Marco Rubio may be rivaling Macbeth in the bloody hands department if the roll he’s on continues. You’re painfully aware of how USAID folded overnight. This was at the behest of Elon Musk. Rubio made a feckless claim that a “six-week investigation” had taken place and USAID was found to be inefficient, so 83% of its programs were killed overnight. Children will literally die due to Musk’s playing government and Rubio playing along. And now we have an even worse scenario involving children.
The State Department has quietly terminated a contract that was in the process of transferring evidence of alleged Russian abductions of Ukrainian children—a potential war crime—to law enforcement officials in Europe, two people familiar with the situation tell The New Republic.
The nixed award could make it harder to continue tracking down the kidnapped Ukrainian kids and complicate efforts to seek accountability for the abductions, says one of the sources, who has direct knowledge of the ongoing operation.
One of Ukraine’s central demands for any peace deal is the return of Ukrainian children who have allegedly been the victims of a Russian program of coerced adoption. Russia has claimed this program is a humanitarian one that benevolently adopts Ukrainian kids and makes them citizens. But under President Biden, the State Department strongly condemned it as the “forcible transfer and deportation of Ukraine’s children to camps promoting indoctrination in Russia.”
Indeed, as The New York Times reported, Russia has not just transferred children from Ukrainian orphanages to Russian camps; it has also taken kids whose relatives want them back. The Times noted that the abductees number in the “thousands,” and concluded: “This mass transfer of children is a potential war crime.”
The contract is extremely sensitive, because it involves the tracking of some of these abducted children. With this award, which was initially granted several years ago and renewed in late 2023, the State Department has been underwriting work by the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab, which has been using highly sophisticated tools, such as satellite imagery and analysis of open-source technology and biometric data, to identify and locate the abducted kids.
Repatriation of the children forcibly removed is the goal here. It is certainly an honorable goal and one that comports with the Geneva Convention and with human rights laws globally. But it looks like that is not going to happen now. And this is a tragedy of no small dimension.
The Yale lab had also transferred names and dossiers on the abducted kids it had located to Ukrainian authorities. But the underlying evidence—the hard digital documentation of kids’ movements and locations, compiled with sophisticated technologies—still needs to be transferred to Europol, the European Union’s law enforcement arm, the source with direct knowledge of the operation says.
This transfer to Europol has been interrupted by the Trump-Rubio State Department’s cancellation of the award, according to that source and a Democratic congressional aide with knowledge of the contract. This sort of tracking involves extremely complex and technologically sophisticated work, and the evidence itself—which is essential to proving the abductions—is highly complicated and must be moved via secure channels.
But now the transfer won’t happen, potentially making it harder to ultimately track down and bring back the kids and less likely that the repatriations happen at all, the first source tells me. In a statement,* Yale confirmed the contract’s cancellation but declined to comment directly on the State Department’s decision. […]
On another front, Reuters reports that ongoing Trump administration funding freezes are defunding other efforts by Ukraine to investigate and document Russian war crimes, ones that had previously been funded by the U.S.
Meanwhile, Trump has installed Pete Marocco at the State Department, where he is overseeing the destruction of the U.S. Agency for International Development by gutting its funding and canceling thousands of its contracts. This has been loudly cheered by Russia, which hates USAID’s promotion of democracy abroad. And ProPublica reports that in 2018, Marocco met abroad with Bosnian Serb separatist and Christian nationalist leaders aligned with Russia, in defiance of then U.S. policy.
The State Department’s actions are aligning with Russia because Trump is aligned with Russia. That is the simple truth of the matter. Meanwhile, Rubio is struggling to maintain a position of neutrality in the Russia-Ukraine conflict as long as he’s a member of the Trump administration, which is utterly absurd. And the rest of the world knows it. Congressman Tom Malinowski says, “Americans may take different positions about how to resolve this conflict, but I’m confident that every American, Republican or Democrat, understands why Ukrainian parents would fight to get their children back. Achieving that is essential to peace.”
In any normal administration, that would be the case. But this administration is not normal. For the first time in history, we have an American *president* who is working against one of our allies and for one of our adversaries. His Secretary of State may try to whitewash that basic truth, but it’s an effort in futility.
Marco Rubio is going to end up being a major fall guy for Trump. In fact, I predict the day will dawn, if it hasn’t already, when he rues taking the job.
*********
If you’re able to help the blog stay up and running with a donation, it would be greatly appreciated. We are here for the duration. The pendulum will swing back again and the electorate will become reengaged. Meanwhile, thank you for being here and collectively, we shall overcome. Ursula
I had a long Friday talk with my cousin who’s headed overseas like he does this time every year. He spent a career doing remarkable things. After college, to the chagrin of everyone in his family (except I think his father) he went into the Peace Corps. It took him to Nepal where he met his wife, and while he didn’t say much I gathered from talking with him after I met her (it turned out we’d been living a half-mile from each other in Alexandria, VA while he was stateside preparing for his next posting) his marriage to a dark skinned woman didn’t go over well at all. I found her, and their kids to be delightful. In any case he worked with different foreign aid groups before joining the State Dept. which he retired from back in 2016. Jim commented on a change I’d made to my FB homepage – he liked it a lot. Naturally we talked about what’s been going on, and he’s deeply saddened by the cutting of USAID which funded so much work he did prior to becoming a diplomat. Not to mention other stuff. I suggested while in southeast Asia he tell folks he’s Canadian! (Americans have in some places done that since back in the first Trump term) He’ll be mostly amongst longtime friends. Since he’s got a family (albeit the kids are grown) he’ll come back in a couple of months but if not he admitted he’d seriously consider just staying put. He’s got the connections from multiple stints in southeast Asia to get permanent residency. As someone who devoted his life to diplomacy and helping people in some of the poorest places he’s now ashamed of this country as I am. If he had any “juice” with Ukraine I’d have him asking them to let me come over and fight. I got turned down when I tried at the start of the war due to (I assume) my age and disability. However the Marines trained me in anti-tank warfare and they are down to mostly using the same armor I was trained to ID and shoot missiles at. In less than a week I could have my “tank ID” up to snuff and get checked out on Javelins which are a helluva lot easier to use than the Dragon and T.O.W. missiles from back in my day. And I still recall how to rig explosives. I told him I’d be willing to die for Ukraine, and given my condition understood the high chance it would be up to me to cover a withdrawal and go to hell in a crowd of Russians. He didn’t try to dissuade me when I said I’d go on a day’s notice to fight.
My country I was willing to die for doesn’t exist anymore. I can only hope, and work towards making it worth it again.
There’s talk and walking the talk. You have it in you to overcome the obstacles. Bon Courage
This absolutely wrecked me. Just shattered me. I would say “How could they?!” but it’s already obvious because they already did. I’m speechless.
Yet another way in which Trump and Russia are behaving like Hitler. Nazi Germany stole “Aryan” children from.their parents and gave them to SS officers for adoption. What’s next? Brothels with sufficiently Aryan unmarried girls being recruited to bear children.for Putin’s favorites, as Hitler did with the Lebensborn brothels?
Surprised? Hardly. After all, Trump separated 6000 children at OUR border with NO SYSTEM OR INTENTION TO REUNITE THEM! Nine years later 1400 are still missing! The American voters’ response? Phuck you kids…we want the child killer/rapist back in absolute power. Phuck you America. Phuck your goddamn evil hypocrisy. Just plain PHUCK YOU!!! Little Marco is a good American. I rescind my oath as a veteran to defend any goddamn country that votes child killing nazis into power. May karma jump up and bite you phucking heartless evil bastardsin the ass. May you rot in HELL, which each day brings you closer to your just reward…eternal darkness with your peers…the demons of HELL. They once were people too. Just like YOU!
now can anyone be a hero and get that data where it needs to go without funding? Employ a little basic spycraft, even?