Zelenskyy says he would step down if Ukraine can join NATO

USA Today

24-02-2025

Zelenskyy says he would step down if Ukraine can join NATO | The Excerpt
On Monday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says he would step down if Ukraine can join NATO, while blasting President Donald Trump's mineral pitch. USA TODAY National Correspondent Dinah Voyles Pulver takes a look at some of the impact from USAID domestically. Pope Francis attended Mass Sunday but remains in critical condition. USA TODAY Money Reporter Bailey Schulz examines why we're seeing more generations living together under one roof. 'Conclave' wins big at the Screen Actors Guild Awards.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here
Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson, and today is Monday, February 24th, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today, Ukraine's leader makes some stark comments about his future, also, the many parts of life impacted by USAID domestically, and we take a look at the rise of multigenerational housing.
♦
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would be willing to step down if Ukraine were granted membership in NATO. He said in Ukrainian at a news conference that if it means peace for Ukraine, he's ready to leave his post. Still, NATO membership for Ukraine looks increasingly out of reach in recent days.
After Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said NATO membership was not realistic for negotiated settlement to the war, Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin and dispatched a team to negotiate with Russian counterparts and Saudi Arabia last week without any input from Ukraine or its European allies.
Zelenskyy also had harsh words for a deal proposed by the Trump administration to gain control of the country's mineral reserves in exchange for continued US support. He said the proposed deal would require Ukraine to pay back aid it was given to defend against Russia's attacks, a term he would never accept.
♦
President Donald Trump's administration said, yesterday, it was placing all personnel at the Foreign Assistance Agency USAID except leaders and critical staff on paid administrative leave and eliminating 1,600 positions in the United States.
Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency has led an effort to gut the US Agency for International Development, the main delivery mechanism for American foreign assistance and a critical tool of US soft power for winning influence abroad.
While some Americans have criticized USAID money as government bloat, others say President Donald Trump's recent moves are bad for business and national security. I spoke with USA TODAY National Correspondent Dinah Voyles Pulver for more. Hello, Dinah.
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
Hello there.
Taylor Wilson:
You outlined some of the potential impacts here, Dinah, domestically, on some of the US interests that folks maybe weren't thinking about as part of this conversation over the last few weeks. You bring up the example of coffee beans in this piece. How has USAID been involved in this trade, and how do these trade relationships potentially benefit the US?
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
It was fascinating to me to learn that coffee has been a part of USAID. The agency has spent money to help coffee farmers to help make the production of coffee beans more sustainable and more resilient for some countries to develop coffee beans and to develop their production of coffee because coffee's in big demand, you know. Well, there are a lot of coffee drinkers who take their coffee imports pretty seriously. So USAID is invested, and they've spent money in Indonesia, Peru, Honduras, Ethiopia, to name a few, where they've been working on developing coffee production.
What the international experts tell us is that when USAID spends money to help farmers in foreign countries, they're developing goodwill. This goodwill matters to the US when it comes to situations like a name-brand hotel in the US to want to open up its business in that country and develop hotels. Or if the US, for example, is looking to purchase critical minerals or some other product from a country, they're in competition with other countries who also want these same items.
So if the US has built up a relationship with these countries through our foreign assistance, whether it's food, water, or developing things like coffee crops, they believe that those countries will look more favorably on the US, and it would help to create and establish these trade relations that can benefit us in myriad ways, including national security.
Taylor Wilson:
You also bring up potential impacts on domestic shipping and farming. Can you talk through some of those concerns, Dinah?
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
Whenever the freeze was put into place, there were already ships laden with US food commodities that were on their way to these foreign countries around the globe because there are agreements in place that USAID is required to help US farmers distribute a certain percentage of their products overseas.
The shipping aspect of it is interesting because the US Maritime Administration is involved with USAID in ensuring that a certain percentage of all the products that are purchased by USAID are shipped on US vessels because they want to make sure that the US shipping fleet remains viable and productive, so that US goods can be shipped on these US-flagged vessels, and so that the US doesn't have to depend on other foreign countries for shipping its products.
Taylor Wilson:
When USAID has played a vital role around the world when it comes to the spread of viral disease outbreaks. How so, Dinah?
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
Cooperating with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, they monitor outbreaks such as the monkeypox or the Ebola outbreaks that are ongoing right now in Africa. They help monitor those, and they try to treat those to try to prevent the spread from coming to the US. The USAID has also been involved in the development of vaccines.
Taylor Wilson:
What have past audits actually revealed, and why do Trump and allies really argue for this kind of slashing to USAID?
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
They've passed the audits. But in the past, they've had suggestions from their own inspector general's office and from the governmental accounting office for accounting practices that they could improve, better ways that they could monitor the spending and keep track of the spending, which is obviously difficult and complicated when they're spending money around the globe. But there've been a number of suggestions about how they could do that better.
Part of President Trump's entire campaign premise was to eliminate fraud, waste in government and to downsize bureaucracy. So some of the things that they are seeing with USAID fit in exactly with the kind of things that President Trump had vowed to cut back or to restrict. They went through a lot of the expenditures from USAID and found expenses that involved spreading diversity, equity, and inclusive issues internationally. Also, there were some conversations related to climate change and helping other countries with climate resilience.
Some of those programs have come under target from the administration because they have questioned whether they're wasteful. There are questions that the administration has raised about where those expenses were going, and the international experts that we talked to agreed that it is the president's obligation to look for fraud and waste and to try to reduce that in any government agency, not just USAID, but the international experts also said that it would seem to be better to do that on a case-by-case basis rather than issuing a wide sweeping freeze on spending across the board.
Taylor Wilson:
This was a great, and I think, necessary step-back piece in this moment. Dinah Voyles Pulver is a national correspondent covering the climate and environment for USA TODAY. Thank you, Dinah.
Dinah Voyles Pulver:
Thank you.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
In an update on Pope Francis and his health, the Vatican said earlier today that Francis had a good night in hospital. The 88-year-old remains in critical condition battling double pneumonia. He's also had blood tests that revealed mild kidney issues described as under control.
Yesterday, he reportedly attended mass while in the hospital. The Pope has suffered various health issues over the past two years, and he's particularly prone to lung infections because he developed pleurisy as a young adult and had part of one lung removed.
♦
Young adults are driving a major uptick in US households with multiple adult generations living under one roof. I caught up with USA TODAY money reporter Bailey Schulz to learn more. Hey there, Bailey.
Bailey Schulz:
Hi. Thanks for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for hopping on. So let's just start with this. I mean, tell us about this rise we're seeing in multigenerational housing, and really, why is this happening? Why is multigenerational living on the rise?
Bailey Schulz:
The definition of multigenerational housing isn't always the same. You'll see some reports saying it's two different generations of adults. Some have three generations under one roof, but either way, it looks like we are seeing numbers for multigenerational households ticking up in the United States. These surveys over and over and these reports over and over kind of point to financial issues and sort of housing costs affecting younger adults as one of the main drivers behind this trend.
So there was a 2023 paper from Morton that found nearly half of adults between 18 and 29 lived with their parents, and that's up from about 25% in 1960. So that research really point to housing costs as the main driver behind this.
We're seeing another paper from Pew points to financial issues, caregiving, and then the rise in diversity also playing factors in this. But as far as this trend, we're seeing this a lot with these younger Americans, but we're seeing this across age groups as well, where data from Pew found that between 1971, 2021, the percentage of Americans in this sort of multi-generational household went from 7% to 18%, and we're seeing spikes in that data with 25- to 34-year-olds, 35- to 64-year-olds, and then those 65 and older.
Taylor Wilson:
Bailey, you mentioned an increase in diversity. I want to just circle back to that point for a second. What do you mean by that? Why is that playing a role here?
Bailey Schulz:
What Pew report is that Asian, Hispanic, Black populations tend to be more likely than White populations to live with a sort of extended family. So based on their reports, as those sort of populations have grown in the United States, so to have these multi-generational living trends.
Taylor Wilson:
Interesting. So Bailey, what are some of the benefits you're really hearing about from some of the folks you spoke with in these living arrangements?
Bailey Schulz:
I just heard over and over two things, really. One is financial. Of course, that is a reason that's driving striving so many of these family members together. It's something that can help people deal with high-cost-of-living area with high housing and rent prices.
But in addition to that, there's also the sort of emotional relationship side of things where with the people I spoke to who live in these sort of households, they talked about stronger family bonds. I spoke to older Americans who are living with millennials, for example, and they were talking about how they've just been able to learn from these younger generations and how this trend is something that has really helped with the sort of loneliness epidemic in the United States.
One advocate I spoke to said that there are surveys that indicate that financial issues often prompt families to start living in multigenerational housing, but the majority of these surveys said that they plan to continue the sort of living. So she told me that that sort of indicates that people are finding that this is a way of living that has benefits and that this is working for them.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. So have you heard anything in terms of drawbacks for this piece, Bailey?
Bailey Schulz:
Even the people who are advocating for multigenerational living are very upfront about the fact that the things that are drawing families together, those high housing costs, nursing home costs, financial issues, those things I was talking about earlier, those aren't necessarily things to celebrate, and also the fact that this isn't something that is going to work for everyone or every family.
There was one survey that found 75% of those living in a multigenerational home said it caused stress among the family. But we're also seeing that same report show that 76%, so about the same amount of people say that the arrangement has also had a positive impact on their mental or physical health.
Taylor Wilson:
Okay. So this is obviously not super uncommon in other parts of the world, but how does American society, Bailey, really view this trend?
Bailey Schulz:
So I think you do see a stigma against anything that's not that sort of nuclear family structure that has become really popular in the United States in the past century. That's especially if you're looking at the younger Americans who are moving back in with parents for some of those financial issues.
We see from Pew in 2022, they found that a third of Americans say that more young adults living with their parents is "bad for society."
Another survey from Edelman found that while 42% of parents provide financial support for their adult children, last year, 78% said that children should be living on their own by age 25.
Taylor Wilson:
So just trying to kind of read between the lines, taking a look at the trend data and some of the conversations you've had, Bailey, I mean, do we expect this to kind of keep moving in this direction?
Bailey Schulz:
Well, I spoke to experts and people who have studied this. There are a lot of people who think that this is a trend that will continue. But because so much of this is tied to those financial issues that we talked about, housing costs, elder care costs, I think a lot of where this trend goes will depend on how the economy shapes up in the coming years.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Bailey Schulz covers money for USA TODAY. Thank you, Bailey.
Bailey Schulz:
Yeah, thank you.
♦
Taylor Wilson:
Hollywood's brightest stars made a final sprint to the Oscars last night. The Screen Actors Guild Awards marked the last major awards show before next week's Academy Awards. Pope thriller Conclave made off with the evening's top trophy for outstanding cast while Zoe Saldana for Emilia Pérez and Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain continued their month-long sweeps in acting categories. You can check out all the big winners and more coverage from our entertainment team on usatoday.com ahead of the Oscars on Sunday.
♦
Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio, and if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson, and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from USA TODAY.