Zelenskiy Puts the Ball Back in Trump’s Court on Standing Up to Russia

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has decided to play ball with the Trump administration in efforts to stop the Russian invasion.

On Monday, Trump announced that if Zelenskiy wanted to keep getting U.S. military aid, Ukraine would have to fork over some precious rare minerals.

“We’re telling Ukraine they have very valuable rare earth; we want what we put up to go in terms of a guarantee. We want a guarantee, we’re handing them money hand over fist, we’re giving them equipment, [the European Union is] not keeping up with us,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “We have an ocean in between, they don’t. It’s more important for them than it is for us … so we’re looking to do a deal with Ukraine where they’re going to secure what we’re giving them with their rare earth and other things.”

On Friday, Zelenskiy agreed to Trump’s demands.

“If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” he said, according to Reuters. “The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most. And they should have this priority, and they will. I would also like to talk about this with President Trump,” Zelenskiy continued, trying to explain that he actually wasn’t just giving Trump access to all the valuable rocks he wanted but instead was offering a joint agreement.

The majority of Ukraine’s mineral deposits—holding metals like titanium and uranium—are now in Russian-controlled territory, as Putin has gained more and more Ukrainian soil as the war has dragged on.

“We need to stop Putin and protect what we have: a very rich Dnipro region, central Ukraine,” Zelenskiy said.

Trump and Zelenskiy are expected to talk sometime next week.

Donald Trump wants you to believe that he’s totally nonplussed by Time magazine’s February cover, which features Elon Musk—not the president—behind the Resolute Desk.

During a press conference Friday alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump tried to play it off as if he were totally unbothered by the cover, insinuating that he wasn’t aware that the popular American news magazine (which named him “Person of the Year” in December) was still around.

“Is Time magazine still in business? I didn’t even know that,” Trump said when asked for a reaction to the provocative cover, sparking laughter from the room.

But Trump’s cavalier attitude to the magazine’s focus belies the fact that he spent years pining for it to name him “Person of the Year.” In fact, Time’s decision to feature Steve Bannon on the cover in the early days of Trump’s first term effectively ended his romance with his top strategist.

Bannon was, much like Musk, at the epicenter of Trump’s universe at one point, serving as the forty-fifth president’s chief White House strategist in the first year of his term. But the former host of The Apprentice abruptly fired him in 2017 following a series of controversies in which Bannon openly contradicted Trump and began to encroach on the MAGA limelight.

The pattern appears to be repeating with Musk. Reports emerged Friday that even Trump loyalists in and outside of the administration have found themselves suffering under the billionaire’s sudden seizure of the executive branch.

Last month, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles openly refuted Musk’s outsize influence on the administration, telling Axios that anyone who wants to be a “star” would have no place on her team.

“I don’t welcome people who want to work solo or be a star,” Wiles said at the time. “My team and I will not tolerate backbiting, second-guessing inappropriately, or drama. These are counterproductive to the mission.”

One of Elon Musk’s allies, Tom Krause, is going to be installed in a senior position in charge of America’s critical payment systems.

Krause, a Silicon Valley executive with ties to Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, will become the financial assistant secretary of the Treasury after clashing with David Lebryk, the previous secretary, over illegally ceasing payments on foreign aid.

Lebryk had served in the Treasury Department since 1989, becoming its longest-serving career official. He was serving as acting head of the department until Scott Bessent’s confirmation as treasury secretary last week, and refused to allow Musk’s cronies to have access to the federal payment systems distributing trillions of dollars every year, operated by the Bureau of Fiscal Service.

Bessent has tried to downplay the level of access that Musk’s DOGE henchman have in the Treasury Department, claiming that it was only at “read-only” levels. In reality, one of Musk’s software engineers, 25-year-old Marko Elez, had been given administrator privileges allowing the code governing those vital payment systems to be rewritten. A federal court halted that access Thursday, and Elez has resigned after racist social media posts, although Musk and JD Vance have floated rehiring him.

The Treasury systems at stake distribute funds for thousands of vital functions that millions of Americans depend on, including Social Security and Medicare benefits, federal salaries, payments to government contractors, grants, and tax refunds. Now all of that will be overseen by Krause, who will certainly be acquiescing to Musk’s demands to unilaterally stop payments that he and the MAGA right disagree with. Is any of this legal? In Trump’s presidency, the law isn’t likely to be enforced.

One of Donald Trump’s biggest donors is looking to the Supreme Court to limit tough press coverage of the MAGA leader’s administration.

Republican megadonor Steve Wynn filed a petition with the nation’s highest judiciary on Friday to overturn New York Times v. Sullivan, a landmark 1964 decision that raised the standards required for a plaintiff to win a defamation lawsuit against a media organization.

The bench unanimously found, at the time, that it wasn’t enough for reported information to be found false for a plaintiff to win a suit. Instead, Justice William Brennan Jr. argued that in order to win a defamation case, public figures must prove that journalists published details with “actual malice”—as in, a gross recklessness or disregard for the truth.

Wynn’s case against press protections comes with its own baggage. In 2018, the casino mogul sued the Associated Press for defamation after the newswire reported that two women had accused him of sexual assault in the 1970s.

Wynn resigned as chairman and CEO of Wynn Resorts that year, just two weeks after  The Wall Street Journal reported that the billionaire had paid out a $7.5 million settlement to a hired manicurist he allegedly raped.

“After she gave Mr. Wynn a manicure, she said, he pressured her to take her clothes off and told her to lie on the massage table he kept in his office suite, according to people she gave the account to,” the Journal reported at the time. “The manicurist said she told Mr. Wynn she didn’t want to have sex and was married, but he persisted in his demands that she do so, and ultimately she did disrobe and they had sex, the people remember her saying.”

The Nevada state Supreme Court ruled against Wynn in November, with Justice Ron Parraguirre writing that “one of the most recognized figures in Nevada” needed to show “clear and convincing evidence to reasonably infer that the publication was made with actual malice.” Wynn’s request Friday to the Supreme Court is an effort to overrule that decision.

“Sullivan is not equipped to handle the world as it is today—media is no longer controlled by companies that employ legions of factcheckers before publishing an article,” Wynn’s attorneys argued in their petition. “Instead, everyone in the world has the ability to publish any statement with a few keystrokes. And in this age of clickbait journalism, even those members of the legacy media have resorted to libelous headlines and false reports to generate views.

“This Court need not further this golden era of lies,” they wrote.

Evangelicals are finally getting fed up with Donald Trump’s bad-neighbor behavior, according to an NBC News report published Friday.

Trump received sweeping support from evangelicals in the 2024 presidential election, securing the votes of about eight in 10 white evangelical Christian voters, according to AP VoteCast, which surveys more than 120,000 voters. Trump secured a similar margin in 2020.

His appeal to Latino evangelicals helped him to make inroads among Latino voters, who also supported him with surprising force in the most recent election. Trump’s shockingly ineffectual sidekick Vice President JD Vance has his own ties to the Christian nationalist movement.

But since Trump entered office, some evangelicals are struggling with the incoherent inhumanity of the president’s policies.

Reverend Gabriel Salguero, the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, said he had been meeting with lawmakers about how Trump and Elon Musk’s efforts to shutter USAID would undermine their work benefiting vulnerable children and families abroad.

Salguero pointed out the clear connection between gutting international aid and cracking down on immigration.

“If we’re concerned with immigration, shouldn’t we also be concerned about how foreign aid helps people stay in their country and flourish?” Salguero told NBC News.

Salguero said that Trump’s actions sent an “inconsistent message,” as they sought to limit both documented and undocumented immigration. He said pastors like him were “trying to seek clarity” on the president’s immigration policy.

At the Gathering Place, the Orlando, Florida, church where Salguero serves as pastor, he said he has witnessed the strife of mixed-immigration-status families, fearful from Trump’s orders ending birthright citizenship and allowing ICE agents to pursue those they suspect of being undocumented in schools and places of worship.

“We need to deal with criminals and violent criminals in ways that keep our community safe. We support that,” Salguero said. “On the other hand, they’re passing memos and executive orders that are way beyond that scope.”

He also pointed out an inconsistency with Trump’s claim that his immigration policies are meant to target violent criminals.

“If it’s true that the administration is worried about violent criminals, why did they pardon over a thousand people who acted violently in the Capitol?” he asked, rhetorically. “Why then try to rescind the Fourteenth Amendment, depriving children of birthright citizenship? They’re not violent criminals; they haven’t been born. They have a right to be citizens.” Salguero noted that he is a registered independent and does not endorse candidates.

Walter Kim, president of the National Association of Evangelicals, also pushed back against Trump’s order allowing immigration enforcement to extend into churches.

“Should churches be law-abiding? Absolutely. Should they be cooperating with agencies to ensure that criminal influences are dealt with? Absolutely,” Kim told NBC News. “But by and large, those communities that are experiencing fear and not going to church is far beyond the very small portion of the immigrant, undocumented criminal segment.”

Despite the widespread support from evangelicals, this rift is hardly surprising given the Trump administration’s distinctly America First interpretation of the Good Book.

Last month, Vance fell into religious crosshairs after he said that it was Christian to “love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world.”

Podcaster Rory Stewart called Vance’s comment “a bizarre take on John 15:12-13—less Christian and more pagan tribal. We should start worrying when politicians become theologians, assume to speak for Jesus, and tell us in which order to love.”

John 15:12-13 says, “This is my commandment: Love one another as I have loved you.”