Helsinki Redux – After Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov (left) and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met in Riyadh for a day to discuss Russia’s war against Ukraine -- without Ukraine -- President Trump falsely claimed Ukraine started the war. Scroll down, center column, for more…

Incredible DOGE Savings, Shrinking – The Department of Government Efficiency’s new website claims it already has saved $55 billion toward the goal of a balanced budget. This is “a combination of fraud detection/deletion, contract/lease cancellations, contract/lease renegotiations, asset sales, grant cancellations, workforce reductions, programmatic changes, and regulatory savings.”

But the site’s first major data release, its “Wall of Reciepts” cut that down to more than $16 billion in savings, and after correcting an apparent clerical error that entailed such mistakes as counting $8 million in savings for the Department of Homeland Security as $8 billion (what do you expect? DOGE founder Elon Musk paid $44 billion when maybe he should have paid $44 million for Twitter before cutting 80% of its work staff), according to an investigation by NPR’s Morning Edition, the actual actual savings is about $8.5 billion.

•••

Cutting the IRS – Prima facie, cutting the US Internal Revenue Service tends to be a popular idea across political philosophies. The Trump administration is expected to begin layoffs of about 6,000 IRS employees, mostly recent hires, The New York Timesreports. 

This comes down to another attempt to reverse policy by the previous president. The Biden administration had made new hires and boosted IRS funding in an attempt to revitalize the agency’s effectiveness in going after alleged tax evaders.

•••

Too Many Centenarians? – No, contradicting what President Trump says, tens of millions of dead people are not getting Social Security checks, The Associated Press reports. 

Speaking from Florida, where many centenarians live, President Trump on Tuesday said, “We have millions and millions of people more than 100 years old. They’re obviously fraudulent or incompetent,” President Trump said Tuesday at a briefing in Florida.

But newly installed acting Social Security Commissioner Lee Dudek set Trump straight: “The reported data are people in our records with a Social Security number who do not have a date of death associated with their record. These individuals are not necessarily receiving benefits. I am confident that with DOGE’s help and the commitment of our executive team and workforce, that Social Security will continue to deliver for the American people.”

--TL

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Helsinki Redux

WEDNESDAY 2/19/25

This is False – In a news conference following the one-day “peace talks” in Riyadh led by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, President Trump blamed Ukraine for, apparently, invading its own land to start its war with Russia three years ago, Newsweek reports.

Trump said Ukraine did not need a seat at the negotiating table because it “should’ve ended [the war] in three years. You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.”

Trump’s statement is reminiscent of his press conference after meeting with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin in Helsinki in July 2018. Trump told reporters he believed Putin over the US intelligence community’s assessment that Russia interfered with the 2016 presidential election that Trump won. 

“I don’t see any reason why it would be Russia,” Trump said.

This is true … Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said President Trump is “living in a disinformation space,” The New York Times reports. 

The “decision on how to end the war with Ukraine cannot be made without Ukraine, nor can any conditions be imposed,” Zelenskyy said. “We were not invited to the Russian-American meeting in Saudi Arabia. It was a surprise for us, I think for many others as well.

“I would like to have more truth with the Trump team.”

--TL

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WEDNESDAY 2/19/25

When The Washington Post “abruptly pulled out” of plans to run an advertisement calling on President Trump to “fire” DOGE chief Elon Musk – created to be delivered directly to the White House and Congressional offices -- the ad’s author, Common Cause, had questions…

•“Did our ad get censored because it criticizes Elon Musk and Donald Trump, the two most powerful men in the country?

•“Will The Washington Post only publish things they think the president will like?

•“And … is Jeff Bezos more worried about an angry phone call from the White House than his paper’s journalistic duty?”

What do you think? Email your comments to editors@thehustings.news.

•••

In Case You Missed This – Vice President JD Vance kind of pre-empted Common Cause criticism at the Munich Security Conference Friday, saying this: If US democracy could withstand years of “scolding by Greta Thunberg, you can survive a few months of Elon Musk” (per The Independent).  Like Vance’s head-scratching Diet Mountain Dew joke months ago, this “quip” elicited no laughs, guffaws or chuckles.

•••

‘Peace’ Whether Ukraine Likes it Or Not – Americans, and presumably Ukrainians, owe President Trump a “thanks” for efforts to bring peace to Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, as talks in Riyadh concluded Tuesday between the US and Russia. 

No Ukraine at the talks. No NATO. 

But you knew that. In the single day meeting, the US and Russia agreed to improve diplomatic and economic ties between each other and to work toward ending the war that Trump had promised to end on “Day One” of his administration. 

Strengthening the diplomatic and economic ties President Biden essentially cut in reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine three years ago appears to be the first concession to Vladimir Putin. 

Putin advisor Yuri Ushakov told pro-Kremlin Channel One Russia, according to The Kyiv Independent, that talks were “not bad,” but it was “hard to say” if US and Russian interests were converging. “We have agreed to take account of each other’s interests and develop bilateral relations, since both Moscow and Washington are interested in this,” Ushakov said.

•••

Hochul v. Trump – Four more aides to New York City Mayor Eric Adams have resigned in the wake of a Justice Department order to federal prosecutors to drop corruption charges against the mayor, NPR reports. They are not the first wave of aides to resign since Adams was charged last September. 

Federal prosecutors had charged Adams with allegedly illegal campaign contributions and acceptance of elaborate vacations. The Justice Department’s order to drop charges last week – which would not cause double-jeopardy if federal charges were to be reissued -- prompted at least seven prosecutors, including acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York Danielle Sassoon to resign.

Sassoon has said she was “baffled” by DOJ calling off prosecutors, as she had been preparing new charges against the mayor. 

Now New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul, a fellow Democrat, may use her authority to remove Adams as Manhattan’s mayor as soon as Tuesday, NPR’s Morning Edition reports.

Hochul called her potential action a “serious step,” but Adams’ “alleged conduct at City Hall that has been reported over the past two weeks can’t be ignored,” she said.

“I am going nowhere,” Adams told a Baptist congregation at church services Sunday. He blames his federal charges on “retribution” by ex-President Biden for opposing his immigration policy, though of course this is without any evidence.

In any case, Adams could be going somewhere else later this year, perhaps to Mar-a-Lago for an extended vacation; he is up for re-election this November, though the June 24 Democratic primary is pretty much the city’s general election. Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, the Democrat who left that office early over sexual harassment allegations, is expected to run against Adams in the primary. Cuomo stepped down as governor in 2021. His replacement was Lt. Gov. Hochul.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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TUESDAY 2/18/25

The US and Russia are negotiating Ukraine's fate without Ukraine or NATO at the table in "peace talks" in Riyadh.

By Todd Lassa

European leaders held an emergency meeting in Paris Monday over the future of Ukraine, and indeed, NATO itself, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio flew from Tel Aviv to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in what The New York Times called a “whistle-stop” tour of the Middle East. Following Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s remarks in Brussels and that of Vice President JD Vance and special Ukraine-Russia envoy Gen. Keith Kellog at the Munich Security Conference last week, the European leaders were desperate to exert any sign of leadership and have a role in peace talks, NPR’s Morning Edition reports, that clearly are going to go Russian dictator Vladimir Putin’s way.

Trump had “warned” Putin on Truth Social January 23 he would impose “high tariffs and further sanctions” on Russia if the Kremlin resisted US efforts to end the war and he reiterated his plans to negotiate a settlement in a single day. Given the concessions the Trump White House has made to the Kremlin since, this warning seems little more than an effort to simulate distance between the Art of the Deal president and Putin.

Trump reportedly called Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, after the call with Putin last week. Zelenskyy Monday was in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, making for a quick trip to Riyadh, though only after the White House and Kremlin spend some time alone together.

As if previewing the sweetheart deal with Putin that Trump discussed in that phone call last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Monday there would be “no thought of” territorial concessions to Ukraine, The Kyiv Independent reports. Lavrov explicitly named the Crimea peninsula annexed by Russia in 2014 and Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts in 2022.

In his remarks to European defense ministers at a lunch meeting in Brussels last week, Hegseth, Trump’s defense secretary, warned NATO not to try to allow Ukraine into the alliance. This is Putin’s greatest concern in the peace talks, and it looks pretty clear that if NATO does try to grant Ukraine membership after Washington and the Kremlin reach a deal it will be the Trump White House’s cue to withdraw from the organization. (All 32 NATO nations must vote in favor of a new country’s membership, and even if the US leaves there’s still Hungary.)

Prior to last week’s security conference in Munich, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in a phone call with Zelenskyy “reaffirmed” the UK’s backing of Ukraine’s “irreversible path” to join NATO (per BBC). This stems from a NATO summit in Washington late last year when then-President Biden pledged support for Ukraine’s membership.

Whether the Trump White House holds back funding from NATO, or ultimately pulls out altogether, it will mark the end of a post-World War II deal in which the US guaranteed security for Western Europe in part by assuring there was no room for an extremist politician or political party to take over a potentially powerful military on the continent. 

Under the Trump administration, the United States becomes an isolationist country again and will not get into the sort of entanglements that bogged use down for two decades in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Along with US isolationism comes an expansionism already on record: Making the Panama Canal America again, capturing Greenland from Denmark by force if necessary and apparently making Canada from the Yukon Territory on-down the 51^st state, giving its 41 million citizens two US senators and perhaps 50 congress members. (What are the chances a few of those districts would vote MAGA-Republican?)

Initially not taken very seriously, taking over Canada and Greenland would place a large chunk of the Western Hemisphere north of Mexico, east of Russia and west of NATO-Europe, under Trump’s rule.

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MONDAY 2/17/25

INFLATION RISING -- No wonder Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday the central bank doesn’t “need to be in a hurry” to get back to its interest rate cutting campaign, according to USA Today. The Labor Department reported Wednesday that its Consumer Price Index rose 0.5% in January, to an annual rate of 3%. The CPI had dropped to 2.4% last September as the Fed started easing up on its rate, but this is the wrong direction to meet the Fed’s target rate of 2% inflation. Gasoline was up 1.8% in January, and food was up 0.4%.

FRIDAY 2/14/25

USAID Hold on Hold – Late Thursday US District judge for the District of Columbia Carl Nichols extended by one week a temporary restraining order preventing the Trump administration from placing more than 2,000 US Agency for International Development workers on administrative leave and forcing the return of overseas workers, The New York Times reports. 

•••

Reciprocal Tariffs – The Commerce Department and US trade representatives have been directed to deliver reports on steps to take toward achieving reciprocal trade status in a memo President Trump issued Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reports. How to achieve reciprocal trade? 

Glad you asked. Trump wants federal agencies to match duties and certain economic restrictions enforced by other countries against the US. The order does stop short of imposing tariffs immediately, as foreign capitals had feared, according to the report.

•••

HHS Goes MAHA – That’s “Make America Healthy Again,” former Democratic presidential candidate, current anti-vaxxer and now Health and Human Services Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s health care mantra. The Senate confirmed RFK Jr.’s nomination to the post Thursday by 52-48 vote, with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), a polio survivor and the sole Republican joining all 47 Democrats in opposition, according to The New York Times. 

“Individuals, parents and family have a right to push for a healthier nation and demand the best possible scientific guidance on preventing and treating illness. But a record of trafficking in dangerous conspiracy theories and eroding trust in public health does not entitle Mr. Kennedy to lead these important efforts.”--TL

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THURSDAY 2/13/25

McMahon Up – Senate confirmation hearings for Linda McMahon, the ex-executive of the World Wrestling Federation, to become the Trump administration’s Education secretary begin Thursday. McMahon has very thin experience in education, having served on the Connecticut Board of Education in 2009, but that doesn’t matter, because President Trump has said that if she does her job as intended, the US Education Department is history. 

The Department of Education is one of the smallest in the federal government, according to NPR. K-12 Dive reported last year that the department’s fiscal year 2024 budget had been cut by half a billion dollars, its first cut since 2015, to $79.1 billion. 

•••

Where’s DOGE Now? – The State Department signed a contract with Elon Musk’s Tesla to purchase $400 million worth of armored vehicles beginning in the fourth quarter, NPR reports. But after news of the procurement circulated Wednesday, the procurement document was edited at 9:12 pm and now says the federal contract was worth $400 million of “armored electric vehicles” with the Tesla brand name removed.

MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show broadcasts begin 9 pm Eastern time, and the eponymous host gave the story perhaps its most high-profile coverage.

Musk tweeted on X/Twitter, “Hey @Maddow, why the lie?”

Cybertruck? … Speculation is that Tesla would fulfill the $400 million contract with its Cybertruck pickup, which starts at $82,000 and has been suffering slow sales and plummeting lease residuals. But that base price would not include armored sheetmetal or thick, bulletproof windows, which would add weight and make it necessary to order more powerful Tesla Cybertrucks, which retail for well over $100,000. 

State Department’s award to Tesla was listed December 13, 2024, according to Drop Site News and was targeted to the fourth quarter of this year as a five-year contract.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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WEDNESDAY 2/12/25

UPDATE: President Trump said on Truth Social he had “a lengthy and highly productive call” with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin Wednesday, that will start negotiations to end the war in Ukraine, The New York Times reports. Trump reportedly posted the news on his social media site before informing Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Meanwhile … The Senate confirmed by 52-48 vote former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) as Trump’s director of national intelligence. Sen. Mitch McConnell joined all 47 Democrats as the only Republican to vote against Gabbard. 

•••

Ukraine to Get the Deal Putin Wants – Pete Hegseth revealed the nature of the peace deal the Trump White House will negotiate between Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenksyy, in the US defense secretary’s first official overseas trip, meeting with European defense ministers in Brussels Wednesday. In his remarks, Hegseth essentially confirmed worst fears by Ukraine’s US supporters, about President Trump’s promised negotiations between the warring countries. 

“We must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective,” he said, per The Guardian.  

What’s more, Putin will enter negotiations with Trump and Zelenskyy with the understanding that President Trump is ready to pull back US support, maybe even withdraw completely, from NATO.

Hegseth said, in a statement toned down from an advanced briefing to reporters that from now on, Europe will have to provide “the overwhelming share” of future military aid to Kyiv, and that he was “here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe.”

The US defense secretary’s remarks came after Zelenskyy said in an interview with The Guardian that Ukraine could cede territory it controls in Russia’s Kursk Oblast in exchange for Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories -- a return to the pre-2014 map.

Any questions about which side the Trump White House will favor in negotiations were made clear by the Kremlin’s response to Zelenskyy’s offer to exchange held territories.

“This is impossible,” Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the TASS state news agency, echoing Hegseth’s remarks (per The Kyiv Independent). “Russia has never discussed and will never discuss the topic of exchanging its territory.”

This came the day after teacher Marc Fogel, 63, returned to the US from Russia with special envoy Steve Witkoff. His release is part of an exchange in which Alexander Vinnik, 42, co-founder of BTC-e, a key cybercurrency platform used by cyber criminals for ransomware extortions, identity-theft schemes and narcotics distribution, will return to Russia from three years in a California prison, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Witkoff had spent three years in a Russian jail for allegedly entering the country with medical marijuana and was left behind from high-profile prisoner exchanges under the Biden administration. Malphine Fogel had lobbied Trump before his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania – the one at which a bullet grazed Trump’s right ear – for her son’s release. 

“I feel like the luckiest man on Earth right now,” Witkoff said. “I will be forever indebted to President Trump, to Steve over there.”

Putin might have reason to show some gratitude, especially as Trump pulls back from NATO. But in remarks Tuesday about the prisoner exchange, Trump did not comment on whether he had directly spoken with Putin. 

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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...meanwhile... TUESDAY 2/11/25

Trump v. Jordan – King Abdullah of Jordan was to meet with President Trump at the White House Tuesday to try and talk, or negotiate, through the Gaza Riviera proposal (per The New York Times). That’s Trump’s apparently serious proposal that Palestinians be cleared out, permanently, of the region Israel has bombed to rubble since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack on the Gaza Envelop of southern Israel. 

Trump has threatened to end US financial support for Jordan if Abdullah refuses to accept Palestinian refugees, permanently, as the US rebuilds the Gaza Strip into an international vacation destination, likely with at least one or two Trump towers. 

Hamas on Monday night threatened to “derail” its truce with Israel, while Trump threatened “all hell” if Hamas failed to release all remaining hostages from its attack on Israel, by this weekend.

But fear not… Hamas has since softened its response, while Trump added a caveat to suggest his threat was only a negotiating tactic.

•••

Son of Smoot-Hawley Part II – President Trump’s 25% tariff on steel and aluminum from everywhere “will not go unanswered,” European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen says, per The Associated Press. So American producers of bourbon, jeans and motorcycles had better watch out. 

The Trump tariffs might not affect steel so much, as the import share here has fallen since 2018 tariffs from the president’s previous term, to about 32%, according to Minnesota Public Radio’s Marketplace. Aluminum is another issue, with the US producing about half of what manufacturers consume, and most the other half coming from Canada. 

Much of this is used for electrical components, appliances and aircraft. Boeing’s 737 is about 90% aluminum, Richard Aboulafia of the AeroDynamic Advisory told Marketplace. But even with so much US capacity, industry fears the tariffs will push up steel prices anyway, especially for building construction.

“There are a lot of worries among contractors,” Brian Turmail of the Association of General Contractors of America told the business radio show.

•••

Bipartisanship Trump-Style – President Trump’s Justice Department has called on federal prosecutors to drop charges in the Southern District of New York’s corruption case against Democratic New York City Mayor Eric Adams, per NPR’s Morning Edition. Adams has called his five-count criminal indictment in which he allegedly received about $100,000 in luxury travel allegedly accepted from Turkish officials in exchange for official New York City Hall acts in their favor “payback” for his speaking out against then-President Biden’s border policy. 

Since the presidential election, Adams has visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago and attended his inauguration last month. Charges are to be dropped without prejudice, which means they could be raised again, according to NPR.

About Blagoyevich … Trump in 2020 commuted the sentence of Rod Blagoyevich, who had spent eight years in prison on corruption charges. On Monday, Trump signed a full and unconditional pardon for the former Democratic governor of Illinois, The Hill reports. 

“He was set up by a lot of bad people,” Trump told reporters Monday.

Upshot: Like Adams, Blagoyevich has embraced the MAGA GOP, having attended the party’s national convention in Milwaukee last summer. 

Adams is up for re-election this year, and the Democratic primary June 24 is widely considered the election (subway vigilante Curtis Sliwa is expected to run, again, as the Republican candidate). Adams’ chief rival for the Democratic primary, so far, appears to be former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a well-known Trump antagonist who brings his own issues (he stepped down as governor after allegations of sexual harassment in office). 

Blagoyevich certainly will not run again for Illinois governor, but the current holder of that office is another Trump antagonist, Democrat JB Pritzger, who has declared – satirizing Trump’s Gulf of America – that Lake Michigan is hereby renamed “Lake Illinois.”

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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TUESDAY 2/11/25

"He's not getting anything," President Trump said of DOGE Chief Elon Musk in a Fox News interview with Brett Baier Sunday. "In fact, I don't know how he can devote time to it -- he's into it."

MONDAY 2/10/25

Steel and Aluminum – President Trump promises a 25% tariff on steel and aluminum from every trading partner, The Wall Street Journal reports. Canada in particular is a major importer to the US of the metals. Trump also will announce reciprocal tariffs to be detailed Tuesday or Wednesday, and to take effect “almost immediately.”

“Very simply, they charge us, we charge them,” he told reporters on Air Force One on the way from Florida to New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX. 

Musk is ‘terrific’ … In an interview with Fox News’ Brett Baier recorded at Mar-a-Lago before he flew off to the Super Bowl, President Trump called a federal court’s temporary halt on the Department of Government Efficiency’s access to Treasury Department records “crazy.” 

“I’ve had great help with Elon Musk, who’s been terrific,” Trump told Baier. 

Trump predicted the Kansas City Chiefs would win Super Bowl LIX. The Chiefs lost to the Philadelphia Eagles, 40-22.

•••

CFPB Shuts Down – Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were informed Monday the Washington headquarters will be closed this week and that they must work remotely, NPR’s Morning Edition reports, citing an internal email it obtained. On Saturday night, CFPB employees were instructed by the agency’s new acting director, Trump Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 co-author Russell T. Vought, that they should “stop virtually all their work.” 

The White House initially replaced Biden CFPB appointee Rohit Chopra as director with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

--Compiled and edited by Todd Lassa

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MONDAY 2/10/25