Donald Trump finds making peace is easier said than done

Good morning and welcome to White House Watch! Today let’s dig into:

President Donald Trump campaigned on a promise to bring a swift end to the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East — but in reality, making peace is a Sisyphean task.

After speaking to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday, Trump tried to mask the difficulty of the situation, saying a “contract for peace” to end the war in Ukraine was on course and the “process” for a settlement was “in full force”.

But on their long call, Putin rebuffed the ceasefire proposal that the US and Ukraine agreed last week. The Putin-Trump conversation came just hours after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas over Gaza collapsed — a deal that Trump officials helped the Biden administration get over the line.

The Russian president only agreed to a limited 30-day truce on attacking energy and infrastructure assets, though Moscow kept up strikes on Ukraine yesterday morning, hitting the energy supply of its national railway lines.

“Putin has managed to give a small concession to Trump without really conceding anything,” said Fiona Hill, who was a US National Security Council official during Trump’s first term.

There is a real disconnect between Trump’s vision for a quick peace in Ukraine, and what sort of pact the two warring nations might be willing to swallow. 

For now, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has agreed to the US’s proposal to stop attacking Russian energy infrastructure, though he wants other early steps taken, too. Trump, meanwhile, wants the US to take over Ukrainian nuclear power plants.

Over in the Middle East, the US had been holding direct talks with Hamas to try to get to the second phase of the ceasefire, only to switch gears days later and back Israel’s resumption of military operations. There is now renewed instability in the region. 

“Donald Trump is not going to be able to reconcile his self-image as a great negotiator with the grim realities of these conflicts,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“Personality, which in Trump’s world plays such a central role in everything, isn’t working.”

The latest headlines

What we’re hearing

We could be heading for a constitutional crisis, according to legal experts.

Trump’s attack on federal judges, and his apparent willingness to defy court orders, show that he’s willing to test the limits of his power against the judiciary’s even though they are co-equal branches of government alongside the US Congress.

The tensions between the White House and the courts are on stunning display. As Yale Law School professor William Eskridge told the FT’s Stefania Palma:

The rule of law in our country is dancing along the precipice, [which] overhangs a chasm of lawlessness and breakdown.

Whether we fall over the edge depends on whether the current administration openly defies or even stealthily evades [legal precedent].

Trump on Tuesday attacked a federal judge online, an apparent response to a ruling that attempted to halt the deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members. This prompted US Chief Justice John Roberts to issue a rare public rebuke to Trump over his threat to impeach federal jurists.

So what could be done to make the US president abide by the law if he chooses not to? It’s fraught.

“You could imagine courts being reluctant to engage in a direct confrontation with the executive branch,” Douglas Keith, of the Brennan Center’s judiciary programme, told Stefania. Trump is also largely insulated from legal exposure.

Ultimately, the cases that have enraged Trump could end up before Roberts’s Supreme Court — and questions about adhering to the rule of law don’t necessarily break along political lines.

Viewpoints