U.S. President Donald Trump said Sunday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed to an "energy ceasefire," but offered no details on its terms.

Trump's brief social media post said only that the ceasefire took effect immediately and that both sides had agreed to it. "Do not break it!" he wrote. Neither Moscow nor Kyiv immediately commented on the announcement, and The White House did not immediately clarify the president's post or add detail.

His announcement came as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in an interview aired Sunday, said Ukraine was ready to stop striking Russian refineries if Moscow halted attacks on Ukraine's energy system, and asked Trump to press the Kremlin to agree.

"We are asking President Trump, (to) give them (a) signal, not (to) attack energy infrastructure of Ukraine," he told ABC's "This Week."

Trump spars with Zelenskyy

Trump said Saturday it was time for Ukraine to get a new president, suggesting Zelenskyy has not done enough to end the war and blaming him for high diesel prices in the U.S.

Zelenskyy said in response to Trump's comments that Ukraine could hold elections if Russia agreed to a 60-day ceasefire. "Give us two months, 60 days off. Total ceasefire, 60 days, and we will organize elections," he said, adding that Ukraine would be ready to accept whatever choice its people made.

"With all respect to President Trump, it's up to our society, up to our people to choose one or another leader," he said. Zelenskyy added that holding a vote during the war would be unlawful and that Ukraine would need security guarantees to allow people to vote safely.

Ukraine has been under martial law since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, and the Ukrainian Constitution bars elections while it remains in force. Beyond the legal barrier, a nationwide vote would be vulnerable to Russian missile and drone attacks, and organizing one is widely seen as logistically impossible, with roughly a fifth of the country under occupation, millions of Ukrainians displaced abroad and soldiers on the front line. Zelenskyy's term formally expired in May 2024, but the constitution allows him to remain in office until a new president is sworn in.

The exchange came as Kyiv pressed its campaign against infrastructure deep inside Russia, with a drone attack on Sunday shutting down a data center run by Russian technology giant Yandex, the third strike on the company's facilities in four days. Russia and Ukraine are locked in a long-range aerial war while their armies remain largely deadlocked on the front line.

The U.S. president, who on Friday struck a deal with Putin to buy diesel from Russia in an attempt to address high fuel prices ahead of U.S. midterm elections, has been urging Zelenskyy for weeks to stop strikes on Russian energy infrastructure.

He has sought to blame record U.S. diesel prices on Ukraine rather than the U.S.-led war in Iran, which has driven up world energy prices. Ukrainian and European officials reacted to the diesel deal with dismay, saying it will help pay for Russia's war effort.

Ukrainian strike on Russian data center triggers outages

The Ukrainian drone attack on the Yandex data center in the city of Vladimir, east of Moscow, caused outages across the company's services, leaving users in dozens of Russian cities and in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Armenia unable to order taxis or access banking services, according to Russian independent news outlet Astra.

"As a result of the drone attack, the infrastructure of Yandex's data center in Vladimir was damaged. Operations at the data center have been completely halted. There were no injuries," said the Yandex Cloud Telegram channel, which provides operational updates on service availability.

In Moscow, residents described disruption to everyday tasks. Pavel Belyavskiy, a driver for Yandex Taxi, said it was unclear whether orders were coming through at all, and that on several rides he had to cancel after waiting a long time because he could not reach the passenger.

"I'd press the 'call' button to contact them, but nothing happens," he said, "There's nothing I can do, so I'm just forced to cancel."

Igor Mann said he went to check the status of an order on the Yandex Market shopping platform but the page was unavailable, and connecting through a VPN did not help. "Nothing worked," he said.

Another Moscow resident, Eduard Malyavko, said the outages had "direct impact" and weren't just about "convenience."

"It's also about work," he said, adding that they also affected "healthcare, and everything else."

On Thursday, a drone attack took a Yandex data center offline in the Ryazan region, southeast of Moscow. A day later, Ukrainian drones hit the company's major data center in the Kaluga region, southwest of Moscow, partly putting it out of action, Yandex said.

Yandex, often described as Russia's Google, runs the country's most popular search engine and a wide range of digital services, and is heavily involved in Russia's artificial intelligence development.

A former high-ranking Democratic legislator in New Mexico accused of diverting millions of dollars meant for vocational education in the state's largest school district to businesses and charities in which she had an interest has pleaded guilty to state charges that include fraud and money laundering.

Sheryl Williams Stapleton changed her plea during a hearing Friday, just three weeks after a federal jury convicted her of dozens of similar charges stemming from what prosecutors described as a yearslong scheme.

State prosecutors filed money laundering, racketeering and other charges against Williams Stapleton in 2021. She was set to go to trial in October. Under the plea agreement, all but four of the charges were dropped, and the agreement calls for a 10 1/2-year prison sentence and more than $1.8 million in restitution.

“Today's guilty plea holds Sheryl Williams Stapleton accountable for defrauding New Mexico taxpayers and abusing the public trust,” said Lauren Rodriguez, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Justice.

Rodriguez added that state prosecutors are pleased that the federal sentencing range “will provide a significant period of incarceration beyond what the state system could impose on its own.”

An attorney for Williams Stapleton did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment Friday.

A former state House majority leader and an administrator with Albuquerque Public Schools, Williams Stapleton was first elected in 1994. She resigned from the House two days after search warrants were served at her home during summer 2021, and the school district fired her.

In the federal case, prosecutors said that the district paid more than $3 million to Robotics Management Learning Systems LLC, a Washington, D.C.-based company at the center of both the state and federal cases. Most of that money came from federal funds meant for vocational education programs.

As the school district's career and technical education director, Williams Stapleton made sure money for those programs went to Robotics, which was owned by her friend and federal co-defendant Joseph Johnson, prosecutors said. Williams Stapleton was accused of ushering the company's invoices through the procurement process. Johnson was accused of providing blank checks to Williams Stapleton.

During the federal trial, prosecutors also presented evidence that Williams Stapleton and Johnson failed to report thousands of dollars in payments from Robotics on their federal income tax returns.

Jurors also convicted Johnson in the federal case. He and Williams Stapleton have yet to be sentenced, and their attorneys previously indicated they would appeal the federal verdicts.

A divided Supreme Court on Monday allowed the White House to continue construction on a $400 million ballroom project as lawsuits play out, a win for President Donald Trump as he flexes unprecedented executive power and remakes the capital in his image.

The apparent 5-4 decision replaces a temporary order issued earlier this month, shortly before a court-ordered halt would have gone into effect.

That temporary order was signed by Chief Justice John Roberts, assigned to handle appeals from the capital. But he publicly disagreed with the latest decision, writing a strong dissent that said the project is likely unlawful because it hasn't been approved by Congress.

“Today's decision is no victory for the separation of powers,” Roberts wrote. The court's three liberal-leaning justices agreed.

The majority, on the other hand, found the National Trust for Historic Preservation likely did not have the legal right to challenge the project.

The unsigned order pointed to government arguments that the ballroom would address national security concerns by shielding a planned underground military installation and offering a more secure structure for large events than the tents currently used.

By contrast, “the only harm the Trust claims is the offense one of its members will suffer from having to view a structure of the ‘scale,’ ‘height,’ and ‘massing’ the government intends,” it states.

Trump applauded the decision, writing in a social media post, “I am pleased to report that the United States Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of the Ballroom/Military Complex being built without any further contingency, doubt, or threat.”

The majority's order did not directly decide the legality of the project, and the suit will return to lower courts. Documents filed in the case, though, say that key portions of the project could be complete within months — a quick timeline compared with a typical legal case.

The trust's president and CEO, Brent Leggs, said the group was disappointed with the decision but pleased with Roberts' dissent. “This is not the final decision on the merits of our case and does not resolve our fundamental argument — that each President is a temporary steward of the People's House and does not have the unilateral authority to demolish and redesign it without the approval of Congress,” he said in a statement.

The Trump administration asked the justices to intervene after federal courts found the project must halt because it didn't have congressional approval.

The lawsuit from the trust argued that Trump has no unilateral authority to undertake the work, which has included demolishing the East Wing. The group's lawyers accused the White House of trying to “outrun the courts” by accelerating construction.

In lower courts, the administration has argued that the president has total authority to renovate the White House and other federal buildings.

A man accused of arranging the fatal shooting of a Microsoft design manager on a Florida road was convicted Wednesday in a murder-for-hire scheme that followed years of a stormy child custody arrangement between the victim and his wealthy ex-wife.

Jared Bridegan was shot in 2022 after he got out of his SUV to remove a tire from a road in Jacksonville Beach. The attack stumped police for months as they struggled to understand why someone with no apparent enemies would be killed while his daughter sat nearby in her car seat.

Prosecutors believe he was killed because of ongoing strife with his former wife, Shanna Gardner, over the parenting of their twins.

Mario Fernandez Saldana, 38, was convicted of first-degree murder and solicitation of murder and faces an automatic sentence of life in prison. He's married to Gardner, 39, whose trial is set to start in September.

“They wanted a majority of the decision making. They wanted more custody, even 60-40,” Assistant State Attorney Christina Stifler said during closing arguments Tuesday in Duval County court.

“It doesn't matter if they were completely right about the situation or completely wrong. What matters is how they fixed it,” Stifler said. “They fixed it by executing a man when they had other alternatives available to them. That's why we're here.”

Prosecutors said Fernandez Saldana hired Henry Tenon to carry out the fatal ambush. He had no personal connection to Bridegan, but was a former tenant at Fernandez Saldana's rental property in Jacksonville. The prosecutor described him as “basically homeless, squatting on people's couches with overdrawn bank accounts.”

Jurors saw three checks totaling $10,000 written to Tenon after the homicide, marked as payments by Fernandez Saldana for handyman work and a business idea — “good luck!!”

Tenon's DNA was identified on the rim of the tire that was intentionally placed in the road, police said.

He initially pleaded guilty and agreed to testify against Fernandez Saldana but backed out and will stand trial in 2027.

Defense attorney Jesse Dreicer told jurors that Fernandez Saldana had no motive to have Bridegan killed. Fernandez Saldana and Gardner are estranged, and Gardner moved to Washington state after the killing. She was arrested in 2023.

“He certainly gained no benefit from the death of Jared Bridegan,” Dreicer said, noting there was no testimony that Fernandez Saldana told anyone that Bridegan “deserves to die.”

Gardner is the daughter of the co-founder of Stampin' Up!, an arts-and-crafts company based in Utah.

Bridegan was shot twice when he stopped his Volkswagen Atlas to move the tire out of the way. He had just returned two children to Gardner's home after a meal with the twins. At the time of his death, he was married to Kirsten Bridegan and they had two children.

Kirsten Bridegan told the jury that the post-divorce relationship between her husband and Gardner was “pretty terrible,” adding there was “absolutely no trust.” She said it interfered with the kids' medical appointments and even routine meetings at school.

Bridegan was chief technology officer at Utah-based Clean Simple Eats before working at Microsoft for less than a year before his death, his wife said.

The Supreme Court opened a path Monday for possible implementation of President Donald Trump's executive order restricting mail-in voting, though it remains unclear how much can be put in place before the fast-approaching midterm elections.

The decision leaves room for additional court challenges that could further slow Trump's order, and other similar cases have already been filed. The U.S. Postal Service laid out how it would implement the order last week, but time is running short to impose major changes. North Carolina is sending out ballots Sept. 4 overseas and to military voters, and other states will quickly follow suit in just a few weeks.

The Supreme Court's conservative majority didn't decide the legality of Trump's order, instead ruling that states who sued did not have the legal right to challenge it.

While the emergency order is not final, it does have the potential to create chaos around voting across the country, with Trump often questioning the integrity of elections and the nation's highest court again the possible arbiter of a political controversy.

“The Court's disposition of this application does not mean that any measure taken by the Government to implement the Order will necessarily be lawful. On that score, time will tell,” the majority wrote in an unsigned order.

The three liberal-leaning justices publicly dissented, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson writing that the rule “lets another shoe drop in the Kafkaesque nightmare that our precedents have been steadily creating for certain plaintiffs who seek to bring election-related challenges.”

New York Attorney General Letitia James foreshadowed more legal fights ahead, calling the decision a “painful setback” but vowing it would “not be the final word.”

The court's order opens a path for the administration to begin action to restrict mail voting, but it also could lead to further litigation that could freeze the federal government again.

“This is just the first inning of a very fast nine-inning game,” said Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame University.

Mail balloting has long been a favorite target for Trump, who has claimed that it breeds fraud despite strong evidence to the contrary and his own use of the voting method.

Trump's executive order, signed in March, calls on his administration to create lists of eligible voters and orders the U.S. Postal Service to deliver mail ballots only to people on those lists. New requirements released Friday would forbid the Postal Service from sending mail ballots from any state that does not comply with Trump's order.

A Postal Service spokesperson did not immediately respond messages seeking comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Bitcoin and gold shot higher this week, with both getting a boost from some frantic action surrounding the bond market, and the cryptocurrency also benefiting from activity in Washington.

Bitcoin had dropped from a January high of around $95,000 to below $60,000 at the end of June. Investors shied away from speculative assets earlier in the year and crypto supporters were concerned about the lack of movement on proposed regulation of the industry. On Friday, bitcoin rose above $77,000.

Gold hit a high above $5,300 in January but dropped to around $4,000 in June as rising rates made interest-bearing investments more attractive. Gold rose to $4,661 on Friday.

The first jolt arrived Wednesday when the Treasury Department announced plans to significantly increase its buybacks of long-term Treasurys, or government debt. On the same day, President Donald Trump, who made about $1.2 billion last year from various crypto holdings, urged Congress to move quickly on crypto legislation.

There was an almost immediate reaction, which included a dollar sell-off and a jump in the value of gold and bitcoin as investors moved toward alternative assets.

How these two investments caught fire can be understood in the context of several developments this week. In a surprise announcement Wednesday, the U.S. Treasury Department said that it would at least double the size of its planned purchases of longer-term government debt. The maneuver was intended to calm bond markets after a sustained sell-off, meaning investors were asking for higher yields to lend money to the U.S., which investors suddenly viewed as riskier.

That's because while the Treasury intervention worked, at least for a short period, it also raised questions about whether the government is trying to push borrowing costs lower despite inflationary pressures. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is attempting to lower long-term borrowing costs, a move that can put upward pressure on inflation at a time when inflation is already elevated. Bessent's maneuver could handcuff the Federal Reserve, which fights inflation by raising interest rates.

Then there's the national debt, which surpassed a record $40 trillion on the same day that the Treasury's actions unfolded. The milestone figure was recorded just five months after the U.S. hit a record $39 trillion debt in March. It reached $38 trillion five months before that, in October.

There is already a lot of anxiety over inflation, particularly because of the conflict in Iran and soaring energy prices. If yields on U.S. bonds are not truly reflecting risk, you can often see that play out in the value of the U.S. currency, which took a significant downward swoop Wednesday. So where does the money that was invested in the dollar or Treasurys go? This week, it appears to have been funneled into what is known as the “debasement trade,” when investors flood into alternative assets such as gold, which rose more than 2% Wednesday. The debasement trade now includes bitcoin. Bitcoin jumped more than 20% this week.