Raw Story

President Donald Trump issued his vision of a peace plan for the war in Ukraine from his Truth Social account on Monday, a plan that one expert said could "go off the rails at any moment."

The plan was issued after Trump met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and several leaders of European nations at the White House.

"During the meeting we discussed Security Guarantees for Ukraine, which Guarantees would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America," Trump's post reads in part. "Everyone is very happy about the possibility of PEACE for Russia/Ukraine."

The plan raised several questions for Julia Ioffe, a founding member and Washington correspondent for Puck News. Ioffe appeared on CNN's "The Lead with Jake Tapper," hosted by Pamela Brown, on Monday, to discuss the plan.

"First, wow," the Russian-born American journalist said about the plan. "Second of all, I'll believe it when I see it."

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that he would not accept security guarantees from NATO or European countries to end the war in Ukraine. Ioffe found it curious that the European delegation would discuss security guarantees based on Putin's past statements.

"What kind of security guarantees are acceptable for Ukraine but not too much for Russia?" Ioffe asked.

She also noted that Putin appears to want to end the war and secure his gains in Ukraine. However, Trump has given Putin no reason to stop the war, she added.

There are also outstanding questions about whether Russia will be allowed to keep Ukrainian land or if it will have to give back land that it has taken, Ioffe noted.

"We'll see, but this could go off the rails at any moment," she said.

Watch the entire clip below or by clicking here.

Not even local police officers in Maine are immune from President Donald Trump's Immigration and Customs Enforcement busts.

According to The Associated Press, ICE agents "arrested Old Orchard Beach Police Department reserve Officer Jon Luke Evans, of Jamaica, on July 25, as part of the agency’s effort to step up immigration enforcement. Officials with the town and police department have said federal authorities previously told them Evans was legally authorized to work in the U.S."

ICE alleged, however, that Evans overstayed his visa and unlawfully tried to buy a gun while he was undocumented.

The move triggered a dispute between ICE and the Old Orchard Beach police, the report continued: "Police Chief Elise Chard has said the department was notified by federal officials that Evans was legally permitted to work in the country, and that the town submitted information via the Department of Homeland Security’s E-Verify program prior to Evans’ employment. Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin then accused the town of 'reckless reliance' on the department’s E-Verify program."

The conflict appears to have ended with Evans agreeing to leave the country voluntarily, with ICE telling reporters a judge has agreed to accept his voluntary departure, "and that he could leave as soon as that day," avoiding forcible deportation.

The Trump administration's massive increase in immigration enforcement has led to extensive controversies, from the fact that many of the detainees are being shipped out of the country with little or no due process, to the fact that some of them appear to have been politically targeted, like students who were involved in anti-Israel protests.

In other cases, immigration officials have arrested people performing vital work for their communities, including a Russian researcher at Harvard whose work on imaging could massively improve cancer screening, and who faces persecution in her home country due to her criticism of the invasion of Ukraine.

President Donald Trump said he is helping to set up a meeting between himself, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after meeting with both leaders in recent days.

Trump met with Zelenskyy on Monday at the White House, alongside several European leaders, to discuss negotiations aimed at ending Russia's invasion.

Following the summit, Trump bragged on his Truth Social platform that he had a "very good meeting" with his "distinguished guests," and said that ended with a" further meeting in the Oval Office."

"During the meeting we discussed Security Guarantees for Ukraine, which Guarantees would be provided by the various European Countries, with a coordination with the United States of America," he said. "Everyone is very happy about the possibility of PEACE for Russia/Ukraine."

Once the meetings ended, Trump confirmed reports he called Putin, and said he began making arrangements for another meeting at a location that has yet to be determined that will include himself, Putin and Zelenskyy.

"After that meeting takes place, we will have a Trilat, which would be the two Presidents, plus myself. Again, this was a very good, early step for a War that has been going on for almost four years," he said.

Trump said Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and special envoy Steve Witkoff are coordinating with Russia and Ukraine.

Fresh off of walking a tightrope to get a massive budget bill passed with reluctant Republicans on one side and Donald Trump on the other, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is once again stuck in the middle trying to make both parties happy.

At issue now is Trump’s desire for Republicans to redistrict multiple red states in order to gain more GOP seats in the House and Republican caucus members who could be out of a job if Democratic governors, including California’s Gavin Newsom, make good on threats to do the same for their own party.

In the middle sits Johnson, who needs to figure out a compromise that will keep both factions happy with his leadership.

The Washington Post reported, “Redistricting is only the latest headache for Johnson, who oversees a historically narrow House majority with boisterous personalities that have often stymied easy passage of key legislation. A larger majority could ensure a continuation of Johnson’s speakership for another two years and give him a wider margin for success. But the redistricting debate could make it harder for Johnson to pass legislation in the meantime.”

As Johnson aide Greg Steele put it, his boss has “relayed pertinent information between the White House and those Members in what remains a thoughtful, productive dialogue.”

One California Republican who could be redistricted out of his job is not feeling that confident.

“I really don’t like the idea that this is going to be some sort of redistricting war, or there’s going to be this domino effect where one state after another upends their district lines. That’s not the way things are supposed to work,” complained Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA).

Kiley is joined by a smattering of red-state Republican lawmakers who are also unnerved by the GOP leadership tempting fate.

“Texas Republican House members are frustrated that their seats in the new map, which is on the path to approval, will become more competitive and that they might have to fend off primary challengers in slightly less but still conservative districts. Some fear their seats could include more Democratic voters and become swingier,“ the Post is reporting.

Kiley added, “I have made it very clear to [Johnson], both publicly and privately, that I think he and the minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, need to show leadership here and get this situation under control and stop this chaos from cascading across the country.”

You can read more here.

When 34-year-old Thad Cochran arrived in Washington after his first election in 1972, the Republican felt it important to document what he’d heard and learned from Mississippians on the campaign trail and share it with his young staff.

He sat down at a typewriter and wrote a memo titled “General Responsiveness" and dated March 14, 1973:

During the campaign I detected a very strong animosity among the people toward government and those associated with government bureaus and agencies. This included elected officials and those associated with them. Part of the cause of this attitude was due to a lack of feeling or understanding by government people for the needs and opinions of the average citizen. We are all in a job to represent all our constituents. We are not the bureaucracy. A constituent who asks us for help should be assured to be in need of help with our office as his last resort. A constituent who writes a letter should be made to feel by our response that he is glad he wrote us. A constituent who claims to have been wronged by the government should be assumed to be correct. Everyone should guard against developing the attitude that we are better than, smarter than or more important than any constituent. We do not hold a position of authority over any constituent. We are truly servants of the people who selected us for this job.

Every year from 1973 through 2018, over his three U.S. House terms and six U.S. Senate terms, Cochran shared that memo with every staffer who worked in his offices. The guidance, he said all those years, was a necessary reminder to show respect to the people who offer feedback or need help. He never wanted his staff or himself to forget who sent them to Washington.

The memo, like so many other things, serves as a stark reminder that Cochran was among the last in a bygone era of American politics. The perspective he wrote and shared is a far cry from what Mississippians have been getting recently from our current U.S. senators.

“Surely everybody else has better things to do with their time,” senior U.S. Sen. Roger Wicker said to a room full of constituents earlier this month when asked about calls and emails his office has been getting. After half-heartedly explaining that he does see a list of names of people who reach out to his office, he quipped: “Get a life.”

Wicker, who typically chooses his words a little more carefully, perhaps was trying to match his junior colleague's energy.

“Why is everyone’s head exploding?” U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith said in April to Mississippi constituents who had expressed concerns over slashing federal Medicaid spending. “I can’t understand why everyone’s head is exploding.”

There are many kind staffers working for Republicans Wicker and Hyde-Smith who are helpful to Mississippi constituents in any number of ways privately or behind the scenes. These people care deeply about serving their home state and they do it well, and they cannot help how their bosses address the public. But, boy, their phones must be blowing up more than ever since the senators made these comments.

Consider, for a moment, what it means that we have devolved from having a leader who believed that “a constituent who claims to have been wronged by the government should be assumed to be correct” to one who thinks telling constituents to “get a life” is appropriate. Think about the fact that we replaced a leader who regularly reminded his staff that “we are truly servants of the people who selected us for this job” with one whose gut response to legitimate concerns from constituents is that their “heads are exploding.”

Just … wow. To call it alarming doesn't fully encapsulate the gravity of their behavior. It’s enough to discourage even the most optimistic among us about the present and future of our state and our nation.

It’s enough to inspire you to ponder, in this intense political climate when unprecedented and harrowing federal government decisions are being made and going largely unchecked every day, whether our current U.S. senators even remember why they're in Washington, why we sent them there.

It is necessary, in the shortest possible order, to ask and answer for ourselves what we should expect of our elected officials and whether we should feel OK about being dismissed or ignored outright like this.

You don’t have to be a Democrat to think that this behavior is out of line. Plenty of Republicans — some publicly and many privately — are increasingly disturbed by what’s happening in Washington. Regardless of your own personal political beliefs, be honest with yourself about whether you can read these comments from our senators and still feel that your best interests are being represented.

Sadly, we can no longer ask Cochran to help us answer these questions, but it sure seems clear where he’d stand. What about you?

Several of the law firms that agreed to do pro-bono work for Donald Trump’s administration after he publicly targeted them with threats have yet to do a single thing for the president because they believe the terms of the agreements are unenforceable.

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Trump’s campaign against the law firms resulted in a series of executive orders threatening their access to federal buildings, removing security clearances and putting their clients’ government contracts at ris.

It caused multiple high-profile firms to cave to the president and promise to provide millions of dollars worth of pro bono legal services.

While some of them have come through, others haven’t lifted a finger since the president moved on to other perceived enemies.

As the Journal reported, “Several firms that struck the unprecedented deals have shrugged them off as unenforceable and have taken on little to no additional unpaid work, according to people familiar with the matter. They are hoping Trump has moved on.”

RELATED: Clients dump law firms that rolled over for Trump: 'Don't know how to fight'

According to their report, one way the firms are getting around complying stems from the fact that no one at the White House is compelling them to make good on their promises.

“Many firm leaders said they received limited follow-up from the White House after inking the deals,” the Journal reported, before adding, “One leader at a firm with a White House agreement told associates that they wouldn’t have to work on causes favored by Trump, including representing participants in the Jan. 6 riots on the Capitol — and wouldn’t face new obligations because of the deal, according to people familiar with those discussions.“

According to attorney Gary DiBianco, “I think the administration has completely lost the leverage it has over future firms.”

The report goes on to note, “The Oversight Project, a conservative watchdog group formerly affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, has been approaching law firms that made deals to ask for legal help, but most never responded, the group’s president, Mike Howell, said. A few firms took meetings but haven’t yet taken on any proposed legal work.”

You can read more here.