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[ti-amie]

[ti-amie]

What the...

Updated
Aug. 18, 2025, 6:35 p.m. ET13 minutes ago
Maggie Haberman David E. Sanger and Jim Tankersley

Here’s the latest.
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met with President Trump and an extraordinary delegation of European leaders at the White House on Monday, seeking to defend his nation’s interests as Mr. Trump presses for a quick peace agreement with Russia that would require Ukraine to make sweeping concessions.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky huddled for several hours in the East Room with the small group of European leaders, who had rushed to Washington to support the Ukrainian president in talks about how to end the war despite serious disagreements over the path forward. After the meetings, Mr. Trump called President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia while Mr. Zelensky and the other European leaders were still at the White House, two people briefed on the call said.

Mr. Trump confirmed the call in a post on Truth Social, giving no details about what he had relayed to Mr. Putin. He portrayed the meetings with the European leaders as fruitful and said they discussed security guarantees for Ukraine and how they would be implemented, a subject that — if it were to include NATO troops — was preemptively rejected by Russia on Monday.

Mr. Trump also said that he had initiated steps for a meeting between Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Putin, at a site to be determined, and said it would be followed by a further trilateral meeting that he would attend.

Yuri Ushakov, Mr. Putin’s foreign policy aide, said the Russian president and Mr. Trump spoke for 40 minutes and agreed that more senior negotiators would be appointed for direct talks between Russia and Ukraine. But Mr. Ushakov, in his comments to Rossiya 24, a state-run news channel, made no mention about Mr. Putin himself participating.

(...)

But details of any progress toward peace were scarce. And Mr. Zelensky, now three and a half years into a war instigated by Russia, was expected to soon confront a difficult choice: surrender territory in exchange for vague promises for Ukraine’s future security, or hold his ground and risk reigniting Mr. Trump’s anger.

The initial interactions were a striking departure from the tone of Mr. Zelensky’s previous visit to the White House in February, when Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated him in the Oval Office on live television. Mr. Vance said nothing this time, and both presidents were genial. Mr. Zelensky absorbed jokes about his suit and handed Mr. Trump a letter his wife had written to the first lady, Melania Trump.

On Monday, Mr. Trump, a skeptic of multilateral alliances and deeply desiring of a Nobel Peace Prize, was not specific about what security guarantees for Ukraine would look like, although he said the U.S. would help in some way, and he did not rule out involving American troops.

While Mr. Zelensky said he was ready for a trilateral meeting with Mr. Putin, he has steadfastly rejected ceding land to Russia. But as Mr. Trump has aligned more closely with Russia after his warm meeting with Mr. Putin, Mr. Zelensky faces increased pressure to persuade the United States that Ukraine should get a better deal.

In a sign of the alarm among allies, a posse of European leaders — including Keir Starmer of Britain, President Emmanuel Macron of France and two leaders whom Mr. Trump generally likes, Giorgia Meloni of Italy and Alexander Stubb of Finland — had rushed to join Monday’s meetings in an effort to show solidarity with Ukraine and “to defend the interests of the Europeans,” according to Mr. Macron.

Several top European officials have warned that if Mr. Putin, who has a history of breaking diplomatic commitments, is not stopped in Ukraine, he could try to take more European territory by force.

Mr. Zelensky on Sunday labeled talk of U.S. security guarantees “a significant change” in the U.S. position. But he doesn’t have the authority to make the most important concession that Mr. Putin appears to be demanding: giving up all of the eastern Donbas region, including territory that Ukraine still controls, to Russia. Ukraine’s Constitution requires a referendum to cede territory, and the vast majority of Ukrainians oppose doing so.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/08/18 ... aine-putin

[ti-amie]

From WaPo live updates:

No indication Putin has agreed to meet with Trump, Zelensky

Catherine Belton and Robyn Dixon

There was no indication Monday evening that Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a trilateral meeting with President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky following the White House talks, a potential indication that any peace deal could still be out of reach. Kremlin foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov told reporters that during a 40-minute phone call, Trump and Putin had discussed “the idea that it would be advisable to explore the possibility of raising the level of representatives of the Ukrainian and Russian sides participating in the negotiations.”

Putin and Trump “agreed to continue to maintain close contact with each other on Ukrainian and other issues on the international and bilateral agenda. The Russian president once again noted the importance of Donald Trump’s personal efforts to find solutions leading to a long-term settlement in Ukraine,” Ushakov said.

“The conversation was frank and constructive,” he added.

Earlier Monday, Russia’s Foreign Ministry sharply warned that Russia would not accept forces from any NATO nation on Ukrainian soil, calling it “categorically unacceptable” and claiming it could lead to “an uncontrolled escalation of the conflict with unpredictable consequences.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics ... a-ukraine/

[ti-amie]

Drew Harwell‬
‪@drewharwell.com‬
· 1h
Showing the endangered leader of an invaded country my hats

[ti-amie]

Trump ordered strike on suspected drug boat to send a message, Rubio says
The administration has not provided a legal authority or justification for the attack Tuesday that killed 11 people.

Updated
September 3, 2025 at 5:48 p.m. EDTyesterday at 5:48 p.m. EDT


A video posted by President Donald Trump shows a vessel he says was transporting illegal narcotics to the United States as it is struck by the U.S. military in the southern Caribbean. (Donald Trump/Truth Social/Reuters)

By John Hudson, Samantha Schmidt and Alex Horton

MEXICO CITY — U.S. forces could have stopped the boat that officials say was carrying illegal drugs from Venezuela to the United States on Tuesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, but President Donald Trump chose instead to destroy it, killing 11 people on board, to send a deterrent message to traffickers.

“Instead of interdicting it, on the president’s orders, we blew it up — and it’ll happen again,” Rubio told reporters Wednesday in Mexico City.

U.S. forces launched a “precision strike” on the vessel as it traveled through the Caribbean Sea, U.S. officials said. When asked if they warned the crew, Rubio said the vessel, like others carrying drugs, posed an “immediate threat to the United States,” giving the country the right to destroy it.

“The president has a right to eliminate immediate threats to the United States,” Rubio said. “This president is not a talker; he’s a doer — he’s going to do it.”

White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly said in a statement that the strike was “conducted against the operations of a designated terrorist organization and was taken in defense of vital U.S. national interests and in the collective self-defense of other nations,” an apparent reference to the 2001 authorization for the use of military force enacted by Congress after the 9/11 terrorist attacks that year. It authorizes the use of force against the perpetrators of the al-Qaeda attacks and to prevent “future acts of international terrorism.” Various lawmakers have tried unsuccessfully for years to repeal the measure, including Vice President JD Vance, who as a senator in 2023 co-sponsored the End Endless Wars Act.

Kelly also said that “the strike was fully consistent with the law of armed conflict.” Interpretation of the international law generally depends on the definition of “armed conflict” between two parties, and whether those attacked were participants in it.

The administration has not said how the vessel was targeted, who was on board or the types and quantities of drugs they were allegedly smuggling.

Rubio argued the strike was justified because interdicting drug-smuggling ships yields insufficient results. “It doesn’t work,” he said. Cartels factor in a 2 percent loss from interdictions, he said, arguing that drug seizures won’t stop them.

“What will stop them is if you blow them up,” Rubio said. “The president is going to wage war on narco-terrorist organizations.”

Aerial imagery posted by Trump and other officials on Tuesday shows a modestly sized boat speeding through open water and then being engulfed in flames.

“We have tapes of them speaking,” Trump said from the Oval Office on Wednesday. “It was massive amounts of drugs coming into our country to kill a lot of people, and everybody fully understands it. You see it, you see the bags of drugs all over the boat, and they were hit.”

Neither the White House nor the Pentagon has produced visual evidence that clearly shows 11 people were on board the vessel. The Trump administration has not released crew members’ names. Some criminal groups smuggle drugs and people, and the Caribbean also is a common transit point for unlawful migration to the United States.

Trump and other officials have claimed the alleged smugglers were connected to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, a U.S. adversary. Federal prosecutors in 2020 secured an indictment accusing the authoritarian socialist of narcoterrorism; the State Department last month raised the reward for information leading to his arrest or conviction to $50 million.

Maduro is running the South American nation “effectively as a kingpin of a drug narco state,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on “Fox & Friends” on Wednesday morning. “Nicolás Maduro, as he considers whether or not he wants to continue be a narco trafficker, has some decisions to make.”

“It won’t stop with just this strike,” Hegseth said. “Anyone else trafficking in those waters who we know is a designated narco-terrorist will face the same fate.”

Trump said U.S. forces “positively identified” the vessel’s crew as members of Tren de Aragua, a criminal group his administration has sought to connect to Maduro and violent crime in the United States. Hegseth said Wednesday the U.S. government “knew exactly who was in that boat” and identified them as “Tren de Aragua, a narco-terrorist organization designated by the United States, trying to poison our country with illicit drugs.”

Tren de Aragua has not been associated with large-scale drug trafficking, said Jeremy McDermott, the co-founder and co-director of InSight Crime, which has researched the Venezuelan gang. The gang, which has a presence in several Latin American countries, has focused on extortion, human smuggling and human trafficking, preying particularly on Venezuelans who have fled Maduro’s rule.

“Up until now, we do not qualify the Tren de Aragua as a transnational drug-trafficking organization,” McDermott said. “We have been unable to link it to any multi-ton shipments crossing any frontiers.”

Gen. William Salamanca, who until this year served as director of Colombia’s national police, described Tren de Aragua as a transnational criminal network with major capacity for expansion. In several cities, he said, gang members were involved in smaller-scale “microtrafficking,” playing a secondary role to larger organizations in the drug trade. But he said he “never ruled out the possibility” that the group could expand that line of operations.

South America has in recent years produced record amounts of cocaine to ship to the U.S. and Europe, but it’s unclear how much of the drug flows through Venezuela. Maduro’s government does not release reliable seizure data.

A retired Drug Enforcement Administration agent who was involved in Venezuela investigations in recent years said Venezuelan government officials since former president Hugo Chávez have allowed cocaine to be trafficked unimpeded from Venezuela to the U.S. and taken a cut of the proceeds. The retired agent, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information, compared the system to the U.S. mafia model, in which people or families control regions.

The retired agent said Tren de Aragua was not a focus of his investigations into drug trafficking in Venezuela in recent years.

The U.S. Coast Guard sometimes shoots out the engines of go-fast boats during maritime interdictions, the former agent said, but killing the crew is new for the United States.

“How long are you going to do it?” he asked. “The drug traffickers are like cockroaches. They’ll wait you out. They’ll do something else, and once you leave, they’ll go back.”

The U.S. has traditionally considered international drug trafficking a matter for domestic law enforcement. Border agencies manage the land frontiers; the Coast Guard patrols territorial waters, boards vessels and makes arrests.

Since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the government has expanded the circumstances in which it says it may use lethal military force. But the strike Tuesday represents a new escalation.

Mary Ellen O’Connell, a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, said the strike violated international law. The U.S. is not in armed conflict with Venezuela or its criminal elements, she noted, which means it violated the suspects’ right to life.

It also raises the possibility that Trump, in pursuit of other traffickers, could launch military strikes within the U.S., she said.

“When the president decides this is a person who can be killed summarily, there’s no restraint on him,” O’Connell said. “It’s a very dangerous new move.”

Hegseth linked Tren de Aragua to U.S. overdose deaths and accused the gang of “trying to poison” Americans. The overwhelming majority of drug overdose deaths in recent years in the U.S. were caused by fentanyl, which is not generally produced in or smuggled in large quantities from South America.

The U.S. has dispatched an unusually large number of warships to the waters around Central and South American in recent weeks for what officials have described as anti-drug-trafficking operations. Maduro has warned Venezuelans of a possible U.S. invasion, dispatched troops to Venezuela’s border with Colombia and called on civilians to join militias to defend the country.

Neither Maduro nor other top Venezuelan officials have responded publicly to the attack Tuesday. But communications minister Freddy Ñáñez claimed the video released by Trump was created using artificial intelligence.

“Enough of Marco Rubio’s warmongering and attempts to stain President Donald Trump’s hands with blood,” Ñáñez said in a social media post.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the attack “murder.”

“We have been capturing civilians transporting drugs for decades without killing them,” Petro said. “Those who transport drugs are not the big drug lords, but very poor young people from the Caribbean and the Pacific.”

On Capitol Hill, congressional staffers said Wednesday that lawmakers have pressed the Trump administration for details but had so far received no substantive response.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington), the top Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee, called the strike “deeply concerning.”

“The administration has not identified the authority under which this action was taken, raising the question of its legality and constitutionality,” Smith said. “The lack of information and transparency from the administration is even more concerning. Does this mean Trump thinks he can use the U.S. military anywhere drugs exist, are sold or shipped? What is the risk of dragging the United States into yet another military conflict?”

Latin American leaders have expressed mounting concern that the U.S. could use military force unilaterally against drug cartels in their countries.

During Rubio’s visit, Mexico’s foreign secretary expressed relief that the U.S. and Mexico agreed to a form a “high-level implementation group” to crack down on drug cartels and secure the border together. Juan Ramón de la Fuente told reporters the agreement would ensure “respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Schmidt reported from Bogotá. Horton reported from Washington. Karen DeYoung, Noah Robertson and David Ovalle contributed to this report.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/20 ... drug-boat/

[ti-amie]

I wonder what his "fee"was?

South Korea Negotiates Release of Korean Workers Detained in Georgia Raid
The South Korean government said on Sunday that it would send a charter plane to the United States to retrieve hundreds of workers detained in an immigration raid.
By Choe Sang-Hun
Reporting from Seoul

Sept. 7, 2025
Updated 11:11 a.m. ET
Leer en español

South Korea reached a deal with the United States to free hundreds of South Korean workers arrested when U.S. immigration authorities raided the construction site of a battery plant in Georgia, the country’s presidential office said on Sunday.

“There are some administrative procedures left, but once they are cleared, we will send a chartered plane to bring our people home,” Kang Hoon-sik, the chief of staff for President Lee Jae Myung of South Korea, told a meeting of senior officials from the administration and the governing Democratic Party on Sunday.

Mr. Kang provided no further details, including when South Korea expected to send the plane. But his remarks provided the first strong indication that South Korea and the United States were working out a diplomatic solution after days of tensions between the allies.

U.S. immigration officials stormed the construction site of a major Hyundai-LG electric vehicle battery plant in Ellabell, Ga., on Thursday, arresting 475 people. Of them, about 300 were South Korean citizens, the South Korean foreign minister’s office said.

The raid unsettled South Korea, a crucial U.S. ally that has been asked to invest billions of dollars in the United States to build new factories and create jobs. It was part of the Trump administration’s aggressive crackdown on immigration, and U.S. officials said those arrested were in the United States illegally or working unlawfully.

“We will not let our guard down until we have our people safely back home,” Mr. Kang said. “We will also review and improve the visa system for those who go to the United States on business trips related to investment projects so that similar incidents won’t be repeated.”

The raid brought construction to a halt at the Georgia factory. Mr. Kang confirmed on Sunday that South Korea was still committed to finishing the project.

The Trump administration has encouraged South Korean industrial giants like Hyundai, Samsung and LG to invest in the United States. But the administration has also drastically tightened visa allocations, making it harder and more expensive for them to bring in skilled workers to build their factories.

Speaking Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” the White House border czar, Tom Homan, defended the raid on the battery plant and said the administration planned to continue such large-scale raids, adding that it is a crime to work and live illegally in the United States.

Those arrested included dozens of LG workers who were on business trips with various visas or under a visa waiver program to provide technical guidance for building the battery factory, according to industry officials familiar with the project. Other detained South Korean workers had been hired by construction subcontractors working for Hyundai and LG, they said.

U.S. immigration officials accused the South Korean companies of discriminating against American workers by hiring unauthorized workers from abroad.

Erica L. Green contributed reporting.

Choe Sang-Hun is the lead reporter for The Times in Seoul, covering South and North Korea.


https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/07/worl ... ai-lg.html

[ponchi101]

I mean. How much of a coward can you be?
I know, I know, I know. This is a billions of dollars thing. But just pull the plug on the (expletive) factory. Let it sit there for a couple of years and let's see what happens then.
I am pretty sure that those 300 Koreans were not janitors.
Really. The capitulation. Nobody has a spine.

[ti-amie]

I mean. How much of a coward can you be?
I know, I know, I know. This is a billions of dollars thing. But just pull the plug on the (expletive) factory. Let it sit there for a couple of years and let's see what happens then.
I am pretty sure that those 300 Koreans were not janitors.
Really. The capitulation. Nobody has a spine.

In this situation I would play along until the citizens of my country were safely home and not on their way to South Sudan or El Salvador. I'd even make a downpayment on his "fee".
Once they were secure I'd quietly do exactly what you say.

Apparently the woman who called ICE is a MAGAt trying to gather cred so she can run for office. Every post I've seen about her doxxes her so I won't post anymore than this.