Donald Trump

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Musk announced the news on X, where he declared his controversial government cost-cutting measures a victory.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk has announced that he is leaving the administration of United States President Donald Trump, where he led a months-long project to cut costs in the federal government.

“As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending,” he wrote on the social media platform on Wednesday evening.

“The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government,” Musk said, referring to the Department of Government Efficiency, which he was a top figure in.

An unnamed White House official confirmed the news with the Associated Press.

Musk’s departure comes just days after he publicly expressed concerns about Trump’s flagship “big, beautiful bill”– a 1,000-page piece of legislation that extends the president’s 2017 tax cuts while adding work requirements for food assistance and Medicaid.

The bill also allocates spending for some of Trump’s signature projects, like building a wall between the US and Mexico and raising funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

The “big, beautiful bill” passed in the House of Representatives last week and will next be discussed by the Senate.

As my scheduled time as a Special Government Employee comes to an end, I would like to thank President @realDonaldTrump for the opportunity to reduce wasteful spending.

The @DOGE mission will only strengthen over time as it becomes a way of life throughout the government.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 29, 2025

“I was disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told the news programme CBS Sunday Morning, using an acronym for the “Department of Government Efficiency.”

The billionaire joined the Trump Administration in January with the promise of slashing at least $1tril from the US federal budget, although the DOGE website shows that it has only achieved around $175bn in savings, or $1,088.96 per US taxpayer.

If passed in its current format, Trump’s spending bill would cancel out DOGE’s work because it is expected to raise the US deficit by $3.9tril by 2034, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“I think a bill can be big, or it can be beautiful, but I don’t know if it can be both. My personal opinion,” Musk told CBS.

DONALD Trump’s sweeping global tariffs are now at risk after a court has said he doesn’t have the power to impose the levies himself.

A US federal court in New York on Wednesday blocked most of the import taxes from going into effect, ruling that the president had overstepped his authority.

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The Court of International Trade ruling is a big setback for Trump, who has sought to reshape global trade and put America first by using its economic heft to cut deals.

Trump has started a global trade war with nearly every country by instituting a minimum 10 per tariff on their exports into the US.

He also slapped a 25 per cent tariff on Mexico and Canada, saying he needed to levies to stop the flow of illegal immigrants and the horror drug Fentanyl.

The court’s order could spell an end to Trump’s international trade war as it bars Trump’s most sweeping tariffs, effectively erasing most of the trade restrictions Trump has announced since taking office.

But Trump is likely to appeal and take the fight all the way to the Supreme Court.

White House spokesman Kush Desai said: “Foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the Unites States has fueled America’s historic and persistent trade deficits.

“These deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base – facts that the court did not dispute.

“It is not for unelected judges to decide how to properly address a national emergency. President Trump pledged to put America First, and the Administration is committed to using every lever of executive power to address this crisis and restore American Greatness.”

The ruling does not state that tariffs themselves are illegal, but that the executive branch does not have the authority to impose them without Congress.

The president used a 1977 federal economic emergency law to justify a range of levies.

The three-judge panel wrote in an unsigned opinion: “The question in the two cases before the court is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (“IEEPA”) delegates these powers to the president in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.

“The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.”

One of Trump’s key aides, Stephen Miller, attacked the ruling in a post on social media saying: “The judicial coup is out of control.”

Trump memorably held up a board showing rates he was about to set individual trading partners in the White House’s Rose Garden when he announced the tariffs as part of a “liberation day”.

China was clobbered with 34 per cent tariffs, Vietnam 46 per cent, Thailand 36 per cent and Cambodia 49 per cent.

Tariffs on China were eventually increased to a whopping 145 per cent as Trump sought to begin negotiations.

The ten per cent on Britain was at the bottom of the sliding scale devised by Trump’s officials.

Markets were thrown into turmoil but calmed after he paused the larger tariffs for 90 days.

He also suspended some of the higher duties pending negotiations with individual countries and blocs.

Britain has signed a new trade deal with Trump following the imposition of the tariffs – how that will be affected is not yet clear.

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The US will also ‘enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications’ from China and Hong Kong, the State Department said.

The United States will “aggressively revoke” the visas of Chinese students studying in the US, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced, as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on foreign students enrolled at higher education institutions in the country.

Rubio announced the shock move both in a post on X, as well as a statement published late on Wednesday titled “New Visa Policies Put America First, Not China”.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the US State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security to aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields,” the statement said.

“We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong,” it added.

Rubio’s announcement added to the uncertainty for international students in the US, who have faced intensifying scrutiny over recent months amid the administration’s wider assault on higher education institutions.

On Tuesday, the White House also temporarily suspended the processing of visas for foreign students, ordering embassies and consulates not to allow any additional student or exchange visas “until further guidance is issued”.

The State Department also said it plans to “issue guidance on expanded social media vetting for all such applications”.

May 28 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is a strong ally for the growing cryptocurrency industry, Vice President JD Vance told attendees at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday.

“Crypto finally has a champion and an ally in the White House,” Vance said while delivering the event’s keynote address, CBS News reported.

“We want our fellow Americans to know that crypto and digital assets, and particularly bitcoin, are part of the mainstream economy and are here to stay,” he said.

Vance was this year’s featured speaker at the annual bitcoin conference, which President Donald Trump headlined last year while campaigning for the presidency.

Stablecoins stabilize the dollar

He said the Trump administration does not view so-called stablecoins as destabilizing the U.S. dollar and instead strengthens it, CNBC reported.

“We view them as a force multiplier for our economic might,” Vance told the audience at The Venetian Resort.

A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency whose value is derived from another asset, such as gold or the U.S. dollar, according to coinbase.

Vance said cryptocurrency has transformed how people and businesses conduct transactions, and its decentralized nature makes it a good way to protect personal and business finances against bad policies.

“Crypto is a hedge against bad policymaking from Washington, no matter what party’s in control,” he said.

Political advocacy for crypto progress

Vance encouraged those who are involved in cryptocurrency to increase their political advocacy.

He said $200 million in campaign support for candidates who supported cryptocurrency had a positive effect during the 2024 general election, The Hill reported.

Such financial support enabled Sen. Bernie Moreno, R-Ohio, to beat Democratic Party incumbent Sherrod Brown in the 2024 Senate election in Ohio.

“Part of the reason that I’m standing here, part of the reason that Bernie Moreno defeated Sherrod Brown in the Senate campaign last year, is because you guys got organized and got involved in American politics,” Vance said.

Brown chaired the Senate Banking Committee, but his election defeat removed him as an obstacle to crypto-friendly legislation.

“There’s a lesson to take from that experience,” Vance said. “Unless you guys get involved in politics, politics is going to ignore this industry.”

Strong support for the GENIUS Act

The Trump administration is advocating for the GENIUS Act, which officially is called the Guiding and Establishing National Innovation in U.S. Stablecoins Act.

Vance said the proposed act’s enabling legislation is poised to be approved in the Senate and likely would fare well in the House of Representatives.

President Trump’s lead crypto adviser, David Sacks, last week told CNBC that U.S. investors have more than $200 billion in unregulated stablecoins.

Sacks said that amount could reach trillions of dollars “if we provide the legal clarity and legal framework for this.”

A United States federal judge has said that an effort by the administration of President Donald Trump to deport pro-Palestine student activist Mahmoud Khalil is likely unconstitutional.

District Judge Michael Farbiarz of New Jersey wrote on Wednesday that the government’s claim that Khalil constituted a threat to US national security and foreign policy was not likely to succeed.

“Would an ordinary person have a sense that he could be removed from the United States because he ‘compromise[d]’ American ‘foreign policy interests’ — that is, because he compromised US relations with other countries — when the Secretary has not determined that his actions impacted US relations with a foreign country?” Farbiarz wrote. “Probably not.”

Farbiarz did not immediately rule on the question of whether Khalil’s First Amendment rights to free speech were violated. He also did not order Khalil’s immediate release, citing unanswered questions about his permanent residency application.

The judge is expected to order further steps in the coming days.

A ruling against the government would be the latest legal setback for the Trump administration’s controversial efforts to crack down on pro-Palestine activism across the US in the name of national security and combating anti-Semitism.

But critics have accused the Trump administration of violating basic constitutional rights in its efforts to do so.

Khalil, a lawful permanent resident of the US, was the first high-profile arrest made in the Trump administration’s push to expel student protesters involved in demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza.

A former graduate student, Khalil had served as a spokesperson for the antiwar protests at Columbia University. But on March 8, the 30-year-old was arrested in the hall of his student housing building in New York City, while his wife, Dr Noor Abdalla, filmed the incident.

He was then transferred from a detention centre in New Jersey to one in Jena, Louisiana, while his lawyers struggled to ascertain his location. He remains imprisoned in the Jena facility while the US government seeks his deportation.

In public statements, Khalil has said that his detention is part of an effort to chill dissent over US support for Israel’s war, which has been described as a genocide by human rights groups and United Nations experts.

Civil liberties organisations have also expressed alarm that Khalil’s detention appears premised on his political views, rather than any criminal acts. Khalil has not been charged with any crime.

In Louisiana, Khalil continues to face an immigration court weighing his deportation. But in a separate case before the US federal court in Newark, New Jersey, Khalil’s lawyers are arguing a habeas corpus petition: in other words, a case that argues their client has been unlawfully detained.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, acting on behalf of the Trump administration, has cited the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 as the legal basis for Khalil’s detention.

That Cold War-era law stipulates that the secretary of state can deport a foreign national if that person is deemed to pose “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences”.

But that law has been rarely used and raises concerns about conflicts with the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which guarantees the right to free speech regardless of citizenship.

Judge Farbiarz appeared to echo that concern, warning that the Trump administration’s rationale appeared to meet the standards for “constitutional vagueness”.

That, in turn, means Khalil’s petition is “likely to succeed on the merits of his claim” that the government’s actions were unconstitutional, the judge wrote on Wednesday.

Khalil’s legal team applauded the judge’s order, writing in a statement afterwards, “The district court held what we already knew: Secretary Rubio’s weaponization of immigration law to punish Mahmoud and others like him is likely unconstitutional.”

Khalil is one of several high-profile students whose cases have tested the constitutional bounds of the Trump administration’s actions.

Other international students detained for their involvement in pro-Palestine politics, such as Tufts University student Rumeysa Ozturk and Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, have been released from detention after legal challenges.

But Khalil remains in detention. The government denied a request for Khalil’s temporary release that would have allowed him to witness the birth of his son in April.

It also sought to prevent him from holding his newborn son during visitation sessions at a Louisiana detention centre.

“I am furious at the cruelty and inhumanity of this system that dares to call itself just,” Abdalla, Khalil’s wife, said in a statement.

She noted that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had denied the family “this most basic human right” after she flew more than 1,000 miles to visit him in Louisiana with their newborn son.

A judge blocked those efforts by ICE last week, allowing Khalil to hold his son for the first time more than one month after he was born.

US electronic design automation software makers were told via letters to stop supplies to China, the FT reported.

United States President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered US firms that offer software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups, the Financial Times has reported, citing people familiar with the move.

Electronic design automation software makers, which include Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA, were told via letters from the US Commerce Department to stop supplying their tech, the report, which was published on Wednesday, said.

A spokesperson for the Commerce Department declined to comment on the letters but said it is reviewing exports of strategic significance to China, while noting that, “in some cases, Commerce has suspended existing export licenses or imposed additional license requirements while the review is pending”.

Shares of Cadence, which declined to comment, closed down by 10.7 percent, while shares of Synopsys fell by 9.6 percent.

Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi said in a call with analysts that the company had not received a letter, nor had it heard from the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry (BIS) and Security, which enforces export controls.

“We are aware of the reporting and speculations, but Synopsys has not received a notice from BIS. So, our guidance that we are reiterating for the full year, reflects our current understanding of BIS export restrictions as well as our expectations for year-over-year decline in China. We have not received a letter,” Ghazi said.

After the market closed, Synopsys reaffirmed its revenue forecast for 2025. Its shares and those of Cadence bounced back 3.5 percent in trading after the close.

Siemens EDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The software of these firms is used to design both high-end processors as well as simpler products.

While the scope of the policy change described in the report was not immediately clear, any move to strip the software makers of their Chinese customers could deal a blow to their bottom line and to their Chinese chip design customers, which heavily rely on top-of-the-line US software.

“They are the true choke point,” said a former Commerce Department official, who added that rules restricting the export of EDA tools to China have been under consideration since the first Trump administration, but were ruled out as too aggressive.

Synopsys relies on China for about 16 percent of its annual revenue, while China accounts for about 12 percent of annual revenue for Cadence.

Synopsys, which partners with chip companies such as Nvidia, Qualcomm and Intel, provides software and hardware used for designing advanced processors.

United States President Donald Trump has brushed aside criticism of his wide-ranging budget bill — known as the One Big Beautiful Bill — from a high-profile source, government adviser Elon Musk.

On Wednesday, at a swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office, Trump faced questions about Musk’s comments, which suggested the bill would balloon the national debt.

The Republican leader responded with a degree of ambivalence, though he staunchly defended the bill’s tax cuts.

“We will be negotiating that bill, and I’m not happy about certain aspects of it, but I’m thrilled by other aspects of it,” Trump said. “That’s the way they go.”

The budget bill clocks in at over a thousand pages, and it contains a range of domestic policy priorities for the Trump administration.

That includes legislation cementing some of the tax cuts Trump championed during his first term as president, in 2017. It would also increase the funds available for Trump’s “mass deportation” effort and heightened security along the US-Mexico border.

Some $46.5bn, for instance, would be earmarked to renew construction of the southern border wall and other barriers, another hallmark of Trump’s first term in office.

But to pay for those tax cuts and policy priorities, the bill proposes measures that remain controversial on both sides of the political spectrum.

One provision, for instance, would increase the federal debt limit by $4 trillion. Others would impose strict work requirements on programmes like Medicaid — a government health insurance for low-income Americans — and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), sometimes known as food stamps.

Those work requirements are expected to bar thousands of people from accessing those safety-net programmes, allowing for cost savings. But critics fear those barriers will drive some families deeper into poverty.

In a preview of an interview with the TV show CBS Sunday Morning, Musk expressed frustration with the sheer cost of the bill, echoing criticism from fiscal conservatives.

He also accused the “Big Beautiful Bill” of setting back the progress he made as leader of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), a task force Trump established to pare back “wasteful” spending.

“I was, like, disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not decrease it, and undermines the work that the DOGE team is doing,” Musk told CBS, dressed in an “Occupy Mars” T-shirt.

“I think a bill can be big or it can be beautiful,” he added. “I don’t know if it could be both. My personal opinion.”

This is not the first time that Musk has spoken out against a US budget bill. In December, under former President Joe Biden, Musk rallied public outrage against another piece of budget legislation that weighed in at over a thousand pages, calling on Congress to “kill the bill“.

Musk’s latest comments, however, signal a potentially widening fracture between himself and the Trump White House.

Up until recently, Musk, a billionaire thought to be the world’s richest man, has played a prominent role in Trump’s government. He even helped him secure a second term as president.

In 2024, Musk endorsed Trump’s re-election effort, joined him on the campaign trail and donated hundreds of millions of dollars to the Republican leader and his political allies.

For his part, Trump returned Musk’s warm embrace. Days after he won a second term as president, Trump announced that Musk would join his incoming administration as head of DOGE.

But Musk’s role in the White House has remained ambiguous, and highly controversial. Though Musk is a regular presence at presidential cabinet meetings, he has not had to undergo a Senate confirmation hearing.

The White House has described him as a “special government employee”, a temporary role given to consultants from business fields. Normally, those employees can only work with the government for 130 days per year, and they are barred from using their government roles for financial gain.

But critics have argued that the length of Musk’s tenure at the White House has not been clearly established and that he has indeed leveraged his position for personal profit. In March, for instance, Trump held a news conference to show off models from Musk’s car company Tesla.

Musk’s other business ventures, including the rocket company SpaceX and the satellite communications firm Starlink, have also raised conflict-of-interest questions, given that they are competitors for government contracts.

Media reports have indicated that there have been behind-the-scenes clashes between Musk and other members of the Trump White House that may have cooled relations between the president and his billionaire backer. But Trump has so far avoided criticising Musk publicly.

On Wednesday, for instance, Trump pivoted from the question about Musk’s comments to attacking Democratic members of Congress, who refuse to back his signature budget bill.

“ Remember, we have zero Democrat votes because they’re bad people,” Trump said. “There’s something wrong with them.”

A version of the budget bill narrowly passed the House of Representatives last week. Currently, it is being considered by the Senate. But with a 53-seat majority in the 100-person chamber, Senate Republicans can only afford to lose three votes if they hope to pass the bill.

Trump renewed his call for party unity on Wednesday, despite concerns from his fellow Republicans.

“We have to get a lot of votes,” Trump said. “We need to get a lot of support, and we have a lot of support.”

Some Republicans have voiced opposition to the increase in the national debt. Others fear the effects that Medicaid restrictions might have on their constituents.

Trump himself has said he opposes any cuts to Medicaid. But he has tried to frame the bill’s tax cuts as a boon to lower-income people, though critics point out those cuts are poised to deliver the biggest savings to the wealthy.

“We’ll have the lowest tax rate we’ve ever had in the history of our country,” Trump said. “Tremendous amounts of benefits are going to the middle-income people of our country, low- and middle-income people of our country.”

May 28 (UPI) — Nvidia officials have scheduled a 5 p.m. EDT first-quarter earnings report that many expect to reflect the Trump administration’s restrictions on trade with China.

The artificial intelligence firm is expected to show increased earnings from a year ago, when it posted adjusted earnings of 61 cents per share on $26.04 billion in sales during the quarter that ended on April 27, Investor’s Business Daily reported.

Analysts queried by FactSet anticipate Nvidia to report adjusted earnings of 73 cents per share and $43.34 billion in sales during the first quarter this year.

Others suggest the AI chipmaker will report 93 cents in adjusted earnings per share on $43.31 billion in sales, CNBC reported.

Analysts anticipate improved numbers during the second quarter with projected adjusted earnings of 99 cents per share and nearly $46 billion in sales.

The effect of the Trump administration’s restrictions on trade with China should be known better after the Wednesday earnings report by Nvidia.

The Trump administration on April 9 notified Nvidia that it is requiring the chipmaker to obtain an export license for its H20 chip that is designed specifically for use in China’s market.

The chip is a specially designed version of Nvidia’s popular Hopper AI chips and is intended to comply with U.S. trade restrictions.

The Nvidia earnings report also comes on the heels of the Federal Reserve‘s recent announcement that it is maintaining the Fed’s lending rate of 4.25% to 4.5%.

The Federal Reserve’s Open Market Committee met earlier in the month and agreed that President Donald Trump‘s tariffs policy and other inflationary pressures could trigger a rise in inflation.

Despite such concerns, Nvidia is expected to announce increased first-quarter earnings.

Meanwhile, the Dow closed down more than 200 points at the end of trading on Wednesday.

May 28 (UPI) — The People Power Party’s Kim Moon-soo, 73, is the main conservative candidate in South Korea’s June 3 snap presidential election. The former labor minister trails his liberal opponent, Democratic Party frontrunner Lee Jae-myung, by a large margin in most polls.

Kim emerged as a prominent labor and democracy rights activist in the turbulent 1970s, and as a former labor activist, he began his career in politics when he participated in the founding of the progressive People’s Party in 1990. Watching the collapse of communist countries in the late 1980s and early 1990s, he abandoned his “leftist view of labor” and shifted to a moderate stance, expressing the view that resources should be concentrated on growth while also improving welfare. He ran as a candidate for the conservative New Korea Party in 1996 and became a three-term lawmaker representing Bucheon. He was later elected governor of Gyeonggi Province in 2006 and won a second term in 2010. Kim served as Labor Minister under impeached President Yoon Suk Yeol in 2024-2025.

The PPP candidate was born in Yeongchon, North Gyeongsang Province, as the sixth of seven children in an impoverished household. He was able to enter business school at Seoul National University in 1970 but was expelled for his anti-dictatorship activism during the regime of President Park Chung-hee.

Kim found factory work after expulsion and grew deeply involved with the labor activist movement as well, rising to national prominence and facing arrest and torture by the authoritarian government during the 1980s. He eventually finished his university degree in 1994, some 25 years after first enrolling.

After a turn to the conservative camp in 1994 under the invitation of then-President Kim Young-sam, himself a former activist who moved rightward, Kim saw his political star rise as a lawmaker and then Gyeonggi governor. In 2014 he announced that he would not run for re-election, ending his term as Gyeonggi governor. Instead, he supported his party colleague Nam Kyung-pil. Nam was elected governor that year but lost to the Democratic Party candidate four years later, who was none other than Lee Jae-myung.

Kim re-emerged in the Yoon Suk Yeol administration and maintained support for Yoon even as some other primary candidates called for distancing the party from the impeached president.

He was the sole cabinet member who refused to stand and apologize for Yoon’s martial law attempt in a session at the National Assembly and won the strong backing of hardline loyalists who opposed impeachment.

Kim won the PPP nomination on May 3, but faced a late push by party leadership to replace him with former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo, who some saw as a less polarizing figure with a better chance of defeating Lee. An all-member meeting finally confirmed Kim as their candidate a week later.

Kim has outlined a conservative vision for the country in his campaign, touting business-friendly economic policies and a hard line against threats from North Korea, as well as promising to push through sweeping political and anti-corruption reforms.

Economy

Kim said he would be a “job president” in his acceptance speech for the PPP nomination in May, and has promoted business-friendly policies such as economic deregulation and tax relief. Like his opponent, Lee Jae-myung, Kim has vowed to make South Korea an AI powerhouse, promising to establish a $71 billion public-private fund to invest in infrastructure and technology development in the sector.

Other pledges include child support grants and housing assistance to help address South Korea’s declining birthrate crisis, and the expansion of nuclear power as an energy source.

If elected, Kim has vowed to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump immediately to negotiate tariffs and resolve trade issues.

Defense and Foreign Policy

In his nomination acceptance speech, Kim vowed to be a “security president who eliminates the fear of North Korea’s nuclear weapons,” and has signaled a hard-line stance similar to the approach taken by Yoon Suk Yeol.

He has called for strengthening extended deterrence capabilities under the U.S.-South Korea military alliance, including the potential of redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula.

“If we can arm ourselves with nuclear weapons within the scope of the South Korea-U.S. alliance, we should do it,” Kim said during a presidential debate on May 28.

Kim has also called for enhancing South Korea’s own defense capabilities and has pledged to develop nuclear-powered submarines.

On May 26, Kim’s key foreign policy advisers said that the candidate would seek engagement with North Korea while maintaining a demand for its complete denuclearization, and would “proactively support” a summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Government Reforms

Like his opponent Lee Jae-myung, Kim has proposed transitioning from South Korea’s current single five-year presidential term to a two-term, four-year presidency. He has promised to cut down his own term to three years if elected, allowing presidential and general elections to synchronize in 2028.

In the wake of the martial law crisis under Yoon, Kim has proposed decentralizing executive power and removing presidential immunity. He has also been deeply critical of the current Democratic Party-led parliament, calling it the “worst National Assembly dictatorship in history” over its opposition to Yoon and numerous impeachment motions. Kim has said he would slash the number of lawmakers by 10% and relocate the National Assembly to the administrative city of Sejong.

Kim has maintained a connection with Yoon and received the impeached president’s endorsement on May 17.

He issued an apology for the “suffering” caused by Yoon’s martial law attempt earlier in May and called it an “extreme measure” that he would not look to employ.

“If I become president in the future, I will not use martial law,” he said while campaigning. “I will complete democracy through dialogue, persuasion and patience to resolve any issues between the ruling and opposition parties.”

He also met two former conservative presidents, Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye and received their support.

Avelo Airlines, a struggling, Houston, Texas-based budget carrier, has faced weeks of backlash after taking a contract with the United States government to use its planes to deport migrants, the first commercial airline to do so.

Avelo, which started the deportation flights in mid-May, defended the move in an April 3 letter to employees, saying its partnership with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency is “too valuable not to pursue”.

Founded in 2021, the airline has been in financial turmoil and was projected to have only about $2m in cash on hand by June, the trade publication Airline Observer reported last month. An Avelo spokesperson told Al Jazeera that that reporting is outdated.

The airline has not disclosed the terms of the deal with ICE but is said to be using three of its Boeing 737 aircraft for the flights. Avelo has 20 aircraft in its fleet.

At the beginning of 2024, Avelo reported its first profitable quarter since its founding but hasn’t released any financial results since then. Because it is not a publicly traded company, Avelo is not legally obligated to regularly disclose its financial status to the public.

Avelo’s deal was brokered through a third-party contractor, CSI Aviation, which received $262.9m in federal contracts, mostly through ICE, for the 2025 fiscal year. While CSI Aviation did not confirm to Al Jazeera the specifics of its deal with Avelo, federal spending records show the company was awarded a new contract in March and received $97.5m in April when the Avelo flights were announced.

April’s contract marks the biggest for CSI Aviation since it began receiving federal contracts in 2008. Until now, CSI Aviation’s highest payouts had come more frequently during Democratic administrations. In October under former President Joe Biden, the federal government paid out more than $75m to CSI Aviation.

CEO Andrew Levy has said Avelo operated similar flights under the Biden administration but the public outcry against Avelo this time is because of how Republican President Donald Trump’s administration has conducted deportations.

“In the past, the deportees were afforded due process,” aviation journalist and New Hampshire state lawmaker Seth Miller said. “[They were] not snatched off the street, moved multiple times to evade the judicial process and put on planes before they could appeal. In the past, they were returned to their country of origin, not a third country. In the past, they were not shipped to a labour camp from which no one is ever released.”

“These are, to me, not the same deportations as in the past, and any company signing on in April 2025 to operate those flights knows that,” Miller told Al Jazeera.

The US government has awarded CSI Aviation $165m for deportation charter flights so far in the current year until August 31, and that could be extended to February 26. The data does not specify how much goes to each subcontractor. However, the March 1 $165m contract was modified on March 25 with an additional $33.7m tacked onto it just days before Avelo announced its deal.

Al Jazeera was unable to confirm the specific dollar amount for the Avelo contract.

CSI Aviation did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

Avelo, led by Levy – an industry veteran who previously served as CEO of another US-based budget airline, Allegiant, and as chief financial officer for United Airlines – has stood by the deal despite the public outcry.

“We realize this is a sensitive and complicated topic. After significant deliberations, we determined that charter flying will provide us with the stability to continue expanding our core scheduled passenger service and keep our more than 1,100 Crewmembers employed for years to come,” Levy said in a statement to Al Jazeera, comments the company had also provided to other publications.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong pressed the airline for the terms of the deal. Avelo responded by instructing Tong to file a  Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. FOIA requests typically take several months to process. Connecticut is home to one of Avelo’s biggest hubs in New Haven.

Avelo declined Al Jazeera’s request for information on the terms of its agreement with CSI Aviation, saying in an email that it was not “authorised to share the details of the contract”.

Al Jazeera has submitted a FOIA request for the contract terms. ICE denied our expedited request for the contract terms, saying our request lacked “an urgency to inform the public about an actual or alleged federal government activity, if made by a person primarily engaged in disseminating information”. The phone number ICE gave to challenge the request through its public liaison did not work when called.

“For reasons of operational security, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not release information about future removal flights or schedules in advance. However, the removal of illegal aliens who are unlawfully present in the United States is a core responsibility of ICE and is regularly carried out by ICE Air Operations,” a spokesperson for ICE told Al Jazeera.

Several lawmakers, including Senator Alex Padilla of California and Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, have voiced concerns over these flights.

“Given the Trump Administration’s mission to indiscriminately deport our nation’s immigrants – without due process, in violation of the Constitution and federal immigration law, and, in some cases, in defiance of court orders – it is deeply disturbing that Avelo has determined that its partnership with ICE is ‘too valuable not to pursue,’” Padilla’s office said in a news release.

Flight attendants have also raised safety concerns, saying there is no safe plan in the event of an emergency and it is only a matter of time before a tragic incident occurs.

As first reported by ProPublica, ICE Air detainees have soiled themselves because they did not have access to bathrooms while being transported to prisons without due process.

ICE has denied allegations that detainees lacked access to bathrooms during flights.

Are financiers concerned?

Avelo’s largest investor is Morgan Stanley Tactical Value, whose managing director, Tom Cahill, sits on Avelo’s board. Morgan Stanley’s fund invested an undisclosed amount in the airline’s Series A funding round, the first major investment stage for a company.

That round raised $125m in January 2020, weeks before the COVID-19 pandemic was declared a US and global emergency. A subsequent Series B round in 2022 brought in an additional $42m, $30m of which came from Morgan Stanley.

Morgan Stanley Tactical Value remains Avelo’s largest shareholder. Cahill, who has been with Morgan Stanley since 1990, has not publicly commented on the deal. He did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment. Morgan Stanley declined to comment.

Avelo has also hired Jefferies Financial Group, an investment bank and financial services company, to raise additional capital in a new investment round, reportedly aiming to raise $100m, according to the Airline Observer, information that Avelo said is outdated.

Jefferies did not respond to Al Jazeera’s request for comment.

A public image problem

Avelo’s involvement in the deportation programme has sparked intense public backlash. Upon the launch of the flights, protests erupted at airports in Burbank, California; Mesa, Arizona; and New Haven, Connecticut.

A Change.org petition calling for a boycott of the airline has garnered more than 38,000 signatures. Avelo did not comment on the petition.

“From a reputational perspective, someone in a boardroom somewhere made the decision that the hit to reputation wasn’t as important as staying alive,” said Hannah Mooney Mack, an independent strategic communications consultant.

Miller has taken action to raise awareness about the airline’s recent contract, funding two billboards near Tweed New Haven Airport that criticise Avelo’s participation in deportation flights. The signs read: “Does your vacation support their deportation? Just say AvelNO!”

“I love almost all of the things that aviation does in helping bring people together and connect communities and things like that. This is decidedly not that. And it rubbed me the wrong way,” the congressman told Al Jazeera.

“I certainly understand that from a financial perspective there may be a need. I happen to disagree with it from a moral perspective and think it’s abhorrent.”

Miller said he spent $7,000 on the billboards and 96 people contributed to the effort. Avelo reportedly convinced billboard operator Lamar Advertising to take down the ads, citing copyright concerns. Miller has since sued Avelo on First Amendment grounds. He said he’s fighting because he thinks people need to know about Avelo’s contract.

“I don’t like that this is happening, and I think other people should not fly Avelo as long as they are running these deportation flights.”

AN ALLEGED gang member wanted over the fatal stabbing of a young man in London has been arrested in Spain.

Six mobsters went on the run after the tragic murder of 21-year-old Giovanny Rendon Bedoya in Walworth, south London, on April 21.

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The fugitive was detained at the request of British authorities in the town of Sabadell around 15 miles north-west of the Catalan capital as he entered a restaurant, Spanish police said.

He is said to belong to the dangerous Latin gang known as the Trinitarios.

They have become a major security threat across much of Europe in recent years especially in cities like Madrid and London.

The alleged killer is now facing extradition to the UK and a possible “life sentence” according to Spanish cops.

Met Police pleaded for information around the death of Giovanny earlier this year.

It comes as three of the six people initially arrested have now been bailed pending further inquiries.

In the latest update this month, they said a fourth man has now been charged with murder.

All four men have been named by police as Joseph Jimenez, 21, Angel Gonzales Angulo, 19, Brian Villada-Hernandes, 19, and Zozoro Mohamed Olivier, 20.

Cops previously said a 17-year-old boy was also arrested on suspicion of murder.

Confirming the latest arrest near Barcelona today, Spain’s National Police said in a statement: “National Police officers have arrested a member of the Trinitarios gang in the town of Sabadell in Barcelona who is wanted by the British justice system after allegedly committing a murder in the United Kingdom.

“An international arrest warrant was issued for him after the crime which took place on April 14.

“He could face a life sentence for attacking with five other alleged members of the same gang, another young man from a rival gang who was killed.

“The investigation was launched by the British authorities on 14 April when the fugitive and five other alleged members of the Trinitarios gang violently accosted another young man from a rival gang following a dispute.”

Giovanny was attacked just after 9pm and was left with serious injuries which resulted in the amputation of fingers, the loss of an organ and multiple fractures.

These injuries resulted in his death, police confirmed at the time.

The Trinitarios gang is said to have been founded in 1993 by two Dominicans facing separate murder charges being held in the Rikers Islands New York City jail.

The gang’s notoriety across the globe even caused them to be scrutinised by the Trump administration this year.

Donald Trump described them as “animals” as he carried out his sweeping sanctions on US criminal enterprises.

Nearly two dozen Trinitarios gang members were hit with RICO conspiracy charges in February.

They were accused of six murders and 11 attempted murders, according to the US Attorney’s Office in Massachusetts.

Spiralling violence around Madrid in recent years has been blamed on the fracturing and spread of Dominican gangs which have become Spain’s primary urban security threat.

Officials believe the man arrested today may have been in Spain trying to flee to the Dominican Republic.

The Sun has contacted the Metropolitan Police for further comment.

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Harvard students protested US President Donald Trump’s decision to cut all remaining federal contracts with the Ivy league university. Meanwhile, the Trump administration has ordered a halt to all international student visa processing, as it prepares to expand social media vetting for all foreign applicants.

The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to “chart a unified and collective path towards a peaceful, prosperous, and just future”, following their meeting in the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur.

In a world roiled by United States President Donald Trump’s threats of crippling tariffs and rising economic uncertainties, alternative centres of global power were on full display, with the GCC and China attending the ASEAN summit for the group’s inaugural trilateral meeting on Tuesday.

In their joint statement released on Wednesday, the GCC – comprising Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – China, and ASEAN members Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar said they were committed to enhancing economic cooperation.

Chief among that cooperation will be the promotion of free trade, the signatories said, adding they looked “forward to the early completion of the GCC-China Free Trade Agreement negotiations” and the upgrading of the ASEAN-China free trade area.

“We reaffirm our collective resolve to work hand in hand to unleash the full potential of our partnership, and ensure that our cooperation translates into tangible benefits for our peoples and societies,” they said.

Malaysia’s Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim – whose country is currently chair of ASEAN and hosted the summits – told a news conference that the US remains an important market while also noting that ASEAN, the GCC, and China collectively represent a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $24.87 trillion with a total population of about 2.15 billion.

“This collective scale offers vast opportunities to synergise our markets, deepen innovation, and promote cross-regional investment,” Anwar said.

The prime minister went on to dismiss suggestions that the ASEAN bloc of nations was leaning excessively towards China, stressing that the regional grouping remained committed to maintaining balanced engagement with all major powers, including the US.

James Chin, professor of Asian studies at the University of Tasmania in Australia, told Al Jazeera that the tripartite meeting was particularly important for China, which is being “given a platform where the US is not around”.

ASEAN and the GCC “already view China as a global power”, Chin said.

‘The Gulf is very rich, ASEAN is a tiger, China…’

China’s Premier Li Qiang, who attended the summit, said Beijing was ready to work with the GCC and ASEAN “on the basis of mutual respect and equality”.

China will work with “ASEAN and the GCC to strengthen the alignment of development strategies, increase macro policy coordination, and deepen collaboration on industrial specialisation,” he said.

Former Malaysian ambassador to the US Mohamed Nazri bin Abdul Aziz said China was “quickly filling up the vacuum” in global leadership felt in many countries in the aftermath of Trump’s tariff threats.

The economic future looks bright, Nazri said, for ASEAN, China and the Gulf countries, where economies are experiencing high growth rates while the US and European Union face stagnation.

“The Gulf is very rich, ASEAN is a tiger, China… I cannot even imagine where the future lies,” Nazri said.

Jaideep Singh, an analyst with the Institute of Strategic & International Studies in Malaysia, said ASEAN’s trade with GCC countries has been experiencing rapid growth.

Total trade between ASEAN and the Gulf countries stood at some $63bn as of 2024, making GCC the fifth-largest external trading partner of the regional bloc, while Malaysia’s trade with the GCC grew by 60 percent from 2019 to 2024.

In terms of foreign direct investment, FDI from GCC countries in ASEAN totalled some $5bn as of 2023, of which $1.5bn went to Malaysia alone, Singh said.

However, the US, China, Singapore and the EU still make up the lion’s share of FDI in Malaysian manufacturing and services.

US still ASEAN’s biggest export market

Even as China’s trade with ASEAN grows, economist say, the US still remains a huge market for regional countries.

In early 2024, the US took over China as ASEAN’s largest export market, with 15 percent of the bloc’s exports destined for its markets, up nearly 4 percent since 2018, said Carmelo Ferlito, CEO of the Center for Market Education (CME), a think tank based in Malaysia and Indonesia.

“The US is also the largest source of cumulative foreign direct investment in ASEAN, with total stock reaching nearly $480bn in 2023 – almost double the combined US investments in China, Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan,” Ferlito said.

Israel’s war on Gaza was also highlighted at the ASEAN-GCC-China meeting on Tuesday.

Delegates condemned attacks against civilians and called for a durable ceasefire and unhindered delivery of fuel, food, essential services, and medicine throughout the Palestinian territory.

Supporting a two-state solution to the conflict, the joint communique also called for the release of captives and arbitrarily-detained people, and an end to the “illegal presence of the State of Israel in the occupied Palestinian territory as soon as possible”.

The civil war in Myanmar was also a focus of the talks among ASEAN members at their summit on Tuesday, who called for an extension and expansion of a ceasefire among the warring sides, which was declared following the earthquake that struck the country in March. The ceasefire is due to run out by the end of May. However, human rights groups have documented repeated air attacks by the military regime on the country’s civilian population despite the purported temporary cessation of fighting.

Zachary Abuza, professor of Southeast Asia politics and security issues at the Washington-based National War College, said that while Prime Minister Anwar may be “more proactive” – in his role as ASEAN chair – in wanting to resolve the conflict, Myanmar’s military rulers were “not a good faith actor” in peace talks.

“The military has absolutely no interest in anything resembling a power-sharing agreement,” he said.

Trump’s latest comments come as China, North Korea, Russia say the Golden Dome missile defence system will create ‘space arms race’.

United States President Donald Trump says he has told Canada it will have to pay $61bn to be part of his proposed Gold Dome missile defence system “if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation”.

In a post on TruthSocial, Trump claimed Canada “very much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome System” and would gain free access if it joins with the US.

Participating in the proposed defence system would cost Canada “ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State”, Trump said, adding, “They are considering the offer!”

Trump’s post came just hours after Canada’s parliament hosted the UK’s King Charles III for a rare royal speech in which the monarch emphasised Canada’s sovereignty in “dangerous and uncertain” times, and amid the US president’s exhortations for the country to become part of the US.

Following the king’s speech, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told Canadian Public broadcaster CBC that he hopes Canada will join ReArm Europe by July 1, in an effort to reduce dependence on the US for weapons.

Canada did not immediately respond to Trump’s latest comment, but Carney has previously confirmed his country has held “high-level” talks on the defence system issue with the US.

Funding, timeline uncertain

In total, Trump has claimed the Golden Dome system will cost some $175bn and would be completed by the end of his current term in 2029, although defence industry experts have questioned the feasibility of this timeline and budget.

Trump is hoping to secure an initial $25bn funding for the system through the sweeping “Big, Beautiful Bill” which is next to go up for a vote in the Senate after narrowly passing the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives last week.

The bill boosts spending on the military and border enforcement while cutting funding for social programmes, including Medicaid and food assistance that helped tens of millions of low-income Americans.

The Golden Dome is modelled after Israel’s Iron Dome, which also receives significant funding from the US, including $500m per year for its upkeep.

It is unclear how Trump would scale up the Iron Dome to cover the entire US, since Israel is only about the size of New Jersey, one of the smaller states in the US.

The Iron Dome is also designed to target short-range missiles, with a range of 1,000km (about 620 miles), while the main threat to the US would likely come from long-range ballistic and hypersonic missiles.

Golden Dome will create ‘space arms race’

China, North Korea and Russia have all criticised Trump’s plan to put weapons in space, which the US president described in detail for the first time last week.

China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs swiftly responded, with spokeswoman Mao Ning saying the plan “heightens the risk of space becoming a battlefield, fuels an arms race, and undermines international security”.

“The United States puts its own interests first and is obsessed with seeking its own absolute security, which violates the principle that no country’s security should come at the expense of others,” Mao Ning said.

North Korea’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs also responded, saying the US is “hell-bent on the moves to militarise outer space”.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday that the Golden Dome project undermines the foundations of “strategic stability” as it involves the creation of a global missile defence system.

According to Russia’s state news agency TASS, Zakharova said developing the Golden Dome would also lead to development of the “means of pre-launch missile destruction and infrastructure that ensures their use”.

“This is already a literal manifestation of the US’s highly dangerous doctrinal course toward delivering so-called preventive, but essentially first strikes,” she said, warning it would turn space into a “weaponised environment” and an “arena of armed confrontation”.

May 27 (UPI) — President Donald Trump is set to pardon Todd and Julie Chrisley, former television stars serving lengthy prison terms after being found guilty of conspiring to defraud banks and committing tax evasion.

The couple gained fame in the United States through their Chrisley Knows Best reality show in which they flaunted their wealth. They were found guilty in 2022 of manipulating financial records to make it appear as if they were wealthier than they really were, when applying for more than $30 million in loans from 2007 to 2012.

They received a combined 19-year prison sentence, with Todd Chrisley to serve 12 years in prison and Julie Chrisley sentenced to serve seven. Both sentences came with three years’ supervised release.

Trump, a former reality star, is expected to grant the couple the latest presidential pardons of his second administration.

In a video excerpt published on X by a White House aide of a phone call Tuesday between Trump and the jailed couple’s adult children, the president is heard stating, “your parents are going to be free and clean, and I hope we can do that by tomorrow.”

“I don’t know them, but give them my regards and wish them a good life.”

“Mr. President, I just want to say thank you for bringing my parents back,” Grayson Chrisley is heard responding.

“Yeah, well, they were given a pretty harsh treatment from what I’m hearing,” Trump replied.

Margo Martin, the White House aide who published the clip online, said in the caption that Trump will be granting them “full pardons.”

“Trump Knows Best!” she added.

The Conservative Political Action Conference said in a statement that it “appreciates” Trump’s pardoning of Todd and Julie Chrisley, the parents of its Nolan Center for Justice senior fellow, Savannah Chrisley, who was on the phone call Tuesday with Trump.

“The Chrisleys were targeted by weaponized prosecutors who abused the power granted to them by our criminal justice system,” CPAC said in a statement.

“Thank you to President Trump for restoring order and integrity to the justice system.”

According to prosecutors, the Chrisleys, who were found guilty in June 2022, spent money they defrauded from banks to purchase luxury cars, real estate and travel and then used new fraudulent loans to pay off the old loans.

Todd Chrisley filed for bankruptcy and walked away from $20 million in debt. On top of the conspiracy to defraud banks, they were found guilty of conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. Julie Chrisley was also found guilty of wire fraud and obstruction of justice.

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has used his executive powers to punish political adversaries with executive orders and to seemingly reward convicted friends, supporters and donors with presidential pardons.

On Monday, Trump pardoned disgraced former Virginia sheriff Scott Jenkins who was sentenced to 10 years’ imprisonment after a federal court found he accepted tens of thousands of dollars in bribes to appoint local businessmen as auxiliary deputy sheriffs. The president described Jenkins as being a victim of a “corrupt and weaponized Biden” Department of Justice.

Last month, Trump pardoned Paul Walczak, a former nursing home executive who was sentenced to 18 months in jail for tax crimes and whose mother had raised millions for the New York real estate mogul’s campaigns.

In March, he also pardoned Devon Archer, a former business associate of Hunter Biden who was sentenced to a year and a day in prison in 2022 for a scheme to defraud a Native American community. However, he testified against the Biden family during the Republicans’ failed investigation to try and impeach former President Joe Biden.

US President Donald Trump says Russia’s Vladimir Putin is ‘playing with fire’ and Russia has so far been shielded from ‘really bad things’.

A senior Moscow security official has rebuked United States President Donald Trump and raised the danger of another world war breaking out after Trump said Russian leader Vladimir Putin was “playing with fire” by refusing to engage in Ukraine ceasefire talks with Kyiv.

Dmitry Medvedev said World War III was the only “REALLY BAD thing” in a response, late on Tuesday, to Trump, who had earlier posted a message to Putin on social media saying that “really bad things would have already happened in Russia” without his intervention.

“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realise is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened in Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire,” Trump said in a post on his platform Truth Social.

Medvedev responded on the platform X: “Regarding Trump’s words about Putin ‘playing with fire’ and ‘really bad things’ happening to Russia. I only know of one REALLY BAD thing — WWIII.”

“I hope Trump understands this!”

Regarding Trump’s words about Putin “playing with fire” and “really bad things” happening to Russia. I only know of one REALLY BAD thing — WWIII.
I hope Trump understands this!

— Dmitry Medvedev (@MedvedevRussiaE) May 27, 2025

Currently the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and a key Putin ally, Medvedev served as the Russian president between 2008 and 2012, and is known for his sabre-rattling comments.

He has repeatedly warned throughout the course of Russia’s war on Ukraine that Moscow could use its nuclear arsenal.

Putin also raised the possibility of nuclear confrontation in a state of the nation address in March 2024, warning Western powers of Russia’s nuclear capabilities should any decide to deploy troops in support of Ukraine.

“Everything that the West comes up with creates the real threat of a conflict with the use of nuclear weapons, and thus the destruction of civilisation,” Putin said at the time.

Medvedev’s public rebuke of Trump also comes after the US president said in a post on Sunday that Putin had “gone absolutely CRAZY” by carrying out extensive aerial attacks on Ukraine despite widespread calls for a ceasefire and Washington’s frustrated attempts to broker a peace accord.

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,” Trump posted on Sunday.

Trump also told reporters he was considering new sanctions on Russia amid the impasse in ceasefire talks.

The war of words on social media comes as hopes for a swift end to Russia’s war on its neighbour dim. Kyiv suffered another battlefield setback on Tuesday, with Russian forces capturing four villages in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region.

Sumy Governor Oleh Hryhorov wrote on Facebook that the villages of Novenke, Basivka, Veselivka and Zhuravka had been occupied by Russia, although residents had long been evacuated.

Russia’s Ministry of Defence said on Monday that it had also taken the nearby village of Bilovody, implying a further advance into Ukrainian territory, as the more than three-year war grinds on.

Ukrainian officials have said for weeks that Russian troops are trying to make inroads into the Sumy region, the main city of which lies less than 30km (19 miles) from the border with Russia.

Russian forces, attacking in small groups on motorcycles and supported by aerial drones, have been widening the area where they have been carrying out assaults on the front line, a spokesperson for Ukraine’s border guard service said.

Ukrainian forces last year used the Sumy region as a launchpad to push into Russia’s neighbouring Kursk region, where they captured a vast area of territory before being driven out by Russian forces last month.

Latest Trump administration move comes amid a wider pressure campaign against top universities, and targeting of students.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump is temporarily suspending the processing of visas for foreign students, according to an internal memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The cable, widely reported by US media on Tuesday, ordered embassies and consulates not to allow “any additional student or exchange visa… appointment capacity until further guidance is issued”.

It added that the State Department “plans to issue guidance on expanded social media vetting for all such applications”.

The move is the latest blow to foreign nationals seeking to study in the US, as the Trump administration intensifies pressure on universities and students alike.

The administration last week revoked Harvard University’s approval for enrolling international students, amid a wider standoff over the school’s response to pro-Palestine protests and its diversity programmes. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the move.

The processing pause also comes as Rubio has sought to rescind hundreds of visas for foreign students, citing minor legal infractions or pro-Palestine speech or advocacy.

Speaking on Tuesday, US State Department Spokesperson Tammy Bruce did not directly respond to the cable, but said broadly, “We take very seriously the process of vetting who it is that comes into the country.”

“It’s a goal, as stated by the president and Secretary Rubio, to make sure that people who are here understand what the law is, that they don’t have any criminal intent, that they are going to be contributors to the experience here, however short or long their status,” she said.

Bruce added that those applying for student visas should continue to proceed normally, but should expect higher scrutiny.

“If you’re going to be applying for a visa, follow the normal process, the normal steps, [and] expect to be looked at,” she said.

Rubio’s cable did not give a timeline for the suspension, but told diplomatic staff they should receive guidance in the “coming days”.

Ongoing challenges

The Trump administration’s actions towards higher education have raised thorny constitutional questions about academic freedom and the rights of individuals living in the US on temporary visas.

Last week, Rubio told lawmakers in the US Senate that he had revoked “thousands” of visas since Trump took office on January 20, although a full accounting has not been released.

Rubio has relied on an obscure law that the administration maintains grants broad powers to remove foreigners whose presence in the US they deem to be counter to US foreign policy interests.

Lawyers for several students targeted by Rubio for their pro-Palestine views – including Mahmoud Khalil, Rumeysa Ozturk, Mohsen Mahdawi and Badar Khan Suri – have maintained that their clients’ freedom of speech rights are being trampled.

Meanwhile, Harvard University has also said the Trump administration is violating its rights by cutting funding and revoking its ability to enrol foreign students.

US media also reported on Tuesday that Trump’s administration was expected to soon sever the remaining federal contracts with Harvard, in what would be the latest escalation.

Government escalates row with university over demands to curb pro-Palestine student activism and change racial diversity policies.

The administration of US President Donald Trump will move to sever remaining federal contracts with Harvard University, escalating a row centred on issues such as pro-Palestine student activism and racial diversity.

The New York Times and Reuters news agency reported on Tuesday that a draft letter from the General Services Administration (GSA) instructs all federal agencies to review and possibly cancel existing contracts with Harvard, worth an estimated $100m.

A copy of the draft letter shared by the Times states that Harvard has continued to engage in “race discrimination, including in its admissions process” and that the university’s failure to halt alleged acts of anti-Semitism suggests a “disturbing lack of concern for the safety and wellbeing of Jewish students”.

The move would be the latest effort by the government to use federal funds to force universities to accept changes sought by the Trump administration, including greater control over curricula, harsher steps against pro-Palestine students, and an end to policies that encourage racial diversity and greater opportunities for racial minorities.

The Trump administration has portrayed efforts to encourage greater racial diversity at US universities as a form of discrimination that prioritises racial identity over merit. Supporters say that such efforts, such as using race as one factor of many in admissions decisions, are necessary to remedy long histories of racist discrimination and exclusion in US higher education.

“GSA understands that Harvard continues to engage in race discrimination, including in its admissions process and in other areas of student life,” the letter reads.

The administration has also taken an aggressive stance on pro-Palestine activism on university campuses, which erupted after the beginning of Israel’s most recent war in Gaza in October 2023.

Critics have portrayed those steps as part of a larger assault on US universities, which Trump has depicted as hotbeds of political dissent and radical ideas at odds with the goals of his administration.

“The Trump administration has gone after Harvard because of the pro-Palestinian protests, and also has made a list of demands that goes far beyond any of that,” Al Jazeera correspondent Patty Culhane reported from Cambridge, Massachusetts, where Harvard is located.

“It wants detailed information on foreign students that Harvard is refusing to give. It wants basically a political audit to see where people’s ideologies are. So Harvard University has sued in court to stop many of these moves, and this will undoubtedly be the next one that goes before a judge.”

In March, the GSA and the Departments of Education (DOE) and Health and Human Services (HHS) announced an official review of $255.6m in Harvard contracts and $8.7bn in multi-year grants, stating that the review was part of an effort to combat alleged anti-Semitism on college campuses.

The administration also cut $400m in grants to Columbia University in New York City in March, despite a series of concessions to government demands.

The administration has said that campus protests against Israel’s war in Gaza and the US provision of billions of dollars of weapons to Israel are driven by anti-Semitism and create an unsafe environment for Jewish students on campus.

Several international students have been arrested and detained by the administration for their involvement in pro-Palestine activism, including a Turkish international student named Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts University, who was arrested on the street by federal agents for co-signing an op-ed calling for an end to the war.

Trump has consistently threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, and moved last week to block the university’s ability to accept international students, who currently make up about 27 percent of the university’s total enrolment.

A judge blocked that effort, which Harvard had called an act of retaliation for “our refusal to surrender our academic independence and to submit to the federal government’s illegal assertion of control over our curriculum, our faculty, and our student body”.

Trump Media says the money will be used to create a ‘Bitcoin treasury’.

The Trump Media and Technology Group will raise about $2.5bn to invest in Bitcoin, United States President Donald Trump’s social media firm says, as it looks to diversify its revenue streams with a push into the financial sector.

The company is raising the funds by selling $1.5bn in stock at its last closing price and $1bn in convertible notes priced at a 35 percent premium, it said in a statement on Tuesday. The money will be used to build a “Bitcoin treasury”, the company said.

The Bitcoin will be held on Trump Media’s balance sheet alongside existing cash and short-term investments totalling $759m at the end of the first quarter. Crypto platforms Anchorage Digital and Crypto.com are to provide custody for the Bitcoin holdings.

“We view Bitcoin as an apex instrument of financial freedom,” Trump Media CEO Devin Nunes said, hailing the move as a “big step forward” in the company’s plan to acquire “crown jewel assets consistent with America First principles”.

Shares of the company behind Truth Social, a streaming and social media platform, were down 6 percent in early trading.

Trump Media has been exploring potential mergers and acquisitions as it aims to diversify into financial services.

Last month, it reached a binding agreement to launch retail investment products, including cryptocurrency and exchange-traded funds aligned with Trump’s policies.

Embracing cryptocurrencies

The Trump family, long rooted in skyscrapers and golf clubs, has opened multiple beachheads in cryptocurrencies, quickly gaining hundreds of millions of dollars. Its other crypto forays include Trump nonfungible tokens (NFTs), a meme coin, a stake in a newly formed Bitcoin producer called American Bitcoin and the cryptocurrency exchange World Liberty Financial.

But the crypto push has attracted scrutiny from lawmakers, including Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, who last month asked the US securities regulator about its plans to supervise exchange-traded funds (ETFs) due to be launched by Trump Media.

Trump, who referred to cryptocurrencies in his first term as “not money”, citing their volatility and a value “based on thin air”, has shifted his views on the technology.

During an event at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida during his presidential campaign in May 2024, Trump received assurances that crypto industry backers would spend lavishly to get him re-elected.

Last week, Trump rewarded 220 of the top investors in one of his other cryptocurrency projects, the $Trump meme coin, with a swanky dinner with him at his luxury golf club in northern Virginia, spurring accusations that the president was mixing his duties in the White House with personal profit.

The high court has declined to hear a bid to block a project that Indigenous groups say would destroy a site of religious significance.

The United States Supreme Court has declined to weigh a bid from a Native American advocacy group to block the construction of a large copper mine on land that many Apache people consider sacred.

The court turned down an appeal by the group Apache Stronghold on Tuesday, keeping in place a lower court’s ruling that would allow the project to move forward.

At the heart of the case is a stretch of federal land in the Tonto National Forest, part of the western state of Arizona.

The San Carlos Apache tribe know the land as Oak Flat — or Chi’chil Bildagoteel in the Apache language. Members of the tribe point out that the land, with its ancient groves of oak, has long been used as a site for prayer, ceremony and burial.

But Resolution Copper, a subsidiary of the mining conglomerates Rio Tinto and BHP, believes the site sits atop the second largest copper deposit in the world.

In 2014, under former President Barack Obama, the US Congress approved a land swap that gave Resolution Copper 9.71sq km (3.75sq miles) of the Oak Flat forest in exchange for other parcels of land in Arizona.

That, in turn, triggered a years-long legal showdown, with members of Arizona’s San Carlos Apache tribe arguing that construction on the Oak Flat site would violate their religious rights. In their petition to the Supreme Court, they described Oak Flat as a “direct corridor to the Creator”.

“Since time immemorial, Western Apaches and other Native peoples have gathered at Oak Flat, outside of present-day Superior, Arizona, for sacred religious ceremonies that cannot take place anywhere else,” Apache Stronghold said in a news release in early May.

The group has also argued that the project would violate an 1852 treaty between the US government and the Apaches, promising that the government would protect the land to “secure the permanent prosperity and happiness” of the tribe.

The administration of President Donald Trump, however, has promised to push through the land transfer. The US Forest Service estimates the mining project could produce nearly 40 billion pounds of copper — or more than 18 billion kilogrammes.

But critics anticipate the result would be a crater as wide as 3km (2 miles) and nearly 304 metres (1,000ft) deep.

By refusing to review the Apache Stronghold’s appeal, the Supreme Court is allowing a decision to stand from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, based in San Francisco.

In March 2024, that appeals court ruled along ideological lines to allow the land transfer to proceed: Six judges voted in favour, and five against.

But on May 9, a federal judge in Arizona temporarily blocked the government from transferring the land, while the Apache Stronghold pursued its appeal to the highest court.

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito did not participate in Tuesday’s decision, likely due to his financial ties to the companies involved. But two justices, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas, issued a dissent calling the Supreme Court’s decision not to weigh in “a grave mistake”.

“While this Court enjoys the power to choose which cases it will hear, its decision to shuffle this case off our docket
without a full airing is a grievous mistake — one with consequences that threaten to reverberate for generations,” Gorsuch wrote.

“Just imagine if the government sought to demolish a historic cathedral on so questionable a chain of legal reasoning. I have no doubt that we would find that case worth our time.”

The land swap was approved as part of a 2014 defence spending bill. A required environmental impact statement was issued during the final days of Trump’s first term in office in January 2021.