BIG TALK: After meeting with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky and other European leaders at The White yesterday, President Trump immediately called Russia’s Vladimir Putin. A Russian representative said Trump and Putin spoke for 40 minutes.

  Now there is talk of Putin and Zelensky meeting face to face within two weeks.

  Details of discussions and progress were not released. The question is what, if anything, Putin will give up. His troops control 20 percent of Ukraine and Zelenskyy has consistently rejected giving up any territory. 

  European leaders were holding out for a ceasefire and Trump is looking for an overall peace agreement. Zelensky said at a news conference that a potential security guarantee would include Ukraine buying $90 billion in American weapons through Europe and the US buying drones from Ukraine. 

  As Zelensky arrived at the White House portico, Trump noted with appreciation that he wore a jacket and tie instead of his usual combat clothes. Later, sitting in the Oval Office, Zelensky made sure to flatter and profusely thank the President, unlike their explosive meeting early in the year.

  As he spoke before the summit, Trump quickly devolved into blame, personal complaints, and self-promotion. He said for the umpteenth time that the Ukraine war never would have happened if he had been president and he called it “Joe Biden’s war,” although it was Vladimir Putin who invaded Ukraine.

  Trump spoke of his diplomatic skills. “You know I’ve done six wars,” he said. “I’ve ended six wars.”

BALLOT ISSUE: On the day that he was trying to end the war in Ukraine, Trump opened a new political battle front declaring that he would lead a movement to eliminate mail-in ballots and sign an executive order to “help bring HONESTY to the 2026 Midterm Elections.” 

  This announcement on his Truth Social account comes as he’s pushing Texas Republicans to re-draw their congressional districts to fix that same election.

  This also came just a few days after Russia’s Vladimir Putin told Trump that mail ballots were a source of fraud in the 2020 election, which Trump lost. 

  Trump said in his post that he wants to get rid of “Highly ‘Inaccurate,’ Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election.” 

  Then he spun off into a rant about open borders, men playing in women’s sports, transgenderism, and wokeness.

FAKE NEWS: Right-wing cable channel Newsmax agreed to pay $67 million to settle the libel lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems brought against the channel for claiming without evidence that the voting machine company had rigged votes in the 2020 presidential election.

  The settlement was revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Newsmax would make the payments in three installments by January 15th, 2027.

  A Newsmax spokesman said the settlement did not require them to make an apology or  retraction.

CAPITAL OCCUPATION:  More Republican states are sending National Guard troops to Washington as Attorney General Pam Bondi claims to be sweeping the streets of criminals. 

 Trump said that people who have not gone out to dinner in DC for years are now enjoying a night out. But according to the website OpenTable, restaurant reservations in the capital have cratered.

  DC Mayor Muriel Bowser told reporters yesterday that the crackdown does not match the facts of crime in her city. “The question is really not for us,” she said. “It’s why the military would be deployed in an American city to police Americans.” 

REGIME NEWS:

— The Trump Education Department is turning its enforcement focus on civil rights at K-12 schools and colleges to giving priority to cases that allege transgender students and minorities are given unfair advantages. At the same time that deep staff cuts have left thousands of other cases unresolved or abandoned, The Washington Post reports.

  The office has a backlog of about 25,000 unresolved cases, up from about 20,000 when President Trump took office, the Post reports according to department officials. 

  Statistics show an increase in investigations taken up without the filing of an official complaint. The civil rights office has announced investigations of at least 99 schools, often based on news coverage or complaints from conservative groups, the Post reports.

— The head of the House Oversight Committee said it would begin to release files on sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein after names of victims and child abuse material are redacted. 

— The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, in accordance with President Trump’s edict that English is the country’s official language, will no longer provide material in languages other than English. 

THE OBIT PAGE: Dan Tana, whose Hollywood red sauce restaurant served steak with a side of pasta and was the place to see the stars, died in Belgrade at age 90. Dan Tana’s was said to be as much a part of Hollywood as palm trees and Botox.

THE SPIN RACK:  A Los Angeles drug dealer known as  the “Ketamine Queen” agreed to plead guilty to selling the ketamine that killed beloved “Friends” actor Matthew Perry. Jasveen Sangha, 42 could face decades in prison. Four other people have already pleaded guilty in the case. — Air Canada and its flight crews have reached a tentative agreement to end their strike. — The Cambridge Dictionary, which one might say has become “trendy,” has added 6,000 new words to its online edition including “skibidi,” “delulu,” and “tradwife.” In order they mean “cool’ or “bad”; “delusional,” and “traditional wife.” Cambridge defines “trendy” as “influenced by the most recent fashions or ideas.”

BELOW THE FOLD: Cable channel MSNBC after being spun off from NBC is losing the peacock logo and its name, which originally stood for “Microsoft NBC.” The network will be re-named  MS NOW — short for My Source News Opinion World. Hardly a tune you can dance to. 

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