Bad Deal for Ukraine

Trump’s deadline for Ukraine: President Donald Trump is apparently pressuring Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sign a peace deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin, drafted up by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, by American Thanksgiving—aka six days from now.

The draft plan kind of sucks for Ukraine. It would force Zelenskyy to massively reduce the size of Ukraine’s military—from around 800,000 to 600,000—and even turn over territory to Russia that hasn’t yet been conquered, which has historically been a sticking point for the Ukrainian delegation. It’s a bright red line of something they don’t do. “Russia would receive ‘de facto recognition’ of its control of Crimea, Luhansk and Donetsk, as well as of the areas of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia it has illegally seized, with the conflict in these regions frozen on the current front line,” reports The Washington Post. And while “the draft rules out Ukraine’s membership of the Nato military alliance, it keeps the door open for its membership of the European Union,” notes the BBC.

Ukraine isn’t starting from a strong position. “Russia has made further advances in the east of the country. Moscow’s long-range strikes on Ukraine’s grid has left most of the country facing power cuts,” adds the BBC. “Allegations of serious corruption in Ukraine’s government have also led to political infighting and diverted attention from the war.”

Meanwhile, “it doesn’t seem like everyone in the Russian government is interested in this,” a source familiar with the situation told the Post.

In terms of deterrents, if Russia decided to attack Ukraine again at some point in the future, the deal notes that all current sanctions would be reinstated and recognition of the territories they acquired would be revoked. But how exactly would that work in practice?

Scenes from New York: “Justice Democrats, the organization that helped power Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s rise to Congress in 2018, will test New York City’s political climate by throwing its support behind an insurgent challenger to Representative Adriano Espaillat,” reports The New York Times. The challenger is Darializa Avila Chevalier, a social justice organizer (fake job!) from Harlem.

Avila Chevalier is also an investigator in a public defender office in Harlem, and has also lead protests against the Israel-Hamas war at Columbia University. (You can guess which side.) In the past, she helped lobby for the removal of a Central Park statue of the 19th-century gynecologist J. Marion Sims.

QUICK HITS

• New from me at Reason‘s YouTube channel: why tradwives don’t deserve to be disparaged, why Betty Friedan and the second-wave feminists were wrong on a few counts, and what communities lose out on when there are fewer homemakers. Please give it a watch:

• “Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said he sees room for the US central bank to cut interest rates again in the near term as the labor market softens,” reports Bloomberg. “In the text of a speech he delivered Friday in Santiago, Chile, Williams said downside risks to employment have increased while upside risks to inflation have eased.”
• A group of lawmakers posted a video saying federal law enforcement “can refuse illegal orders” and “must refuse illegal orders.” They continue: “This administration is pitting our uniformed military and intelligence community professionals against American citizens.” They say that “right now the threats of our Constitution aren’t just coming from abroad but right here at home.” The president, pissed off by this, called this “seditious behavior, punishable by DEATH!” The White House then had to issue a statement, um, clarifying that Trump wasn’t actually calling for the execution of members of Congress.

TRUMP DOES NOT WANT TO EXECUTE MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, WHITE HOUSE SAYS

— NewsWire (@NewsWire_US) November 20, 2025

Senior citizen with no arrest history broke some unduly burdensome gun laws because he wanted to protect himself—a bet that paid off when he was put in a situation in which he needed to use deadly force. Rather than give him a permit for the gun he ended up needing (and never… https://t.co/DKmuLNl0aA

— Rafael A. Mangual (@Rafa_Mangual) November 21, 2025