Here’s the biggest news you missed this weekend

Vice President JD Vance remains confident the U.S. can broker an end to the war between Russia and Ukraine despite potential hang-ups that have emerged since President Donald Trump’s meeting this month with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“We believe we’ve already seen some significant concessions from both sides, just in the last few weeks,” Vance said in an exclusive interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press.”

“We’re going to eventually be successful, or we’ll hit a brick wall. And if we hit a brick wall, then we’re going to continue this process of negotiation, of applying leverage,” the vice president added. “This is the energetic diplomacy that’s going to bring this war to a close.”

Meanwhile, Russia’s top diplomat, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, put a damper on hopes that Trump will propel a swift end to the war in Ukraine.

He told “Meet the Press” moderator Kristen Welker that Ukraine has hindered the process, saying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders “don’t want peace.”

“Zelenskyy said no to everything,” Lavrov said. “How can we meet with a person who is pretending to be a leader?”

Lavrov said Putin is ready to meet with Zelenskyy “when the agenda is ready.” But he suggested that Putin would not sign a peace agreement with Zelenskyy, whose legitimacy Moscow has questioned since Ukrainian elections were postponed last year amid martial law.

“When we come to a stage when you have to sign documents, we would need a very clear understanding by everybody that the person who is signing is legitimate,” he said. “And according to the Ukrainian constitution, Mr. Zelenskyy is not at the moment.”

Justice Department gave Ghislaine Maxwell ‘a platform to rewrite history,’ family of Virginia Giuffre says

Family members of Virginia Giuffre, a prominent Jeffrey Epstein accuser, said they were “outraged” by the Justice Department’s decision to release transcripts from Ghislaine Maxwell’s testimony last month, arguing the interviews provided Maxwell a “platform to rewrite history.”

“The content of these transcripts is in direct contradiction with felon Ghislaine Maxwell’s conviction for child sex trafficking,” the family of Virginia Roberts Giuffre said in a statement. The family added, “This travesty of justice entirely invalidates the experiences of the many brave survivors who put their safety, security, and lives on the line to ensure her conviction, including our sister.”

The Justice Department on Friday released audio and transcripts of the two-day interview, during which Maxwell disputed several allegations of wrongdoing against her and Epstein, including by Giuffre, who died by suicide in April.

Maxwell said she never witnessed any inappropriate conduct from any man, including Trump, and denied the existence of an incriminating “client list” of those who benefited from Epstein’s crimes.

On “Meet the Press,” Sen. Adam Schiff echoed the Giuffre family’s view, claiming that Maxwell has the motivation to say anything that could potentially get her pardoned.

“She says exactly what her lawyers tell her is going to be necessary to get a pardon. No one should be surprised here,” Schiff said.

Politics in brief

Padding passage: The Republican-controlled Texas state Senate passed the party’s new congressional maps — designed to pad the GOP majority in the U.S. Congress — completing a legislative odyssey that sparked a nationwide scramble over redistricting.
Undelivered: Postal services across the world are halting parcel deliveries to the United States amid mounting confusion over new import duties imposed on small shipments under Trump’s new tariff regime.
Baltimore next? Trump on Truth Social threatened to send the military into Baltimore to “quickly clean up” crime, the latest in a line of threats to replicate the deployment of National Guard troops to Washington.

The federal takeover of Washington has sparked a fierce debate over the state of crime in the city. What’s beyond dispute is that carjackings exploded during the pandemic and are not yet back to pre-pandemic levels. It’s a particularly brutal crime, experts say, one that often causes lasting psychological damage.

“It became the crime of the pandemic,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington-based organization of current and former law enforcement officials focused on improving policing. “And the reason you still have it is because juveniles learned how to do it. That presents a lot of challenges for the justice system.”

The soaring number of young people who have engaged in carjacking is indeed one of the key factors that has driven the surge in the Washington area and beyond, according to interviews with more than half a dozen police officials, criminologists and youth advocates.

Some of these perpetrators stole vehicles to use them to commit more crimes. Many others commit carjackings simply for the thrill of it, or to earn respect and attention on social media, according to police investigators and advocates who have spoken to the young offenders.

Over the last 18 months, the carjacking numbers have fallen in the area. Sgt. Josh Scall, a supervisor in the carjacking unit in neighboring Prince George’s County, Maryland, said he’s proud of the progress, but even one carjacking is one more than he wants to see in his county.

“We can parade that we’re not at 573,” Scall added, referring to the record number of carjackings recorded in Prince George’s in 2023. “But it’s still unacceptable in our books.”

Sending a freshman off to college is almost always an expensive endeavor, but the latest viral trend is taking back-to-school shopping to the next level.

Extreme dorm makeovers are becoming increasingly popular, with some parents shelling out tens of thousands of dollars and hiring professional interior designers to transform their kids’ humble abodes into the dorm rooms of their dreams.

Far removed from the beat-up mini-fridges and crooked posters of the past, the dramatic transformations are unnecessary, some say, and reflect the widening line between the haves and have-nots in the United States.

“Wealth disparity just becomes obvious on a college campus, because suddenly your lifestyle is either funded by you or it’s not,” said Mya Mendola, who graduated from the University of Minnesota last year.

Notable quote

Frank Ilett announced last October he wouldn’t trim his locks until his beloved Manchester United won five soccer matches in a row. More than 320 days later, he’s still waiting.