Ukraine agrees to temporary ceasefire with Russia | The Excerpt
On Wednesday's episode of The Excerpt podcast: Paste BN White House Correspondent Francesca Chambers breaks down Ukraine's agreement to a ceasefire deal. The House passes a GOP funding bill. The NTSB releases its preliminary report on the deadly January mid-air collision, and gives urgent recommendations to the FAA, including prohibiting helicopter operations on certain routes. Paste BN Domestic Security Correspondent Josh Meyer discusses how Attorney General Pam Bondi has moved to align the Justice Department with the president's agenda. An appeals court refuses to lift a block on President Donald Trump's order restricting birthright citizenship. Trump cuts the Education Department in half after laying off 1,300 workers. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals halts the execution of death row inmate David Leonard Wood. For more, check out our Deep Dive episode with Reporter Amanda Lee Meyers.
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Taylor Wilson:
Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson. Today is Wednesday, March 12th, 2025. This is The Excerpt. Today Ukraine agrees to a temporary ceasefire with Russia. What's next? Plus the NTSB releases its preliminary findings into the deadly January DC helicopter and plane collision, and we check in on Pam Bondi's pledge to depoliticize the Justice Department.
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Ukraine yesterday agreed to a temporary ceasefire with Russia after negotiators met in Saudi Arabia.
Marco Rubio:
The solution to this war and the way to end it and to achieve the president's objective of peace is to negotiate. But before you can negotiate, you have to stop shooting at each other.
Taylor Wilson:
That's Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is part of the US delegation at the meetings. For more on what this move means for the conflict going forward, I spoke with Paste BN White House correspondent Francesca Chambers. Hello, Francesca.
Francesca Chambers:
Hey, Taylor. Thanks for having me back.
Taylor Wilson:
Thanks for coming on on this, Francesca. So let's just start with some of the basics here. I mean what did Ukraine agree to and who were the players that helped make this happen?
Francesca Chambers:
Sure. So Ukraine came in planning to propose a partial ceasefire of land and sea, as well as on infrastructure, particularly energy in your infrastructure, in the war. But they said that the US came in with a full ceasefire proposal that they have now agreed to. So that would freeze the conflict along current battle lines if everything that the US and Ukraine agreed to hold. But, of course, Russia has to agree to the ceasefire proposal as well.
Taylor Wilson:
Yeah, I want to get to the Russia side of this in a second here, Francesca. But this comes after that big Oval Office blow up last month between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. What has happened between then and now?
Francesca Chambers:
Zelensky was notably not in the talks between US negotiators and Ukrainian negotiators in Saudi Arabia, although he was there on Monday. But neither was President Donald Trump. He was back in Washington, DC. So this was left to top aids to both presidents, including on the US side US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, as well as White House National Security Advisor Michael Waltz, to hash out a deal in Saudi Arabia.
Now Rubio, as he spoke to reporters after they came out and announced an agreement on the ceasefire proposal, said that the relationship here between President Zelensky and President Trump wasn't really relevant to the talks that were taking place now. He said, "This isn't Mean Girls. This isn't some episode of a television show. This is serious stuff."
Taylor Wilson:
Ahead of this, I mean what have been the sticking points for Russia in terms of a peace deal?
Francesca Chambers:
Russia has said that it does not want Ukraine to be able to enter NATO ever. The US has effectively taken NATO membership for Ukraine off the table, at least in the short term, if not the long term, publicly with the president, as well as other US officials saying that that's just not going to be in the cards for Ukraine.
That said, Russia also wants to be able to keep the territory that it's taken from Ukraine in the war. President Donald Trump has said that he will try to get as much of that territory back as possible, but again the administration has said that Ukraine is going to have to come to some concessions here, that this war will not end militarily, it will only end diplomatically. What those concessions that Ukraine is willing to give up, we still don't know. That's all under discussion, Taylor.
Taylor Wilson:
Francesca, will this latest development have any impact on that minerals deal between the US and Ukraine that seemed to lose momentum after that Oval Office blow up last week?
Francesca Chambers:
Coming out of the talks, both the US and Ukraine indicated that the minerals deal was still in play, but that wasn't the focus of the discussions that took place in Saudi Arabia. That was focused on the ceasefire, as well as a longer term peace agreement. It sounded like it was nearing the completion line, though, and we expect to hear more about that in the next few days.
Taylor Wilson:
Francesca, after this news, I mean what does all this mean for US military assistance?
Francesca Chambers:
So the US and Ukraine said in their joint agreement that the military assistance would resume as a result of Ukraine agreeing to this ceasefire proposal. Also US intelligence to Ukraine. That was also expected to restart.
One thing that's still under discussion is what security guarantees there would be for Ukraine moving forward, both as part of a minerals deal or as part of a long-term peace agreement with Russia in this war. That is something to keep an eye on as these talks progress.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Francesca Chambers is a White House correspondent with Paste BN. Thank you, Francesca.
Francesca Chambers:
Thank you, Taylor.
Taylor Wilson:
Russian sources earlier today reacted warily to the ceasefire proposal, saying that any deal to end the war would have to take into account the Russian advances and address Moscow's concerns. A senior Russian source told Reuters that President Vladimir Putin would find it difficult to agree to the ceasefire idea without hashing out terms and getting some guarantees.
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The House passed a continuing resolution yesterday in an attempt to prevent a government shutdown at the end of the week. The resolution made it out of the chamber on mirroring partisan lines with all but one Republican voting for it and all but one Democratic representative voting against it. The funding bill now heads to the Senate where it will need to find seven non-Republican votes to get past the filibuster, forcing the Democrats in the upper chamber to either remain united in opposition against the Trump Act plan or help the Republicans avoid a shutdown.
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The National Transportation Safety Board released its preliminary report yesterday on the mid-air collision of an American Airlines regional jet and an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River in January, a tragedy that left 67 people dead.
NTSB also issued urgent recommendations to the FAA, citing insufficient separation distances between a route called Helicopter Route 4 in the area and aircraft landing on Runway 33 at Reagan Airport as a major risk factor. In a press briefing, the NTSB shared the investigation's initial findings. NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy.
Jennifer Homendy:
There's a serious safety issue here, which is why we're issuing these urgent safety recommendations. Fortunately, and I am pleased, that Secretary Duffy took immediate action. Now we need to see that more permanent solution.
Taylor Wilson:
Investigators found inconsistent altitude readings from the helicopter, which may have caused altitude deviation. The helicopter crew may not have received a crucial air traffic control instruction to pass behind the airline flight, possibly due to radio interference. The airliner received a traffic alert and collision avoidance system or TCAS warning seconds before impact, but it was too late to avoid the crash.
The Washington, DC airspace is notoriously congested, and near mid-air collision data shows that one or more collision avoidance system alerts involving helicopters and commercial jets occur at Reagan Airport every month.
You can read more of the report's early findings with a link in today's show notes. For more on airplane safety issues, be sure to tune in today after 4:00 PM, Eastern Time, when I'll be joined by Paste BN aviation reporter Zach Wichter to take a closer look at some of the issues. You can find that episode right here on this feed.
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Attorney General Pam Bondi promised to depoliticize the Justice Department. But has she actually done the opposite? I caught up with Paste BN domestic security correspondent Josh Meyer for more. Josh, always a treat having you on. How are you, sir?
Josh Meyer:
I'm good, Taylor. How are you?
Taylor Wilson:
Good, good. Thanks for hopping on on this great piece, Josh. Josh, let's go back to this moment last month with Bondi's effort to release documents about convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and his alleged ties to Democrats like former President Bill Clinton. What happened here, Josh, and how does this Epstein document question fit into this?
Josh Meyer:
Bondi was responding to a lot of people in the MAGA world and Trump supporters who have been saying for years that the Epstein documents, if they're released, will be very damaging to Democrats like former President Clinton and that that will help Trump. And so, she, with much fanfare, said that she was going to release the documents and that there would be a lot bombshells in there.
When she finally released the documents, there was really nothing in there that was new. It was all stuff that was from court files. But that did raise the question, why was she doing it? She did say on Fox News that she was releasing them at the direction of President Trump, and presidents really aren't supposed to direct the attorney general to do anything. They're supposed to be independent.
Some there are some former Justice Department officials that I talked to who said that that's not what she's supposed to be doing and that she's actually weaponizing the Justice Department in the ways that she's promised not to do.
Taylor Wilson:
Right. Well, on that point, more specifically, Josh, what are experts or keen observers really saying about what they've seen from Bondi over these past few weeks?
Josh Meyer:
What they're saying is that she's taken a number of measures that they believe are political, one of which was the night she was sworn in, which was February 5th, within an hour, she issued 14 sweeping directives that really changed the way the Justice Department looks at things. One of them was to establish a weaponization working group, and she ordered it to investigate all of the federal and state prosecutions of Trump that the president himself has insisted without evidence were overly politicized. So basically she was directing prosecutors and federal law enforcement agents to investigate the investigators.
Another of her directives required Justice Department lawyers to "zealously, advance, protect, and defend not the interests and policies of the United States, but those of Trump himself". Since then, Bondi's Justice Department and the FBI have fired, transferred, or launched investigations into literally dozens of senior officials that they deem problematic.
Taylor Wilson:
In light of this conversation, Josh, I mean what do we hear from the DOJ themselves? What accomplishments, for instance, do they point to during Bondi's first few weeks from their perspective?
Josh Meyer:
I've been asking them for comment for a couple of weeks now, and they don't want to comment on accusations that she's politicized the Justice Department. But what they did do is give me a list of her accomplishments. She continues to say that she's working overtime to depoliticize the Justice Department, that she and Trump, say, is both biased against him and against political conservatives in general. So that's one of her major successes she says.
The Justice Department also has dismissed four DEI lawsuits, diversity, equity, and inclusion lawsuits, brought against police and fire departments. It's warned officials in California, Maine, and Minnesota that failure to comply with federal laws regarding men in women's sports would result in federal lawsuits.
They have taken down some serious drug traffickers and gotten Mexico to hand some over. They also launched a multi-agency federal task force to combat anti-Semitism. That task force just announced that it was pulling about $400 million in federal funds from Columbia University due to what they said was "continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students". They've said that that's just the first of many actions they could take against potentially dozens of universities for the same thing.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. Josh, what have we seen in terms of DOJ resignations in this Bondi era, and really what are some of the reasons people are putting forward for why they've stepped down?
Josh Meyer:
There were seven resignations, at least in New York City, in the federal prosecutor's office there after the Justice Department demanded that they drop the criminal investigation and prosecution of New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Trump has said that he wants Adams to help him in his immigration crackdown. And so, the Justice Department, essentially one of the charges against him dropped.
And so, the prosecutors on the case refused to do that. The acting Manhattan US Attorney Danielle Sassoon pledged to resign if Bondi wouldn't meet with her to reconsider the decision in the Adams case. But we don't know if Bondi agreed to meet with her or refused to, but Sassoon did resign. Then after she resigned, six other prosecutors, including the lead prosecutor in the case, resigned as well. Then the Justice Department found other people to drop the case. Judge still has to rule on that.
Taylor Wilson:
All right. So another great piece from you, Josh. Folks can find the full version with the link in today's show notes. Josh Meyer covers domestic security for Paste BN. Thanks, Josh.
Josh Meyer:
Thanks, Taylor.
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Taylor Wilson:
A federal appeals court yesterday continued to block President Donald Trump's order to end automatic citizenship to children born to two parents who are not legally authorized to be in the country. It's the latest setback for Trump's immigration priorities.
Trump signed the executive order on his first day back in office in January. He directed US agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of children born in the United States if neither their mother nor father was a US citizen or lawful permanent resident. The order aimed to revoke a longstanding provision of the Constitution that has been upheld in the Supreme Court. At least 10 federal lawsuits challenged the order, and several judges temporarily blocked its enforcement.
The 14th Amendment states all persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.
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The Trump administration is cutting roughly half the Department of Education's workforce through a combination of mass layoffs and voluntary buyouts according to administration officials yesterday. More than 1300 education department employees received termination notices Tuesday after 572 employees accepted buyouts offered in recent weeks in exchange for their resignations. The moves will cut the department from around 4100 workers when President Trump began his second term in January to just under 2200 workers.
The significant cuts come as Trump is considering an executive order attempting to dismantle the agency and as all federal departments and agencies are preparing large-scale reductions in force ahead of a Thursday deadline ordered by Trump.
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The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has blocked the execution of convicted El Paso Desert Killer David Leonard Wood court records show. The state's highest criminal court issued a ruling yesterday stopping Wood's execution about 48 hours before he was scheduled to be killed. For more on his story and his sit down with reporter Amanda Lee Myers, check out our special edition episode. We have a link in today's show notes.
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Thanks for listening to The Excerpt. You can get the podcast wherever you get your pods. 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.