The stakes of a potential Trump-Putin summit: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

Happy Friday! In today’s edition, we dig into a tentatively scheduled summit next week between President Donald Trump and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Plus, Kristen Welker previews her interview this weekend with Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker. And Aria Bendix answers this week’s reader question on the Trump administration’s latest vaccine moves.

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— Adam Wollner

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Trump appears to hand Putin a diplomatic win with a tentatively scheduled summit

By Alexander Smith

Just when Ukraine and its European allies thought President Donald Trump was coming around to their view of the war, he appeared to give a huge win to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.

For Kyiv, this was Trump’s deadline to Putin: stop the fighting by Friday or face tough new economic sanctions. Instead, Trump has handed Moscow a diplomatic coup by agreeing to meet Putin face-to-face in a matter of days, their first encounter since the invasion of Ukraine.

Trump had initially suggested that such a summit would only go ahead if Putin agreed to meet with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, something the Ukrainian president’s administration has long called for but has been resisted by Russia. On Thursday, Trump dispelled the idea that they would have to get together — raising the specter of a bilateral negotiation that freezes out Kyiv.

The latest: Gabe Gutierrez and Monica Alba report that the meeting between Trump and Putin is tentatively scheduled for the end of next week. The location is still being discussed, a senior White House official said, but possibilities include the United Arab Emirates, Hungary, Switzerland and Rome.

Further details and logistics of the meeting are still unclear and remain very fluid, including whether Zelenskyy will be involved.

The stakes: “The danger for Ukraine is actually quite grave,” said Jonathan Eyal, international director at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank. “There will be a sense of alarm in European capitals.”

For Eyal and others, Ukraine’s nightmare is now one step closer to reality: “Trump will be so pleased by what he perceives as the great achievement of getting Putin to the negotiating table that he grabs any kind of offer that is made,” Eyal said. “The danger of half-baked compromise, which Trump can claim as his main achievement, is very high.”

That compromise could be a temporary ceasefire that would allow Russia to restock its army and give its economy a break from international sanctions, according to Hope for Ukraine, a nonprofit organization based in Roseland, New Jersey.

Even if there is no truce agreement, “a meeting with Trump — no matter the outcome — would be a big diplomatic victory for Putin,” Yuriy Boyechko, Hope for Ukraine’s executive assistant, said in an email. “Putin wants to break his diplomatic isolation,” and such a meeting “will stroke his ego.”

Read more →

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The ripple effects of the growing redistricting wave

Analysis by Kristen Welker

The redistricting fight has boiled over.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott vowed Thursday in an interview with NBC News to call “special session after special session after special session” until state Republicans can pass new maps to pad the party’s majority in Congress, as Republicans ramp up their legal threats against the Democrats who fled the state to block their progress.

Democrats are vowing to push back. Governors like Illinois’ JB Pritzker, California’s Gavin Newsom and New York’s Kathy Hochul are warning they may move forward on efforts to redraw their own states’ districts to boost Democrats if Texas enacts new congressional lines.

This push by national Democrats to go “nuclear” puts them in line with the fight that their voters have said they want to see from their leaders, at a time where poll after poll shows the party at its lowest marks with the American public in decades.

But it’s a risky bet — potentially more so for Democrats than Republicans.

Democrats are up against a significant time crunch to get a special election onto the ballot this fall that could allow them to redraw maps in California. Hochul’s tough talk in New York is chastened by the laws there, which require a lengthy legislative process that wouldn’t likely lead to new maps until the 2028 elections. And Pritzker’s float of a redraw in Illinois runs up against more practical concerns — can Democrats squeeze any more juice out of a congressional map that has 14 Democrats and three Republicans?

And if all these efforts are successful, creating a new world where America redraws its congressional districts constantly for short-term political gain, will that be the final nail in the coffin for the already endangered species of political moderates on Capitol Hill?

We’ll discuss this issue and many more on Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” which includes exclusive interviews with Pritzker, former Attorney General Eric Holder and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.

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✉️ Mailbag: The impact of RFK’s latest vaccine policies

Thanks to everyone who emailed us! This week’s reader question is about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent moves on vaccine funding:

“Will there be enough Covid and flu shots available this fall?”

To answer this, we turned to health reporter Aria Bendix:We’re not anticipating any major supply issues right now. Kennedy’s decision this week to cut $500 million in mRNA vaccine contracts doesn’t apply to the current shots. Rather, he’s slashing federal funds for research projects intended to develop new vaccines, such as inhaled Covid or flu vaccines or shots that protect against bird flu. mRNA vaccines are seen as a critical tool for the next pandemic, since they can be produced and updated quickly.

As far as this fall and winter are concerned, flu vaccine manufacturers have already begun shipping doses to health care providers and pharmacies in anticipation of flu season starting around October. And the FDA approved new formulations of the Covid vaccine to be rolled out later this year.

However, there may still be a few impediments to getting vaccinated: It’s not clear whether insurers will cover Covid vaccines for healthy children or pregnant people after Kennedy said the CDC was no longer recommending them for these groups. And flu vaccines containing the preservative thimerosal — which made up a very small portion of last year’s shots — won’t be available, per a decision from a Kennedy-appointed vaccine advisory panel.

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That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Dylan Ebs.

If you have feedback — likes or dislikes — email us at politicsnewsletter@nbcuni.com

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CORRECTION (Aug. 8, 2025, 5:07 p.m. ET): A previous version of this article misattributed a comment about Putin’s diplomatic isolation. The statement was made by Yuriy Boyechko, not Gabriella Ramirez.

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