Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-08-15 Friday

Episode Date: August 15, 2025

Democracy Now! Friday, August 15, 2025

From New York, this is Democracy Now. We have other cities also that are bad, very bad. You look at Chicago, how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles, how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. We're not going to let it happen. We're not going to lose our cities over this.

As President Trump escalates his takeover of the Washington, D.C. police force. He's also threatening to take action against other cities, especially those run by black mayors. We'll speak with Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson. Then President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are meeting today in Alaska for a high stake summit to discuss a possible ceasefire in Ukraine. Trump says a follow-up meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could soon take place.

I think President Putin will make peace. I think President Zelensky will make peace. We'll see if they can get along. And if they can, it'll be great. They'll host a debate between acclaimed political scientist John Mearsheimer and former Bernie Sanders advisor Matt Duss. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.

I'm Amy Goodman. Health officials in Gaza say Israeli attacks have killed at least 21 people since dawn today as an intense heat wave compounds the suffering of Palestinians who continue to starve under Israel's blockade. Among the dead, a one-and-a-half-year-old Palestinian boy killed when an Israeli strike hit a tent in Gaza City. Several of the boys' family members were injured. The U.N.'s humanitarian office warns the nutritional status of Gaza's children continues to deteriorate due to Israel's siege with almost 13,000 admissions of children for acute malnucrition recorded in July. On Thursday, the Emergency Department of Gaza's Nasser Hospital flooded with raw sewage

after an Israeli strike damage nearby infrastructure. The hospital's director said Israeli forces were blocking efforts to repair the broken sewer lines. The problem is not inside Nassar medical complex. The problem is outside, but it is in an area known as the Red Zone, which the municipality or any other institution can't reach without coordination with the Israeli occupation. To be able to resolve this problem, the coordination needs 72 hours, according to what we've been told. The situation is tragic and we can't afford 72 hours. The hospital will collapse. Israeli forces are carrying out raids across the occupied West Bank with at least 20 Palestinians

arrested since last night. Separately, Israeli settlers attack the Palestinian village of Atara north of Ramallah, setting fire to several vehicles. Another attack by settlers targeted the village of Sasea, south of Hebron. The surge of violence came amidst international condemnation of remarks by Israel's far-right finance minister Bezalov Smotrick, who on Thursday announced plans for the construction of more than 3,000 new homes and illegal settlements that would bisect land Palestinians want for a future state. The Israeli advocacy group, Shalomarshav, peace now, warns Smotrix annexation plans are, quote, guaranteeing many more years of bloodshed, unquote. The European Union condemned the plans, as did British Foreign Secretary David Lamy.

The Office of the U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guttedish called on Israeli authorities to immediately halt settlement construction. The Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the regime, that's associated with this settlements go against international law. Settlements to state the obvious further entrenched the occupation put the prospect of a two-state solution even further away. President Vladimir Putin's praise President Trump's efforts to halt Russia's war in Ukraine, ahead of bilateral talks between the U.S. and Russian leaders in Alaska this afternoon. Putin suggested a new nuclear weapons agreement could be on the table. During his first term, President Trump formally withdrew the U.S.

from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty. At the White House, Trump predicted Friday's summit will be a stepping stone to a future meeting that would include Ukrainian President Volodemar Zelenskyy. It's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we'll bring some of the European, And leaders along, maybe not. Today's summits taking place in Alaska, which the United States purchased from Russia in 1867.

Putin's visit to U.S. soil comes despite an outstanding warrant from the International Criminal Court seeking his arrest for war crimes involving the unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine. Neither Russia nor the U.S. is a party to the Rome statute that established the ICC. We'll have more on the war in Ukraine and the Trump-Puton summit. later in the broadcast will host a debate. The private military contractor and Trump ally Eric Prince will soon deploy nearly 200 mercenaries to Haiti as part of agreement with the Haitian interim government to conduct lethal operations against gangs who've seized Porta Prince and vast swaths of territory across the island nation. That's according to Reuters, which spoke to Prince for an exclusive interview, detailing a 10-year deal between his firm Vectis Global

and Haiti's interim government. Vectis Global will also assume a long-term role in working with Haitian officials to implement a tax collection system. Prince refused to say how much the Haitian government would pay his private firm or how much tax revenue he expects to collect in Haiti. Eric Prince is the founder of Blackwater, the private military firm accused of war crimes, including the 2007 Nysore Square Massacre in Baghdad. Democratic state lawmakers from Texas say they're prepared to end their nearly two-week walkout that has blocked Republicans from redrawing Texas's congressional maps. On Thursday, state representative Democratic leader Gene Wu of Houston said in a statement lawmakers agreed to return to Texas, but only after a special legislative session called by

Republican Governor Greg Abbott officially ends today. Republican leaders had sought to arrest or remove from office. who fled Texas to deny Republicans a quorum to ram through a new gerrymandered map. Meanwhile, top Democrats in California are backing a ballot initiative that would allow California legislature to redraw the state's electoral maps at a rally in Los Angeles. Governor Gavin Newsom said California Democrats would now play by the same set of rules as Texas Republicans. Today is Liberation Day in the state of California. As Senator Schiff said, Donald Trump, you have poked the bear, and we will punch back.

As Governor Newsom and other Democratic leaders held their rally inside the Japanese-American National Museum, Border Patrol agents made a show of force outside the venue. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she did not believe the Border Patrol's presence was a coincidence, she called the agency's actions provocative and disrespectful. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondies ordered Washington, D.C.,'s mayor, and police chief, to recognize Terry Cole, the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration, as emergency police commissioner for the District of Columbia, giving him full powers to act as chief of the Metropolitan Police Department. D.C. officials, including Mayor Muriel Bowser, have rejected the order, calling it unlawful.

In a letter to MPD Chief Pamela Smith, Washington, D.C. Attorney General, Brian Schwab, writes the Home Rule Act does not grant the president the power to remove or replace the chief of police or to alter the chain of command. Schwab writes to Chief Smith, quote, you are the lawfully appointed chief of police of the District of Columbia, unquote. This comes after a House spending bill approved by Republicans in March cut over $1 billion from D.C.'s budget. Earlier on Thursday, Smith announced the MPD will begin to assist immigration and customs enforcement agents conceding to a demand by Attorney General Pam Bondi, who said the department must end its sanctuary city policies. President Trump welcomed the announcement telling reporters, I think this could happen all over the country, unquote. The ACLU of Washington, D.C., called the police chief's order dangerous and unnecessary, writing, quote, immigration

enforcement is not the role of local police. And when law enforcement aligns itself with ICE. It fosters fear among D.C. residents regardless of citizenship status. Meanwhile, unhoused people in D.C. are bracing for more raids on tent encampments by federal agents and national guard troops. The White House says people without homes must move to shelter, seek addiction or mental health services or face fines or jail time. Advocates have condemned the crackdown. Andy Wassnick is Director of Policy at Miriam's Kitchen, which provides food and services to unhoused people. So when we're talking about, like, taking people out of the city, we're removing people from their homes, from where they are. They may be homeless, but they do have homes. And so that's, in a way, also why we use unhoused. Unhoused, you don't have a roof over your head. You have a home. Your home is Washington, D.C.

A new lawsuit accuses ICE of violating its own policies and federal laws when agents quietly arrested families that included U.S. citizen children, denied them due process, then rapidly deported them to Honduras. ignoring legal filings challenging their removal. The lawsuit was filed on behalf of two mothers and their four children, including a four-year-old boy with stage four kidney cancer. Lawyers for both families say the mothers were coerced into taking their children with them when they were deported and prohibited from contacting lawyers or family members after they were detained in Louisiana last April following routine ice check-ins. The four-year-old boy identified as Romeo was,

receiving life-saving cancer treatment at New Orleans Children's Hospital before ICE deported him. Florida's preparing to open a second immigration jail dubbed deportation depot at a state prison near Jacksonville. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis made the announcement Thursday as a federal judge weighs whether to shut down the newly opened alligator Alcatraz, a remote immigration jail poorly set up on an airfield in the Everglades swing. The new ICE jail will be located inside an unused section of the Baker Correctional Institution and cost an estimated $6 million to prepare with enough space to imprison hundreds of immigrants. Florida officials say the detention camp will be operational in two to three weeks,

raising questions about potentially dangerous conditions once immigrants are transferred there. The ACLU of Michigan filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of a Detroit man who is brutally beaten, shocked, pepper sprayed, and threatened him with a canine dog by Warren police officers while undergoing a mental health emergency in 2022. Christopher Gibson was hospitalized for about a week with damage to his heart and kidneys after the violent attack. The suit says Gibson and his family repeatedly informed the officers who was experiencing a mental health emergency and required immediate psychiatric treatment, but the Warren

police officers assaulted him instead. Gibson was found wandering the streets, lost, confused, and without a coat during a winter night in December 2020, when police took him into custody because of outstanding warrants. This is Christopher Gibson's mother, Awanda Gibson, speaking in a video released by the ACLU of Michigan. Christopher is afraid to sit on the porch. He's afraid to see the police officers when they ride down the street. He thinks they're going to jump out and finish the job of what the Warren Police Department did to him. Had they just listened and handled the situation better, we wouldn't be here now. They need mental health experts to respond to these type of situations.

It's going to keep happening over and over again unless the Warren Police Department changes. In Geneva, Switzerland talks aimed at forging an international treaty to curb plastic pollution have failed. The United States was among a minority of oil-producing nations opposed to a more ambitious treaty. Representatives from about a hundred countries had sought to put limits on plastic production and the use of toxic chemicals. This is Samoa's representative to the talks. We must also join others in conveying our disappointment with the progress we have achieved over the last 10 days. Samoa is of the view that the urgency of this work cannot be overstated. It was the sixth time in just three years that negotiations for a global plastics treaty have failed to reach an agreement.

And here in New York, workers' rights advocates have vowed to keep fighting after Mayor Eric Adams vetoed two bills this week that would have raised the minimum wage for thousands of grocery delivery workers in the city. The measures would have increased the pay to more than $20 an hour for delivery workers, many of whom are immigrants working for apps such as Instacart. New York City City Council Speaker, Adrian Adams, has vowed to override the mayor's controversial last-minute veto. These bills are about protecting working class New Yorkers from the exploitation of poverty wages as a result of businesses treating workers as independent contractors. Mayor Adams chose to side with corporate special interests over workers and the nearly 20,000 working people these laws would protect. I'm so proud to support these bills.

And we look forward to overriding the mayor's senseless anti-worker vetoes in the coming weeks yet again. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war in peace report. Coming up as President Trump threatens to send the National Guard to more cities, we'll speak to Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson. Stay with us. Won't you take me to that place Where I lose my sense of time

Where I escape my face When I feel the most love life Won't you play my favorite song My favorite song Play my favorite song

Won't you play my favorite song My favorite song Favorite song by Sin Cane performing in our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

The Trump administration's escalating its takeover of the Washington, D.C. police force. Attorney General Pam Bondi has named the head of the Drug Enforcement Administration as D.C.'s emergency police commissioner. But D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwab have rejected the order. In addition, Bondi's ordered an end to Washington, D.C.'s sanctuary policies, which restricted D.C. police from aiding federal immigration enforcement. This comes days after Trump deployed 800 National Guard to Washington, D.C., as he declared a crime emergency in D.C., even though violent crime is at a 30-year low. Meanwhile, the Republican-controlled Congress is continuing to withhold a billion dollars taken away from Washington, D.C.'s budget earlier this year. President Trump's also threatening to take action against other Democratic cities.

You look at Chicago how bad it is. You look at Los Angeles how bad it is. We have other cities that are very bad. New York has a problem. And then you have, of course, Baltimore and Oakland. We don't even mention that anymore. They're so far gone. We're not going to let it happen.

We're not going to lose our cities over this. And this will go further. We're starting very strongly with D.C. and we're going to clean it up real quick, very quickly. All of the cities Trump named are run by black mayors. Trump singled out Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson for criticism. And if we need to, we're going to do the same thing in Chicago, which is a disaster. We have a mayor there who's totally incompetent.

He's an incompetent man. And we have an incompetent governor there. We go now to Chicago, where we're joined by Mayor Brandon Johnson, who served as mayor since 2023. Mayor, thank you for joining us. Well, why don't you start off by responding directly to President Trump's criticism of you, but also the takeover of D.C. and what Chicago is doing about it. Well, good morning.

There's a clear fundamental difference between the approach that President Trump is taking versus how we are handling the very complex social issues that have unfortunately plagued our cities in America for decades. It is very evident that we have a president that has incredible disdain for working people. It's pretty straightforward for us here in the city of Chicago. I remember a time, you know, Amy, when presidents declared wars on poverty, this president has declared war on poor people and the work that we're doing in Chicago and really cities across America, we're investing in people, right? The fundamental difference between the authoritarianism that's coming from the White House versus the collective community approach that we're leading here in Chicago is that the president is looking to resuscitate the sins and the evil. of the past and the city of Chicago is moving progressively forward. And so for instance, we are

investing in mental health and behavioral health. I'm the first mayor since the first black mayor in the history of Chicago to reopen mental health clinics and provide mental health treatment across the city. When people are having mental health crises, a paid professional mental health provider shows up to those crises versus a police officer to provide the necessary care there and that frees up law enforcement to address some of the other critical issues that we are dealing with. The bottom line is this. Our approach and investing in people has led to some of the most historic declines in violence. The month of April, we have the fewest amount of homicides since 1962. Right now we are on pace to not only lower crime in a very significant

way. We're doing it in the very neighborhoods that have been historically disinvested in. And so right now in the city of Chicago, we have a 30% reduction in homicides. Shootings and shooting victims are down nearly 40%. Robberies are down nearly 35%. There is certainly more work to be done, but we're not going to transform our cities. If we revert back to a time in the past where the addiction of jails and incarceration has not led to safer communities. In fact, it has done the opposite. And so as the mayor of this city, I don't necessarily pay attention to name calling.

It's really about calling out the names of the people who have put mayors like myself in positions to lead. The last thing that I'll say is I'm thinking about, of course, the great history of the labor and the civil rights movement, where Dr. Keen said, if these two forces were to ever collide, what enormous potential it will have. And he came to the city of Chicago a generation ago, fighting for fair housing. And he said, if we can get it right in the city of Chicago, we can do it anywhere in the world. And that's essentially what we're doing. We're carrying out the dreams and the hopes and aspirations of our ancestors, building the safest, most affordable big city in America.

10,000 affordable units by the end of my first term. A lot of work to do, but we're not going to get it done if we don't move forward with progressive policies. And we're certainly not going to get it done if we revert back to a time in which clearly Donald Trump is salivating over, a time in which people have been deeply harmed by federal policy. We're not going to go backwards. We're going to continue to move forward as a city. Mayor, I wanted to ask you also about Trump blasting the Illinois governor's position and your position. on cash bail, the impact that elimination of cash bail has had on the black and brown communities? Well, again, here's yet another example of progressive policies that, you know, have led to a precipitous

decline in violent crime. What we have seen is in the past, there is a proclivity to criminalize poverty. And that's essentially what has been happening for decades throughout the country. And so by eliminating this barrier where people were being held and detained for minor and offenses of essentially trying to survive. And people being held up in our jails simply because they cannot afford bail. We have discovered that that doesn't necessarily drive violence down in the city of Chicago. What drives violence down is when we are investing in our workers. You know, I passed an ordinance in the first few months of my time in office where we expanded pay time off for workers. And so workers were looking for a day off, and I gave them 10.

So we are the largest city in America that has offered up paid time off for over one million workers. And so now you have workers who can spend time with their families, make doctor appointments. That's the type of work that has to be done in cities across America if we're truly going to build safe and affordable cities. It's not reverting back to a time in which the addiction on jails and incarceration where that has led to, quite frankly, not just the separation of families, but it has really not caused violent crime to go down. We have to do what works. And in the city of Chicago, the state of Illinois, we're very proud of our progressive policies and not just, just for paid time off and making sure that workers can actually spend time with their families. We have abolished the sub-minimum wage for tip workers. So we're talking about

60,000 workers overwhelmingly brown and black women who would now receive raises on top of their tips. We're building the safest, most affordable big city in America, the most pro-worker city in America, and we're doing it in a very collective way in response to what people are actually calling for. And whether it's eliminating cash bail, eliminating the sub-minimum wage, giving workers pay time off, investing in our young people in mental health care services. It's why we're seeing violent crime go down in the city of Chicago. And Mayor, I want to ask you also about immigration, clearly a signature issue of President Trump's mass deportations of the undocumented and even the targeting and reduction

of legal immigration. What's the situation in Chicago? Have these ice rates? intensified, and you being a sanctuary city, how are you confronting the threat of this massive mobilization of the Trump administration in cities like Chicago? Well, we are a welcoming city, and we've been a welcoming city for 40 years. The first black mayor, Mayor here at Washington, declared that his corporate council, James Montgomery, who was also the council for the Black Panther Party, insisted that we as local law enforcement not engage with federal ICE agents in terms of the implementation of immigration policy. It doesn't make us safe. In fact, it creates that much more trepidation

and animus towards law enforcement that really becomes antithetical to what we're trying to accomplish through constitutional policing. And so I have, you know, been very vocal about making sure that we will protect the rights of immigrants and undocumented families. We are not going to allow for our local law enforcement to behave or double as federal ICE agents, particularly at a time in which the president of the United States of America is using the ICE department as his own personal militarized force. You know, with his so-called big bill, the largest concentration. of wealth into the hands of the ultra-rich.

We have never seen that type of shift of wealth at one single time. And then the ICE budget is only third to the United States government in terms of its military force and China. So there's only two other forces that have more resources than ICE. And Dr. Keene warned us of militarization and racism, right? He warned us of these things a generation ago. And so we're seeing that play out in the Trump administration, but we're not going to back down. We're not going to cower or bend or certainly be intimidated by these attempts to divide and conquer our communities. So we are a firm, welcoming city.

We're going to protect immigrants undocumented people, but we're also going to ensure that we do everything in our power to invest in people. Because that's how you build safe and affordable big cities by actually invest. in people, and that's exactly what we're doing. Mayor Johnson, I wanted to turn to other mayors who are also pushing against Trump's threats. This is Baltimore mayor, Brendan Scott, in an interview with CNN. I think it's very notable that each and every one of the cities called out by the president has a black mayor, and most of those cities are seeing historic lows in violent crime. The president could learn a lot from us instead of throwing things at us.

Meanwhile, Oakland mayor, Barbara Lee, told ABC 7 her city will not allow a military occupation. This is part of his effort to dismantle democracy, to militarize cities where people live, which he does not recognize, understand, or see. Of course, that's Barbara Lee, now Oakland mayor, before that Congress member. So Chicago Mayor Brendan Johnson, explain exactly how you're taking the Trump administration on. What are the lawsuits? How are you planning to respond? Yeah, first of all, both of those mayors are absolutely right. Again, racism, poverty, militarism.

These are the three evils that we were warned of a generation ago. And so how we are approaching this is, first of all, calling out the hypocrisy. of President Donald Trump. If he was serious about transforming our cities, he would not have taken over $800 million out of the budget that was designed for violence prevention. One of the ways in which you actually prevent violence in cities across America is by investing in people. And so what we've done is that we have strengthened our welcoming city ordinance to ensure that immigrants and undocumented families are secure and safe in our city. We are investing in the west and south size of Chicago, a $1.25 billion investment for housing and economic development. We are investing

in our public education system. Literally everything that we are doing is what President Trump is trying to prevent from happening, whether it's his budget to eliminate Medicaid, to eliminate snap and his war on public education, we are going to use every single tool that we have available to us. And whether it's the policies that we're putting forward, the investments that we're putting forward, taking legal actions, and then, of course, people taking it to the streets. As a former union organizer and a public education, a public school teacher here in Chicago, I know the value and the benefit of people raising up their voices. You know, the very elevators in which I now take to the fifth floor.

I've blocked those elevators and I've taken arrest because we've had administrations ignore the interest of working people. This is really a moment, not just for mayors, but for labor, for community leaders, for faith leaders to all come together to resist the tyrannical rain that is coming from the White House. And so I'm going to use every single tool that I have access to, to ensure that we protect working people across our city, black, brown, white, Asian, young, old, the very exciting intergenerational movement that said, yes, we can. The movement that said keep hope alive,

you know, the movement that, of course, that have propelled, you know, many tremendous great leaders into powerful positions, that, that is what Chicago has, has been about, right? And again, you know, it was Dr. Keene who came to the city of Chicago and said that if we can figure it out in the city of Chicago, we can do it anywhere in the world. And we're literally building and transforming communities by building more affordable units. We've hired over 30,000 young people for summer jobs. It's a almost 50% increase since taking office. And then, of course, we're making all of the necessary investments to ensure that we are solving crime in Chicago. Violent crime is down. A lot of work to be done. But you're

seeing black mayors across this country. You're seeing progressive policies actually prove positive to the interest of everyone. And so we're also moving forward in our budget season to ensure that the ultra-rich pay their fair share in taxes. If we're going to continue to make progress across this country, the ultra-rich have to put more skin in the game. What Donald Trump is essentially doing, he is doing the bidding of tyrants around the world. If you're getting high-fives from Putin, you know you're aligned with some of the very people who have been charged with war crimes, right? And so we're seeing these tyrants all over the country find refuge in Trump's administration. But we the people, we the people, must resist

the urges of fear and anxiety and stand firm on the fundamental values of our democracy. And And then finally, to never, ever surrender our humanity. Mayor, we only have about a minute, but I wanted to ask you about a more local issue, but a major issue. Public education, your school board in Chicago is facing a more than $700 million deficit. And there's been constant battles between yourself and school leaders over whether you should borrow more money, whether the school should borrow more money. and even the outgoing CEO, Pedro Martinez, that you were at war with for quite a while. Now you have someone that you've appointed as interim, but even they are resisting this idea to borrow more money to deal with the deficit. I'm wondering your position on the latest Chicago Board of Education budget proposal.

Well, look, public education at the expense of the state, after all, is a Negro idea. Those are the words of W.E.B. Du Bois. And so investing in our public schools, that's fundamental to our democracy. The city of Chicago has invested nearly a billion dollars into our public education system. We are still woefully underfunded by the state of Illinois. Their own calculation has made it very clear that the city of Chicago, working class people, are owed $1.6 billion. The federal government allowed for the ESER investment to expire. Had those investments been maintained,

We would be talking about a surplus right here. Look, there are two choices. We're either going to invest in people or we're going to cut from people. And I'm making the very conscious decision that in order to build the safest, most affordable, big city in America, the most pro-worker city in America, we have to invest in our children. We have to invest in our people. And that's exactly what the people of Chicago voted for. And that's exactly what I'm going to do. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, we want to thank you for being with us, former teacher and organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union.

coming up a debate. President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are meeting today in Anchorage, Alaska for a high-stake summit to discuss a possible ceasefire in Ukraine. Stay with us. In 1649 to St. George's Hill, a ragged band they called the Diggers came to show, the people's will they defied the landlords, they defy. the laws They were the dispossessed The claiming what was this We come in peace

They said to sing and soul We come to work The land in common hand To make the waste ground grow This earth divided We will make whole So it shall be A common treasury for all

The sin of Property we do disdain man has any right to buy and sell the earth for private gain by theft and murder. They took the land. Now everywhere the walls rise up at their commands. They made the laws. The world turned upside down by Billy Bragg, performing in our Democracy Now studio.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York. Juan Gonzalez is in Chicago. President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are meeting today in Alaska for a high-stakes summit to discuss a possible ceasefire in Ukraine. At the White House, Trump predicted Friday's summit could lead to a follow-up meeting that would include Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenskyy. I think it's going to be a good meeting, but the more important meeting will be the second meeting that we're having. We're going to have a meeting with President Putin, President Zelensky, myself, and maybe we'll bring some of the European leaders along. maybe not. I don't know that it's going to be very important. We're going to see what happens.

And I think President Putin will make peace. I think President Zelensky will make peace. We'll see if they can get along. And if they can, it'll be great. On Wednesday, Trump warned Russia would face very severe consequences if Putin doesn't agree to a ceasefire deal. Meanwhile, Zelensky's rejected proposals for Ukraine to give up territory in the Dombas region as part of a ceasefire. Today's summit is taking place in Alaska, which the United States purchased from Russia in 1867. The meeting marks Putin's first visit to the United States since 2015 when he met with President Obama during the United Nations General Assembly.

Trump and Putin last meant met in 2019 at the G20 in Japan. Today's summit's taking place, even though there's an outstanding, warrant from the international criminal courts seeking Putin's arrest for war crimes involving the unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine. Neither Russia nor the U.S. is a party to the Rome statute that established the ICC. This all comes as Russian forces claim to have captured two more settlements in Ukraine's eastern Dombas region, while Ukraine ordered the mandatory evacuation of families from a town close to where Russian forces recently broke through front lines. To talk more about the war in Ukraine, U.S. Russian

relations and more were joined by two guests in Washington, D.C. Matt Duss is with us, executive vice president at the Center for International Policy, former foreign policy advisor to Senator Bernie Sanders. And John Mearsheimer joins us from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mearsheimer is professor of political science at the University of Chicago, an author most recently of how states think the rationality of foreign policy. In 2014, he wrote a wide red peace for foreign affairs headlined why the Ukraine crisis is the West's fault. Well, Professor Mearsheimer, let's begin with you. Talk about what's happening today in Alaska and what your view is of Trump's relationship

with Putin and Zelensky and what needs to happen now. Very much wants a peace agreement. to shut down the Ukraine War. But the fact is that he's not able to do that, and meeting in Alaska with Putin today is not going to do anything to help achieve that end. And the principal problem here, Amy, is that the Russians have a series of demands that they will not compromise on, that Trump cannot accept, and certainly the Ukrainians won't accept, and the Europeans won't accept. And those three demands involve the West and Ukraine, recognizing that Russia has annexed for Ukrainian Oblast and the Crimea. That's number one. Number two is the Russians insist that

Ukraine be a neutral state. This basically means it can't be in NATO and it can't have security guarantees from the West, especially the United States. And then the third demand is, is that Ukraine disarmed to the point where it doesn't have significant offensive capability against Russia. These demands are unalterable from a Russian perspective. But obviously, they're unacceptable to the Ukrainians. They're unacceptable to the Europeans. And there's no way that Trump can agree to them.

So there'll be a lot of talking today about a lot of issues. But I find it hard to imagine you're going to make any progress towards an agreement. And Professor Mearsheimer, the mere fact that this summit is between Trump and Putin, doesn't that in effect reinforce the perspective of some that this has essentially been a proxy war between the United States and Russia from the beginning? oh it's clearly been a proxy war and there's no question that the united states and russia are almost at war with each other and therefore it makes sense for Putin and for trump to sit down and talk and try to work out the broad parameters of a deal but the problem is there are two other players in the game and those two other players are ukraine and europe so you have a situation here, Juan, were even if Putin and Trump were to work out some sort of agreement,

they could lay out the parameters of a deal, they have to run that deal by the Ukrainians and the Europeans. And I think if Trump makes the necessary concessions to accommodate the Russians, the problem is that there's no way the Ukrainians, the Europeans, and truth be told, the large chunk of the American National Security establishment would accept the deal that Putin worked out. And that's why this one is ultimately going to be settled on the battlefield. I'd like to bring in Matt Dust to the conversation. Matt, your perspective on this summit in Alaska and what you expect or think may come out of it. Yeah, thank you. I mean, in terms of what's going to come out of this summit, I actually don't disagree.

with Professor Meersheimer, it seems like there's not been a great deal of preparation going into this summit. And Putin, as the professor said, Putin's goals do not seem to have changed much, if at all. He wants a Ukraine that's effectively under his influence, part of Russia's sphere of control. That's not something the Ukrainians are going to agree with. I think we can imagine a possible resolution to this in which Russia retains control of parts of Ukraine. I think there is some evidence that Ukrainians themselves would settle for that if it really ended the war. And I think that's the key question here. Can we get an agreement that ends the war not just temporarily, but in the long term? And I think that's very, very unlikely,

at least right now, although I will say just the fact that the U.S. and Russia are sitting down could possibly create some other opportunities that we haven't yet considered, although I'm very skeptical. I want to put this question to both Matt Dess and Professor Mearsheimer, because I know that you disagree on this issue, is how did we get to this point? Let's start with you, Matt. Well, we got to this point because Vladimir Putin decided to invade Ukraine and try to take it over. There's a longer history there, of course. I mean, Professor Meersheimer has talked a lot about the growth of NATO and how Russia sees that as a threat. I think there is evidence that that is true. I mean, that others have claimed that as well.

U.S. officials throughout the 1990s, former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry, former head of the CIA, Bill Burns, have all in their time as diplomats mentioned that this is a real problem for Russia, not just for Putin. However, that does not explain the entire problem. NATO alone was not the cause of this war. Putin himself has made clear various times, most notably in a speech that he gave in June 2021, of his much grander vision of a kind of restored Russian imperial in which Ukraine was a part. So I think the growth of NATO, you know, again, is part of Russia's larger grievance, but I do think Putin has made clear that he has a pretty grandiose historical conception of what he sees as a kind of renewed Russian empire that is simply not consistent,

certainly with Ukraine's own sovereignty and independence. And I don't think it's consistent with a kind of a general approach to international affairs that is based in any kind of law or norms. Professor Mayor Sharmer. I think, Amy, before I give you my explanation on what caused the war, it's very important to understand that how you think about the causes of the war has huge implications for how you think about the prospects for actually settling the conflict. Now, Matt basically makes the argument that the principal cause of the war was that Putin had grand ambitions. He wanted to restore the Soviet Union, create a greater Russia or what have you,

and he was interested in conquering Ukraine and incorporating it into Russia. I don't believe that. I believe there's hardly any evidence to support that line of argument. And I think it's quite clear. In fact, I think there's overwhelming evidence. that it was NATO expansion into Ukraine that drove this train. Putin made it clear when NATO first announced in April 2008 that Ukraine would become part of NATO.

Putin made it perfectly clear that he viewed this as an existential threat, and this would not be allowed to happen. And the invasion on February 24, 2022, was driven in large part by fear of NATO expansion. And what that means is that Putin sees NATO expansion. He sees Ukraine and NATO as an existential threat. And because he sees it as an existential threat, he's unwilling to compromise. Many people think that in Alaska, what Trump can do is work out a deal, where there's a

territorial swap, where there's a ceasefire to start with, and so forth and so on. And the Russians will make this accommodation and that accommodation. that's not true. The Russians have laid out their demands from the very beginning. They have not wavered at all. And the reason they have not wavered is because they view Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat. We, on the other hand, in the West, don't see things that way. We think that Trump was, I mean, that Putin was just aggressive. He didn't get all he wanted, but we can work out a deal with him. I don't think that is an accurate description. of reality. I think, again, you want to understand that Ukraine has to be a neutral state.

There can be no Ukraine and NATO. There can be no Western security guarantees to Ukraine. But we refuse to accept that. The Ukrainians refuse to accept that. And that's why we're at an impasse today. Matt Duss, I wanted to ask you back in 2013 and 2014, on Democracy Now, we had the Russia experts, Stephen Cohen on many times. And he essentially said the same thing. In fact, he insisted that the president who was overthrown, Yanukovych, wanted to maintain the neutrality of, in the Maydan revolt in 2014, wanted to maintain the neutrality of Ukraine. But it was the, it was NATO that was insisting, no, that Ukraine could not be. could not be neutral and that had to take a stand against Russia. And that's part of what then

led to his overthrow that the United States clearly backed. Wondering your sense of that. And also, do you think that if Mexico reached a security agreement with China or Russia stationed troops from those countries in its own country or missiles from those countries in Mexico, that the United States would sit idly by? Sure. I mean, all good questions. I mean, first I want to just respond to something Professor Michimer said. I mean, it's baffling to hear

him claim that there's no evidence that Putin wanted to conquer Ukraine and establish a new kind of Russian Imperium. Putin has said this explicitly. I would encourage people to look at that June 2021 speech that I mentioned. He also landed troops outside

Kiev in February 2020 as part of the failed effort. to topple Ukraine's government and install his, you know, a friendly Russian government. Those Russian troops were not landed in Kiev to go camping. So that effort failed, but I think that's clear evidence that Putin's ambitions were much larger than the professor seems to claim. Now, with regard to the Maidan and Yanukovych, I don't think I would put this on NATO. Clearly, as I said, Russia and Putin have seen the growth of NATO as a threat.

we should take that seriously. That's something we need to discuss. I would also note that countries are not absorbed into NATO. Countries in Europe have sought to join NATO. This is not something that is being imposed on them. They see joining NATO as part of their security. Again, that's not to diminish, I think, the kind of the way that Russia sees this as provocative. I do think we need to take that seriously. But the Maidan Revolution was not about NATO. The Maiden Revolution was about the people of Ukraine seeking closer relationships with Europe, rather than closer relationships with Russia. And I think it's important to note that this is not something that was driven by NATO.

This was something that was driven by the Ukrainian people. And I think this constant obsession with NATO really denies Ukrainians their own agency. And I think we need to put that really at the center of this conversation. Now, your question about Mexico, clearly, if Mexico was to sign a, security agreement with Russia or China or any other power of the United States would probably have something to say about it. I think that's something we should work through diplomatically. That would not, in my view, justify the United States invading and occupying parts of Mexico in response. I want to talk about what Ukrainians want. First going to Zelensky, the Ukrainian

president, speaking to reporters during a joint briefing in Berlin with a German chancellor Friedrich Mertz. We must prepare a trilateral format for the conversation. There must be a ceasefire, number one, there must be really reliable security guarantees. Today, by the way, President Trump spoke about supporting this and about America's readiness to participate. Also, among the agreed principles, Russia cannot have a veto right over Ukraine's European and NATO prospects. And peace talk should be combined with appropriate pressure on Russia. Elections must be in place and they must be strengthened if Russia does not agree to a ceasefire in Alaska. Let me go to Professor Mearsheimer first and point out that there was just this Gallup poll.

More than three years into the war, Ukrainian support for continuing to fight until victory has hit a new low. In Gallup's most recent poll of Ukraine conducted in early July, 69 percent say they favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible, compared with 24 percent. whose support continuing to fight until victory. Let's go back to 2022. Three quarters, 73 percent in Ukraine favored Ukraine fighting until victory. Let's get your response, Professor, and then Matt Duss. Well, I think it's not surprising that enthusiasm for the war in the Ukrainian-Bali politic has diminished. They've suffered enormous casualties of the Russians.

have been winning on the battlefield, and it doesn't look like Ukraine can rescue the situation or that the West can help Ukraine rescue the situation. So obviously, down below in Ukrainian society, support for the war is beginning to melt away. The problem is that at the elite level, there's no evidence that anyone is willing to cut a deal with the Russians. And again, you want to understand that the Russians are driving a hard bargain here. They're driving a really hard bargain. It will be extremely difficult, and I'm choosing my words carefully here, for any Ukrainian leader to accept the terms that the Russians have on the table and don't show any flexibility

with regard to. Now, what the Ukrainian elites are hoping they can do is they're hoping that they can drag the Americans and they can drag the Europeans into giving meaningful security guarantees to Ukraine for the future and that they will continue, the West will continue to support Ukraine and that at some point in the future, Russia will weaken and Ukraine will be in a position with help from the West to get territory that it's now lost back from Russia. That's their great hope. So the elites are willing to hang in there, and this is what you see reflected in Zelensky's comments.

But the question you have to ask yourself, Amy, is, What is going to happen to Ukraine in this war as it continues to lose on the battlefield and support at home melts away? One would think at some point Ukraine will collapse, given historical evidence, that is the likely outcome. Matt Dust, do you agree? Yeah, I do pretty much agree, except I would not put so much on Ukraine's elites. Clearly there are some in the Ukrainian government, you know, who fit the characterization that the professor just made. But I think what's important here to note is that there is growing support among Ukrainians, as you noted, to end this war if you could have a durable and real end to the war.

I don't think we should, you know, with regard to President Zelensky's comments, I don't think anyone should be surprised. I don't think anyone should expect the president of Ukraine to kind of preemptively concede territory. I do think that if there was an offer or an agreement in the works that really ended the war, the government of Ukraine could probably be pressured into agreeing to it. They understand there is political support in the country, even though it will be a very, very tough decision to accept a large part of their country is now under the control of Russia. But again, the key question here is, has Putin changed his ultimate goal?

and there is no evidence that Putin is willing to enter such an agreement that really ends the war. That is the key problem here. Professor Mercham, I wanted to ask you a couple of facts that are startling to me. When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s and Ukraine became independent, Ukraine had a population of 52 million people. by the time the war started with Russia, the population was already down to 40 million. And today, the estimates are given the outmigration, the refugees that have left, continuing high death rate and low birth rate, that there's only about 28 million people

in the current Ukraine. This is an astonishing decline of population for a country. Has Ukraine essentially been a country that's been disintegrating ever since the fall of the Soviet Union? Well, let me make two points on this. First of all, the phrase is sometimes used to describe the situation in Ukraine that is that it is in a demographic death spiral. Just think about those words. It's in a demographic death spiral. And what this war has done is ended up killing huge numbers of Ukrainians. And furthermore, huge numbers of Ukrainians have left the country.

And I would surmise that many of them will not return. So this is a disaster from a demographic point of view. We just have 30 seconds, Professor. Sorry, Ukraine is going to end up as a dysfunctional role. state as well. And this is a disaster of great proportions. What do you think in 15 seconds, how do you think this should end? I think it should end with the Ukrainians doing everything they can to concede to the Russians and put an end to the war. I don't think they're going to get a better deal if they fight on. I think the best thing to do is cut it now. I would agree. I wrote a

piece with my colleague Rob Farley back in November for Foreign Policy Magazine saying this was the time for the Ukrainians to get to make the best peace they can. Basically saying that, if they can concede part of Ukraine that Russia now controls, they should do it. But the question is, will that really end the war? And the problem is we see no evidence that Putin is interested. We have to leave it there. Matt Duss and Professor John Mearsheimer.