Washington — Making future military aid to Ukraine contingent on its participation in peace talks with Russia. Chinese nationals are prohibited from purchasing property within a 50-mile radius of US government structures. Filling the national security sector with supporters of Donald Trump.

One group attempting to prepare the framework for a second Trump administration if the former Republican president wins in November has released a new policy book articulating an “America First” national security strategy.

The book, which was shared with The Associated Press before its release on Thursday, is the America First Policy Institute’s newest endeavor. Like the Heritage Foundation’s “Project 2025,” the group aims to help Trump avoid the mistakes he made in 2016 when he entered the White House unprepared.

In addition to its policy activities, the institute’s transition project has been working on dozens of executive orders and a training program for prospective political appointees. Heritage has been developing a comprehensive personnel database and providing its policy manuals.

Both organizations emphasize their independence from Trump’s campaign, which has frequently made an effort to distance itself from such efforts by claiming that the only ideas the candidate supports are those that he has himself expressed.

Still, the book’s editor, Fred Fleitz, stated that he and retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as Trump’s acting national security adviser and wrote several of the chapters, have been in frequent contact with the former president, soliciting feedback and discussing topics such as Ukraine in depth.

We hope this is where he is. “We’re not speaking for him, but I believe he will approve,” said Fleitz, who formerly served as the National Security Council’s chief of staff.

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A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

He thinks the book will serve as “an intellectual foundation for the America First approach” to national security and be “easy to use.”

“It’s a grand strategy,” Kellogg continued. “You do not begin with the policies first. You start with the strategies first. And that’s what we did.”

The group portrays the current direction of US national security as a failure, blaming the foreign policy establishment for embracing an interventionist and “globalist” strategy at the expense of America’s national interests.

While lacking in specifics, the book provides guidelines for how a potential Trump administration should address foreign policy concerns such as Russia’s war against Ukraine. Trump has stated that if elected, he will resolve the problem before Inauguration Day in January but has yet to specify how.

The war chapter in the book focuses on how the conflict developed rather than how it was resolved. However, it states that any US military help should be subject to Ukraine’s participation in peace talks with Russia.

It forecasts that the Ukrainian army would gradually lose ground and warns against the US continuing “to send arms to a stalemate that Ukraine will eventually find difficult to win.” However, once a peace accord is reached, it states that the United States will continue to arm Ukraine as a deterrence to Russia.

The authors appear to support a framework in which Ukraine “would not be asked to relinquish the goal of regaining all its territory” but would agree to diplomacy “with the understanding that this would require a future diplomatic breakthrough, which probably will not occur before (Russian President Vladimir) Putin leaves office.”

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A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

It recognizes that Ukrainians “will have difficulty accepting a negotiated peace that does not return all of their territory or, at least for now, hold Russia accountable for the carnage it inflicted on Ukraine.” Their supporters will, too. However, as Donald Trump stated during the CNN town hall in 2023, ‘I want everyone to stop dying.’ That is our viewpoint as well. It’s a good first step.

The book blames Democratic President Joe Biden for the war and reiterates Trump’s argument that if he had been president, Putin would never have invaded. Its key argument in support of that assertion is that Putin regarded Trump as powerful and determined. Trump developed a close relationship with the Russian leader and hesitated to question him.

Most of the chapter outlines an, at times, inaccurate timeline of Biden’s management of the conflict.

Moving forward, it appears like Putin could be convinced to participate in peace talks if Biden and other NATO leaders offer to postpone Ukraine’s NATO membership for an extended time. It proposes that the United States develop a “long-term security architecture for Ukraine’s defense that focuses on bilateral security defense.” It needs to explain what this entails. It also proposes charges on Russian energy sales to fund Ukraine’s rehabilitation.

The book criticizes Trump’s 2016 transition operations, citing a general lack of preparation before Trump took office.

“The tumultuous transition of 2016/2017 did not serve President Trump and the nation well and slowed the advancement and implementation of his agenda,” the writers stated. For example, they point out that before the election, Democrat Hillary Clinton’s transition team submitted over 1,000 names for future security clearance. Trump’s team filed only 25.

The group claims to have identified over 1,200 national security-related roles that the future administration would need to fill and wants it to be prepared on Day 1 with Trump loyalists who support the “America First” strategy.

“It is not about retaliating against individuals or attempting to politicize official posts. “It’s about ensuring that government employees do their jobs while keeping politics out of it,” Fleitz added.

The book portrays China as the country’s most significant national security concern, eager to dethrone the United States as the world’s dominant force. It advocates a hardline policy that builds on methods taken under both the Trump and Biden administrations to render Beijing’s actions “largely irrelevant to American life.”

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A Trump Affiliated Group Has Released A New National Security Book Outlining Prospective Second-Term Approaches.

It raises economic concerns about China to national security ones and advocates a reciprocal strategy that would deny Beijing access to US markets in the same way that American enterprises have been denied access in China.

The book also calls for more stringent screening of cyber and digital enterprises owned by US rivals, particularly China, to ensure they are not collecting sensitive information. It also advises prohibiting Chinese people from purchasing property within a 50-mile radius of any US federal facility.

It advocates for visa restrictions on Chinese students seeking to study in the United States and the ban of TikTok and other Chinese apps due to worries about data privacy. Conversely, Trump has spoken out against legislation that would force TikTok to sell or ban access in the United States.

Analysts’ interpretations of what constitutes an “America First” policy frequently reflect the writers’ own interests.

Ellie Cohanim, a former Trump senior State Department ambassador in charge of monitoring and combatting antisemitism, sees “America First” as a shopping list for Israel’s military.

The United States should provide Israel with a squadron of “25 Lockheed Martin F-35s, one squadron of Boeing’s F-15 EX, and a squadron of Apache E attack helicopters,” Cohanim stated.

The United States should give Israel some of its billions of dollars in military funding in Israeli currency so that it can spend it at home, and Washington should press Arab states to foot the bill for Gaza reconstruction and accept Israel’s suspension of any political talks with the Palestinians pending an indefinite period of compulsory deradicalization for the Palestinian people, she wrote.

SOURCE – (AP)

Boulevard, California  — Julia Paredes believed that her migration to the United States was either now or never. Mexico was just days away from needing visas for Peruvian travelers. If she didn’t move immediately, she’d have to embark on a more dangerous, clandestine voyage overland to join her sister in Dallas.

Mexico began requiring visas for Peruvians on Monday in response to a significant surge of migrants from the South American country, following similar actions by Venezuelans, Ecuadorians, and Brazilians. It removed the possibility of flying to a Mexican city near the US border, like Paredes, 45, did just before the deadline.

“I had to treat it as an emergency,” said Paredes, who worked delivering lunch to miners in Arequipa, Peru, and borrowed money to fly to Tijuana, Mexico, across the border from San Diego. Last month, traffickers led her through a remote hole in the border wall to a dirt lot in California, where she and about 100 other migrants from around the world chilled over campfires after a morning drizzle while waiting for overloaded Border Patrol agents to bring them to a processing station.

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Mexico Tightens Travel Rules On Peruvians In A Show Of Visa Diplomacy To Slow Migration To US

Senior US officials addressed reporters ahead of a summit of top diplomats from approximately 20 Western hemisphere countries this week in Guatemala. They praised Mexico’s crackdown on air travel from Peru and described visa restrictions as an important instrument for combating illegal migration.

Critics argue that banning air travel fosters more risky decisions. Although the pause was brief, illegal migration by Venezuelans fell sharply after Mexico enforced visa requirements in January 2022. Last year, Venezuelans accounted for about two-thirds of the record-breaking 520,000 migrants who crossed the Darien Gap, a notorious jungle that spans portions of Panama and Colombia.

Last year, more than 25,000 Chinese traveled through Darien. They typically fly to Ecuador, a country with little travel restrictions, and then illegally cross the US border in San Diego to request asylum. With an immigration court backlog of over 3 million cases, it takes years to resolve such claims, allowing people to obtain work permits and establish roots.

“People are going to come no matter what,” said Miguel Yaranga, 22, who flew from Lima, Peru’s capital, to Tijuana before being released by Border Patrol on Sunday at a San Diego bus stop. He received orders to appear in immigration court in New York in February 2025, which perplexed him because he had informed authorities he would settle with his sister on the opposite side of the country, in Bakersfield, California.

According to Jeremy MacGillivray, deputy chief of the International Organization for Migration’s Mexico mission, Peruvian migration will reduce “at least at the beginning” and then rebound as individuals move to travel through the Darien Gap and to Central America and Mexico.

Last month, Mexico said that it will need visas for Peruvians for the first time since 2012 in response to a “substantial increase” in illegal migration. Large-scale Peruvian migration to Mexico began in 2022. Peruvians were stopped an average of 2,160 times each month from January to March this year, up from a monthly average of 544 times in 2023.

Peruvians also began arriving at the US border in 2022. The US Border Patrol apprehended Peruvians an average of 5,300 times per month last year, dropping to 3,400 from January to March amid Mexico’s massive immigration campaign.

Peru promptly reciprocated Mexico’s visa demand but altered its direction after facing criticism from the country’s tourism industry. Peru stated in its reversal that it is a member of a regional economic bloc that includes Mexico, Chile, and Colombia.

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Mexico Tightens Travel Rules On Peruvians In A Show Of Visa Diplomacy To Slow Migration To US

According to Adam Isaacson, an analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America, Peru’s membership in the Pacific Alliance with Mexico gave its people visa-free travel longer than in other countries.

It is unknown whether Colombia, another major source of migration, will be next, but Isacson claims Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has a “lovefest” with his Colombian counterpart, Gustavo Petro, while his relations with Peru’s administration are tense.

Colombians frequently rank among the top nationalities of migrants arriving at Tijuana’s airport. Many stay in motels before being guided to the boulder-strewn mountains east of the city, where they cross through border wall holes and walk into dirt lots designated as waiting stations by the Border Patrol.

Bryan Ramírez, a 25-year-old Colombian, arrived in the United States with his girlfriend last month, just two days after flying from Bogota to Cancun, Mexico, and then to Tijuana. He waited with others overnight for Border Patrol authorities to pick him up as chilly rain and strong winds whipped over the crackle of high-voltage power lines.

The group waiting near Boulevard, a small, vaguely defined rural community, included several Peruvians who claimed to have come for economic opportunities and to flee violence and political concerns.

Peruvians can still bypass the Darien jungle by traveling to El Salvador, which granted them visa-free travel in December in exchange for a similar action by Peru’s government. However, they would still have to travel overland via Mexico, where many are robbed or abducted.

Mexico Tightens Travel Rules On Peruvians In A Show Of Visa Diplomacy To Slow Migration To US

Ecuadorians, who have required visas to enter Mexico since September 2021, can also fly to El Salvador, albeit not all of them do. Oscar Palacios, 42, explained that he walked through Darien since he couldn’t afford to fly.

Palacios, who abandoned his wife and year-old child in Ecuador with plans to financially support them in the United States, said it took him two weeks to get from his house near the violent city of Esmeralda to Mexico’s border with Guatemala. It took him two months to cross Mexico because immigration officials turned him around three times and bused him back to the country’s southern region. He claimed he was routinely robbed.

After three nights in a motel, Palacios arrived in Tijuana and entered the United States. A Border Patrol agent recognized him with migrants from Turkey and Brazil and drove them to a dirt lot to wait for a van or bus to transport them to a processing station. Looking back on the adventure, Palacios stated that he would rather cross the Darien Gap 100 times than Mexico just once.

SOURCE – (AP)

Pavilion Township, Michigan – Severe storms swept into the Midwest early Wednesday, a day after two tornadoes ripped through a Michigan city and surrounding area, demolishing homes and business structures, including a FedEx factory.

According to the National Weather Service, tornadoes were initially recorded after dark Tuesday in sections of Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio. Tornado watches were also in effect in Illinois, Kentucky, and Missouri. The storms struck a day after a fatal tornado blasted through an Oklahoma town.

Travis Wycoff left his southwestern Michigan home Tuesday night after seeing on radar that a tornado had touched down in the Portage region. About five minutes later, he discovered the aftermath.

“There were a lot of people running through the streets trying to find people and their pets,” Wycoff stated. “It was just a lot of chaos.”

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Severe Storms Batter The Midwest, Including Reported Tornadoes That Shredded A FedEx Facility

Wycoff claimed he assisted an elderly couple get out of their partially collapsed home and liberated a service dog from a property whose owner was at work.

On Wednesday morning, he distributed water and volunteered to assist in cutting down fallen tree branches around the Pavilion Estates mobile home park.

“It is community. “I can’t sit a mile away from here when I was completely safe,” Wycoff added. “I couldn’t sit there in good conscience and not come down to try to help somehow.”

The National Weather Service verified that a tornado with a preliminary EF-0 rating and winds of 85 mph (137 kph) came down early Wednesday in southern Indiana, damaging homes in a subdivision north of Sellersburg, which is about 12 miles (19 kilometers) north of Louisville, Kentucky.

The Clark County Emergency Management Agency reported that the storm damaged 24 structures.

Candice Holmes, a Lewis & Clark condominium homeowner north of Sellersburg, said she, her husband, and son took refuge in their bathroom when they heard the approaching storm and “the wind just picked up all at once.”

“My husband and son went outside, opened the door, slammed it, and hurried back to the restroom. “And they held the bathroom door shut as it passed through,” Holmes told WDRB-TV. “It was done as soon as it began, but it was a frightening experience. And I’m delighted we’re still alive.

According to Jeff Craven, the meteorologist in charge of the weather service’s Pittsburgh office, survey teams will go out Wednesday to evaluate whether tornadoes affected Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia regions.

Tornadoes were detected on radar in Hancock County, West Virginia, and Jefferson County, Ohio, but according to Craven, teams will need to assess the damage to determine their rating.

Hancock County Schools in West Virginia canceled classes Wednesday due to “extensive overnight weather issues” throughout the county. News outlets reported damaged structures and power disruptions.

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Severe Storms Batter The Midwest, Including Reported Tornadoes That Shredded A FedEx Facility

According to forecaster Tabitha Clarke, a National Weather Service team was also heading to Hot Springs, Arkansas, to assess the damage and strength of a tornado that struck early Wednesday morning.

The tornado damaged homes, toppled trees, and knocked down power lines. According to the state Division of Emergency Management, there were no initial reports of tornado-related injuries.

In Michigan, two tornadoes slammed through Portage and the nearby Pavilion Township, demolishing houses and commercial structures, including a FedEx facility.

No significant casualties were reported immediately, but municipal officials claimed in a news release that the tornadoes knocked off electricity to more than 20,000 residents. According to city officials, the majority of them will be without power until late Wednesday.

Due to broken electrical lines, approximately 50 people were trapped inside the FedEx building. However, corporate representative Shannon Davis confirmed late Tuesday that “all team members are safe and accounted for.”

According to Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller, more than a dozen mobile homes in Pavilion Township were “totally destroyed.” At least 16 individuals were hurt there, he said, although the injuries were not life-threatening.

“We found homes in the roadway,” the sheriff stated late Tuesday. “We found houses in our neighbors’ homes. We discovered huge trees in residences.

On Wednesday, the sound of chainsaws and tree limbs snapping filled the air as cleanup at a mobile home park began.

“The cleanup efforts are enormous. We’re looking at homes across this community that have been completely demolished,” Fuller said Wednesday at the Pavilion Estates mobile home park.

A house with seven occupants “is totally on its top,” he remarked. They were able to self-rescue, get somewhere safe, and come back today.”

Pavilion Township is approximately 137 miles (220 kilometers) west of Detroit.

According to PowerOutage.us, over 30,000 people in Michigan lost power early Wednesday, with another 10,000 in Ohio.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has proclaimed a state of emergency in four counties.

National Weather Service crews were surveying storm damage in several counties in Michigan’s southwest Lower Peninsula on Wednesday to determine whether tornadoes touched down there, including the two reported Tuesday night in the Portage area, according to meteorologist Mike Sutton of the weather service’s Grand Rapids office.

He said the Grand Rapids office had received 11 tornado reports from storm spotters, emergency managers, and the general public between late Tuesday afternoon and Tuesday night, but no tornado touchdowns had been confirmed as of 8 a.m. on Wednesday.

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Severe Storms Batter The Midwest, Including Reported Tornadoes That Shredded A FedEx Facility

“It’s possible that these are numerous reports from the same storm. The real number of tornadoes could be fewer depending on what they uncover while surveying,” Sutton said.

The storms on Tuesday followed a day of torrential rain, strong winds, hail, and tornadoes in parts of the central United States. Tornadoes wreaked havoc across the Plains and Midwest this spring.

Across the United States, the entire week looks stormy. The Midwest and South are likely to bear the brunt of the poor weather for the remainder of the week, including Indianapolis, Memphis, Nashville, St. Louis, and Cincinnati, which have more than 21 million populations. It should become evident over the weekend.

On Monday night, a catastrophic tornado ripped through the 1,000-person community of Barnsdall, Oklahoma. At least one person was killed, and another is missing. Dozens of homes have been damaged.

It was the second tornado to strike Barnsdall in five weeks; on April 1, a twister with maximum wind speeds of 90 to 100 mph (145 to 161 kph) damaged homes and blew down trees and power poles.

Oklahoma communities, including Sulphur and Holdenville, are still recuperating after a tornado that killed four people and left others without electricity late last month.

SOURCE – (AP)