In Ukraine: Moving On From What?

Hello it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender ☕️

Secretary of State Marco Rubio started the day Friday by announcing that the United States might walk away from negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.

“If it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, we need to move on,” he told reporters while on a trip to Paris. Rubio had just finished a meeting with European and Ukrainian officials about the war.

We don’t know what it means to “move on” for this administration, or how much weight Rubio’s words should even carry.

What’s more interesting to me is the premise: what does Rubio think we are moving on from?

For the past several months, the U.S. has engaged in some negotiations with Ukraine. That’s involved pressuring the country into signing away the rights to some of its mineral deposits, and persuading Ukrainian leaders to agree to one half of a ceasefire. At the same time, Trump real estate friend Steve Witkoff (he supported Trump during his NYC trial last year by attending throughout) has been traveling to Russia to meet with Vladimir Putin and other senior Russian officials.

Through that, Witkoff has discovered that the Russian President is interested in territorial aggrandizement and political control over whatever is left of Ukraine. He shared this revelation with Sean Hannity this week, while touting “potential commercial opportunities” between Russia and the U.S.

Does this really rise to the level of “talks” or “negotiations”? It’s hard to imagine that what Witkoff is doing meets that standard. The Russians have been happy to give the impression that they’re interested in peace, after launching an invasion that’s led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands. In reality, they’ve continued to attack the Ukrainians, even as Kyiv has made concessions under pressure from Trump. Is that what we’re moving on from?

— Josh Kovensky

Here’s what else TPM has on tap this weekend:

• Khaya Himmelman weighs in on the Justice Department’s new policy, which unironically bans social media posts that might “be perceived by a reasonable person as injecting their political views into the work they perform.” This, of course, comes despite the fact that the firewall meant to prevent White House political interference in DOJ work has been intentionally dismantled by Attorney General Pam Bondi and the other Trump loyalists running the department.
• Emine Yücel questions how exactly RFK Jr. intends to discover “what has caused the autism epidemic” by September.
• Kate Riga examines the split screen between Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-MD) efforts to check in on Kilmar Abrego Garcia in El Salvador this week and the White House’s inhumane amusement at its own cruelty toward the man.

The DOJ’s Shockingly Unironic Social Media Policy

Trump’s Department of Justice, which has in only a few short months made clear its intention to carry out the President’s retribution agenda, has implemented a social media policy that is supposed to prevent DOJ employees from posting explicitly political content. Unsurprisingly, that’s been a problem among top officials.

The policy, according to a recent report from the Washington Post, was announced by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who sent a memo to staff telling them to avoid posting anything that could interfere with the “the efficiency of the Department and the work it performs through its employees,” as well as anything “that may be perceived by a reasonable person as injecting their political views into the work they perform.”

“Specifically, Department employees may not use any social media in a way that adversely affects the maintenance of trust and confidence between supervisors and employees; that hinders the user’s ability to perform the essential functions of their role as federal employees; or that presents obvious risks to professional and mutually respectful collaboration among coworkers,” the policy reads. 

The change comes as many of the DOJ’s top officials use their social media platforms to openly hype Trump.

Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the Assistant Attorney General in the Civil Rights Division, as just one example, wrote on X this month: “Democrats are jealous of President Trump! Moreover, they are extremely jealous of Trump’s popularity with the American people!”

The policy, however, will do little to stop the DOJ from going after Trump’s political enemies — an agenda the White House and the DOJ have prioritized since the start of Trump’s second administration. 

On on her first day as attorney general, Pam Bondi launched the “Weaponization Working Group,” an entity devoted to investigating the Biden-era investigators of Trump. 

Since February, over 20 officials involved in the January 6 prosecutions and criminal prosecutions against Trump have been fired from the DOJ and many have resigned in protest for being asked to act on Trump’s retribution agenda, according to one tally by New York Magazine. 

— Khaya Himmelman

RFK Jr. Is Trying Really Hard To Falsely Link Autism To Vaccines

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. claimed that autism “destroys” children and families during a press conference this week.

“These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem,” RFK Jr. declared during his first official news conference as the head of HHS. “They’ll never go out on a date.”

The internet hit back hard, responding to the most egregious parts of his inflammatory comments with facts — something often missing in RFK Jr’s rhetoric. Many pointed out that people with autism do, in fact, pay taxes, as well as … all of those other things. 

In an equally absurd move, RFK Jr. has also asserted that HHS will “know what has caused the autism epidemic” by September during a White House meeting last week.

The supposed answer to that question will likely come from the recently hired HHS employee David Geier, a major figure in the anti-vaccine movement. Geier was reportedly hired to conduct an official HHS study that will look into a possible link between immunizations and autism, a conspiracy theory that has been debunked for decades.

RFK Jr. has repeatedly, falsely claimed over the years that vaccines are the cause of autism. And during his Wednesday press conference he said “some environmental exposure” may have a hand in autism diagnoses.

Experts speculate that he is almost undoubtedly setting the stage for HHS to claim that vaccines are the cause of autism.

— Emine Yücel

Van Hollen Shows Humanity While White House Delights In Abrego Garcia’s Suffering

Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) traveled to El Salvdaor this week in the hopes of visiting Kilmar Abrego Garcia, his constituent who the Trump administration admitted under oath that it wrongfully deported.

After initially being turned away, Van Hollen ultimately sat down with Abrego Garcia and got to call his wife and share the news that her husband is still alive. Abrego Garcia appeared dressed in normal clothes in photos shared by Van Hollen and El Salvador president Nayib Bukele, who reportedly tarted up the meeting with fancy drinks to make the conditions of his torture prison appear downright cushy. 

Praise of Van Hollen, coupled with joy that at least one Democrat is doing something, has rocketed around social media and liberal circles. Other Democratic members of Congress are now planning similar trips. 

Part of Van Hollen’s mission, he said in interviews, was to determine whether the Trump administration is following the Supreme Court’s directive to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release. Members of the U.S. embassy there told him that they have not received any request from the Trump administration to return him. 

That tracks with a Trump White House candid in its gleeful disobedience of a Supreme Court order. The official account tweeted out a New York Times headline Friday —  “Senator Meets With Wrongly Deported Maryland Man in El Salvador — striking out “wrongly,” replacing “Maryland Man” with “MS-13 Illegal Alien” and appending “Who’s Never Coming Back.”

It’s hard to describe this behavior without sounding hysterical. The country is being run by people who at least want to appear amused by the suffering of a man they accidentally sent to a gulag. How his family and friends must feel reading that tweet doesn’t rate notice. Being a brown man on the wrong end of a paperwork error is enough, rendering his life disposable. Not having to admit fault is worth it to this administration — worth condemning Abrego Garcia to lifelong imprisonment or death and his family to life-altering loss, worth a prolonged negative news cycle and growing protest, worth provoking a full-blown constitutional crisis.

— Kate Riga