The Dictatorship

Ukraine balks at White House’s call to give up its rare earth minerals

Published

1 year ago

February 18, 2025

Ukraine balks at White House’s call to give up its rare earth minerals

Over the course of the last decade, Donald Trump’s line on the 2003 invasion of Iraq has evolved more than once, but there’s one claim he’s repeated ad nauseum: The United States, the Republican has long argued, should’ve kept Iraq’s oil as part of the war. After the president deployed U.S. troops to Syria, Trump insisted that his administration actually did take and keep Syrian oil.

He was, of course, brazenly lyingbut the false claims reflected a sentiment he appeared to take quite seriously: Foreign policy interventions, from Trump’s perspective, should be inherently transactional. If the United States deploys military resources abroad, the argument goes, then it stands to reason that American officials are entitled to other countries’ natural resources.

That’s not at all how U.S. foreign policy has ever worked in this country, and just an approach isn’t altogether legal under international law. By all appearances, Trump has never cared.

With this in mind, it probably shouldn’t surprise anyone that the Republican White House believes Ukraine should also turn over some of its natural resources to the United Statesin exchange for the security aid we’ve provided to our ally.

At least for now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy didn’t appear especially receptive to the idea. NBC News reported:

The Trump administration has suggested to Ukraine that the United States be granted 50% ownership of the country’s rare earth minerals, and signaled an openness to deploying American troops there to guard them if there’s a deal with Russia to end the war, according to four U.S. officials. Rather than pay for the minerals, the ownership agreement would be a way for Ukraine to reimburse the U.S. for the billions of dollars in weapons and support it’s provided to Kyiv since the war began in February 2022, two of the officials said.

When presented with proposed deal, Zelenskyy declined to sign it. The Ukrainian president did, however, say that he would examine the offer in more detail.

Of course, the fact that the Trump administration even put such a proposal on the table is quite extraordinary. The United States didn’t defend our ally against a deadly invasion because we expected Ukrainians to give up its natural resources; we defended our ally because it was in our geopolitical interests to do so.

There was no need for a transaction — at least until Trump returned to power.

Time will tell what, if anything comes of this, but in the meantime, the Republican president and his administration are moving forward with plans for peace talks, beginning with negotiations in Saudi Arabia. There’s some uncertainty about the degree to which Ukrainian officials will be involved in the process, but Zelenskyy declared at a security conference in Germany over the weekend, “Ukraine will never accept deals made behind our backs.”

For his part, Trump said a day later that Zelenskyy “will be involved” in the negotiations — he didn’t say when, how, or to what degree — and went on to talk about how impressed he is with Russian military might.

“They have a big, powerful machine, you understand that?” the American president saidreferring to Putin’s military. “And they defeated Hitler and they defeated Napoleon.”

It was the latest in a series of pro-Russia comments that Trump has made in recent days.

Steve legs

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an BLN political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”

The Dictatorship

Trump: ICE should continue traffic stops after recent shootings, seeming to contradict new policy

Published

28 minutes ago

July 16, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Trump: ICE should continue traffic stops after recent shootings, seeming to contradict new policy

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump wants Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers to keep pulling over vehicles, signaling his opposition Wednesday to plans announced just a day earlier to suspend most traffic stops following another string of fatal shootings.

It’s not clear whether ICE will quickly reverse course and resume most stops, which have been a key tool in Trump’s immigration crackdown.

Ending those stops, Trump wrote, would be “playing right into the criminal’s hands.”

“We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” Trump wrote Wednesday on his social media site.

Hours after Trump made his views known, Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin issued his own statement saying people illegally in the country would be “arrested and deported wherever they are.” While Mullin didn’t directly say whether ICE officers will be allowed to carry out traffic stops, he later said in a statement that he and Trump “are on the same page,” and that they want ICE officers “to have all options available to keep them safe while executing our mission.”

ICE’s enforcement tactics are coming under renewed criticism after three people died during encounters with federal officers within a week. In Florida, a 28-year-old man was killed Tuesday after he was hit by a tractor trailer while running from immigration and other federal officers, authorities said.

Before that, two motorists were shot and killed by ICE officers — one in Texas last week and another in Maine on Monday.

Policy change for ICE traffic stops

After the Maine killing, Trump administration officials told ICE officers to suspend most vehicle stops, people familiar with the decision said Tuesday.

Since the immigration crackdown began, federal officers confronting drivers have opened fire several times, saying the drivers’ vehicles had posed a danger. Policing experts have long said that shooting into moving cars presents a danger of its own and should almost always be avoided.

There have been at least 10 deaths involving encounters with immigration agents since Trump launched his deportation campaign. At least four of them involved people in vehicles, a trend so troubling that Republican U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine urged Department of Homeland Security leaders “to cease all non-urgent vehicle stops.”

Two shootings in a week, she said Wednesday, “raise very serious questions” and warrant a halt in that approach for the time being.

ICE has been under pressure to beef up arrest and deportation numbers. It says people being sought are increasingly staying in their homes, and it often blames immigration advocates who advise immigrants to stay in homes unless ICE produces a warrant signed by an independent judge.

ICE officers say that means they’re forced to find other ways to make arrests.

DHS says the man killed in Maine came to the US illegally

More protests are planned after hundreds gathered Tuesday to remember Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero, the 25-year-old Colombian national who was shot in his car Monday.

Karolina Rojas, his partner and the mother of their young daughter, shared a photo on Instagram of the three hugging and smiling.

“I love you, my darling, my life. I love you. I have no words for this pain. You were my everything. Please watch over me. Help me find the strength to carry on. Stay with me always. Don’t leave me alone. I’m begging you, my love,” she wrote.

Durán Guerrero illegally entered the U.S. on Sept. 1, 2023, through the southern border, DHS said Wednesday. Advocacy groups said that when he was killed, he was authorized to work in the U.S.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said the Homeland Security secretary told him on Monday that ICE officers were in Biddeford to serve an arrest warrant but that it wasn’t for the person who was shot.

When ICE tried to stop a vehicle driven by someone who came from a home under surveillance, the “vehicle attempted to flee the scene and, fearing for public safety, an officer discharged his weapon,” the department said.

In its statement Wednesday, DHS said Guerrero was released into the U.S. after crossing the border.

The department didn’t answer questions about the agent who shot him.

Photos showed bullet holes in Durán Guerrero’s car windshield, but the officers involved didn’t have body camerasleaving many questions.

Texas state police will investigate Houston shooting

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a staunch supporter of Trump’s immigration crackdown, said Wednesday that the state’s top law enforcement unit would investigate the fatal shooting of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston.

DHS’ account of the July 7 shooting is disputed by three other men who were riding in a van with Salgado Araujo at the time. A public viewing for Salgado Araujo, a homebuilder from Mexico, was set for Thursday in Houston.

More than a week after the shooting, new court records show the FBI is investigating if drugs were found in the van, according to a search warrant application signed by a federal judge Tuesday.

FBI special agent David McNeilly stated in an affidavit that he observed four plastic bags of a white substance appearing to be meth inside the van. DHS has not stated that suspected drugs were the reason why ICE officers engaged in the traffic stop. The FBI referred questions about the search warrant to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ACLU of Texas, which is providing legal representation for Salgado Araujo’s family, said the Trump administration “lacks credibility” to investigate itself.

Maine shooting puts a spotlight on ICE

Outgoing Colombian President Gustavo Petro called the shooting of Durán Guerrero in Maine a targeted killing “at the hands of the U.S. government.”

In Wednesday’s social media post, Trump told ICE to be “judicious, fair and smart, and go back and do your very important job.”

Border czar Tom Homan told reporters that the investigation needs to play out and that officers will be held accountable if they are found to have acted inappropriately or illegally.

Maine’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, said ICE should be scrapped as a federal agency if it can’t be fixed.

Mills, who has criticized ICE before, said Wednesday that the agency needs changes “before more families are robbed of a loved one.”

___

Whittle reported from Biddeford, Maine. Associated Press reporters Jack Brook in New Orleans, Michael R. Sisak in New York, John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio, Isabel DeBre in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Elliot Spagat in Park City, Utah, Anna Wilder in Austin, Texas, and Darlene Superville in Washington contributed to this report.

The Dictatorship

ICE should permanently end vehicle stops

Published

19 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Christmas. 15, 2026, 1:16 PM EDT

ByDavid J. Bier

Following two killings of motorists in two weeks in Maine and Texas, Immigration and Customs Enforcement briefly suspended most vehicle stops to retrain its agents. The suspension implicitly conceded the obvious — ICE could have prevented these deaths — but President Donald Trump quickly overruled the agency, ordering it to resume the stops.

The president posted on social media Wednesday that “we cannot give up one of I.C.E.’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” But he’s wrong. His own adviser, White House border czar Tom Homan, has admitted that vehicle stops are not an important enforcement tool, and that permanently ending them would better protect ICE agents, their targets and the public.

ICE agents appear to relish the car chases and often fail to stop the suspect before they drive away.

It’s true that ICE officers receive less training on vehicle stops. That’s because, before this administration, most arrestees came straight from federal, state or local custody, and when ICE had to go to the streets, it carefully planned operations — surveilling suspects to learn their routines, sometimes for weeksand working as a team of agents and creating a pre-enforcement action plan.

To speed up arrests, however, ICE reportedly eliminated the pre-enforcement planning last year as it started targeting areas more than specific people. “It’s hard to fill out a worksheet that just says, ‘Meet in the Home Depot parking lot,’” one former ICE official told NBC News. Enforcement went from targeted and planned to indiscriminate and opportunistic, which led to more chaotic interactions.

Reflecting this lack of planning, both of the immigrants shot and killed in the past two weeks were not the individuals ICE agents were originally looking to arrest, according to lawmakers who spoke to officials. A similar situation played out in Minnesota earlier this year, when ICE agents mistook a DoorDash driver for their target before shooting him after he ran into his home. (That officer was charged after video evidence from a city traffic camera contradicted his account.)

Even when pre-arrest surveillance of a specific suspect is conducted, ICE agents appear to relish the car chases and often fail to stop the suspect before they drive away. One Department of Homeland Security supervisor described the attitude to The New York Times as “we’re adrenaline junkies who want action, foot chases, car pursuits.”

In October 2025, for instance, agents waited outside the home of Carlitos Ricardo Parias, a TikTok influencer, whom ICE was particularly interested in arresting. But rather than leap immediately into action, they let him get into his car. This led to a vehicle stop at which an ICE agent shot Parias, and the bullet ricocheted into a U.S. marshal.

On Fox News Tuesday, Homan admitted that there’s no downside. “I hear a lot of noise right now, ‘this will affect ICE arrests.’ It’s not going to,” he said.

Another shooting in California in April 2026 followed the same pattern. ICE did the surveillance but let the suspect get into their car. This appears to have been intentional. In June, surveillance video captured what appears to be a targeted ICE arrest in Milwaukee, in which officers allowed the suspect several minutes to get a snack and re-enter his vehicle before the team moved in for the arrest.

When stops do happen, as a Wall Street Journal investigation found earlier this yearICE agents commonly use tactics that place themselves in unnecessary risk: failing to tell drivers to turn off their engines, grabbing cars when they start to move, placing their bodies — rather than vehicles — in the way, and then shooting at uncooperative drivers.

DHS’ use-of-force policy already gets most of these issues right. It prohibits officers from “intentionally and unreasonably placing themselves in positions in which they have no alternative to using deadly force.” It bars shooting drivers unless there is an imminent risk of serious bodily harm.

Outside of a terrorist attack where the car is the weapon, shooting the driver does not lessen the threat; it enhances it. After an ICE agent in Minneapolis shot Renee Good, the car didn’t stop. It accelerated until it crashed. In Maine, ICE officers had to try to grab the car on foot to stop it after the injured driver lost control, and the car circled blindly. Eventually, an ICE agent used his vehicle to stop it.

ICE’s suspension of most vehicle stops would force agents to spend time learning new tactics, but doing so would have gone a long way to protect agents, targets and bystanders. Rather than a temporary reprieve, in fact, ICE should have made it permanent.

On Fox News Tuesday, Homan admitted that there’s no downside. “I hear a lot of noise right now, ‘this will affect ICE arrests.’ It’s not going to,” he said. “Before he gets into the car, you can arrest him then. You can wait until the vehicle gets to its destination,” he said — unless the target is a violent criminal. He added, “If we can take that 2-ton ‘weapon’ away from them, that’s good.”

Homan is admitting what the record shows: ICE has been endangering its officers and others for no enforcement benefit. Ending vehicle stops won’t end all the problems, or even all the deaths. But continuing them means more danger for ICE personnel and the public.

David J. Bier

David J. Bier is the director of immigration studies at the Cato Institute.

The Dictatorship

If recent history is any guide, Trump’s primetime address won’t be a success

Published

19 hours ago

July 15, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

If recent history is any guide, Trump’s primetime address won’t be a success

Donald Trump hasn’t exactly been shy about the point of the prime-time speech he intends to deliver Thursday night. During an appearance on Newsmax this week, for example, the president peddled familiar, tiresome nonsense: “Our elections are crooked, and we’ve got to straighten them out.”

A day later at an unrelated White House event, he said he didn’t want to go into a lot of detail about what would be included in his address, though he did tell reporters“What we’re going to be talking about Thursday is, it doesn’t get bigger, because without free and fair elections, you don’t have a country.”

The president neglected to mention that Americans already have a country, as well as free and fair elections.

But while the public waits to hear Trump’s latest conspiratorial pitch, it’s worth appreciating the fact that the format he has chosen has not exactly served him well.

In recent decades, prime-time presidential addresses are generally reserved for major announcements about pressing matters of great significance. Trump’s prime-time presidential addresses, however, tend to be duds.

Consider some of the more notable examples.

April 1, 2026: The president delivered remarks on the war in Iran, though once it was over, no one seemed to have any idea what the point of the speech was. He presented no plan. He offered no coherent vision. Trump meandered from dubious point to dubious point and peddled a contradictory message about a possible endpoint, leaving many viewers even more concerned about the war. The New York Times’ Helene Cooper summarized“Trump has concluded speaking after 19 minutes. … This was a rehash of his Truth Social posts over the past month.”

The speech had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.

Dec. 17, 2025: Trump delivered a prime-time address, ostensibly to talk about how great the first year of his second term was. What he presented, however, was 18 minutes of combative presidential blame-shifting and excuse-makingpackaged in the unsubtle desperation of a man who didn’t seem to understand why so much of the public failed to appreciate his systemic failures and embarrassments.

The speech also had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.

March 11, 2020: As the Covid-19 pandemic started to wreak havoc in the United States, Trump delivered a weird Oval Office address in which he flubbed his own policyprompting White House officials to spend the rest of the evening clarifying that the president didn’t exactly mean what he said.

The speech also had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.

Jan. 8, 2019: In the middle of a government shutdown he was responsible for, Trump delivered an Oval Office address for no apparent reason. Over the course of nine minutes, he presented no plan, offered no material, endorsed no solution and had no factsas evidenced by the avalanche of falsehoods he peddled to the nation. Rachel Maddow asked as part of MS NOW’s live coverage, “Why did he just do this? … Why did this just happen?”

The speech also had no discernible effect on public attitudes or his approval rating.

Taken together, it’s hard not to wonder if this just isn’t Trump’s best format.

A member of the president’s team told Axios this week that he wants to do prime-time speeches because they “give a sense of importance to what he’s saying.”

I don’t doubt that this is the idea behind the addresses, but as Hearst columnist Philip Bump explainedTrump and his team apparently haven’t figured out “that he’s dragging the gravitas down rather than it lifting him up.”

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

Steve Benen is a producer for “The Rachel Maddow Show,” the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He’s also the bestselling author of “Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans’ War on the Recent Past.”