The 47th President and the Post-Biden World

Anyone seen Vivek Ramaswamy lately?

After previously suggesting that the U.S. would not involve European representatives in negotiations to end Russia’s war against Ukraine, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff met in Paris last week for talks with Ukrainian and European officials. The U.S. presented what it called “the outlines of a durable and lasting peace,” even as Russia continued to attack Ukrainian civilian areas.

A senior European official told Illia Novikov, Aamer Madhani, and Jill Lawless of the Associated Press that the Americans presented their plan as “just ideas” that could be changed. But Barak Ravid of Axios reported on Friday that Trump was frustrated that the negotiations weren’t productive and said he wanted a quick solution.

Talks were scheduled to resume today, in London, but yesterday Rubio pulled out of them. The U.S. plan is now “a final offer,” Ravid reported, and if the Ukrainians don’t accept it, the U.S. will “walk away.”

On a bipartisan basis, since 2014 the United States has supported Ukraine’s fight to push back Russia’s invasions. But Trump and his administration have rejected this position in favor of supporting Russia. This shift has been clear in the negotiations for a solution: Trump required repeated concessions from Ukraine even as Russia continued bombing Ukraine. Axios’s Ravid saw the proposed “final offer,” and it fits this pattern.

The plan would recognize Russia’s occupation of Ukraine’s Crimea and its occupation of almost all of Luhansk oblast and the portions of Donetsk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts Russia has occupied. This would essentially freeze the boundary of Ukraine at the battlefront.

Ukraine would promise not to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the post–World War II defensive alliance that first stood against the aggression of the Soviet Union and now stands against the aggression of Russia.

Sanctions imposed against Russia after its 2014 and 2022 invasions of Ukraine would be lifted, and the United States, in particular its energy and industrial sectors, will cooperate with Russia.

In essence, this gives Russian president Vladimir Putin everything he wanted.

What the Ukrainians get out of this deal is significantly weaker. They get “a robust security guarantee,” but Ravid notes the document is vague and does not say the U.S. will participate. We have been here before. After the Soviet Union crumbled in 1991, Ukraine had the third-largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world. In exchange for Ukraine’s giving up those weapons, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia agreed to secure Ukraine’s borders. In the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, they agreed they would not use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine.

Russia violated that agreement with its 2014 and 2022 invasions, making it unlikely that Ukraine will trust any new promises of security.

Under the new plan, Ukraine would also get back a small part of Kharkiv oblast Russia has occupied. It would be able to use the Dnieper River. And it would get help and funds for rebuilding, although as Ravid notes, the document doesn’t say where the money will come from.

There is something else in the plan. The largest nuclear power plant in Europe is Ukrainian: the Zaporizhzhia plant. It will be considered Ukrainian territory, but the United States will operate it and supply the electricity it produces to both Ukraine and Russia, although the agreement apparently doesn’t say anything about how payments would work. The plan also refers to a deal between the U.S. and Ukraine for minerals, with Ukraine essentially repaying the U.S. for its past support.

Ravid notes that the U.S. drafted the plan after envoy Steve Witkoff met for more than four hours last week with Putin. But the plan has deeper roots.

This U.S.-backed plan echoes almost entirely the plan Russian operatives presented to Trump’s 2016 campaign manager Paul Manafort in exchange for helping Trump win the White House. Russia had invaded Ukraine in 2014 and was looking for a way to grab the land it wanted without continuing to fight.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s 2019 report on Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election explained that Manafort in summer 2016 “discussed a plan to resolve the ongoing political problems in Ukraine by creating an autonomous republic in its more industrialized eastern region of Donbas, and having [Russian-backed Viktor] Yanukovych, the Ukrainian President ousted in 2014, elected to head that republic.”

The Mueller Report continued: “That plan, Manafort later acknowledged, constituted a ‘backdoor’ means for Russia to control eastern Ukraine.” The region that Putin wanted was the country’s industrial heartland. He was offering a “peace” plan that carved off much of Ukraine and made it subservient to him. This was the dead opposite of U.S. policy for a free and united Ukraine, and there was no chance that former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who was running for the presidency against Trump, would stand for it. But if Trump were elected, the equation changed.

According to the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, Manafort’s partner and Russian operative Konstantin Kilimnik wrote: "[a]ll that is required to start the process is a very minor 'wink' (or slight push) from D[onald] T[rump] saying 'he wants peace in Ukraine and Donbass back in Ukraine' and a decision to be a 'special representative' and manage this process." Following that, Kilimnik suggested that Manafort ‘could start the process and within 10 days visit Russia ([Yanukovych] guarantees your reception at the very top level, cutting through all the bullsh*t and getting down to business), Ukraine, and key EU capitals.’ The email also suggested that once then–Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko understood this ‘message’ from the United States, the process ‘will go very fast and DT could have peace in Ukraine basically within a few months after inauguration.’”

According to the Senate Intelligence Committee, the men continued to work on what they called the “Mariupol Plan” at least until 2018.

After Russia invaded Ukraine again in 2022, Jim Rutenberg published a terrific and thorough review of this history in the New York Times Magazine. Once his troops were in Ukraine, Putin claimed he had annexed Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, two of which were specifically named in the Mariupol Plan, and instituted martial law in them, claiming that the people there had voted to join Russia.

On June 14, 2024, as he was wrongly imprisoning American journalist Evan Gershkovich, Putin made a “peace proposal” to Ukraine that sounded much like the Mariupol Plan. He offered a ceasefire if Ukraine would give up Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson, including far more territory than Putin’s troops occupy, and abandon plans to join NATO. “If Kyiv and the Western capitals refuse it, as before,” Putin said, “then in the end, that’s their…political and moral responsibility for the continuation of bloodshed.”

On June 27, 2024, in a debate during which he insisted that he and he alone could get Gershkovich released, and then talked about Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Trump seemed to indicate he knew about the Mariupol Plan: “Putin saw that, he said, you know what, I think we’re going to go in and maybe take my—this was his dream. I talked to him about it, his dream.”

Now that plan is back on the table as official U.S. policy.

Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country will not recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea. In this determination, he speaks for the global rules-based order the U.S. helped to create after World War II. Recognition of the right of a country to invade another and seize its territory undermines a key article of the United Nations, which says that members won’t threaten or attack any country’s “territorial integrity or political independence.” French president Emmanuel Macron and other European leaders are standing behind those principles, saying today in a statement from Macron’s office that they reject Russian territorial gains under the U.S. plan. “Ukraine’s territorial integrity and European aspirations are very strong requirements for Europeans,” the statement said.

But Trump himself seems eager to rewrite the world order. In addition to his own threats against Greenland, Canada, and Panama, in a post today on his social media site he echoed Putin’s 2024 statement blaming Ukraine for Russia’s bloody war because it would not agree to Putin’s terms. Today, Trump said Zelensky’s refusal to recognize the Russian occupation of Crimea was “inflammatory,” and he pressured Zelensky to accept the deal.

Curiously, he felt obliged to write that “I have nothing to do with Russia…”.

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IThere is something else in the plan.

Two US marines investigated over alleged rape at military base in Okinawa
Allegations come days after Japanese authorities increased efforts to deter crimes by US servicemen on island

Two US marines based on the Japanese island of Okinawa are being investigated for alleged rape, days after local authorities stepped up efforts to deter sexual and other crimes by US service personnel.

A marine in his 20s is suspected of raping a Japanese woman in a bathroom at a US military base last month, while a second man, also a marine in his 20s, allegedly raped a woman at a base in January, according to media reports.

The men, who were not named publicly, had been referred to Japanese prosecutors, the Kyodo news agency said.

The first man is also alleged to have injured a second woman as she attempted to stop the assault.

The Okinawa governor, Denny Tamaki, who is opposed to US military bases in the country, condemned the alleged rapes as “deplorable” and urged US military authorities to “take measures to prevent a similar incident”.

The US ambassador to Japan, George Glass, said he was deeply concerned by the reports.

Glass, who arrived in Japan last week, said: “We deeply value the ties of trust and friendship we have built over many decades with our Japanese hosts, and I am committed to doing everything I can to prevent actions that may jeopardise these bonds.”

The alleged rape cases are certain to anger civilians in Okinawa, a subtropical island that hosts more than half of the 47,000 US troops in Japan and two-thirds of US bases.

In 2024, 80 people connected to the US military were charged with crimes in Okinawa. Three servicemen have been indicted over alleged sexual crimes on the island since last June.

Other high-profile crimes, notably the 1995 abduction and rape of a 12-year-old girl by three US servicemen, inflamed anti-base sentiment on the island and prompted Washington and Tokyo to attempt to reduce the US military footprint.

In 2012, the two countries agreed to move 9,000 marines from Okinawa to the US Pacific territory of Guam and other locations, and to relocate a sprawling base in the middle of a heavily populated area to a remote coastal site. However, only about 100 marines have left Okinawa, and the base relocation has been delayed by legal and political challenges.

The US and Japanese governments say US troops in Okinawa act as a deterrent amid growing concern over Chinese military activity in the South and East China Seas, and North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes.

Last week, US military officials and Japanese police conducted a joint patrol of a popular nightclub near a US airbase in Okinawa. It was the first time the two countries had conducted patrols together since 1974, two years after the islands that make up Okinawa prefecture reverted to Japanese control.

Latest denial of disaster funding comes as Trump has repeatedly stated he wants to eliminate Fema

Donald Trump has denied federal disaster relief funds to the people of Arkansas, which saw dozens of people die from a series of deadly tornados last month, so legislators are pleading for him to reconsider.

More than 40 people have been found dead after a series of tornados and severe storms hit Arkansas and neighboring states Mississippi and Missouri in March, according to CNN.

Given the scale of the disaster, the state’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee, requested federal disaster aid as a part of an emergency declaration. That request was later denied by the Trump administration.

Huckabee and other Arkansas lawmakers have since publicly asked Trump to reconsider his decision. Huckabee sent an appeal of the decision on 18 April. US senators Tom Cotton and John Boozman of Arkansas and US Representative Rick Crawford also followed up with a letter to Trump, asking him to “reconsider the denial”.

“As Governor Sanders noted in her request, these storms caused catastrophic damage across the state, resulting in disastrous amounts of debris, widespread destruction to homes and businesses, the deaths of three Arkansans, and injuries to many more,” the legislators wrote in a 21 April letter.

The letter continued: “Given the cumulative impact and sheer magnitude of destruction from these severe weather events, federal assistance is vital to ensure that state and local communities have the capabilities needed to rebuild.”

The latest denial of disaster funding comes as Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to overhaul and eliminate Fema. In March, Trump signed an executive order for state and local governments to play a more active role in disaster relief.

“Preparedness is most effectively owned and managed at the state, local, and even individual levels, supported by a competent, accessible, and efficient federal government,” read the order.

“When states are empowered to make smart infrastructure choices, taxpayers benefit.”

Trump also ordered a review of Fema in January, later stating: “I say you don’t need Fema, you need a good state government,” while visiting the aftermath of the Los Angeles fires. He added: “Fema is a very expensive, in my opinion, mostly failed situation.”

Critics of Trump’s position have argued that he is weakening the US’s disaster readiness, especially as the global climate emergency makes natural disasters more likely and more intense.

Disaster management is also already in the hands of state and local municipalities, critics have noted. Any additional elimination of FEMA would mean slashing federal funding that states rely on after disasters.

The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.

Alleged former members of neo-Nazi group claim its leader is Russian spy
Allegation against Rinaldo Nazzaro, founder of the Base, could shed new meaning on group’s efforts inside Ukraine

Alleged former members of an international neo-Nazi terrorist organization are claiming its Russia-based and American leader is a Kremlin spy, according to online records reviewed by the Guardian.

The allegation that Rinaldo Nazzaro, a former Pentagon contractor and founder of the Base, listed as a designated terrorist organization all over the world, is an alleged Russian intelligence asset could bring new meaning to his group’s latest effort: sabotage and assassination missions inside of Ukraine to weaken the government of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

A website circulating on far-right Telegram channels is claiming to speak on behalf of former members of the Base and said it was “exposing” the group for what it really is: the cut out of Russia’s federal intelligence agency, the FSB.

The members allege that they were always suspicious of Nazzaro’s behavior and worried about who his handlers really were.

“[Nazzaro] presented himself as an army veteran who has been to Afghanistan, however during gun ranges he mentioned how he’s never touched a shotgun in his life,” wrote the members.

“Things started becoming really SUS when a few members could see him texting on the phone in Russian, in a fluent/at least a good level as he was writing fast and seemingly naturally, all of that alone led to the belief that [Nazzaro] might be a Russian federal asset, and at that time it was already obvious that he was flying to Russia back and forth.”

For example, when a number of Base members were first being arrested, they noted he quickly, “gets into a plane to Russia”.

During the height of the Base’s activities, it came to light that Nazzaro had worked in a top secret capacity as a drone targeting analyst for American special forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, however there were no records of him being in ground combat.

The ex-members also claimed how the Base’s latest venture into Ukraine, where it is offering cash for operatives to carry out assassination and sabotage missions, is a Russian intelligence operation that is gaining traction. Recent videos online show the Base burning military vehicles with Ukrainian license plates, electrical boxes, and other activities inside the country.

The writers said the new Base cell in Ukraine was “bigger than any other fedop” carried out by Nazzaro.

“[Thus] not only are they trying to disrupt the system but also dislocate the Ukrainian forces which AGAIN furthers the interests of Russia,” they said.

Other evidence provided to the Guardian shows that whoever is running the account for the Base’s Ukraine cell on Telegram, has paid for a bot army to up its follower numbers into the tens of thousands.

“How does The Base have money for so [many] bots and rewards for actions?” wrote a user affiliated with the website on Telegram. “I wonder who funds them.”

Nazzaro has increasingly leaned on Russian digital infrastructure to operate his global organization. Posts calling for attacks on Ukraine first appeared on the Base’s VK account, which is hosted in Russia and run by Nazzaro. The recruitment email for the Base is also a Mail.ru address – the email provider of a well-known ally of Russian president, Vladimir Putin.

Nazzaro, however, has repeatedly maintained that he is not affiliated with any spy agencies, even making an uncanny appearance on Kremlin state television in 2020, telling a reporter that he “never had any contact with any Russian security services”, something the ex-members also reference.

“That these accusations are also coming from alleged former members of the group is particularly interesting, given inside knowledge of the group they may have and Nazzaro’s role within the global accelerationist white power movement,” said Joshua Fisher-Birch, a far-right analyst who saw the website and allegations circulating.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/24/neo-nazi-group-the-base-leader-russian-spy-allegations

As Elon Musk recently said on Joe Rogan's show...

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The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy.

This is a notion or sentiment not unique to Musk, of course. Sociopaths share it. Which is why, for example, Leonard Leo, Bill Barr and others in the far right Catholic hierarchy were utterly delighted at the news of Pope Francis' death. If one were to do a survey of MAGA types where they would be offered a choice of illustrations to hang on their wall where one portrays Jesus bathing the feet of his disciples and another showed Jesus cutting Judas in half with an AK47, I think we know how that survey would go.

The Trump administration specifically stated that the damage from the March tornadoes in Arkansas should be handled by state and local resources, ...

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Disaster management is also already in the hands of state and local municipalities, critics have noted. Any additional elimination of FEMA would mean slashing federal funding that states rely on after disasters.

...after FEMA determined the impact did not warrant a major disaster declaration.

...he has called it "bureaucratic," "slow," and "expensive."

You liberals love to quote only one sentence or phrase out of context to present a distorted version of what the speaker said.

to present a distorted version