95.1 The Bee

President Donald Trump held a call Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, one day before his scheduled White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday. Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington comes as Trump considers whether to authorize the transfer of Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine — a move that would significantly expand U.S. support for Kyiv. The long-range missiles could enable Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russian territory.

After the call, Trump announced in a post on Truth Social that he plans to meet Putin in Budapest, Hungary, for a second round of direct discussions aimed at ending the war in Ukraine. A date for the meeting was unclear.

Trump described his phone conversation with Putin as “very productive,” adding that he believed “great progress was made with today’s telephone conversation.”  According to the President, he and Putin “agreed that there will be a meeting of our High Level Advisors, next week,” though the exact venue for those talks has not yet been finalized. He said the U.S. delegation would be headed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, after which he and Putin would hold a face-to-face meeting.  Trump wrote: “President Putin and I will then meet in an agreed upon location, Budapest, Hungary, to see if we can bring this ‘inglorious’ War, between Russia and Ukraine, to an end.”

Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev reposted Trump’s statement on X and referred to the planned meeting as both “positive” and “important for the world.” In another post, Dmitriev accused “warmongers” from the United Kingdom and European Union of working “very very hard to derail peace prospects” (though he did not provide evidence to support the claim), and added that “dialogue and peace and the US-Russia cooperation will prevail.”

The upcoming meeting between the U.S. and Russian presidents would mark the second time Trump and Putin have met to discuss a potential resolution to the war. Their first summit, held in Alaska in August, stretched nearly three hours but failed to produce any tangible progress toward peace.

Trump’s outreach to both the Russian and Ukrainian leaders follows another major diplomatic breakthrough: a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, which came after both sides accepted a U.S.-brokered peace plan. That agreement led to a cessation of hostilities in Gaza and the release of all surviving hostages and Palestinian prisoners. In his Truth Social post, Trump wrote that he believes “that the Success in the Middle East will help in our negotiation in attaining an end to the War with Russia/Ukraine.”

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President Trump confirmed that he has authorized the CIA to go into Venezuela and conduct covert operations. The New York Times first reported the president’s authorization of CIA operations in Venezuela. The CIA declined to respond to the report.

During a press briefing at the White House, Trump provided two reasons for the authorization: “First, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America” and “allowed thousands and thousands of prisoners” and “people from mental institutions, insane asylums” into the U.S. The President also cited the “drugs coming in from Venezuela … A lot of the Venezuelan drugs come in from the sea. You get to see that, but we’re gonna stop them by land, also.”

Senior U.S. officials have alleged that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro maintains control over the drug cartel known as Tren de Aragua — an accusation Maduro has firmly rejected. The Justice Department has offered a reward for information leading to his arrest, doubling it in August to $50 million.

When asked whether the CIA authorization extended to targeting Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Trump sidestepped the question: “Oh, I don’t want to answer a question like that. That’s a ridiculous question for me to be given. Not really a ridiculous question, but wouldn’t it be a ridiculous question for me to answer? I think Venezuela is feeling heat, But I think a lot of other countries are feeling heat, too.”

In turn, the Venezuelan government condemned Trump’s “warmongering and extravagant” statements, accusing the United States of seeking to impose “regime change” in Caracas.

Earlier in the week, Trump posted on social media that the U.S. military had struck another small vessel off Venezuela’s coast, killing six people. It marked the fifth such attack in the Caribbean since early September, where the administration has asserted its right to treat suspected drug traffickers as unlawful combatants subject to military action. According to U.S. government figures, at least 27 people have been killed in these operation

When asked whether he was also considering launching military attacks on Venezuelan soil, Trump suggested it was possible: “Well, I don’t want to tell you exactly, but we are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control. We’ve had a couple of days where there isn’t a boat to be found.”

Trump has also ordered the deployment of eight warships, a nuclear-powered submarine, and several fighter jets to the region — a show of force he says is aimed at halting the flow of drugs into the United States.

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The U.S. Supreme Court appears poised to curb the use of race as a factor in creating voting districts, signaling a potential narrowing of how the Voting Rights Act is applied to race-based redistricting. On Wednesday, the court heard arguments in a closely watched case that could significantly weaken the Voting Rights Act of 1965, a landmark law protecting minority voters. The case, Louisiana v. Callais, centers on whether the state must maintain a second congressional district with a majority of Black voters.

The high court’s six conservative justices appeared inclined to overturn a majority-Black congressional district in Louisiana, suggesting it was drawn with an excessive focus on race. During arguments, attorneys representing both the state of Louisiana and the Trump administration urged the justices to eliminate the district altogether.

Just last year, the Court upheld Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act—the provision that prohibits voting practices that discriminate on the basis of race—in a similar Alabama case. That ruling forced Alabama to add an additional district where Black voters could elect a candidate of their choice. However, in an uncommon move, the justices requested in June that both sides return for a new round of arguments. This time, the Court broadened the scope of the case, instructing attorneys to address a more sweeping constitutional question.

Although the dispute specifically involves Louisiana’s congressional map, the implications of the decision could reach far beyond the state. Civil rights and voting advocacy groups warn that curbing these federal protections for minority representation could “erase decades of progress” and risk re-segregating political bodies such as state legislatures, school boards, and city councils across the country.

Attorneys representing Louisiana, supported by the Trump administration, are urging the justices to eliminate the state’s second majority-Black district. They argue that the Voting Rights Act’s current application gives too much weight to race in the redistricting process—making it difficult, if not impossible, to draw maps without considering racial demographics as a key factor. The plaintiffs contend that the creation of Louisiana’s second Black-majority district was unconstitutional, arguing that it was drawn primarily based on race rather than on traditional redistricting principles such as compactness and contiguity.

According to NPR, rhe results of the case before the high court could have wide-reaching effects beyond Louisiana. Should the U.S. Supreme Court rule in favor of the plaintiffs, Democrats could lose up to 19 congressional seats across the country. Depending on how the justices rule, the Court could send the case back to a lower court with instructions to draft a new map—or it could take a more sweeping step by declaring that Section 2’s reliance on race conflicts with the equal protection guarantees of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Such a ruling would threaten congressional districts nationwide that were established under the Voting Rights Act’s protections, potentially reshaping the political landscape for years to come.

The court is expected to rule by June (the traditional end of its term); however, the justices can issue rulings whenever they are complete.

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The federal government shutdown entered its third week on Wednesday, after the Senate failed to advance a House-passed GOP bill to fund the government for the ninth time.

With no breakthrough in negotiations, House Speaker Mike Johnson cautioning that the impasse could become “one of the longest shutdowns in U.S. history unless Democrats drop their partisan demands.” (the longest shutdown lasted 35 days in December 2018, and January 2019).  Despite mounting pressure, Democrats and Republicans remain deadlocked over competing short-term funding plans. The stalemate in Congress has Republicans demanding passage of a “clean” continuing resolution that would reopen the government through at least November 21, free of additional spending provisions. Democrats, meanwhile, insist that any funding bill must include an extension of enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, which are scheduled to expire at the end of the year — a measure estimated to cost roughly $1 trillion.

In light of the ongoing government shutdown, a federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from firing federal workers, with the ruling coming five days after the administration issued reduction-in-force notifications to more than 4,000 federal workers. San Francisco U.S. District Court Judge Susan Yvonne Illston told lawyers for the administration on Wednesday at a hearing where she issued the temporary restraining order that “the activities that are being undertaken here are contrary to the laws .. you can’t do this in a nation of laws, and we have laws here, and the things that are being articulated here are not within the law.”

Office of Management and Budget director Russell Vought had said Wednesday that the Trump administration could slash more than 10,000 federal jobs during the government shutdown: “We want to be very aggressive where we can be in shuttering the bureaucracy, not just the funding. We now have an opportunity to do that, and that’s where we’re going to be looking for our opportunities.” Trump and  Vought have followed through on earlier threats to dismiss federal employees during the shutdown. According to sources cited by ABC News, workers from several major agencies — including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — were among those terminated.

Trump had said he plans to release a list Friday of “Democratic” programs he’s eliminated, stating: “We are closing up Democrat programs that we disagree with, and they’re never going to open up again.. We’re able to do things that we’ve never been able to do before. The Democrats are getting killed.”

Though Trump has made funding available for military service members to get their next paychecks, Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., said it’s a temporary fix: “If the Democrats continue to vote to keep the government closed as they have done now so many times, then we know that U.S. troops are going to risk missing a full paycheck at the end of this month.”

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