🔵 Putin Chickens Out

Author

Citizen Frank
May 15, 2025

Good evening. It’s Wednesday, May 14.

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced he will not take part in peace talks in Turkey between Moscow and Kyiv on Thursday, despite pleas from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to attend.

White House officials said that US President Donald Trump will also not go to Turkey for the talks after Putin announced the list of Russian attendees, all of whom are relatively low-level officials.

Putin first proposed holding direct talks between Russia and Ukraine — “without preconditions” — last Sunday, in response to a demand from Ukraine’s western allies for a 30-day ceasefire in the war. He said the negotiations would be held on Thursday in Turkey.

Running out of options to get their DOGE cuts approved by Congress, the White House is now looking at a two-year runway to get the cuts passed and opening the door to launching a court fight over the president’s power to shut down spending on his own.

President Donald Trump initially wanted Congress to approve a formal rescissions package that would claw back about $9 billion in previously approved federal spending, a vote that would give legislative teeth to some of the cuts DOGE has already made. The package would include major cuts to USAID and public broadcasting like NPR and PBS.

That effort is hitting a dead end on Capitol Hill, with Republicans warning the White House that it faces tough odds in their so-called megabill, even though it requires just a simple majority of 50 Republican votes in the Senate, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie.

Most Democrats are publicly and privately annoyed at Rep. Shri Thanedar forcing a vote on President Donald Trump’s impeachment Wednesday. Some of them will end up voting for it anyway.

Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told caucus-affiliated members in a note obtained by POLITICO he planned to vote against the House GOP’s likely motion to sink the measure — but stressed that members should vote their district.

“This doomed impeachment vote is not about holding Trump accountable, but instead seems to be about the interest of the bill sponsor. At the same time, Donald Trump has committed serious crimes,” Casar wrote Wednesday afternoon.

A Former Army National Guard soldier has been arrested near a US military base on the day he allegedly planned to carry out an ISIS-inspired mass shooting attack.

The suspect is accused of gathering armor-piercing bullets and teaching two other people to build bombs before his terror plan was foiled, according to the Department of Justice.

Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said, 19, previously served in the Michigan Army National Guard from 2022 until he was discharged in December 2024.

Boeing and Qatar Airways on Wednesday announced a deal for the Middle Eastern airline to buy up to 210 jets, notching the U.S. planemaker’s largest-ever order of widebody aircraft.

The order — the biggest in Qatar Airways’ history — includes 130 of Boeing’s 787 Dreamliners and 30 of its much-delayed 777-9s, with options for up to 50 more planes, the companies said in a press release.

Qatar Airways also signed an agreement with GE Aerospace for more than 400 engines to power the Boeing planes, those companies said in another joint release.

Sen. Ron Johnson said Wednesday he thinks House Republicans’ reconciliation bill is “going down.” And he’s working to ensure its demise.

“The ‘big, beautiful bill,’ I think that’s the Titanic,” the third-term Wisconsin Republican said at a POLITICO Live event in Washington, arguing it doesn’t do enough to reduce spending. “I think that’s going down because I think I have enough colleagues in the Senate that this has resonated with, that say, ‘yeah, we have to return to a reasonable pre-pandemic spending.’”

Johnson’s comments indicate that even if the House is able to secure the votes to pass its ambitious legislative package this week, it will struggle to clear the Senate.

U.S. energy officials are reassessing the risk posed by Chinese-made devices that play a critical role in renewable energy infrastructure after unexplained communication equipment was found inside some of them, two people familiar with the matter said.

Power inverters, which are predominantly produced in China, are used throughout the world to connect solar panels and wind turbines to electricity grids. They are also found in batteries, heat pumps and electric vehicle chargers.

While inverters are built to allow remote access for updates and maintenance, the utility companies that use them typically install firewalls to prevent direct communication back to China.

Mexico’s security chief confirmed Tuesday that 17 family members of cartel leaders crossed into the U.S. last week as part of a deal between a son of the former head of the Sinaloa Cartel and the Trump administration.

Mexican Security Secretary Omar García Harfuch confirmed a report by independent journalist Luis Chaparro that family members of Ovidio Guzman Lopez, who was extradited to the United States in 2023, had entered the U.S.

Guzmán Lopez is one of the brothers left running a faction of the Sinaloa Cartel after notorious capo Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was imprisoned in the U.S. Video showed the family members walking across the border from Tijuana with their suitcases to waiting U.S. agents.

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