Kremlin says Russia and US have not yet begun to discuss a possible Putin-Trump meeting

Santo Domingo: US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Thursday supervised the seizure of a second aircraft belonging to Venezuela’s leftist government in less than a year, showing a hard line despite nascent diplomacy.
Rubio, a passionate opponent of Latin America’s leftist authoritarians like Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, witnessed the confiscation of the aircraft at the end of his first trip in the job, which took him to five countries of Latin America.
Rubio traveled to a military airstrip in the capital Santo Domingo where, in front of cameras, a Dominican Republic prosecutor and US law enforcement representative together taped a sign that said “seized” on a Dassault Falcon 200 jet bearing a Venezuelan flag.
“We are very grateful to the Dominican Republic for participating and cooperating with the US justice system,” Rubio said in an interview with SIN News.
“The message is that when there are sanctions because they are violating human rights, they are violating a whole series of things, traveling to Iran, helping countries that really wish harm to the United States,” he said, “these sanctions are going to be applied and reinforced.”
Dominican Republic authorities detained the aircraft last year after US authorities said it had violated unilateral US sanctions against Venezuela.
Venezuelan officials used the plane to fly to Greece, Turkiye, Russia, Nicaragua and Cuba, and had taken it to the Dominican Republic for maintenance, according to the US State Department.
Maduro’s oil minister also used the plane to attend a meeting of the OPEC oil cartel in the United Arab Emirates in 2019, according to the Treasury Department.
In September, the United States, under then-president Joe Biden, announced the seizure of a first Venezuelan government airplane in the Dominican Republic that had been used to transport Maduro on international trips.
President Donald Trump has long vowed to clamp down on Maduro and in his first term unsuccessfully sought to remove him, after wide international questioning on the legitimacy of Maduro’s re-election.
But an envoy from Trump, Richard Grenell, last week traveled to Caracas to meet with Maduro, securing the release of six US prisoners.
Venezuela said the talks were held with “mutual respect,” but Rubio and other US officials have insisted that there was no backtracking on the US refusal to accept Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president.
Rubio said that Venezuela remained a concern for US national security, pointing to the mass migration from it as the economy implodes.
“Venezuela is an issue of national security, not just of lack of democracy,” Rubio told reporters Wednesday in Guatemala.
“It is about a government — a regime — that has harmed more than seven million Venezuelans, and all the neighboring countries that have had to face the reality of this massive migration,” he said, referring to Venezuelans who have left.
Grenell also pressed Maduro to accept the return of Venezuelans deported from the United States.
Trump quickly after taking office stripped roughly 600,000 Venezuelans in the United States of protection from deportation.
Biden had refused to deport them due to the security and economic crises in Venezuela.

WASHINGTON: Federal workers associations filed suit late Thursday asking a federal court to stop the Trump administration’s “effective dismantling” of the lead US aid agency.
The lawsuit by the American Foreign Service Association and the American Federation of Government Employees comes as the new Trump administration and ally Elon Musk are targeting the US Agency for International Development for eradication, freezing its funds and placing almost all of its workers on leave or furlough.
The lawsuit says President Donald Trump lacks the authority to shut down an agency enshrined in congressional legislation. It asks the federal court in Washington to compel the reopening of USAID’s buildings, return its staffers to work and restore funding.

Earlier in the day, the Trump administration presented a plan to dramatically cut staffing worldwide for US aid projects as part of its dismantling of the USAID, leaving fewer than 300 workers out of thousands.
Two current USAID employees and one former senior USAID official told The Associated Press of the administration’s plan, presented to remaining senior officials of the agency Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity amid a Trump administration order barring USAID staffers from talking to anyone outside their agency.
The plan would leave fewer than 300 staffers on the job out of what are currently 8,000 direct-hires and contractors. They, along with an unknown number of 5,000 locally hired international staffers abroad, would run the few life-saving programs that the administration says it intends to keep going for the time being.
It was not immediately clear whether the reduction to 300 would be permanent or temporary, potentially allowing more workers to return after what the Trump administration says is a review of which aid and development programs it wants to resume.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said during a trip to the Dominican Republic that the US government will continue providing foreign aid.
“But it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest,” he told reporters.
The Trump administration and billionaire ally Elon Musk, who is running a budget-cutting Department of Government Efficiency, have targeted USAID hardest so far in an unprecedented challenge of the federal government and many of its programs.
Since President Donald Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, a sweeping funding freeze has shut down most of the agency’s programs worldwide, and almost all of its workers have been placed on administrative leave or furloughed. Musk and Trump have spoken of eliminating USAID as an independent agency and moving surviving programs under the State Department.
Democratic lawmakers and others call the move illegal without congressional approval.