Good morning and happy May Day to any stray Europeans who wandered in here. Best of luck with your flower poles today.

UKRAINE

🇺🇦 U.S. and Ukraine sign landmark mineral deal

Sure, the White House is focused on a never-implemented idea to show the cost of tariffs alongside some prices on Amazon’s Temu knockoff. But it turns out you can complement Jeff Bezos and sign major global economic agreements at the same time.

Back in February, the U.S. and Ukraine had reached a preliminary agreement for the joint development of Ukraine's significant natural resources. President Trump framed it as a way for Ukraine to "pay back" the U.S. for billions of dollars in military aid since 2022.

• That version of the deal exploded in spectacular fashion during an Oval Office meeting between Presidents Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Ukraine has potentially trillions of dollars of natural resources critical to modern technology. That includes everything from lithium to oil and natural gas to the famed rare-earth elements. Despite their name, rare-earth elements aren't all that rare. What they are is costly and difficult to find and extract in large amounts.

• China currently produces about 90% of the world’s rare earths. If they turn off the faucet, well, that’s a big problem for America.

• The U.S. is building some new mines right now, but mineral deposits are limited.

• Most of Ukraine’s mineral wealth remains untapped. Ramping up production there could be a win-win for the U.S. and Ukraine.

What’s it say? According to U.S. Treasury Sec. Scott Bessent, the agreement establishes the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund. This’ll be a 50/50 joint venture that pairs American business, cash, and talent with Ukrainian natural resources.

• The U.S. government’s Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is going to work with Ukraine to get things going.

• The DFC helps set up U.S. business investments in foreign countries, often with government guarantees.

• The U.S. won’t own Ukraine’s untapped minerals. All those rights stay with Ukraine. But the U.S. will reap the benefits of their extraction.

What’s it going to cost us? How much future military and economic aid this will cost the U.S. isn’t clear yet. What is clear, though, is that Ukraine views the deal as a method of ensuring U.S. involvement in its economy and security over the long term. And the U.S. agrees, with Bessent saying it reaffirms America’s “commitment to Ukraine’s security, recovery, and reconstruction.”

This isn’t quite over just yet. The deal will still need to be finalized by Ukraine’s parliament. And then there’s that little issue of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine War. They’re still working on a potential ceasefire, but Russia isn’t playing along. One critical point: No one who aided Russia’s war effort will be allowed to benefit from the agreement.

GOVERNMENT

⚖️ The Supreme Court heard arguments on Wednesday in a case debating the legality of a state-funded private Catholic charter school in Oklahoma. Under state law, St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School is operated independently but takes state funding. The state's charter school board approved St. Isidore's creation, but Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond (her cousin) sued to stop it. He says the school’s public funding amounts to an illegal government establishment of religion. Expect a final decision in the case by early July.

🚫 Over at the Department of Defense (DoD), Sec. Pete Hegseth nixed the Women, Peace, and Security program. The program was created by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by then-President Trump in 2017 to boost women's participation in peacekeeping missions. But Hegseth believes the Biden administration "distorted & weaponized" it. He called it a "woke" and "divisive" initiative that distracts from the military's core task of warfighting. Since it was created by Congress, Hegseth can't kill it completely. Instead, he plans to do the bare-bones legal minimum and ask Congress to dump it next year.

📉 The Department of Commerce has spoken, and, well, the economy is shrinking (albeit barely). During the first quarter of 2025, U.S. gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 0.3% at an annualized rate. That’s down from positive growth of 2.4% at the end of 2024. GDP measures the value of everything the economy produces. But it only measures the final products — cars are included, but the parts that go into them aren’t. The White House defended the economy, blaming the shrinkage on funky economic math surrounding a massive surge in imports by people trying to avoid tariffs. They say everything will even out later when that stuff is used up or sold.

CONGRESS

💰️ Congress buckles down for budget fight

It’s never a good sign when your boss starts passing out goodie bags with Red Bulls, stress balls, and earplugs. That’s exactly what happened to members of the House Financial Services Committee yesterday ahead of a long, boring-but-contentious hearing on the 2026 budget.

Since Congress is so polarized, most of President Trump’s legislative priorities have to be passed as part of the annual budget. That means they’ve got to be budget-related. And taxes and fees are a big part of that. A lot of policy is based on what to fund and how to fund it.

• Since the budget is a must-pass sort of thing, it only needs 50 votes in the Senate. Most bills need 60 — a near impossibility these days.

Immigration: House Republicans proposed a budget-adjacent overhaul of the immigration system. Negotiations are ongoing, and the plan won't necessarily make the cut. But the idea is to modify the immigration system by juicing the fees involved. Proposed changes include:

• $1,000 to request asylum

• $3,500 to sponsor an unaccompanied child

• $550 for work permits every six months

The plan also calls for new immigrant detention centers, immigration judges, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) staff.

Why? Much of the Biden-era immigration surge was driven by immigrants crossing the border to claim asylum (a specific legal situation different from standard immigration). Generally, they'd be released into the U.S. while the approval process played out.

• Proponents of the fee changes say it would prevent system abuse by ensuring only genuine asylum requests are made.

• Opponents say the fees would make it too difficult for people seeking genuine humanitarian asylum.

Also on the budget docket? An overhaul of the student loan system (mostly) for future borrowers.

Impeachment: Elsewhere in Congress, three House Democrats removed their names as co-sponsors of Rep. Shri Thanedar’s (D) bill to impeach President Trump. Their stated reasons vary, but include the obvious: This thing ain’t passing a Republican-controlled Congress.

Ambassadors: The Senate confirmed former Sen. David Purdue (R) as U.S. ambassador to China. He’s a former CEO with extensive business experience in China. Houston Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta also sailed through confirmation as ambassador to Italy.

• In Rome, Fertitta will get to live in an insane 15th-century house. The official ambassador’s residence, Villa Taverna, is loaded with art, including an ancient Roman sarcophagus and Egyptian columns.

Vice President JD Vance performed his weird constitutional side gig on Wednesday. He showed up at the Senate to cast a tie-breaking vote against a Senate effort to kill President Trump’s tariffs.

TRIVIA

Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon. The capture of what was then South Vietnam's capital marked the end of the Vietnam War and a victory for the North, ushering in a half-century (and counting) of communist rule. Aside from Vietnam, what three countries still officially have communist governments?

Hint: Vietnam borders two of them.

BRIEFS

● A Catholic church cardinal from Baghdad predicts the papal conclave, set to begin Wednesday, May 7, will be “short” and last only two or three days. The most recent conclave lasting longer than that was 1958’s four-day event.

● Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and his Liberal Party rode anti-Trump sentiment to victory in this week’s election. They won 43.7% of the vote in a five-way race. Despite losing, the Conservatives improved their standing as support for minor parties collapsed.

● Pakistan wants Trump to play peacemaker to prevent a potential nuclear war. India is threatening military action against its neighbor (and enemy) amid rising tensions stemming from a terrorist attack in the long-disputed Kashmir region.

● Amazon launched 27 satellites into low-Earth orbit on Monday to kick off its long-delayed internet-from-space venture. Project Kuiper is a $10 billion effort to rival SpaceX's Starlink network and will eventually consist of 3,236 satellites.

● Nepal plans to limit overcrowding on Mt. Everest by only granting $15,000 climbing permits to those who have previously scaled at least one 23,000-foot mountain in the country. Income from climbers is the Nepali government's main source of revenue.

QUOTE

ANSWER

If North Korea is on your list, you lose a point (sorry!). While the place is basically a giant open-air prison and was founded as a communist state, it later removed all references to communism in favor of a hometown K-Mart version called "Juche." In addition to Vietnam, the three countries that still self-identify (despite significant economic changes in recent decades) as communist are China, Cuba, and Laos.