Senators urge Trump to drop Russian diesel plan; judge orders ads canceled

A bipartisan group of six senators on Sunday called on the Trump administration to “immediately reverse course” on its plan to purchase diesel from Russia as part of an effort to lower high fuel prices. Four Republican senators — Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and John Curtis of Utah — signed the statement along with two Democrats.

Trump announced the deal Friday on social media, saying he had struck it with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a phone call. Under the plan, Russia would immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel to the American and global market, followed by an additional 500,000 tons in November and 1 million tons “immediately thereafter.”

In their statement, the senators said the administration failed to consult Congress or submit any explanation justifying the decision as required by statute. They noted that Congress explicitly banned Russian energy imports in 2022, and wrote that the United States “should not provide Putin with a financial lifeline while Russia continues to kill Ukrainian civilians.”

Energy experts say the arrangement is unlikely to make a dent in prices at the pump. Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, noted that the total amount of diesel involved appears to be less than what the U.S. uses in a single day.

In a separate ruling Sunday night, U.S. District Judge Jennifer L. Rochon in New York ordered the administration to cancel any remaining taxpayer-funded television commercials promoting Trump’s political message, granting a temporary restraining order in a case brought by a coalition that includes the nonpartisan watchdog Common Cause. Asked for comment, the White House referred to an Oct. 5 social media post in which Trump defended the ads as “rather standard” but, amid backlash, said he would pay for them from his political fundraising.

Meanwhile, a fight over bycatch in Alaska’s pollock fishery is intensifying. Bycatch makes up 2% of the fishery’s total catch, but at the scale of the second-largest fishery on Earth — the source of the fish in McDonald’s Filet-O-Fish, fish sticks and imitation crab — that adds up: over the last 10 years, Bering Sea pollock trawlers caught an average of about 18,000 Chinook and 288,000 other salmon a year, nearly all of them chum. The issue has become prominent in Alaska’s midterm elections as salmon runs have collapsed across western Alaska.