Morning Brief: Trump Drops Tariffs on Some Foods, Man Executed by Firing Squad in South Carolina, Belgium Halts Ukrainian Lifeline

South Carolina’s Firing Squad Carries Out Another Execution as National Debate Heats Up South Carolina carried out its third firing squad execution of the year on November 14, putting Stephen Corey Bryant to death at the Broad River Correctional Institution. The state has now used this method five times since restarting executions in 2024 after a long pause. Bryant’s name has lingered in South Carolina for more than two decades due to the brutality of his crimes, including a message scrawled in a victim’s blood that investigators never forgot. Bryant, forty-four, was sentenced to death for killing sixty-two-year-old Willard TJ Tietjen in Sumter County. He had been connected to other homicides as well, which only added weight to the case that followed him through years of appeals. On the night of his execution, he was secured to a chair in the death chamber, a hood was placed over his head, and three state volunteers fired from fifteen feet away, each trained on the heart. Bryant offered no final statement. Doctors declared him dead at 6:05 p.m., three minutes after the shots rang out. The state’s path back to capital punishment has been shaped by problems that many states are facing. Pharmaceutical companies have refused to sell lethal injection drugs, which left South Carolina without a viable execution method for more than a decade. Lawmakers responded in 2023 with a law that added the firing squad to the list of approved methods and shielded the identities of drug suppliers. Inmates can now choose between the electric chair, lethal injection if the drugs exist, or the firing squad. Each new execution has fueled arguments that show no sign of cooling. Advocacy groups, defense attorneys, and several lawmakers have pressed the courts to halt the firing squad, calling it cruel and unusual. Supporters counter that the method is fast and reliable. The record tells a more complicated story. A firing squad execution earlier this year was labeled botched by defense attorneys who claimed the shots did not strike the intended location cleanly, giving new ammunition to opponents who argue the state is taking a step backward. Bryant’s attorneys also raised claims that he endured severe childhood abuse. The courts reviewed these arguments but declined to intervene. South Carolina shows no indication it plans to slow its pace. Only Florida has carried out more executions in 2025. With legal challenges still moving through the system and public pressure rising, the state now sits at the center of a national fight over how far the government should go when it carries out the ultimate punishment.   On Friday, SC executed Stephen Bryant, the 50th inmate put to death in the state since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. Bryant, 44, was executed by firing squad at Broad River Correctional Institution. pic.twitter.com/A2gWLgrkxp — WPDE ABC15 (@wpdeabc15) November 15, 2025 Belgium Puts the Brakes on Europe’s $200 Billion Lifeline to Ukraine Ukraine is fighting for territory, but it is also fighting to keep its economy breathing. A massive two-hundred-billion-dollar financial lifeline from Europe, largely built on frozen Russian assets, was supposed to keep Kyiv in the fight. Instead, the plan has run into an unexpected blockade in Brussels, and the clock is ticking. At the center of this standoff sits roughly two hundred billion euros in Russian state assets parked inside Euroclear in Belgium since the 2022 invasion. European leaders, with Volodymyr Zelensky pushing hard and Washington’s support fading, floated a bold workaround. Europe would borrow against those frozen assets, then send the money to Ukraine as long-term loans. The cash would pay for ammunition and air defenses, but also government salaries, power grids, and the basic scaffolding of a functioning state under fire. On paper, it looked like a creative strategy. In practice, Belgium slammed on the brakes. At a key summit in Brussels, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo raised doubts about whether the plan would survive legal scrutiny and whether all European Union states should share the risk if things went sideways. Euroclear and Belgian officials warned about Russian retaliation against Belgian interests and the possibility that courts could claw back assets or interest income. There is another layer that nobody in Brussels ignores. Belgium collects sizable tax revenue from the interest these frozen Russian assets generate. That money has domestic stakeholders who are in no hurry to see it sacrificed on the altar of geopolitical ambition. The result is that a package sold to the public as a decisive step for Ukraine is stuck. Heavyweights like Germany and France keep talking up the need to move fast, but in the European Union, every member has a veto. Until Belgium moves, the lifeline remains theory. Critics across Europe are using the delay to question corruption in Ukraine and to chip away at political will. For Kyiv, this is not an academic debate. Ukraine needs cash to hold the line and to keep its government operating. Fighting a high-intensity war while your main financial hose is kinked is not a sustainable plan. Until someone in Brussels finds a way around Belgian resistance, Europe’s promise of long-term support looks fragile, and so does its claim to be the reliable pillar that keeps Ukraine in this fight.   The European Union is racing against the clock to overcome Belgium’s objections to a plan to fund Ukraine’s defense using Russian money https://t.co/urVUf7ZtC6 — The Wall Street Journal (@WSJ) November 15, 2025