Speaker Johnson says he's open to Russia sanctions bill
His comments came shortly after Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) indicated the Senate could vote on a Russia sanctions bill — led by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) — by the end of the month, and after President Trump said on Tuesday that he was looking at the legislation 'very strongly.'
'I don't know any details yet but I know there's an interest in that in the House side, so we'll have to see,' Johnson told reporters in the Capitol when asked about the Senate bill.
'Vladimir Putin has shown an unwillingness to be reasonable and to talk seriously about brokering a peace, and I think we have to send them a message, that's my view,' he added.
Johnson had previously backed penalizing Russia as the conflict drags on, telling reporters last month: 'There's many members of Congress that want us to sanction Russia as strongly as we can … and I'm an advocate of that.'
But his comments on Wednesday put the Senate's bill, which is veto-proof with more than 80 co-sponsors, on a potential path to President Trump's desk.
Thune on Wednesday said the upper chamber has made 'substantial progress' on the Russia sanctions bill, adding that it could be ready to hit the floor in the coming weeks.
'We've also made substantial progress on Graham's overwhelmingly bipartisan Russia sanctions legislation to enhance President Trump's leverage at the negotiating table and to help end the bloodshed in Ukraine,' Thune said on the Senate floor. 'And Mr. President, I fully expect that that could be ready for floor consideration as early as this work period.'
'Senate Republicans are committed to working with the House and the White House to get this legislation through Congress and on to the president's desk,' he added.
Discussion about passing the sanctions bill is heating up as Trump becomes increasingly annoyed with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Last week, he said he was 'very disappointed' with a conversation he had with Moscow's leader, adding: 'I don't think he's there.'
'I'm just saying, I don't think he's looking to stop, and that's too bad,' Trump said.
Trump for months has sought to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine to no avail.
On Tuesday, he reversed a decision by the Pentagon last week to pause some arms shipments to Ukraine, saying he wanted to arm Kyiv with 'defensive weapons because Putin is not treating human beings right.' He also said he did not know who at the Pentagon decided on the pause.
Graham said the Senate bill includes a presidential waiver, which would give Trump more authority over the sanctions. He also noted that the Senate will look to penalize China, India and other countries 'that buy Russian energy products that finance Putin's war machine.'
Support for Ukraine has been a prickly subject in the House GOP conference since Moscow launched its offensive in February 2022, with a number of hard-line conservatives vocally against sending additional money and support to Kyiv.
In April 2024, however, Johnson oversaw the passage of roughly $61 billion in aid for Ukraine, a move that was celebrated by Kyiv's supporters in both parties.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Yahoo
7 minutes ago
- Yahoo
News Analysis: Trump's 'force of personality' hasn't delivered on key foreign policy goals
When President Trump returned to the White House in January, he promised to deliver big foreign policy wins in record time. He said he would halt Russia's war against Ukraine in 24 hours or less, end Israel's war in Gaza nearly as quickly and force Iran to end to its nuclear program. He said he'd persuade Canada to become the 51st state, take Greenland from Denmark and negotiate 90 trade deals in 90 days. 'The president believes that his force of personality … can bend people to do things," his special envoy-for-everything, Steve Witkoff, explained in May in a Breitbart interview. Six months later, none of those ambitious goals have been reached. Ukraine and Gaza are still at war. Israel and the United States bombed Iran's nuclear facilities, but it's not clear whether they ended the country's atomic program once and for all. Canada and Denmark haven't surrendered any territory. And instead of trade deals, Trump is mostly slapping tariffs on other countries, to the distress of U.S. stock markets. It turned out that force of personality couldn't solve every problem. 'He overestimated his power and underestimated the ability of others to push back,' said Kori Schake, director of foreign policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. 'He often acts as if we're the only people with leverage, strength or the ability to take action. We're not.' Read more: Inside Trump's ICE expansion: Can he really hire 10,000 new agents? The president has notched important achievements. He won a commitment from other members of NATO to increase their defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product. The attack on Iran appears to have set Tehran's nuclear project back for years, even if it didn't end it. And Trump — or more precisely, his aides — helped broker ceasefires between India and Pakistan and between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But none of those measured up to the goals Trump initially set for himself — much less qualified for the Nobel Peace Prize he has publicly yearned for. 'I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize for this,' he grumbled when the Rwanda-Congo agreement was signed. The most striking example of unfulfilled expectations has come in Ukraine, the grinding conflict Trump claimed he could end even before his inauguration. For months, Trump sounded certain that his warm relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin would produce a deal that would stop the fighting, award Russia most of the territory its troops have seized and end U.S. economic sanctions on Moscow. 'I believe he wants peace,' Trump said of Putin in February. 'I trust him on this subject.' But to Trump's surprise, Putin wasn't satisfied with his proposal. The Russian leader continued bombing Ukrainian cities even after Trump publicly implored him to halt via social media ('Vladimir, STOP!'). Critics charged that Putin was playing Trump for a fool. The president bristled: "Nobody's playing me." But as early as April, he admitted to doubts about Putin's good faith. 'It makes me think that maybe he doesn't want to stop the war, he's just tapping me along," he said. 'I speak to him a lot about getting this thing done, and I always hang up and say, 'Well, that was a nice phone call,' and then missiles are launched into Kyiv or some other city,' Trump complained last week. 'After that happens three or four times, you say the talk doesn't mean anything." The president also came under pressure from Republican hawks in Congress who warned privately that if Ukraine collapsed, Trump would be blamed the way his predecessor, President Biden, was blamed for the fall of Afghanistan in 2022. So last week, Trump changed course and announced that he will resume supplying U.S.-made missiles to Ukraine — but by selling them to European countries instead of giving them to Kyiv as Biden had. Trump also gave Putin 50 days to accept a ceasefire and threatened to impose 'secondary tariffs' on countries that buy oil from Russia if he does not comply. He said he still hopes Putin will come around. 'I'm not done with him, but I'm disappointed in him,' he said in a BBC interview. It still isn't clear how many missiles Ukraine will get and whether they will include long-range weapons that can strike targets deep inside Russia. A White House official said those details are still being worked out. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sounded unimpressed by the U.S. actions. 'I have no doubt that we will cope,' he said. Foreign policy experts warned that the secondary tariffs Trump proposed could prove impractical. Russia's two biggest oil customers are China and India; Trump is trying to negotiate major trade agreements with both. Meanwhile, Trump has dispatched Witkoff back to the Middle East to try to arrange a ceasefire in Gaza and reopen nuclear talks with Iran — the goals he began with six months ago. Despite his mercurial style, Trump's approach to all these foreign crises reflects basic premises that have remained constant for a decade, foreign policy experts said. 'There is a Trump Doctrine, and it has three basic principles,' Schake said. 'Alliances are a burden. Trade exports American jobs. Immigrants steal American jobs.' Robert Kagan, a former Republican aide now at the Brookings Institution, added one more guiding principle: 'He favors autocrats over democrats.' Trump has a soft spot for foreign strongmen like Putin and China's Xi Jinping, and has abandoned the long-standing U.S. policy of fostering democracy abroad, Kagan noted. Read more: Trump threatens Russia with tariffs and boosts U.S. weapons for Ukraine The problem, Schake said, is that those principles 'impede Trump's ability to get things done around the world, and he doesn't seem to realize it. 'The international order we built after World War II made American power stronger and more effective,' she said. 'Trump and his administration seem bent on presiding over the destruction of that international order.' Moreover, Kagan argued, Trump's frenetic imposition of punitive tariffs on other countries comes with serious costs. 'Tariffs are a form of economic warfare,' he said. 'Trump is creating enemies for the United States all over the world. ... I don't think you can have a successful foreign policy if everyone in the world mistrusts you.' Not surprisingly, Trump and his aides don't agree. 'It cannot be overstated how successful the first six months of this administration have been,' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said last week. 'With President Trump as commander in chief, the world is a much safer place.' That claim will take years to test. Get the L.A. Times Politics newsletter. Deeply reported insights into legislation, politics and policy from Sacramento, Washington and beyond, in your inbox twice per week. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Chicago Tribune
8 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Chicago-area children get deportation letters: Leave or ‘the federal government will find you'
Thirteen-year-old Xally Morales stared blankly at a letter she received from the Department of Homeland Security last month. She could not read the dozens of lines in English addressed to her. She arrived in the country from Mexico a little over seven months ago, crossing the southern border in search of safety. Xally knows very little English. 'They say I have to leave the country immediately,' the young teen whispered in Spanish, barely meeting anyone's eyes at a Chicago law firm on a recent Friday afternoon. No explanation. No hearing. And no time. The night she received the letter, she said, the family went into hiding after her older sister translated the letter for her. 'Trump wants me to go back to Mexico. But how can I do that alone?' Xally told the Tribune. 'I'm scared ICE will come for me.' Xally is one of at least 12 children in the Waukegan area — all unaccompanied minors from Mexico — who received sudden deportation letters from DHS last month, according to advocates. All of the girls legally entered the country within the past year under humanitarian parole as unaccompanied minors and were later reunited with undocumented parents or other family already living in the U.S. But despite that reunification, the girls are unable to be legally represented by their parents in immigration court due to the way they entered the country. Immigration advocates warn that these cases are becoming more common, with a growing number of children now receiving letters from DHS ending their humanitarian parole. They say this could signal a troubling shift under the Trump administration: a move to strip asylum protections from children, even those with pending claims, and accelerate the deportation of minors without due process. 'Do not attempt to unlawfully remain in the United States — the Federal Government will find you,' the June 20 letter reads. Unless their families can find and afford scarce legal representation, the children could be at risk of getting detained or could be forced to face a judge alone, advocates and attorneys said. But an assistant secretary of DHS, Tricia McLaughlin, in an emailed statement to the Tribune said that 'accusations that ICE is 'targeting' children are FALSE and an attempt to demonize law enforcement.' McLaughlin added that Immigration and Customs Enforcement 'does not 'target' children nor does it deport children.' The agency also does not separate families, she said in the statement. Instead, 'ICE asks mothers if they want to be removed with their children or if the child should be placed with someone safe whom the parent designates.' But questions regarding why letters are being sent to unaccompanied minors, like Xally, and what the protocol is to deport them, as stated in the letter, were left unanswered. Sitting next to her mother in the law office that afternoon, she held her hand tight. Since receiving the letter, the two had been staying at a Waukegan church because they were afraid that ICE agents would suddenly show up to their home and take Xally. Her mother, Francisca Petra Guzman, 48, arrived in the country in January, also as an asylum-seeker. The two, she said, ran away from domestic abuse and death threats. But churches are no longer a safe refuge. Instead, the pastor of the church, longtime activist Julie Contreras, escorted the mother and daughter to meet with a group of attorneys who could help them understand their options: return to the country they fled, possibly together to avoid detention, or remain in the U.S. for safety. 'As much as I tried, I couldn't provide for Xally in Mexico. I couldn't keep her safe,' Guzman said. 'Then my health started to decline. We had no other option than to come here.' Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, DHS began widely sending these letters. While the agency has always had the discretion to revoke any type of parole, the practice has expanded significantly under his administration, according to the legal and immigration experts. Minors, however, had not been targeted until now. Still, the letter may not mean that ICE will in fact show up to the family's home or their school to deport the children, said immigration attorney John Antia. Many of these children may qualify for other forms of legal protection, Antia said. The first step is meeting with an experienced immigration lawyer. That's something, however, that's often out of reach for families due to financial hardship or lack of understanding about their rights. 'Whether ICE can lawfully detain these children largely depends on each child's immigration status and individual circumstances,' Antia said. When he learned that Xally and other children were taking sanctuary at a Waukegan church after getting the letters, he offered to meet with them, attempting to ease their anxiety and fear. 'The reality is that under this administration, no one is safe anywhere. They (immigration authorities) are unpredictable and desperate to meet a quota even if it means detaining a child,' Antia said. 'This administration doesn't care whether you are in the hospital, whether you are in the courthouse, whether you are in your home, definitely not at church.' While Xally and her mother didn't leave the law office with clear answers about their future, they said they felt a small sense of hope. The attorneys said they would explore legal options to help Xally stay in the country, or at the very least, protect her from detention. They returned to the church, packed their bags and went home. The fear, however, lingers more than ever. Every morning, Xally wakes up wondering if agents will show up at her door the way they have been showing up to other homes in Waukegan and other cities near Chicago. The girl and her mother avoid going out altogether, spending most days watching TV, doing her nails, writing or reading. 'When I begin to feel anxious, I pray,' Xally said as she scrolled though a photo of her late father on her cellphone background. Her nails are painted in bright pink polish and glitter. She painted them while she was staying at the church with other children who received similar letters from DHS. She said she is used to living in fear since she lived in Mexico. Only briefly after arriving did she think her life would take a turn for the best. Xally still remembers the day she first saw Lake Michigan after arriving in the Chicago area. It was Sept. 19 of last year. Before that, she had spent nearly a month in a Texas federal facility run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, surrounded by other children who, like her, had crossed the southern border seeking asylum. 'More than scared, I was nervous and excited,' Xally said. She was eager to leave behind a life marked by pain and instability after her father died from COVID over five years ago. When her mother remarried, they found themselves trapped in an abusive household, her mother recalled. As the threats heightened, her mother desperately searched for a way to protect her youngest daughter. At first, she left Xally with her elderly grandmother in their impoverished Mexican hometown. But soon, Guzman realized her best option was to send Xally to the United States, where her older sisters — both U.S.-born — lived. Guzman herself had lived in the U.S. unauthorized as a teenager. It was where she met Xally's father. The couple decided to return to Mexico when Xally's grandfather was on his deathbed and they wanted to see one last time. Shortly after, Xally was born. With the help of Contreras, founder of United Giving Hope, an organization supporting immigrant families in suburban Illinois, Xally was granted humanitarian parole as an unaccompanied minor and successfully reunited with her older sisters in Waukegan. 'It was a new start for a young girl with big dreams,' Contreras said. 'She arrived at a place of safety every child deserves.' Over the past decade, Contreras has helped hundreds of children and mothers legally cross the southern border seeking asylum, assisting with paperwork and connecting them to attorneys to support their cases. But now, about a dozen of those children, including Xally, have received letters from DHS ordering them to leave the country. 'This is deeply concerning and alarming,' Contreras said. 'These children are not the criminals Trump claimed ICE would target. They are victims of human rights violations and are being terrorized. Even if ICE doesn't come for them immediately, the threat alone causes severe psychological trauma.' While Xally and her mother choose to endure the uncertainty, others cannot bear it and have opted to return to their native towns. Even when it means facing danger, Contreras said. Sixteen-year-old Daneli Mendez, who arrived in the Chicago area last October, decided to go back to her native Veracruz, Mexico. After staying at the church with Contreras for nearly a week, terrified that ICE would arrive and arrest her, Daneli told her family she would rather return voluntarily than risk detention. The girl has heard of others being detained in detention centers in poor conditions for undetermined amounts of time. Most recently, a 15-year-old Mexican boy was reportedly arrested by federal authorities and taken to Alligator Alcatraz, a notorious detention facility in Florida. On July 5, just a day after Independence Day, Contreras escorted Daneli to O'Hare International Airport and watched as the young girl boarded a flight back to the country she once fled. 'It's heartbreaking to see their dreams shattered. But this is about more than dreams, it's about their safety,' Contreras said. Daneli returned with nothing but a small backpack, a few English words she had learned, and a broken heart, leaving her family behind once again. 'She would much rather do that than be detained and deported,' Contreras said. Under U.S. immigration law, unaccompanied minors, children under 18 who arrive at the border without a parent or legal guardian, are supposed to receive special protections. They are typically placed under the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement and granted humanitarian parole while their cases are processed. But in recent months, immigration advocates and attorneys say the system is being quietly dismantled. 'We're seeing more and more unaccompanied minors having their parole revoked and being thrown into immigration proceedings where they're completely unequipped to defend themselves,' said Davina Casa, pastor and leader of the Monarchy Organization. The group provides legal guidance and other services for immigrants in Illinois. Its main goal is to reunify families. Casas and Contreras have worked closely together to help Xally and other children arrive safely in the United States. What's more concerning, she said, is that in March, the Trump administration cut federal funding for legal representation for unaccompanied minors. Only after 11 immigrant groups sued, saying that 26,000 children were at risk of losing their attorneys, did a court order temporarily restore the funding, but the case is still ongoing. Those groups argued that the government has an obligation under a 2008 anti-trafficking law to provide vulnerable children with legal counsel. That same law requires safe repatriation of the children. But Casas is skeptical of that. Even if the funding has been restored, the demand can't keep up. In April, more than 8,300 children ages 11 and under were ordered deported by immigration courts. That is the highest number for that age group in any month since tracking began over 35 years ago, according to court data from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse, as first reported by The Independent. Since Trump took office in January, judges have ordered the removal of over 53,000 immigrant children, according to the data collected. Most of those children are elementary school age or younger. Approximately 15,000 were under the age of 4, and another 20,000 were between 4 and 11 years old. Teenagers have also been affected, with 17,000 ordered deported, though that number is still below the peak seen in 2020, during Trump's first term. Some of the children are unaccompanied minors, like Xally and Daneli, but it's unclear how many, since immigration authorities stopped tracking that data years ago. In the Chicago area, it's hard to know how many children are currently being detained or deported, due to gaps in the available data. But according to data obtained by the Deportation Data Project and analyzed by the Tribune, at least 16 minors were deported or left the U.S. after being booked in Chicago-area ICE detention centers during Trump's first 150 days back in office. Another seven cases are still pending. If all seven of those cases result in deportation, that would bring the total to 23 minors — about the same number as were deported in the final 150 days of the Biden administration. But the latest available ICE data doesn't capture any efforts since late June. When Xally learned that Daneli had returned home, she panicked. The two girls had spent a few nights at the church, confiding in each other the fear that few other young girls would understand. 'Would I have to do that too?' she asked herself. 'I don't want to. I like school here, I want to go back after summer break.' Xally is enrolled at Robert Abbott Middle School in Waukegan, where she would enter eighth grade if she stays in the country. Meanwhile, her summer has been shadowed by fear and uncertainty. Just days after receiving the letter, her family quietly marked her 13th birthday — no guests, no music, no gifts. She can't even go anymore to the beach, a place that once felt like the freedom and safety she and her mother had desperately sought after being released from federal custody.
Chicago Tribune
8 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
Steve Weinshel: Cutting parking requirements while upzoning Broadway will create a crisis
One of the key aspects of Mayor Brandon Johnson's continued push for more housing development in Chicago is eliminating the city's parking mandates for new multifamily housing construction. It is a major component in Johnson's 'Cut the Tape' initiative intended to boost more affordable housing. While many of us might hope for a utopian future in which the average Chicagoan no longer owns a car, that is distinctly not the current situation. To pretend otherwise invites chaos throughout Chicago. The Johnson administration is attempting to rush through the City Council an ill-conceived and massive upzoning of Broadway from Montrose to Devon avenues in Chicago's Uptown and Edgewater neighborhoods. This change would allow for an additional 10,000 units to be built along this stretch of Broadway in addition to the thousands of units that current zoning already allows. A cornerstone of this plan is to radically reduce the number of parking spaces required in new large-scale housing developments. All of Broadway lies within a transit-oriented development zone due to its proximity to the Red Line and several bus lines. As such, developers are required to provide only one parking space per two housing units. But this is only the city's opening hand for reduced parking requirements. Under the city's Connected Communities ordinance, developers may reduce that one parking space per two-unit requirement even further, even down to no off-street parking at all. For example, several projects currently in development or recently completed in Edgewater provide as little as one parking space per 10 units or less. As a 35-year resident of one of Chicago's densest neighborhoods, I am no stranger to high-density urban living. I live in the Kenmore-Winthrop area of Edgewater, which together with Sheridan Road immediately to the east, is home to roughly 20,000 housing units, making it among the densest census tracts not only in Chicago but also the nation. To contemplate adding 10,000 housing units along Edgewater's adjacent stretch of Broadway with minimal off-street parking requirements constitutes urban planning malpractice. Such lunacy will plague Edgewater for generations to come. Anyone familiar with the east side of Edgewater knows that street parking is already virtually nonexistent. There is also a major shortage of off-street parking for current households. Many of the buildings in the area were built long before car ownership was common and have little or even no off-street parking of their own. Residents, even in higher-end condominiums, are forced to seek off-street parking elsewhere, such as in the neighborhood's many four-plus-one apartment buildings. Historically, residents could find such spaces within a block of where they lived. But in recent years, as parking pressures have continued to increase, residents now often have to venture several blocks or more from home to find a rentable space. As a result, countless drivers now repeatedly circulate throughout the area looking to win the parking space lottery, posing great risk to pedestrian safety and compromising air quality. The Chicago Department of Planning and Development's proposed framework for Broadway is predicated on the wishful thinking that people living near mass transit are substantially less likely to own cars. But that is simply not borne out by the facts. Car ownership rate for homeowners in Edgewater is 1.3 cars per owner-occupied household, according to Ownership rates for renters in the community are somewhat lower but are still 0.9 vehicles per household. Those figures are similar for the Uptown and Rogers Park communities adjacent to Edgewater. Even data provided by the city as part of its case for the Broadway upzoning framework demonstrates the point that it's creating a parking nightmare. That means more cars will be coming to Edgewater if its 'visions' are realized. Where these vehicles will go is anyone's guess, but city bureaucrats and their housing density mouthpieces try to deny this reality. Many new residents will likely aggravate current practices of illegally parking in front of fire hydrants, in handicapped zones, blocking alley entrances and corner tow zones that are essential for the passage of school buses and emergency vehicles. As a major artery for traffic coming off of DuSable Lake Shore Drive, Broadway is already a busy, relatively narrow corridor. It currently has metered parking and numerous business loading zones, but these may soon be disappearing with increasingly dense residential development. Intensified residential development will inevitably bring even more double parking for ride-share and delivery vehicles, which have already exploded in recent years. Before the city moves forward with any additional housing in Edgewater or Uptown, it needs to carefully study the car ownership rates for residents and limit additional housing accordingly. It could also help its own housing cause by requiring developers to proactively address parking problems by establishing car-sharing programs in new properties. Most neighborhoods abutting the CTA's Red, Brown and Blue lines on the North Side are already quite dense. Substantial new housing development has already been coming to all of these neighborhoods, especially along major commercial streets such as Broadway, Clark, Ashland, Western, Milwaukee, Irving Park, Montrose and Lawrence, even under old zoning standards. But does this mean these neighborhoods have endless capacity for further densification? There is a tipping point, and too much development in these communities threatens to greatly diminish the quality of life for future residents as well as the many thousands of current residents who have worked hard for decades to eradicate urban blight in Edgewater. If the Department of Planning and Development is serious about enhancing Chicago's north lakefront neighborhoods, perhaps it ought to actually do some planning.
