The lawsuit alleges the Trump administration’s move to cut federal funding to public broadcasting is a violation of the US Constitution’s First Amendment.
National Public Radio (NPR) and three of its local stations have filed a lawsuit against United States President Donald Trump, arguing that an executive order aimed at cutting federal funding for the organisation is illegal.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court on Tuesday in Washington, DC by NPR and three local stations in Colorado — Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Public Radio and KUTE Inc – argues that Trump’s executive order to slash public subsidies to PBS and NPR violates the First Amendment of the US Constitution.
Trump issued the executive order earlier this month, instructing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and requiring that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organisations. Trump issued the order after alleging there is “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting.
The Corporation for Public Broadcasting spends roughly $500m on public TV and radio annually. PBS and NPR get part of their funding from federal grants: 17 percent and two percent, respectively.
“The Order’s objectives could not be clearer: the Order aims to punish NPR for the content of news and other programming the President dislikes and chill the free exercise of First Amendment rights by NPR and individual public radio stations across the country,” the lawsuit alleges.
“The Order is textbook retaliation and viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment, and it interferes with NPR’s and the Local Member Stations’ freedom of expressive association and editorial discretion,” it said.
The White House’s executive order argued that editorial choices – including that NPR allegedly “refused to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story”, and that it ran a “Valentine’s Day feature around ‘queer animals’” – were some of the reasons it wanted to cut federal funding.
“This is retaliatory, viewpoint-based discrimination in violation of the First Amendment,” NPR CEO Katherine Maher said in a statement.
“NPR has a First Amendment right to be free from government attempts to control private speech as well as from retaliation aimed at punishing and chilling protected speech. By basing its directives on the substance of NPR’s programming, the Executive Order seeks to force NPR to adapt its journalistic standards and editorial choices to the preferences of the government if it is to continue to receive federal funding.”
The absence of PBS from Tuesday’s filing indicates the two systems will challenge this separately; PBS has not yet gone to court, but is likely to do so soon.
The US president’s attempts to dismantle government-run news sources like Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty have also sparked court clashes.
The administration has battled with the press on several fronts. The Federal Communications Commission is investigating ABC, CBS and NBC News. And after The Associated Press refrained from calling the Gulf of Mexico “the Gulf of America”, as Trump directed, the administration restricted the news outlet’s access to certain government events.
OTTAWA, Ontario — King Charles III said Canada is facing unprecedented challenges in a world that’s never been more dangerous as he opened the Canadian Parliament on Tuesday with a speech widely viewed as a show of support in the face of annexation threats by President Trump.
Trump’s repeated suggestion that the U.S. annex Canada prompted Prime Minister Mark Carney to invite Charles to give the speech from the throne outlining his governments priorities for the new session of Parliament. The king is the head of state in Canada, which is a member of the Commonwealth of former colonies.
“We must face reality: since the Second World War, our world has never been more dangerous and unstable. Canada is facing challenges that, in our lifetimes, are unprecedented,” Charles said in French.
He added that “many Canadians are feeling anxious and worried about the drastically changing world around them.”
It’s rare for the monarch to deliver what’s called the speech from the throne in Canada. Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, did it twice before in 1957 and 1977.
”I have always had the greatest admiration for Canada’s unique identity, which is recognized across the world for bravery and sacrifice in defense of national values, and for the diversity and kindness of Canadians,” he said.
Charles, on his 20th visit to Canada, noted that it has been nearly 70 years since his mother first opened Parliament.
“In the time since, Canada has dramatically changed: repatriating its constitution, achieving full independence, and witnessing immense growth. Canada has embraced its British, French, and Indigenous roots, and become a bold, ambitious, innovative country that is bilingual, truly multicultural,” the monarch said.
He said when his late mother opened a new session of Canadian Parliament in 1957, World War II remained a fresh, painful memory and said the Cold War was intensifying.
“Freedom and democracy were under threat,” he said. “Today, Canada faces another critical moment. Democracy, pluralism, the rule of law, self-determination, and freedom are values which Canadians hold dear, and ones which the government is determined to protect.”
Charles also said that the Canadian government “will protect Canada’s sovereignty by rebuilding, rearming, and reinvesting in the Canadian Armed Forces.
“It will stimulate the Canadian military industry by participating in the ‘ReArm Europe’ plan and will thus contribute, together with European partners, to trans-Atlantic security. And it will invest to strengthen its presence in the North, as this region, which is an integral part of the Canadian nation, faces new threats,” the king said.
Former Canadian Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper were among those in attendance.
The speech isn’t written by the king or his U.K. advisers as Charles serves as a nonpartisan head of state. He read what was put before him by Canada’s government, but makes some remarks of his own.
Carney, the new prime minister and a former head of the Bank of England, and Canada’s first Indigenous governor general, Mary Simon, the king’s representative in Canada, met with Charles on Monday.
Canadians are largely indifferent to the monarchy, but Carney has been eager to show the differences between Canada and the United States. The king’s visit clearly underscores Canada’s sovereignty, he said.
Carney won the job of prime minister by promising to confront the increased aggression shown by Trump.
The king said that Canada can build new alliances and a new economy that serves all Canadians. More than 75% of Canada’s exports go to the U.S. and Carney is eager to diversify trade.
The new U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, said that sending messages to the U.S. isn’t necessary and Canadians should move on from the 51st state talk, telling the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. that if there’s a message to be sent, there are easier ways to do that, such as calling him or calling the president.
“There are different ways to ‘send a message’ and a phone call is only of them,” said Daniel Beland, a political science professor at McGill University. “The king would normally add his own short introductory remarks and observers will be listening to them very carefully with the issue of Canada’s sovereignty in mind.”
The king said that among the priorities for the government is protection of the French language and Quebec culture, which are at the heart of Canadian identity.
“They define the country that Canadians, and I, love so much. Canada is a country where official and Indigenous languages are respected and celebrated,” he said.
“The government is committed to protecting the institutions that promote these cultures and this identity throughout the world, such as CBC/Radio-Canada.”
He also said the Canada must protect Quebec’s dairy supply management industry. Trump attacked the industry in trade talks.
A horse-drawn carriage took king and queen to the Senate of Canada Building for the speech. It will accompanied by 28 horses, 14 before and 14 after. He will receive the Royal Salute from the 100-person guard of honor from the 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment before entering the chamber for his speech.
The king will return to the U.K. after the speech and a visit to Canada’s National War Memorial.
Justin Vovk, a Canadian royal historian, said the king’s visit reminds him of when Queen Elizabeth II opened the Parliament in Grenada, a member of the commonwealth, in 1985.
A U.S.-led force invaded the islands in October 1983 without consulting the British government following the killing of Grenada’s Marxist prime minister, Maurice Bishop.
NPR and three of its member stations filed suit in federal court Tuesday against President Trump‘s White House over the president’s executive order to block funding for public media.
Trump’s order called for an end to government dollars for the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, the taxpayer-backed entity that provides funding to NPR and PBS. He called the outlets “left wing propaganda.”
“The Order targets NPR and PBS expressly because, in the President’s view, their news and other content is not ‘fair, accurate, or unbiased,’” the legal brief said, according to an NPR report.
The suit also says that the funding — currently at around $500 million annually — is appropriated by Congress. The allocation is made two years in advance.
“Congress directly authorized and funded CPB to be a private nonprofit corporation wholly independent of the federal government,” Corp. for Public Broadcasting chief Patricia Harrison told NPR in a statement.
Harrison said that the Corp. for Public Broadcasting is not a federal agency subject to the president’s authority.
“The Executive Order is a clear violation of the Constitution and the First Amendment’s protections for freedom of speech and association, and freedom of the press,” NPR President and Chief Executive Katherine Maher said in a statement.
The order is one of a number of attempts by Trump to limit or intimidate institutions he does not agree with. Targets included law firms, universities and media companies such as CBS, which is being sued for $20 billion over a “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential campaign.
NPR filed the suit with three public radio outlets, including Denver-based Colorado Public Radio, Aspen Pubic Radio and KSUT which serves the Four Corners region of Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico and Utah.
Both NPR and PBS have stressed that the bulk of the federal funding they receive goes to stations that provide local news and emergency alerts for their communities.
One fateful October decision to trim two convoluted sentences from a “60 Minutes” interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris has snowballed into a full-blown corporate crisis for CBS’ parent company, Paramount Global, and its controlling shareholder, Shari Redstone.
President Trump’s $20-billion lawsuit — claiming “60 Minutes” producers deceptively manipulated the Harris interview to make her look smarter — has festered, clouding the future of Paramount and the company’s hoped-for $8-billion sale to David Ellison’s Skydance Media.
The dispute over the edits has sparked massive unrest within the company, prompted high-level departures and triggered a Federal Communications Commission examination of alleged news bias. The FCC’s review of the Skydance deal has become bogged down, according to people familiar with the matter who weren’t authorized to comment.
The agency, chaired by a Trump appointee, must approve the transfer of CBS television station licenses to the Ellison family for the deal to advance.
A lawsuit resolution, through court-ordered mediation, remains out of reach. And last week, three Democratic U.S. senators raised the stakes by suggesting, in a letter to Redstone, that a Trump settlement could be considered an illegal payoff.
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) warned in their letter that any payment to Trump to gain favorable treatment by the FCC could violate federal anti-bribery laws. Paramount’s dealings with Trump “raises serious concerns of corruption and improper conduct,” the senators wrote.
“Under the federal bribery statute, it is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act,” the senators said.
President Trump during a signing ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House.
(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)
Redstone is desperate for the Paramount-Skydance deal to go through.
Her family’s holding company is cratering under a mountain of debt. Paramount’s sale to the Ellison family would provide the clan $2.4 billion for their preferred shares — proceeds that would allow the Redstones to pay their nearly $600 million in debt — and remain billionaires.
Paramount, Skydance and a spokesperson for Redstone declined to comment.
While recusing herself from granular and final decision-making, Redstone has made it clear that she wants Paramount to settle with Trump, rather than wage an ongoing beef with the sitting president, according to people familiar with the matter but not authorized to discuss internal deliberations.
Figuring a way out of the dispute has divided the company, according to insiders.
For CBS News professionals, apologizing to Trump over routine edits of a lengthy interview is a red line. Tensions have spilled into public view.
Redstone has been cast as the villain. The Drudge Report, created by journalist Matt Drudge, who got his start at CBS in Los Angeles, last month published a photo of 71-year-old heiress, identifying her in all caps as “The woman who destroyed CBS News.”
Two top CBS News executives have resigned. Both refused to apologize to Trump as part of any settlement, the knowledgeable sources said.
Most CBS journalists and 1st Amendment experts see Trump’s lawsuit a shakedown, one seemingly designed to exploit Paramount’s vulnerability because it needs the government’s approval for the Skydance deal.
“Settling such a case for anything of substance would thus compromise 1st Amendment principles today and the broad notion of freedom of the press in the future,” prominent press freedom lawyer Floyd Abrams said.
Paramount has stressed that it sees the Trump lawsuit and the FCC review of the Skydance deal as separate. “We will abide by the legal process to defend our case,” a Paramount spokesperson said.
But “60 Minutes” correspondent Scott Pelley connected the two for viewers during an extraordinary April broadcast, in which he rebuked Paramount management on air at the end of the program. That, according to sources, angered some of Paramount’s leaders.
While “60 Minutes” has received additional corporate oversight, some insiders pointed to Pelley’s acknowledgment that “none of our stories have been blocked.”
All the high-level scrutiny has put Paramount and Redstone in a box, and the Skydance deal looks less certain than it did months ago.
“Who’s going to sign that settlement, knowing that you could be accused of paying a bribe?” asked one person close to Paramount.
Paramount Global’s path to peril began long before the infamous “60 Minutes” edits. The company was diminished by management turmoil and years of cost-cutting, which would eventually force Redstone to find a buyer for one of Hollywood’s most storied studios.
Should New York-based Paramount, which also owns Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon and the famed Melrose Avenue movie studio, fail to complete its sale to Skydance by its October deadline, the deal could collapse.
Paramount then would owe $400 million to Skydance as a breakup fee, putting the company in further dire financial straits. Skydance and its investor RedBird Capital Partners have agreed, once they take over, to inject $1.5 billion into Paramount, helping it pay down some debt.
Redstone would also be on the hook to repay her financiers. Two years ago, a Chicago banker rescued the Redstone family investment firm, National Amusements Inc., with a $125-million equity investment.
The family’s finances were strained after Paramount cut its dividend to shareholders that spring during the Hollywood writers’ strike. The family’s dire financial situation was a leading impetus for Paramount’s sale.
If the deal fell through, Redstone would also have to repay a $186-million loan from tech mogul Larry Ellison. The billionaire Oracle co-founder and father of David Ellison extended the loan so National Amusements could make a looming debt payment.
National Amusements holds 77% of Paramount’s controlling shares, giving the Redstone family enormous sway over Paramount management.
Paramount Chairwoman Shari Redstone in 2023 in New York.
(Evan Agostini / Invision / Associated Press)
Critics privately note Redstone’s role in setting up the company for the current drama. It took nearly a year for Redstone and Paramount’s special board committee to negotiate a deal with Skydance. The independent directors spent months searching for an alternate buyer, adding to the delays that now haunt both sides.
Had the parties reached agreement sooner, the companies could have asked the FCC for approval earlier last year during the less hostile Biden administration.
Instead, weeks were spent haggling over various demands, including having Skydance indemnify Redstone and her family against shareholder lawsuits. In the end, the Ellisons also agreed to help Redstone pay for her New York apartment and private jet after the deal closes, according to the knowledgeable people.
Paramount petitioned the FCC for review in September.
By that time, political environment was caustic for mainstream media companies. Conservatives were upset over ABC News’ handling of the Sept. 10 debate between Trump and Harris after ABC anchors fact-checked Trump in real time, including pushing back on his false claim that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were eating pets.
Trump reportedly backed out of a “60 Minutes” appearance — long a traditional stop for presidential candidates — because CBS intended to fact-check his remarks. Conservatives viewed such formats as a double standard and as an example of how news bias has seeped into major networks’ coverage of Republicans.
“This was an issue we were already sensitive to and focused on,” said Daniel Suhr, president of the conservative Center for American Rights legal group, which filed an FCC complaint against Walt Disney Co.’s ABC after the debate.
Redstone, who had previously urged news executives to bring more balance to CBS’ coverage, was livid after managers scolded “CBS Mornings” co-host Tony Dokoupil for his sharp questioning of author Ta-Nehisi Coates about Israel during an interview segment. Coates’ book, “The Message,” compared Israel’s treatment of Palestinians to the Jim Crow South in the U.S.
Redstone, who is Jewish and has focused her philanthropy on battling antisemitism in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, publicly rebuked CBS News managers for their treatment of Dokoupil.
The controversial exchange in the Harris “60 Minutes” interview also happened to concern Israel.
Harris gave a long-winded three-sentence response.
CBS broadcast the convoluted first sentence on its Sunday public affairs show, “Face the Nation,” on Oct. 6. The following night — the anniversary of the Hamas attacks — “60 Minutes” aired only her most forceful and succinct third sentence: “We are not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.”
Conservatives zeroed in.
“CBS created this mess for itself. … The conservative ecosystem was outraged when they saw the two different clips because it vindicated everything,” Suhr said. “Folks had always believed the media was selectively manipulating interviews like that.”
Journalists routinely cut extraneous words to provide clear and compact soundbites for audiences. CBS released a statement saying that it had not doctored the interview. Rather, news producers said they trimmed Harris’ response to cover more ground during the broadcast.
Internally, CBS debated whether to release the full transcript to quell the furor — but it stopped short at first. Some people close to the company have been particularly critical of CBS for not immediately releasing the unedited video.
One of Trump-appointed FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s first moves was to revive a separate news distortion complaint against “60 Minutes,” which Suhr had filed shortly after the broadcast. The matter had been dismissed by the previous Biden-appointed chair.
“It’s become clear that the company and I do not agree on the path forward,” McMahon told her staff in a note last week.
Insiders note other McMahon decisions, including the introduction of a new “CBS Evening News” format, which has led to plummeting ratings, as factors in her fall. McMahon could not be reached for comment.
Redstone and others hope the mediation with Trump’s attorneys will produce a truce.
But several questions remain: What will it take for Paramount to appease the president? And could the company’s leaders be prosecuted if they pay the president a multimillion-dollar settlement?
In “normal times,” officials might be alarmed by a president’s demand for a big check, said Michael C. Dorf, a Cornell Law School professor.
“These are not normal times, however, so the president will likely be able to get away with soliciting a bribe from Paramount, just as he is getting away with extortion of law firms and universities,” Dorf said.
Staff writer Stephen Battaglio contributed to this report.
May 26 (UPI) — Former Culpeper County (Va.) Sheriff Scott Jenkins won’t have to go to prison for bribery after President Donald Trump pardoned him on Monday.
Trump accused a “corrupt and weaponized Biden” Department of Justice of engaging in an “overzealous” prosecution of Jenkins that resulted in his December conviction on bribery and other charges in the U.S. District Court of Western Virginia.
“In fact, during his trial, when Sheriff Jenkins tried to offer exculpatory evidence to support himself, the Biden [-nominated] Judge, Robert Ballou, refused to allow it, shut him down and then went on a tirade,” Trump said Monday in a Truth Social post.
“In federal, city and state courts, radical left or liberal judges allow into evidence what they feel like, not what is mandated under the Constitution and rules of evidence,” Trump continued.
“This sheriff is a victim of an overzealous Biden Department of Justice and doesn’t deserve to spend a single day in jail.”
He said Jenkins “was persecuted by radical left ‘monsters’ and ‘left for dead,'” so he granted him a full and unconditional pardon.
The federal court in December convicted Jenkins of accepting $70,000 in bribes and campaign contributions to appoint local businessmen as auxiliary deputy sheriffs and in March sentenced him to 10 years in prison, The Hill reported.
He was convicted on seven counts of bribery concerning programs receiving public funds, four counts of honest services mail and wire fraud, and one count of conspiracy.
Jenkins was the Culpeper County sheriff from 2012 until losing his bid for re-election in 2023.
Two of those from whom he was convicted for accepting bribes were undercover FBI agents.
Although the alleged bribers were from those who lacked training and weren’t vetted, Jenkins offered them badges and sheriff department credentials, federal prosecutors said.
After Jenkins in March was sentenced to serve 10 years in prison, prosecuting U.S. Attorney Zachary T. Lee said those who received the badges and credentials did not provide any services for the county or the sheriff’s office.
“Scott Jenkins violated his oath of office and the faith the citizens of Culpeper County placed in him when he engaged in a cash-for-badges scheme,” Lee said in a statement.
“We hold our elected law enforcement officials to a higher standard of conduct,” Lee added. “This case proves that when those officials use their authority for unjust personal enrichment, the Department of Justice will hold them accountable.”
California Rep. Nanette Diaz Barragán urged the Federal Communications Commission on Monday to follow through on plans to modernize the federal emergency alert system and provide multilingual alerts in natural disasters for residents who speak a language other than English at home.
The call comes nearly five months after deadly fires in Los Angeles threatened communities with a high proportion of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — some with limited English proficiency — highlighting the need for multilingual alerts.
In a letter sent to Brendan Carr, the Republican chair of the FCC, Barragán (D-San Pedro) expressed “deep concern” that the FCC under the Trump administration has delayed enabling multilingual Wireless Emergency Alerts for severe natural disasters such as wildfires, hurricanes, earthquakes and tsunamis.
“This is about saving lives,” Barragán said in an interview with The Times. “You’ve got about 68 million Americans that use a language other than English and everybody should have the ability to to understand these emergency alerts. We shouldn’t be looking at any politicization of alerts — certainly not because someone’s an immigrant or they don’t know English.”
Multilingual emergency alerts should be in place across the nation, Barragán said. But the January Pacific Palisades and Eaton fires served as a reminder that the need is particularly acute in Los Angeles.
Not only does L.A. have a significant risk of wildfires, flooding, mudslides, and earthquakes, but the sprawling region is home to a diverse immigrant population, some of whom have limited English proficiency.
“When you think about it, in California we have wildfires, we’re always on earthquake alert,” Barragán said. “In other parts of the country, it could be hurricanes or tornadoes — we just want people to have the information on what to do.”
Four months ago, the FCC was supposed to publish an order that would allow Americans to get multilingual alerts
In October 2023, the FCC approved rules to update the federal emergency alert system by enabling Wireless Emergency Alerts to be delivered in more than a dozen languages — not just English, Spanish and sign language — without the need of a translator.
Then, the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau developed templates for critical disaster alerts in the 13 most commonly spoken languages in the US. In January, the commission declared a “major step forward” in expanding alert languages when it issued a report and order that would require commercial mobile service providers to install templates on cellphones within 30 months of publication of the federal register.
“The language you speak shouldn’t keep you from receiving the information you or your family need to stay safe,” then-FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a January statement.
But shortly after, Trump took control of the White House. Under the chairmanship of Brendan Carr, the commission has yet to publish the January 8 Report and Order in the Federal Register — a critical step that triggers the 30-month compliance clock.
“This delay is not only indefensible but dangerous,” Barragán wrote in a letter to Carr that was signed by nearly two dozen members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus and the Congressional Black Caucus. “It directly jeopardizes the ability of our communities to receive life-saving emergency information in the language they understand best.”
Barragán noted that Carr previously supported the push for multilingual alerts when he was a member of the commission, before taking over leadership.
“Your failure to complete this ministerial step — despite having supported the rule itself — has left this life-saving policy in limbo and significantly delayed access to multilingual alerts for millions of Americans,” she wrote.
Asked by The Times what explained the delay, Barragán said her office had been told that Trump’s regulatory freeze prohibited all federal agencies, including the FCC, from publishing any rule in the Federal Register until a designated Trump official is able to review and approve it.
“It’s all politics,” she said. “We don’t know why it’s stuck there and why the administration hasn’t moved forward, but it seems, like, with everything these days, they’re waiting on the president’s green light.”
Barragán also noted that multilingual alerts helped first responders.
“If you have a community that’s supposed to be evacuated, and they’re not evacuating because they don’t know they’re supposed to evacuate, that’s only going to hurt first responders and emergency crews,” she said. “So I think this is a safety issue all around, not just for the people receiving it.”
Manjusha Kulkarni, executive director of AAPI Equity Alliance, a coalition of 50 community-based groups that serves the 1.6 million Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who live in Los Angeles, told The Times the FCC’s failure to push alerts in more languages represented a “real dereliction of duty.”
Over half a million Asian Americans across L.A. County are classified as Limited English Proficiency, with many speaking primarily in Chinese, Korean, Tagalog and Vietnamese, she noted.
“President Trump and many members of his administration have made clear they plan to go on the attack against immigrants,” Kulkarni said. “If this makes the lives of immigrants easier, then they will stand in its way.”
During the January L.A. fires, Kulkarni said, residents complained that fire alerts were sent only in English and Spanish. More than 12,000 of the 50,000 Asian immigrants and their descendants who lived within four evacuation zones — Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Hughes — need language assistance.
“There were community members who didn’t realize until they were evacuated that the fire was so close to them, so they had little to no notice of it,” Kulkarni said. “Really, it can mean life or death in a lot of cases where you don’t get the information, where it’s not translated in a city and county like Los Angeles.”
Community members ended up suffering not just because of the fires themselves, Kulkarni said, but because of federal and local officials’ failure to provide alerts in languages every resident can understand.
“It is incumbent that the alerts be made available,” she said. “We need those at local, state and federal levels to do their part so that individuals can survive catastrophic incidents.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says the US president ‘wants peace’ but will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon.
Washington, DC – United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem says she delivered a message from President Donald Trump to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that the two countries should be aligned on how to approach Iran.
Noem, who concluded a visit to Israel on Monday, told Fox News that her talks with Netanyahu were “candid and direct”. Her comments come days after US and Iranian officials held their fifth round of nuclear talks in Rome.
“President Trump specifically sent me here to have a conversation with the prime minister about how those negotiations are going and how important it is that we stay united and let this process play out,” she said.
On Sunday, Trump suggested that the talks were progressing well.
“We’ve had some very, very good talks with Iran,” the US president told reporters. “And I don’t know if I’ll be telling you anything good or bad over the next two days, but I have a feeling I might be telling you something good.”
Last week, CNN reported, citing unidentified US officials, that Israel was preparing for strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities, despite the US-led talks.
Iran has promised to respond forcefully to any Israeli attack, and accused Netanyahu of working to undermine US diplomacy.
Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Abbas Araghchi said last week that the Israeli prime minister is “desperate to dictate what the US can and cannot do”.
Israel has been sceptical about the nuclear negotiations, and Netanyahu has been claiming for years that Iran is on the cusp of acquiring a nuclear bomb. Israeli officials portray Iran – which backs regional groups engaged in armed struggle against Israel – as a major threat.
On Monday, Noem said that the US understands that Netanyahu does not trust Iran.
“The message to the American people is: We have a president that wants peace, but also a president that will not tolerate nuclear Iran capability in the future. They will not be able to get a nuclear weapon, and this president will not allow it,” she said.
“But he also wants this prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to be on the same page with him.”
A major sticking point in the talks has been whether Iran would be allowed to enrich its own uranium.
US officials have said they want Iran not just to scale back its nuclear programme, but also to completely stop enriching uranium – a position that Tehran has said is a nonstarter.
Enrichment is the process of altering the uranium atom to create nuclear fuel.
Iranian officials say enrichment for civilian purposes is a sovereign right that is not prohibited by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
Tehran denies seeking a nuclear weapon, while Israel is widely believed to have an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
During his first term, in 2018, Trump nixed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which had seen Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions against its economy.
Since then, the US has been piling sanctions on Iran. Tehran has responded by escalating its nuclear programme.
On Monday, Iran ruled out temporarily suspending uranium enrichment to secure an interim deal with the US.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baqaei stressed that Iran is not buying time with the talks.
“We have entered the course of talks seriously and purposefully with the intention of reaching a fair agreement. We have proved our seriousness,” Baqaei was quoted as saying by the Tasnim news agency.
The British monarch is expected to voice support for Canada’s sovereignty against Trump’s 51st state comments.
King Charles III, the British monarch, has arrived in Canada for a two-day visit that officials say aims to assert support for the country’s sovereignty amid Donald Trump’s calls for annexing the United States’ northern neighbour.
The monarch’s trip, which started on Monday, comes at the invite of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, who won general elections last month amid Trump’s threats.
Charles is the ceremonial head of state in Canada, which remained a commonwealth realm after gaining independence from Great Britain in 1867.
The king is set to open parliament in Ottawa on Tuesday with a “Speech from the Throne” speech – the first such address to be delivered by a British monarch in Canada since 1977.
While the British monarch has refrained from interfering in politics in recent decades, remaining a symbolic figure, Charles is expected to deliver a message of support for Canada against Trump’s statements.
“The prime minister has made it clear that Canada is not for sale now, is not for sale ever,” Canada’s envoy to the UK, Ralph Goodale, told reporters last week.
“The king, as head of state, will reinforce the power and the strength of that message.”
Canadian officials have forcefully rejected Trump’s comments about making their country the 51st US state, as a trade row between the two countries continues. During a visit to the White House earlier this month, Carney told Trump that Canada is “not for sale”.
Charles’ trip, which he will make with his wife Queen Camilla, will be his first visit to the former British colony since becoming king in September 2022.
Governor General Mary Simon, the monarch’s ceremonial representative in Canada, said the royal couple’s visit holds “profound significance”.
“It reaffirms the enduring constitutional bond that has shaped Canada’s journey into a proud and independent nation,” Simon, who is the first indigenous person to hold the position, said in a statement.
On Monday, the royal couple will visit a large park in Ottawa and meet vendors and artists, according to Buckingham Palace. The king will then participate in a ceremonial puck drop to launch a street hockey demonstration before planting a tree in another part of the city.
May 26 (UPI) — President Donald Trump will mark his first Memorial Day as commander-in-chief in his second term with ceremonies in Arlington National Cemetery.
“I will be making a Memorial Day Speech today at Arlington National Cemetery,” the president announced Monday morning on his social media platform, adding to “enjoy!!!”
Trump, who will take part in a wreath-laying ceremony per tradition at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, says the speech at the nation’s cemetery across the Potomac River from Washington in Virginia will be at 11 a.m. EDT.
“Happy Memorial Day to all, including the scum that spent the last four years trying to destroy our country through warped radical left minds,” Trump wrote in all caps in part in an earlier post Monday morning.
In a separate statement, the White House said on “this solemn day” as the country honors the sacrifice of its fallen soldiers, Trump and first lady Melania Trump “ask all citizens to join us in prayer that Almighty God may comfort those who mourn, grant protection to all who serve, and bring blessed peace to the world.”
America’s first observance of Memorial Day on May 30, 1890, previously known as Decoration Day, was proclaimed by Union Commander John A. Logan to honor fallen soldiers who died fighting to preserve the Union during the Civil War.
According to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, the government estimates more than 650,000 Americans have died in battle since the Revolutionary War began in 1775.
On Monday, the VA will partner with nonprofits to honor veterans interred in national cemeteries where more than 5.4 million people are buried.
VA officials announced Thursday that through partnerships with Carry The Load, the Travis Manion Foundation and Victory for Veterans, at least 70,000 volunteers visit 54 national veterans cemeteries on Memorial Day.
It arrives on top of Trump’s revelation earlier this month that he plans to name November 11 — which is Veterans Day — a “national holiday” to celebrate past world war victories.
US president continues to fuel global economic uncertainty with erratic trade policy.
United States President Donald Trump has backed away from launching a trade war with the European Union, two days after threatening to impose punishing tariffs.
Trump said on Sunday that he has agreed to extend trade negotiations with the EU to July 9 following a call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. As part of that agreement, the US will also hold back from imposing a 50 percent tariff on imports from the bloc, which Trump announced on Friday would be imposed on June 1.
The announcement is the latest U-turn on US trade policy in a long series in recent months, and will only add to the uncertainty that Trump’s erratic and unpredictable policy is casting over the global economy.
Trump said, “[von der Leyen] said she wants to get down to serious negotiation. We had a very nice call.”
“She said we will rapidly get together and see if we can work something out,” he told reporters.
The European Commission chief noted that she had shared a “good call” with Trump and that the EU was ready to move swiftly.
Backtracked
Trump set a 90-day window for trade negotiations with the EU in April, making them due to end on July 9.
He had backtracked on Friday, saying he was not interested in reaching an agreement at all and escalated the transatlantic trade dispute.
“I’m not looking for a deal,” the president said. “We’ve set the deal – it’s at 50 percent.”
However, by Sunday, he welcomed von der Leyen’s assertion that the bloc is willing to negotiate but needs more time.
“Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively,” she recapped on X. “To reach a good deal, we would need the time until July 9.”
The bloc’s top trade negotiator, Maros Sefcovic, had on Friday urged the US to show “mutual respect, not threats”.
Trump roiled financial markets with his Liberation Day announcement in April, which threatened sweeping tariffs on multiple countries.
However, amid nosediving markets, threats of retaliation, and turmoil across the globe, the US president has in many cases softened his stance in favour of negotiations.
Washington has made deals with the United Kingdom and opened talks with China. Those moves have buoyed markets somewhat, but uncertainty persists as the US stance continues to shift.
PAINTSVILLE, Ky. — Janet Lynn Stumbo leaned on her cane and surveyed the two dozen or so voters who had convened in a small Appalachian town to meet with the chair of the Kentucky Democratic Party.
A former Kentucky Supreme Court justice, the 70-year-old Stumbo said the event was “the biggest Democratic gathering I have ever seen in Johnson County,” an enclave where Republican Donald Trump got 85% of the presidential vote in November.
Paintsville, the county seat, was the latest stop on the state party’s “Rural Listening Tour,” a periodic effort to visit overwhelmingly white, culturally conservative towns of the kind where Democrats once competed and Republicans now dominate nationally.
Democrats’ path back to power may start in places like Paintsville, one small meeting at a time, because it may be difficult for the party to regain control of Congress or the White House without faring better among rural and small-town voters across the country.
The party recently lost U.S. senators from states with significant rural populations: Montana, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. Also, Democratic-led states are losing population to Sun Belt states led by Republicans, with some projections suggesting changes after the 2030 census could cost Democrats 12 electoral college votes.
“The gut check is we’d stopped having these conversations” in white rural America, said Colmon Elridge, the Kentucky Democratic chair. “Folks didn’t give up on the Democratic Party. We stopped doing the things that we knew we needed to do.”
It’s not that Democrats must carry most white rural precincts to win more elections. It’s more a matter of consistently chipping away at Republican margins in the way Trump narrowed Democrats’ usual advantages among Black and Latino men in 2024, and not unlike what Kentucky’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, did in two statewide victories.
Nationally, Trump won 60% of small-town and rural voters when he lost reelection in 2020 — and 63% in his 2024 victory, according to AP VoteCast data. That’s a far cry from a generation ago, when Democrat Bill Clinton won pluralities in Johnson County on his way to capturing Kentucky’s electoral votes in the 1992 and 1996 White House races.
“We have to be intentional about how we build something sustainable,” Elridge said. “It’s not like we haven’t won here before.”
Combating the ‘caricature’ of Democrats
For two hours in downtown Paintsville, Elridge listened as Stumbo and others took umbrage at conservatives’ policy agenda, expressed frustration over President Trump’s standing in eastern Kentucky and said they were determined to sell their neighbors an alternative. Many brought their personal experiences to bear.
The event was part town hall, part catharsis, part pep talk. In some ways, the complaints in Paintsville mirrored how Democrats nationally are angry, often for very different reasons.
Sandra Music, a retired teacher who called herself “a new Democrat,” converted because of Trump. She bemoaned conservatives’ success in advancing private school tuition voucher programs and said they were threatening a public education system “meant to ensure we educate everybody.”
Music criticized Republicans for making a “caricature” of Democrats. “They want to pull out keywords: ‘abortion,’ ‘transgender,’ ‘boys in girls’ sports’” and distract from the rest of the Republican agenda, she said.
Stumbo, the former justice, lamented what she called the rightward lurch of the state and federal courts. “We are going to suffer irreparable damage,” she said, “if we don’t stop these conservative idiots.”
Michael Halfhill, who works in healthcare information technology, was incredulous that the billionaire president has taken hold of voters in Appalachia, historically one of the country’s poorest regions.
“It’s not left versus right. It’s rich versus poor,” he said, shaking his head at working-class white voters — Johnson County is 97.5% white — “voting against themselves.”
Ned Pillersdorf, who is married to Stumbo, went after Republicans for their proposed federal tax and spending plans, especially potential cuts to Medicaid. He said Paintsville still has a rural hospital, which is among the largest employers in the region, in no small part because Kentucky is among the GOP-leaning states where a Democratic governor expanded Medicaid under the 2010 Affordable Care Act.
Elridge, the first Black chair of a major party in Kentucky, mentioned Trump’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and related civil rights laws and regulations.
“This is where Trump and MAGA excel — if somebody who looks like me is your enemy, then you don’t care if the guy in the White House is peeing on your leg and telling you it’s rain,” he said, referring to Trump’s “Make American Great Again” movement.
Republican response
By definition, a “listening tour” is not meant to produce concrete action. Elridge and Nicholas Hazelett, the Johnson County Democratic chair who is a college student and a Paintsville City Council member, acknowledged that the small crowd was Democrat-friendly. Despite a few recent converts, no one was there waiting to be convinced.
Across the street, antiques shop owner Michelle Hackworth said she did not even know Democrats were holding a meeting. Calling herself a “hard-core Republican,” she smiled when asked if she would consider attending.
“They wouldn’t convince me of anything,” she said.
Bill Mike Runyon, a self-described conservative Republican who is Paintsville’s mayor and loves Trump, went immediately to social and cultural commentary when asked in an interview to explain Johnson County politics.
Democrats, he said, “have to get away from the far-left radical — look at the transgender message.” Further, Runyon said, “everything got kind of racial. It’s not like that here in Paintsville and in Johnson County, but I can see it as a country. … It’s making people more racist against one another.”
Asked specifically who he was talking about, he alluded to progressive U.S. Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Latina from New York City, and Jasmine Crockett, a Black woman from Texas.
“It’s the ones you always see on TV,” the mayor said.
Governor’s bipartisan appeal
Beshear seems to be the one Democrat who commands wide respect in and around Paintsville.
Democrats hailed the 47-year-old governor for supporting abortion and LGBTQ+ rights while still attracting support beyond the Democratic strongholds of Louisville, Lexington and Frankfort. Beshear did not win Johnson County but got 37% of the vote in his 2023 reelection. He carried several nearby counties.
Many Republicans, including the mayor, complimented Beshear for his handling of floods and other disasters in the region.
“He’s been here,” Runyon said. “I absolutely can get to him if I need him.”
In 2024, Beshear landed on the list of potential vice presidential running mates for Democratic nominee Kamala Harris. He also remains Senate Democrats’ top pick for a 2026 campaign for the seat coming open with Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell’s retirement.
Beshear, whose father once lost to McConnell after having won two governor’s races, has said he will not run for Senate. But he has stepped up his cable TV interviews and launched his own podcast, fueling speculation that his next campaign will be for the 2028 presidential nomination.
“Andy is not like those national Democrats,” Runyon said. Harking back to the 1990s, he added, “Bill Clinton wasn’t like these Democrats today.”
Hackworth, the shop owner, noted that she voted against the younger Beshear twice. But over the course of an extended interview, she, too, commended the governor’s disaster management. She also questioned some moves by Trump, including the idea of getting Washington completely out of the disaster aid business.
She blamed Trump’s predecessor, former President Biden, for a “tough time at my store,” but acknowledged that federal aid had helped many businesses and households stay afloat through the COVID-19 pandemic emergency.
Hackworth said she was not familiar with details of Medicaid expansion, but she identified the nearby hospital as among the area’s largest employers. The others, she said, are the public school system and Walmart, which a day earlier had announced it was increasing prices because of Trump’s tariffs.
While supporting Trump’s “America first” agenda, Hackworth said widespread tariffs would upset many consumers. “You can walk through my store and see where the new stuff is made,” she said. “I try to buy American, but so much of it is China, China, China.”
Asked again whether any of that should give Democrats an opening in places like Paintsville, she said, “Well, there’s always an opening if you show up.”
1 of 3 | Policy advisor Kim Hyung-suk said Monday that People Power Party presidential candidate Kim Moon-soo would support a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Photo by Thomas Maresca/UPI
SEOUL, May 26 (UPI) — Conservative South Korean presidential candidate Kim Moon-soo would ”proactively support” a summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un if elected, a key policy adviser said Monday.
Kim Hyung-suk, co-chair of the Unification and Foreign Affairs Committee of the candidate’s People Power Party, made the remark during a briefing with foreign media in downtown Seoul. South Korea’s presidential election will be held on June 3, with Kim trailing liberal frontrunner Lee Jae-myung of the Democratic Party in polls.
“If Mr. Trump seeks to re-engage with Kim Jong Un on talks of denuclearization [and] addressing peace and prosperity issues on the Korean Peninsula … [Kim Moon-soo] will proactively support the communication between the two,” Kim said.
“We [would] respect and highly approve of their communications,” he added.
The White House has not prioritized North Korea in its foreign policy agenda since Trump returned to office, but there has been speculation that the president may look to revive nuclear negotiations with Kim Jong Un.
During Trump’s first term, the two leaders held a pair of high-profile summits and met briefly a third time at the DMZ. The diplomatic outreach failed to result in a nuclear deal, however, and Pyongyang has accelerated the development of its weapons programs in the intervening years.
At the beginning of April, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that there has been communication with North Korea and that the two sides would “probably do something at some point.”
“I have a very good relationship with [Kim],” Trump said. “I think it’s very important. He’s a big nuclear nation and he’s a very smart guy.”
Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated dramatically in recent years, with Pyongyang officially designating the South a “hostile state” in a 2024 constitutional revision.
On Monday, Kim Hyung-suk said that a Kim Moon-soo administration would aim to “normalize inter-Korean relations” while maintaining Washington and Seoul’s longtime stance calling for North Korea to dismantle its nuclear arsenal.
“The Kim Moon-soo administration will consistently strive for a phased and actionable solution for the complete denuclearization of North Korea in close cooperation with the Trump administration,” he said.
The policy adviser added that Kim is eager to engage with North Korea and is making outreach plans with or without involvement from the Trump administration.
“As we know, President Trump is very busy these days due to a long list of different engagements internationally,” Kim said. “I don’t think we can wait years and years for the two to meet. In order to bring North Korea to the table, we are going to actively pursue communication, whether it be three-party or two-party.”
Kim’s opponent in the election, Lee Jae-myung, also voiced his support for engaging with North Korea while on the campaign trail Monday, but called the prospect of his own summit with Kim Jong Un “very difficult.”
Lee announced a campaign pledge on Monday to improve inter-Korean communications, including restoring a military hotline that North Korea has not responded to since 2023, but said that a face-to-face meeting with Kim would pose a challenge.
“It is something that should obviously be done, but I am not sure if it would be possible,” he told reporters at Ajou University in Suwon, south of Seoul. “It would be very difficult in the current situation.”
Harvard’s crest adorns a gate on the campus of the university. File Photo by CJ Gunther/EPA-EFE
May 25 (UPI) — President Donald Trump again raged against Harvard University on Sunday, demanding that the university provide a list of names of its international students and the countries they come from.
Trump made his comments amid his ongoing feud with the prestigious university on his Truth Social platform.
It was not immediately clear what Trump meant, as international students are required to have student visas provided by the State Department, the records of which his administration would be able to access.
After students arrive in the United States, their status is then monitored by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which tracks such students through its Student and Exchange Visitor Information System database. Universities are legally required to update this federal database regularly.
“Why isn’t Harvard saying that almost 31% of their students are from foreign lands, and yet those countries, some not at all friendly to the United States, pay nothing toward their student’s education, nor do they ever intend to,” Trump said.
“Nobody told us that! We want to know who those foreign students are, a reasonable request since we give Harvard billions of dollars, but Harvard isn’t exactly forthcoming. We want those names and countries.”
The remarks from Trump came after a federal judge on Friday blocked his administration’s efforts to prevent the university from enrolling anyone in the United States on a student visa.
“The revocation continues a series of government actions to retaliate against Harvard 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,” university president Alan Garber said in a statement Friday morning.
“We condemn this unlawful and unwarranted action. It imperils the futures of thousands of students and scholars across Harvard and serves as a warning to countless others at colleges and universities throughout the country who have come to America to pursue their education and fulfill their dreams.”
The university has not yet publicly commented on Trump’s latest demand.
The clash between Trump and Harvard has been escalating for months. In April, the administration froze over $2 billion in federal research funding to the university after Harvard refused to comply with demands to alter its curriculum, admissions policies, and faculty hiring practices.
The administration also threatened to revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status and demanded the university conduct a “viewpoint diversity” audit.
United States President Donald Trump has lambasted his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, describing him as “absolutely crazy” after Moscow launched its largest aerial attack of the war on Ukraine, killing at least 13 people.
Trump’s comments, issued on his Truth Social platform late on Sunday, marked a rare rebuke of Putin.
“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him. He has gone absolutely CRAZY!” the US president wrote.
“I’ve always said that he wants ALL of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!” he added.
The comments came as Ukraine’s Air Force said Russia had launched a record number of drones against Ukraine overnight on Sunday. It said Russian forces deployed 298 drones and 69 missiles, but that it was able to down 266 drones and 45 missiles.
The Russian attack was the largest of the war in terms of weapons fired, although other strikes have killed more people.
Ukraine’s emergency services described an atmosphere of “terror” across the country on Sunday, and regional officials said those killed included victims aged eight, 12 and 17 in the northwestern region of Zhytomyr.
More than 60 others were wounded.
“Without truly strong pressure on the Russian leadership, this brutality cannot be stopped,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on social media.
“The silence of America, the silence of others around the world only encourages Putin,” he said, adding: “Sanctions will certainly help.”
Sanctions
Trump has increasingly voiced irritation with Putin and the inability to resolve the now three-year-old war, which the US leader had promised he would do within days of returning to the White House.
He had long boasted of his friendly relationship with Putin and repeatedly stressed that Russia is more willing than Ukraine to reach a peace deal.
But earlier on Sunday, Trump made it clear that he is losing patience with the Russian president.
“I’m not happy with what Putin’s doing. He’s killing a lot of people. And I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin,” Trump told reporters as he departed northern New Jersey, where he had spent most of the weekend.
“I’ve known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”
Asked if he was considering more sanctions on Russia, Trump said, “Absolutely.”
Trump also criticised Zelenskyy, a more frequent target of his ire, in his social media post, accusing him of “doing his Country no favours by talking the way he does”.
“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” he said of Zelenskyy.
Europe condemns Russia
A peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine remains elusive.
Last week, Trump and Putin held a two-hour phone call, after which the US leader said Moscow and Kyiv would “immediately start negotiations towards a ceasefire”.
Putin, however, made no commitment to pause his three-year invasion of Ukraine, announcing only a vague proposal to work on a “memorandum” outlining Moscow’s demands for peace.
That conversation occurred after Russian and Ukrainian officials met in Turkiye for the first face-to-face talks since 2022. But on Thursday, the Kremlin said no direct talks were scheduled.
The Russian attack against Ukraine prompted criticism from Europe, too.
The European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, called for “the strongest international pressure on Russia to stop this war”. In a post on X, she said the attacks “again show Russia bent on more suffering and the annihilation of Ukraine. Devastating to see children among innocent victims harmed and killed”.
German Minister for Foreign Affairs Johann Wadephul also denounced the attacks, saying, “Putin does not want peace, he wants to carry on the war and we shouldn’t allow him to do this,” he said.
“For this reason, we will approve further sanctions at a European level.”
The massive attacks on Ukraine came as Russia said it had exchanged another 303 Ukrainian prisoners of war for the same number of Russian soldiers held by Kyiv – the last phase of a swap agreed during talks in Istanbul on May 16.
That marked their biggest prisoner swap since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, with 1,000 captured soldiers and civilian prisoners in total sent back by each side.
US President Donald Trump has said he is “not happy” with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin, following Moscow’s largest aerial attack yet on Ukraine.
In a rare rebuke, Trump said: “What the hell happened to him? He’s killing a lot of people.” He later called Putin “absolutely crazy”.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier said Washington’s “silence” over recent Russian attacks was encouraging Putin, urging “strong pressure” – including tougher sanctions – on Moscow.
Air sirens warning of incoming drones and missiles sounded again in many regions of Ukraine early on Monday.
At least three people, including a child, were injured in the north-eastern city of Kharkiv, Mayor Ihor Terekhov said.
Speaking to reporters in New Jersey late on Sunday, Trump said of Putin: “I’ve known him a long time, always gotten along with him, but he’s sending rockets into cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”
Asked about whether he was considering increasing US sanctions on Russia, Trump replied: “Absolutely.” The US president has repeatedly threatened to do this before – but is yet to implement any restrictions against Moscow.
Shortly afterwards, Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that Putin “has gone absolutely crazy”.
“I’ve always said that he wants all of Ukraine, not just a piece of it, and maybe that’s proving to be right, but if he does, it will lead to the downfall of Russia!”
But the US president also had strong words for Zelensky, saying that he “is doing his country no favours by talking the way he does”.
“Everything out of his mouth causes problems, I don’t like it, and it better stop,” Trump wrote of Zelensky.
Despite Kyiv’s European allies preparing further sanctions for Russia, the US has said it will either continue trying to broker these peace talks, or “walk away” if progress does not follow.
Last week, Trump and Putin had a two-hour phone call to discuss a US-proposed ceasefire deal to halt the fighting.
The US president said he believed the call had gone “very well”, adding that Russia and Ukraine would “immediately start” negotiations toward a ceasefire and “an end to the war”.
Ukraine has publicly agreed to a 30-day ceasefire.
Putin has only said Russia will work with Ukraine to craft a “memorandum” on a “possible future peace” – a move described by Kyiv and its European allies as delaying tactics.
The first direct Ukrainian-Russian talks since 2022 were held on 16 May in Istanbul, Turkey.
Aside from a major prisoner of war swap last week, there was little or no progress on bringing a pausing in fighting closer.
Russia currently controls about 20% of Ukrainian territory. This includes Crimea – Ukraine’s southern peninsula annexed by Moscow in 2014.
President Donald Trump crosses the South Portico after exiting Marine One at the White House in Washington, D.C., on Sunday, May 25, 2025. On Sunday, he announced a delay to tariffs on European Union goods until July 9. Photo by Tierney L. Cross/UPI | License Photo
May 25 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Sunday said he has agreed to delay imposing a 50% tariff on European goods until July 9 to allow more time for trade negotiations.
Trump announced the decision in a post on his Truth Social media platform, saying he made the decision following a call with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who had requested the extension.
“I agreed to the extension — July 9, 2025 — It was my privilege to do so,” he said in the statement. “The Commission President said that talks will begin rapidly. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
In a statement of her own published prior to Trump’s announcement, von der Leyen said she had a “good call” with the American president, and that to reach a “good” trade deal, they would need until July 9.
“The EU and U.S. share the world’s most consequential and close trade relationship,” she said on X.
“Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively.”
The delay is the latest from the American president, who has turned to the threat of imposing tariffs as a negotiating tool to bring about a new deal with terms more favorable for the United States.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration announced that an agreement had been reached with China to reduce most of their tariffs for 90 days to allow time for negotiations. That agreement saw U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods drop from 145% to 30% and China’s reciprocal tariffs on American goods fall from 125% to 10%.
Trump had originally announced 20% tariffs on EU imports in April as part of his so-called reciprocal tariffs, which sought to use the tax to level out trade disparities.
He then reduced those tariffs to 10% for 90 days later.
On Friday, Trump announced that a 50% tariff on EU goods would go into effect June 1, claiming the 27-member bloc was being “very difficult to deal with.”
“Their powerful Trade Barriers, Vat Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against Americans Companies and more, have led to a Trade Deficit with the U.S. of more than $250,000,000 a year, a number which is totally unacceptable,” he said on Truth Social.
According to the U.S. Trade Representative, the U.S. goods trade deficit with the EU last year was $235.6 billion, an increase of nearly 13% from the year prior.
WASHINGTON — Asylum seekers under the Trump-era “Remain in Mexico” policy whose cases were closed — many for reasons beyond their control, including kidnappings and court rulings against the government — will now be able to come into the U.S. to pursue asylum claims, the Biden administration said Tuesday.
The administration on Wednesday will begin to allow the first of thousands with closed cases to pursue their asylum claims within the United States, the Department of Homeland Security announced. More than 30,000 migrants could potentially be eligible, according to government data.
“As part of our continued effort to restore safe, orderly, and humane processing at the Southwest Border, DHS will expand the pool” of asylum seekers eligible for processing, the department said in a statement, including those “who had their cases terminated or were ordered removed in absentia.”
But when President Biden took office and began winding down the policy that he sharply criticized, his administration allowed only asylum seekers under Remain in Mexico — formally known as Migrant Protection Protocols — whose immigration cases remained open to enter the United States.
Since February, the Biden administration has permitted entry to some 12,000 asylum seekers with pending Migrant Protection Protocols cases, according to the United Nations refugee agency, the primary organization processing them. At the same time, Biden officials have urged patience from those whose cases were closed, promising a second phase.
Advocates and experts welcomed the move to begin admitting those asylum seekers, but criticized the administration’s slowness on restoring access.
“A delay of that kind would have to be driven by political considerations, not legal or purely administrative ones,” said Austin Kocher, an assistant professor at Syracuse University. “It flags a larger question: Is the Biden administration serious about following its national and international obligations to asylum law?”
For many asylum seekers, it is too late. From January 2019, when the Trump administration first implemented the policy in Southern California, to when Biden froze the program on his first day in office, roughly 70,000 migrants were sent by U.S. officials to wait in some of the world’s most dangerous cities just south of the border.
More than 1,500 of them suffered rape, kidnapping and assault, according to Human Rights First. And those numbers have continued to rise during Biden’s presidency, through a combination of policies that have left tens of thousands stuck on the southern side of the border.
“Why it’s taken so long is obviously of concern, because those people who are still in Mexico are still suffering and in dangerous situations,” said Judy Rabinovitz of the American Civil Liberties Union, which sued then-President Trump over the policy.
Biden administration officials have acknowledged this grim toll, even as they continue to send asylum seekers — some with Migrant Protection Protocols cases — to Mexico again, invoking a Trump-era coronavirus policy. Citing Title 42, an obscure 1944 public health law, border officials have summarily expelled more than 850,000 migrants, including asylum seekers, this time without a court date or due process.
“Having Title 42 still in place at the same time that the administration is claiming to try and fix cases in Remain in Mexico presents the administration with a fundamental contradiction between what they claim to be doing and the way that border control is actually working on the ground,” said Kocher.
Biden froze Migrant Protection Protocols on his first day in office, though it had already largely been supplanted by Trump’s coronavirus expulsions policy. But the Biden administration did not formally end Remain in Mexico until June 1.
In the memo ending the policy, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro N. Mayorkas said it had further strained department resources and added to a record backlog in immigration court proceedings.
More than 25% of those subjected to the policy were apprehended by border officials when they attempted to enter again, Mayorkas said, and roughly 44% of cases were completed by judges’ orders to remove asylum seekers who missed their hearings.
That raised questions about whether the program provided them “adequate opportunity” to appear, he said, “and whether conditions faced by some MPP enrollees in Mexico, including the lack of stable access to housing, income, and safety, resulted in the abandonment of potentially meritorious protection claims.”
Advocates argue that migrants subjected to Migrant Protection Protocols who received final decisions from immigration judges denying their asylum claims also deserve to be given another opportunity to seek asylum in accordance with U.S. law.
On Tuesday, the Homeland Security Department statement reiterated that others who may be eligible to enter in the future “should stay where they are currently located and register online” through a system administered by the United Nations.
“This is what they wanted, and this is what they got: People couldn’t get asylum,” Rabinovitz said of Trump administration officials. Now with Biden in the White House, she continued, “we’re saying no — in order to unwind it, you need to give people a new opportunity to apply for asylum, free of that taint.”
U.S. border officials frequently committed errors while administering the Remain in Mexico policy, The Times found. That included serving asylum seekers paperwork in languages they did not speak, or writing the phrase “domicilio conocido” — “known address” — or simply “Tijuana” — a Mexican border city of some 2 million people — on their paperwork, instead of a legally required address. That made it nearly impossible for applicants to be notified of changes to their cases or court dates.
These missteps by U.S. border officials also fueled federal judges’ rulings against the policy.
In one ruling, a 9th Circuit Court of Appeals judge said Homeland Security’s procedures for implementing the policy were “so ill-suited to achieving that stated goal as to render them arbitrary and capricious.”
But the Supreme Court never ultimately ruled on the legality of Migrant Protection Protocols. In early February, the Biden administration asked the nation’s highest court to cancel arguments on the policy. Opponents in several states sued, arguing that the Biden administration cannot end it.
On Monday, the Supreme Court rejected that effort, ordering: “The motion to intervene is dismissed as moot.”
WASHINGTON — President Trump said Sunday that the U.S. will delay implementation of a 50% tariff on goods from the European Union until July 9 to buy time for negotiations with the bloc.
That agreement came after a call Sunday with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, who had told Trump that she “wants to get down to serious negotiations,” according to the U.S. president.
“I told anybody that would listen, they have to do that,” Trump told reporters Sunday in Morristown, N.J., as he prepared to return to Washington. Von der Leyen, Trump said, vowed to “rapidly get together and see if we can work something out.”
In a social media post Friday, Trump had threatened to impose the 50% tariff on EU goods, asserting that the 27-member bloc had been “very difficult to deal with” on trade and that negotiations were “going nowhere.” Those tariffs would have kicked in starting June 1.
But the call with Von der Leyen appeared to smooth over tensions, at least for now.
“I agreed to the extension — July 9, 2025 — It was my privilege to do so,” Trump said on social media shortly after he spoke with reporters Sunday evening.
Von der Leyen said the EU and the U.S. “share the world’s most consequential and close trade relationship.”
“Europe is ready to advance talks swiftly and decisively,” she said. “To reach a good deal, we would need the time until July 9.”
PORTLAND, Ore. — One program distributes laptops in rural Iowa. Another helped people get back online after Hurricane Helene washed away computers and phones in western North Carolina. Programs in Oregon and rural Alabama teach older people, including some who have never touched a computer, how to navigate in an increasingly digital world.
It all came crashing down this month when President Trump — on his own digital platform, Truth Social — announced his intention to end the Digital Equity Act, a federal grant program meant to help bridge the digital divide. He branded it as “RACIST and ILLEGAL” and said it amounts to “woke handouts based on race.” He said it was an “ILLEGAL $2.5 BILLION DOLLAR giveaway.” The program was funded with $2.75 billion.
The name seemed innocuous enough when the program was approved by Congress in 2021 as part of a $65-billion investment meant to bring internet access to every home and business in the United States. The broadband program was a key component of the $1-trillion infrastructure law enacted under the Biden administration.
The Digital Equity Act was intended to fill gaps and cover unmet needs that surfaced during the massive broadband rollout. It gave states and tribes flexibility to deliver high-speed internet access to families that could not afford it, computers to kids who did not have them, telehealth access to older adults in rural areas, and training and job skills to veterans.
Whether Trump has the legal authority to end the program remains unknown. But for now the Republican administration can simply stop spending the money.
“I just felt my heart break for what we were finally, finally in this country, going to address, the digital divide,” said Angela Siefer, executive director of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance, a nonprofit that was awarded — but has not received — a $25.7-million grant to work with groups across the country to help provide access to technology. “The digital divide is not just physical access to the internet, it is being able to use that to do what you need to do.”
The word ‘equity’
While the name of the program probably got it targeted — the Trump administration has been aggressively scrubbing the government of programs that promote diversity, equity or inclusion — the Digital Equity Act was supposed to be broader in scope.
Though Trump called it racist, the words “race” or “racial” appear just twice in the law’s text: once, alongside “color, religion, national origin, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability,” in a passage stating that no groups should be excluded from funding; and later, in a list of covered populations, along with older adults, veterans, people with disabilities, English learners, people with low literacy levels and rural Americans.
“Digital Equity passed with overwhelming bipartisan support,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the act’s chief proponent, noted in a statement. “And that’s because my Republican colleagues have heard the same stories as I have — like kids in rural communities forced to drive to McDonalds parking lots for Wi-Fi to do their homework.
“It is insane — absolutely nuts — that Trump is blocking resources to help make sure kids in rural school districts can get hot spots or laptops, all because he doesn’t like the word equity!”
The National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which administers the program, declined to comment. It’s not clear how much of the $2.75 billion has been awarded, though in March 2024 the NTIA announced the allocation of $811 million to states, territories and tribes.
‘More confident’
On a recent morning in Portland, Ore., Brandon Dorn was among those taking a keyboard basics class offered by Free Geek, a nonprofit that provides free courses to help people learn to use computers. The class was offered at a low-income housing building to make it accessible for residents.
Dorn and the others were given laptops and shown the different functions of keys: control, shift and caps lock, how to copy and paste. They played a typing game that taught finger and key placement on a color-coded keyboard.
Dorn, 63, said the classes helped because “in this day and age, everything has to go through the computer.” He said it helped him feel more confident and less dependent on his children or grandchildren to do things such as making appointments online.
“Folks my age, we didn’t get this luxury because we were too busy working, raising the family,” he said. “So this is a great way to help us help ourselves.”
Juan Muro, Free Geek’s executive director, said participants get the tools and skills they need to access things like online banking, job applications, online education programs and telehealth. He said Trump’s move to end funding has put nonprofits such as Free Geek in a precarious position, forcing them to make up the difference through fundraising and “beg for money to just provide individuals with essential stuff.”
Sara Nichols works for the Land of Sky Regional Council, a multi-county planning and development organization in western North Carolina. On the Friday before Trump’s inauguration in January, the organization received notice that it was approved for a grant. But like other groups the Associated Press contacted, it has not seen any money.
Land of Sky had spent a lot of resources helping people recover from last year’s storms. The award notice, Nichols said, came as “incredible news.”
“But between this and the state losing, getting their letters terminated, we feel just, like, stuck. What are we going to do? How are we going to move forward? How are we going to let our communities continue to fall behind?”
Filling unmet needs
More than one-fifth of Americans do not have broadband internet access at home, according to the Pew Research Center. In rural communities, the number jumps to 27%.
Beyond giving people access to technology and fast internet, many programs funded by the Digital Equity Act sought to provide “digital navigators” — human helpers to guide people new to the online world.
“In the United States we do not have a consistent source of funding to help individuals get online, understand how to be safe online and how to use that technology to accomplish all the things that are required now as part of life that are online,” said Siefer of the National Digital Inclusion Alliance. This includes providing families with internet hot spots so they can get online at home and helping seniors avoid online scams, she said.
“Health, workforce, education, jobs, everything, right?” Siefer said. “This law was going to be the start for the U.S. to figure out this issue. It’s a new issue in the big scheme of things, because now technology is no longer a nice-to-have. You have to have the internet and you have to know how to use the technology just to survive, let alone to thrive today.”
Siefer said the word “equity” in the name probably prompted Trump to target the program for elimination.
“But it means that he didn’t actually look at what this program does,” she said. “Because who doesn’t want Grandma to be safe online? Who doesn’t want a veteran to be able to talk to their doctor rather than get in a car and drive two hours? Who doesn’t want students to be able to do their homework?”
Ortutay and Rush write for the Associated Press and reported from San Francisco and Portland, Ore., respectively.
