‘Fighting for Freedom on Raritan Bay': Revisiting Maritime Clashes
The first battles of the Revolutionary War took place in Massachusetts in April 1775, but the war did not reach the New York-New Jersey region until days after independence was declared in July 1776. Schneider observes that control of the regional waterways came to define how the war was fought.
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Los Angeles Times
25 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Trump tax law could cause Medicare cuts if Congress doesn't act, CBO says
WASHINGTON — The federal budget deficits caused by President Trump's tax and spending law could trigger automatic cuts to Medicare if Congress does not act, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office reported Friday. The CBO estimates that Medicare, the federal health insurance program for Americans over age 65, could potentially see as much as $491 billion in cuts from 2027 to 2034 if Congress does not act to mitigate a 2010 law that forces across-the-board cuts to many federal programs once legislation increases the federal deficit. The latest report from CBO showed how Trump's signature tax and spending law could put new pressure on federal programs that are bedrocks of the American social safety net. Trump and Republicans pledged not to cut Medicare as part of the legislation, but the estimated $3.4 trillion that the law adds to the federal deficit over the next decade means that many Medicare programs could see cuts. In the past, Congress has always acted to mitigate cuts to Medicare and other programs, but it would take some bipartisan cooperation to do so. Democrats, who requested the analysis from CBO, jumped on the potential cuts. 'Republicans knew their tax breaks for billionaires would force over half a trillion dollars in Medicare cuts — and they did it anyway,' Rep. Brendan Boyle of Pennsylvania, the top Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said in a statement. 'American families simply cannot afford Donald Trump's attacks on Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare.' Hospitals in rural parts of the country are already grappling with cuts to Medicaid, which is available to people with low incomes, and cuts to Medicare could exacerbate their shortfalls. As Republicans muscled the bill through Congress and are now selling it to voters back home, they have been critical of how the CBO has analyzed the bill. They have also argued that the tax cuts will spur economic growth and pointed to $50 billion in funding for rural hospitals that was included in the package. Groves writes for the Associated Press.
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
'No deal': Takeaways from Trump's Alaska summit with Putin
WASHINGTON – Vladimir Putin caught a ride in the presidential limousine and achieved recognition on the world stage. Donald Trump flew more than 4,000 miles and rolled out the red carpet for the Russian leader in Alaska – and left empty-handed after some three hours of negotiations. A much-hyped summit between Trump and Putin that saw the U.S. president flex his deal-making skills achieved no major breakthrough in peace negotiations over Russia's war against Ukraine. The talks culminated in a vague statement to the media in which Putin spoke of an 'agreement.' Trump was then left in the awkward position of declaring 'no deal' had been reached. A planned press conference? Called off. The two leaders spoke briefly and answered no questions. 'There were many, many points that we agree on,' Trump said without elaborating. 'A couple of big ones that we haven't quite gotten there,' he added. 'So there's no deal until there's a deal.' More: 'No deal': Live updates from Trump-Putin Alaska summit Trump said he'd be calling Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO allies on his way home to debrief them on the conversation with his Russian counterpart, who had been isolated by western leaders after invading Ukraine in 2022. As the American president, who'd warned of 'severe consequences' if a ceasefire wasn't reached, waved goodbye to press while boarding Air Force One for Washington, Putin taxiied down the runway in the distance. Putin invokes 'root causes' of war, jabs Trump foe Biden For a television president who regularly fields questions from reporters, Trump's quick exit after the meeting was abnormal. The two men spoke for a combined 12 minutes – with Putin going first. He praised Trump for convening the meeting, saying relations between the two countries had fallen to their lowest point since the Cold War. But he soon brought up old charges about the 'root causes' of the conflict that he's long blamed on NATO enlargement and Ukraine's alignment with the West. And while Putin notably said 'the security of Ukraine should be secured' and Russia was 'prepared to work on that' he did not say what he had in mind. 'I would like to hope that the agreement that we've reached together will help us bring closer that goal and will pave the path towards peace in Ukraine,' Putin added, without saying what it entailed. He then warned Ukrainian and European leaders not to 'throw a wrench in the works' with 'backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress.' 'I just don't think we heard anything that signaled any sort of shift in Russia's maximal position,' David Salvo, a former State Department official who served in Russia. He cast Putin's comments as 'grandstanding' and said of security guarantees for Ukraine, 'I don't think he's ready to soften his position quite yet.' Putin also jabbed at former President Joe Biden and said he agreed with Trump's assertions that the war never would have happened if the Republican had won in 2020. Trump said Putin's comments were 'very profound.' He described the meeting as 'extremely productive' and said the two sides agreed on 'many points' without divulging the details. 'We didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there,' Trump said. Trump leaves without a ceasefire agreement Hanging over the summit was a potential ceasefire, which Zelenskyy and European leaders thought could emerge from the talks. But expectations fell quickly as Trump talked up potential 'land swaps' that have been rejected by Zelenskyy. Trump sought to lower expectations ahead of the summit and cast the conversation as talks about future talks. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska told CNN while the summit was happening, 'I think the best that we could hope for is that there is a commitment coming out of Putin to a ceasefire with enough contours to it that it is believable that it will be more than just a brief moment to check a box here.' The summit ended without any mention of a ceasefire by Putin or Trump, who repeated in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity after the summit that he believed an agreement was in sight. Trump added: 'Now it's up to President Zelenskyy to get it done.' He indicated that a prisoner swap between Russia and Ukraine was part of the discussion. Putin teases possible business deals with Trump First, there were joint hockey games. Then, there were films promoting 'traditional values.' And at their Alaska summit Putin made another enticement: potential economic investments. 'It is clear that the U.S. and Russian investment and business cooperation has tremendous potential," Putin said. "Russia and the U.S. can offer each other so much in trade, digital, high tech and in space exploration. We see that arctic cooperation is also very possible.' Accompanying Putin at the summit was Kirill Dmitriev, the special envoy for investment and economic cooperation. The Putin adviser met with Witkoff in Washington in April. 'He's bringing a lot of business people from Russia. And that's good, I like that, because they want to do business,' Trump told reporters on Air Force One on his way to Alaska. 'But they're not doing business until we get the war settled.' Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick came with Trump. Trump later referred to "tremendous Russian business representatives" at the summit and said "everybody wants to deal with us." In his Hannity interview, Trump indicated that Putin also tried to flatter him by saying the 2020 election he lost to Biden was 'rigged' and fanned baseless claims that the outcome was the result of widespread voter fraud. Trump rolls out the red carpet for Putin Putin received a warm reception in Alaska after years of being left out in the cold by western leaders. The summit began with Trump giving Putin an outreached hand, as the Russian leader walked down an intersecting red carpet on the tarmac to greet him. Trump clapped his hands in applause as Putin approached. They shook hands, patted each others' arms and walked together, posing for pictures on a platform with a sign reading 'Alaska 2025.' In the background: Military planes and personnel and green cloud-covered mountains. A reporter shouted "President Putin, will you stop killing civilians?" while Putin stood next to Trump on the platform. He gestured but didn't say anything. Trump and Putin rode together, without aides, to the summit in Trump's limousine. Gone was the frustration that Trump had expressed throughout the summer over Putin's reluctance to agree on a peace deal. 'I've always had a fantastic relationship with President Putin, with Vladimir,' Trump said of his Russian counterpart as they shared a stage together in Alaska. Now what? Severe consequences? Secondary Tariffs? Another meeting? The lack of progress at the Trump-Putin summit raised questions about what comes next. Trump said he planned to speak with Zelenskyy and NATO leaders to brief them. He again talked about moderating a three-way meeting with Putin and Zelenskyy. And although he'd warned before the meeting that if Putin wasn't cooperative he would face 'severe consequences' and threatened tariff hikes on Russia's top trading partners, for now, he said he was letting China off the hook. "Because of what happened today, I think I don't have to think about that,' Trump told Hannity. 'Now I may have to think about it in two weeks or three weeks or something, but we don't have to think about that right now, I think the meeting went very well." Trump's next moves will be closely watched to see if he maintains the friendly posture toward Putin that he took at the summit or takes a firmer approach. 'By framing it as a positive meeting, in his own mind, it takes the pressure off of himself to make Russia pay a price for continuing the war,' former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst said. 'At least for right now.' Trump told reporters before the meeting that he was 'not looking to waste a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of money' negotiations and wanted to see the war quickly wrapped up. 'The wildcard now is whether Trump's actually going to get tough on Russia, or whether it's going to be in sort of endless talks and letting Russia stall for time,' said Salvo, managing director for the Alliance for Securing Democracy at the German Marshall Fund.
Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
Trump Leaves Alaska Empty-Handed
So what was that all for? President Donald Trump emerged today from his summit with Russia's Vladimir Putin without a deal and without much to say. Trump rarely misses a chance to take advantage of a global stage. But when he stood next to Putin at the conclusion of their three-hour meeting, Trump offered few details about what the men had discussed. Stunningly, for a president who loves a press conference, he took no questions from the reporters assembled at a military base in Alaska. In his brief remarks, Trump conceded that he and Putin had not reached a deal to end the war in Ukraine or even pause the fighting. 'There's no deal until there's a deal,' the president said. He characterized their three-hour meeting—vaguely—as 'very productive.' Of the outstanding issues between the two sides, he admitted that 'one is probably significant,' but he didn't say what that was. 'We didn't get there but we have a very good chance of getting there,' Trump insisted. The Russian president, for his part, made mention of 'agreements' that had been struck behind closed doors. Yet Putin also provided no elaboration, leaving the distinct impression that it was a summit about nothing. If anything, Putin seemed to make clear that his demands regarding Ukraine haven't changed. In his usual coded way, he said an agreement could be reached only once the 'primary roots' of the conflict were 'eliminated'—which means, basically, that Ukraine should be part of Russia. 'We expect that Kyiv and European capitals will perceive that constructively and that they won't throw a wrench in the works,' Putin said, in what sounded like a warning. 'They will not make any backroom dealings to conduct provocations to torpedo the nascent progress.' As Putin and Trump boarded their respective airplanes for their flights home, Ukraine and Europe were left guessing as to what the coming days will bring. Will more missiles fly toward Kyiv? Will a second meeting involving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky occur? The president was equally as vague in a Fox News interview taped after the summit, though he did suggest that the next steps in the process would be up to Zelensky. What was clear today was that Trump, who had once promised to bring the war to a close within 24 hours, left the summit empty-handed. 'Summits usually have deliverables. This meeting had none,' Michael McFaul, an ambassador to Russia under President Barack Obama, told me. 'I hope that they made some progress towards next steps in the peace process. But there is no evidence of that yet.' At their last summit, in Helsinki in 2018, Trump and Putin captivated the world when they took questions, revealing details of their private discussions as the American president sided with Moscow, rather than his own U.S. intelligence agencies, over Russia's 2016 election interference. This time, they quickly ducked offstage as reporters shouted in vain. When the two men did speak, they mostly delivered pleasantries. Putin even repeated Trump's talking point that Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 would never have happened had Trump been in office then. And Trump, once more, said that the two men 'had to put up with the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax.' That the summit happened at all was perceived by many as a victory for Putin, who, after years as an international pariah, was granted a photo with a U.S. president on American soil—on land that once belonged to Russia, no less. And he was greeted in an over-the-top, stage-managed welcome that involved a literal red carpet for a man accused of war crimes. Putin disembarked his plane this morning moments after Trump stepped off Air Force One, and the two men strode toward each other past parked F-22 fighter jets before meeting with a warm handshake and smiles. After posing for photographs, and quickly peering up at a military flyover that roared above them, the two men stepped into the presidential limousine, the heavily fortified vehicle known as 'the Beast.' The White House had announced earlier in the day that the two men would not have a previously planned one-on-one meeting, but would instead have a pair of sitdowns flanked by advisers. But here, in the backseat of the Beast, Putin had his time alone with Trump. As the limousine drove off the tarmac to the summit site, Putin could be seen in a rear window laughing. Putin and Trump were scheduled to have a formal meeting at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, followed by lunch. But after the first meeting ran long, extending to more than three hours, reporters were abruptly rushed to the room where the press conference would be staged. The second meeting had been canceled. Had there been a breakthrough or a blowup? Putin sported the better body language: He almost glowed as he spoke to the press, offering a history lesson about Alaska, while praising the 'neighborly' relations between the men. And, oddly, he got to speak first, even though Trump was the summit's host. Trump, in contrast, seemed subdued, only perking up when Putin ended their media appearance by suggesting that their next summit be in Moscow. 'I think Trump did not lose, but Putin clearly won. Putin got everything he could have wished for, but he's not home free yet,' John Bolton, who was a national security adviser in Trump's first term, told me. 'Zelensky and the Europeans must be dismayed. And I thought Trump looked very tired at the press event. Putin looked energetic.' Putin seemed eager to broaden the conversation beyond Ukraine. He brought Russian business leaders to Alaska, hoping to play to Trump's hopes of better economic relations between the two countries, and perhaps strike a rare-earth-minerals deal. He also suggested earlier this week that he would revisit a nuclear-arms agreement, perhaps allowing Trump to leave the summit with some sort of win that did not involve Ukraine. But nothing was announced on those fronts either. The fear in Kyiv and across Europe was that Trump is so desperate for the fighting to stop, he might have agreed to Putin's terms regardless of what Ukraine wants. That did not happen, which was cheered across the continent, and Trump said he would soon consult with Zelensky and NATO. But Putin has shown no sign of compromising his positions. He wants Russia to keep the territory it conquered, and Ukraine to forgo the security guarantees that could prevent Moscow from attacking again. Those terms are nonstarters for Ukraine. The Europeans and Ukrainians had good reason to be nervous about today's summit. Trump has spent most of his decade on the global stage being extraordinarily deferential to Putin, which continued when he returned to the White House this year. He initially sided with Russia—even blaming Ukraine for causing its own invasion—before slowly souring on Putin's refusal to end the war. This summit came together in about a week's time' final details were still being arranged even as some of Putin's delegation arrived in Alaska yesterday. Trump's personal envoy, Steve Witkoff, had made several visits to Moscow in recent months. He had been in the Middle East when he received word through a back channel that Putin might finally be willing to come to the table given Trump's more hostile rhetoric toward Putin and threat of sanctions. After a series of meetings with key Trump senior aides and multiple flights across the Atlantic, Witkoff met again with Putin and accepted the offer of a summit. (He also accepted a twisted gift: Putin presented Witkoff an Order of Lenin award to pass along to a senior CIA official whose son had been killed in Ukraine fighting alongside Russia.) Summits, particularly those as high-stakes as ones between American and Russian presidents, usually take weeks if not months to plan. Everything is carefully choreographed: the agenda, the participants, the ceremony. Normally, the outcome is more or less predetermined: In the days before the actual summit, aides hash out some sort of agreement so the two leaders simply need to show up and shake hands to make the deal official. That was clearly not the case today—or in other Trump-Putin meetings. Trump had met with Putin seven previous times, all but one coming on the sidelines of larger summits and all friendly. The first was at the G20 in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, when the two men sat next to each other for an hours-long leaders dinner. Their last meeting, at the G20 in Osaka, Japan, in the fall of 2019, ended with Trump mockingly warning Putin to never interfere again in American elections, with a sarcastic smile and exaggerated finger wag. But Helsinki is the headliner. It came against the backdrop of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Moscow. I was one of the two American journalists called upon to ask a question, and I posed to Trump whether he believed Putin or his own U.S. intelligence agencies about Russia's interference in the 2016 election. Putin glared at me. Trump sided with Moscow. The eruption on both sides of the Atlantic was fierce and immediate, and even some loyal Republicans said they thought Trump's answer was a betrayal of American values. Some of Trump's top aides—including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Chief of Staff John Kelly—were photographed with pained expressions on their faces. Fiona Hill, Trump's Russia adviser, told me later she nearly faked a heart attack in a desperate attempt to get the summit to stop. Anchorage wasn't Helsinki. For that, Europe can be grateful. Trump didn't give away Ukrainian land to Russia or demand that Zelensky take a bad deal, at least immediately. But Putin did get much of what he wanted, including a high-profile summit and, most of all, more time to continue his war. When he boarded his plane to leave Alaska, he was spotted smiling again.
