Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Chemical manufacturer 3M has entered into a settlement agreement with New Jersey to resolve claims accusing the company of contaminating water and other natural resources with PFAS substances, popularly known as “forever chemicals,” the state Attorney General’s office said in a May 13 statement.

The settlement, valued at up to $450 million and subject to court approval, is the “largest statewide PFAS settlement in New Jersey history,” said the statement. It resolves certain lawsuits filed by the state against the company in 2019.

PFAS (per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are used in fabric, furniture, industrial products, and several household items. Known as “forever chemicals” because of their inability to degrade over time, these substances continue to accumulate in human beings and the environment.

The chemicals have been found in drinking water, livestock, and food packaging, and are linked to several adverse health issues such as cancers, endocrine disorders, developmental issues in fetuses, and negative impacts on reproduction and immune function.

The settlement amount will be paid over a period of 25 years, with around $275 million to $325 million scheduled to be paid between 2026 and 2034, and the remainder between 2035 and 2050.

The first lawsuit on the matter was a complaint filed in March 2019. It alleged that New Jersey sustained environmental damage from 3M’s role in contaminating the Chambers Works site in Pennsville and Carneys Point in Salem County.

The second lawsuit, also filed in March 2019, made similar claims against the company’s Parlin facility in Sayreville in Middlesex County.

A third complaint was filed against 3M and other manufacturers in May 2019, citing environmental damage and violation of the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act. This was related to the manufacture and sale of certain products that allegedly contained or broke down into PFAS chemicals.

With the settlement agreement, all these lawsuits are now resolved.

“For decades, 3M knew that their PFAS chemicals were forever contaminating the New Jersey environment. But they continued to pollute the environment and escape accountability. That ends now,” said Attorney General Matthew Platkin.

“New Jersey has some of the highest levels of PFAS in the country. That’s why New Jersey has been leading the national charge against corporate polluters who contaminate our drinking water and harm our state’s communities.”

The agreement also settles 3M’s liability related to a statewide PFAS directive issued in 2019 by New Jersey’s Department of Environmental Protection.

Announcing the settlement in a May 12 statement, 3M said it had committed to ending all PFAS manufacturing by the end of 2025 and was “on track to do so.”

“This agreement is another important step toward reducing risk and uncertainty on these legacy issues, allowing 3M to focus on its strategic priorities,” it said.

“In the agreement, the State specifically recognized that 3M ‘has taken actions, which other companies have not taken, to cease manufacturing’ PFAS.”

Tackling PFAS Contamination

3M has previously settled claims related to PFAS contamination. In June 2023, the company reached a $10.3 billion settlement with multiple public drinking water systems. The amount was set to be paid over a period of 13 years.

The company was caught up in another complaint in December when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against 3M and DuPont for allegedly misleading consumers about the safety of PFAS.

“Defendants marketed products containing harmful PFAS chemicals for over 70 years and were aware of the harmful effects of PFAS chemicals for over 50 years,” the state said in the lawsuit.

The Trump administration is taking action to combat PFAS contamination.

On April 28, Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), outlined certain actions the agency intends to take on the matter.

Such actions include establishing liability frameworks to ensure polluters pay for contamination and creating limitation guidelines for PFAS manufacturers.

“I have long been concerned about PFAS and the efforts to help states and communities dealing with legacy contamination in their backyards,” Zeldin said.

“This is just a start of the work we will do on PFAS to ensure Americans have the cleanest air, land, and water.

“With today’s announcement, we are tackling PFAS from all of EPA’s program offices, advancing research and testing, stopping PFAS from getting into drinking water systems, holding polluters accountable.”

Much of the world was caught off guard when amid an avalanche of multiple US-Gulf deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars each being signed Wednesday, President Trump not only announced that he is lifting all sanctions on Syria, but even met in-person with US-designated terrorist and Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa (Jolani) in the Saudi capital.

Apparently even the State Department and US Treasury departments were caught off guard. Trump’s move to lift sanctions on Syria “took many by surprise,” including his own officials at State and Treasury, according to Reuters. 

“In Washington, senior officials at the State Department and Treasury Department scrambled to understand how to cancel the sanctions, many of which have been in place for decades … The White House had issued no memorandum or directive to State or Treasury sanctions officials to prepare for the unwinding and didn’t alert them that the president’s announcement was imminent,” several senior US officials anonymously told publication.

“Officials were confused about exactly how the administration would unwind the layers of sanctions, which ones were being eased and when the White House wanted to begin the process,” they added while emphasizing that top officials were “caught off guard.”

“Everyone is trying to figure out how to implement it,” Reuters cited the officials as saying. Legally and procedurally, the removal of the sanctions will be a process which could take weeks or even months.

Meanwhile there are reports saying the Syrian Pound (SYP) jumped 30% quickly upon Trump’s announcement. The local currency has experienced runaway inflation, and people have to lug huge bricks of cash around to purchase simple items like eggs or medicines.

Syrians have further endured rolling blackouts and lack of resources, or even fuel, for years amid the US-sanctions regimen which was geared toward regime change. But now…

The streets of Syria were a carnival of car horns, fireworks and flags after President Donald Trump made the surprise announcement that the United States would lift sanctions that have throttled the country’s economy for more than 45 years.

Trump stunned even close observers on Tuesday by saying he wants to normalize relations after Syria’s longtime president, Bashar al Assad, was toppled in December. Trump met Wednesday with Assad’s successor, interim President Ahmad al-Sharaa, a former leader of an al-Qaeda offshoot group, in Saudi Arabia after urging him late Tuesday to “show us something special.”

Trump said he wanted to give Syrians a ‘fresh start’ – and indeed this could be the start of an economic turnaround after years of brutal proxy war.

With Assad having been overthrown, the Saudis and Qataris are also stepping in to cover national debt and prop up public sector salaries.

Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs: “With the fall of the Assad regime last year, U.S. posture should change and shouldn’t continue to punish the Syrian people.”

A clear articulation of the US posture in Syria up until last year: to bring about the fall of the Assad regime, the US… pic.twitter.com/lllUpwIZbF

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) May 15, 2025

Ultimately, Washington and the Gulf monarchies got their desired regime change in Syria. It was never about “democracy” or the Syrian people at all. The brutality of the sanctions, which compounded the common mysery, proves that – as some US officials are now openly admitting.

But this sick policy of the Washington blob is nothing really new…

A Wisconsin judge pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges that she obstructed federal agents seeking to detain an illegal immigrant in her courtroom.

Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan entered her plea during a Wednesday morning arraignment in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin, one day after she was indicted by a federal grand jury following her April arrest by the FBI on charges that she helped Eduardo Flores-Ruiz and his attorney slide out the side of her courtroom on April 18 when ICE agents showed up to arrest him. 

Dugan was charged with obstructing or impeding a proceeding before a department or agency of the United States and concealing an individual to prevent his discovery and arrest.

The two-page indictment accuses Dugan of confronting members of ICE and lying to them about needing a judicial warrant to conduct their operation. Dugan faces a maximum penalty of 6 years in prison and up to $350,000 in fines.

On Wednesday, Dugan claimed ‘judicial immunity’ – citing President Trump’s Supreme Court ruling from last year.

“The problems with this prosecution are legion, but most immediately, the government cannot prosecute Judge Dugan because she is entitled to judicial immunity for her official acts,” her lawyers wrote in a motion filed on Wednesday. “Immunity is not a defense to the prosecution to be determined later by a jury or court; it is an absolute bar to the prosecution at the outset,” they wrote, citing Trump v. United States.

In her motion to dismiss, Dugan’s lawyers quote from the Trump immunity ruling, where it said, “In dividing official from unofficial conduct, courts may not inquire into the President’s motives.” They quoted that line to support the argument that her “subjective motivations are irrelevant to immunity.” They also cite the Trump immunity ruling’s quotation of a prior precedent that said the essence of immunity is the immunity possessor not having to answer for their conduct in court. “Judge Dugan therefore has both immunity from conviction and immunity from prosecution,” they wrote. –MSNBC

According to her attorney, Craig Mastantuono, “as she said after her unnecessary arrest, Judge Dugan asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court.”

The state Supreme Court suspended Dugan while she contests charges of concealing Flores Ruiz and obstructing ICE.

On the day she was arrested, US Attorney General Pam Bondi said “If you are harboring a fugitive, we don’t care who you are, if you are helping hide…anyone who is illegally in this country, we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”

FBI director Kash Patel said investigators believe Dugan “intentionally misdirected federal agents” away from Flores-Ruiz, as officers were preparing to arrest him in the courthouse where the judge works.

Eduardo Flores-Ruiz – who was previously deported to his home country in 2013, was accused in a domestic violence case assigned to Dugan, according to officials. 

Milwaukee County court and police records reveal more information about the incident that landed Flores Ruiz in Dugan’s court on three domestic abuse-battery charges.

Three people told police that Flores Ruiz injured them during a March 12 verbal and physical altercation, after which two of them sought hospital treatment.

Miguel Mendoza-Figueroa alleged that Flores Ruiz “intentionally … struck him multiple times in his body and face, causing pain and scratches during a verbal argument about loud music,” the police report says. 

The man reported being punched about 30 times.

*  *   *

When Deyci Torres Sierra, identified as Miguel’s girlfriend, tried to intervene, Flores Ruiz “struck her multiple times in her head” with his fist, inflicting pain, the report says.

A second woman, Maria Sierra Chihuahua, said she, too, tried to break up the fight, and Flores Ruiz “elbowed her in her upper left arm.”

Police said that, when questioned at the scene, Flores Ruiz described the incident as “a mutual fight” between himself and Mendoza-Figueroa, a court record shows.

In Other News

Trump’s pick for US Attorney for New Jersey, his former attorney Alina Habba, appeared on Wednesday in court to prosecute Newark Mayor Ras Baraka for raiding an ICE facility last week.

BREAKING: Alena Habba arrives outside Newark court for Newark Mayor for Ras Baraka’s hearing following ICE arrest outside Delaney Hall

Video by @peterhvideo @FreedomNTV Desk@freedomnews.tv to license pic.twitter.com/0uplFCCBzF

— Oliya Scootercaster 🛴 (@ScooterCasterNY) May 15, 2025

Baraka was arrested for trespassing at an ICE center in New Jersey – arriving at the facility with a cadre of protesters and Democrat representatives.  He is seen in bodycam in an argument with officers and apparently refusing to leave the area, at least initially.  The details of the arrest are not yet clear, but the establishment media is running with the narrative that this is political persecution on the part of the Trump Administration.

The arrest led to an angry flurry by protesters including at least one Dem representative who seemed to physically attack officers.  Democratic representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez visited the center known as Delaney Hall on Friday saying they wanted to “inspect” the facility.  Their posture became confrontational when they were apparently denied entry.

The US Senate could pass a key bipartisan stablecoin bill as soon as next week after removing language targeting President Donald Trump and his family’s sprawling crypto interests.

As Jesse Coghlan reports below for CoinTelegraph, Republican Senator Cynthia Lummis said onstage at an event by Coinbase’s lobbying arm, Stand With Crypto, that she thinks it’s a “fair target” to have the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for US Stablecoins Act, or GENIUS Act, passed by May 26 — Memorial Day in the US.

Joining her onstage was Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, who hinted that the bill’s language was changed to scrap provisions that targeted Trump’s various crypto projects, which include memecoins, a crypto platform, a stablecoin and a crypto mining company that plans to go public, among others.

“When this language comes out, people will see really good refinement, a lot of progress, on things like consumer protection, and bankruptcy protection, and ethics,” Gillibrand said.

“Things beyond just ‘what’s the structure?’ and ‘what’s required for an issuer?’”

Senate Democrats pulled support for the bill on May 8 and stalled its momentum, airing concerns that it wouldn’t help address multiple crypto-tied deals that will personally enrich Trump.

“A lot of what President Trump is engaged in is already illegal,” Gillibrand said. 

“I also think his issuance of a memecoin is illegal based on current law.”

“It’s literally offering anyone who wants to curry favor with the administration to just send him money — that’s about as illegal as it gets.”

“I’m not so worried about this bill having to deal with all President Trump’s ethics problems. What this bill is really intended to do is regulate the entire space of stablecoins,” she added.

Source: Brian Armstrong

Gillibrand said the revised bill includes “some ethics requirements,” but it was “not an ethics bill.”

“If we were dealing with all President Trump’s ethics problems, it would be a very long and detailed bill,” she added.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong, also on stage, was hopeful the Senate would vote on the stablecoin bill “early next week.”

Armstrong, whose company cozied up to Trump by donating $1 million to his inauguration fund, declined to comment when asked if the President’s memecoin could impact the passage of bipartisan crypto bills.

“It’s not my place to really comment on President Trump’s activity,” he said. 

“What I do think is important is that this bill remains focused on stablecoins.”

Crypto bills “absolutely critical” to pass before midterms

The crypto industry is pushing for Congress to pass the GENIUS Act and a Republican-drafted crypto market structure bill before the midterm elections on Nov. 3, 2026, where all 435 House seats and a third of the 100 Senate seats are up for election.

“We have a very narrow window to get legislation through between now and the midterms,” Marta Belcher, the president of the crypto lobby group the Blockchain Association, told Cointelegraph at the Consensus conference in Toronto.

“I strongly suspect that window is going to close very quickly. I don’t know if we’re going to get another window like this to get legislation through,” she added.

“It’s absolutely critical that we get it through now, especially because there really is a real possibility that in the future we end up with an administration that is hostile to crypto.”

The association’s communications director, Chris Jonas, added that it’s critical the bills pass before Congress takes a recess for the month of August.

“Once you get into the calendar year of the midterms, historically not a lot of legislation moves, so that’s why it’s so critical,” he explained.

Trump should be on track to sign both crypto bills before the August break, according to Bo Hines, the executive director of the Presidential Council of Advisers for Digital Assets.

Hines noted on stage at Consensus on May 13 that negotiations on both bills are still ongoing, but it was “the President’s desire” to sign both “stablecoin legislation and market structure legislation before the August recess.”

By Benjamin Picton, Rabobank Senior Macro Strategist

Patience To See

Tech names drove the NASDAQ and S&P500 to further gains yesterday, while the Dow Jones fell for a second-straight session. Semiconductors performed especially well as fund managers caught underweight high-beta US megacaps continued a buying spree that was sparked by a 90-day tariff reduction between the US and China announced on Monday. Nvidia posted a 4.16% gain and AMD was up 4.68% as both companies inked deals with Saudi Arabia to sell more chips for AI applications. European stocks underperformed with most major indexes closing lower, and the Nikkei fell as funds flowed back into Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index and China’s CSI300.

While stocks were rising, US 10-year bond yields poked back above the psychological 4.50% level to close the day up 6bps at 4.54%. 30-year Treasury yields closed half a bip below the intraday highs at 4.98%, which means that yields on both the 10-year and the 30-year are now trading above the levels that were in effect on April 9th when the Trump administration apparently cried “uncle!” in response to bond market pressure and kicked the implementation of reciprocal tariffs into the long grass for 90 days.

Perhaps we are about to find out whether it really was rising bond yields that forced the about face on those reciprocal tariffs, or if Scott Bessent has some other rabbit to pull out of his hat to force long yields lower. Rising bond yields is a problem for America’s chief bond salesman who has trillions of Dollars’ worth of debt to refinance in the months ahead. With the Fed still engaged in quantitative tightening, and enormous budget deficits still being run (despite DOGE), Bessent is going to have to work hard to sniff out other bids, and US homebuyers better hope that he can convince offshore investors that Treasuries yielding 4.5-5% are just too juicy to last. One wonders how durable the rally in long-duration tech can be while yields on long bonds are making new highs.

Fed Speakers yesterday offered no help to the Treasury Secretary by giving the impression that there is no rush to cut the Fed Funds rate any further. Mary Daly said that the Fed had to have “patience to see, not to guess”, which seems to discount the possibility of any kind of pre-emptive policy action. Daly also said that if you take a step back from all the tariff uncertainty the underlying economy is experiencing solid growth, with a strong labor market and declining inflation. That assessment might be a little bit like saying that the Dinosaurs were in really good shape if you ignore the uncertain effects of the approaching meteor. 

In the land of hard data, the US economy shrank in Q1 because of a surge in imports that could be replicated in Q2 as the 90-day reprieve on China tariffs encourages importers and retailers to “reload the gun” on goods inventories. Two consecutive quarters of negative growth is the definition of a recession, but get ready for plenty of commentators to suggest that this one doesn’t really count (it wouldn’t be the first time!).

Meanwhile, President Trump continues his dealmaking tour of the Middle East where Qatar has now reportedly agreed to purchase as many as 210 new jets from Boeing. This comes off the back of the semiconductor, energy and military hardware deals signed in Saudi Arabia, Trump’s announcement that sanctions on Syria will be lifted and his meeting with the new Syrian President, who he urged to normalize relations with Israel.

It’s worth pointing out that while the markets were mostly focused on deals to sell more US chips and US energy, there were also announcements of new sanctions on companies facilitating the sale of Iranian oil to China and a new guidance issued by the Commerce Department that the use of Huawei’s Ascend AI chips “anywhere in the world” constituted a violation of US export controls. 

As this Daily noted yesterday, 90-day tariff reduction notwithstanding, what is happening in the Middle East and with trade more broadly should serve as a signal that geopolitical competition between the United States and China isn’t going away.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Today, the United States Supreme Court will hear three consolidated cases in Trump v. CASA on the growing use of national or universal injunctions. This is a matter submitted on the “shadow docket” and the underlying cases concern the controversy over “birthright citizenship.” However, the merits of those claims are not at issue. Instead, the Trump Administration has made a “modest request” for the Court to limit the scope of lower-court injunctions to their immediate districts and parties, challenging the right of such courts to bind an Administration across the nation.

The case is the consolidation of three matters: Trump v. CASA out of  Maryland; Trump v. Washington out of Washington State, and Trump v. New Jersey, out of Massachusetts. These cases also present standing issues since the Administration challenges the argument that there is a cognizable “injury” to individuals who may travel to the states bringing the actions.

However, the main question is the scope of injunctions.

As I have previously written, district court judges have issued a record number of injunctions in the first 100 days of the Trump Administration. 

Under President George W. Bush, there were only six such injunctions, which increased to 12 under Obama. 

However, when Trump came to office, he faced 64 such orders in his first term.

When Biden and the Democrats returned to office, it fell back to 14. 

That was not due to more modest measures. 

Biden did precisely what Trump did in seeking to negate virtually all of his predecessors’ orders and then seek sweeping new legal reforms. He was repeatedly found to have violated the Constitution, but there was no torrent of preliminary injunctions at the start of his term.

Yet, when Trump returned to office, the number of national injunctions soared again in the first 100 days and surpassed the number for the entirety of Biden’s term.

This is a rare argument. 

First, it is a shadow docket filing that usually results in summary decisions without oral argument. Moreover, this matter came after what is commonly viewed as the final day for oral arguments. The Court granted a rare late oral argument, reflecting that multiple justices view this matter sufficiently serious to warrant a break from standard operating procedures.

Rather than arguing a “question presented” on birthright citizenship, the Administration is solely looking for limits on the district courts as appeals continue on the “important constitutional questions” raised by birthright citizenship.

The Administration argues that the Constitution does not give judges the power to issue universal injunctions and that courts are limited to addressing the cases before them in a given district. The Administration acknowledges that class actions can create the basis for universal injunctions, offering a moderate resolution to the Court. In such cases, if the parties can meet the standard for a national class, they can seek a national or universal injunction.

In today’s arguments (which I will be covering for Fox and on X), we can expect to hear from justices who have previously been critical of universal injunctions, including Justice Clarence Thomas, who, in his concurring opinion in Trump v. Hawaii, called them “legally and historically dubious.”

Likewise, Justices Gorsuch and Alito have criticized such injunctions. In a prior dissent to an emergency filing in Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition, Alito was joined by Thomas, Gorsuch, and Kavanaugh in stating that the government “has a strong argument that the District Court’s order violates the principle that a federal court may not issue an equitable remedy that is ‘more burdensome than necessary to’ redress the plaintiff’s injuries.”

Many of us will be watching three members the most closely: Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Elena Kagan and Amy Coney Barrett. Roberts is the ultimate institutionalist, and we should see in his argument how he views the impact of such injunctions on the court system as a whole. He is very protective of the courts’ inherent authority but may also have misgivings about the scope of these orders.

During the Biden Administration, Justice Kagan has previously criticized universal injunctions. In an interview at Northwestern University Law School, Kagan flagged the “forum shopping” by litigants in filing cases before favorable courts:

“You look at something like that and you think, that can’t be right. In the Trump years, people used to go to the Northern District of California, and in the Biden years, they go to Texas. It just can’t be right that one district judge can stop a nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the years that it takes to go through the normal process.”

Justice Barrett previously joined with Kavanaugh in stating that the power of district courts to enter a universal injunction “is an important question that could warrant our review in the future.”

The argument today will start at 10 am and I will be doing a running review of the arguments on X.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer will argue the government’s case.

Jeremy Feigenbaum, New Jersey’s solicitor general, will argue for the state and local governments and  Kelsi Corkran, the Supreme Court director at Georgetown’s Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, will argue for the private individuals and groups.

Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro Professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University where he teaches a course on the Supreme Court and the Constitution.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s investment envoy and close aide, Kirill Dmitriev, has praised US President Donald Trump for putting together Russia-Ukraine peace talks in Istanbul, the first such direct dialogue between the warring countries since early 2022.

Trump and his team have “made the impossible possible” by bringing Moscow and Kiev to the table. Dmitriev further wrote on X that the Istanbul meeting is happening “against all odds/fierce resistance” and that if “not derailed last-minute, this could be a historic step to peace.”

Dmitriev also specifically named Vice President J.D. Vance, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio – the latter two who are present in Istanbul – as major contributors to the mediation effort. The Kremlin had spent the opening years of the conflict blasting the Biden administration for constantly stoking the war and thwarting dialogue, taking Washington-Moscow relations to new historic lows.

As we noted earlier, Ukraine’s President Zelensky is actually in Turkey, where he’s set to meet with President Erdogan – but separately in the capital of Ankara, and has boasted that “I am here” and that Putin is not. Zelensky has even called the Russian delegation, largely composed of junior officials, “phony”. 

President Trump meanwhile, while attending meetings in Qatar, was asked by a reporter why the American leader is not himself present in Turkey for the talks:

“Why would he go if I’m not going?”

“I wasn’t planning to go and I didn’t think he would if I didn’t.”

“But we have people there. Marco’s doing a fantastic job, Marco’s there…”

It remains that Putin has little reason or incentive to go, with war analysts widely recognizing that he remains in the driver’s seat militarily, and with Ukrainian forces against the ropes.

‘Why would he go if I’m not going?’: Trump reacts to Putin sitting out Istanbul talks

“I wasn’t planning to go and I didn’t think he would if I didn’t.” pic.twitter.com/4YvqvO8gWh

— Chay Bowes (@BowesChay) May 15, 2025

Zelensky has until now offered no major concessions, and issues like permanent control over Crimea and the four eastern territories remain sticking points for Moscow. Thus there are unlikely to be any major breakthroughs in Istanbul, but the fact that the two sides are even at the table is a big accomplishment.

Below is an important rundown of what’s expected in Istanbul and what’s at stake for both sides, excerpted from fresh Responsible Statecraft analysis, Istanbul 2.0: know when to hold ’em, know when to fold ’em:

* * *

What has changed since then?

Ukraine will enter the Istanbul talks in a weaker position that it held in 2022.

Western support for Ukraine financially and economically is not as sound as it was then. No big ticket economic aid and assistance has been made available since the G7 agreement of a $50 billion package of loans, in June 2024. While European states scratched together new economic aid to Ukraine in April, this cannot make up for the reduction in US support.

In territorial terms, Russia withdrew from Kyiv as a concession to the first Istanbul talks and lost ground in Kharkiv and in Kherson in late 2022. However, Russia has gone on steadily to gain further territory in the Donbas since the end of 2023. So while both sides have scores on the board, Russia now maintains the military upper hand on the battlefield and that seems unlikely to change. These two factors in particular were behind President Trump’s February assertion that Ukraine has no cards to play.

What has stayed the same?

NATO membership is still off the table

The verified documents shared by the New York Times last June confirmed that Ukraine’s neutrality and non-membership of NATO was the central issue agreed upon in 2022. Ukraine was ready to become a “permanently neutral state” that would never join NATO or allow foreign forces to be based on its soil.

There seems no route for Ukraine to resile from that given its currently weakened negotiating position and President Trump’s stated view that NATO membership for Ukraine is not practical. Although Germany’s new foreign Minister, Johann Wadephul recently repeated the line that Ukraine’s path to NATO is irreversible, most have agreed, privately and publicly, that Ukraine’s path to NATO is a fraught if not impossible one.

Right now, just having the talks is a huge breakthrough

The Istanbul talks would not be happening had the Trump administration not pushed for it so hard. We don’t need to rehash the “did they or didn’t they” debate around why Ukraine abandoned the Istanbul agreement in April 2022. What is clear, is that Ukraine became entrenched, not only in not negotiating with Russia, but in excluding Russia from all discussions on peace in Ukraine from then onward.

Having agreed in principle for Ukraine to accept neutral status Zelensky was pushing his own ten point peace plan. This included, among other things, Russia withdrawing its troops to the pre-2014 border, i.e. giving up Crimea and the Donbass and creating a Euro-Atlantic Security Architecture, by which he meant Ukraine joining NATO. Peace summits were organized in various countries that explicitly excluded Russia, culminating in the Switzerland event on June 15, 2024.

At this event, President Zelensky was dug in deeper on resisting any engagement with Russia until a full withdrawal of its troops from Ukraine, which was a completely unrealistic proposal. “Russia can start negotiations with us even tomorrow without waiting for anything – if they leave our legal territories,” he said.

Even after President Trump was elected, European leaders clung to the line that “only Ukraine can decide what peace means.”’ I see no circumstances in which a Kamala Harris presidency would have cajoled President Zelensky to enter into negotiations. Tomorrow’s talks wouldn’t be happening unless the Trump administration broke a whole load of Ukrainian and European eggshells to get to this point.

And Responsible Statecraft continues:

The biggest issue now is territory

Even though he was wrongly derided at the time by mainstream media, Steve Witkoff correctly pointed out in his March interview with Tucker Carlson that the territorial issues in Ukraine will be most intractable. Russia’s decision in October 2022 to formally annex the four oblasts of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk changed the calculus. However, Russia does not have full territorial control of any of those oblasts, which are cut through the middle by a hotly contested front line.

Resolving the line of control when the war ends is, by some margin, the most problematic challenge. This will be a hugely sensitive topic, and European allies will shoot down any major concessions to Russia, as they did when the idea surfaced that the U.S.might de jure recognise Russia’s occupation of Crimea.

The most obvious settlement is a de facto recognition of occupation, a Cyprus-style scenario, that does not stand in the way of Ukraine’s future membership of the European Union. Even that will require detailed agreement on issues around demilitarization of the line of control and enforcing any ceasefire.

Sanctions are probably tricky, but also tractable

As I have said before, there is enormous scope to a plan that allows for the immediate lifting of the bulk of zero-impact measures, phasing out the remainder at points agreed to by both sides. The toughest issue remains the $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, mostly held in Belgium. Russia has shown a willingness to concede this funding to support reconstruction in Ukraine, including those parts that Russia occupies.

But there is texture here. Freeing up those funds for reconstruction would immediately remove the source of interest payments that are meeting Ukraine’s obligations on its $50 billion in debt to the G7, agreed to in June 2024. But the more general policy question arises, how much of the freed up funding would be spent in Ukraine itself and how much in Russian-occupied Ukraine, where most of the war damage has occurred? The U.S. must keep the pressure on to ensure the talks stay on track.

A U.S. presence in Istanbul will be vital, to prevent, in particular, Ukraine from bailing on the talks. That’s why sending Steve Witkoff and Keith Kellogg makes sense. The former is trusted by the Russian side while the latter has built relationships in Ukraine. Their presence serves to keep the process moving forward until a deal can be pushed over the line and the fighting can stop.

Bear in mind that the 2022 talks ran for a month and a half and the circumstances have materially changed as I have indicated above. While there has been speculation that President Trump might drop into Istanbul, I am not sure that this is necessary if President Putin doesn’t himself attend. Knowing the Russians, I assess that Putin will want his own “‘meeting moment” with the U.S. President on terms that the Russian side can better choreograph. Indeed, that may be a prize for Russia’s engagement in the process, given its desire for a more comprehensive reset of relations with the U.S.

The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits for the first time was flat from the prior week at 229k (the same level it was at in Jan 2022)…

Source: Bloomberg

Headline continuing claims remains below the Maginot Line of 1.9 million Americans…

Source: Bloomberg

But, drilling down, the ‘Deep Tristate’ saw initial jobless claims spike last week…

Source: Bloomberg

…and continuing jobless claims in the ‘Deep TriState’ also rose as perhaps DOGE is starting to have some effects…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, the chart that sums up the entire farcical FUD-fest about the US labor market and Trump’s terrible tariff trauma…

Source: Bloomberg

When will the CEOs face reality?

Via City AM,

• A recent trade deal between the UK and the US has led to the removal of tariffs on American bioethanol, which British farmers fear will undermine their domestic market.

• Concerns exist among beef farmers that the deal will result in increased American beef imports, leading to unfair competition and impacting their livelihoods.

• The trade agreement has sparked widespread scepticism among British farmers regarding the government’s commitment to protecting their interests and the future of the agricultural sector.

Ministers and commentators heralded the UK’s trade deal with the United States as a political coup that will save thousands of jobs at British automakers. But changes to beef and bioethanol trade rules have left an already bruised agricultural sector fearing the worst, writes Ali Lyon.

When he’s not slavishly editing clips for the hundreds of thousands of people that subscribe to his Youtube channel, Olly Harrison has the not insignificant job of running 1,500 acres of farmland.

But as his impressively regular feed of videos illustrates, tending to that land – and trying to eke out a semblance of profit from it – has become a difficult, bordering on impossible task, as headwind after headwind hit his arable holding near Liverpool.

“It’s been rubbish,” he tells City AM, still dealing with the aftermath of what was England’s driest April on record. 

“We’ve had extremes of weather, which has been very wet or – like now – very dry.”

Added to recent years’ inhospitable climes, are the input costs for producing the wheat his family has grown for five generations. They have, he says, remained at the elevated prices sparked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. At the same time, the price he is able to secure for his end product has fallen by as much as 40 per cent since those 2022 supply-constraint-induced highs.

But it is another, more recent, external shock that has Harrison especially worried. One that, while niche and esoteric, could kibosh the safety net he and his fellow British arable farmers have traditionally fallen back on when the wholesale wheat price drops too low.

Bioethanol: The little-known safety net of arable farmers

“The bioethanol market in the UK – for wheat – is quite big,” Harrison says.

“It’s basically the floor in the market.”

Opening up the UK and US’s agricultural markets to more trade was a key football in the frenzied negotiations that helped the Starmer administration become the first country in the world to secure a trade deal with America since 2 April’s ‘Liberation Day’.

And to spur the States’ capricious President into bringing down painful tariffs on Britain’s export industries like automakers and plane parts, the government agreed to lower its own levies on a selection of American agriculture products; namely beef and the fuel.

The beef tariffs were reduced only on imports that subscribed to the UK’s world-leading food standards, leading some in the farming community to breathe a partial sigh of relief. But the bioethanol concessions – which saw the UK’s 19 per cent tariff abolished completely – contained no such caveats to protect our sizeable domestic industry. That decision has already sparked warnings from key figures involved in domestic bioethanol production that their sector could be facing extinction.

“Bioethanol, for me, is the watch area,” Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers’ Union (NFU) tells City AM.

“I have been speaking to the bioethanol manufacturing sector… and we think [these changes] probably make it unviable.”

The prognosis from Bradshaw – whose assiduous campaigning around the recent inheritance tax reforms has already made him a regular thorn in the government’s side – was echoed by the UK’s two largest bioethanol producers over the weekend.

The chief executive of London-listed AB Foods’ sugar division, Paul Kenward, and Grand Pearson, the chairman of Ensus, both warned in a joint intervention their “strategically essential sector” was under an “existential threat”.

All of which has left Harrison worried about what it will do to demand for his product. “If they can now bring it [ethanol] in from the States – using wheat that’s grown a lot cheaper than we can because they get a lot more support off their government, using technologies that we can’t, from farms that have got scale that we haven’t – then that’s seriously undermining a sector that’s already on its knees,” he says.

A hollowed out bioethanol sector also poses the risk of some unsavoury knock-on effects for livestock farmers, the very area of agriculture that the government sought to protect during its negotiations.

Because just as Unilever sources its ingredients for Marmite from breweries – and the byproducts produced in the fermenting process – bioethanol producers sell one of their own high-protein outputs as feed for cows.

As Bradshaw summarises: “If they’re not making bioethanol, we won’t get that animal feed.”

Yet more farmer beef

The feed supply issue is just one of several fears that Joe Seels, a Yorkshire-based beef farmer, has for his livelihood as the dust settles on the trade deal.

The NFU’s Bradshaw went to lengths to praise the government for maintaining standards in the face of US pressure. But for Seels, who documented his attendance at the string of protests in London around the changes to inheritance tax on his own Youtube channel, the deal represents yet another example of British agriculture being the fall industry to fix problems elsewhere in the economy.

His primary concern is that there will now be a glut of beef supply in the UK, without the same opportunities to export to the US. Because while the deal ostensibly brings down barriers to trade both ways – both countries agreed to accept 13,000 metric tonnes of beef imports each other each year tariff free – Seels can’t imagine a world in which American food producers buy British.

“I’m really sceptical that it will open up new export avenues,” he says. 

“Being American is eating American beef, they won’t accept ours which will be at a premium to [the hormone-aided beef] in their market.”

While the challenging trade environment in the US will persist, British farmers, he adds, will now face stiff competition from the low-cost American beef that will now be available at home.

Consumers and supermarkets are likely to continue to prefer domestically produced beef. Despite other large beef producing nations having access to the UK market, shoppers overwhelmingly prefer meat produced domestically or in Ireland. Senior figures in retail believe that the ubiquity and salience of farm labelling – from the ‘red tractor’ signifier of food standards to the regular sight of union-jack adorned packaging – mean shoppers are unlikely to find American meat in supermarket aisles.

Where Seels and Bradshaw imagine the influx of American beef will be felt, however, is catering and hospitality, where choice is constricted and labelling is less prominent.

“They [the US] have got less red tape, fewer planning restrictions, and their farming operations are just on a huge scale, which all leads to being able to create a product that’s much cheaper,” says Seels.

“We won’t see that on shelves,” he adds, “but where this beef might have a market is food services.”

Ministers have been at pains to trumpet the deal’s positive impact on livestock farmers, many of whom have long feared the spectre of chlorinated chicken and hormone beef being a concession in wider UK-US trade talks. But years of feeling let down by successive governments, mean farmers remain fearful of what the future holds.

“I have no faith whatsoever that the government will protect our interests in future negotiations,” says Harrison. 

“They’re just giving us another kick every time, and not realising how vulnerable the farming sector is.”

That scepticism is shared by Seels, who like Harrison is also a popular farming video blogger and has previous in using his channels to vent at political decision making.

“This government has said things to us in the past that it wasn’t going to do then it’s turned around and changed its mind,” he says.

If it does so again, ministers can expect the vitriolic response comprising more than just a few fiercely worded Youtube videos.