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After months of intense back-and-forth negotiations, on-the-floor haggling and threats to tank the legislation, Republicans’ massive tax and spending bill is heading to President Donald Trump’s desk to become law.
The wide-ranging megabill is the vehicle for much of Trump’s domestic policy agenda for his second term in the White House, with major changes in health care, immigration and tax policy that are sure to touch nearly every American. Here are the major ways Texas will be affected.
ACA and Medicaid
Over 300,000 Texans could lose their health insurance once the Medicaid changes passed by Congress take effect in 2027.
Medicaid, a federal-state health insurance program for low-income and disabled people, insures over 4 million Texans. The federal government paid for nearly two-thirds of the program’s $57 billion costs in Texas during the 2023 fiscal year, according to KFF, a nonprofit health policy organization. Using estimates from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, KFF projects that Texas stands to lose 10% of its federal Medicaid funds over the next decade, or $39 billion.
The cuts could be particularly potent in the Rio Grande Valley, which has an outsized number of Medicaid recipients, and in rural areas, where hospitals rely on Medicaid payments. Texas already has the highest uninsured rate in the nation.
Beyond Medicaid, the bill makes it harder to enroll in coverage through Affordable Care Act marketplaces and allows for the expiration of Biden-era enhanced premium tax credits that lower out-of-pocket costs for people with ACA marketplace coverage. Because Texas is among the 10 states that have never expanded Medicaid under the ACA, its residents rely heavily on marketplace coverage and the soon-to-expire tax credits.
Taken together, KFF estimates that the megabill’s provisions will lead to 1.7 million Texans losing their coverage, adding to the nearly 5 million children and adults under 65 who currently lack health insurance.
The GOP megabill also imposes nationwide work requirements on Medicaid for the first time in the program’s history. Recipients between the ages of 19 and 64 — except for those with disabilities or with dependent children under 14 — will have to prove they are working or in school for 80 hours per month. In states that implemented work requirements under a program from Trump’s first term, enrollment dropped precipitously, including among people who were working or qualified for an exception but struggled to document it.
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Texas Health and Human Services will be responsible for designing and enforcing work requirements that comply with the new federal law.
Before the Senate passed the bill this week, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a floor speech that the work requirements would strengthen Medicaid for its intended recipients — children, the disabled and pregnant women.
“It’s not fair to the taxpayer to have them subsidize people sitting on the couch playing video games all day when they can contribute to their community and their family,” he said.
Texas Democrats have homed in on Medicaid cuts as the most devastating portion of the bill.
“You’re talking about a health care disaster that is going to take place — not just in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, but in every major metropolitan area in the state,” said Rep. Marc Veasey, D-Fort Worth. “When you add that on top of the rural hospitals that are going to close and the smaller areas in Texas, it’s going to create a health care nightmare scenario.”
SNAP
The Republican bill also includes deep cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, previously known as food stamps.
But the size of Texas’ SNAP cut is up in the air, dependent on how often the state errs in over- or underpaying benefit recipients.
Under the bill, states will have to cover a portion of SNAP benefits — which are currently paid for by the federal government in full — based on the percentage of erroneous payments made. States with an error rate under 6% will not have to share the cost, while states above that will be on the hook for escalating costs tied to their error rate.
Texas logged an error rate of 8.3% in fiscal 2024 — meaning that, had the law been in place, the state would have been responsible for 10% of the cost of SNAP benefits, or $716 million per year, according to the North Texas Food Bank.
The SNAP benefit cut is scheduled to kick in in fiscal 2028, unless Texas’ error rate falls under 6 percent. States with the highest rates of over- or underpayments — anything above 13.3% can delay the onset of the cost sharing, a last-minute provision included to win the support of Sen. Lisa Murowski, R-Alaska
In addition, Texas will now need to pay for 75% of the administrative cost of running the SNAP program, up from the current 50% rate. Feeding Texas, the statewide network of food banks, estimates that the new arrangement will cost the state $89.5 million annually.
Republicans also tightened SNAP work requirements in the bill. Previously, recipients over age 52 and those with children under 18 in their house were exempted from having to meet such requirements. Now, able-bodied Texans between the ages of 52 and 65 and those with children over 14 must prove they are working at least 80 hours per month to qualify for benefits.
Immigration and the border
Among the top priorities for Texas members was securing money to reimburse the state for the billions it spent on immigration enforcement along the southern border under the Biden administration. That money is now poised to flow to Texas after making it into the bill’s final draft.
Gov. Greg Abbott, who spearheaded the state’s multibillion-dollar border security program known as Operation Lone Star, has been lobbying Trump and lawmakers for federal dollars since Biden left office in January.
Texas’ GOP delegation at first pushed congressional leaders to include $12 billion in reimbursements for states that spent money on border enforcement. Cornyn secured an additional $1.5 billion in the Senate version, upping the available grants to $13.5 billion. The rules for this pot of money ensure that Texas has the largest claim to the funds of any state.
Apart from these grants, GOP lawmakers gave U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement nearly $30 billion to revamp its workforce and equipment, with the goal of speeding the agency’s rate of deportations — a hallmark Trump campaign pledge.
The reconciliation bill also puts billions into new surveillance technology and construction of a wall along the southern border.
Clean energy
The bill rolled back several key provisions of former President Joe Biden’s landmark Inflation Reduction Act, which created tax credits for clean energy projects to spur industry investment.
Those subsidies will be phased out under a provision that reserves the tax credits only for solar and wind projects that are up and running by the end of 2027. Projects that start construction within a year of the law’s enactment — including those that become operational post-2027 — also will remain eligible.
Several Republicans, including U.S. Rep. Chip Roy of Austin, wanted to see the credits abolished immediately. Roy claimed that clean energy cannot reliably power Texas’ grid, as some energy generators, such as solar panels and wind turbines, can only produce electricity in favorable weather conditions. He also said the credits subsidize foreign manufacturers whose renewable energy products dominate the American market.
Clean energy advocates say any cuts are bound to hamper the Texas labor market, as workers on renewable projects could be fired as their employers’ tax incentives disappear. With Texans’ energy demand expected to skyrocket in the next decade, supporters say clean energy could quickly and cheaply fill in the gaps.
Tax cuts
The centerpiece of the Republican megabill is the extension of an array of income tax cuts from the 2017 tax-cut package Trump signed into law during his first term.
Set to expire at the end of the year, the cuts were permanently enshrined in the bill, allowing most Americans to continue benefiting.
Republicans on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee estimate that a family of four earning the median income in Texas — $75,780 — would have seen its tax bill rise by $1,550 if the 2017 cuts had expired and tax rates had reverted to their Obama-era levels.
Independent analyses of the bill have found that its benefits will mostly flow to the wealthy, while tax savings for the lowest earners will be largely offset by benefit cuts.
A state-by-state analysis by the Institute of Taxation and Economic Policy, a left-leaning think tank, found that the top 1% of Texans — or those making over $806,800 — will see the biggest share of the tax cuts. Those top earners will save 3.4%, or an average of $114,680 per year, on their federal income tax due to the passage of the bill.
The richest Texans will receive a larger average tax cut than their top one percent counterparts in all but two other states, according to the ITEP analysis.
Though the bill’s tax-cut provisions largely focused on preserving existing cuts, Republicans also created a host of new temporary tax relief programs aimed at workers and seniors. Texans who work in roles that traditionally receive tips will get to claim a deduction of up to $25,000 — a priority of Sen. Ted Cruz — through 2028. Those earning overtime can deduct up to $12,500 through the same time period, with lesser deductions for high earners.
And seniors can add $6,000 to their standard deduction, also through the 2028 tax year.
Trump accounts
Born out of a late-night poker game last year, Cruz championed the idea of “Trump accounts,” a provision included in the bill that will seed $1,000 in a tax-deferred investment account for nearly every child born in America in 2025 and beyond. As each recipient ages into adulthood, family, friends and nonprofits will be able to contribute up to $5,000 annually. Once they reach 18, the beneficiaries will be able to access half the funds for limited purposes — such as educational expenses, starting a small business or placing a down payment on a home. They can withdraw the rest once they reach age 31.
To accrue wealth, the account will be pegged to a broad stock index that has yet to be determined. Assuming an average market growth of 7% per year, the accounts will be worth anywhere from $3,500 to $170,000 after 18 years, depending on yearly contribution amounts.
Children born between 2025 and 2028 will be automatically enrolled in the program via their parents’ tax returns as part of the initiative’s pilot program. It is set to cost about $3 billion a year.
Cruz views the new accounts as a way to sell the next generation of American children on the free-market system.
“It gives every kid some skin in the game,” he said in an interview with The Texas Tribune earlier this month.
Pell Grant program
The megabill narrowly avoided cuts to the Pell Grant that would have devastated nearly half a million Texas students who depend on the aid to pay for college.
The House initially proposed stricter requirements to qualify for the Pell Grant, which helps cover costs for low-income students and is the largest source of grant aid in Texas. Students would have had to take more college credits each semester to get the full award, and students who are enrolled less than half-time would have lost access to the aid entirely.
In the end, the Senate stripped those changes after college access advocates sounded alarms about the educational barriers they would have raised.
The bill does prevent students from qualifying for the Pell Grant if their college already covers the full cost of their tuition. That will affect so-called “promise” programs across Texas that provide aid after Pell dollars kick in.
Republicans on Capitol Hill also extended Pell Grants to short-term workforce training programs, which can last just eight to 15 weeks. Some GOP members tried to make unaccredited training programs eligible for the aid, but the proposal was quashed by the Senate parliamentarian.
Incentives for K-12 scholarships
The legislation also includes one of Cruz’s priorities: annual tax credits for people who donate to nonprofits that give scholarships to elementary and secondary school students — a framework supporters call “school choice” and that is similar to private school vouchers.
To comply with Senate parliamentary rules, Cruz’s original proposal was scaled back so it could pass the chamber with a simple majority rather than the typical 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.
Under the provision, donors will receive a tax break equal to the amount they give to K-12 scholarship-granting organizations, including those that help students pay to attend private schools. The credit will max out at $1,700 annually, down from an earlier cap of 10% of the donor’s income, and states will get to opt in, meaning Democratic-controlled states could decline to participate.
This caveat, which was added in Senate negotiations, almost certainly sets the stage for another round of political fights in states wary of incentivizing private school attendance with public dollars.
Despite the trepidation, Cruz touted the measure repeatedly, calling school choice the “civil rights issue of the 21st century.”
Moving the Space Shuttle Discovery
Another provision secured by Cornyn requires the NASA administrator to consider moving the Space Shuttle Discovery from its current home in Virginia to the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
In 2010, the NASA Authorization Act mandated the four now-retired space shuttles be gifted to cities with ties to their orbital missions. None were allocated to Houston in what Cornyn called a political stunt by the Obama administration.
Given the city’s central role in space exploration and coordinating each of the shuttle flights, Cornyn called Houston “the cornerstone of our nation’s human space exploration program” and said it would right an “egregious wrong” to move the shuttle to Texas.
The senior Texas senator also secured an additional $10 billion in funding to support programs at the Houston space center and more money for the International Space Station and NASA’s Moon and Mars exploration program, known as Artemis.
Disclosure: Feeding Texas has been a financial supporter of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.
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It’s Florio vs. Simms. Picking every game. Straight up and against the spread.
Here they are, starting with the first game of the season, to be played tonight in Philadelphia. As the Eagles, unbeknownst to coach Nick Sirianni, hang their second banner.
And this season will get off to a bang. We disagree on seven picks, with Simms picking seven underdogs to win, straight up.
Cowboys at Eagles
Will the Cowboys rally following the Micah Parsons trade and throw a wrench in Philly’s big night? Much of it comes down to the ability of new coach Brian Schottenheimer to push their buttons in a way that allows them to outscore a better team.
Florio’s pick: Eagles 30, Cowboys 17.
Simms’s pick: Eagles 27, Cowboys 20.
Chiefs at Chargers
Is the Chiefs’ window closing? The Chargers get the first crack at commencing the process of closing it. It won’t be easy.
Florio’s pick: Chiefs 21, Chargers 17.
Simms’s pick: Chiefs 28, Chargers 24.
Buccaneers at Falcons
The Falcons swept the Bucs last year, in a couple of barnburners. The chronically underrated Bucs are well aware of that fact.
Florio’s pick: Buccaneers 30, Falcons 24.
Simms’s pick: Falcons 23, Buccaneers 20.
Bengals at Browns
The Bengals break free from their early-season struggles, against a rival who is poised to struggle all year long.
Florio’s pick: Bengals 31, Browns 17.
Simms’s pick: Bengals 27, Browns 24.
Dolphins at Colts
It will be an emotional day in Indy, with the first regular-season game following the passing of owner Jim Irsay. That could be the difference for Daniel Jones and his new team.
Florio’s pick: Colts 23, Dolphins 20.
Simms’s pick: Dolphins 24, Colts 21.
Panthers at Jaguars
It’s a battle of recently former Buccaneers’ offensive coordinators. The home team gets the edge.
Florio’s pick: Jaguars 24, Panthers 20.
Simms’s pick: Jaguars 28, Panthers 20.
Raiders at Patriots
A Raiders owner has a statue outside Gillette Stadium. The Raiders could use him on the inside of the stadium against an improving Pats team.
Florio’s pick: Patriots 23, Raiders 17.
Simms’s pick: Patriots 23, Raiders 17.
Cardinals at Saints
Both teams are a work in progress. The visitors have made more progress, so far.
Florio’s pick: Cardinals 21, Saints 17.
Simms’s pick: Cardinals 24, Saints 20.
Steelers at Jets
The Steelers didn’t make several all-in moves to lose out of the gates to an inferior roster.
Florio’s pick: Steelers 24, Jets 10.
Simms’s pick: Steelers 20, Jets 16.
Giants at Commanders
The Commanders have expectations, for the first time in a long time.
Florio’s pick: Commanders 27, Giants 17.
Simms’s pick: Giants 21, Commanders 17.
Titans at Broncos
It’s a tough draw for Cam Ward and company, because the Broncos could be forcing their way into the Super Bowl window.
Florio’s pick: Broncos 28, Titans 20.
Simms’s pick: Broncos 28, Titans 17.
49ers at Seahawks
As Christian McCaffrey goes, so go the 49ers.
Florio’s pick: 49ers 27, Seahawks 20.
Simms’s pick: Seahawks 23, 49ers 20.
Lions at Packers
The trade for Micah Parsons could give the rest of the Packers a lift. The front office sees them as a potentially elite team. They get a chance right away to prove it — and to end a three-game home losing streak to Detroit.
Florio’s pick: Packers 24, Lions 20.
Simms’s pick: Lions 28, Packers 27.
Texans at Rams
Matthew Stafford is healthy, for now. The Rams have a Super Bowl glow. The Texans, during their recent resurgence, don’t have many impressive road wins against great teams.
Florio’s pick: Rams 24, Texans 20.
Simms’s pick: Texans 24, Rams 20.
Ravens at Bills
Lamar Jackson in regular-season prime-time games is virtually unstoppable.
Florio’s pick: Ravens 30, Bills 27.
Simms’s pick: Ravens 30, Bills 21.
Vikings at Bears
Can Ben Johnson make an immediate difference for the Bears?
Washington, DC, officials are suing the Trump administration, accusing the president of violating the Constitution and federal law by sending thousands of National Guard troops into the city without consent from local leaders.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday by DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb, claims the troops – many from out of state – have been deputized by the US Marshals office and are patrolling neighborhoods, conducting searches and making arrests, despite federal laws that generally bar the military from acting as local police.
The lawsuit argues that the deployment undermines the city’s autonomy, erodes trust between residents and law enforcement and damages the local economy by discouraging tourism and hurting businesses.
“Deploying the National Guard to engage in law enforcement is not only unnecessary and unwanted, but it is also dangerous and harmful to the District and its residents,” Schwalb said in a statement. “It’s DC today but could be any other city tomorrow. We’ve filed this action to put an end to this illegal federal overreach.”
President Donald Trump rolled out the deployment of troops on August 11 as part of his anti-crime agenda in the nation’s capital, which has also included a surge in federal officers from other agencies and an attempted takeover of the city’s police department.
In the weeks since, National Guard members in DC, which include troops from six GOP-led states, have been ordered to carry weapons. As of Tuesday morning, there were 2,290 National Guard troops assigned to the mission – 1,340 of them from supporting states.
The city, the lawsuit reads, “has suffered a severe and irreparable sovereign injury from the deployment.”
“No American jurisdiction should be involuntarily subjected to military occupation,” reads the complaint, filed in the US District Court for DC. “The District of Columbia brings this lawsuit to obtain declaratory and injunctive relief that will stop Defendants’ violations of law, remedy the harms Defendants are inflicting on the District, and preserve the District’s sovereignty.”
CNN reported earlier this week that National Guard members deployed in DC are expected to have their military orders extended through December to ensure troop benefits.
The Trump administration has touted its efforts in the capital city, pointing to a sharp drop in violent crime since ramping up federal law enforcement last month. But critics — including DC Mayor Muriel Bowser — argue the National Guard deployment is unnecessary and costly, with taxpayers footing an estimated $1 million a day, while troops are seen taking photos with tourists, picking up trash, and laying mulch.
Bowser issued an executive order this week requiring the city to closely coordinate with federal law enforcement indefinitely. While some progressive groups viewed the move as ceding to Trump, Bowser later clarified that the order was designed to provide a pathway for the district to exit the federal emergency by offering the administration and congressional Republicans an off-ramp to scale back their involvement in DC.
“I want the message to be clear to the Congress: We have a framework to request or use federal resources in our city. We don’t need a presidential emergency,” Bowser said Wednesday, emphasizing that protecting DC’s autonomy remains her “north star.”
The lawsuit comes as the Trump administration prepares for a major immigration enforcement operation in Chicago, with Trump pledging to send in National Guard troops, though he has not given a timeline.
While the administration looks to replicate its efforts in other Democratic-led cities – Trump holds unique authority over the DC National Guard, which reports only to the President of the United States. The city’s status as a district — not a state — allows the president and the federal government more leeway in directing troops and a range of federal authorities.
The DC attorney general’s lawsuit comes after another challenge to Trump’s deployment of the National Guard proved successful earlier this week in California.
A federal judge ruled Tuesday that Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth violated federal law by using the US military to help carry out law enforcement activities in and around Los Angeles earlier this summer.
In June, Trump ordered 2,000 National Guard troops and hundreds of Marines into Los Angeles – over the objection of the state’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom – to quell immigration protests.
Schwalb sued the Trump administration last month after Attorney General Pam Bondi attempted to appoint an emergency police commissioner to replace DC’s police chief and take over the department’s operations. Ultimately, Trump officials backed down from that sweeping takeover but still maintain the ability to request any services from the local police department as part of the federal emergency, which expires next week unless Congress extends it.
House Republicans are currently weighing legislation that would overhaul criminal justice policies in DC and oust the locally elected Schwalb, replacing him with a presidential appointee.
This week, Schwalb announced he will run for reelection.
LONDON (AP) — European countries are stuck between a rock and a hard place as a coalition of countries meets in Paris on Thursday to discuss security guarantees for a postwar Ukraine.
The war is raging unabated, with no ceasefire in sight — and the crucial question of American involvement in ensuring Ukraine’s future security remains unresolved.
For months, the so-called “coalition of the willing” has been meeting to discuss aid for Ukraine, including sketching out plans for military support in the event of a ceasefire to deter future Russian aggression.
The coalition leaders — French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K.Prime Minister Keir Starmer — have insisted that any European “reassurance” force in Ukraine needs the backing of the United States. But while U.S. President Donald Trump has hinted his country will be involved, he has moved away from calling for a ceasefire in Ukraine and refrained from implementing tough additional economic measures to punish Moscow.
Although Trump said he is “disappointed” in Russian President Vladimir Putin and issued several threats to try to cajole him into negotiating an end to hostilities, none has worked. At a meeting with Putin in Alaska in August, Trump failed to persuade the Russian leader to stop fighting and has not yet managed to broker talks between Putin and Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
While Trump and European leaders met in Washington after the Alaska summit — and U.S., European and NATO military chiefs held discussions on support for Ukraine — little concrete detail has emerged on the security guarantees to deter Moscow from a future conflict.
Former military generals and experts suggest Europe is in a bind — not knowing the level of support the U.S. is prepared to provide the coalition, the nature of any ceasefire or if the U.S. will abide by commitments made. It’s also far from certain that Putin would agree to a cessation of hostilities, something Russian officials have invariably dismissed.
“Talking about detailed operational planning when you don’t actually have your mission is, quite frankly, impossible,” said Ed Arnold, an expert in European Security at the Royal United Services Institute in London and a former military planner.
Why Europeans believe a ceasefire is necessary
The “coalition of the willing” is a broad term for about 30 nations supporting Ukraine, but the so-called “reassurance force” that would provide security guarantees to Kyiv is a subset of that group.
French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that 26 of those countries — including the U.K. and France — have pledged to deploy troops as a part of that force once there is a ceasefire to deter Putin from attacking again.
There is “no suggestion” that any troops will be deployed without a ceasefire because it’s too risky, said François Heisbourg, special adviser at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.
Despite Zelenskyy signaling his willingness to talk, a ceasefire agreement is not currently in the cards — not least because of the positions of the U.S. and Russian presidents.
At his Aug. 18 meeting with European leaders at the White House — three days after meeting Putin — Trump walked back his previous demands for a ceasefire in Ukraine and said he thought a peace agreement was preferable.
The comments marked a shift toward the Russian position from Trump and would allow Moscow to fight on in Ukraine while peace negotiations are underway.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov later suggested an end to hostilities was even further away, stating that Moscow will not accept Zelenskyy’s signature on any peace agreement as Russia considers him to be an illegitimate president.
“If Putin doesn’t want a ceasefire — and if Trump doesn’t call for a ceasefire — what are the chances of a ceasefire happening?” asked Heisbourg.
What a European security guarantee for Ukraine could look like
Even if a ceasefire or peace agreement for Ukraine were implemented, it’s not clear it would be a sufficient deterrent to Putin and it would still be “very, very risky” for European nations to deploy troops, said Arnold at RUSI.
Such an operation hinges on the U.S. providing intelligence support and the deterrent effect of U.S. airpower in countries outside Ukraine.
The Western appetite to potentially shoot down Russian missiles violating a ceasefire or target launchers firing them from within Russia is “close to zero,” said Heisbourg.
Any response to a ceasefire violation, he said, would likely depend on “how many Western soldiers the Russians would have actually killed…and nobody wants to think about that too much in advance.”
In March, Starmer told allies that a force for Ukraine would need at least 10,000 troops, but that would potentially require around 30,000 troops when taking into account those on rotation and rest.
As a coalition leader, the U.K. should look at contributing a brigade of 5,000 soldiers which would become 15,000 when taking into account rest and rotation, said Arnold.
That figure would account for about 30% of the deployable capacity of the British Army, he said, and potentially create a “tricky” problem whereby the U.K. deploys more forces on behalf of non-NATO ally Ukraine than it does for NATO allies such as Estonia.
European officials have indicated that the troops could be involved in training Ukrainian soldiers and likely based away from the frontlines although the risk of Russian missile and drone strikes would remain high.
But there would be “zero credibility” if Western troops were put in various Ukrainian towns without a clear mission or purpose, said Ben Hodges, former commanding general of the U.S. Army in Europe.
“That will not impress the Russians at all,” he added.
US as a reliable partner
European leaders are also grappling with the question of whether to take Trump and his officials at their word while also eyeing the rise of populist parties — particularly in the U.K., France and Germany — which may not share the same commitment to Ukraine as current political leadership.
That means the future of any security guarantees for Kyiv could be extremely fragile.
There is “absolutely no guarantee” that Trump will abide by commitments made to European nations over Ukraine, said Arnold, pointing to Trump’s withdrawal from previous agreements, including the Paris climate agreement and Iran’s nuclear deal.
That means European nations cannot rely on him ordering U.S. jets into action in the event of a ceasefire violation because “at one time he may say yes, at another time he may say no,” Arnold said.
With NATO membership for Kyiv ruled out by Trump and a host of hurdles to overcome to implement security guarantees for Ukraine, European leaders may decide to navigate the situation by spending “a lot more money on weapons” for Kyiv, said Heisbourg.
Arnold agreed, adding that the best option could be to give Kyiv “loads of guns and loads of ammo.”
“There’s no easy way out,” he said. “None of the options, especially for the Europeans, are good.”
___
This version has corrected to say the European leaders meeting was three days after the Trump-Putin summit, not one day.
