Reuters World News - US-Ukraine, midterms, Chauncey Billups and DOGE

Episode Date: November 24, 2025

The U.S. and Ukraine continue to hammer out the details of a peace plan after Kyiv said the initial proposal was too much of a capitulation to Moscow. We look at President Trump's frenetic 2026 midterm strategy. And Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups is due in court, accused of conspiring with the mafia to rig illicit poker games. Plus, with eight months left to go on its charter, DOGE ‘doesn’t exist’ anymore.    Listen to Morning Bid podcast here. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Find the Recommended Read here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Monday, November 24th. Today, the US and Ukraine say they're making progress on a deal to end the war in Ukraine, with Trump putting the pressure on Zelensky. Back home, Trump pauses efforts into the midterms and keeping control of Congress. And NBA Hall of Famer, Chauncey Billups, heads to court. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know. know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. The U.S. and Ukraine say they've created an updated peace plan to end the war with Russia after Kiev complained Washington's earlier version, ceded too much to Moscow's demands.

American and Ukrainian officials are meeting in Geneva to try and get a plan both agree on. U.S. Secretary of State, Marco Rubio. It is probably the most productive day we have had on this issue. maybe in the entirety of our engagement, but certainly in a very long time. But work remains. Unresolved issues include how to guarantee the future security of Ukraine and the role of NATO. It's possible Ukraine's president, Vladimir Zelensky, could travel to the U.S. to discuss the plan with President Donald Trump as early as this week, where he will again

need to walk a political tightrope. Correspondent Andy Sullivan in Washington, D.C., explains why. So Trump really laid into Zelensky. He's been really laying on the pressure, calling him ungrateful for his efforts and saying he's got to accept this 28-point peace plan by Thursday. So Zelensky was really backed into a corner here. He quickly came out and said, no, he is grateful for the U.S. support. There's also this open question of whether Zelensky will come to the United States for another White House visit with Trump. You will call the first time they met in the Oval Office in February, total disaster. they appear to have patched up that relationship, but that could add a whole other volatile dynamic to these talks. Russia has yet to comment on the peace deal being discussed in Geneva. While Trump tries to maneuver a way to end the war in Ukraine, back home, his attention is on next year's midterms,

with the rest of his presidency hinging on the outcome. Reuters has uncovered frenetic behind-the-scenes efforts by Trump, calling candidates, making early endorsements and shaping strategy to try and keep Congress in Republican hands. Reporter Tim Reid has more on why the stakes are so high. Trump is very engaged in this fight. Currently, the Republicans have narrow majorities in both the House and the Senate. And if Republicans lose just one of those chambers in next November's midterm elections, First of all, it will allow Democrats to fundamentally block Trump's domestic agenda for the last two years of his presidency.

But even more important for Trump is that if Democrats take control of the House, which is a real possibility, that will give Democrats the power and the ability, if they want to, to impeach him for a third time. and it will fundamentally plunge the last two years of his presidency into some sort of chaos. Election strategists are saying that although Trump's approval ratings are the lowest of his second term, he remains a driver to get people out to vote at all. And Tim says the president is working hard to connect with the issue that voters care about the most. Well, he's already talking about affordability a lot more than he was a month ago. he realizes it's a big issue for voters. There is talk of actually Republicans holding some sort of national convention

in the middle of next year ahead of the midterms, which is highly unusual for a midterm year. So, again, it shows the level of involvement by him and the White House in trying to persuade voters that they are really worried and are hearing voters loud and clear about the cost of living crisis. Elon Musk came into government wielding his prehistory. proverbial and sometimes literal chainsaw, promising to drastically slash the size of the federal bureaucracy. But with eight months left to its mandate, his Department of Government Deficiency is dead.

When Reuters reached out to Office of Personnel Management Director Scott Kupor earlier this month to inquire about Doge's status, he replied, that doesn't exist. After its highly publicized and controversial effort to slash government agencies, critics say Doge delivered few measurable savings. About this time in the podcast, we go to markets, but we have something exciting to announce. Today, we launch our latest podcast edition, Reuters MorningBid. MorningBid will bring you everything you need to know in finance and markets in just five minutes, seven days a week. You can ask your smart speaker for Royter's MorningBid or listen on your favorite podcast app. You can also watch it on Spotify. Mike Dolan is with the MorningBid team.

Congrats on the launch. What's on the agenda for today's episode? Thanks, Kim. Today we're talking about the wobbling tech sector and whether there's some signs of stability first thing on Monday morning. We're also talking about market speculation that a Fed rate cut in December is back on the cards, back in the mix. And also we're looking at the Ukraine peace deal and whether that's having a significant impact on energy markets. So if you want to hear more on those subjects, please tune into the podcast. For more market news, make sure to subscribe to Reuters' Morning Bid, so you never miss an episode. Israel has killed a top Hezbollah military leader in a strike on Beirut. The hit is the first in months on Lebanon's capital.

Hezbollah confirmed the death of Ali Thabtabai, its acting chief of staff. Demonstrators in Brazil gather around a giant inflatable balloon depicting former president Jaya Bolsonaro wearing prison fatigues, as they celebrate the leader's arrest over the weekend. Bolsonaro had been under house arrest, but a Supreme Court justice ordered he be detained citing a potential flight risk as the right-wing leader awaits final appeals

of his prison sentence for coup plotting. Bolsonaro is denying he tried to escape house arrest by attempting to remove his ankle monitor. His interaction with an agent was recorded on camera, where Bolsonaro can be heard saying he stuck a soldering iron on the bracelet out of curiosity. He later said he was hallucinating on medication that he takes for chronic hiccups and thought that there was a wire inside the bracelet.

Chauncey Billups, an NBA Hall of Fame player and head coach of the Portland Trailblazers, is due in Brooklyn Federal Court today to enter a plea in a sprawling criminal case, alleging he conspired with organized crime associates to rig underground, poker games. Here's legal reporter Jack Queen. So Portland Trailblazers coach and NBA Hall of Famer Chauncey Billups was indicted alongside 30 others, including some alleged organized crime associates, members of New York City's Gambino, Bonano, and Genevese crime families of running this elaborate scheme to lure people into these underground poker games using the star power of people like Billups and then using

all this high-tech equipment to cheat them at cards. And that included things like an X-ray card table and rig shuffling machines. And all of this stuff was used to communicate to the players who were playing with the victim what the victim had so they could cheat it. Another separate but related federal gambling case involves Miami Heat Guard Terry Rosier, who's been charged with insider sports betting. Together with this case, that made a huge splash in the sports world, as you can imagine, because sports betting has exploded in public. popularity in the U.S. in recent years, basically ever since it was legalized. And now we have these revelations that players are also doing it and cheating at it. And so that raises obviously tremendous concerns for all the people who are betting and for the sports books and their sponsors.

You know, and it sort of raises the specter of this being super widespread across professional sports. And for today's recommended read, it's a wrap on the COP 30 climate conference with a compromise deal, a tripling of the money given to developing countries coping with global warming, but sidestepping the main issue driving that climate change, fossil fuels. There's a link to the story in the pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player. If you're listening on a smart speaker, just ask for the latest news from Reuters seven days a week.

We'll be back tomorrow with our daily headline show.