U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Wednesday that NATO membership for Ukraine was unrealistic and in sweeping remarks suggested Kyiv should abandon hopes of winning all its territory back from Russia and instead prepare for a negotiated peace settlement to be backed up by international troops.

Hours later, President Donald Trump said he and Russian President Vladimir Putin had agreed to begin “negotiations” on ending the Ukraine war. In a social media post, the Republican disclosed a call between the two leaders and said they would “work together, very closely.”

Addressing allies eager to hear how much continued support Washington intends to provide to the Ukrainian government, Hegseth indicated that Trump is determined to get Europe to assume most of the financial and military responsibilities for the defense of Ukraine, including a possible peacekeeping force that would not include U.S. troops.

The Defense Secretary, making the first trip to NATO by a member of the new Trump administration, also said the force should not have Article 5 protections, which could require the U.S. or the 31 other nations of the NATO alliance to come to the aid of those forces if they end up in contact with Russian forces.

Hegseth’s stark message, and his insistence that Russia should keep some territory that Ukraine wants back, offered the closest look yet at how the administration might try to end the war.

The Secretary’s comments were also sure to dim Ukraine’s hopes of making itself whole again and to complicate talks later this week between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and U.S. Vice President JD Vance and other senior American officials at a major security conference in Munich.

“The United States does not believe that NATO membership for Ukraine is a realistic outcome of a negotiated settlement,” Hegseth said, as Kyiv’s backers gathered at NATO headquarters for a meeting to drum up more arms and ammunition for the war, which will soon enter its fourth year.

All 32 allies must agree for a country to join NATO, meaning that every member has a veto.

“Instead, any security guarantee must be backed by capable European and non-European troops,” Hegseth said. “To be clear, as part of any security guarantee, there will not be U.S. troops deployed to Ukraine.”

Hegseth insisted that NATO should play no role in any future military mission to police the peace in Ukraine and that any peacekeeping troops should not be covered by the part of NATO’s founding treaty that obliges all allies to come to the aid of any member under attack.

Article 5 has been activated only once, when European allies and Canada used the collective security guarantee to help the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington.

Hegseth also said Europe “must provide the overwhelming share of future lethal and nonlethal aid to Ukraine.” Ukraine currently relies equally on Europe and the U.S. for about 30% each of its defense needs. The rest is produced by Ukraine itself.

Speaking with the allies of Ukraine known as the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, he also insisted that Ukraine’s Western backers must abandon the “illusionary goal” of returning the country to its pre-2014 borders, before Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and seized parts of eastern Ukraine.

“Members of this contact group must meet the moment,” Hegseth said to the approximately 50 member countries that have provided support to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022.

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, U.K. Defense Secretary John Healey said Hegseth’s words would not go unheeded.

“We heard his call for European nations to step up. We are, and we will,” he said.

Healey underlined that “Ukraine’s rightful place is in NATO. That is a process that will take some time.”

He also announced that Britain would provide Ukraine with a fresh $187 million “firepower package,” including drones, tanks and air-defense systems.

Over nearly three years, those 50 countries have collectively provided Ukraine with more than $126 billion in weapons and military assistance, including more than $66.5 billion from the U.S., which has served as the Chair of the group since its creation.

Hegseth’s trip comes less than two weeks before the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion on Feb. 24, 2022. Most U.S. allies fear that Putin won’t stop at Ukraine’s borders if he wins, and that Europe’s biggest land war in decades poses an existential threat to their security.

Trump has promised to end the war quickly. He’s complained that it’s costing American taxpayers too much money and suggested that Ukraine should pay for U.S. support with access to its rare earth minerals, energy and other resources.

Hegseth in his remarks said that NATO member nations also need to significantly increase defense spending to 5% of their budgets — a high mark that the U.S. does not presently meet either.

“The United States will no longer tolerate an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependence. Rather, our relationship will prioritize empowering Europe to own responsibility for its own security,” Hegseth said.

European allies have hiked their military budgets since Putin ordered his troops into Ukraine, and 23 of them are estimated to have reached or exceeded last year’s target of spending 2% of gross domestic product, but a third still fall short.

Some U.S. allies worry that a hasty deal might be clinched on terms that aren’t favorable to Ukraine.

Before Hegseth spoke, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte told The Associated Press that Putin will only negotiate a peace deal with Ukraine if its backers continue to provide enough weapons and ammunition.

“We have to make sure that he has no other option, and that means to force him to the table,” Rutte said. “He needs to understand that we will not give up on Ukraine. We have to make sure that we have maximum economic impact on Russia.”

Hegseth’s remarks come a day after American history teacher Marc Vogel returned safely to the U.S. after three years in a Russian prison. The White House suggested that his release could help to advance negotiations on ending the war.

Trump said another American, someone “very special,” would be released Wednesday, though he declined to name the person or say from what country.

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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The Senate has moved a step closer to passing a new bill that is a compromise between Gov. Ron DeSantis and the Legislature over who gets power to oversee the state’s immigration efforts.

The Senate Appropriations Committee passed a bill (SB 2C) sponsored by Sen. Joe Gruters that would establish a board to oversee Florida’s immigration efforts and increase penalties for crimes committed by undocumented immigrants.

Democrats spoke fiercely against another provision in the measure that would eliminate in-state tuition rates for the 6,500 undocumented immigrants currently attending Florida’s public colleges and universities.

Last month, the Legislature passed the TRUMP Act naming Agriculture Commissioner Wilton Simpson as the state’s immigration enforcement chief, taking that power from DeSantis.

Lawmakers and DeSantis clashed over who should be the leader working with the federal government to stop illegal immigration. The Governor vowed to veto the bill.

The Legislature went back into Special Session this week for the third time, with Gruters’ bill proposing that no single official would have the role. Instead, DeSantis, Simpson, the Attorney General, the Chief Financial Officer and handpicked county Sheriffs and Police Chiefs would share those responsibilities and be required to make decisions unanimously as a council. 

During Wednesday’s hearing, Democrats raised concerns that undocumented students known as Dreamers could see tuition tripled or quadrupled to out-of-state rates, potentially forcing them to drop out of school.

“Take out in-state tuition, and I’d vote for it,” said Senate Democratic Leader Jason Pizzo of the immigration bill during the three-hour discussion Wednesday.

But Republican Sen. Randy Fine, who stood next to Gruters, defended the bill by saying, “I am sorry that their parents did it to them. These children did not magically appear in the United States. Their parents chose to break the law.”

Democrats also argued that the legislation wasn’t strong enough to address the root of illegal immigration: the employers who hire undocumented workers.

“This legislation is not serious about curbing illegal immigration,” said Sen. Carlos Guillermo Smith. “We don’t need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayer money to duplicate what the federal government is already doing.”

Kara Gross, the Legislative Director for the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, warned the bill would have a devastating impact. Some immigrants overstayed their visas years ago and stayed in the United States where they work, raise their families and pay taxes, Gross said.

“Because of the color of their skin or the accent that they speak with, they are targeted and swept up in this. That’s what this rhetoric does,” Gross said. “It makes it seem that people are illegal when they’re just here. They’re merely present in our state. And they’ve been here for 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.”

But Republicans argued the bill stands with President Donald Trump’s agenda to ramp up deportations of undocumented immigrants.

“Part of the debate I find very troubling, I don’t know if it’s intentional or just wrong, but there’s this confluence … that we’re anti-immigration, as though there is no difference between illegal immigration and legal immigration,” Fine said. “It is a crime to come across the border in an unauthorized way. That is a federal crime.”

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Republican Sen. Katie Britt has been working to make sure the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency doesn’t hit what she called “life-saving, groundbreaking research at high-achieving institutions,” including her state’s beloved University of Alabama.

Kansas GOP Sen. Jerry Moran is worried that food from heartland farmers would spoil rather than be sent around the world as the U.S. Agency for International Development shutters.

And Idaho GOP Rep. Mike Simpson warns national parks could be impaired by cutbacks at the start of summer hiring in preparation for the onslaught of visitors.

“We need to have a conversation with DOGE and the administration about exactly what they’ve done here,” said Simpson, a seasoned lawmaker who sits on the powerful Appropriations Committee. “It’s a concern to all of us.”

One by one, in public statements and private conversations, Republican lawmakers are beginning to speak up to protect home-state interests, industries and jobs that are endangered by President Donald Trump’s executive actions and the slash-and-burn tactics erupting across the federal government by billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE.

While Democrats have been denouncing the impact of Trump’s cuts on Americans, the stirrings from Republicans are less a collective action than targeted complaints. Almost none are openly questioning the purpose or legality of the DOGE effort, which the party has largely cheered. But taken together, the quiet concerns are the first glimmers of GOP pushback against Trump’s upending of the federal government.

“The people voted for major government reform, and that’s what the people are going to get,” Musk said Tuesday in the Oval Office with Trump.

The situation unfolding on a scale like nothing Washington has ever seen as Trump issues executive actions at a rapid clip and Musk’s team roams agency to agency, tapping into computer systems, digging into budgets and searching for what he calls waste, fraud and abuse. Dozens of lawsuits are piling up claiming Trump and DOGE are violating the law.

While Presidents have long taken liberty with their authority to issue executive orders, actions and proclamations toward their goals, the White House typically choses a few signature priorities to make a mark rather than employ such vast power to sweep across the government.

Former President Barack Obama, for example, used executive authority to protect from deportation an entire group of immigrants — the young “Dreamers” who came to the U.S. as children without proper paperwork. Former President Joe Biden used his executive authority to cancel student loan debt for millions. Both actions have been in court and are still making their way through the legal system.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said DOGE is taking a “meat ax” to the federal government.

“If you want to make cuts, then you do it through a debate in Congress,” said the New York Senator, “not lawlessly.”

It raises questions about what happens next as judges are quickly slapping on limits and halting many of the White House actions. Both Musk and Vice President JD Vance have questioned the legitimacy of judicial oversight, which is a mainstay of the U.S. democracy and its balance of power.

House Speaker Mike Johnson said he met with Musk at the start of the week and has no concern that DOGE is going too far or treading on Congress’ authority to direct taxpayer dollars or provide oversight of the executive branch.

“To me, it’s very exciting what they’re able to do because what Elon and the DOGE is doing right now is what Congress has been unable to do in recent years,” the Louisiana Republican said, referring to the spending reviews underway.

Johnson said he agrees with Vance and suggested the courts should cool it.

“The courts should take a step back and allow these processes to play out,” he said. “What we’re doing is good and right for the American people.”

Alabama’s Britt was far from alone in speaking up about Trump’s caps on the National Institutes of Health grant program that hit universities, medical centers and research institutions coast to coast.

“While the administration works to achieve this goal at NIH, a smart, targeted approach is needed,” the senator said in a statement.

North Carolina GOP Sen. Ted Budd said he has heard from constituents in his state, home to the Raleigh area’s influential Research Triangle. And Sen. Susan Collins, the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, listed the ways scientists in Maine are conducting “much-needed research on Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy,” as well as other research as she decried the funding caps.

“There is no investment that pays greater dividends to American families than our investment in biomedical research,” Collins said in a statement.

As the U.S. Agency for International Development was being dismantled, Kansas’ Moran said on social media that “U.S. food aid feeds the hungry, bolsters our national security & provides an important market for our farmers, especially when commodity prices are low.”

The Senator said he spoke to the Department of Agriculture and “the White House about the importance of resuming the procurement, shipping & distribution of American-grown food.”

Moran and others have been working on legislation that would move management of food aid program from USAID to USDA.

On Saturday, Moran shared an update: “GOOD NEWS: State Dept. has approved shipping to resume, allowing NGOs to distribute the $560 million of American-grown food aid sitting in US & global ports to those in need.”

He thanked Secretary of State Marco Rubio “for helping make certain this life-saving aid gets to those in need before it spoils.”

It’s unclear, however, if the aid work will have the funding to resume. And the gutting of global supply lines for aid shipments, thanks to the shuttering of USAID, also makes it uncertain that enough workers can be found to deliver stalled food aid, aid groups say.

In Florida, GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez is trying to help Venezuelans, who fled their homeland and are now living in the Miami area under Temporary Protected Status, from being deported as Trump ends the program.

Gimenez wrote last month to ask the administration to consider Venezuelans on a case-by-case basis.

“I support the President in the vast majority of things he does,” Gimenez told the Associated Press.

“As a member of Congress, I also have to represent the interests of my constituents,” he said.

Asked if he felt he had the power to make a difference, he replied: “I’m not powerless. I’m a member of Congress.”

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Republished with permission of The Associated Press.

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