Happy Thursday! Elon Musk has described his DOGE campaign as the “wood chipper for bureaucracy.” Perhaps he could learn some efficiency lessons from some of nature’s woodchippers, like these Czech beavers who finished a government dam project before workers ever broke ground.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
- President Donald Trump spoke with Russian Vladimir Putin Wednesday on a phone call that Trump said marked the beginning of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The conversation followed a meeting of Ukrainian allies at NATO’s headquarters in Brussels on Wednesday, during which Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth laid out the administration’s vision for resolving the conflict. “The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” he said. Hegseth also described Russia’s return of the Ukrainian land it has seized since the 2014 invasion of Crimea as an “unrealistic objective” and said that any Ukrainian security guarantees as part of a settlement would not be provided by U.S. forces. Any European peacekeeping troops deployed should not be done so as part of a NATO mission, he added.
- Multiple outlets reported Wednesday that Alexander Vinnik, a Russian bitcoin exchange founder convicted of money laundering, will be released from U.S. custody as part of the exchange that freed Marc Fogel, the American teacher who had been imprisoned in Russia since 2021. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that Fogel’s release “was not in return for anything.” Separately, the White House announced Wednesday that an unidentified U.S. citizen and two other non-citizens including a Radio Free Europe journalist had been released from detention in Belarus. The eastern European country led by President Alexander Lukashenko, a long-serving dictator and close Putin ally, released an American woman in January who had been detained since December.
- The Senate voted 52-48 on Wednesday to confirm Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence. Sen. Mitch McConnell, the sole Republican vote against Gabbard’s nomination, released an extended statement explaining his opposition. “The nation should not have to worry that the intelligence assessments the President receives are tainted by a Director of National Intelligence with a history of alarming lapses in judgment,” he said. Meanwhile, the Senate voted 53-47 Wednesday to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, with a confirmation vote expected today.
- A federal judge lifted a temporary restraining order Wednesday on the Trump administration’s federal employee deferred resignation plan. U.S. District Court Judge George A. O’Toole Jr. had previously paused the administration’s February 6 deadline for employees to accept the buyout after federal labor unions filed a lawsuit challenging the program. In his Wednesday order, O’Toole concluded the unions’ lawsuit lacked the program was now closed and that 75,000 federal workers had accepted the offer.
- The Consumer Price Index (CPI) rose 0.5 percent month-over-month and 3 percent annually in January, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday, up from 0.4 and 2.9 percent, respectively, in December. Both were slightly above economists’ expectations. While testifying before Congress Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said the CPI numbers show “we’re not quite there yet” in bringing down inflation and consequently, the central bank wants “to keep policy restrictive for now.”
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Africa’s Forgotten War Rekindles
After bearing witness to waves of fighting throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the eastern Congo city of Bukavu may once again find itself at the center of a decadeslong armed conflict. Home to 1.3 million people, the regional capital of the South Kivu province has begun closing schools and businesses in preparation for an imminent attack as M23 rebels advance toward government-held positions in the volatile Great Lakes region.
Hailed by some Congolese as liberators and denounced by others as foreign invaders, the armed group is now threatening to push “all the way to Kinshasa”—the country’s far-off capital—in its campaign against President Félix Tshisekedi’s government. The renewed violence, which the United Nations estimates has left nearly 3,000 people dead and displaced 700,000 others since January, marks the latest bloody chapter of what has long been described as Africa’s forgotten conflict. And it shows no signs of slowing, as longtime ethnic rivalries ...
As a non-paying reader, you are receiving a truncated version of The Morning Dispatch. You can read our 1,034-word item on renewed fighting in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in the members-only version of TMD.
Worth Your Time
- Writing for Foreign Affairs, former Obama administration Council of Economic Advisers Chair Jason Furman outlined what he argued is the tragedy of “Bidenomics” and the attempt at a post-neoliberal economic policy. “Biden’s advisers and some prominent economists proclaimed that the Build Back Better agenda would herald the beginning of a post-neoliberal era in which massive public investment in infrastructure and the domestic economy would better position the country for inclusive growth and the clean energy future,” he wrote. “The Biden administration failed to seriously reckon with budget constraints and to contend with the effects of ‘crowding out,’ when a surge in public-sector spending causes the private sector to invest less. Both missteps reflected a broader unwillingness to contend with tradeoffs in economic policy and allowed Trump to ride a wave of discontent back into the White House. For Democrats, it would be a mistake to think their loss was due solely to a global backlash against incumbents—or worse, to conclude that American voters had simply been insufficiently appreciative of everything Biden did for them.”
Presented Without Comment
New York Times: State Dept. Plans $400 Million Order for Armored Trucks From Musk’s Tesla
Also Presented Without Comment
Axios: GOP Bill Would Rename Greenland To “Red, White and Blueland”
Also Also Presented Without Comment
Associated Press: A Joke Petition Seeks To Help Denmark Buy California as Donald Trump Eyes Greenland
In the Zeitgeist
World No. 3 golfer Rory McIlroy said Wednesday that Trump is “not a fan” of the LIV Golf League format and is “on the PGA Tour’s side” in negotiations to re-unify the sport. Maybe that’s why Tiger Woods and Adam Scott spent time with the president over the last few days. But we’ll probably have to wait for a future season of Netflix’s Full Swing to get to the bottom of it. In the meantime, the show just dropped its trailer for Season 3.
Toeing the Company Line
- In the newsletters: Jonah Goldberg outlined why those concerned the Trump administration will start ignoring court orders can take some comfort in history, at least for now, and Nick Catoggio argued the Trump administration’s position that the U.S. needs to pull back from Europe to contain China is a bait-and-switch.
- On the podcasts: Chris Stirewalt is joined by William Galston on The Remnant to discuss the health of the constitutional order and the state of the Democratic party.
