Good morning. It is February 13th. There's a gross drizzly thaw on in Manhattan. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

And guess what? The news is bad. Yesterday, it was Ukraine's turn in the barrel as the Trump administration continued to work its way down the list of every bad thing it said it was going to do. This morning's New York Times has a variant front page layout. Instead of a right-hand column or columns of news, there is a four-column photo of a Russian soldier in fatigues and a balaklava, putting on a combat helmet. Under the headline, “A Call With Putin Spawns Peace Talks, Trump Says.” Under two more photos of young Russian military cadets and of a snow-dusted trench, the rightmost column down on the fold is “No Role Specified Yet for Ukraine in Process.” 

“President Trump said on Wednesday,” the Times writes “President Trump said on Wednesday that he had a ‘lengthy and highly productive phone call’ with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, characterizing it as the beginning of a negotiation to end the war in Ukraine. ‘We each talked about the
strengths of our respective Nations, and the great benefit that we will someday have in working together,’ Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post. ‘But first, as we both agreed, we want to stop the millions of deaths taking place in the War with Russia/Ukraine.’”

Nations and war were both capitalized. The Times adds, “An estimated several hundred thousand deaths have occurred in the conflict, not millions.” And then, “For Mr. Putin, the call was a major milestone, signifying the collapse of Western efforts to isolate him diplomatically after he invaded Ukraine nearly three years ago.” 

On the Jump page, there's more about the developing relationship between the superpowers. At the top, the headline is, “U.S. Defense Secretary says return to pre-2014 borders is unrealistic.” 

Dateline Berlin. “A return to Ukraine's pre 2014 borders is an ‘unrealistic objective’ and an ‘illusionary goal’ in the peace settlement between Ukraine and Russia that President Trump wants to accomplish. Pete Hegseth, the US defense secretary, said on Wednesday at a meeting of countries supporting Ukraine.” He also, the Times reports, told them that Donald Trump “‘does not support Ukraine's membership in NATO as part of a realistic peace plan.’ After a settlement,” the Times continues, “‘a durable peace for Ukraine must include robust security guarantees to ensure that the war will not begin again.’ But that would be the responsibility, he said, of European and non-European troops in a “‘non-NATO mission,’ unprotected by NATO's Article 5 commitment to collective defense.” 

The Guardian reports that a more drastic framing of things from the advance draft of Hegseth's remarks did not make it into his actual speech. The draft, the Guardian writes, “had said that the U.S. was no longer the primary guarantor of security in Europe.” 

Rather than reporting on that back and forth, the Times just writes, “Mr. Hegseth did not question American commitment to NATO, as President Trump has sometimes done in the past.” 

Below that, in further U.S.-Russia relations, the Times gets around to figuring out what the swap part of the prisoner swap with Russia that they reported on yesterday was. Officials, the Times writes, “Officials were preparing to release Alexander Vinnik, who pleaded guilty to money laundering in 2024, to Russia as part of a swap for Marc Fogel, according to the three officials. ‘Mr. Vinnik is a nonviolent offender and is forfeiting tens of millions of dollars in assets in the exchange,’ one of the officials said.” Mr. Vinick, the Times writes, “was charged in 2017 with overseeing a black market Bitcoin exchange known as BTC-E, that laundered money. Prosecutors said the exchange facilitated ransomware attacks, identity theft and other crimes.” 

And speaking of making deals, page A13 brings news of a potential new framework for Trump-Ukraine relations. “Kiev uses rare minerals in asking Trump for aid.” 

“Over the past week, the Times writes Mr. Trump has repeatedly pushed the idea of trading U.S. aid for Ukraine's critical minerals He told Fox News on Monday that he wanted the equivalent of ‘like $500 billion worth of rare earths’ a group of minerals crucial for many high-tech products in exchange for U.S. Ukraine had essentially agreed to do that, he said.” 

And in other unilateral renegotiations to say nothing of other cyber criminal exploits. Down at the bottom of page 16 is the news that New York City Comptroller Brad Lander looked in the city's bank accounts yesterday and discovered that $80 million was missing because the Trump administration had removed it from the city's account. Recinding a payment of already appropriated shelter monies for migrants that FEMA had delivered. This was the latest act in the ongoing real life Internet theater surrounding Elon Musk's false but energetic assertion that disaster relief funds have been misused to put up migrants in fancy hotels. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, the Times writes, “seemed to justify the clawback by saying that the city was using FEMA funding to finance the use of the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan as a migrant shelter, claiming that the hotel served as a base of operations for Tren de Aragua a Venezuelan gang that Mr. Trump recently moved to designate a foreign terrorist organization.” Police officials, the Times notes, “have said that the gang has recruited members from inside migrant shelters and that the Roosevelt, which houses hundreds of migrant families, has housed members of an offshoot of the gang.” 

The distance between a “luxury command post for the gang” and some second order gang affiliates having passed through the hotel, feels a lot like the difference between the lavish renderings of a full-scale Hamas command post underneath Al-Shiva Hospital in Gaza, and the single tunnel cutting through the hospital property that reporters were shown by the Israeli military after they destroyed the hospital. The fact that it was possible to draw obvious conclusions didn't mean that the hospital was going to be up and running again. And so the $80 million is gone. 

Above that, on the same page, there is a picture of Tulsi Gabbard being sworn in as director of national intelligence after the Senate rolled over and put her through, ignoring her sympathies for foreign dictators. And though the Times is too polite to mention it, her lifelong membership in a bizarre cult. 

Below that, “Senate advances Kennedy's nomination.” R.F.K. Jr. saw even polio victim Mitch McConnell join in in a party line vote to advance his nomination toward a confirmation vote. Other Republicans who rebuked the passionate anti-vaxxer about the importance of vaccines, nevertheless voted to put him in a position to destroy the country's vaccine program. 

Back on page one, on the left side, two columns wide, “Under Trump Shake-Up, Benefits for Musk Empire / Firings Undercut Litigation and Inquiries.” It’s a look at how Elon Musk's attacks on a wide assortment of federal agencies just so happened to make life a lot easier for Elon Musk, as does the regulatory agency turnover between the Biden administration and the Trump administration. At least 11 federal agencies, the Times writes, “that have been affected by those moves have more than 32 continuing investigations, pending complaints or enforcement actions into Mr. Musk's six companies, according to a review by the New York Times. The events of the past few weeks have thrown into question the progress and outcomes of many of those pending investigations into his companies.”

“The inquiries include the Federal Aviation Administration's fines of Mr. Musk's rocket company SpaceX for safety violations and a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit pressing Mr. Musk to pay the federal government perhaps as much as $150 million, accusing him of having violated federal securities law. On its own, the National Labor Relations Board, an independent watchdog agency for workers' rights, has 24 investigations into Mr. Musk's companies, according to the Review by the Times. Since January, Mr. Trump has fired three officials at that agency, including a board member, effectively stalling the board's ability to rule on cases. Until Mr. Trump nominates new members, cases that need a ruling by the board cannot move forward, according to the agency.” On it goes, “over at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a public database shows hundreds of complaints about the electric car company Tesla, mostly concerning debt collection or loan problems. The agency has now effectively been put out of commission, at least temporarily, by the Trump administration, which has ordered its staff to put a hold on all investigations.”

“The Bureau is also an agency that would have regulated Mr. Trump's new efforts to bring a payments service to X.” 

In other ethics and government news, on page A-19, the Times goes with a remarkably blunt and accurate headline. “Trump curtails anti-corruption inquiries, giving bribery a green light.” The paper juxtaposes the order to drop the corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams with an executive order halting investigations and prosecutions of corporate corruption in foreign countries and Trump's pardon of Rod Blagojevich, the former Democratic governor of Illinois, the Times writes “who was convicted in 2011 of essentially trying to sell a Senate seat that was vacated by President Barack Obama. Trump administration officials,” the Times writes “have also ordered the shutdown of an initiative to seize assets owned by foreign kleptocrats, dial back scrutiny of foreign influence efforts aimed at the United States and replace the top career Justice Department official handling corruption cases. To some current and former Justice Department officials,” the Times writes, “finding someone to say it for them—the steps reflect the degree to which Mr. Trump, as a politician who has faced multiple indictments and a real estate developer who prioritizes deal making,”—and a convict, though it doesn't say that—“is deeply antagonistic to law enforcement efforts to clean up politics and corporations.” 

Back again on page one, the Times gives the spending freeze the kind of clean news forward treatment that it needs. “Funding Stops, As Do Answers, Amid a Freeze.” It starts with the Missouri School District that got a federal grant to buy electric school buses, ordered the school buses, and now that it's time to take delivery of the buses, can't get the grant money it was promised. “The EPA refused to let the district take the money,” the Times writes. “The agency is still refusing, despite two court orders telling the Trump administration to end a freeze on federal grants. The number of grants that are still frozen is unknown,” the Times writes. But “after losses in court, Trump officials have shifted the rationale they've offered for freezing the funds — saying this is no longer a broad hold, but a targeted pause on specific grants it objects to because they did not meet previously required conditions.” The Times then notes that the $80 million dollar confiscation from New York indicated that that approach seemed to be working. 

And finally on page one, lest a reader feel too good about the Times' performance, the news section does what the editorial board already did and writes a piece about how terrible it is that Donald Trump is persecuting trans people. “Trump’s Words Attack Morality Of Being Trans” is the headline. “The sheer volume of orders” the Times writes, “and their language and tone, suggest to both transgender advocates and Mr. Trump’s supporters that the overarching intention is about more than policy — it’s about undermining the very idea that transgender identities are legitimate and should be recognized.” And then the story proceeds to air the polite versions of Trump's attacks, calling medical treatments for transgender children a hotly disputed issue. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the Times writes, “has so far continued to endorse the treatments as effective in relieving the psychological distress many transgender youths experience as a result of the incongruence between their sex and their gender identity. But “Two dozen states have barred doctors from treating minors with puberty blockers, hormones or surgeries. Several European countries have limited the treatments and are conducting research to gauge their efficacy.” OK, but so stateside, you're pitting the American Academy of Pediatrics against right-wing lawmakers as the two sides of a debate over pediatric care. “The Trump administration's order,” the Times writes, “calls the practice of medical transition for youths a ‘stain on our nation's history’ and medical guidelines' ‘junk science.’ It directs federal agencies to withhold funding for hospitals and medical schools that carry out transgender medical care for patients under the age of 19, referring to it as ‘maiming.’” That's certainly nasty language, but when those state legislatures issued their bans, what they cited was the judiciously skeptical work of the New York Times. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, sustain our podcasting work through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Please do keep those coming. And if no unexpected troubles come up, we will talk again tomorrow.