Turkish imports of Russian oil drop nearly fourfold after new sanctions

Turkish imports of Russian oil have quietly plummeted since harsher sanctions were imposed earlier this year, the Moscow Times reported on Feb. 27.
The U.S. and U.K. passed sweeping sanctions against Russia's oil sector on Jan. 10, particularly targeting Moscow's "shadow fleet" of tankers.
Shipments of Russian Urals, the country's flagship crude oil, have dropped to a low not seen since December 2022. Turkish imports of Russian Urals fell to 0.24 million tons in February, down from 1.56 million tons in January, the Moscow Times .
Turkey's top refiner, Turkiye Petrol Rafinerileri (Tupras), has stopped accepting shipments of Russian crude, demanding that they comply with the $60 per barrel , Reuters reported earler this month. The change in policy began after the Jan. 10 sanctions.
The drop in demand for Russian oil has impacted operations at Gazprom Neft and Surgutneftegaz, major Russian oil and gas companies, and has affected over 180 tankers of the so-called "shadow fleet," a large group of vessels Russia uses to circumvent Western sanctions.
Amid sanctions on Russian , Turkey has sought to import from other producers. Turkish imports of oil from reached a five-year high in February.
Turkish imports of Nigerian Forcados Blend oil reached 0.26 million tons in February, the highest amount the nation has purchased from since 2020. The country imported 0.36 million tons of Libyan Es Sider and Amna grade oil in February compared to only 80,000 tons in January — a fourfold increase.
Turkey has been long singled out as one of the main facilitators of circumventing sanctions imposed on Russia by the West over the invasion of Ukraine. In November 2024, the European Union's anti-fraud agency opened an investigation into the possible exporting of rebranded Russian oil via Turkey into the EU.
Turkey, a member of NATO, has been pursuing a standalone Russia policy since Russia's full-scale invasion began, retaining a mediator role between Russia, Ukraine, and the West.
Russian and U.S. officials held talks in Istanbul on Feb. 27, their second round of direct discussions this month. Ukraine was not a topic of the discussion, the U.S. State Department said.
Read also: 'Trump likes what Putin does,' Bernie Sanders says in exclusive interview
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CNN

26 minutes ago

• CNN

The kings of Queens: Andrew Cuomo seeks restoration months after Donald Trump's

They are two men from the outer boroughs of New York – both with the Queens accent to prove it, each with his own distinctive rhythm – born of domineering fathers who chose their careers for them and made them righthand men. They revered their fathers but also saw them as not quite ready to do what it took to truly get ahead. One brought his father's real estate empire into Manhattan and turned it into a global brand. The other took his father's political mantle and built a career in both Washington and New York, winning three governor's elections of his own. Both revel in finding weakness and needling those they don't respect. Both can be abrasive, then charming a moment later. Both present themselves as forever underestimated. Both have faced a litany of scandals and been accused of sexual misconduct by multiple women in allegations they both deny and dismiss as politically motivated. Both have small circles of ultra-loyalists and much longer lists of enemies who want them to fail. Now, seven months after Donald Trump won a second White House term that he presented as part vindication, part retribution, Andrew Cuomo is seeking his own restoration. Ahead of Tuesday's Democratic primary for New York mayor, Cuomo has centered his bid on the idea that he alone has the stature and experience to fight Trump. Their lives have intersected and crashed into each other for 40 years – over politics and policy, literal questions of life and death during the Covid-19 pandemic, but also personality and self-assurance that each knows better what their parties, and Americans, want. That worries some who have clashed with both. 'Seeing what I see from Washington, DC, which is only focused on retribution and revenge, there are a lot of similarities in certain people running for the mayor of the city of New York, and I don't need those same characteristics to be revealed in the office of the mayor or the city,' said New York Attorney General Tish James, a longtime Cuomo and Trump critic. For decades, they were competing Macy's Thanksgiving Parade balloon-sized personalities who made the motions of friendship to get what they really wanted. Trump recorded a video played at Cuomo's bachelor party warning him not to cheat. Nineteen years later, Cuomo was one of the guests watching Trump walk his daughter Ivanka down the aisle at her wedding to Jared Kushner. Over that time, Trump donated a total of $64,000 to Cuomo's campaigns. A few days after Cuomo won his third term as governor in 2018, he flew to Washington to have lunch with Trump, where the president greeted him like an old friend. Before walking out of the Oval Office grabbed Cuomo's arm and said, 'Hey Andrew, can you believe this?' The year that defined them both was 2020. As they faced off over immigration, Covid-19, racial justice protests and federal funding for the state of New York, Cuomo would return to the Oval Office for what would be the first of three in-person meetings, along with dozens of phone calls and quite a few tweets. A dozen aides to Trump and Cuomo revealed new details about those run-ins to CNN. They spoke on condition to anonymity to discuss private meetings. Those details may be the guide for what may be ahead if Cuomo becomes mayor and they inevitably meet again. The meeting started with a warm handshake, with the White House photographer right up close to get the smiles. 'You should sit here,' Trump said, pointing Cuomo to one of the chairs in front of the Resolute Desk, according to one person in the room. That morning before heading to the White House, Cuomo had accused Trump of 'extortion': The president was threatening to revoke 'trusted traveler' status for New York, which allowed for Global Entry speeding travelers through customs, if the governor didn't give the administration access to the state's driver's license database. Immigrants without legal authorization can get licenses in New York. Cuomo didn't want the database to be used for immigration raids, but he also didn't want to lose all the international travel business. In the meeting, Trump held up a sheet with three columns of states, arranged by color. All green were giving Trump all the information he wanted. Green and red were mixed. New York, Trump pointed out, was all red. He shoved the chart across the desk at Cuomo. Trump name-checked a few rich New Yorkers who didn't want to have their access to Global Entry shut down. 'It's good leverage,' he pointed out to Cuomo, according to the person in the room. 'You can do this, but we will sue you,' Cuomo told him. By the end, neither the president nor the governor had conceded anything, and aides to both thought they'd outmaneuvered and cornered the other. Trump slid a small stack of red MAGA hats toward Cuomo at the end, talking about his poll numbers and how great his re-election campaign was going to be. Cuomo glanced at them and did not pick them up. Eventually, the administration produced a memorandum of understanding that did not admit doing anything wrong but did back off the threats. A court reinstated 'trusted traveler' later that year. But within weeks, no one was traveling much at all. Trump was on the phone quickly after the first confirmed coronavirus cases hit New York. He had been yelling at rallies that the virus was a Democratic hoax, but to Cuomo, he was asking what the state needed, what he could do to help. Within days, their daily dueling briefings began. Cuomo liked the attention, the sudden nationalization that made him both a social media hero for locked-down liberals, driving Democratic speculation that he could sub in as the Democratic presidential nominee for a man already showing his age, then-former Vice President Joe Biden. Cuomo and Trump watched each other on TV. They went in front of cameras to respond to mock and undermine each other. Then they got on the phone and blew past whatever had been part of the show to talk about what they were going to do. Trump was giving Cuomo's team access to statisticians and academics trying to figure out what was happening. Cuomo was grateful, often telling aides who were running into problems that he'd walk into his office and call the president directly to get them cleared, enjoying being able to bypass what he'd felt was too many steps in dealing with the previous administration of Democratic President Barack Obama. When Trump toyed with blockading New York City, Cuomo wrote a New York Times op-ed with one reader in mind. Trump called him as soon as he saw it and talk of a blockade stopped. Cuomo felt like he was in the catbird's seat, his aides say, of being in a crisis needing something out of a president he was convinced he knew how to work. 'They both understood why each of them was taking the public approach and it didn't really bother them why the other one was saying what they were saying publicly,' a former state official told CNN. Cuomo and a few aides were back in the Oval Office two weeks later to ask for more help. Each state was being allocated 20,000 tests per day, and Cuomo felt the severity in New York should get their allocation boosted to 40,000. Going in, Cuomo had been amused that he and his aides had to test multiple times before seeing the president themselves. Trump was behind the desk again, Cuomo and aides in chairs in front. According to three people in the room, the president kept the conversation loose, armed again with charts and a marker to make points. Trump asked Cuomo if he'd seen the 'Bikers for Trump' rally that had just happened. He asked how Cuomo's mother was doing. Cuomo sat back, letting him go on before interjecting to bring him back to a specific ask. He even brought the president a bottle of New York-branded hand sanitizer. 'They always did that charm dance with each other because they were Queens brawlers,' one Cuomo aide at the time told CNN. Trump asked Cuomo how 'our hospitals' back in Queens were doing. Eventually he agreed to the extra tests, but not extra disaster aid Cuomo wanted too. Trump offered to put Cuomo on the phone with the doctor who'd treated then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who had just recovered from coronavirus. On the way out, Cuomo and his retinue ran into Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, according to two people who saw the interaction. Cuomo asked about the disaster relief money, and when he heard it wasn't resolved, brought them back into the Oval Office. Trump, already back in his private dining room watching TV, came back in and agreed to the request. As they left, he gave Cuomo a few extra rapid testing machines they had in the White House for his own use. Cuomo aides convinced themselves that they were being strung along so that Trump would cajole Cuomo to join his own briefing that evening. Trump aides say that was never a possibility. They each did their own briefings after, Cuomo when he returned to New York. Two days after George Floyd was killed, Cuomo was back in the Oval Office. He wanted to get Trump thinking that more federal money for infrastructure projects could 'supercharge' the projects while giving Trump potential accomplishments for an ongoing re-election campaign that appealed to him personally and politically. The meeting did not go well – Trump came in incensed that the New York attorney general had subpoenaed his children and was convinced that Cuomo had orchestrated it, according to top Cuomo aide Melissa DeRosa, who detailed the encounter in her book, 'What's Left Unsaid: My Life at the Center of Power, Politics & Crisis.' But afterward, Cuomo went a few blocks over to the National Press Club in Washington and said it was a 'good conversation.' 'The president is from New York, so he has a context for all these things we're talking about,' Cuomo said. The money never arrived. They talked more when the summer of protests sparked by Floyd's murder began to grow violent in New York. Though things were never as intense there as in other parts of the country, Cuomo responded with a stronger hand than his rival, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, pushing de Blasio to establish a curfew, moving to send in state police and openly considering sending in the National Guard himself. A few weeks later, Trump was dangling the threat to send troops into more cities. Cuomo called him and told him not to. Trump told him to stop criticizing him publicly. Cuomo backed off. The troops never came. The relationship dissolved again later that summer, when Trump was furious about Cuomo's recorded speech to the Democratic National Convention. Far from the famous rallying keynote Mario Cuomo delivered against Ronald Reagan in 1984, it was still a call to action, and a call to kick out 'a dysfunctional and incompetent' Trump. The president spent the night tweeting furiously about 'the horrible governor.' Since Trump moved troops into Los Angeles two weeks ago to quell protests over immigration enforcement, Cuomo has repeatedly said that Trump didn't do that when he was governor and wouldn't do it if he were mayor. Trump aides question both claims, but Cuomo does have the 2020 parallel to point to. Trump has made clear he wants the operations in Los Angeles to be the first in a series of moves into blue cities. Cuomo has spent the closing weeks of his campaign leaning heavily into anti-Trump talk and warning about repeats of Los Angeles in TV ads, in mailed materials and in comments on the trail. Last month, when word leaked that the Department of Justice was stepping up its investigation into him for possible perjury in congressional testimony over his handling of Covid-19, he linked himself to other Democratic politicians the president has targeted. 'We know Mr. Trump, because this is Trump II. I was there for Trump I,' Cuomo boasted on Thursday at a stop. 'Don't ever forget that we beat Trump once. We're gonna beat him again.' Cuomo's opponents, meanwhile, have said he wouldn't stand up enough, and 'I think New Yorkers are hungry for a different kind of politics,' progressive challenger Zohran Mamdani began one campaign video standing outside of Trump Tower, drawing comparisons between the two of them. Incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who is seeking reelection as an independent, and others say Cuomo is only running for to line himself up for Trump's current job in 2028. Cuomo, in turns, says his rivals aren't tough enough and recently suggested Trump would cut through Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman, 'like a hot knife through butter.' He argues repeatedly that his experience is a main reason to elect him. The president was asked in April about Cuomo. Aboard Air Force One, Trump claimed credit for helping New York during the pandemic before offering an apt summary of their relationship. 'I've always gotten along with him,' Trump said. 'We've had our ins and outs a little bit.'

Yahoo

36 minutes ago

• Yahoo

Pakistan to nominate Trump for Nobel Peace Prize

By Saeed Shah ISLAMABAD (Reuters) -Pakistan said on Saturday it would recommend U.S. President Donald Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize, an accolade that he has said he craves, for his work in helping to resolve the recent conflict between India and Pakistan. Some analysts in Pakistan said the move might persuade Trump to think again about potentially joining Israel in striking Iran's nuclear facilities. Pakistan has condemned Israel's action as a violation of international law and a threat to regional stability. In May, a surprise announcement by Trump of a ceasefire brought an abrupt end to a four-day conflict between nuclear-armed foes India and Pakistan. Trump has since repeatedly said that he averted a nuclear war, saved millions of lives, and grumbled that he got no credit for it. Pakistan agrees that U.S. diplomatic intervention ended the fighting, but India says it was a bilateral agreement between the two militaries. "President Trump demonstrated great strategic foresight and stellar statesmanship through robust diplomatic engagement with both Islamabad and New Delhi, which de-escalated a rapidly deteriorating situation," Pakistan said. "This intervention stands as a testament to his role as a genuine peacemaker." Governments can nominate people for the Nobel Peace Prize. There was no immediate response from Washington. A spokesperson for the Indian government did not respond to a request for comment. Trump has repeatedly said that he's willing to mediate between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region, their main source of enmity. Islamabad, which has long called for international attention to Kashmir, is delighted. But his stance has upended U.S. policy in South Asia, which had favored India as a counterweight to China, and put in question previously close relations between Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In a social media post on Friday, Trump gave a long list of conflicts he said he had resolved, including India and Pakistan and the Abraham accords in his first term between Israel and some Muslim-majority countries. He added: "I won't get a Nobel Peace Prize no matter what I do." Pakistan's move to nominate Trump came in the same week its army chief, Field Marshal Asim Munir, met the U.S. leader for lunch. It was the first time that a Pakistani military leader had been invited to the White House when a civilian government was in place in Islamabad. Trump's planned meeting with Modi at the G7 summit in Canada last week did not take place after the U.S. president left early, but the two later spoke by phone, in which Modi said "India does not and will never accept mediation" in its dispute with Pakistan, according to the Indian government. Mushahid Hussain, a former chair of the Senate Defence Committee in Pakistan's parliament, suggested nominating Trump for the peace prize was justified. "Trump is good for Pakistan," he said. "If this panders to Trump's ego, so be it. All the European leaders have been sucking up to him big time." But the move was not universally applauded in Pakistan, where Trump's support for Israel's war in Gaza has inflamed passions. "Israel's sugar daddy in Gaza and cheerleader of its attacks on Iran isn't a candidate for any prize," said Talat Hussain, a prominent Pakistani television political talk show host, in a post on X. 'And what if he starts to kiss Modi on both cheeks again after a few months?"

Washington Post

38 minutes ago

• Washington Post

Abandoned by Trump, a farmer and a migrant search for a better future

KIRK, COLORADO There was a saying he'd heard, about how every farmer rooted for all the other farmers to do well, too, until one of those others started farming next door. So JJ Ficken didn't talk much about the grant money with other farmers. But his bills had mounted, and his ambitions had unraveled, and in Kirk, a town of 61, it was easy to feel alone. Now on that afternoon in mid-April, JJ, 37, unstrapped the bags of seed corn on his trailer for a customer. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement 'How are ya?' JJ said, extending his hand to a man he'd known all his life. They'd played ball together, shared in family trips. So JJ decided to tell him. The federal government had promised JJ a $200,000 grant, spread across two years, to cover the cost of a seasonal farmhand from Latin America. In a place where local, legal help was nearly impossible to keep, the extra worker would give him the freedom to handle more jobs and invest in his own equipment. It was an opportunity that could transform his family's future, but, JJ explained to his friend, President Donald Trump had frozen the money. 'Good,' the man said, grinning. 'Too much spending here and there. I'm okay with a little hurt.' JJ took a breath. 'It needed to be done,' JJ said, softly, because he was also a Republican who, like nearly every farmer he knew, thought the country wasted too much money. 'But not all of it,' JJ said, because he rejected the notion that his grant was a waste. 'I guess,' JJ said, because he didn't want to argue. JJ Ficken plants corn on a sunny day in April. Hurt was something JJ already understood. It had been part of the landscape long before Trump took office. JJ was an American farmer, perpetually subject to weather, labor, loans, overhead, markets, health, politics. None of it was predictable, and all of it was a threat. The industry's survival has long depended on the deals made between millions of Americans willing to brave all that uncertainty and a federal government willing to sustain them, through grants, subsidies, insurance, financing, payouts and disaster relief. But then Trump, in the earliest days of his second term, threatened to break tens of thousands of those deals, suspending billions in agricultural funding and decimating the staffs that managed it. Swept up in the freeze was JJ and the $50 million grant program he'd signed up for along with 140 other farmers across the country. All of them had agreed to hire and, in many cases, house domestic workers or lawful immigrants willing to take jobs that Americans would not, but with the reimbursements in doubt, farmers worried they'd miss payrolls, default on loans or face bankruptcy. Many feared the checks would never come. 'I tried to do things right,' JJ said, because he could have taken on an undocumented laborer at any time for $14 an hour, as many of his neighbors had, but he didn't believe in supporting illegal immigration. Almost nothing mattered more to him than his word, and he'd kept it to the U.S. government: He'd committed to buy a plane ticket for a 24-year-old from Guatemala named Otto Vargas. He'd rented him a single-wide. He'd bought him an old pickup to use. He'd spent tens of thousands of dollars to do what the grant required, covering most of it with a line of credit at 8.5 percent interest. Now, he didn't know if Otto would ever get here, or if the government would ever pay him back. Deep reads The Washington Post's best immersive reporting and narrative writing. Each Deep Reads story is narrated so you can listen on the go. This one is read by the author and includes audio gathered in reporting, original music and sound design. Previous Next JJ had joined 81 percent of Yuma County's voters in supporting Trump, whom he considered the better of two bad options. He wanted to believe that the president would honor his many pledges to do right by people like him. 'The USA will PROTECT OUR FARMERS!!!' Trump had posted to Truth Social that very day. JJ needed that to be true as he climbed into his Dodge, turned onto a gravel road and drove toward the horizon, where eastern Colorado's parched brown canvas converged with a cloudless sky. Nothing else was within view. No people. No cows. No homes or barns, pickups or tractors. Out here, it was just JJ and the dirt. It was the fall of 2023, and an ad urging farmers to apply for the grant program had been playing for months on the radio when JJ's wife finally brought it up. 'Why not?' Kassidee asked. Larger farms paid specialists to handle the paperwork, but Kassidee, 36, believed they could take on the applications themselves, and they did, slogging through 40 hours of maddening federal bureaucracy. Each night, they put their two kids to bed and sifted through hundreds of pages of guides and forms in JJ's basement office. Taped to his walls were bits of motivation and financial advice. 'Stay the Course,' read a line at the top, bolded and underlined. JJ was a fourth-generation farmer but had been handed no wealth, land or expensive equipment from his parents, who divorced when he was about 6. To make a living, he had baled hay and helped raise neighbors' wheat, soybeans, pinto beans, great northern beans and alfalfa. Now he rented and farmed his mom's two circles of corn, each about 125 acres, and partnered with his dad to sell seed corn. He and Kassidee, a dental hygienist, married in 2012 and slipped into debt in their early 20s. They dug themselves out with advice from Dave Ramsey's books: Save for big purchases and live below your means. The couple paid off their home early, opened investment accounts, bought a small rental house. They'd avoided serious debt since, but the promise of a grant and another worker inspired JJ to make a bigger bet on himself. Vivian Ficken, 7, and her brother, Henry, 4, play on bags of seed corn. Henry rides on his father's lap in the tractor. JJ pours a mixture that prevents the seed corn from clumping as it's planted. In the months after applying, he bought a 2012 combine, a 2013 planter, a 2013 corn header, a 2000 Dodge pickup meant for Otto and a second hay stacker, the only new piece of equipment he'd ever owned. JJ paid cash as much as he could but still owed more than $380,000. At the time, it didn't scare him, because with Otto, the grant money, the farmhand he already had and the extra margin he'd pocket from owning his machinery, JJ figured he could pay it all off in three years. His investments spoke to the value that even one dependable worker can bring to today's farms, where more than 40 percent of the workforce is undocumented. To address the critical shortage of labor and stem the flow of undocumented immigrants, the U.S. Agriculture Department unveiled the Farm Labor Stabilization and Protection Pilot Program in 2023. With the grant, farms could bring on foreign workers through the H-2A visa program and, in exchange, provide good working conditions. 'I've employed Americans, and they quit after a few days,' said Tracy Vinz, assured $400,000 for her organic farm in Wisconsin. 'They quit after a few hours.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement 'I've had a couple who didn't even last a whole day,' said Mitch Lawson, a Georgia produce farmer who lost nearly two dozen American employees before he qualified for $200,000. In Trump's first term, he gave farmers $23 billion to cover the losses from his trade war with China, and he expanded support programs through a new Farm Bill, an achievement President Joe Biden's administration would fail to match. 'Nobody's done for farmers what I've done,' Trump, sitting before a pair of John Deere tractors, told a crowd in Pennsylvania this past fall. Then, four months later, he halted the grant payments. On Jan. 20, his first day in office, Trump signed executive orders intended to block funding from Biden-era climate legislation and purge links to 'diversity, equity and inclusion,' known as DEI. Baffled staffers at the Agriculture Department told The Washington Post they struggled to interpret vague directions dictating who should and shouldn't be paid. 'The process is changing more than once a day,' Tricia Kovacs, a deputy administrator, told managers, according to a record of the meeting. Staff abandoned their normal work to defend programs that appeared to have nothing to do with DEI. Many were snagged in a broad search for key words branded problematic. Among the misfires was the widespread flagging of 'biodiversity.' JJ's grant was frozen in late January as top administrators considered whether to cancel it. Over the next two months, more than 20 farmers requested $4 million owed to them, according to documents reviewed by The Post. None were paid. Dozens of farmers in the program met in a virtual call to share updates and commiserate, later starting a chat group JJ joined. Some considered filing lawsuits. 'Why are you ignoring a military veteran?' Jason Harris, a Trump voter offered a $400,000 grant for his farm in Mississippi, wrote Republican senators in early April. 'The longer these funds are not released it is starting to make me think that you do not care for people like me.' Citing litigation, an Agriculture Department spokesperson declined to answer questions, including whether the agency intended to cancel the program. But the White House defended Trump. 'Farmers helped propel President Trump to victory in November because they knew he would negotiate better trade deals, cut red tape, and boost American exports,' spokesperson Anna Kelly wrote in a statement. 'They were right — since January, President Trump has delivered a historic trade deal with the UK, with more deals on the way, and eliminated bureaucracy and bloat at USDA, which is why farmer sentiment has improved across the country.' She cited a survey from April that showed farmers were increasingly optimistic about their future. As that poll was conducted, farmers in Tennessee, Texas, Michigan, Minnesota, California and Georgia who'd signed up for the grant program told The Post they'd drained their savings or taken on debt. In Oregon, a pear farmer had to cash out her children's life insurance policies. In West Virginia, a farmer who'd risked raising a dozen new fruits and vegetables feared she'd have to close if the money never came. In Maine, a broccoli farmer already contemplating bankruptcy doubted he'd last another year without it. Pictures on the wall of a room the Fickens use as both an office and a home-school classroom. Otto was the youngest candidate JJ interviewed, but he sounded eager. Through an interpreter, Otto told him he wanted to learn English, and JJ told Otto he wanted to learn Spanish. The language barrier didn't concern JJ when he offered him the job. He already had another worker, a 21-year-old named Riggin Williams, who had grown up in the community. As long as he had Riggin, JJ wouldn't have to ask Otto to deal with customers or operate the most technical equipment. Then, one morning in mid-April, Riggin quit. He had found a job with regular hours and didn't want to spend another season baling hay. He gave JJ two weeks' notice and told him he hoped the new guy worked out. But the new guy was still in Guatemala, waiting for a visa. JJ couldn't even apply for the first installment of his grant money until Otto arrived, which should have happened weeks earlier. He'd heard from a recruiter that the administration's attempt to make the government more efficient had slowed the visa process throughout Central America. JJ tried not to panic, but suddenly, for him to operate, Otto had to make it to Colorado, and if he did, he had to work out. Tell us how people's lives are being changed This story is part of an ongoing examination into how President Donald Trump's overhaul of the federal government is reshaping the lives of Americans. The Washington Post wants to hear from people who have been affected. You can contact us by email or Signal encrypted message. John Woodrow Cox: or johnwoodrowcox.01 on Signal. Sarah Blaskey: or SarahBlaskey.25 on Signal. Read more about how to use Signal and other ways to securely contact The Post. Previous Next The stakes were still on JJ's mind that afternoon when a neighbor stopped by his shop and, as it often did, the conversation turned to Trump's overhaul of the federal government. 'There'll be some growing pains,' said Eric Smith, who had grown up in Yuma County, joined the Navy and returned to Kirk to raise his two daughters and work the family land. 'There'll be some caught in the fray that, you know, maybe shouldn't have been caught.' JJ handed cans of Michelob Ultra to Eric and Riggin, who was patching a tire. JJ had voted for Trump in part because of the president's promises to cut spending, but he'd never imagined the cuts would target a core Trump constituency. It made no sense to JJ, who said he didn't know what DEI stood for, much less what it had come to represent. He didn't hire Otto to promote an agenda, and he didn't think the government owed him a handout. The Agriculture Department had sought out JJ and the other farmers promoting an opportunity intended to lift the whole country. 'I'd like to think a year from now, what's being done now, we see the benefits from it,' JJ said of what Trump was doing and how he fit into it. 'I would hope.' JJ talks to his father, Kent Ficken, in front of a pallet stacked with seed corn. He didn't care much for politics, preferring parenting and self-help books to partisan podcasts. The fervor Trump inspired unsettled him — he'd hated trying to explain the 'F--- Biden' flag outside town to his daughter — but JJ found elements of the president's rhetoric appealing. He, too, resented that the country sent billions of dollars abroad when so many people here needed support. 'So you're bringing over help?' asked Eric, who understood why. The 47-year-old had taken on more than $800,000 in debt to manage his hayfields and buy equipment, and he flew commercial airliners to cover the bills. 'Mm-hmm,' JJ replied, explaining that, like all businesses in the H-2A program, he'd first been required to advertise the job to U.S. citizens. None applied. 'People don't want to work,' Eric said. Riggin sipped his beer. The conversation was not about him, but that didn't make it less awkward. He had originally committed to two more years, prompting JJ to buy the second hay stacker. But Riggin changed his mind. In the new job, as a field tech working on phone lines, he'd earn more money, get health insurance and make it home for dinner. Eric, meanwhile, wondered what working in Kirk would feel like for an outsider. 'F---ing wind's blowing all the time. It's every shade of brown,' he said. 'It's hard. You can't get people to do it.' JJ took another swig. He hoped that wasn't true. JJ steps inside his shop as he prepares his equipment to plant corn. In Guatemala, Otto was pleading with God. From his rural hometown of Aldea Chispán, he'd prayed that he'd get a job interview, and when he did, he prayed he'd do well, and when he did, he prayed he'd receive an offer, and when he did, he prayed the United States would let him come. Otto had made the six-hour round-trip drive to interview for his visa on April 15 — the same day Riggin quit. Now, he waited, worrying he would be denied or JJ would back out. The two men had spoken during their video interview for just 17 minutes. Each week Otto missed because of the delay cost him at least $700 in lost wages, and all of it mattered to Otto. His family's 40-acre farm, he said, had struggled in recent years. Bad winters killed crops. A lost onion harvest squandered five months of work. He had told JJ that nothing mattered more between a worker and a boss than trust, but he wasn't certain he had the experience to earn that trust. He'd learned on his dad's old tractors, nothing like what he expected to face in Colorado. Otto Vargas, 24, pleaded with God to help him make it to the United States. His earliest memories were on the farm, fetching his dad's tools. His father would dig a little hole, and Otto would press fertilizer into the soil by hand. In the flatlands east of the mountains, he'd learned to tolerate temperatures that topped 110 degrees. During planting season, he and his dad would rest in the shade of their lemon trees, sweating and laughing and sharing his mother's empanadas. Now his dad was 64, and Otto dreaded leaving him. He relied on Otto to manage the land, but Otto also leaned on his dad, who had tried to prepare him for the United States, a place he'd never visited. In the months since Trump took office, Otto said, he'd seen videos on Facebook of immigrants being harassed and arrested. 'You get to thinking about all the people who are here for a better future, for their family,' he said in Spanish. 'It's very difficult.' His dad insisted that if an officer confronted him, he should do what he was told, never argue. So, Otto made a plan: He would hurry to type a message into the translation app on his phone, asking if he could use it to communicate. He would offer documentation that proved he was legal. He would ask to call his boss, who he hoped could explain that everything was okay. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement JJ loaded his kids and their lunch boxes into the back seat of the pickup, and now, just after 8 a.m. on April 17, a Thursday, he pulled a trailer to his father's place and made a list of the work ahead: Deliver 7,000 pounds of seed corn to a farmer an hour away. Prep his ripper for a neighbor who asked to rent it. Bring his corn header inside in case of rain. Fix a sprinkler and mow the lawn and finish installing the water heater. Then JJ remembered. He glanced in the rearview mirror. 'Vivi, what's your sugar at?' In October, Vivian, who is 7, had been diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. The whole family changed diets, even her 4-year-old brother, Henry. She needed constant monitoring and frequent insulin shots and regular appointments two hours west in Denver, so the couple decided to home-school both kids. In the pickup, Vivian reached for her phone, linked through Bluetooth with a monitor on her arm. 'It's at 127,' Vivian said, passing the phone up to her dad. 'See?' She needed insulin. He sped up. At his father's shop, JJ figured out the dosage on her phone, and a bottle-cap-size pump on her leg injected the medication. 'Did you hear it go beep beep on ya?' he asked. Vivian eats lunch in a room at JJ's shop. Henry plays with a tablet while sitting next to his father. JJ had accepted that farm work would shape their life at home, and he made certain the reverse was true, too. The kids slowed him down, scaling stacks of corn bags and pretending the trailer was a pirate ship, but he still took them along. He had come to think of himself as the sum of his commitments. First, to the kids and Kassidee and God. Then to his customers, whom he owed fair prices and honest answers. To the country, whose flag he'd pasted along both sides of his grain cart. To the land, so it might survive another generation. To Riggin, until he collected his last paycheck. And now to Otto, a stranger from a faraway place. JJ sometimes faltered, but when he did, he tried to make it right. He expected the same of others, and that included the president, who he'd never believe in again if the grant didn't come through. 'No way in hell,' JJ said. After two hernia surgeries and hundreds of fitful nights, JJ hoped his children found a different path. He and Kassidee had already started saving for their college. The couple suspected Vivian would prefer city life — 'She loves the light,' he said — but Henry was just like him. Now, as JJ fired up the forklift, his son hurried over to sit beside him, legs straddling the levers. Henry had dressed to match his dad, in blue jeans, work boots and a hoodie. At home, in his bedroom, he'd carefully organized a collection of toy harvesters, grain bins, hay bales and seed boxes. JJ, who had dropped out of college before attending an automotive technology program, had rehearsed what he might someday pitch to Henry: 'Why don't you go be an architect, and then own you a farm — a hobby farm? Do it a different way. Do this for a tax write-off, not to feed your kids.' Henry rides with JJ in the forklift. JJ and Kassidee had been a year apart at the only high school in their community. She graduated in a class of eight. JJ, a class of five. Opportunities were scant. The couple had once imagined the grant might allow JJ more time with the kids, freeing Kassidee to earn her master's degree. She'd worked for years as a dental hygienist in rural offices that turned away people on Medicaid. She and a partner had started their own office, and turned away no one, but Kassidee needed an advanced degree to provide treatments their poorest patients couldn't afford elsewhere. 'Maybe next year,' she told her husband. One night, in their kitchen, Kassidee prepared a meat loaf as she considered the relentless uncertainty their family navigated. How would the couple, who had no health insurance, pay for their daughter's care if the administration and Congress gutted Medicaid? JJ never stopped accounting for the farming costs that would not quit climbing and the eastern Colorado drought that would not end. And now came the tariffs that could spike the price of equipment and the attacks on subsidies that protect commodity farmers when markets collapse. Kassidee and JJ gather in the kitchen with their children Vivian, left, and Henry before a meal. 'There are so many variables in farming that things get turned upside down all the time,' Kassidee said. 'Every part of it is a gamble.' From 2017 to 2022, according to the latest Census of Agriculture, the country lost 141,000 farms and 20 million acres of farmland, an area about the size of Maine. At dinner, Henry sat at the head of the table, beside JJ. Vivian, in a bunny-ears headband, crunched on a cherry tomato and opened a small box that read, 'TALKING POINT CARDS.' 'What do you think it means to be,' Vivian read from one, pausing to spell out the last word. Kassidee helped her sound it out: 'Suc-cess-ful.' Vivian asked if making her bed counted. 'Successful people do make their beds,' Kassidee said. 'All of 'em,' JJ added. His definition had evolved. Money would once have been the measure. Today, he said, it was the family in front of him. Kassidee, back in the kitchen baking sugar-free chocolate chip cookies, mulled the question for another minute. 'I don't know,' she said. 'Success can mean just making it through the day.' JJ rests in the living room as Henry plays with a farm toy on the floor. Otto's alarm sounded at midnight, 13 hours before the flight he hoped would change his life. But first he had to make it to the airport, nearly 100 miles away. It was April 28, a week since his visa had been approved, and a national strike was expected to shut down major highways. Otto had slept only an hour or so. He'd worked late into the evening on his father's farm picking loroco, an edible flower bud. Now he loaded two bags into his 2005 Honda CR-V and met a man who, for the equivalent of about $150, shuttled people to the airport. It could be dangerous to travel at that hour. Story continues below advertisement Advertisement If he reached Colorado, the money would make a difference, and not just for his father's farm. Otto had applied for residency in the United States in 2023, the same year he married a neighbor from Guatemala who now lives legally in Rhode Island. They hoped to someday move in together and have children. Otto never considered trying to work in the United States illegally, he said. He knew the abuses other undocumented immigrants endured and hated the idea of living under the threat of deportation. He had tried to do things right. He hoped it would be worth it. Otto reached La Aurora International Airport before dawn, but the government official with his approved passport had yet to arrive. In the mountains of Guatemala City, it was chilly, so Otto sat in his car. Every hour, he walked back to the terminal to ask for an update. Without the passport, Otto couldn't board his flight. Nineteen hundred miles north, JJ sat at his dining room table that afternoon and studied an instruction manual for a pair of $430 earbuds that translated other languages in real time. They'd just arrived. 'This might just save my life,' he said, six hours before Otto's plane was scheduled to reach Denver. 'First use: place earbuds in charging case,' he read. Henry, lugging an old drill, checked on his father's progress. 'Are we going to need the tape measure, Dad?' he asked. 'You never know, bud,' JJ said. 'There's not much we do without a tape measure.' JJ sets up translation earbuds that he hopes will help him communicate with Otto. It was 1 p.m., and he didn't even know whether Otto had left Guatemala. JJ, who had no social media accounts, had tried and failed to connect with Otto on WhatsApp, which he'd never used before. He and Kassidee had fretted over whether Otto would settle into their community. Hispanics accounted for 30 percent of Yuma County's population, but there was no easy way to make friends. It was 104 times the size of Manhattan but had 0.6 percent of its population — 4 people per square mile. Kirk had a lunchtime food truck, the Filling Station, but no restaurants or bars. The local grocery store, Super's, closed at 6:30 p.m. Otto loved soccer, so JJ, who knew nothing about the game, had Googled how to take him to a Colorado Rapids match in Denver. At 5 p.m., JJ left for the airport, still with no idea where Otto was. An hour into the drive, JJ got a call from a Rhode Island number. The man asked for Jack, so JJ hung up. Then came two more calls. 'Hello,' a woman said, her accent thick and the connection spotty. 'I talk with — from Guatemala.' 'Otto?' he asked. 'From Guatemala?' 'Yes, because he lost — he lost the flight,' she said, and for a moment, JJ felt sick. He pulled onto the shoulder of the one-lane road. Another relative called to explain that Otto missed a connection and would arrive late to Denver. The man said he'd connect JJ to Otto on WhatsApp, and a few minutes later, a photo appeared along with a message. 'Hi, Jace,' it read, referencing JJ's full name. 'I am Otto.' 'Hey guy! I don't have great service to load your picture,' JJ wrote back. 'But will be there to pick you up!' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement He stopped at a Mexican restaurant outside the city to eat a long, nervous fajita dinner and sip a margarita. 'I am scared to death,' he said. 'It was just easy with Riggin.' Two hours later, JJ pulled into the parking garage and considered what this experience might mean to Otto. By federal mandate, JJ would pay $17.84 an hour, and to get the grant, he'd agreed to offer overtime after 40. JJ intended to give him as much work as he could handle. Sitting in the darkness, JJ tried to Google the minimum wage in Guatemala. He saw 33 'quetzals,' a word he couldn't pronounce. Just more than $4 an hour. He shook his head. Besides the rental, the truck and the $1,134 flight, JJ would cover Otto's gas, internet, phone, household items and workers' compensation. By then, the grant had technically been unfrozen because of a court order two weeks earlier, on April 15, but an administrator from the Agriculture Department later told the judge it faced a massive backlog. More than 42,000 contracts had been stalled. On April 23, a national group of nonprofits suing the Agriculture Department accused it of largely ignoring the order and rushing to cancel grants rather than unfreeze them. Government attorneys said that wasn't true, but, according to documents and farmers in the chat group, no one in JJ's program had been paid. Inside the airport, JJ lingered by baggage claim, checking his phone, scanning faces. At 10:13 p.m., he waved. Otto, in jeans and a T-shirt, grabbed his bag and walked over, grinning. They shook hands. JJ greets Otto as he arrives at Denver International Airport. In the SUV, JJ handed him an earbud. 'It can translate,' JJ said. 'Oh, okay,' Otto said, nodding. After a few seconds, the words came through, so Otto detailed his flight trouble, eager to explain why he was late. They talked about his wife, a hairdresser, and the protests back home and how there was lots of traffic in Guatemala but none where they were going. At McDonald's, Otto, who hoped to one day become a U.S. citizen, asked for fries, Coke and a Big Mac. 'Do you have more workers on your farm?' Otto asked, according to the translation in JJ's ear. 'I had one full-time guy,' JJ said, 'and he just quit.' 'Okay,' Otto said, eyebrows raised. JJ pointed at Otto, then himself. 'Just you and me.' Otto walks with JJ outside the Fickens' home as a storm passes in the distance. 'Otto speaks Spanish, you guys,' JJ told his kids, strapped in the back seat of the Silverado. Otto had made it to Kirk 29 days late. Now, at 10 o'clock the next morning, JJ was headed back to the rented mobile home to pick him up. 'He's gonna be saying, like, 'comprendo' and stuff?' Henry asked. 'To say 'okay' in Spanish, you say 'comprendo.'' So, JJ practiced: 'Comprendo. Comprendo.' By then, Otto said, he'd already been up for hours. He understood that thousands of people from his home country would have taken this job, and he wanted to prove to JJ, on this first day, that he'd made the right choice. He took a shower and cleaned the glass with a squeegee. He got dressed, slipped on his sneakers, combed his hair, passed the sign on the wall that read, 'Dream the impossible.' He made the bed. As JJ pulled up, Otto walked outside. 'How are ya?' JJ asked, and Otto nodded and smiled. JJ and Otto use the translation earbuds to talk about the work to be done. Otto, sitting on a lawn mower, listens to JJ discuss the farming equipment. That afternoon, they went to JJ's house to plant a row of young Rocky Mountain junipers. It was a laborious, low-pressure task, a good way to ease Otto in. JJ ran a line of twine on stakes to keep the row straight. Otto raked sticks into piles. Henry lugged them to a trailer. They had just unfurled a black weed tarp when JJ's phone rang. It was a woman from Alianza Nacional de Campesinas, a national organization that provides seasonal workers in the grant program with a 'know your rights and resources' training. Until Otto attended a session, JJ couldn't request the first half of his money. He dropped his shovel. 'How are you, ma'am?' It would take time for Alianza to arrange a training near Kirk for just one worker, but the woman said Otto could join a session north of Denver, 165 miles away. 'What day?' he asked. 'Tuesday.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement 'Ahhh, Rosa. I can't do Tuesday,' he told her, aware that Kassidee had to work that day. 'I've got the kids.' But he would do Tuesday, because he would do whatever it took, even a six-hour round-trip drive with Otto and the kids. He'd already accepted that he needed to ask for an extension on the $46,000 hay stacker payment due the next month. JJ leaned against the hood of his pickup and bowed his head. He didn't know it then, but in early May, a few people in his grant program who'd waited since winter for installments would finally receive them. That did little to calm the fear that political appointees running the agency would kill the program. Already, they had canceled the research component of the grant, which was intended to show whether the program helped farmers or curbed illegal immigration. 'DEI,' officials called it. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins would announce a 'Make Agriculture Great Again' initiative on May 19 that proposed her department address the labor shortage in the same ways JJ's pilot program already did: by working with other government agencies and relying on the H-2A visa process. A month later, at least three farmers yet to receive installments would say they'd soon be unable to make payroll. JJ, who'd send eight emails to the Agriculture Department pleading for answers, would still be waiting for his check. Vivian and Henry watch JJ and Otto organize seed corn containers at Kent Ficken's shop. JJ and Otto prepare the ground before planting trees together near JJ's house. Now, in Kirk, the tree line had been set and the sticks cleared, and JJ was trying to say, in Spanish, that they would stop in 45 minutes, at 5 p.m. He figured Otto must be exhausted from the day before. 'So we'll work 'til,' he said, pausing to count, 'cinco — de la noche?' 'La tarde,' Otto corrected, and they laughed. 'We're all still pretty tired,' JJ said. He picked up a posthole digger and spiked it into the hard, dry earth, and when he was done, Otto planted the first tree. Vivian listed all the words she knew in Spanish. 'The trees are verde,' she said. Otto, now digging the holes, pointed to his jeans. 'What is the color?' he asked her. 'Azuuuuul.' Story continues below advertisement Advertisement JJ knelt to plant the next tree. He looked up at his daughter. 'This is going to be good for us, Viv.' About 4:45 p.m., a white pickup sped past on their dirt road. It was Riggin, who honked and waved. He was finished for the day, headed home. JJ waved back. Ten minutes later, he picked up the tape measure and dropped it into the toolbox. He told Otto they could finish later. 'I'm beat,' JJ said. Otto asked how many more trees they needed to plant. 'Probably 20,' JJ answered. Otto reached for the posthole digger. 'No problem,' he said. So JJ grabbed another sapling and followed him back to work. JJ and Otto work late into the afternoon planting trees near JJ's home.