A Pro-West Reformer Wins in Romania

Happy Tuesday! Attention prospective homebuyers: The Chicago childhood home of Robert Prevost, who now goes by Pope Leo XIV, will be sold at auction in June. We can’t promise you’ll get a good price-per-square-foot for the new pontiff’s former digs, but the dinner party lore would be heavenly. 

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

• President Donald Trump held a two-hour phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, after which Trump said on social media that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire.” Putin confirmed after the phone call that the Kremlin “will propose and is ready to work with” Ukraine to reach a “possible future peace accord.” After also conferring with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump said that both sides would negotiate conditions for such a deal. The Vatican offered to host the talks, the president added. It remains unclear when the negotiations would take place, after Putin opted to skip a scheduled face-to-face meeting with Zelensky in Istanbul last week. 
• Israel announced Monday that five United Nations trucks carrying humanitarian aid had entered the Gaza Strip from Israel’s Kerem Shalom border crossing, bringing Palestinian civilians flour, baby food, medical supplies, and fuel supplies. Israel “will continue to facilitate humanitarian assistance in the Gaza Strip,” Israeli officials said in a statement, “while making every effort to ensure that the aid does not reach Hamas.” Israel had blocked the Gaza Strip from receiving aid deliveries since early March, citing the vast amounts of supplies seized by Hamas. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the trucks will provide a “minimal, basic bridge” to bring critical resources into Gaza temporarily until Israeli-constructed aid distribution centers are completed. 
• The European Union and United Kingdom agreed to a new trade deal on Monday that establishes a defensive security pact and eliminates trade restrictions erected in the aftermath of Brexit, though the full terms have yet to be disclosed. Reported details of the deal include expedited border checks on certain imports, including food; reduced tariffs on imports of British steel; providing European fishing boats access to British waters through 2038; and allowing British travelers access to electronic gates when crossing European borders. Additionally, the EU and U.K. will coordinate on issuing economic sanctions and collaborate in military development projects. 
• The U.K. and Iran summoned each other’s diplomatic envoys on Monday, two days after three Iranian nationals—charged with spying in the U.K. on behalf of Tehran—appeared before a London court. British prosecutors allege that the trio conducted surveillance on journalists associated with Iran International, a U.K.-based Persian news outlet often critical of the Islamic Republic. U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said on Monday that the government will draft new laws to “restrict the activity and operations of foreign state-backed” groups in the U.K., including Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. 
• The Supreme Court on Monday paused a federal district judge’s order that had barred the Trump administration from immediately canceling the temporary protected status (TPS) designation for more than 300,000 Venezuelans that allowed them to legally reside in the United States. In February, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ordered that TPS status be revoked for Venezuelan nationals—a move U.S. District Judge Edward Chen blocked, citing its “unprecedented” nature. The Trump administration appealed the decision, but a federal appeals court left Chen’s ruling in place until it ruled on the appeal. The Supreme Court, in a one-page unsigned order, reversed that decision on Monday, allowing the Trump administration to move forward with removing TPS status from Venezuelan nationals until the federal appeals court rules on the administration’s appeal. 
• The House Budget Committee late on Sunday night advanced the GOP’s reconciliation bill in a 17-16 vote after four House Republicans—who voted against advancing the bill on Friday—switched their votes to “present.” Speaker Mike Johnson will work this week to win over the support of GOP holdouts as he seeks to pass the bill before the chamber’s Memorial Day recess. Republican opponents of the bill have cited reasons from front-loaded spending provisions to delayed work requirements for Medicaid recipients. Other sticking points include the potential elimination of tax credits created in the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 and the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap. 
• President Trump on Monday signed into law a bipartisan bill, the “Take it Down Act,” which makes it a federal crime to disseminate sexually explicit imagery, including AI deepfakes, without the subject’s consent. The statute requires that social media companies take down such explicit content within 48 hours of receiving a removal request from a victim, and instills criminal penalties on both companies that fail to abide by the law and individuals who share the content without consent. The bill—publicly championed by first lady Melania Trump—passed the Senate in February unanimously unanimously and was approved in a 409-2 House vote in late April. The Federal Trade Commission is tasked with enforcing the law. 

The West Wins in Romania

Following the shocking annulment of Romania’s presidential election last year amid allegations of Russian interference, the eastern European nation and NATO ally undertook a do-over on Sunday. The result was another upset, but this time, it will count.

As Romanians went to the polls this weekend, they faced the same ideological choice as before: a nationalist, conservative demagogue who’s a fierce critic of the European Union or a pro-West reformer who supports Ukraine. This time, instead of disqualified far-right candidate Cǎlin Georgescu being on the ballot, they were choosing between Georgescu ally George Simion, a nationalist member of parliament, and Nicușor Dan, the independent mayor of Bucharest.

Simion led by double digits after the first round of voting on May 4, but as the results came in for Sunday night’s runoff, Dan was the clear winner, finishing with 54 percent of the vote. Europeans opposed to the rise of the populist right in their countries breathed a sigh of relief. But the election was also yet another example of how, across the developed world, political outsiders continue to …

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Today’s Must-Read

Toeing the Company Line

Worth Your Time

• In the New York Times, Richard Sandomir reflected on the life of Walter Frankenstein, a Jewish survivor of Nazi Germany who died at the age of 100 last month. “For more than two years, Walter Frankenstein and his small family were among the estimated 6,500 human U-boats in Berlin—Jews trying to elude Nazis by figuratively hiding like submarines. They took refuge in bombed-out buildings, cars, forests, craters, brothels or wherever they could survive for another day or week,” he wrote. “In the days before the war ended, the four Frankensteins lived in a subway station that had been converted into a bunker. ‘I lay on a plank bed with a straw mattress on it, put the children on it, and there we stayed until liberation,’ Mr. Frankenstein told the historian Barbara Schieb for an essay included in the 2009 book ‘Jews in Nazi Berlin: From Kristallnacht to Liberation,’ edited by Beate Meyer, Hermann Simon and Chana Schütz. ‘We had no water, no food, nothing.’”
• President Donald Trump is optimistic that he can broker a peace deal in Ukraine, but are Ukrainians? Not quite, Anne Applebaum reported for The Atlantic. “On Saturday, I asked Andriy Sadovyi, the mayor of Lviv, in western Ukraine, whether he expected the Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul to lead to a cease-fire. ‘No,’ he told me. Later, I asked the audience at the Lviv Media Forum whether any of them expected a cease-fire soon. About 200 journalists and editors were in the room. No one raised their hand. Many laughed. Over several days in Lviv I didn’t meet anybody who believed that the Russian president wants to end the war, or that he will negotiate to do so in Istanbul,” she wrote. “Ukrainian reasoning is straightforward: Vladimir Putin has never said he wants to end the war. The propagandists on Russian state television have never said they want to end the war. The Russian negotiating team in Istanbul did not say it wanted to end the war.”

Presented Without Comment

Washington Post: U.S. To Pay Nearly $5 Million to Family of Jan. 6 Rioter Ashli Babbitt

President Donald Trump’s administration is set to pay nearly $5 million to the family of Ashli Babbitt to settle a lawsuit brought by the estate of the Trump supporter who was fatally shot by police when she tried to storm the House Speaker’s Lobby during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, according to two people familiar with the matter.

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No final deal had been signed and terms had not been disclosed at the May 2 hearing.

Also Presented Without Comment

New York Times: Russia Beefs Up Bases Near Finland’s Border

In the Zeitgeist

Longtime Hollywood makeup and prosthetics artist Greg Cannom died this month at age 73. You might not recognize his face, but you’ve likely seen the faces he’s created on the big screen. He won Academy Awards for best makeup in Mrs. Doubtfire, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Vice.