UN Security Council adopts neutral US stance on war in Ukraine | The Excerpt
On Tuesday’s episode of The Excerpt podcast: The U.N. Security Council has adopted a neutral U.S. stance on the war in Ukraine. Plus, President Donald Trump met with French President Emmanuel Macron. A judge blocks ICE enforcement actions at houses of worship. Paste BN Supreme Court Correspondent Maureen Groppe discusses what might be at stake at the high court in a case surrounding 'reverse discrimination' claims. A judge blocks Elon Musk's DOGE from Education Department personnel information. Plus, the federal Office of Personnel Management notified workers they could ignore Elon Musk's latest DOGE directive. Paste BN Youth Mental Health Reporting Fellow Rachel Hale talks about sexual exploitation and its impact on American teens.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. And today is Tuesday, February 25th, 2025. This is The Excerpt.
Today, the latest on US-Russia relations and Trump's shifting approach on the war in Ukraine. Plus, a judge blocks ICE agents from entering churches, and we take a look at financial sex in the US and its devastating impact on teens.
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The United Nations Security Council yesterday adopted a US drafted resolution that takes a neutral position on the Russia-Ukraine conflict. The move reflects President Donald Trump's shifting US policy on Ukraine after taking office last month in an apparently warmer stance toward Russia. Former president Joe Biden had led efforts at the UN to support Ukraine throughout the war. Russia's UN ambassador told the council the resolution was not an ideal one, but a starting point for future efforts toward a peaceful settlement. Russia's president Vladimir Putin said yesterday that Russia wants to first build trust with Washington before turning to Europe's participation in peace talks. Yesterday marked three years since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron met at the White House yesterday. Macron has taken a leading role in Europe's push to keep Trump from cutting a hurry deal to end the Ukraine war that could legitimize Putin and reward the Russian invasion. He and France's leader had a good rapport throughout the day, but Macron split with Trump on some key issues. Trump refused to refer to Russian president Vladimir Putin as a dictator after calling Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator last week. Macron said it was clear that Russia is the aggressor in the conflict. For his part, Zelenskyy has said in recent comments, he would be willing to step down if Ukraine were granted membership in NATO.
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A federal judge has temporarily blocked Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE agents from entering places of worship or targeting migrants nearby. The move comes after religious groups argued doing so was a violation of long-standing federal policy not to conduct enforcement actions in places of worship.
US district Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland ordered the Department of Homeland Security and its subdivision ICE not to conduct immigration enforcement actions in or near any place of worship associated with the case brought by Quakers, Baptists, and Sikhs. The ruling is another setback for one of President Donald Trump's top priorities to strengthen immigration enforcement and conduct mass deportations of migrants who are in the country without legal authorization.
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The Supreme Court tomorrow will debate a case centered on reverse discrimination claims in the workplace. I caught up with Paste BN Supreme Court correspondent Maureen Groppe to get a better sense of what might be at stake.
Maureen, hello. Always a pleasure.
Maureen Groppe:
Hey, how are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good. Good. Thanks for hopping on today. So would you just start by telling us about Marlene Ames, her story and how we got to this point?
Maureen Groppe:
So she is the woman who's at the center of this case that the Supreme Court is going to be hearing on Wednesday, and she works for Ohio Youth Services Department, which oversees aspects of the juvenile corrections and rehabilitation system in Ohio. She's worked there since 2004. She was first hired as an executive secretary. She held various positions. And then in 2019 she sought a promotion that she did not get. That job went instead to a gay woman who had held management roles like she had, but did not have a college degree and had not originally applied for the job. And then soon after, she was told she wasn't getting the promotion she applied for. She was also told that they no longer wanted her in her current position. She could either take a demotion or she could leave and she chose to take the demotion. And the job that she had held was given to a gay man who she, as in the first circumstance, thought was not as qualified as she was.
Taylor Wilson:
So Maureen, what will the Supreme Court then debate tomorrow?
Maureen Groppe:
They're going to debate whether a lower court was correct when they dismissed her lawsuit for discrimination. The court, they make an initial determination about whether her case is strong enough to go on to the next stage and they said it wasn't. And they applied a standard that some courts have been applying for discrimination cases that involve someone who's a member of a majority group. So if you're a male or your white, for example, some courts have said that you have to show background circumstances that support your suspicion that your boss, your employer, is that "unusual employer" who discriminates against the majority.
So what the court is asked to aside is that an extra hurdle that a member of the majority group, like this woman who is her majority group in this case, is that she's heterosexual, is she being asked to jump over an extra hurdle that she wouldn't have had to clear if she was a gay person bringing that discrimination suit?
Taylor Wilson:
Maureen, this case comes as you write, the nation is turning away from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, this backlash turbocharged by President Donald Trump. Can you just talk through how this case comes kind of in this moment and this conversation more broadly?
Maureen Groppe:
Yeah. So it's not directly tied to this fight that is going on, this battle that's going on about diversity, equity, and inclusion, but that's of course the backdrop at which this case ended up making its way to the court. So it'll be interesting to see if that comes up at all in the debate of the processes. There are many separate lawsuits that have been filed to challenge steps that Donald Trump has taken in his first weeks in office to get rid of DEI initiatives in government as well as in the private sector. He says those are discriminatory.
So that's sort of the backdrop on which this all is playing out, but even though that issue has become very politically polarizing, one of the things that's interesting about this case is that the narrow issue that this court is deciding whether this threshold that this lower court said this woman didn't clear whether that's allowed, the Biden administration agreed with the woman in this case. They said that was an extra step that should not have been allowed, and they had filed a brief to the Supreme Court before the administration changed hands saying that this is not the way the federal government looks at these cases and that's not the standard that the court should be using.
Taylor Wilson:
All right, we'll see what happens later this week. Maureen Groppe covers the Supreme Court for Paste BN. Thank you, Maureen.
Maureen Groppe:
Thank you.
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Taylor Wilson:
A federal judge yesterday temporarily blocked Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency from access to sensitive Education Department information saying the Trump administration's cost-cutting arm had not explained why it needs access to the records.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Trump and Musk have criticized judges for blocking access to one part of the executive branch from another part of the executive. Musk has suggested impeaching judges, while White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the administration will appeal adverse decisions and eventually win.
Later on Monday, the Federal Office of Personnel Management notified workers they could ignore Musk's latest DOGE directive, a reversal for the billionaire adviser to Trump who sought to remove workers who did not reply. You can read more about that with a link in today's show notes.
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Financial sextortion is growing in the United States with teenage boys targeted in particular, and some have died by suicide after scams online. I spoke with Paste BN youth mental health reporting fellow Rachel Hale to learn more about what she's found in her reporting.
Rachel, thank you so much for coming on The Excerpt to talk through this.
Rachel Hale:
Hi. Thank you so much for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
So Rachel, let's start with James Woods. Would you tell us about his really devastating story?
Rachel Hale:
James Woods was a 17-year-old high school senior in Streetsboro, Ohio. He loved track and his parents told me that he was the one to beat when it came to the men's 110-meter hurdles. He was also obsessed with comics and had planned a trip to go to the Dream Con comic book convention the following summer, but three months into the school year, just before Thanksgiving when he died by suicide. His parents were shocked, grieving, and also really baffled because he hadn't previously struggled with mental health issues.
When police looked through his phone, they discovered that he had fallen victim to financial sextorsion, a growing crime that happens when predators threaten to distribute private material or harm a victim if they don't comply with financial demands. In James's case, predators falsely told him he would face jail time after a man who was pretending to be a teenage girl his age convinced him to send nude photographs. Over the course of 19 hours, they sent him more than 200 messages, a technique that predators use to really threaten their victims. The scam is the fastest growing cybercrime targeting children in North America and most commonly exploits teenage boys aged 13 to 17 just like James.
Taylor Wilson:
It's just completely unthinkable and devastating. Rachel, I mean, as you mentioned, these are cases of financial sextortion and as you said, it's on the rise in the US. What really does the trend data say here? What do the numbers say?
Rachel Hale:
So our understanding is that after the pandemic, there was a surge in financial sextortion schemes. In 2022, the FBI issued a public safety alert and more followed. They found that there were 3,000 minors targeted in 2022. And between 2021 and 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children's Cyber tip line received more than a 300% increase in tip sent to them. And they think their 2024 numbers are going to even rise above those. So this rise in financial sextortion coincided with the youth mental health crisis kind of exacerbated during the pandemic, which left more teenagers isolated and online. So we see those trends combining at the same time, but really we're looking at the beginning of 2022 through now is when this trend has started to surge.
Taylor Wilson:
And that's true with suicides tied directly to this as well?
Rachel Hale:
Yes, we've seen that sextortion has been connected to at least 30 deaths of teenage boys by suicide since 2021, and that's just within the United States.
Taylor Wilson:
Why are teens particularly susceptible here, Rachel?
Rachel Hale:
Teenagers' executive functioning, their abstract thinking, and decision-making skills are still continuing to develop through 25. So teens tend to focus more on the here and now than future orientation, and they're also at higher risks for attention and hyperactivity problems, all things that can contribute to impulsive suicide attempts. And one thing that experts say is really important to keep in mind is that suicide is tied to a variety of risk factors. So not just the sextortion that happened, but also if there were pre-existing mental health disorders or environmental factors like access to firearms and drugs or different life events like experiencing a parent's divorce, all those things can impact a teen's ability to think through suicide or to navigate an emotionally tense situation like this.
Taylor Wilson:
In terms of the culprits here, Rachel, I mean, who are we talking about? Of course we should say every case is different, but do they have anything in common across these cases?
Rachel Hale:
There are definitely some through line trends. The majority of sextortion efforts are traced to predators outside of the US, in West African countries, including Nigeria and Southeast Asian countries like the Philippines, which makes it challenging to track down criminals. Of course, this does happen in the US and other parts of the world as well. There have been cases where a criminal has been extradited. There was actually one that just happened in January regarding the death of Gavin Guffey by suicide, a South Carolina teen. His father, Brandon Guffey, is someone that we interviewed for this article. And experts that I've spoken with say they hope that some of those extraditions will send a message to predators in these countries that even if they go through with these crimes, they will be found and that they can be extradited out to the US.
Taylor Wilson:
Some of these parents have become advocates after these tragedies. What messages do they and experts have that they want to leave folks with?
Rachel Hale:
Parents that I spoke with said it's most important for teens to understand that they are not to blame here, their predator is. In a lot of instances, the predator will try to victim-blame the teen to convince them that their parents aren't going to love them anymore, that they could be put on a sex offender list, or that they're going to be shamed by their whole school and community when really the case is that even if a teen made a mistake, their life will continue to go on and the criminals are the only one to blame.
Taylor Wilson:
Rachel Hale, Paste BN youth mental health reporting fellow. Rachel, just outstanding journalism on this and thank you so much for coming on and discussing.
Rachel Hale:
Thank you so much for having me.
Taylor Wilson:
If you or someone you know is struggling or in crisis, help is available. Call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.
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And thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your audio. And if you're on a smart speaker, just ask for The Excerpt. I'm Taylor Wilson and I'll be back tomorrow with more of The Excerpt from Paste BN.