logo
Trump says he'll reduce timeline for Russia to agree to ceasefire or face consequences

Trump says he'll reduce timeline for Russia to agree to ceasefire or face consequences

The Hill6 days ago
President Trump told reporters he plans to shorten the timeline for Russia to agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine based on Russian President Vladimir Putin's continued attacks on Ukrainian cities.
Trump had said on July 14 that Russia would face additional sanctions and tariffs if it did not stop fighting in Ukraine within 50 days, putting the deadline at Sept. 2. But on Monday, the president indicated he would push up that timeframe.
'We thought we had that settled numerous times and then President Putin goes out an starts launching rockets into some city like Kyiv and kills a lot of people in a nursing home or whatever,' Trump said standing alongside British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. 'You have bodies lying all over the street. And I say that's not the way to do it. So we'll see what happens with that. I'm very disappointed. I'm disappointed in President Putin.
'I'm going to reduce that 50 days I gave him to a lesser number because I think I already know the answer what's going to happen,' Trump added, without providing more detail on a new timeline for the U.S. initiating sactions targeting Moscow.
The president earlier this month said the U.S. would impose 'severe' tariffs on Russia if Moscow did not agree to a ceasefire in Ukraine in the next 50 days. Trump indicated he would impose a 100 percent 'secondary' tariff, which would target other nations that do business with Russia in a bid to further hurt the Russian economy.
Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022 after amassing troops at the border. Trump campaigned on a pledge to end the war within 24 hours, a timeframe he later claimed was 'sarcastic.'
While Trump has at times complained about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's approach to the conflict, he has in recent weeks expressed increasing frustration with Putin as Moscow continues to fire missiles into Ukraine despite the White House's push for a ceasefire.
Trump earlier this month also announced NATO alliance members would finance the purchase of additional U.S. weapons to be sent to Ukraine.
Orange background

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Comments

No comments yet...

Related Articles

Not just Big Bird: What to know about the Center for Public Broadcasting and its funding cuts
Not just Big Bird: What to know about the Center for Public Broadcasting and its funding cuts

Yahoo

timean hour ago

  • Yahoo

Not just Big Bird: What to know about the Center for Public Broadcasting and its funding cuts

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which has helped pay for PBS, NPR, 1,500 local radio and television stations, and programs such as Sesame Street and Finding Your Roots, announced Friday it would shut down after the U.S. government removed its funding. The organization told staff most positions will end with the fiscal year on September 30. A small transition team will remain until January. The private nonprofit corporation was founded in 1968 after Congress authorized its formation. It now comes to an end after almost six decades of fueling the production of celebrated educational programming, cultural content, and emergency alerts about natural disasters. Trump cancels funding President Donald Trump signed a bill on July 24, canceling about $1.1 billion that had been approved for public broadcasting. The White House claims the public media system is politically biased, and an unnecessary expense, and conservatives have particularly directed their anger at NPR and PBS. Lawmakers with large rural constituencies voiced concern about what the cuts could mean for some local public stations in their state. They warned that some stations will have to close. The Senate Appropriations Committee on Thursday reinforced the policy change by excluding funding for the corporation for the first time in more than 50 years as part of a broader spending bill. How it started Congress passed legislation creating the body in 1967. This came several years after Newton Minow, the then-Federal Communications Commission chair, described commercial television as a 'vast wasteland' and called for programming in the public interest. The corporation doesn't produce programming, and it doesn't own, operate, or control any public broadcasting stations. The corporation, PBS, and NPR are independent of each other, as are local public television and radio stations. Rural stations hit hard Roughly 70 percent of the corporation's money went directly to 330 PBS and 246 NPR stations across the country. The cuts are expected to weigh most heavily on smaller public media outlets away from big cities, and it's likely some won't survive. NPR's president estimated that as many as 80 NPR stations may close in the following year. Mississippi Public Broadcasting has already decided to eliminate a streaming channel that airs children's programming such as 'Caillou' and 'Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood' 24 hours a day. Maine's public media system is looking at a hit of $2.5 million, or about 12 percent of its budget, for the next fiscal year. The state's rural residents rely heavily on public media for weather updates and disaster alerts. In Kodiak, Alaska, KMXT estimated the cuts would slice 22 percent from its budget. Public radio stations in the sprawling, heavily rural state often provide not just news but alerts about natural disasters like tsunamis, landslides, and volcanic eruptions. From Big Bird to war documentaries 'Sesame Street' initially aired in 1969. Child viewers, adults, and guest stars alike were instantly hooked. Over the decades, characters from Big Bird to Cookie Monster and Elmo have become household favorites. Entertainer Carol Burnett appeared on that inaugural episode. "I would have done anything they wanted me to do,' she said. 'I loved being exposed to all that goodness and humor.' The New York Times reports 'Sesame Street' will survive without the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. NPR and PBS get a relatively small portion of their annual budget from the corporation, and children's TV programs are produced independently of those organizations. Still, the NYT reports the cutbacks could affect the availability of those shows, particularly in pockets of the country without widespread access to broadband internet and mobile data. Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. started the program 'Finding Your Roots' in 2006 under the title 'African American Lives'. He invited prominent Black celebrities and traced their family trees back to slavery. When the paper trail ran out, they would use DNA to see which ethnic group they were from in Africa. Challenged by a viewer to open the show to non-Black celebrities, Gates agreed, and the series was renamed 'Faces of America', which had to be changed again after the name was taken. The show is PBS's most-watched program on linear TV and the most-streamed non-drama program. Season 10 reached nearly 18 million people across linear and digital platforms and also received its first Emmy nomination. Grant money from the nonprofit has also funded lesser-known food, history, music, and other shows created by stations across the country. Documentarian Ken Burns, celebrated for creating the documentaries 'The Civil War', 'Baseball', and 'The Vietnam War', told PBS NewsHour that the corporation accounted for about 20 percent of his films' budgets. He said he would make it up, but projects receiving 50 percent to 75 percent of their funding from the organization won't. The influence of shows Children's programming in the 1960s was made up of shows including 'Captain Kangaroo', 'Romper Room', and the violent skirmishes between 'Tom & Jerry'. 'Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood' mostly taught social skills. PBS also aired programs by 'Monty Python' and broadcast shows such as 'Downton Abbey' and 'The French Chef' with Julia Child. Education professionals and child psychologists designed 'Sesame Street' to help low-income and minority students aged between two and five overcome some of the deficiencies they had when entering school. Social scientists had long noted that white and higher-income kids were often better prepared. One of the most widely cited studies about the impact of 'Sesame Street' compared households that got access to the show with those who didn't. It found that the children exposed to 'Sesame Street' were 14 percent more likely to be enrolled in the correct grade level for their age at middle and high school. Over the years, 'Finding Your Roots' showed Natalie Morales discovering she's related to one of the legendary pirates of the Caribbean, and former 'Saturday Night Live' star Andy Samberg finding his biological grandmother and grandfather. It revealed that drag queen RuPaul and Senator Cory Booker are cousins, as are actors Meryl Streep and Eva Longoria. 'The two subliminal messages of 'Finding Your Roots', which are needed more urgently today than ever, is that what has made America great is that we're a nation of immigrants,' said Gates. 'And secondly, at the level of the genome, despite our apparent physical differences, we're 99.99 percent the same.' Solve the daily Crossword

Senate heads home with no deal to speed confirmations as irate Trump tells Schumer to 'go to hell'

timean hour ago

Senate heads home with no deal to speed confirmations as irate Trump tells Schumer to 'go to hell'

WASHINGTON -- The Senate left Washington Saturday night for its monthlong August recess without a deal to advance dozens of President Donald Trump's nominees, calling it quits after days of contentious bipartisan negotiations and Trump posting on social media that Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer can 'GO TO HELL!' Without a deal in hand, Republicans say they may try to change Senate rules when they return in September to speed up the pace of confirmations. Trump has been pressuring senators to move quickly as Democrats blocked more nominees than usual this year, denying any fast unanimous consent votes and forcing roll calls on each one, a lengthy process that can take several days per nominee. 'I think they're desperately in need of change," Senate Majority Leader John Thune said of Senate rules Saturday after negotiations with Schumer and Trump broke down. "I think that the last six months have demonstrated that this process, nominations is broken. And so I expect there will be some good robust conversations about that.' Schumer said a rules change would be a 'huge mistake," especially as Senate Republicans will need Democratic votes to pass spending bills and other legislation moving forward. 'Donald Trump tried to bully us, go around us, threaten us, call us names, but he got nothing," Schumer said. The latest standoff comes as Democrats and Republicans have gradually escalated their obstruction of the other party's executive branch and judicial nominees over the last two decades, and as Senate leaders have incrementally changed Senate rules to speed up confirmations — and make them less bipartisan. In 2013, Democrats changed Senate rules for lower court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations as Republicans blocked President Barack Obama's judicial picks. In 2017, Republicans did the same for Supreme Court nominees as Democrats tried to block Trump's nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch. Trump has been pressuring Senate Republicans for weeks to cancel the August recess and grind through dozens of his nominations as Democrats have slowed the process. But Republicans hoped to make a deal with Democrats instead, and came close several times over the last few days as the two parties and the White House negotiated over moving a large tranche of nominees in exchange for reversing some of the Trump administration's spending cuts on foreign aid, among other issues. The Senate held a rare weekend session on Saturday as Republicans held votes on nominee after nominee and as the two parties tried to work out the final details of a deal. But it was clear that there would be no agreement when Trump attacked Schumer on social media Saturday evening and told Republicans to pack it up and go home. 'Tell Schumer, who is under tremendous political pressure from within his own party, the Radical Left Lunatics, to GO TO HELL!' Trump posted on Truth Social. 'Do not accept the offer, go home and explain to your constituents what bad people the Democrats are, and what a great job the Republicans are doing, and have done, for our Country.' Thune said afterward that there were 'several different times' when the two sides thought they had a deal, but in the end 'we didn't close it out.' It's the first time in recent history that the minority party hasn't allowed at least some quick confirmations. Thune has already kept the Senate in session for more days, and with longer hours, this year to try and confirm as many of Trump's nominees as possible. But Democrats had little desire to give in without the spending cut reversals or some other incentive, even though they too were eager to skip town after several long months of work and bitter partisan fights over legislation. 'We have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now,' Schumer said.

Gifford fire burns 30,000 acres in Los Padres National Forest
Gifford fire burns 30,000 acres in Los Padres National Forest

Los Angeles Times

timean hour ago

  • Los Angeles Times

Gifford fire burns 30,000 acres in Los Padres National Forest

The Gifford fire has scorched more than 30,000 acres in less than two days in Los Padres National Forest as firefighters struggle to quell the blaze in the Sierra Madre mountains. Wildland firefighters were continuing to battle the blaze Saturday along Highway 166 in rural Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties, about 20 miles east of Santa Maria, according to the U.S. Forest Service and Cal Fire. But fire crews were faced with challenging conditions such as high temperatures, dry vegetation and rugged terrain. As of Saturday evening, the fire was 5% contained and continuing to chew through the tall, dry grass and chaparral that covers the steep hills and mountains. Evacuation orders and warnings were issued for agricultural lands near the unincorporated community of Garey. Although the fire is on federally managed land, Cal Fire crews joined the response to assist with more ground personnel and firefighting aircraft. Criticized on the social media platform X for the fire's explosive growth, Gov. Gavin Newsom's press office reiterated that the fire was not on state land. 'The #GiffordFire started on Trump's federally managed land in the Los Padres NATIONAL Forest,' read the post. 'While Trump just gutted wildfire funding, @CAL_FIRE is now stepping in to clean up what federal mismanagement helped fuel.' Newsom has criticized President Trump for cutting funding for forest management, including activities such as prescribed burning, a process that reduces the risk of explosive fires by proactively burning vegetation in a controlled environment. As of Saturday evening, a California Interagency Incident Management Team — composed of federal, state and county firefighters from various agencies, including the U.S. Forest Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, National Park Service, Cal Fire, the state's Office of Emergency Services and county-level fire departments — was tasked with taking command of the incident. The fire was first reported about 2 p.m. Friday near Los Padres National Forest's Gifford trailhead, not far from the perimeter of the recently extinguished Madre fire. According to Cal Fire, the blaze had multiple start points along Highway 166. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.

DOWNLOAD THE APP

Get Started Now: Download the App

Ready to dive into a world of global content with local flavor? Download Daily8 app today from your preferred app store and start exploring.
app-storeplay-store