Today’s edition of quick hits.
* One step forward, one step back: “The Kremlin on Sunday appeared to temper enthusiasm on the results of several days of peace talks in Miami, where American representatives met separately with Russian and Ukrainian officials in the latest round of negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s war with Ukraine.”
* That’s a lot of ambassadors: “The Trump administration has recalled more than two dozen career diplomats from ambassador positions and other senior posts around the world as it works to enforce adherence with President Donald Trump’s ‘America First’ agenda, current and former U.S. officials said.”
* In Syria: “The Trump administration launched major airstrikes on ISIS targets in Syria late Friday in what Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as ‘vengeance’ for the killing of three Americans by an ISIS gunman last week.”
* Our ridiculous energy policy: “The Trump administration on Monday said it would pause leases for five wind farms under construction off the East Coast, essentially gutting the country’s nascent offshore wind industry in a sharp escalation of President Trump’s crusade against the renewable energy source.”
* The White House executive order on state-based AI policies has been widely ignored: “New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday signed into law a new bill aimed at regulating artificial intelligence companies and requiring them to write, publish and follow safety plans.”
* I meant to mention this one last week: “TikTok’s chief executive told employees on Thursday that the company had signed agreements with three major new investors to help form an American version of TikTok, bringing it one step closer to completing a deal to keep the app operating in the United States, according to an internal memo reviewed by The New York Times.” * Something for Hegseth’s to-do list: “For the eighth year in a row, the Pentagon has failed an annual audit, the Department of Defense said on Friday, continuing a pattern of financial accountability problems that have drawn bipartisan criticism and emerged as a campaign issue. The Pentagon’s first audit was conducted in 2018 and it consistently failed, reflecting system and accounting problems across its vast bureaucracy that have persisted.” * The latest on the disaster at CBS: “The executive producer of ‘60 Minutes’ responded to criticism after CBS News abruptly pulled a highly promoted segment on the Trump administration’s deportations, telling colleagues in a private meeting Monday that she stood by the investigation but could not allay the concerns of the network’s editor in chief, Bari Weiss.” See you tomorrow.
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."
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