Tangle - The prisoner swap with Russia.

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Quick hits.

1. U.S. employers added 114,000 jobs in July, fewer than economists expected. (The numbers) Separately, concerns about a slowing U.S. economy triggered a global stock sell-off that accelerated on Monday. (The latest)
2. Vice President Kamala Harris met with finalists to be her running mate over the weekend and is expected to announce her decision on Monday. (The decision) Separately, Harris raised $310 million in July, two-thirds of which came from first-time donors. Former President Trump raised $138.7 million during the same period. (The funding)
3. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin overrode a plea agreement reached for the accused masterminds of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, reinstating their cases as death-penalty eligible. (The decision) Separately, the U.S. formally recognized Edmundo González as the winner of Venezuela's contested presidential election. (The recognition)
4. An Israeli airstrike reportedly killed over 30 people at two Gaza schools where some Gazans were sheltering. Israel confirmed the strikes, saying the schools were being used as Hamas command and control centers. Israel also conducted a rare airstrike in the West Bank, killing nine Hamas militants. (The strikes)
5. Several nations including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and France urged their citizens to evacuate Lebanon over concerns of a wider regional war with Israel. (The warning)

Today's topic.

The U.S.-Russia prisoner swap. On Thursday, the Biden administration announced a prisoner exchange between several European nations, the U.S., and Russia to secure the release of three U.S. citizens, one U.S. legal resident, and twelve others. Eight prisoners were sent back to Russia in return, three of whom had been held in the U.S. The swap was the largest of its kind since the Cold War, involving seven countries and 24 prisoners.

The three Americans released were journalist Evan Gershkovich, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, and Russian-American journalist Alsu Kurmasheva. Gershkovich was arrested in March 2023 on espionage charges while reporting on Russia's invasion of Ukraine for The Wall Street Journal, which denied the charges, and the U.S. State Department classified him as wrongfully detained. In July 2024, Gershkovich was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 16 years in prison.

We covered Gershkovich’s arrest here.

Whelan was detained in Russia in 2018 on suspicion of spying and was serving a 16-year sentence for an espionage conviction in 2020. Whelan’s family has maintained that he was visiting Russia for a friend's wedding party, and the State Department had also classified him as wrongfully detained. Kurmasheva, a Prague-based editor, was initially prevented from leaving Russia in June of 2023 for failing to register her U.S. passport, then arrested in October 2023 on charges of spreading false information about Russia’s military. She was convicted in July 2024 and sentenced to over six years in prison. 

Others released from Russia included Russian journalist Vladimir Kara-Murza, a U.S. resident and one of the most visible opposition figures to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Kara-Murza was arrested for treason shortly after returning to Russia in April 2022 for speaking out against the war in Ukraine while in the United States. The other 12 prisoners held by Russia were political dissidents; they were released to Germany. Discussions for the swap had included Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny before his death in a Russian prison in February.

Of the eight prisoners released to Russia, the most notable was Vadim Krasikov, a former high-ranking Russian agent who was serving a life sentence in Germany for assassinating a Chechen separatist in Berlin. The Wall Street Journal reported that Krasikov — a longtime Putin ally — was central to negotiations in the prisoner swap. The other Russians released had known or suspected ties to Russian intelligence and were imprisoned in the U.S., Norway, Poland, and Slovenia.  

The last high-profile prisoner exchange between the U.S. and Russia came in 2022, when Russia swapped U.S. basketball player Brittney Griner (who was arrested for possessing cannabis oil while traveling to Russia) for convicted arms dealer Viktor Bout.

President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris greeted Gershkovich, Whelan, and Kurmasheva when they arrived back in the U.S. on Thursday. "Some of these women and men have been unjustly held for years. All have endured unimaginable suffering and uncertainty. Today, their agony is over," Biden said in a statement. The president reportedly finalized the deal about an hour before announcing he would drop his bid for reelection on July 21. 

Today, we’ll explore responses to the deal from the left and right. Then, I’ll share my take.

Agreed.

• Both sides celebrate the prisoners’ release and commend the efforts of the Biden administration to negotiate the swap. 
• Writers on the left and right also share concerns that Putin’s strategy of wrongfully detaining Americans and political dissidents will continue and suggest Biden has set a risky precedent with this deal.

What the left is saying.

• The left cheers the prisoners’ return but worries about the cost of bringing them home.
• Some say the exchange shows Biden is committed to acting on unresolved issues before the end of his term.
• Others say Putin may have made the deal because he thinks Trump will lose the election.

In The New York Times, Serge Schmemann wrote “the joyful release of Evan Gershkovich came at a high price.”

“Seizing Gershkovich secured the Kremlin a hostage. But seizing a reporter for a major American publication also sent a signal to those foreign reporters who remain in Russia that real journalism under this regime is really dangerous, and not just for homegrown media, which has been thoroughly muzzled or driven into exile,” Schmemann said. “Putin came to power after the domestic and foreign press had thrown off the muzzles of the Soviet era, and he proceeded, especially since the invasion of Ukraine, to deliberately crush it. Many foreign journalists now try to report from outside Russia; Gershkovich tried valiantly to report from within and paid a heavy price.”

“Yet even as we celebrate the liberation of these innocent people, it is hard to avoid the troubling fact that Putin has successfully used their detentions to get real criminals out of the prisons where they belong, most notably Vadim Krasikov, a Russian assassin serving a life sentence in Germany. Biden was right to do everything he could to bring back wrongfully imprisoned Americans, but the readiness of authoritarian states like Russia to seize innocent foreigners as hostages is galling.”

In Bloomberg, Andreas Kluth suggested the prisoner swap “will be Biden’s last big win.”

“Maybe this is what Biden had in mind when, in passing the Democratic baton in the presidential race to Kamala Harris, he said that he would use his remaining time in office to take care of as much unfinished business as he can,” Kluth said. “Biden has six months to go, fully one-eighth of his term. That still makes for an unusually long ‘lame-duck’ period, as it’s called. The pessimistic take is that this leaves a power vacuum in the White House which rogue actors abroad — from allies such as Israel to foes such as North Korea — could try to exploit. The optimistic spin, which Biden and Blinken are peddling, is that this premature duck-laming will now cue a swan of a commander-in-chief to sing his last song.”

“In the Middle East, Biden is unlikely to score a late win and will be lucky to avert disaster. His objective is to prevent the wars between Israel and Hamas and Israel and Hezbollah from spreading into a regional conflict that draws in the US and Iran,” Kluth wrote. “The happy news is that Biden can still make a difference in some places and for some people, such as Gershkovich and Whelan. The tragedy is that the world and its hatreds are too complex to fit into the calendar of an outgoing American president whom too many people at home and abroad want to see failing.”

In Slate, Fred Kaplan said “it sure seems as if Vladimir Putin is recalculating the U.S. elections.”

“Trump has bragged, as he has when speaking of many problems, that only he could solve the problem… It seems that we don’t need Trump as a savior to wrest the nation’s foreign policy from the bungling clutches of Team Biden. It turns out that sometimes Biden & Co. know what they’re doing,” Kaplan wrote. “It turns out that most world leaders make decisions based on their interests. And for reasons that haven’t yet been revealed, Putin decided that it was in his interest to make the deal now.”

“It may be that Putin has recalculated the odds of this November’s American presidential election. It could be that Trump was, to some degree, right—that Putin (assuming he wanted to make a deal at some point) was waiting until Trump won so that the two men could resume their beautiful friendship,” Kaplan said. “However, like most world leaders, Putin has no doubt been reading the polls, and he may have concluded that Trump is not going to win… Putin might have reasoned, it’s better to take a deal now so it looks as if he’s acting without an eye to our election.”

What the right is saying.

• The right is glad to see the Americans freed but criticizes Biden for a pattern of capitulating to Putin’s demands.
• Some say the U.S. gave up more than it received in the deal. 
• Others credit Biden for bringing the prisoners home but say their detainment was in part his fault.  

In The Spectator, Ben Domenech called it “a lifesaving prisoner swap with the worst incentives.”

“The massive prisoner swap which led to Russia’s release of prisoners Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan and Vladimir Kara-Murza, among many others, is the greatest gift their families and loved ones could ever hope for — in several cases, it is a lifesaving development. But it also serves as an indication of just how much the practice has become a weapon of the world’s great powers,” Domenech said. “What used to be the practice of squalid terror groups in Middle Eastern byways is now official policy for Great Powers. They do it because it works, and it works because America is weak.”

“Until the day that the United States brings real pain to these kidnappers, without giving them a bit of satisfaction, the abduction and jailing of Americans around the world will continue, and get worse, and grow,” Domenech wrote. “An American president should never be willing to submit to this type of extortion. Our willingness to shame ourselves is now baked in. The country needs a president with the strength to say no, and to hit back — and who understands that once you pay the Danegeld, you never get rid of the Dane.”

In The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson argued the deal “was ridiculously lopsided.”

“All Americans should welcome the release of our three unjustly imprisoned compatriots… But this wasn’t a Cold War-era prisoner swap of the kind immortalized in the Oscar-winning 2015 film ‘Bridge of Spies.’ It was a dangerously uneven exchange that saw the release of a Russian assassin along with Russian spies and hackers, all of whom have committed serious crimes in western countries,” Davidson said. “Essentially, Moscow arrested a bunch of innocent western journalists and political dissidents, and then used them as bargaining chips to secure the release of its own killers, criminals, and spies.” 

The deal “sends a clear message that a hostile regime can arrest and detain American citizens on false pretenses, using them as leverage to secure the release of their own people,” Davidson wrote. “At the very least, it most assuredly wasn’t the brilliant foreign policy maneuver the Biden administration and the media are saying it was… Again, it’s good news that three American citizens were released, but it’s hard to make the case that the Biden administration stood up for ‘American security’ or made America safer by agreeing to this deal.”

In The Washington Examiner, Tom Rogan said “Biden deserves credit for Russia prisoner swap,” but the president still “broadcast weakness.”

“While this deal carries a heavy risk of boosting Russian President Vladimir Putin’s appetite for aggressive intelligence operations, it deserves support,” Rogan wrote. “Biden and his key negotiator, CIA Director Bill Burns… deserve particular credit in terms of the parameters of the agreement. After all, Biden likely could have reached a deal earlier if it only involved Americans and some Germans detained by Russia. Instead, the deal included a significant number of German citizens, possibly including some German BND foreign intelligence service agents and officers, and prominent Russian dissidents.”

“Yet we shouldn’t forget, as some in the media are forgetting, that Gershkovich was detained under Biden, not Trump. Gershkovich was detained under Biden because the president had shown Putin that he would make significant concessions even in the face of blatantly unjust Russian detentions. Putin learned this lesson in December 2022 when Biden exchanged a major Russian arms dealer, Viktor Bout, for the WNBA star Brittney Griner,” Rogan said. “The next time an American is taken hostage or U.S. interests are otherwise attacked by Russia, the first U.S. response should not be to enter a long process of negotiations. Instead, the U.S. should escalate in riposte.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• Every writer we quoted today is glad these prisoners have returned home, and so am I.
• Yes, their release comes at a political cost, and balancing the freedom of journalists against the imprisonment of criminals is very difficult.
• Any deal with Russia will feel lopsided, since the U.S doesn’t imprison journalists, and today that’s a fact worth being proud of.

First and foremost, like the writers we quoted today, I’m incredibly glad these prisoners are free.

Despite my own Russian heritage and desire to see the country, I won't be traveling to Russia anytime soon (see: Vladimir Putin). But I know there are a lot of writers and reporters more courageous than I am, and they don't deserve to be rotting away in penal colonies because Putin can't tolerate a critical word written about him. Yes, the prisoners’ release comes at a cost; but it is fundamentally a good thing these people are home, and despite the political cost, we should all celebrate it.

Gershkovich's story was perhaps the most moving of all. Some people in the media spent part of last week debating whether the National Association of Black Journalists should have hosted Donald Trump at their annual conference (including me — I argued that yes, obviously, they should have). As The Wall Street Journal reported, Gershkovich’s last request upon leaving Russia was a one-on-one interview with Putin, his captor and tormentor. It's an incredible distinction: The American Twitter journalists who think interviewing Trump is beyond the pale contrasted with the foreign correspondent whose top priority is trying to interview the person who literally just imprisoned him for over a year.

That is journalism, and the spirit of a real journalist, and it's why people like Gershkovich are so valuable and should be a source of great American pride.

Does that mean this swap was a perfect outcome? Hardly. When President Biden landed a deal for the release of Britney Griner, I said he made the right bad deal. Griner's freedom came at a high price, and her release didn't include some of the other high-profile Americans who got left behind. Today, I share a very similar sentiment: This release came at a high price, though at least this time we also secured the release of several more Americans being held in prison (still, more remain). 

Now, I know a lot of pundits and writers are keen on armchair-quarterbacking decisions like this. I'm not one of them. Of all the things presidents have to deal with, putting a price on a person’s freedom seems like one of the most difficult. Biden’s critics seem capable of presenting precisely zero alternatives to what he did — which is typically a sign they don't have one. And it's no wonder. How do you value the life of an American citizen detained unjustly against a dangerous Russian spy?

I don't have great answers for these questions.

Of course, I understand the negative sentiments. For starters, any time we trade athletes or journalists for genuine criminals — like hitmen willing to kill someone publicly in Berlin — it feels like we're on the "losing" side of an international prisoner swap. I share the concerns of writers on the left and right who say this saga could be far from over — in part because we have shown our willingness to make major concessions to bring home our people. The more we negotiate the release of Americans, the stronger the signal is that foreign governments can unjustly arrest our citizens and use them as chess pieces. 

But at the end of the day, it’s worth remembering that any deal between the United States and Russia is going to feel lopsided; because while Putin kills, disappears and detains dissidents and journalists, our government arrests arms dealers and assassins. While Putin works tirelessly to get murderers and criminals out of prison, then brags about it, our leaders work tirelessly to free innocent journalists from prison.

Over the last several years, the war in Ukraine has stirred up a revitalization of an anti-American punditry that Russia is just "responding to NATO aggression" or that “Putin is no worse than American imperialist presidents.” I hope that moments like these bring clarity to the distinctions between free countries and authoritarian ones, and serve as a reminder of why the former are worth fighting for (and worth defending). 

We have a bloody and broken world, and we live in an imperfect and often unjust country, but I'm reminded on days like today that I much prefer our guys running the show than theirs.

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Your questions, answered.

Q: What evidence do you have that ANY of this assertion is true: “This motivates some to skip their hearings, or simply work here for a couple of years and quietly return home after.” [ed: Taken from the June 6 edition on asylum rules]

I’m genuinely interested because I have found no information whatsoever about what illegal immigrants allowed into the US are doing today. Certainly I’ve seen zero information regarding illegal immigration exiting the US. Pray share your information.

— Jeff from Naperville, IL

Tangle: Let’s take the first part of your question first. The number of migrants residing in the U.S. who skip their cases is fairly disputed, but what’s not disputed is the fact that a non-negligible portion does so. In 2019 (when Trump was making this issue central to his re-election campaign), Vice President Mike Pence claimed that 90% of migrants awaiting trial don't show up to court, citing testimony from Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan. The real numbers are more complicated than that, though, and the better number may be closer to 44%. Either way, it’s a significant number of people.

The reason it’s hard to say for certain is that the government doesn't track and report attendance numbers, but instead has to calculate them from different figures. We do know, however, that these hearings often take years to adjudicate, and that many cases result in neither a grant of asylum or deportation, but in a ruling of “other.” That distinction includes no-shows but also cases that had been resolved through other means, and we also know that the portion of “other” resolutions to asylum cases has been rising for the past several years. Again, it would be wrong to conclude all of those cases were migrants skipping their hearings — but it would also be wrong to conclude that none of them were.

To the last part of your question, it’s a known fact that many people come to the U.S. from countries that are struggling economically, or immigrate to any other country with better economic opportunities, and work to send money home. Organizations like the Migration Policy Institute track immigration inflows and outflows and regularly see certain illegal immigrant populations decrease in size, telling us that some migrants are returning home. We also know that many immigrants want to come here temporarily to help earn money for their families. Journalists have corroborated these stories, and for many decades have tracked migrants who come and go voluntarily. So there’s plenty of evidence that some of these migrants are returning to their home country, but the exact numbers are difficult to determine.

Want to have a question answered in the newsletter? You can reply to this email (it goes straight to our inbox) or fill out this form.

Under the radar.

Former President Donald Trump refused to begin his panel interview at the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) conference unless he could be assured there would not be live fact-checking, the NABJ president claimed. Trump, who eventually took the stage more than an hour late, blamed the delay on audio and technical issues. None of the three journalists interviewing him contested that claim in real time, and there were apparent audio issues during the interview. However, after the event, NABJ President Ken Lemon said the delay was caused by a late negotiation with Trump’s team about fact checking. Trump’s team has denied the claims, citing the audio and technical issues as the sole cause of the delay. Axios has the story.

Numbers.

• 491. The number of days between Evan Gershkovich’s arrest in Russia and his release.
• 2,043. The number of days between Paul Whelan’s arrest in Russia and his release.
• 288. The number of days between Alsu Kurmasheva’s arrest in Russia and her release.
• 41%. The percentage of Americans who said the U.S. government should do more to secure Gershkovich’s release in April 2023, according to a YouGov poll. 
• 53% and 37%. The percentage of Republicans and Democrats, respectively, who said the U.S. government should do more to secure Gershkovich’s release.
• 14. The number of prisoners exchanged between the U.S. and Russia in 2010, the last major swap between the countries prior to last week’s deal.
• 70. The approximate number of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage overseas whose release has been secured during the Biden administration. 
• 59. The number of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage overseas whose release was secured during the Trump administration.

The extras.

• One year ago today we had just written about legacy admissions.
• The most clicked link in Thursday’s newsletter was once again the hilarious broadcaster slip-up.
• Nothing to do with politics: UNESCO announced its 2024 World Heritage sites.
• Thursday’s survey: 1,137 readers responded to our survey about Paul Dans stepping down from Project 2025 with 57% saying it doesn’t signal a change in the relationship between the Heritage Foundation and Donald Trump. “Seems like Trump has never endorsed the plan, but I’d suspect as you do that this doesn’t mean he couldn’t change his mind once elected,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Last week, Adriana Ruano won Guatemala’s first ever gold medal for her performance in shooting. Before learning to compete in this event, however, Ruano was an elite gymnast. While preparing for the 2011 gymnastics world championships, Ruano discovered she had six damaged vertebrae in her back, an injury that would halt her career as a gymnast. She took up shooting after her doctor recommended it as a way to stay in sports without further injuring her back. After taking 26th place in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Ruano won gold in Paris. AP News has the story.

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