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For the Kremlin, the Miami talks were the culmination of a strategy, hatched before Trump’s inauguration, to bypass the traditional U.S. national security apparatus and convince the administration to view Russia not as a military threat but as a land of bountiful opportunity, according to Western security officials. By dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals, Moscow could reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.

Dmitriev, a Goldman Sachs alumnus, had found receptive partners in Witkoff—Trump’s longtime golfing partner—and Kushner, whose investment fund, Affinity Partners, drew billion-dollar investments from the Arab monarchies whose conflict with Israel he had helped mediate.

More recently, Kremlin-linked businessmen Timchenko, Kovalchuk and the Rotenbergs have been offering U.S. counterparts gas concessions in the Sea of Okhotsk, as well as potentially four other locations, according to a European security official and a person familiar with the talks. Russia has also mentioned rare-earth mining opportunities near the massive nickel mines of Norilsk and in as many as six other Siberian locations that are still unexploited, these people said.

“Russia has so many vast resources, vast expanses of land,” Witkoff told The Wall Street Journal, describing at length his hopes that Russia, Ukraine and America would all become business partners. “If we do all that, and everybody’s prospering and they’re all a part of it, and there’s upside for everybody, that’s going to naturally be a bulwark against future conflicts there. Because everybody’s thriving.”

https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/russia-u-s-peace-business-ties-4db9b290

Susan Monarez, the director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention who was fired Wednesday, declined to dismiss her leadership team and approve vaccine recommendations from a panel selected by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a former acting CDC director said.

Monarez, who was sworn into the role in July, had two lines she wouldn’t cross when she stepped into the position, Dr. Richard Besser, the chief executive officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said Thursday. He said he spoke with her Wednesday afternoon.

Monarez said she wouldn’t do anything illegal or anything that defied science, Besser said. “She said she was asked to do both of those,” Besser, a former acting CDC director in the Obama administration, said.

Lawyers for Monarez said Wednesday that she declined to “rubber-stamp unscientific, reckless directors and fire dedicated health experts.”

“Science and integrity can never be compromised,” her lawyers Mark Zaid and Abbe Lowell said Wednesday evening.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/cdc-director-refused-to-fire-leaders-approve-vaccine-recommendations-c777704c

“There will be very severe consequences,” Trump said ahead of the meeting in response to a question about what he would do if Putin failed to offer a cease-fire.

Hours after meeting Putin, however, he dropped his demand in a post on his Truth Social platform, in which he argued in favor of going straight to negotiations for a full peace agreement following his discussions with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and other European nations.

https://www.wsj.com/world/europe/trump-tells-europeans-he-is-open-to-u-s-security-guarantees-in-ukraine-347892f6

Meanwhile, the enrichment site at Fordow, which is buried deep under a mountain, has barely been touched. The enriched uranium at Fordow is believed to be enough to produce several bombs.
...
Israel lacks the deep penetrating bombs, and the heavy bombers to deliver them, that could do more damage to buried sites. The U.S. has both, and Israel would like U.S. help in taking out those nuclear sites.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-fordow-imperative-for-trump-and-israel-nuclear-enrichment-site-iran-7981fbc0

But the White House, led by deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, wants to deport everyone here illegally. This means millions of people who arrived illegally but have since led law-abiding, productive lives. They have formed families and taken jobs that employers say they struggle to fill—in construction, hospitality, agriculture, healthcare, and much more.

Mr. Miller and the restrictionists want to deport everyone to send a message never to come again. But the lost contributions to the U.S. labor force will be great, especially since neither Mr. Miller nor Big Labor will tolerate more legal immigration. The labor-market impact is already showing up in the monthly Bureau of Labor Statistics report.

There is also the risk of unrest, as we’ve seen in California. It’s fanciful to think that raiding restaurants to snatch busboys, or Home Depot to grab stock clerks, won’t inspire a backlash. All the more so when ICE acts in heavy-handed fashion, as its agents sometimes do. Some on the pro-migrant left will do the same, and that’s when things get ugly. The political risks for Mr. Trump will grow if families are broken up, legal migrants are deported by mistake, or tales of hardship proliferate.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-deportation-wars-begin-d3cb4f8d

Trump, an avid consumer of cable news, said that he watched Dimon’s interview Wednesday morning with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. During the interview, Dimon said a recession was a “likely outcome” of the new tariff program, but also defended the idea of some tariffs as a way to improve trade. He urged the president to give Bessent time to make deals. “I’m taking a calm view, but it could get worse,” Dimon said.

Dimon hasn’t had a substantive conversation with Trump for years, people familiar with the matter said. While his appearance on the Fox Business show had been in place for some time, Dimon knew that Trump and his inner circle often watched Fox and that his message would likely get through to them, one of the people said.

President Trump has ordered a pause to intelligence sharing with Ukraine, said Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe, a move that deprives Kyiv of a key tool in fighting Russian forces.

The suspension of intelligence sharing to Ukraine is a major concession to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has said that U.S. involvement in weapons targeting has made Washington a virtual combatant of the war.
https://www.wsj.com/world/trump-suspends-intelligence-sharing-with-ukraine-147c7f2c

The conventional view of Mr. Trump is that he’s above all transactional. He wants deals, at home and abroad, that he can sell as great successes. But the way his second term is unfolding, this may undersell his ambition. Mr. Trump’s strategy seems to be moving toward that of Tucker Carlson and JD Vance, who view America as in decline and no longer able to lead or defend the West.

All of this would amount to an epochal return to the world of great power competition and balance of power that prevailed before World War II. It’s less a brave new world than a reversion to a dangerous old one.

Mr. Trump hasn’t articulated this, but some of the intellectuals surrounding him have. Elbridge Colby, nominated for the chief strategy post at the Pentagon, has argued that the U.S. must leave Europe and the Middle East to their own devices to focus on the Asia-Pacific. But Mr. Colby has also said that South Korea might have to fend for itself, and he said in a letter to us last year that “Taiwan isn’t itself of existential importance to America.”

Mr. Vance is the most vigorous promoter of the abandon Ukraine strategy, arguing that the war with Russia is little more than an ethnic dispute.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/trumps-brave-old-world-foreign-policy-ukraine-blow-up-china-russia-trade-allies-7e32b02a

When President Trump met Russia’s Vladimir Putin for their first bilateral summit, in the Finnish capital of Helsinki in July 2018, the two men cloistered themselves for hours with no advisers present.

Once they emerged to a packed news conference, Trump tossed a gift from the Russian president—a soccer ball meant for Trump’s son Barron—to the front row where America’s senior-most officials sat. Trump then stunned his team by saying he believed Putin, and not America’s own intelligence services, about whether Russia interfered in the 2016 elections that brought him to power.
At the time, the public outcry in Washington—including by the Republican leadership in Congress and his own aides on Air Force One—forced Trump to change course within 24 hours. Soon, new sanctions against Russia went into effect.

Openly embracing Russia was still toxic at the time. After all, Trump’s first choice for national security adviser, Mike Flynn, had been forced to resign over discussing sanctions relief with the Russian ambassador before the inauguration, and Russia hawks assumed key positions in the new administration.

Those guardrails —in Congress or inside the administration— barely exist today.
https://www.wsj.com/world/russia/donald-trump-vladimir-putin-relationship-4decfe96

Mr. Trump on Tuesday mimicked Russian propaganda by claiming Ukraine had started the war with Russia and that Kyiv is little better than the Kremlin because it hasn’t held a wartime election. Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky replied on Wednesday that Mr. Trump was living in a “disinformation space,” which may have been imprudent but was accurate.

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