Lavrov, Rubio discuss settlement of war in Ukraine, forthcoming talks, agencies report
(Reuters) -Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio discussed on Sunday prospects for settling the conflict in Ukraine and Russia-Ukraine talks set for Monday in Turkey, Lavrov's ministry said.
"The situation linked to the Ukraine crisis was discussed," the ministry said in a statement on its website.
"S.V. Lavrov and M. Rubio also exchanged views on various initiatives concerning a settlement of the Ukraine crisis, including plans to resume direct Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul on June 2."
The U.S. State Department, which noted the call was at Russia's request, said Rubio reiterated U.S. President Donald Trump's call for continued direct talks between Russia and Ukraine to achieve "a lasting peace."
The ministry also said that during the conversation Rubio expressed condolences over deaths that occurred when two bridges were blown up in separate Russian regions bordering Ukraine.
"It was stressed on the Russian side that competent bodies will proceed with a thorough investigation and the results will be published. The guilty parties will be identified and will without doubt be subject to a worthy punishment."
Russian officials said at least seven people were killed and 69 injured when the two bridges were blown up on Saturday.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
24 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
The GOP's Fiscal Hawk Era Is Officially Over
There is no constituency for debt reduction, which is a fancy way of saying voters don't care that the federal balance sheet is roughly $37 trillion in the red — and growing. This simple fact of American politics goes a long way toward explaining why President Donald Trump, with the help of congressional Republicans, is pushing a sweeping reconciliation package of tax cuts and fresh domestic spending priorities that is projected to add approximately $3.8 trillion to the swelling federal debt. Politics is a service business and Trump and his Capitol Hill allies are aiming to please the customer.
CNBC
25 minutes ago
- CNBC
Firings, pardons and policy changes have gutted DOJ anti-corruption efforts, experts say
For decades, the FBI and the Justice Department have been the main enforcers of laws against political corruption and white-collar fraud in the United States. In four months, the Trump administration has dismantled key parts of that law enforcement infrastructure, creating what experts say is the ripest environment for corruption by public officials and business executives in a generation. Trump aides have forced out most of the lawyers in the Justice Department's main anti-corruption unit, the Public Integrity Section, and disbanded an FBI squad tasked with investigating congressional misconduct. They have issued a series of directives requiring federal law enforcement agencies to prioritize immigration enforcement. And they have ended a 50-year policy of keeping the Justice Department independent of the White House in criminal investigations. All of that came after Trump fired most of the inspectors general — the independent agency watchdogs responsible for fighting corruption and waste — and the Justice Department dropped a corruption case against the mayor of New York in what a judge said was a "breathtaking" political bargain. And it came after the Trump administration Justice Department pulled back on enforcement of foreign bribery and lobbying statutes, as well as cryptocurrency investigations. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has issued a steady stream of pardons to all but one Republican member of Congress convicted of felonies over the last 15 years. "He's dismantling not just the means of prosecuting public corruption, but he's also dismantling all the means of oversight of public corruption," said Paul Rosenzweig, a George Washington University law professor who was a senior homeland security official in the George W. Bush administration. "The law is only for his enemies now." A spokesman for the Justice Department denied the allegations. "This Department of Justice has ended the weaponization of government and will continue to prosecute violent crime, enforce our nation's immigration laws, and make America safe again," he said. The White House declined to comment. The Biden Justice Department also came under criticism from groups that considered it soft on white-collar and corporate crime. A report by the public advocacy group Public Citizen said President Joe Biden's Justice Department successfully prosecuted only 80 corporations last year — a 29% drop from the previous fiscal year and fewer than in any year for the previous three decades. And an analysis published last month by the Transactional Records Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse University, which uses Justice Department records to examine enforcement and sentencing trends, found that white-collar prosecutions have been declining since 2011. U.S. attorneys' offices filed 4,332 prosecutions for white-collar crimes in fiscal year 2024, less than half of the 10,269 prosecutions filed three decades earlier in fiscal year 1994, the report found. But TRAC analysts, other experts and Democrats say the Trump policy changes — coupled with a mandate that FBI agents spend significant time on immigration enforcement — mean corporate fraud and public corruption enforcement is expected to plummet faster and further. "President Trump has ushered America into a golden age of public corruption," Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island, a senior Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, told NBC News in a statement. "Trump quickly cleared out the watchdogs responsible for policing corruption cases at home and abroad by gutting the Department of Justice's Public Integrity Section and the anti-kleptocracy teams." Last month, the head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, Matthew Galeotti, announced in a memo and a speech that the Justice Department was "turning a new page on white-collar and corporate enforcement." While he said that "white-collar crime also poses a significant threat to U.S. interests," he said the Biden administration's approach has "come at too high a cost for businesses and American enterprise." Big law firms interpreted his message as saying the Trump administration will still prosecute corporate misconduct, at least under certain circumstances. But three lawyers who represent large corporations in dealings with the Justice Department told NBC News that over the last several months, corporate compliance investigations of their clients have dropped. They declined to be named or to cite specifics, citing client confidentiality. In his memo, Galeotti said the Justice Department will prioritize corporate violations relating to drug cartels, immigration law, terrorism, trade and tariff fraud, and corporate procurement fraud. "Too often, businesses have been subject to unchecked and long-running investigations that can be costly — both to the department and to the subjects and targets of its investigations," he added in a speech at an anti-money-laundering conference. All presidential administrations set broad policy direction for the Justice Department. But more than a dozen current and former Justice Department officials and legal experts said in interviews that the Trump administration has unleashed a revolution in policies, personnel and culture across the department unlike anything in the last five decades, including Trump's first term. Trump, they say, has fundamentally changed the nature of the post-Watergate Justice Department, in the process driving out hundreds of senior lawyers who helped form its backbone. The shift began even before Attorney General Pam Bondi took office, when Trump's acting U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., fired several prosecutors who had worked for Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed now-dismissed charges against Trump. Trump aides said the Smith prosecutors were fired because they could not be counted on to carry out Trump's orders, because they had prosecuted him. Never before, experts said, had so many career civil servants been sacked simply because they worked on a case the president disliked. When Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, a former Trump defense lawyer, was acting deputy attorney general, he ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, a move that was seen as another signal that the second Trump term would be different. The move triggered several resignations by prosecutors, and a federal judge ultimately ruled that there was no evidence to support the reasons the Justice Department gave for dropping the charges. The judge, ultimately, decided he had no choice but to dismiss the charges. Bondi also paused enforcement of a law prohibiting U.S. corporate executives from bribing foreign officials, an area of U.S. law so well-developed that major law firms had entire sections devoted to advising clients about it. She also disbanded the FBI task force devoted to combating foreign influence and a Justice Department group that sought to confiscate the assets of Russian oligarchs. She also ordered a pullback on enforcing the law requiring foreign agents to register with the government and disclose their activities. Several weeks later, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche ended an effort by the Justice Department to police crypto-related violations of banking secrecy and securities laws. Finally, one of the most impactful moves the Trump administration has made was to slash the size of the Justice Department's Public Integrity Section, which has dropped from roughly 35 lawyers to four to five, according to two former members of the unit. Lawyers who work in the Public Integrity Section consult with U.S. attorneys around the country on official corruption matters. Their role is twofold — to assist in cases when needed or when U.S. attorney's offices' prosecutors faced conflicts of interest and to ensure politically appointed U.S. attorneys followed the rules in some of the most politically sensitive cases the government brings. Some of the corruption cases the section was working on are continuing, former officials said. For example, a retired four-star admiral was convicted last month of bribery, but many cases are in limbo, and some have been dropped. And Justice Department officials say a policy that requires the Public Integrity Section to approve corruption charges against members of Congress is under review. They also noted that the policy was not followed when the acting U.S. attorney for New Jersey, Alina Habba, another former Trump attorney, brought assault charges against a New Jersey congresswoman last month. The Public Integrity Section has made its share of mistakes over the years, and some Trump supporters wish it good riddance. "President Trump's justice system is focused on protecting the rule of law and combating crime, which is what the American people elected him to do," Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, said in a statement to NBC News. "My public oversight has shown that the DOJ and FBI sections responsible for public integrity inquiries were a hotbed for partisan investigations against President Trump and his allies." But by shrinking the Public Integrity Section, dropping corruption charges against Adams and pardoning political allies convicted of federal crimes, Trump has sent an unmistakable message, current and former Justice Department officials say. "Public corruption investigations are being politicized like we've never seen before," said a former Justice Department official, who declined to be named for fear of retaliation. "What prosecutor or FBI agent is going to want to work on a case they think Donald Trump isn't going to like? To witness the destruction of the institution is just infuriating and disheartening." Rosenzweig, the law professor, said the damage to America's image as a country built on the rule of law is not easily fixable. "Good governance is really a shared myth — it happens only because we all believe in it," he said. "People are good because they share a mythos that expects them to be good. When that myth is destroyed, when you learn that it's just a shared dream that isn't mandatory ... it's really, really hard to rebuild faith." Rosenzweig added, "In 150 days, Donald Trump has casually destroyed a belief in the necessity of incorruptibility built over 250 years."
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump's War With Leonard Leo Could Expose a Conservative Legal Scam
Last week's ruling by an obscure federal court on President Donald Trump's tariff policy may be the most critical judicial decision of these first few months of Trump's second term. A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of International Trade held that Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs in April were unlawful, effectively striking down the White House's flagship economic policy. The coalition of small-business owners that brought the lawsuit had raised a variety of legal and constitutional objections to Trump's tariff policies. The panel concluded that any of them would suffice. 'Regardless of whether the court views the president's actions through the nondelegation doctrine, through the major questions doctrine, or simply with separation of powers in mind, any interpretation of [the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977] that delegates unlimited tariff authority is unconstitutional,' it explained. Since a federal appeals court quickly blocked the ruling from going into effect while legal proceedings continue, however, the economic and legal implications are minimal—that is, until the Supreme Court is forced to step in and resolve this dispute. For now, the ruling's greatest impact may be to widen a public fissure between Trump and the conservative legal movement. In an unusually long post on his personal social media website last week, Trump described the court's ruling in apocalyptic terms. 'The ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade is so wrong, and so political!' he claimed 'Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY. Backroom 'hustlers' must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!' He even inadvertently showed why the ruling was correct in his explanation for why it was wrong. 'The horrific decision stated that I would have to get the approval of Congress for these Tariffs,' he complained. 'In other words, hundreds of politicians would sit around D.C. for weeks, and even months, trying to come to a conclusion as to what to charge other Countries that are treating us unfairly.' While Trump may wish it says otherwise, that is precisely what the Constitution requires by placing tariffs within Congress's core powers. But the most interesting part of his statement was a lengthy exhortation on the conservative legal movement and Leonard Leo, one of its leading figures. The three-judge panel consisted of an Obama appointee, a Reagan appointee, and a Trump appointee. That last one, Judge Timothy Reif, drew Trump's ire in particular. 'Where do these initial three Judges come from?' he wondered. 'How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of 'TRUMP?' What other reason could it be?' Trump attributed the setback to Leo and other legal conservatives who effectively handpicked most of his administration's judicial nominees during his first term, including Reif. In doing so, he was unusually candid about how the judicial sausage gets made, so to speak. 'I was new to Washington, and it was suggested that I use The Federalist Society as a recommending source on Judges,' he claimed. This is true in the broadest sense, but it does not really capture the dynamic of what happened in 2016. Antonin Scalia's unexpected death led to a 4–4 deadlock between liberals and conservatives on the high court. It also created a historic opportunity for Democrats. Filling the vacancy would have given liberals their first five-justice majority on the high court since the 1960s. Senate Republicans, led by then–Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, refused to hold a vote on any of Barack Obama's nominees to prevent this ideological shift from happening. At the same time, Trump's nomination for president that year had created fractures within the Republican Party and raised the possibility that Hillary Clinton would win a four-year term as president—a nightmare scenario for a GOP that had spent the previous three decades treating her as some sort of demonic figure. Though some Republican senators suggested they would maintain the blockade if she won, others were less certain. At the time, Trump had about as much interest in legal conservative theories as he did in medieval Bulgarian poetry. Conservative legal elites feared that he would choose his own slate of judicial nominees instead of the ones that they had been grooming for a generation. The two camps reconciled after Trump released a short list of Supreme Court nominees that September that he would choose from to replace Scalia if elected. The short list included some of the most prominent conservative jurists at the time; it gave former adversaries like Texas Senator Ted Cruz a rationale to openly endorse him. After he won and took office, Trump relied on those same conservative legal elites to shape his overall judicial nominee strategy, fulfilling his side of the implicit bargain. 'I did so, openly and freely, but then realized that they were under the thumb of a real 'sleazebag' named Leonard Leo, a bad person who, in his own way, probably hates America, and obviously has his own separate ambitions,' Trump explained in his recent post. 'He openly brags how he controls Judges, and even Justices of the United States Supreme Court—I hope that is not so, and don't believe it is! In any event, Leo left The Federalist Society to do his own 'thing.'' Leo, who was once a top figure in the Federalist Society, took a leave of absence from the organization to advise the White House on judicial nominees during Trump's first term. His outsize role in the process—and his ensuing status as the de facto face of the conservative legal movement—led to magazine-length profiles that cast him as the power behind the Supreme Court's figurative thrones. It also made Leo a major recipient of donations from right-wing billionaires who hoped to build upon his success. I would be surprised, for what it's worth, if Leo ever 'bragged' that he 'controls' any judges or justices, at least in such crude terms. The conservative legal movement's typical approach is to identify and screen like-minded potential nominees who will advance the movement's goals of their own free will. More direct forms of coercion and control would not only be a violation of judicial ethics but a lot of unnecessary work. Trump's agita over the tariff ruling has him essentially retconning his first term in office, with Leo and the Federalist Society now recast as deep-cover adversaries. 'I am so disappointed in The Federalist Society because of the bad advice they gave me on numerous Judicial Nominations,' Trump continued. 'This is something that cannot be forgotten!' It's true that Trump appointees have ruled against him and his policies from time to time, as is to be expected in a rule-of-law society. For a president who always expects fealty and submission, that would be tough to stomach. The Roberts court has occasionally been an obstacle for some of the Trump administration's policies. At the same time, all three of Trump's Supreme Court nominees helped gut the disqualification clause so he could run for a second term last year. Two of them then voted to invent 'presidential immunity' out of thin air to free him from most of his legal woes. Never before have a president's own Supreme Court appointments rewritten the Constitution so drastically for that president's personal benefit. It would be easy to dismiss Trump's fulminations; he often lashes out at his allies before later reconciling with them. But there are other signs that he is retooling his approach to judicial nominations for his second term in ways that might disempower the conservative legal establishment. Last week, for example, Trump announced that he would nominate Emil Bove to a vacant seat on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. 'Emil is SMART, TOUGH, and respected by everyone,' the president claimed in a post on his personal social media network. 'He will end the Weaponization of Justice, restore the Rule of Law, and do anything else that is necessary to, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN. Emil Bove will never let you down!' Bove has certainly never let Trump down. After working as one of his personal defense lawyers after Trump's first term, Bove joined the Justice Department earlier this year and helped purge it of lawyers who expressed ethical or policy concerns about the Trump administration's tactics. Though Bove is undoubtedly conservative compared to, say, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, he is not one of the rising stars that the conservative legal establishment had groomed for future judicial vacancies and is not part of that powerful social network. The pick prompted significant pushback from legal conservatives on social media. 'Whether the White House wants to acknowledge it or not, the caliber of its early judicial nominations will affect the number of vacancies it gets to fill,' Jonathan Adler, a William & Mary law professor, wrote on Twitter last month. 'This is why the Bove nomination was a risky pick (even apart from the merits).' Ed Whelan, a prominent legal conservative who played a role in the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation fight, shared Adler's post and added more commentary in favor of it. 'Just yesterday, a very conservative appellate judge told me that s/he wouldn't take senior status because of concerns over who would be picked as successor,' Whelan claimed. In a later National Review column, he described Bove's personal and professional faults at length. He also warned that Bove could be in line for the Supreme Court if another vacancy occurs during Trump's second term. 'Republican senators who have the foresight and sense to prevent this scenario should defeat Bove's nomination,' Whelan concluded. The conservative legal movement's problem is that Trump does not really need them anymore. His grip over the Republican Party is ironclad. His various legal troubles have exposed him to a wide range of lawyers to install in the Justice Department, the White House counsel's office, and the federal bench without deferring to Leo's Rolodex. Trump values personal loyalty over ideological purity, so he does not really care what his appointees think about the nondelegation doctrine or Humphrey's Executor or originalism, except insofar as it benefits Trump. As a result, the movement's 50-year quest to entrench its particular legal philosophy in American constitutional law has perhaps never been more successful and never been in greater peril. Legal conservatives finally achieved their goal of a Supreme Court that would strike down Roe v. Wade, gut civil rights laws, and demolish federal regulatory agencies with ease. Along the way they also installed a president whose increasing willingness to defy court orders could turn the federal judiciary into the world's most prestigious debate club. The Supreme Court's conservative justices could make peace by overturning the panel's ruling on Trump's tariffs when they inevitably get the chance. In doing so, they would destroy any remaining credibility for their favored doctrines. Trump is imposing recession-inducing tariffs on America's largest trading partners by invoking a 1977 law that doesn't even mention tariffs and has never been previously used to raise them. If the major questions doctrine can't stop that, then it exists only to derail Democratic presidencies and can thus be treated as the sham that it is. Alternatively, the court could strike down the tariffs, save the American economy from self-inflicted disaster, and try to maintain the legitimacy of its ideological project. But that could also bring about a direct confrontation with a lawless president who is already willing to openly ignore court orders. After all, if Trump decided to continue collecting the tariffs anyway, what could Chief Justice John Roberts do about it? Direct the marshals to seize control of the Treasury's payment system like DOGE did and give everyone refunds on Venmo? I do not doubt that some—and perhaps many—legal conservatives would still accept the current state of affairs over one where a Supreme Court justice appointed by Hillary Clinton is casting the decisive vote on gun rights cases and making it impossible to overturn Roe for another 30 years. Leonard Leo himself may even be among them. But some of the ones who tolerated Trump surely must have heartburn over the scorpion-and-frog situation in which they now find themselves. If so, they've earned it.
