As Trump cancels sanctions from Graham bill he just signed, new report claims Elon Musk suggested, and Trump agreed, on restricting Ukraine’s defenses.
Vladimir Putin’s regime is an enemy of the United States, and President Donald Trump is giving it aid and comfort, subordinating vital American interests to the Kremlin’s interests. It’s that simple. The rest is details . . . and there are a lot of those, as I contend in the weekend piece that we posted this morning.
Just since then, two big developments.
The first involves the topic of my piece: mounting evidence of the Trump administration’s willful placement of restrictions on Starshield, the military application of the Starlink satellite system. The manufacturer, Elon Musk’s SpaceX, provides Starshield to our Defense Department, which in turn provides it to Ukraine. Earlier this week, the Starshield system was manipulated so that objects moving at speeds exceeding 100 mph (160 kph) could not be tracked. This blinded Ukraine’s defense against incoming Russian aerial strikes, and at that precise time, Putin launched one of the most intense attacks against civilian infrastructure in his four-year war of aggression. At least nine people were killed and more than 600,000 left without power.
Because Trump ally Musk is a zealous detractor of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, suspicion over the cause of the Starshield restrictions instantly fell on him. As I detailed, Musk — obviously, if belatedly, sensing that such abetting of the Russian war machine is a huge scandal — sought to distance himself, insisting that Starshield is operated by the U.S. Defense Department, not SpaceX, and therefore that responsibility for intentional disruptions lies with the Pentagon and, ultimately, President Trump.
According to new reporting last night by the Telegraph (paywalled), based on anonymous sources, this is a disingenuous half-truth: The allegation is that Musk, who is most familiar with the technology’s capabilities, suggested to Trump that the restrictions be imposed, that Trump agreed, and that the directive was somehow communicated to the Pentagon. This is generally consistent with the Reuters reporting I noted (also paywalled), which — based on unidentified sources including two U.S. officials — said the directive came from the White House.
To repeat what I’ve argued this morning, there should be immediate congressional hearings. There have been bipartisan calls for an inspector general investigation at the Pentagon, but that’s not good enough; it would disregard Congress’s responsibility to investigate, and the administration could drag it out endlessly. That’s not to say that the Trump administration wouldn’t stonewall Congress, but it would have to do so very publicly, and Congress has means to force compliance . . . or punish noncompliance.
As if there were still any doubt that the president of the United States is taking our enemy’s side in a war our enemy started — part of Putin’s effort to reconstitute the Soviet empire, which he pursues through war crimes and a low-thrum campaign of kinetic provocations against NATO — Trump waited until 9 p.m. on Friday night to announce that he is waiving the sanctions against Russia and its abettors that Congress imposed in the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act, which Trump had signed just three weeks ago. As CBS reports:
Tariffs of 100% on the world’s five largest importers of Russian crude oil and natural gas were set to take effect on Sunday under the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia Act, which Mr. Trump signed late last month. But the law gives the president the authority to waive portions of the law if he certifies to Congress that halting the sanctions is “in the national interests of the United States,” a provision that Mr. Trump invoked in an executive order Friday.
The president said he sent a notification to Congress.
He also waived the law’s 500% tariffs on Russian goods, and halted certain other sanctions on Russia. He said the waivers will remain in place until administration officials “determine that further action is appropriate,” and directed members of his administration to “monitor” countries that import Russian energy or evade sanctions.
An envoy to Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Mr. Trump’s decision on Saturday.
Of course he did.
To repeat what I argued earlier this week, while Trump is the culprit here, Congress itself is complicit. Lawmakers pose as taking seriously their constitutional role in foreign affairs and acting to thwart enemies of the United States and our allies; but the fine print of these provisions unfailingly delegates nearly unilateral power to the president to nullify the legislation. The Lindsey Graham Act, despite the fanfare of its enactment, was watered down from the version Senator Graham championed before his death, and it is a prime example of Congress dodging its duties.
In the earlier post, discussing Trump’s execrable diesel deal with Putin, I contended that the pact was probably illegal under the 2022 Ending Importation of Russian Oil Act. I had to say “probably” because the legislation contains a mushy provision that one could strain to interpret as permitting Trump’s action (even though the action effectively reverses what Congress tried to accomplish), on the theory that Trump is merely waiving the act’s prohibitions, not completely nullifying them. But that aside, in this 2022 act, Congress at least mandated that the president must make specific findings before easing the penalties on Russia. To wit, the president must determine that (a) Russia has reached an agreement to withdraw its forces and end hostilities, (b) the Ukrainian government has accepted that agreement, (c) Russia poses no immediate threat of aggression to any NATO member, and (d) Russia recognizes the Ukrainian people’s right to choose their own government.
By contrast, to blow off the sanctions prescribed in the last month’s Graham Act, the president need only provide (1) a certification to Congress that the waiver he has granted is consistent with the national interests of the United States, and (2) a report explaining his rationale for this certification. That is an illusory check on executive abuse: Trump can rely on his judgment that siding with our enemy against our ally is in America’s interest (because, he’ll claim, he only wants “peace” . . . which is apparently best secured by pressuring Ukraine to surrender).
In addition to conducting prompt hearings on how the Starshield restrictions came to be imposed, Congress should enact sanctions that require the president to obtain Congress’s permission to waive them. The Constitution grants Congress, not the president, the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. Given the history of executive abuse (and not just under the incumbent president), it makes no sense for Congress to keep delegating its authority.
A last observation. Trump clearly grasps that he has overstepped to disastrous effect in incapacitating Ukraine’s defenses while Russia conducted a savage attack targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. During an exchange with reporters at the White House, when asked who gave the order to cut the Starshield defense, the president denied he had done it and even suggested there had been no restriction: “Well, I don’t know if it was anybody because it wasn’t me, and I don’t think it was Elon. And from what I understand, it’s the same as it’s always been.”
There is abundant evidence that restrictions were imposed, that this had to be done by the Defense Department, and that someone at the White House must have given the order. Nothing has been definitively established, but the basis for a congressional probe is manifest. Constitutional conservatives often tout the unitary executive — the theory that the entire executive power is vested in one official, the president — and the Trump administration has exploited that theory quite successfully in expanding the president’s control over administrative agencies. Yet it’s essential to remember why the Framers designed it that way: so that the president could not evade accountability by blaming subordinates, or otherwise obfuscating, for appalling executive actions.
These are appalling executive actions.