US treasury sanctions major Russian oil companies, calls for Russia to accept immediate ceasefire
The Trump administration said on Wednesday it is “imposing further sanctions as a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.
Donald Trump just shared the news by posting a press release from the US treasury, headlined “US treasury sanctions major Russian oil companies, calls on Moscow to immediately agree to ceasefire”, on his social media platform.
According to the treasury, the new measures from the US office of foreign assets control (OFAC) “increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy. The United States will continue to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the war, and a permanent peace depends entirely on Russia’s willingness to negotiate in good faith. Treasury will continue to use its authorities in support of a peace process.”
“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in a statement. “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
The treasury said the sanctions target Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.
Key events
How significant are the new sanctions on Russian oil firms announced on Wednesday by the US treasury?
“This is a big step,” Eddie Fishman, a former state department sanctions official, says in a social media thread. “How big depends on follow through: Will the US actively threaten secondary sanctions on the Chinese banks, UAE traders, and Indian refineries that transact with Rosneft/Lukoil? What about oilfield services firms?”
“I expect, at the very least, some pullback from dealings with Russian oil in the short term,” he adds. “ Whether this marks a long-term, strategic squeeze on Russia’s oil revenues—the lifeblood of Putin’s economy—will depend on the U.S. commitment to active, ongoing enforcement.”
Trump says he canceled meeting with Putin because ‘we have good conversations but then they don’t go anywhere’
After imposing new sanctions on Russian oil firms he called “tremendous” Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he had canceled a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president in Budapest.
“We cancelled the meeting with President Putin. It just, it didn’t feel right to me. It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it. But we’ll do it in the future,” Trump said, while sitting with Mark Rutte, the NATO secretary general, in the Oval Office.
Asked by a reporter to comment on his treasury secretary’s statement that Putin had not been honest in his talks with Trump, the president said: “Well I think that, in terms of honesty, the only thing that I can say is, every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere, they just don’t go anywhere.”
Scott Bessent, the treasury secretary, told Fox Business News, “President Putin has not come to the table in an honest and forthright manner, as we’d hoped. There were talks in Alaska, President Trump walked away when he realized that things were not moving forward.”
“These are tremendous sanctions,” Trump also said. These are very big against their two big oil companies — and we hope that they won’t be on for long. We hope that the war will be settled.”
Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon, just yielded the Senate floor after speaking for 22 hour and 37 minutes.
Merkley said at the start of his speech that he was “holding the floor to protest Trump dragging us further into authoritarianism.”
In particular, the Oregon senator said, he objected to the idea of letting Donald Trump claim, against all evidence, that he had the right to send military forces to Portland because the city a small protest constituted “an insurrection”.
“Our founders did not want the president to be a king,” Merkley said. “A king can decide on a whim to deploy troops against his own people, presidents cannot.”
US treasury sanctions major Russian oil companies, calls for Russia to accept immediate ceasefire
The Trump administration said on Wednesday it is “imposing further sanctions as a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.
Donald Trump just shared the news by posting a press release from the US treasury, headlined “US treasury sanctions major Russian oil companies, calls on Moscow to immediately agree to ceasefire”, on his social media platform.
According to the treasury, the new measures from the US office of foreign assets control (OFAC) “increase pressure on Russia’s energy sector and degrade the Kremlin’s ability to raise revenue for its war machine and support its weakened economy. The United States will continue to advocate for a peaceful resolution to the war, and a permanent peace depends entirely on Russia’s willingness to negotiate in good faith. Treasury will continue to use its authorities in support of a peace process.”
“Now is the time to stop the killing and for an immediate ceasefire,” the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said in a statement. “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support President Trump’s effort to end yet another war. We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
The treasury said the sanctions target Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil.
Federal judge in Portland won’t lift order blocking troop deployment until Friday at earliest
A federal district court judge in Portland, Oregon, rejected the Trump administration’s request to immediately lift a temporary restraining order that blocks the deployment of national guard troops in the city.
The judge, Karin Immergut, previously issued two orders blocking the deployment of national guard troops, after finding that Donald Trump’s claim that the city she lives in is “War ravaged” was “simply untethered to the facts”.
Immergut’s first order, blocking the deployment of Oregon national guard troops, was reversed by a three-judge appeals court panel on Monday, but her second order, which bars the deployment of national guard troops from any state or the District of Columbia, remains in effect because the government appealed only her first order and not the second one.
Immergut, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in his first term, issued the second order in response to Trump’s clear attempt to evade her first order by flying troops from California’s national guard to Oregon.
Justice department lawyers asked Immergut to dissolve the second order based on the reasoning of the two appeals court judges who accepted Trump’s claim that a small protest against immigration raids in Portland, by dozens of protesters, required the deployment of the military.
Instead, she scheduled a hearing for Friday morning in Portland. The judge’s orders to the lawyers for Trump and Oregon asks them to address the possible rehearing of the three-judge panel’s decision by a larger panel of the appeals court, which that court will consider on Thursday.
Federal judge in Chicago to extend order blocking troop deployment, as Trump administration asks supreme court to step in
A federal judge in Chicago on Wednesday agreed to extend her order blocking Donald Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to the Chicago area, possibly by 30 days.
The district court judge, April Perry, said at a hearing that her order will extend until she decides the case, unless the US supreme court steps in to lift it, as the Trump administration has requested.
In a filing on Tuesday, the solicitor general, John Sauer, one of Trump’s former personal defense attorneys, urged the supreme court to issue an emergency order lifting the temporary restraining order (TRO) that would let federalized guard troops be deployed.
“Every day this improper TRO remains in effect imposes grievous and irreparable harm on the Executive,” Sauer wrote.
The surprise demolition of the East Wing of the White House, to make room for Donald Trump’s vast ballroom, is not going down well with former staffers of the office of the first lady, which had been located in the East Wing for decades.
“My heart is breaking for the evident loss of prestige for the first ladies and their staffs,” Penny Adams, who worked in the East Wing for former first lady Pat Nixon, told East Wing Magazine, a newsletter that covers first ladies present and past.
“The photos were jarring when I first saw them,” Michael LaRosa, a press secretary for Jill Biden wrote in an email to the same newsletter. “Initially, they felt like a gut punch. It was also a bit eerie and sad to see some of the interior reduced to rubble.”
Adams also said that some former Nixon staffers had tried, and failed, “to push back on this devastation”.
One of Trump’s most cherished possessions is a 1987 letter from Richard Nixon, the disgraced former president, who passed on praise of the future president’s appearance on a daytime talkshow that year from the former first lady.
“Dear Donald,” Nixon wrote. “I did not see the program, but Mrs Nixon told me you were great on the Donahue show.”
“As you can imagine, she is an expert on politics and she predicts that whenever you decide to run for office, you will be a winner!”
As we prepare for the meeting between Nato secretary Mark Rutte and Donald Trump, a reminder of the context of these talks.
This is a snap meeting, put together as progress between Ukraine and Russia has stalled. Recently, the White House said there were no immediate plans for the president to meet with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, despite Trump touting a second bilateral meeting in Budapest.
The last time Rutte was in Washington was for a meeting with Trump, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders in August.
According to Nato officials, cited by multiple outlets, Rutte is hoping to discuss a 12-point peace plan with Trump. Drawn up by Europe and Ukraine, the plan calls for a ceasefire based on current battle lines, return of the deported children and a prisoner exchange.
The White House did not respond to a question from the Guardian today about when demolition of the East Wing would be completed, as construction continues. An administration official did say that “the scope and size of the project has always been subject to vary and the process developed”. They added that the National Capital Planning Commission “does not require permits for demolition, only for vertical construction” and that “permits will be submitted to the NPC at the appropriate time”.
The New York Times reported that the teardown should be completed by this weekend, according to an official speaking anonymously.
Earlier, my colleague Lauren Aratani reported that the White House had yet to submit plans for Donald Trump’s new ballroom to the federal agency that oversees construction of federal buildings, though demolition is already under way.
Bessent says ‘substantial pickup’ in Russian sanctions coming soon
The treasury secretary Scott Bessent just gaggled with reporters outside the White House.
He said that a “substantial pickup” in sanctions on Russia are coming soon. “We are going to announce either after the close this afternoon, or first thing tomorrow,” he said.
As Jeff Merkley hits the 20th hour of his Senate floor speech, his Democratic colleagues in the upper chamber have praised his efforts, and joined him on the floor to ask questions and give him small breaks as he continues his marathon monologue.
The senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer, called it “incredible”, characterizing the speech as part of the “fight to protect American families from Trump’s reckless and corrupt administration”.
Earlier, senator Mark Kelly of Arizona, said that it “says a lot” about the Trump administration that Merkley can spend hours “talking all the different ways Trump is hurting hardworking Americans and not run out of things to say”.
Cory Booker, the senator from New Jersey who currently holds the record for longest floor speech (coming in at over 25 hours), said Merkley was “demonstrating how Trump is moving us towards tyranny, instead of standing up for American ideals”.
Trump urges cattle farmers to cut beef prices
Donald Trump has urged US cattle farmers to “get their prices down” in order to encourage Americans to buy their beef.
On Truth Social, the president said that ranchers throughout the country “don’t understand” that the only reason they are “doing so well” is because of Trump’s tariffs on several countries, “including a 50% Tariff on Brazil”.
He added:
If it weren’t for me, they would be doing just as they’ve done for the past 20 years – Terrible! It would be nice if they would understand that, but they also have to get their prices down, because the consumer is a very big factor in my thinking, also!
Over the weekend, Trump told reporters he was considering importing beef from Argentina in order to lower prices for consumers.
Watchdog group says top prosecutor’s use of Signal may be illegal
Sam Levine
The revelation that a top federal prosecutor used an encrypted messaging application and had messages set to auto-delete after eight hours is “deeply troubling” and may be illegal, a watchdog group said.
Lindsey Halligan, the interim US attorney for the eastern district of Virginia, used Signal to communicate with Anna Bower, a journalist for Lawfare, about the criminal case she is pursuing against New York attorney general Letitia James. Bower published the full conversation Monday evening and said Halligan had set messages to auto-delete after eight hours.
“The story about US attorney Lindsey Halligan’s use of Signal is deeply troubling. That she used the app apparently to discuss government business with a reporter and configured her messages to disappear after eight hours, raises serious concerns that she is actively violating the Federal Records Act and the justice department’s own records-retention rules,” said Chioma Chukwu, the executive director of American Oversight, a non-profit that frequently files lawsuits under the Freedom of Information Act to obtain federal records.
“Even if portions of the conversation might contain information not typically subject to immediate public disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act, federal law still requires that such records be preserved for specified periods. Setting such communications to automatically delete is not only inconsistent with those obligations but patently unlawful,” she said. “If Halligan failed to ensure these Signal messages were preserved, her actions may have violated federal law and warrant investigation or corrective action by attorney general Pam Bondi and acting archivist Marco Rubio.”
The justice department did not return a request for comment.
Federal law generally requires government employees to preserve official government records and sets penalties for destroying them.
Per my last post, it’s worth underscoring that Platner has achieved significant momentum since he entered the race to challenge incumbent Republican senator Susan Collins.
Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, launched her bid for Senate recently – making the schism between the old and new guard of the party abundantly clear.
Meanwhile, Jordan Wood, another Maine Democratic candidate for Senate, said today that Platner’s Reddit comments are “disqualifying and not who we are as Mainers or as Democrats”.
He added:
With Donald Trump and his sycophants demonizing Americans, spewing hate, and running roughshod over the constitution, Democrats need to be able to condemn Trump’s actions with moral clarity. Graham Platner no longer can.
