| Six months into his second term, President Donald Trump is taking markedly divergent approaches to two overseas conflicts from what he promised his MAGA faithful. In a dramatic move reminiscent of the Cold War, Trump revealed today that he directed two US nuclear submarines be positioned in “appropriate regions” in response to “highly provocative” statements from Russia’s former president, Dmitry Medvedev. Medvedev, now deputy security council chairman, invoked his own ominous warnings recently about Russia’s doomsday nuclear strike capability that was part of an escalating online war-of-words with the US president.  Trump Photographer: Eric Lee/Bloomberg The hard-line stance with Russia cements a shift for Trump, who has grown increasingly frustrated with Vladimir Putin. After pledging as a candidate to stop US aid to Ukraine and to quickly end the conflict, Trump is still facilitating shipments of American weapons to Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s government, albeit on Europe’s dime. While that was welcome news for establishment Republicans, it sparked anger from the isolationists among Trump’s core supporters. Yesterday, he signaled support for new sanctions on Moscow and called Russia’s attacks on Ukraine “disgusting.” He also told my colleague Skylar Woodhouse that he was setting a 10-day deadline for Putin to agree to a truce. Likewise, Trump’s promise to bring an end to the conflict in Gaza, triggered by Hamas’ invasion of Israel, also has proven tough to keep. Although the US president blames Hamas for prolonging the war, its also caused a bit of a rift with Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as within his political base. Trump disagreed with Netanyahu’s assessment that there’s “no starvation” among the civilians in Gaza, based on what he’s seen on television. “I see it, and you can’t fake that,” he said earlier this week. There’s also been a divide emerging among Trump’s supporters. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a MAGA stalwart, became the first Republican member of Congress to use the term “genocide” to describe the situation in Gaza, a position more associated with the left-wing of the Democratic Party. “It does feel like we’re at a watershed moment,” said Mona Yacoubian, who leads the Middle East Program at CSIS. “Whether all of that translates into a change in policy from the White House, that, to me, is another question entirely.” Other developments this week: - Squawk box: Trump has been meeting with executives of big US banks to discuss, among other things, monetizing mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which have been under government conservatorship since the 2008 financial crisis. That could include a public stock offering, something Trump has said he’s considering, Bloomberg’s Todd Gillespie, Katherine Doherty, Hannah Levitt and Josh Wingrove reported. Officials have struggled for years with what to do with the so-called government-sponsored enterprises — one of the last loose ends from the crisis era.
- Pollution rules: The Trump administration proposed scrapping the government’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases as air pollutants by revoking a finding that planet-warming gases endanger public health and welfare, Bloomberg’s Ari Natter reported. It would be among the most far-reaching steps yet by the administration to gut US capacity to fight climate change.
- Redistricting: Texas Republicans unveiled their first proposal for a revamped congressional map, aiming to deliver as many as five more GOP seats in the US House in the 2026 midterm elections, my colleague Joe Lovinger reported. Trump had called on state lawmakers to take on the unusual mid-decade restructuring as Republicans are at risk of losing their paper-thin majority in the chamber.
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