Trump promises Ukraine aid on Europe’s dime, with heavy penalties for Russia. On Monday, President Trump announced a new plan to increase sales of U.S. weapons to Europe in order to help support Ukraine, and promised aggressive new tariffs—perhaps as high as 100%—aimed at Russia’s trading partners should it fail to reach a peace deal in the next 50 days. 

Among the arms Trump said the United States would sell to Europe are a “full complement” of Patriot missiles and batteries, which are generally understood to be 32 missiles, though it varies depending on missile type. Such sales had been in doubt following a hastily-announced and terminated “review” of U.S. weapons stocks, which resulted in a temporary pause in Ukraine aid, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Monday.  

Rewind: This past January, outgoing members of President Joe Biden’s security team met with members of the incoming Trump team. A plan was floated to allow the incoming administration to continue to provide vital weapons and aid to Ukraine, paid for out of rising European defense budgets. That particular plan that strongly resembles the one announced yesterday in the Oval office, Tucker reports. 

Several nations have already lined up to buy U.S. arms for transfer to Ukraine. Those include Germany, Finland, Canada, Norway, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Denmark, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Monday during a visit to the White House. “Speed is of the essence here,” Rutte told reporters. 

Berlin’s POV: “We are determined to assume greater responsibility for Europe’s deterrence and defense, while recognizing that the contribution of the United States of America remains indispensable to our collective security,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters Monday after a visit to the Pentagon. 

Developing: Trump may also remove limits on long-range ATACMS strikes inside Russia, David Ignatius of the Washington Post reported Monday. Ignatius cited “a source involved in the decision” to resume arms transfers to Ukraine (via sales to NATO allies first). 

An estimated $10 billion in U.S. arms for Ukraine could be coming soon, Ignatius writes. But there is also considerably more: “I’m told by a source involved in the decision that this is likely to include permission to use the 18 long-range ATACMS missiles now in Ukraine at their full range of 300 kilometers (about 190 miles),” Ignatius reports. “That wouldn’t reach all the way to Moscow or St. Petersburg, but it would strike military bases, airfields and supply depots deep inside Russia that are now out of range. The package might also include more ATACMS,” he added. 

Notable: Trump is allegedly holding back on sending Ukraine tomahawk cruise missiles, citing in part their much-greater range. “They could be deployed later if Trump wants even more leverage,” Ignatius writes.  

Bigger picture: “The president has also embarked on an escalatory course whose risks are unknowable,” according to Ignatius, echoing fears of many Republican lawmakers during Biden’s tenure as president, when U.S. officials weighed the pros and cons of arming Ukraine with ATACMS, F-16s, tanks, and more. Many U.S. lawmakers accused Biden of provoking a third world war. Relatedly, “It was interesting that the one question Trump didn’t want to answer in Monday’s Oval Office session was: If Putin decides to escalate further, how far are you willing to go in response?” Ignatius reported from Trump’s remarks to reporters Monday at the White House. Read the rest, here.

Putin’s bet: U.S. sanctions and more weapons to Kyiv will not stop his Ukraine invasion, three sources close to the Kremlin told Reuters on Tuesday. “Putin thinks no one has seriously engaged with him on the details of peace in Ukraine—including the Americans—so he will continue until he gets what he wants,” one of those sources said. Another source alleged “Putin considered Moscow’s goals far more important than any potential economic losses from Western pressure.”

Trump’s NATO pivot: The Russia-focused alliance “is now becoming the opposite of [obsolete]” because more members are “paying their own bills,” the president said in a 20-minute phone interview with Gary O’Donoghue of the BBC on Monday. He didn’t elaborate a great deal in the interview, but when asked if he trusts Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Trump responded, “I trust almost nobody, to be honest with you.” 

Related reading: 

• “Donald Trump asked Volodymyr Zelenskyy if Ukraine could hit Moscow, say people briefed on call,” the Financial Times reported; 
• “US citizen who helped Russia from inside Ukraine granted Russian passport by Putin,” Reuters reported Tuesday; 
• “‘Not our war’ – Trump’s Nato weapons deal for Ukraine sparks MAGA anger,” the BBC reported Tuesday.

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Welcome to this Tuesday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Patrick Tucker. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1916, Boeing Co. was founded in Seattle as the Pacific Aero Products Company; it was renamed Boeing Airplane Company the following year.

Around the Defense Department

Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok now has a $200 million deal with the Pentagon, and it comes just days after an “antisemitism row,” reports the BBC. 

Background: Anthropic, Google and OpenAI won similar awards (the number is a “ceiling” that each could win based on existing contracts, Govexec’s editor-in-chief Frank Konkel writes). But the inclusion of Elon Musk’s’ xAI, the parent of the Grok, drew surprise and some alarm. 

Dive deeper: Grok, which is available as a chatbot feature for users of Musk’s X social media platform (formerly Twitter), has spouted racist conspiracy theories and used antisemetic language, and increasingly reflects the personal biases of Musk, himself. 

Capitol Hill reax: “This is the same Grok that was ‘manipulated’ into praising Hitler last week,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., posted on X. “What could possibly go wrong when integrating this AI into our national security?”

New: Pentagon pulls all military speakers from ‘globalist’ Aspen Security Forum, Just The News reported Monday In a statement received by The New York Times and multiple other outlets, Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson described the event–long-attended by senior U.S. military and political leaders–as promoting “the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country and hatred for the president of the United States.” 

Remember Trump 2.0’s first national security advisor, Mike Waltz? Despite being ousted from the White House more than two months ago after the Signalgate scandal with Pete Hegseth, “Waltz has spent the last few months on the White House payroll, earning an annual salary of $195,200,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday. 

Waltz has been nominated to be Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations, and he’s testifying before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday for his first confirmation hearing for that role. That hearing began at 10 a.m. ET. Livestream what remains here. 

Pacific region

In a new first, Australia used a HIMARS long-range rocket system in a war game alongside U.S. and Singapore counterparts Monday, Reuters reported from Australia. 

Why it matters: The system has a 250-mile range, and is seen as a credible threat to the growing Chinese military in the region. “HIMARS will be utilised in conjunction with a number of other weapon platforms … to ensure we have a strategy of denial for security, peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific,” the top officer in charge, Australian Army Brig. Nick Wilson told reporters. 

Sixteen other nations are exercising as well this week in drills known as Talisman Sabre, which span far off Australia’s mainland up near Christmas Island and extend down to Australia’s eastern coast. More, here. 

Japan’s military flagged increasingly complex Chinese military drills in the region as a growing threat, according to the latest such annual report. Chinese troops are “stepping up their activities throughout areas surrounding Japan, including the East China Sea around the Senkaku Islands, the Sea of ​​Japan and the western Pacific Ocean, beyond the so-called first-island,” the authors warn. 

North Korea is also “a more serious and imminent threat to Japan’s security than ever before,” the authors write, citing Pyongyang’s “capability to attack Japan by equipping ballistic missiles with nuclear weapons.”

Recommendation: “It is extremely important to strengthen cooperation not only with allies, but also with as many countries as possible.” Read over the English version (PDF) here. 

Additional reading: 

• “State Department cuts China policy staff amid major overhaul,” the Washington Post reported Monday; 
• And the “State Department cuts hit cyber diplomats doing international engagements,” our sister site Nextgov reported Tuesday. 

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The One Big Beautiful Bill will hand about $2.5 billion to the Army, most of which will go to buying more current weapons while accelerating development of new ones, Defense One’s Meghann Myers reports. The Pentagon is lumping the reconciliation bill’s funding with its recently proffered 2026 appropriations request, which combined would increase the service’s procurement budget by about 14 percent.

The cash infusion comes as the Pentagon reviews its weapons stockpiles and its ability to send aid to allied countries, a move that temporarily halted planned weapons shipments to Ukraine without approval from the White House. You can read more about that here.

Taking lessons from Ukraine’s fight against Russia, the Army is hoping to pump nearly $1 billion into air defense, including specific allotments to speed up the fielding of M-SHORAD and the Stinger missile replacement. The full rundown is here.    

Meanwhile, the Pentagon is hoping to stock up on drones for both offensive and defense strikes. A memo signed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls for the Defense Department to start treating unmanned aerial vehicles as expendable munitions, rather than aircraft, Defense One’s Patrick Tucker reported Friday.

The move would allow Navy captains or Army colonels to buy in bulk as they would other ammunition, rather than having to wait for high-level acquisitions contracts. Read more about the memo here.

Also: SecDef Hegseth pulls 7th Fleet commander nomination over drag? Rear Adm. Michael Donnelly, currently the Navy’s head of air warfare, is no longer under consideration to lead the service’s forces in the eastern Indo-Pacific, USNI reported Friday. The Pentagon has given no explanation, but The Daily Wire, which first reported the story, claimed the move came after the outlet asked the Pentagon questions about drag performers during  ship talent shows while Donnelly commanded the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan from 2016 to 2018. 

Second opinion: “What is Pete Hegseth so afraid of?” asks Defense One contributor Jon Duffy in a commentary on Donnelly’s scuttled nomination. 

Additional reading: 

• “Strong US defense spending draws investors to space startups, report says,” Reuters explained Monday citing VC firm Seraphim Space’s report; 
• “SASC to Pentagon: you need a new cyber-deterrence plan,” Defense One’s Lauren C. Williams reported Friday; 
• And in commentary, “To build ‘peace through strength,’ restore this pillar of US power,” argues former U.S. official Frank Rose, writing Monday in Defense One, regarding the restoration of research funding to universities.

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Welcome to this Monday edition of The D Brief, a newsletter dedicated to developments affecting the future of U.S. national security, brought to you by Ben Watson and Meghann Myers. Share your tips and feedback here. And if you’re not already subscribed, you can do that here. On this day in 1933, Adolf Hitler abolished all German political parties except the Nazis.

Ukraine developments

NATO chief Mark Rutte is visiting Trump at the White House Monday. Rutte is reportedly spearheading a campaign for alliance members to buy U.S. weapons and pass them on to Ukraine, which has been fending off a Russian military invasion for three-plus years. 

One possibility under discussion involves Germany buying two Patriot anti-missile systems and sending at least one to Ukraine, Reuters and the Institute for the Study of War reported this weekend. That arrangement is expected to be a key pillar of German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius’s trip this week to Washington, where he’s slated to meet with Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. 

“Pistorius will also seek clarity on whether Washington remains committed to temporarily deploying long-range missiles to Germany from 2026, as agreed under former President Joe Biden,” the wire service reported separately Monday. “The deployment would include systems such as Tomahawk cruise missiles with a range of 1,800 kilometres (1,118 miles) and the developmental hypersonic weapon Dark Eagle with a range of around 3,000 km.” The U.S. military’s force posture in Germany is also expected to be a point of discussion between Hegseth and Pistorius. More, here. 

Trump’s Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg visited Kyiv Monday for talks with President Volodymir Zelenskyy. The two discussed “Ukraine’s air defense, joint production, and procurement of defense weapons in collaboration with Europe. And of course, sanctions against Russia and those who help it,” Zelenskyy wrote on social media. 

“I am grateful to President Trump for the important signals of support and the positive decisions for both our countries. We deeply value the support of the American people,” he added. 

Related reading: 

• “Macron Lifts Military Spending: ‘You Have to Be Feared’,” the New York Times reported Sunday from Paris;
• And “Ukraine says suspected Russian FSB assassins killed in Kyiv region,” Reuters reported Sunday from Kyiv. 

Trump 2.0

State Department laid off 1,350 employees on Friday, a move the administration argues will make the agency more efficient, Government Executive’s  Eric Katz reported, calling the laid off positions “non-core,” “duplicative” or “redundant.” The move brings this year’s overall reductions of State’s manpower to nearly 3,000, when combined with voluntary resignations. Full story here.

DOGE followed up over the weekend by firing nearly the entire staff of the U.S. Institute of Peace, WUSA9 reported. The administration first tried to take over the organization, founded in 1984 by the Reagan administration, in March. A June court ruling lifted a block on moves to gut the organization, which Trump first signaled with an executive order in February. 

Over at VA, reported cost savings are apparently unrelated to DOGE cuts, The New York Times reports. The department touted canceled contracts that are still in effect. 

Additional reading: 

• “FEMA Didn’t Answer Thousands of Calls From Flood Survivors, Documents Show,” the Times reported separately on Friday; 
• And when it comes to the future of NASA, “Maybe We Don’t Need to Go to Space Anymore,” argued Alexandra Petri writing Friday for The Atlantic.

Deportation nation

Trump vowed to deport “dangerous criminals” and “the worst of the worst.” But six months into his administration, more than 7 in 10 people deported had no criminal convictions, the Associated Press reported Saturday after digging into the latest public statistics from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, released on June 23.

Expert reax: “Trump has justified this immigration agenda in part by making false claims that migrants are driving violent crime in the United States, and that’s just simply not true,” Lauren-Brooke Eisen of the Brennan Center for Justice told AP. “There’s no research and evidence that supports his claims,” she said.  

Notable: “Research has consistently found, however, that immigrants are not driving violent crime in the U.S. and that they actually commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. A 2023 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, for example, reported that immigrants for 150 years have had lower incarceration rates than those born in the U.S.” And that disparity has in fact grown since 1960, Melissa Goldin of AP writes. Continue reading, here. 

Developing: Florida officials appear to be responsible for “enforced disappearances,” which would be a violation of international human rights law, the two celebrated Florida newspapers reported jointly this weekend. 

The lede: “The Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times has obtained a list of more than 700 people who have been detained or appear to be scheduled to be sent to the Florida-run immigration detention facility known as Alligator Alcatraz. The DeSantis administration has not made public a list of names of the immigrants held at the facility in heavy duty tents at an airstrip in the Florida Everglades.”

The papers obtained a list of names at the facility, and “searched each of the 747 names in the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Detainee Locator.” However, “Only 40 appeared on the public-facing website.”

What is an enforced disappearance? According to this definition provided by the United Nations (emphasis added), it consists of “the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.” 

Additional reading: 

• “‘Egregious.’ Brazen.’ ‘Lawless.’ How 48 Judges Describe Trump’s Actions, in Their Own Words,” the New York Times editorial board reported in a multimedia feature on Saturday (gift link);
• “Two-thirds of the DOJ unit defending Trump policies in court have quit,” Reuters reported Monday;
• And “Americans have made a U-turn on immigration since 2024 election,” Politico reported off new Gallup polling published Friday.   

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