COLD WAR PART DEUX

President Biden’s sweeping Russian hostage deal shows he still aims to get some big things done, despite his lame-duck status — especially in foreign policy.

• The U.S. and Russia completed the biggest prisoner exchange since the Cold War on Thursday, swapping a total of 24 people held in six countries, including 16 held by Russia. Three Americans were freed, including Evan Gershkovich, a Wall Street Journal reporter, and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. marine. Biden hailed the deal on Thursday in the White House State Dining Room, surrounded by family members of the released Americans. “Their brutal ordeal is over, and they’re free,” the president said. “It’s an incredible relief.”

• Gershkovich had been held in Russian custody for over a year. The 32-year-old journalist was charged with what U.S. officials, his newspaper and his family all insisted were bogus espionage allegations. He’d been sentenced to 16 years in prison last month. Whelan was arrested in 2018 and likewise accused of spying on flimsy evidence. Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are expected to greet the returnees Thursday night at the Andrews Air Force Base.

• In exchange, Russia received an assassin named Vadim Krasikov, who’d been sentenced to life in Germany for a brazen killing in a park in downtown Berlin, along with seven other prisoners convicted of a variety of crimes. Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former KGB officer with a lifelong personal interest in cloak-and-dagger work, had seemed particularly interested in getting Krasikov back, apparently to show that the Kremlin never forgets its foreign spies when they get locked up on a mission.

The historic deal illustrates how Biden is still pushing to make the most of his last half-year in the White House.

• Biden declared himself  “determined to get as much done” as he can, shortly after bowing out of his campaign for reelection in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. Among his top goals: a cease-fire deal between Israel and Hamas. Meanwhile, his administration is scrambling to keep the Middle East from spinning out of control as tensions rise between Israel, Lebanon and Iran over high-profile assassinations.

• At home, Biden is racing to confirm more federal judges, with 48 positions currently vacant. He’s already placed some 200 of them — and if he hustles, he may be able to seat more judges than anyone since former President Jimmy Carter, according to one recent analysis. Civil rights leaders and elected officials recently urged Biden to focus the end of his presidency on issues like affordable housing and criminal justice reform, according to the Washington Post.

• Disgraced former President Trump, meanwhile, criticized the prisoner exchange as “bad precedent.” Trump had been campaigning on his supposedly unique ability to free the American hostages in the first days of his new administration — even though he never freed Whelan when he had the chance.

Asked about Trump’s boasts by a reporter in the White House, Biden delivered a one-sentence, mic-drop response: “Why didn’t he do it when he was president?

NEWS NEWS NEWS

Republicans are wringing their hands in private over Donald Trump’s baseless attacks on Kamala Harris’s racial identity during the National Association of Black Journalists’ annual convention, according to Politico. Who could have possibly predicted he would say something racist there except absolutely everyone.

Trump, meanwhile, doubled down on his race-baiting attacks, and boasted about his incendiary appearance at a rally and on social media. Yep, that’s him!

Republican Vice Presidential Nominee JD Vance defended Trump’s racist remarks as “totally reasonable” by making the audacious claim that Harris “pretends to be somebody different, depending on the audience she’s talking to.” The existence of a biracial person is really breaking their brains, huh.

Meanwhile, Vance insisted that Trump is still “confident” in him despite the rocky start to his vice presidential campaign (to put it generously), when even Republicans are grumbling about Trump’s ill-advised choice. Vance is reportedly planning to reboot his campaign and begin appearing in public more often, according to CNN. Not sure if seeing even MORE of you is gonna help, my guy!

A New York appeals court upheld the decision to keep Trump’s gag order in place while the former president awaits sentencing, meaning Trump still isn’t free to run his mouth about that case. Obviously, this hardly stops him, but it’s nice to see the levers of justice work from time to time.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) introduced legislation intended to undercut the Supreme Court ruling providing former presidents with sweeping immunity from criminal conviction for any crimes committed while in office.

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