Good morning and welcome to White House Watch. An affordability crisis is sweeping the US, squeezing poorer Americans and causing ructions in Washington. Also in today’s newsletter:
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Is a Russia-Ukraine peace deal in sight?
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Charges against James Comey and Letitia James dismissed
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Donald Trump and Xi Jinping are talking again
Rising prices for food, housing and healthcare are piling pressure on low-income Americans and creating a major political problem for the president.
As living costs escalate, Democrats are seeking to capitalise on a wave of frustration with the Trump administration and cracks are emerging in the president’s Maga movement.
I spent some time in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and the surrounding Lehigh Valley last week to speak to locals about the affordability crunch and its potential political ramifications.
Many of those I spoke to were struggling just to make ends meet. Anissa Camacho, a 26-year-old florist, told me it felt “like everything is just closing in around us”.
Demetri Nash, a 32-year-old yard driver at a local warehouse, said he was working as many as 72 hours some weeks to get by.
Many blame politicians, leaving Trump with the shoe on the other foot after he surged to victory in last year’s presidential election on the back of voter frustrations with Joe Biden over the cost of living.
But a year later, inflation is back where it was when Trump took office and the president is the target of voter ire.
Election victories in New York, New Jersey and Virginia followed campaigns that highlighted rising costs. Meanwhile, the Maga movement has begun to fracture amid accusations he should be doing more to focus on domestic issues.
Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once a Trump loyalist, resigned over the weekend after breaking with the president, who she accused of “gaslighting” voters by telling them that costs were falling.
Yet it is not a given that Democrats will be able to capitalise on the cost of living fallout. The party’s polling numbers edged towards historic lows this year and many of those I spoke to in the Lehigh Valley had little faith the party held the answer to their troubles.
“All I see is them fighting and going back and forth and back and forth. That’s not helping any of us,” said 43-year-old Tiffany Chase, who spoke with me while picking up groceries at a food bank. “I never had such a strong dislike for politics.”
Over the next four years, the FT will be reporting from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania — a post-industrial city in one of the country’s electoral battlegrounds — to understand Trump’s economy and the hopes of those who backed him in 2024, and those who didn’t. Read more here.
The latest headlines
What we’re hearing
Russia has signalled it could reject a modified US peace plan to end the war in Ukraine if it fails to satisfy Moscow’s long-standing demands, even as Kyiv indicated it had agreed a framework with Washington.
Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov said earlier today that if the plan “erased . . . key understandings” that Russian President Vladimir Putin thought he had reached with Trump at a summit in Anchorage, Alaska, in August, the “situation will be fundamentally different”.
Lavrov was referring to a revised 19-point peace plan agreed with Ukrainian and European officials in Geneva, which followed a 28-point US proposal drawn up with Russian input and presented to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Thursday.
The first version of the plan, which Lavrov said Russia had “welcomed”, called for Ukraine to give up territory it has yet to lose in combat, as well as imposing other restrictions on Kyiv. But the latest draft is less favourable to Moscow, leaving the most sensitive issues to be decided by Trump and Zelenskyy.
As Washington continues its push to end the war, US army secretary Dan Driscoll is holding negotiations in Abu Dhabi with Ukraine’s military intelligence chief and a Russian delegation.
Driscoll, an ally of US vice-president JD Vance, began talks with the Russians on Monday night, according to a US official and two people familiar with the meeting.
The composition of Russia’s delegation was not immediately clear and it remained unclear whether the three sides in Abu Dhabi were meeting together or talking separately.
In his evening address on Monday, Zelenskyy said he now believed the “necessary steps to end the war can become doable”.
“After Geneva, there are fewer points — no longer 28 — and many of the right elements have been taken into account in this [new] framework,” he said.
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