged the administration to restore it.“Ending this long-standing program is a direct attack on due process,” Shayna Kessler, a director at Vera Institute of Justice, one of the groups providing legal services to unaccompanied children, said in a statement on Friday.The Administration for Children and Families, ORR’s parent agency, did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding the suspension of the program.Vladimir Putin has gifted Donald Trump a portrait he commissioned of the US president, the Kremlin confirmed on Monday.Putin gave the painting to Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, in Moscow earlier this month, the Russian president’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said in a response to a journalist’s question, declining further comment.The gift was first mentioned last week by Witkoff in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson. Witkoff told Carlson that Trump “was clearly touched” by the portrait, which he described as “beautiful”.Witkoff met Putin after talks with Russian officials about trying to end the war in Ukraine. During his interview with Carlson, Witkoff described Putin’s gift as “gracious” and recalled how Putin told him he had prayed for Trump last year when he heard the then-candidate for the US presidency had been shot at a rally in Pennsylvania. “He was praying for his friend,” Witkoff said, recounting Putin’s comments.It was not immediately known if the portrait Putin gave to Trump had been examined for bugs.The White House hasn’t commented on the portrait. Let’s hope Trump likes it better than the other one.Related: ‘Insecure baby’: Trump draws ridicule after throwing fit over Colorado capitol portraitA law firm will on Monday present a habeas corpus lawsuit to El Salvador’s supreme court in defense of 30 Venezuelan citizens jailed in the Central American nation’s so-called “mega-prison” after being deported there by the US, according to Reuters.The lawsuit, which will seek to question the legality of their detention, comes after the US sent some 238 Venezuelans to El Salvador, accusing them of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang.The judges in charge of the case are allies of President Nayib Bukele, who has offered to hold US prisoners in its prison system and accepted payment from the US to do so.Outside the court, lawyer Jaime Ortega told reporters that while 30 Venezuelan nationals had granted them the powers of attorney to represent them, they would request habeas corpus for the rest of the Venezuelans detained in the country.Some 137 of the group of Venezuelans were deported under an obscure US wartime law targeting “alien enemies” that was quickly blocked by a US federal judge, who ordered the flight carrying the Venezuelan citizens to turn around.However, the Venezuelan citizens were later received in El Salvador where they were taken into custody in a massive anti-terrorism prison, under a deal in which Washington is paying El Salvador’s government $6m, according to the White House.Lawyers and family members of many of the migrants deny they are members of Tren de Aragua and the US judge James Boasberg on Monday ruled they must be given the chance to challenge the government’s claim that they are gang members.The judge also cited accounts of poor prison conditions, including beatings, humiliations, irregular access to food and water and having to sleep standing up because of overcrowding.El Salvador’s presidential office did not respond to Reuters’ request for comment regarding the prison conditions.Related: US deportees face brutal conditions in El Salvador mega-prison: ‘Severe overcrowding, inadequate food’As expected, the US has extended Chevron’s wind-down of oil exports from Venezuela by two months on Monday, after Donald Trump said that any country buying oil or gas from Venezuela will pay a 25% tariff on any trades made with the US.The Trump administration extended until 27 May the wind-down of a license that the US had granted to Chevron since 2022 to operate in sanctioned Venezuela and export its oil. Chevron is only permitted to export that oil to the US.Trump had initially given Chevron 30 days from 4 March to wind down that license after he accused President Nicolás Maduro of not making progress on electoral reforms and migrant returns.Chevron did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.Earlier on Monday, Trump announced a “secondary tariff” to take effect on 2 April, in a post on Truth Social. The two moves taken together alleviate some pressure on Chevron while putting more pressure on consumers of Venezuelan oil, though it is uncertain how Trump’s administration will enforce the tariff.Benchmark crude oil futures jumped nearly 1.5% on the news of the tariff.China, which already has been the subject of US tariffs, is the largest buyer of Venezuela’s oil, the OPEC member’s main export. In February, China received directly and indirectly some 503,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan crude and fuel, which represented 55% of total exports.Tariff impositions in China on imports of certain types of Venezuelan oil in past years led to a decline in the volume of Venezuelan crude received by Chinese buyers, which ultimately forced state company PDVSA to widen price discounts to continue selling to its most important market.Spain, Italy, Cuba and India are other consumers of Venezuelan oil. US imports of the oil are set to end 27 May.There was no immediate response from Maduro’s government to a request for comment.Trump’s notice of the tariff occurred days after news that Shell Plc aims to begin producing natural gas at Venezuela’s Dragon gas field and exporting it to neighboring Trinidad and Tobago in 2026, a year ahead of the original 2027 start date.Donald Trump talked about the Ukraine war at the cabinet meeting. The president said he expected a revenue-sharing agreement with Ukrainian on its critical minerals will be signed soon.Trump also told reporters as he met his Cabinet that the United States is talking to Ukraine about the potential for American firms owning Ukrainian power plants.Our dedicated Ukraine blog has all the latest details: More - in US Politics
Outrage after White House accidentally texts journalist war plans: ‘Huge screw-up’
A catastrophic security leak is triggering bipartisan outrage after the Atlantic revealed that senior Trump administration officials accidentally broadcast classified military plans through a Signal group chat with a journalist reading along.On the Senate floor on Monday, the minority leader, Chuck Schumer, called it “one of the most stunning breaches of military intelligence I have read about in a very, very long time” and urged Republicans to seek a “full investigation into how this happened, the damage it created and how we can avoid it in the future”.“Every single one of the government officials on this text chain have now committed a crime – even if accidentally,” the Delaware senator Chris Coons wrote on Twitter/X. “We can’t trust anyone in this dangerous administration to keep Americans safe.”The New York representative Pat Ryan called the incident “Fubar” (an acronym for “fucked up beyond all recognition”) and threatened to launch his own congressional investigation “IMMEDIATELY” if House Republicans fail to act.According to reporting in the Atlantic, the editor in chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, was accidentally invited into a Signal chat group with more than a dozen senior Trump administration officials including Vice-President JD Vance, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, national security adviser, Mike Waltz, secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, and others.The reporting exposes not only a historic mishandling of classified information but a potentially illegal communication chain in which sensitive military plans about airstrikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen were casually shared in an encrypted group chat with automatic delete functions.“It has made us look weak to our adversaries,” the California congressman Ro Khanna told the Guardian. “We need to take cybersecurity far more seriously and I look forward to leading on that.”As the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, Jim Himes has overseen countless classified briefings. But the Signal group chat leak of impending war plans has made him “horrified”.“If true, these actions are a brazen violation of laws and regulations that exist to protect national security, including the safety of Americans serving in harm’s way,’ he said. “These individuals know the calamitous risks of transmitting classified information across unclassified systems, and they also know that if a lower-ranking official under their command did what is described here, they would likely lose their clearance and be subject to criminal investigation.”Senator Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, posted on social media: “This administration is playing fast and loose with our nation’s most classified info, and it makes all Americans less safe.”The Republican senator John Cornyn described the incident more colloquially, telling reporters it was “a huge screw-up” and suggesting that “the interagency would look at that” to determine how such a significant security lapse occurred.The White House confirmed the leak. The national security council spokesperson, Brian Hughes, told the Guardian: “This appears to be an authentic message chain, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain.”But the White House attempted to defend the communications, with Hughes describing the messages as an example of “deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to troops or national security,” Hughes said.But most lawmakers don’t see it that way. The Rhode Island senator Jack Reed said on X that the incident represented “one of the most egregious failures of operational security and common sense I have ever seen”.The echoes of past document controversies are also coming back to haunt some of the senior officials in the chat, who previously criticized similar security breaches. In 2024, Waltz – the current national security adviser – had said “Biden’s sitting National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan sent Top Secret messages to Hillary Clinton’s private account. And what did DOJ do about it? Not a damn thing.”In 2023, Hegseth had his own critique of the Biden administration handling classified documents “flippantly”, remarking on Fox News that “If at the very top there’s no accountability”, then we have “two tiers of justice”.The bombshell revelation also potentially violated federal record-keeping laws. The Federal Records Act, which mandates preservation of government communications, typically mandates that records are kept for two years, and the Signal messages were scheduled to automatically delete in under four weeks.The New York Republican representative Mike Lawler summed up the bipartisan consensus: “Classified information should not be transmitted on unsecured channels – and certainly not to those without security clearances. Period.” More
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Trump’s shuttering of global media agency endangers reporters, staff say
Foreign workers at US government-backed media outlets being cut by the Trump administration say they face deportation to their home countries, where some risk imprisonment or death at the hands of authoritarian governments.Earlier this month, the Trump administration moved to defund the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM), an independent federal agency that oversees the Voice of America (VoA), the US’s largest and oldest international broadcaster, and provides grants to Radio Free Asia, Radio Free Europe and other news agencies. Staff have been placed on administrative leave and contractors have been fired. The agency had around 3,500 employees with an annual budget of $886m in 2024.“We have many coworkers in different services, several of whom came here and sought asylum visas. If their own government knew they worked for RFA [Radio Free Asia] and they went back to their own country, their lives would be at risk,” Jaewoo Park, a journalist for RFA, who was placed on administrative leave along with all of his coworkers, told the Guardian.“Authoritarian governments have praised what Trump is doing right now,” Park said. “In Burma, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, there were people who fought for freedom and democracy, and they came to work at RFA. It’s very risky for them. Their lives are in danger if Radio Free Asia doesn’t exist.”Chinese and Russian state media have praised the cuts of the news agencies, with a Russian broadcaster calling the cuts a “holiday” for Russian state media outlets.The shuttering of the agency was unexpected and has caused chaos for Park and others. “My wife is 28 weeks pregnant and we’re very concerned because I might go back to South Korea because I’m on a working visa. My wife is almost due and we just bought a home last year,” he added. “It’s very concerning and depressing.”But the impact of the decision will be felt globally, said Park. He cited Radio Free Asia’s broadcasts to North Korea which, he noted, defectors from North Korea have cited as an important source of independent news.“We know North Korea is a very oppressed country. They cannot hear anything other than the government press,” he said.Workers at Voice of America have also pointed out the risks and dangers posed to some employees on visas who may have to return to their home countries now their positions are in jeopardy.Two contributors for VoA are currently imprisoned in Myanmar and Vietnam and four contributors to Radio Free Asia are currently imprisoned in Vietnam. Russia, Belarus and Azerbaijan also reportedly have journalists affiliated with the news agencies currently imprisoned.“Dozens of VoA staffers in Washington are on J-1 visas [non-immigrant visas meant to encourage cultural exchange], and if they lose them, they may have to return to countries whose governments have a record of jailing critics,” wrote Liam Scott in the Columbia Journalism Review, a VoA journalist who was notified their contract would be terminated on 31 March. “Two Russian contractors on J-1 visas who are set to be officially terminated at the end of March are considered at significant risk of being imprisoned if they return to Russia, according to a VoA staffer with knowledge of the situation.”Stanislav Aseyev, a Ukrainian journalist, shared in a post on X that he was tortured for writing for Radio Liberty after being told it was an “enemy” of Russia.“Now, the ‘enemy of Russia’ is being destroyed by America itself, and my torture seems doubly in vain,” he wrote.A VOA employee who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation, told the Guardian: “Screwing over the people who worked for them and helped them, reminds me of what happened to Afghan interpreters.” Following the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Afghan interpreters for the US military were left behind, stranded and in danger while trying to obtain special visas to escape to the US.“It would be an even bigger shame if people that sacrificed for our country were thrown under the bus. It’s a tremendous own goal in terms of US foreign policy and US national interests,” they said.Federal workers, journalists and labor unions filed a lawsuit last week against the US Agency for Global Media over the shuttering of the agency by the Trump administration, seeking immediate relief to reverse it.Donald Trump issued an executive order to defund the US Agency for Global Media, on 14 March. Kari Lake, a former TV anchor, formally joined Voice of America as special adviser in late February 2025.Lake lost the 2022 election for governor of Arizona and a 2024 US Senate race in Arizona as the Republican nominee. She claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump and filed lawsuits claiming her 2022 election bid was also stolen from her. Those lawsuits were dismissed and her lawyers were recently ordered by a federal court to pay $122,000 in legal fees to Maricopa County for the “frivolous” lawsuits.Lake claimed in a press release that the agency was “not salvageable” and accused it of “massive national security violations, including spies and terrorist sympathizers and/or supporters infiltrating the agency”.The US state department and US Agency for Global Media did not respond to multiple requests for comment.Asked about the visa and immigration statuses for workers at the news agencies during a press briefing on 21 March, state department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said: “I have the question out to the secretary. It’s something that I’m following up with as well. He’s a busy guy.” More
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Venezuelan immigrants deported from US to Venezuela via Honduras
A group of Venezuelan immigrants have been deported from the US to Honduras and then sent on to Venezuela, after an apparent deal between the three countries.The flights came one day after a Venezuelan government official announced on social media it would resume accepting deportees from the US. Deportations from the US to Venezuela, which have rarely taken place, have been a point of dispute for the Trump administration.Sunday’s indirect deportation flight to Venezuela comes amid heightened tensions between the Trump administration and Venezuela, and an increase in operations targeting Venezuelan immigrants in the US.The Venezuelan government official’s announcement also alluded to the highly contentious expulsion of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador last week.“Migrating is not a crime, and we will not rest until we accomplish the return of all who need it, and until we rescue our brothers that are kidnapped in El Salvador,” said Jorge Rodríguez Gomez, the president of the Venezuelan national assembly.The Honduran foreign minister announced on Sunday night that 199 Venezuelans were deported from the US to a military base in Honduras on Sunday. From there, the migrants were placed on Venezuelan planes and returned to Venezuela.“This process shows us again the positive cooperation between the government of Honduras, the United States of America and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” Enrique Reina said on X.According to the US state department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, the Trump administration expects to see “a consistent flow of deportation flights to Venezuela going forward”.Since the Trump administration took office two months ago, there has been heightened pressure and aggression towards the Venezuelan government. In early February, the Venezuelan government sent two planes to the US to pick up deportees and returned them to Venezuela. At the time, the two flights were seen as a breakthrough in relations between the US and Venezuela.However, scheduled flights were again placed on hold by the Venezuelan government, after Donald Trump reversed the 2022 license given to Chevron to operate in Venezuela. Last week, secretary of state Marco Rubio threatened “new, severe, and escalating sanctions” on Venezuela if it did not accept deportations.On Monday, the treasury department published a license authorizing the wind down of Chevron’s work in Venezuela.The first deportation to Venezuela via Honduras took place last month, when the US deported 177 Venezuelan immigrants previously detained at the Guantánamo Bay naval base. The US government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and the Honduran foreign minister at the time both announced that deportation.The Honduran government has strong diplomatic relations with Venezuela and their involvement in the transfer of Venezuelan deportees raises questions about behind-the-scenes negotiations between the Trump administration and the two Latin American governments. Before the US president took office, Honduran leftwing president Xiomara Castro had threatened to expel the US military from a base in the Central American country, in response to Trump’s threats to engage in mass deportations.But after February’s first deportation to Venezuela via Honduras, Reina confirmed that Castro’s husband – former president reformist Manuel Zelaya– had coordinated with Trump envoys Mauricio Claver-Carone and Richard Grenell for the transfer of the migrants.In a shakeup to US and Honduran relations, Castro’s brother-in-law and Zelaya’s brother, was previously accused in a US federal court of collaborating with drug traffickers. Her predecessor Juan Orland0 Hernández was convicted and sentenced in New York of drug trafficking.All of this comes amid heightened US aggression towards the Venezuelan government. Earlier this year, before Trump assumed the presidency, the US state department announced a reward of up to $25m, for information leading to the capture of Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. In March 2020, under Trump’s first presidency, Maduro and other top officials were indicted in a New York federal court of drug trafficking and related crimes.On Monday, Trump threatened to impose 25% tariffs on any country that purchases oil from Venezuela, saying the country “has been very hostile to the United States and the Freedoms which we espouse”.When announcing the secondary tariffs, Trump added, without proof, that Venezuela has “purposefully and deceitfully” sent to the US, tens of thousands of “undercover” gang members. In late February, the state department designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a terrorist organization. The Trump administration has continually, also without proof, claimed that many Venezuelan immigrants in the US belong to the gang, and have been sent by the Venezuelan government.Last week, the Trump administration quickly, and without due process, expelled 238 Venezuelan migrants from the US to El Salvador after invoking the Alien Enemies Act. When invoking the Act, Trump said that the Tren de Aragua gang “is closely aligned with, and indeed has infiltrated, the Maduro regime”.The Venezuelan immigrants were sent to a high-security “terrorism” prison, run by the rightwing Salvadoran government of Nayib Bukele.In the days that followed, news organizations began publishing details of the operation, including that some of the Venezuelans expelled to El Salvador were not members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The Trump administration continues to say that the rendition operation was legal, and that all Venezuelans expelled in the operation were gang members. A federal judge blocked the administration from expelling people via the Alien Enemies Act, and on Monday, he ruled migrants are entitled to individual hearings before being expelled.Despite the Trump administration claiming that alleged Tren de Aragua members were sent by the Venezuelan government, an intelligence document suggests otherwise. Reporting from the New York Times last Thursday revealed that the CIA and the National Security Agency contradict Trump’s claims of the Venezuelan government’s ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, raising questions about Trump’s invocation of the war-time Alien Enemies Act. The justice department announced a criminal investigation into the source of the New York Times’ reporting. More
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US and Russia begin talks in Saudi Arabia on Ukraine ceasefire
US and Russian officials have begun talks in Saudi Arabia as Donald Trump pushes to broker a limited ceasefire that Washington hopes will mark the first step toward lasting peace in Ukraine.Ukraine and Russia have agreed in principle to a one-month halt on strikes on energy infrastructure after Trump spoke with the countries’ leaders last week. But uncertainty remains over how and when the partial ceasefire would take effect – and whether its scope would extend beyond energy infrastructure to include other critical sites, such as hospitals, bridges, and vital utilities.US officials held initial talks with Ukraine on Sunday evening and negotiated separately with Russia on Monday, with most meetings taking place at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Riyadh. Monday’s talks were still going after more than eight hours, according to Russian state media.The US is expected to shuttle between the two countries to finalise details and negotiate separate measures to ensure the safety of shipping in the Black Sea. “The ultimate goal is a 30-day ceasefire, during which time we discuss a permanent ceasefire. We’re not far away from that,” said the US special envoy Steve Witkoff in a podcast with the far-right commentator Tucker Carlson over the weekend.Moscow meanwhile appears to be exploiting the window before any ceasefire takes hold, launching mass drone attacks on Ukraine on Monday. Ukrainian officials said that a Russian missile had also damaged a school and a hospital in Ukraine’s north-eastern city of Sumy, wounding at least 74 people including 13 children.“Moscow speaks of peace while carrying out brutal strikes on densely populated residential areas in major Ukrainian cities,” the country’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, said. “Instead of making hollow statements about peace, Russia must stop bombing our cities and end its war on civilians.”The Ukrainian and US delegations on Sunday discussed proposals to protect energy facilities and critical infrastructure, Ukraine’s defence minister said.Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said his country’s delegation to Sunday’s talks was working in “a completely constructive manner”, adding: “The conversation is quite useful, the work of the delegations is continuing.”Zelenskyy earlier said he would hand the US a list of energy infrastructure that would be off-limits for strikes by the Russian military.The Ukrainian delegation could hold additional discussions with US officials on Monday. “We are implementing the president of Ukraine’s directive to bring a just peace closer and to strengthen security,” Rustem Umerov, the Ukrainian defence minister who heads the country’s delegation, said on Facebook.Russia is represented in the talks by Sergey Beseda, a secretive adviser to Russia’s FSB services and Grigory Karasin, a former diplomat who negotiated the 2014 Minsk accords between Russia and Ukraine.As the Russia-US talks began in Riyadh, Trump said he expected Washington and Kyiv to sign a revenue-sharing agreement on Ukrainian critical minerals soon.Trump also told reporters the US was talking to Ukraine about the potential for its firms to own Ukrainian power plants.Ukrainian officials have backed the signing of a minerals deal, but Zelenskyy has publicly rejected the idea of US firms owning Ukrainian power plants.The lead-up to the talks was marked by a series of controversial pro-Russian statements by Witkoff – tapped by Trump as his personal envoy to Putin – in which he appeared to legitimise Russia’s staged referendums in four Ukrainian regions.Speaking with Carlson, Witkoff claimed that in the four regions where Moscow held widely condemned referendums on joining Russia, “the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe referendums in Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia provinces were widely rebuked in the west as illegitimate and are viewed as a thinly veiled attempt to justify Russia’s illegal annexation of the regions. Their annexation marked the largest forcible seizure of territory in Europe since the second world war.In the interview with Carlson, Witkoff also claimed Putin had commissioned a portrait of Trump “by a leading Russian painter” that the envoy had brought back with him after a trip to Moscow.Witkoff went on to say that after the assassination attempt on Trump last July, Putin told him that he visited his local church, met his priest and prayed for Trump. “Not because he was the president of the United States or could become the president of the United States, but because he had a friendship with him and he was praying for his friend,” Witkoff said.“I don’t regard Putin as a bad guy. That is a complicated situation, that war and all the ingredients that led up to it,” he added.Witkoff’s willingness to echo Kremlin talking points and his praise for Putin are likely to heighten anxiety in Ukraine and across European capitals.In an interview with Time magazine published on Monday but conducted before Witkoff’s remarks, Zelenskyy said some US officials had begun to take Putin at his word even when it contradicted their own intelligence.“I believe Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information,” he said. “Their signal to the Americans was that the Ukrainians do not want to end the war, and something should be done to force them.”Moscow and Kyiv remain far apart on what would be acceptable terms for a peace treaty, with no sign that Putin has relinquished any of his maximalist aims in the war against Ukraine.Moscow has set out several maximalist conditions for any long-term settlement – most of which are non-starters for Kyiv and its European allies. These include a halt to all foreign military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine, restrictions on the size of its armed forces, and international recognition of the four Ukrainian regions Russia illegally annexed following staged referendums in 2022.The Kremlin has also signalled it would reject any presence of western troops in Ukraine – something Kyiv views as essential to securing lasting security guarantees.Ukraine remains deeply sceptical of any Russian agreement, pointing to past instances where Moscow failed to honour its commitments. More
