Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan called for an “immediate” end to the war in Ukraine during a call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Saturday.

Erdoğan “highlighted the importance Türkiye attaches to the immediate cessation of the Russia-Ukraine conflicts through negotiations” and “thanked President Putin for his positive stance regarding the extension of the Black Sea Grain Initiative,” according to a statement from Turkey’s Directorate of Communications.

The Black Sea Grain Initiative, which was brokered by the United Nations and Turkey last July, allows Ukrainian grain exports to safely travel through the Black Sea. 

Russia agreed to renew the deal for another 60 days last weekend but warned that any further extension would require the easing of Western sanctions, according to Reuters.

While Turkey has largely maintained economic ties with Russia throughout its yearlong war in Ukraine, Ankara ordered companies last month to halt the transit of goods to Russia that are sanctioned by the U.S. and European Union, Bloomberg reported.

Erdoğan’s appeal for a ceasefire and negotiations come on the heels of a similar call for an end to hostilities made by China and Belarus earlier this month. However, the two countries’ efforts were largely eyed with skepticism by the West, as both appear to have drawn increasingly close to Russia.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) said on Friday that President Biden will not assert executive privilege over court-ordered depositions from former President Trump and FBI Director Christopher Wray.

Trump has also not requested an assertion of privilege over the depositions, the DOJ said in Friday’s filing.

Wray and the former president have been ordered to sit for depositions in lawsuits brought by two former FBI employees who claim they were unfairly targeted for their work investigating Trump’s ties to Russia during the 2016 election.

Former FBI agent Peter Strzok was fired and former FBI attorney Lisa Page resigned from the bureau in 2018, after text messages emerged that showed the two making critical comments about the former president.

The two have claimed they were targeted out of a political vendetta.

U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered Trump and Wray to sit for the depositions last month, after rejecting the Justice Department’s attempts to quash the requests under the “apex doctrine.”

The doctrine allows high-ranking government officials to be deposed when they have personal knowledge on the matter that cannot be obtained elsewhere.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), known to be loyalists of former President Trump, ripped into Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley on Saturday during Trump’s first official campaign rally.

Joining the former president in Waco, Texas, the lawmakers singled out Haley, who previously served as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, criticizing her for her foreign policy agenda and a perceived lack of appeal.

“Nikki Haley says that we must kick all of the world’s bullies with heels,” Gaetz said. “But we cannot go kicking and screaming around the globe, starting new wars behind every Middle Eastern sand dune as Nikki Haley would have us do.”

“So, Nikki Haley can keep clicking her heels,” he continued. “What we know is that President Donald Trump will bring America’s enemies to heel.”

Greene also dismissed Haley as a serious candidate, claiming that no other Republican has a “list of names” like Trump does.

“Here’s what we know about President Trump,” she told reporters from the conservative outlet Right Side Broadcasting Network. “President Trump has a list of names, and no one else has that.”

“Ron DeSantis doesn’t have that. Nikki Haley, or whoever she is, she doesn’t have anything like that,” Greene said, also digging into the Florida governor, who has not yet launched a bid despite rumors of a potential run. “No one else knows how to clean out the swamp like President Trump.”

Despite his increase in attacks against DeSantis in recent weeks — which has put pressure on Republican lawmakers, who will eventually have to choose a side —Trump has been relatively tame when it comes to Haley’s bid. Last month he responded to her official launch with “the more the merrier.”

“I’m glad she’s running,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News at the time. “I want her to follow her heart — even though she made a commitment that she would never run against who she called the greatest president of her lifetime.”

Trump, Haley and entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy are the only candidates to enter the race on the Republican side thus far. Though others — such as DeSantis, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie — have been floated as potential contenders.

While the rally in Waco corresponded with the 30th anniversary of the federal siege in the area that disbanded cult leader David Koresh’s compound, Trump’s team insisted that the location and timing of the event had nothing to do with the event.

Former President Trump vowed to remove the “thugs and criminals” from the justice system at his first official campaign rally of the 2024 cycle on Saturday, as he faces down a potential indictment.

“When this election is over, I will be the president of the United States,” Trump said at an airport tarmac in Waco, Texas. “You will be vindicated and proud, and the thugs and criminals who are corrupting our justice system will be defeated, discredited and totally disgraced.”

The former president took aim at the various prosecutors investigating him in New York, Georgia and Washington, D.C., decrying “prosecutorial misconduct” and telling a crowd of his supporters that “our enemies are desperate to stop us.”

“Our opponents have done everything they can to crush our spirit and to break our will, but they failed. They’ve only made us stronger,” Trump said. “And 2024 is the final battle. That’s going to be the big one. You put me back in the White House, their reign will be over, and America will be a free nation once again.”

Trump’s remarks come just one week after he ignited a political firestorm by suggesting that he could be arrested as soon as Tuesday in Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s (D) hush money probe. 

While his prediction has yet to come to fruition, the former president has doubled down on his claims, warning on Friday that an indictment could result in “potential death & destruction.” 

He struck a similarly bombastic tone as he looked ahead to the 2024 election at Saturday’s rally.

“Either we surrender to the demonic forces abolishing and demolishing, and happily doing so, our country, or we defeat them in a landslide on Nov. 5, 2024,” Trump said. “Either the deep state destroys America, or we destroy the deep state.”

The former president also continued his recent torrent of attacks on Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who is widely considered Trump’s biggest potential competitor despite having yet to announce a 2024 bid.

“Florida has been tremendously successful for many years, long before this guy became governor,” Trump said on Saturday. “Florida has been successful for decades, in fact probably as or more successful than it is now.” 

Former President Trump suggested on Saturday that he would “fight like hell” for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) if she were to run for Senate.

“Would you like to run for the Senate?” Trump said at his first campaign rally of the 2024 cycle in Waco, Texas. “I would fight like hell for you.”

If Greene were to run for Senate, she would likely face off against Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) in 2026.

During his speech on Saturday, Trump touted Greene as a “badass.”

“People do not realize how brilliant she is,” the former president said. “She is just a badass.”

The Georgia congresswoman, who is considered one of Trump’s most loyal allies, has previously been seen as positioning herself as a potential 2024 running mate for the former president.

“She sees herself on the short list for Trump’s VP,” Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon said in January, adding, “When MTG looks in the mirror she sees a potential president smiling back.”

The U.S. federal budget is in dire shape. The 2022 budget deficit was $1.4 trillion, and publicly held federal debt is about $24.6 trillion — roughly equal to 94 percent of GDP. And that doesn’t include the other approximately $6.9 trillion in debt credited to Social Security, Medicare, and other government programs.

Congress must eventually address this imbalance by increasing revenue, reducing spending, or both. Instead of increasing taxes, the government should increase revenue by expanding legal immigration.

The Congressional Budget Office rosily projects that publicly held federal debt will rise to 118 percent of GDP in 2033 — and that assumes no wars, pandemics, or other emergencies in the intervening years that would prompt the government to spend many trillions of dollars more. But that’s just for the next 10 years. Economists at Penn Wharton estimate that federal government debt will rise to about 225 percent of GDP in the next 30 years. And that doesn’t include local and state government obligations.

Increasing legal immigration would help plug that hole without ruinously increasing taxes because immigrants contribute more in tax revenue than they consume in government benefits.

The Cato Institute recently released a white paper detailing the fiscal impact of immigrants in the United States. Adapted from a fiscal model created by the National Academy of Sciences, we found that all immigrants individually will, in present value terms, pay about $267,000 more in taxes at the state, local, and federal levels than they will consume in benefits over the next 30 years. If the immigrant population were doubled with no change in average age or education, that would be about $11.9 trillion in extra net tax revenue over the next 30 years.

More importantly, that’s extra revenue without higher taxes.

The taxes paid and benefits received by immigrants are highly dependent upon the immigrant’s age of arrival in the United States and their ultimate level of education. For instance, a high school dropout immigrant who arrives at age 25 will pay about $216,000 more in taxes than he’ll receive in benefits over the next 30 years. However, an immigrant arriving at the same age who ultimately earns a post-graduate degree will pay almost $1.3 million more in taxes than he’ll receive in benefits.

Low-skilled immigrants arriving between the ages of 20-24 are in the fiscal sweet spot, where the gap between what they pay in taxes and receive in benefits is the highest. The fiscal sweet spot is age 25-30 for high-skilled immigrants with a bachelor’s degree or higher. In those age ranges, immigrants arrive without consuming government benefits or public schooling. As a result, they can begin working and paying taxes immediately, then spend several decades working before retiring and consuming Social Security and Medicare benefits.

The fiscal cost of the descendants of immigrants born in the United States complicates the matter, but including them still produces a positive fiscal impact over the next 30 years. Including the descendants of a high school dropout immigrant who enters at age 25 still results in $57,000 more in taxes paid than benefits consumed. For an immigrant who ultimately earns a graduate degree, the positive contribution drops to about $1.1 million.

Age, increasing education, and lower consumption of government benefits are the three main reasons why immigrants pay more in taxes than they receive in benefits. More than 60 percent of immigrants are in the prime working ages of 25-54, when welfare use is lowest and their tax payments from employment are highest. By comparison, just 38 percent of native-born Americans are in their prime working age.

Immigrants are also more educated than ever, earning higher wages and paying higher taxes as a result. For instance, immigrants and native-born Americans under age 27 have almost identical levels of education. Yet, in 2013, immigrants showed less education than natives when they were 18.  

Lastly, immigrants consume fewer government benefits than the second and third-plus generations of native-born Americans. Immigrants, on average, consume fewer benefits than third-plus generation Americans at every age except between the ages of 5 and 17.

The difference is most dramatic for old age entitlement programs, where immigrants aged 65 and older consume an average of over $110,000 less than third-plus generation Americans from age 65 to 80 and about $76,000 less than the second-generation Americans. Government restrictions on welfare for new immigrants can explain some of this difference.

Increasing legal immigration at every skill level, especially younger immigrants who are highly educated, will help the government balance its books. Boosting legal immigration will not entirely solve America’s fiscal problems, but doing so will bump up tax revenues without higher tax rates. Congress will have to moderate spending and reform near-insolvent entitlement programs no matter what happens to legal immigration, but liberalizing immigration will increase revenue without increasing taxes. It’s time for immigration to be part of the fiscal debate.  

Alex Nowrasteh is the director of economic and social policy studies at the Cato Institute.

As a potential TikTok ban looms, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) gave her response in a unique way: by posting her first video on the social media platform.

“This is not only my first TikTok, but it is a TikTok about TikTok,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her introduction, adding “Do I believe TikTok should be banned? No.”

The New York Democrat said banning the popular video-sharing app would be an “unprecedented” move.

“I think it’s important to discuss how unprecedented of a move this would be. The United States has never before banned a social media company from existence, from operating in our borders,” she said in her video. “And this is an app that has over 150 million Americans on it.

Her post comes after lawmakers from both sides of the aisle grilled TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew on Thursday on ways his company plans to address recent security concerns raised about the social media app.

Criticisms surrounding the app and it’s Chinese-based owner ByteDance, were notably bipartisan during Chew’s testimony before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, including concerns around national security threats, data privacy, the spread of misinformation and the safety for minors.

“They say because of this egregious amount of data harvesting, we should ban this app. However, that doesn’t really address the core of the issue,” Ocasio-Cortez said in her video.

The outspoken Democrat claimed that banning TikTok wasn’t a solution, pointing to other major social media companies that also collect “troves of deeply personal data” without a user’s knowledge or significant regulation.

“In fact, the United States is one of the only developed nations in then world that has no significant data or privacy protection laws on the books,” she argued, later adding “So to me, the solution here is not to ban an individual company — but to actually protect Americans from this kind of egregious data harvesting that companies can do without your significant ability to say no.”

“Usually when the United States is proposing a very major move, that has something to do with signifiant risk to national security, one of the first things that happens is that Congress receives a classified briefing,” she continued, claiming that it had not happened yet. “So why would we be proposing a ban regarding such a signifiant issue without being included on this at all? It just doesn’t feel right to me.”

She said if a decision to ban TikTok was that important to national security, the public deserves to know what kind of information could potentially be leaked by the platform. Ocasio-Cortez also reiterated her point that all platforms should be looked into.

“We are a government by the people and for the people,” she said, adding “I think a lot of this is putting the cart before the horse.”

“Our first priority should be in protecting your ability to exist without social media companies commodifying every single piece of data about you,” Ocasio-Cortez added.

TikTok issued updated community guidelines earlier this week which the company said will focus on improving content moderation on the platform.

Some of the key changes include updating the company’s rules on how it evaluates content created or altered by artificial intelligence technology and providing more details about the work it does to protect civic and election integrity.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced on Saturday that he is finished with inpatient therapy after suffering a concussion on March 8 and will work from home for the next few days.  

That means the GOP leader won’t return to the Capitol in person until after the upcoming two-week recess over the Easter and Passover holidays. The Senate is set to resume session the week of April 17.  

“I want to sincerely thank everyone for all the kind wishes. I’m happy to say I finished inpatient physical therapy earlier today and I’m glad to be home,” McConnell said in a statement released Saturday afternoon.  

“I’m going to follow the advice of my physical therapists and spend the next few days working for Kentuckians and the Republican Conference from home,” he continued. “I’m in frequent touch with my Senate colleagues and my staff. I look forward to returning in person to the Senate soon.”

A McConnell aide confirmed that the leader won’t return to the Capitol before April. 

“Given the proximity to the upcoming State Work Period, the Leader is working from home this week. He will consult with his physical therapists on a return date to the Senate, so I’m not going to speculate,” the aide said.  

“We will be sure to let everyone know when we have an update on a return date,” the source said.  

McConnell, who is 81, suffered a concussion and a fractured rib when he tripped and fell at a private dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in downtown Washington.  

He was discharged from the hospital to an inpatient rehabilitation facility.  

The Kentucky Republican has checked in with colleagues and last week spoke to members of his leadership team, including Senate Republican Whip John Thune (S.D.), Senate GOP Conference Chairman John Barrasso (Wyo.) and Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). 

Republican senators say they have continued to coordinate with McConnell’s office during his absence.  

One former president and two former vice presidents have hung onto classified documents at their private homes, and the National Archives is asking every former president and vice-president to scour their files in case there are more. This makes it a particularly good time for a bipartisan review of the Espionage Act, an antiquated law that is doing the U.S. as much harm as good.

Congress passed the act in 1917, a few months after the U.S. entered WWI, after President Wilson inveighed against foreign-born traitors “who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life.” Its crux is a prohibition on obtaining or disclosing information related to “national defense” if it could be used at the expense of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.

Amendments to include the crime of sedition were upheld by the Supreme Court in the Schenk case, but later repealed. Its last major amendment was in 1950, during the McCarthy era, criminalizing the mere possession of that “national defense” information without any real defense or malicious intent requirement.

The act has been used for some reasonable purposes — against Soviet spies, for example — but also against many others who thought they were acting in the public interest. Among these are government leakers to the media, such as Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers, NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning. Major publishers protested the indictment of Wikileaks’ Julian Assange, as his conviction would create a hard precedent of wielding the act against the mainstream press.

Numerous scholars have argued the act is both underinclusive and overbroad, and thus constitutionally vague. Although “national defense” information is today assumed to mean classified information, the act predates the classification system and may be insufficiently inclusive, as not all classified information is related to the “national defense” (rather than “national security” writ large, the criterion for the classification system under Executive Order 13526.) Yet if one reads “national defense” information in the context of the statute as anything potentially useful to foreign nations and potentially disadvantageous to the U.S., that construction sweeps beyond classified information to nearly anything you can imagine.  

Take Samuel Loring Morison, who was prosecuted for sharing classified photos of Soviet navy yards with a publication with the intention to warn the defense community that the Soviets had real naval ambitions. Once a prosecutor has shown something is “national defense information,” she doesn’t need to show its disclosure caused any real harm to this country — and the defendant can’t argue that point because it’s irrelevant. That’s a real problem, especially as over-classification of information is endemic and growing worse.

There is no defense to prosecution except denying you possessed such material or transmitted it. It’s irrelevant if you thought you were acting in the interest of the U.S. or the public by disclosing wrongdoing, and you won’t be allowed to explain why you did it — your intentions don’t matter. Recent administrations have used the act to deter leaks to the press of embarrassing but arguably important information more than to prosecute spies.

The section that punishes retaining classified information by officials who once, but no longer, have authorization demands a showing of “gross negligence” — which may be reasonable when applied to presidents who have the means to hire lawyers to scour their files, but can be a trap for more low-level government employees without those resources.

Reform of the Espionage Act is no politician’s ideal cause — it sounds like going soft on spies — but it could be reframed as strengthening and restoring the Act to its original purpose: safeguarding genuine security secrets, while protecting the First Amendment. And above all, keeping this law from being used as a weapon in partisan politics.

A few simple fixes would go a long way:

• First, define what is and what is not “national defense” information with particularity, and place a burden on the government to show that any given disclosure or document actually was intended and affected national defense;
• Create a defense for the accused that the public interest in the disclosure of particular information (such as information concerning official wrongdoing) outweighs any harm done to national security, especially where the disclosure is to the media;
• Strengthen whistleblower protections in law for national security officials of the government;
• Enable defendants to argue that their disclosure or retention of documents had no effect on national defense nor was it intended to have such an effect;
• Create a clear schedule and assistance for all government employees in handing over classified documents before their departure from public service. Given how common accidental mishandling of classified information is, the law should also allow some reasonable time to correct innocent errors as a “safe harbour” from liability under the act.

The new Congress, the Department of Justice, the National Archives and the Special Counsel will all be keeping this topic in the news for the foreseeable future. It’s a good moment for Congress to step ahead of the game and show some bipartisan will to fix this deeply flawed law.

Dinah Pokempner is an expert in international law and human rights. She has served as senior legal advisor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Free Expression and as general counsel of Human Rights Watch.

House Republican leaders on Saturday rebuked Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s (D) refusal to testify about his investigation into former President Trump’s role in a 2016 hush money payment.

The letter — from House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) — comes in response to Bragg’s accusation on Thursday that their request was an “unlawful incursion” on his investigation.

“Your conclusory claim that our constitutional oversight responsibilities will interfere with law enforcement is misplaced and unconvincing,” the trio of Republican lawmakers said in their eight-page letter. 

“As a threshold matter, whether your office is, in fact, fairly enforcing the law or abusing prosecutorial discretion to engage in a politically motivated indictment of a former President is a serious matter that … implicates significant federal interests,” the group added.

The GOP lawmakers’ request for Bragg’s testimony came in response to Trump’s claim last weekend that he could be arrested in the Manhattan probe as soon as Tuesday.

The Manhattan district attorney has appeared to be nearing an indictment in the probe, which is investigating a $130,000 payment made to adult film star Stormy Daniels to buy her silence about an alleged affair with Trump ahead of the 2016 election.

Despite Trump’s warnings, Bragg has yet to make an official decision on whether to charge the former president, and the Manhattan grand jury assembled in the case ultimately did not meet on the issue this week.

In his five-page response to the GOP lawmakers, Bragg said their requests would interfere with ongoing law enforcement duties, violate state sovereignty and represent an inappropriate use of congressional power. 

However, he did offer to “meet and confer to understand whether the Committee has any legitimate legislative purpose in the requested materials that could be accommodated.”

The Republican committee chairmen defended the legislative purpose of their requests in Saturday’s letter, claiming that it was in the service of potential legislation.

“[T]he Committee on the Judiciary, as a part of its broad authority to develop criminal justice legislation, must now consider whether to draft legislation that would, if enacted, insulate current and former presidents from such improper state and local prosecutions,” they wrote.

The lawmakers also dismissed Bragg’s assertion that their requests represent an “unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty,” claiming that the issue “involves substantial federal interests.” 

On the Manhattan district attorney’s accusations that they were usurping executive branch powers, they argued that the courts have recognized Congress’ “broad authority to conduct oversight of ongoing civil and criminal investigations.”

Bragg responded to the lawmakers’ latest letter on Saturday via Twitter, reiterating his argument that “it is not appropriate for Congress to interfere with pending local investigations.”

“This unprecedented inquiry by federal elected officials into an ongoing matter serves only to hinder, disrupt and undermine the legitimate work of our dedicated prosecutors,” he tweeted. “As always, we continue to follow the facts and be guided by the rule of law in everything we do.”

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee also accused Jordan, Comer and Steil of holding Trump above the law in their efforts to force Bragg’s testimony.

“This outrageous position is further evidence of former President Trump and MAGA extremists’ hold on Congressional Republicans,” a spokesperson said in a statement.