Trump and Russia are reportedly near a deal to end the conflict in Ukraine, the administration is looking to overhaul SNAP, and Charlotte’s ICE presence is clearing roads and classrooms.
It’s Thursday, November 20, 2025, and this is the news you need to know to start your day. Today’s edition of the Morning Wire podcast can be heard below, and the video version can be seen on The Daily Wire:
Peace In Ukraine At Last?
Topline: The Trump administration is crafting a plan to end the war in Ukraine. According to a new report, officials are in talks to get both sides on board with a 28-point framework.
While few details of a potential deal have been made public, administration officials seem confident about it. Politico quoted one official as saying, “What we are going to present is reasonable.”
The plan reportedly emerged from extensive talks between U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff and Russia envoy Kirill Dmitriev. The two ambassadors met in Miami last month and spent three days together on what a potential deal could look like.
According to Axios, Dmitriev came out of that meeting feeling like “the Russian position is really being heard.” He went on to describe the negotiations as “a much broader framework” that seeks to bring “lasting security to Europe, not just Ukraine.”
What’s not so clear is how far talks have moved forward with Ukraine, or with European officials who may be interested in any potential peace deal–especially one that may involve security guarantees the Europeans have to provide for Ukraine.
The White House seems to think that Kiev and Europe will eventually accept the deal, though, as long as “flexibility” is shown, as one White House official put it.
When? Some reports suggest a deal could be on the table as soon as the end of this week. That might sound fast, but we have seen a lot of movement lately.
According to Politico, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll and other senior U.S. military officials traveled to Kyiv on Wednesday to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who then traveled to Turkey to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan about restarting peace talks with Russia.
Zelensky didn’t talk more of any deal in the works, though, and it’s worth noting that there have been times in the past when Zelensky hasn’t had trouble dissenting from the White House. His buy-in is necessary before a peace plan can move forward.
According to Axios, part of the Trump administration’s plan includes asking Ukraine to trade some land for security guarantees–including some land that Russia does not currently control. That alone could be a sticking point for Ukraine.
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SNAP Waste, Fraud, And Abuse
Topline: Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has announced a complete overhaul of the food stamp program, promising to rein in fraud and abuse.
Rollins is changing a number of things, but most notably, her department is requiring current food stamp recipients to reapply for benefits. Currently, about 43 million people are in the SNAP program, about 12% of the population, and it costs taxpayers about $100 billion annually.
The department’s logic is that reapplying will reduce fraud and abuse, ensuring that benefits go to Americans who really need assistance.
Rollins said Americans know SNAP is “extremely corrupt” by the many anecdotal stories of fraud and waste. Videos have circulated on social media of people admitting to selling their benefits, or grabbing eye-popping grocery hauls for people who don’t seem very needy.
But, but, but: Without hard data, it’s impossible to know how much abuse is going on and where. Rollins has asked every state to share SNAP data to track down the fraud, but only 29 states, mostly Republican-led, have complied.
“The number is closer to 186,000 deceased men and women who are receiving a check,” Rollins said, based on the data the department has compiled so far. “500,000 people getting two times the benefits, individuals getting benefits in 4, 5, 6 different states – and those are just the red states.”
Rollins has said her department is suing to get SNAP data from remaining states, such as New York and California, and suggested the fraud and abuse will be even worse there.
SNAP to illegals? Despite the dearth of data on SNAP benefits, some evidence exists that points to illegal aliens receiving SNAP benefits.
A 2024 Survey of Income and Program Participation, analyzed by The Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), shows that, even though SNAP is restricted to applicants with legal status, potentially up to 4.5 million illegals are using SNAP. This is especially alarming since illegals are already permitted to use WIC, which is another welfare food program that’s a little more restrictive.
CIS also found that 47% of all noncitizen households receive taxpayer-funded food assistance. And generally, about 60% of illegal immigrant households use at least one major welfare program.
Charlotte Empties After ICE Raids
Topline: The Trump administration’s immigration sweeps in Charlotte, North Carolina, have left schools with minimal attendance and roads free of traffic.
Charlotte is a place that doesn’t seem like a traditional hotbed for illegal immigration, but immigration raids are starting to expose it as one. What we’ve seen so far is that school attendance is down. Around 30,000 students did not show up to class in Charlotte Public Schools on Monday after the sweep started over the weekend.
Immigration raids have yielded about 200 arrests and put fear into other industries around the city. Traffic is down altogether, and some construction sites have been completely abandoned.
Why Charlotte: The raids have revealed the city to be a major hotspot for illegal immigrants.
Border Patrol and the Department of Homeland Security, more broadly, saw Charlotte as a sanctuary after the sheriff of Mecklenburg County ended its partnership with ICE in 2018. The sheriff said that he would no longer allow ICE to come into his jails to take in illegal immigrant criminals that were set to be released, effectively adopting a sanctuary policy similar to places such as New York City and Chicago, where ICE and Border Patrol have already been active.
With Charlotte, federal officials say that there were 1,400 illegal immigrants sitting in jails in the city that local authorities were refusing to hand over to ICE. Officials trying to clean up the mess have effectively said, ‘If you’re not going to help us, we’re going to take matters into our own hands.’ And that’s what has happened.
The commander of Border Patrol, Gregory Bovino, has said that the sweeps are yielding more collateral arrests. In other words, illegal immigrants who are with the violent illegal immigrant offenders that federal officials are targeting are being arrested alongside those violent aliens.
According to Bovino, those aliens wrapped up in collateral arrests actually have more serious criminal histories than officials have seen in other cities where raids are happening.