Trump

Paramount Global’s efforts to appease President Trump could carry a steep price, and not just financially. As Paramount executives struggle to win government approval for its planned sale, the legal risks and political headaches are spreading — from Washington to Sacramento.

Three U.S. senators have warned Paramount’s controlling shareholder Shari Redstone and other decision-makers that paying Trump to drop his $20-billion lawsuit over an October “60 Minutes” interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris could be considered a bribe.

Scrutiny widened late last week when two California Democrats proposed a state Senate hearing to probe details of the drama that has roiled the media company for months. The senators invited two former CBS News executives — who both left, in large part, because of the controversy — to testify before a joint committee hearing in Sacramento to help lawmakers examine problems with a possible Trump settlement.

“I haven’t seen a president act in this brazen of a manner,” state Sen. Josh Becker (D-Menlo Park) said in an interview. “We’re concerned about a possible chilling effect any settlement might have on investigative and political journalism. It would also send a message that politically motivated lawsuits can succeed, especially when paired with regulatory threats.”

Settling the Trump lawsuit is widely seen as a prerequisite for regulators to finally clear Paramount’s $8-billion sale to Skydance Media, which Redstone has been desperately counting on to save her family’s fortunes.

Trump contends CBS edited the “60 Minutes” interview to enhance Harris’ appeal in the 2024 presidential election, which she lost. He reportedly rebuffed Paramount’s recent $15-million offer to settle his lawsuit, which 1st Amendment experts have dismissed as frivolous.

“This is a really important case,” said Scott L. Cummings, a legal ethics professor at UCLA’s School of Law. “Legislators are starting to raise alarms.”

But whether federal or state politicians could foil a Trump settlement is murky. Experts caution, for example, that it may be difficult, if a settlement is reached, to prove that Paramount’s leaders paid a bribe.

Congress has grappled with such distinctions before, Cummings said. The U.S. Senate acquitted Trump in February 2020 after the House voted to impeach him for allegedly holding up nearly $400 million in security aid to pressure Ukraine to investigate former President Biden and his son Hunter. Major universities and law firms offered significant concessions to the administration this year to try to carve out breathing room.

“We would have to have a lot more facts,” Cummings said. “Bribery requires a quid pro quo … and [Trump and his lieutenants] are always very careful not to explicitly couple the two things together. But, clearly, they are related, right? This is the challenge, legally speaking.”

Even if a Paramount payoff could be proved to be a bribe, it’s unclear who would prosecute such a case.

No one expects the Trump-controlled FBI or others within the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate allegations of bribery. Trump also has a grip on congressional Republicans and the Federal Communications Commission is run by a Trump appointee, Brendan Carr, who in one of his first acts as chairman, opened a public inquiry into whether the “60 Minutes” edits rose to the level of news distortion.

It may fall to state prosecutors to dig into the issue, Cummings said.

Vice President Kamala Harris talks to “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker.

(CBS News)

That hasn’t stopped nationally prominent progressive lawmakers from sounding alarms.

U.S. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) have demanded Paramount provide information about the company’s deliberations or concessions to facilitate a deal with Trump, including whether newscasts were toned down.

“It is illegal to corruptly give anything of value to public officials to influence an official act,” the lawmakers wrote in their May 19 letter to Redstone. “If Paramount officials make these concessions … to influence President Trump … they may be breaking the law.”

Redstone and Paramount failed to respond to the senators’ questions by this week’s deadline, according to Warren’s office.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has suggested that Paramount executives could be liable for unlawfully paying a bribe if it settles President Trump’s lawsuit against CBS to secure approval of Paramount’s sale to Skydance Media.

(Mark Schiefelbein / Associated Press)

Paramount and a Redstone spokesperson declined to comment.

Lawmakers often express interest in big media takeovers, and Skydance’s proposed purchase of an original Hollywood movie studio and pioneering broadcaster CBS could be an industry game changer. But this time, interest is less focused on vetting the Ellison family or the deal’s particulars and more about determining whether Trump inappropriately wields his power.

Trump has demanded Paramount pay “a lot” of money to settle his lawsuit. The president also has called for CBS to lose its station licenses, which are governed by the FCC.

For more than a month, attorneys for Paramount and Trump have participated in mediation sessions without resolution.

Paramount offered $15 million but Trump said no, according to the Wall Street Journal. Instead, the president reportedly demanded at least $25 million in cash, plus an additional $25 million in free commercials to pump his favorite causes. He also wants an apology.

The latter is a red line for CBS News executives who say they have done nothing wrong, according to insiders who were not authorized to discuss the sensitive deliberations.

Paramount’s leaders have clashed over settlement efforts, according to the sources.

The two California state senators — Becker and Tom Umberg (D-Orange) — hope such fractures provide an opening.

Late last week, the pair invited former CBS News and Stations President Wendy McMahon and former “60 Minutes” executive producer Bill Owens to testify at a yet-unscheduled oversight hearing in Sacramento.

McMahon exited CBS last month under pressure for her management decisions, including resistance to the Trump settlement, sources said.

Owens resigned in April, citing a loss of editorial independence.

“You are being approached as friendly witnesses who may help our committees assess whether improper influence is being exerted in ways that threaten public trust and competition in the media sector,” Becker and Umberg wrote to the former executives. Becker is chairman of the Senate Energy, Utilities & Communications Committee; Umberg heads the Senate Judiciary Committee.

California has an interest, in part, because Paramount operates in the state, including a large presence in Los Angeles, Becker told The Times.

The controversy over the edits began in October after CBS aired different parts of Harris’ response to a question during a “60 Minutes” interview a month before the election. Producers of the public affairs show “Face the Nation” used a clip of Harris giving a convoluted response. The following day, “60 Minutes” aired the most forceful part of her answer, prompting conservatives to cry foul.

Trump filed his federal lawsuit in Texas days before the election, alleging CBS had deceptively edited the Harris interview to boost her election chances, an allegation CBS denies. After returning to the White House, Trump doubled the damages he was seeking to $20 billion. His team claims he suffered “mental anguish” as a result of the interview.

CBS has asked the Texas judge, a Trump appointee, to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the edits were routine.

Since then, the FCC’s review of Paramount’s Skydance deal has become bogged down. Paramount needs Carr’s approval to transfer CBS television station licenses to the Ellison family.

Paramount has said it is treating the proposed settlement and FCC review on the Skydance merger as separate matters.

Experts doubt Trump sees such a distinction.

Trump and his team “essentially are using government processes to set up negotiations that end up benefiting Trump personally in ways that raise corruption concerns,” Cummings said.

Paramount’s decision could open the company to shareholder complaints.

The reason Trump’s CBS “60 Minutes” lawsuit has become such a lightning rod is “because the lawsuit is so ridiculously frivolous,” said Seth Stern, advocacy director for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, which owns Paramount shares and has vowed a lawsuit if the company capitulates.

“This is so transparently an abuse of power — a shakedown,” Stern said.

Media analyst Richard Greenfield of LightShed Partners suggested that Trump’s goal may be about more than his reported demand of nearly $50 million.

“The far bigger question is whether there is any number that Trump would want to settle the CBS/60 Minutes lawsuit,” Greenfield wrote in a blog post this week. “If Trump’s goal is to weaken the press and cause persistent fear of lawsuits that could negatively impact business combinations, keeping the CBS/60 Minutes lawsuit ongoing could be in the President’s best interests.”

UCLA’s Cummings sees another deleterious outcome.

A settlement could “legitimize the narrative that Trump puts out that there’s some sort of corruption within these media entities,” Cummings said. “He could point to a settlement and say: ‘I told you they did something wrong, and they now agreed because they paid me this amount of money.’ ”

“Even though they would be paying to get this deal through,” Cummings said.

Washington, DC – The ties between United States President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have seen highs and lows throughout the years.

But it all came crashing down on Thursday after months of what appeared to be an unshakable alliance in the White House.

A disagreement over Trump’s massive tax bill has escalated over the past few days, with Musk going so far as to suggest that the US president should be impeached.

In a series of social media posts, Musk launched personal attacks against Trump, culminating in a claim, made without evidence, that Trump is in the “Epstein files”.

Those documents relate to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and include travel logs and guest lists related to him and his associates. Part of the Epstein files remain secret, sparking curiosity and conspiracy theories about who might be mentioned.

Trump, meanwhile, responded with a social media fusillade of his own. He claimed he asked Musk to leave his White House role and suggested cutting the government subsidies and contracts awarded to the billionaire’s companies.

So how did the partnership between Musk and Trump collapse? And what may come next for the two men often described as the world’s richest and the world’s most powerful, respectively?

The honeymoon phase

A few months before the war of words between Musk and Trump erupted, the two seemed like an inseparable political force.

Musk had spent nearly $200m to elect Trump to a second term in 2024. Days after his successful election, Trump responded by appointing Musk to lead a newly created government cutting agency, called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Even the name of the department reflected the leeway that the billionaire investor had in Trump’s administration. The word “doge” refers to an internet meme of a dog, favoured by Musk, that became popular in 2010.

In the early weeks of Trump’s second term, Musk became one of the most prominent figures in the administration – and a lightning rod for public criticism. Under his leadership, DOGE sacked thousands of federal employees and gutted various agencies, including the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

Musk appeared so powerful that some Democrats started to refer to him as “President Elon” to get under Trump’s skin.

But Trump and Musk presented a united front. During a Fox News interview in February, the US president and his then-adviser appeared side by side and heaped praise on one another.

“He gets it done. He’s a leader,” Trump said of Musk.

“I love the president. I just want to be clear about that,” Musk said of Trump.

Musk, who is originally from South Africa, started espousing right-wing views over the past few years and grew vocally critical of Democrats and progressives.

Those views became more prominent after he bought the social media platform Twitter, now X, in 2022. As he started to tilt rightward, he used the platform to bash irregular migration and efforts he believed aimed to police free speech, particularly with regards to identity politics and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Even during Musk’s political realignment, however, he and Trump exchanged stern criticism. For example, in July 2022, Musk posted that Trump was getting to be “too old to be chief executive of anything”, much less the presidency.

He also initially backed Trump’s Republican rival in the 2024 presidential race, Ron DeSantis, even hosting the Florida governor’s campaign launch on X.

But the failed assassination attempt against Trump would cement Musk’s shift in allegiance. After a bullet grazed Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, Musk announced he would “fully endorse” the Republican leader.

He even joined Trump for a return to Butler in September of last year.

The unravelling

The cliche in politics is that there are no permanent enemies or permanent allies, only permanent interests. That appears to be the case for Trump, who has a history of firing advisers and disavowing former friends.

Musk is only the latest high-profile rupture – and one that might not come as a surprise to political observers.

The unravelling of Trump’s “bromance” with Musk comes at the tail end of a rocky few months, as rumours swirled about closed-door clashes between the billionaire and the president’s inner circle.

In April, Musk announced that he would be spending less time at DOGE. By that time, his role appeared to be diminishing, with the billionaire no longer dominating headlines or regularly appearing in the Oval Office.

Late in May, Musk criticised the White House-backed tax and budget proposal, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.

“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 the TV programme CBS Sunday Morning.

The bill cuts electric vehicle (EV) subsidies that boost Musk’s Tesla car company. But Musk has maintained his opposition to the bill lies in its increases to the national debt and its byzantine provisions: The bill clocks in at more than 1,000 pages.

The notoriously confrontational Trump, who had pinned his vision for the economy on the bill, kept his cool amid Musk’s early criticisms. He even acknowledged to reporters, “I’m not happy about certain aspects of [the bill].”

The two men made a public appearance together afterwards in the Oval Office, where Trump celebrated the end of Musk’s role as a special government employee. Even then, Trump insisted that Musk was “not really leaving” his team.

Once out of the government, though, Musk not only voiced discontent with the budget bill; he appeared to be lobbying against it. The bill had narrowly passed in the House of Representatives, only to face similarly steep odds in the Senate.

“I’m sorry, but I just can’t stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination,” Musk wrote on X on Monday.

“Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it.”

The US president shot back on Thursday, starting with an appearance in the Oval Office with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

“ I’m very disappointed because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here,” Trump said. “ He had no problem with it. All of a sudden, he had a problem.”

Trump told the assembled reporters that Musk’s reaction was a backlash to his EV policies. He also speculated that Musk would have preferred to stay in the White House.

“ I’ll be honest, I think he misses the place,” Trump said. “ It’s sort of Trump derangement syndrome. We have it with others, too. They leave, and they wake up in the morning, and the glamour’s gone. The whole world is different, and they become hostile.”

Afterwards, Trump took his criticisms to his social media platform, Truth Social.

“Elon was ‘wearing thin,’ I asked him to leave, I took away his EV Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!” Trump wrote in a social media post.

All the while, Musk had been posting on social media, criticising Trump’s bill and taking credit for his re-election campaign.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”

What’s next, and who will win?

What happens next remains unclear. Although Musk has gained popularity within the Republican base, his political rise was partly due to his association with Trump.

He may now find himself loathed by both Democrats and Trump loyalists.

The US president, on the other hand, has a track record of surviving public scandals, including criminal charges.

Trump has also shown apparent willingness to use the government’s power against his rivals, most recently ordering an investigation into the administration of his Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden.

Already, Trump has warned of risks to Musk’s businesses, including the rocket company SpaceX and the communications firm Starlink. “The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” Trump wrote.

Still, Musk can also hurt Trump’s agenda. In his inauguration speech, Trump envisioned planting a US flag on Mars, but on Thursday, Musk said he plans to decommission a SpaceX rocket that the US uses to reach the International Space Station, as retaliation for Trump’s words.

Musk could also align with fiscally conservative lawmakers to block Trump’s signature tax bill in the Senate.

Despite Musk going on the offensive against Trump on Thursday, the US president used one of his later social media posts to shift the focus to his One Big Beautiful Bill.

“I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done so months ago. This is one of the Greatest Bills ever presented to Congress. It’s a Record Cut in Expenses, $1.6 Trillion Dollars, and the Biggest Tax Cut ever given,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“If this Bill doesn’t pass, there will be a 68% Tax Increase, and things far worse than that.”

Harvard University has broadened its existing lawsuit against the administration of President Donald Trump to fight a new action that attempts to stop its international students from entering the United States.

On Thursday, the prestigious Ivy League school filed an amended complaint that alleges Trump’s latest executive order violates the rights of the school and its students.

Just one day earlier, Trump published an executive order claiming that “it is necessary to restrict the entry of foreign nationals who seek to enter the United States solely or principally” to attend Harvard.

He called Harvard’s international students a “class of aliens” whose arrival “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States”. As a result, he said that he had the right under the  Immigration and Nationality Act to deny them entry into the country.

But in Thursday’s court filing, Harvard dismissed that argument as the latest salvo in Trump’s months-long campaign to harm the school.

“The President’s actions thus are not undertaken to protect the ‘interests of the United States,’ but instead to pursue a government vendetta against Harvard,” the amended complaint says.

It further alleged that, by issuing a new executive order to restrict students’ entry, the Trump administration was attempting to circumvent an existing court order that blocked it from preventing Harvard’s registration of foreign students.

The complaint called upon US District Judge Allison Burroughs in Massachusetts to extend her temporary restraining order to include Trump’s latest attack on Harvard’s foreign students.

“Harvard’s more than 7,000 F-1 and J-1 visa holders — and their dependents — have become pawns in the government’s escalating campaign of retaliation,” Harvard wrote.

Trump began his campaign against Harvard and other prominent schools earlier this year, after taking office for a second term as president. He blamed the universities for failing to take sterner action against the Palestinian solidarity protests that cropped up on their campuses in the wake of Israel’s war on Gaza.

The president called the demonstrations anti-Semitic and pledged to remove foreign students from the US who participated. Protest organisers, meanwhile, have argued that their aims were non-violent and that the actions of a few have been used to tar the movement overall.

Critics have also accused Trump of using the protests as leverage to exert greater control over the country’s universities, including private schools like Harvard and its fellow Ivy League school, Columbia University.

In early March, Columbia — whose protest encampments were emulated at campuses across the country — saw $400m in federal funding stripped from its budget.

The school later agreed to a list of demands issued by the Trump administration, including changes to its disciplinary policies and a review of its Middle East studies programme.

Harvard University was also given a list of demands to comply with. But unlike Columbia, it refused, citing concerns that the restrictions would limit its academic freedom.

The Trump administration’s demands included ending Harvard’s diversity programmes and allowing the federal government to audit its hiring and admissions processes to “establish viewpoint diversity”. When those demands were not met, it proceeded to strip Harvard of its federal funding, to the tune of billions of dollars.

Trump also threatened to revoke the school’s tax-exempt status and barred it from receiving future federal research grants.

But the attack on Harvard’s international students has threatened to drive away tuition revenue as well. Nearly a quarter of Harvard’s overall student body is from overseas.

In May, the Department of Homeland Security announced it would revoke Harvard’s access to a system, the Student Exchange Visitor Program, where it is required to log information about its foreign students.

That would have forced currently enrolled Harvard students to transfer to another school, if they were in the country on a student visa. It would have also prevented Harvard from accepting any further international students.

But Harvard sued the Trump administration, calling its actions “retaliatory” and “unlawful”.

On May 23, Judge Burroughs granted Harvard’s emergency petition for a restraining order to stop the restriction from taking effect. But since then, the Trump administration has continued to exert pressure on Harvard and other schools.

Earlier this week, for example, the Trump administration wrote a letter to Columbia University’s accreditor, accusing the New York City school of falling short of federal civil rights laws.

Washington, DC – Donald Trump’s travel ban is the latest instalment in the United States president’s anti-immigration push, which plays to his right-wing base, advocates say, stressing that the order is not about public safety.

The decree, released late on Wednesday, bars and restricts travellers from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

While Trump has argued that the ban was put in place to protect the US from “foreign terrorists”, many believe the president has other motivations for implementing it.

“The latest travel ban is absolutely part and parcel of the administration’s agenda to weaponise immigration laws to target people who are racial and religious minorities and people with whom they disagree,” said Laurie Ball Cooper, vice president for US legal programmes at the International Refugee Assistance Project.

Abed Ayoub, executive director at the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), said that while the administration is presenting the ban as related to vetting travellers, the move aims to “placate” Trump’s supporters.

“It’s the ‘tough on immigration’ stance that this administration has taken on a number of issues since coming into office,” Ayoub told Al Jazeera.

Since his inauguration in January, the Trump administration has gutted the US refugee programme, aggressively stepped up deportations and targeted foreign students critical of Israel – in some cases, pushing to remove them from the country.

Immigration experts said they had been anticipating the travel ban since Trump signed an executive order in January that paved the way for it.

That order directed US officials to compile a list of nations “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries”.

Trump said in the statement announcing the ban that the targeted countries “remain deficient with regards to screening and vetting”.

2025 ban vs 2017 ban

This is not the first time Trump has ordered a travel ban. Wednesday’s order has several predecessors – multiple iterations of a ban that the US president imposed during his first term as president.

One week after taking office in 2017, Trump barred citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries, an order that became widely known as the “Muslim ban”.

As a candidate in 2015, he called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”, and the 2017 proclamation appeared to be a reflection of that proposal.

However, there are key differences between the latest order and the one implemented in 2017, which sparked disorder and protests at airports and initially applied to legal permanent residents and people who already had visas.

Wednesday’s order lists specific exemptions, including for existing visa holders, who will still be able to come to the US using their visas, which will remain valid. Immediate relatives of US citizens will also be able to apply for and obtain visas.

Trump has also ordered it to go into effect on Monday – five days after the executive order was signed – whereas the original “Muslim ban” was implemented immediately and chaotically as soon as he announced it.

Moreover, the latest travel ban targets countries with people from different religious backgrounds across four continents, making it difficult to argue religious bias in any court challenge.

Also, the early bans of Trump’s first term were struck down by federal judges before the Supreme Court eventually upheld the third and last version his administration issued.

“It seems like a lot more thought went into this, a lot more reasoning from their end,” Ayoub said. He added that in some ways, the ban is “not as bad” as the 2017 one and it will be difficult to challenge.

With the courts unlikely to block the order, Ayoub said he hopes the administration will issue more exemptions and work with the targeted countries to take steps that would remove them from the list.

Cooper said the impact of the ban will be devastating.

For example, the exemption on immediate relatives does not include the parents and children of permanent residents – people who have followed the rules and may have been waiting for years to get their immigration interviews to join their loved ones in the US.

“There are still people on the cusp of reuniting with their families, on the cusp of arriving to safety in the United States who will be cut off from that family reunification and from that access to safety by this travel ban,” Cooper told Al Jazeera. “Families will be kept apart.”

Why now?

The timing of Wednesday’s decree also differs from the original “Muslim ban”. It came more than five months into Trump’s second term.

Trump has tied the travel ban to an attack on Sunday that US authorities attributed to an Egyptian asylum seeker. They accused him of using a makeshift flamethrower and Molotov cocktails to injure 12 people who were protesting in Boulder, Colorado in support of Israeli captives held in Gaza.

However, Egypt is not on the list of banned countries, and when asked why not on Thursday, Trump told reporters that the country is a US ally that has “things under control”.

“And why now? I can say that it can’t come soon enough, frankly,” Trump said.

“We want to keep bad people out of our country. The Biden administration allowed some horrendous people, and we are getting them out one by one.”

Cooper said the Trump administration is “exploiting the tragedy” in Colorado by rolling out the order in its aftermath.

“Ultimately, if you look at the travel ban and the way that it operates, I am not convinced that this is a response to that,” she said.

“But even if it were, even when there is a tragedy, even when something awful happens, punishing groups of people based on their nationality because of what one other person allegedly did is not the right answer.”

Cooper added that the order is “arbitrary”, noting that it includes exemptions for athletes competing in next year’s World Cup and the 2028 Summer Olympics but not for students.

Some Democrats have accused Trump of imposing the ban now to distract from his issues at home, including an enormous tax bill advancing through Congress and his feud with his former billionaire aide Elon Musk.

“Anytime you ban people coming to the United States from other countries, it has a real impact,” Senator Chris Murphy told MSNBC.

“But it is chiefly in service of trying to get us all talking about that … instead of talking about the centrepiece of this story, which is this bill to make the rich even richer at the expense of everybody else.”

The administration of President Donald Trump has followed through with a threat to sanction officials on the International Criminal Court (ICC), naming four judges whom it accuses of taking “illegitimate and baseless actions” against the United States and its allies.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the sanctions in a sharply worded written statement.

“The ICC is politicized and falsely claims unfettered discretion to investigate, charge, and prosecute nationals of the United States and our allies,” Rubio wrote.

“This dangerous assertion and abuse of power infringes upon the sovereignty and national security of the United States and our allies, including Israel.”

The four sanctioned judges include Solomy Balungi Bossa of Uganda, Luz del Carmen Ibanez Carranza of Peru, Reine Adelaide Sophie Alapini Gansou of Benin and Beti Hohler of Slovenia.

As a result of the sanctions, the judges will see their US-based property and assets blocked. US-based entities are also forbidden from engaging in transactions with them, including through the “provision of funds, goods or services”.

The ICC quickly issued a statement in response, saying it stood behind its judges and “deplores” the Trump administration’s decision.

“These measures are a clear attempt to undermine the independence of an international judicial institution which operates under the mandate from 125 States Parties from all corners of the globe,” the statement said.

“Targeting those working for accountability does nothing to help civilians trapped in conflict. It only emboldens those who believe they can act with impunity.”

Who are the judges?

In a fact sheet, the State Department explained that Bossa and Ibanez Carranza were sanctioned for authorising an investigation into US troops in Afghanistan in 2020, during Trump’s first term as president.

Previously, the ICC had blocked a request to probe alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Afghanistan, where the US had been leading a slow-grinding war from 2001 to 2021.

But it reversed course the following year, granting a prosecutor’s request to investigate US forces and members of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for war crimes in “secret detention facilities” in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Afghanistan, the court noted, was a member of the Rome Statute, which includes the 125 countries where the ICC has jurisdiction.

But the Trump administration at the time blasted the court’s decision, calling the ICC a “political institution masquerading as a legal body”. It has long argued that the US, which is not party to the Rome Statute, lies outside the ICC’s jurisdiction.

Another country that is not a member of the Rome Statute is Israel, which has used similar arguments to reject the ICC’s power over its actions in Palestine.

The second pair of judges named in Thursday’s sanctions — Alapini Gansou and Hohler — were sanctioned for their actions against Israeli leaders, according to the US State Department.

The US is Israel’s oldest ally, having been the first to recognise the country in 1948. It has since offered Israel strong support, including for its ongoing war in Gaza, which has killed an estimated 54,607 Palestinians so far.

Experts at the United Nations and human rights organisations have compared Israel’s military campaign in Gaza to a genocide, as reports continue to emerge of alleged human rights abuses.

In November 2024, those accusations spurred the ICC to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, who have both been accused of war crimes in Gaza, including intentional attacks on civilians.

Alapini Gansou and Hohler reportedly took part in those proceedings.

Has this happened before?

This is not the first time that the US has issued restrictions against an ICC official since Trump returned to office for a second term on January 20.

Shortly after taking office, Trump issued a broad executive order threatening anyone who participates in ICC investigations with sanctions. Critics warned that such sweeping language could pervert the course of justice, for example by dissuading witnesses from coming forward with evidence.

But Trump argued that the recent arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant necessitated such measures.

He also claimed that the US and Israel were “thriving democracies” that “strictly adhere to the laws of war” and that the ICC’s investigations threatened military members with “harassment, abuse and possible arrest”.

“This malign conduct in turn threatens to infringe upon the sovereignty of the United States and undermines the critical national security and foreign policy work of the United States Government and our allies, including Israel,” the executive order said.

Under that order, the US sanctioned ICC prosecutor Karim Khan, who had petitioned the court for the arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant. That, in turn, slowed the investigation into Israel’s actions in Gaza, and Khan later stepped away from his role amid allegations of sexual misconduct.

But Trump has a history of opposing the ICC, stretching back to his first term. In 2019, for instance, Trump announced his administration would deny or yank visas for ICC officials involved in investigating US troops in Afghanistan.

Then, in 2020, he sanctioned ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and a court official named Phakiso Mochochoko for their involvement in the investigation. Those actions were later overturned under President Joe Biden.

Critics, however, warn that Trump’s actions could have dire consequences over the long term for the ICC, which relies on its member countries to execute orders like arrest warrants. The court itself has called for an end to the threats.

June 5 (UPI) — President Donald Trump and former Department of Government Efficiency Director Elon Musk are slinging accusations after an apparent end to their short-lived friendship.

Trump on Thursday accused Musk of going “crazy” after the president canceled the federal electric vehicle mandate imposed by the Biden administration.

“I took away his EV mandate that forced everyone to buy electric cars that nobody else wanted,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Thursday. “He just went crazy!”

Trump also has threatened to end all government contracts with the Musk-founded Tesla and suggested that would be a fast way to reduce government spending.

The president’s threat likely resonated with investors as Tesla share prices declined by more than 14% on Thursday and shed $152 billion in value from the EV maker.

Trump said he asked Musk to leave his advisory position with DOGE, although Musk was scheduled to exit the position at the end of May.

Musk earlier said Trump would not have won the Nov. 5 election without his help.

He contributed an estimated $250 million to Trump’s campaign effort.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk said Thursday morning in a post on X.

Musk has criticized the proposed “one big, beautiful” federal government budget bill as increasing the nation’s debt and negating his work with DOGE.

The entrepreneur opposes the spending bill that the House has passed and is before the Senate because it removed tax credits and subsidies for buying EVs, Trump claimed.

“I don’t mind Elon turning against me, but he should have done that months ago,” Trump said in a subsequent Truth Social post on Thursday afternoon.

“This is one of the greatest bills ever presented to Congress,” he continued. “It’s a record cut in expenses, $1.6 trillion dollars, and the biggest tax cut ever given.”

If the measure is not passed, Trump said it will trigger a 68% tax increase, “and things far worse than that.”

The president said the “easiest way to save money … is to terminate Elon’s governmental subsidies and contracts” with Tesla.

Later on Thursday, Musk in an X post said it is “time to drop the really big bomb” on the president.

Trump “is in the Epstein files,” Musk said. “That is the real reason they have not been made public.”

Musk did not say in what context Trump allegedly appears in the Epstein files, but ended his post with: “Have a nice day, DJT!”

He made a subsequent post that asks: “Is it time to create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80% in the middle?”

Trump and Musk were very close during the first four months of the Trump administration and often appeared together at high-profile events.

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Thursday that it might be better to let Ukraine and Russia “fight for a while” before pulling them apart and pursuing peace.

In an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Trump likened the war in Ukraine — which Russia invaded in early 2022 — to a fight between two young children who hated each other.

“Sometimes you’re better off letting them a fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” Trump said. He added that he had relayed that analogy to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their phone conversation on Wednesday.

Asked about Trump’s comments as the two leaders sat next to each other, Merz stressed that both he and Trump agreed “on this war and how terrible this war is going on,” pointing to the U.S. president as the “key person in the world” who would be able to stop the bloodshed.

But Merz also emphasized that Germany “was on the side of Ukraine” and that Kyiv was only attacking military targets, not Russian civilians.

“We are trying to get them stronger,” Merz said of Ukraine.

Thursday’s meeting marked the first time that the two leaders sat down in person. After exchanging pleasantries — Merz gave Trump a gold-framed birth certificate of the U.S. president’s grandfather Friedrich Trump, who emigrated from Germany — the two leaders were to discuss issues such as Ukraine, trade and NATO spending.

Trump and Merz have spoken several times by phone, either bilaterally or with other European leaders, since Merz took office on May 6. German officials say the two leaders have started to build a “decent” relationship, with Merz wanting to avoid the antagonism that defined Trump’s relationship with one of his predecessors, Angela Merkel, in the Republican president’s first term.

The 69-year-old Merz — who came to office with an extensive business background — is a conservative former rival of Merkel’s who took over her party after she retired from politics.

A White House official said topics that Trump is likely to raise with Merz include Germany’s defense spending, trade, Ukraine and what the official called “democratic backsliding,” saying the administration’s view is that shared values such as freedom of speech have deteriorated in Germany and the country should reverse course. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to preview the discussions.

But Merz told reporters Thursday morning that if Trump wanted to talk German domestic politics, he was ready to do that but he also stressed Germany holds back when it comes to American domestic politics.

Merz has thrown himself into diplomacy on Ukraine, traveling to Kyiv with fellow European leaders days after taking office and receiving Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Berlin last week. He has thanked Trump for his support for an unconditional ceasefire while rejecting the idea of “dictated peace” or the “subjugation” of Ukraine and advocating for more sanctions against Russia.

In their first phone call since Merz became chancellor, Trump said he would support the efforts of Germany and other European countries to achieve peace, according to a readout from the German government. Merz also said last month that “it is of paramount importance that the political West not let itself be divided, so I will continue to make every effort to produce the greatest possible unity between the European and American partners.”

Under Merz’s immediate predecessor, Olaf Scholz, Germany became the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States. Merz has vowed to keep up the support and last week pledged to help Ukraine develop its own long-range missile systems that would be free of any range limits.

In his remarks on Thursday, Trump still left the threat of sanctions on the table. He said sanctions could be imposed for both Ukraine and Russia.

“When I see the moment where it’s not going to stop … we’ll be very, very tough,” Trump said.

At home, Merz’s government is intensifying a drive that Scholz started to bolster the German military after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In Trump’s first term, Berlin was a target of his ire for failing to meet the current NATO target of spending 2% of gross domestic product on defense, and Trump is now demanding at least 5% from allies.

The White House official said the upcoming NATO summit in the Netherlands later this month is a “good opportunity” for Germany to commit to meeting that 5% mark.

Scholz set up a 100-billion euro ($115 billion) special fund to modernize Germany’s armed forces — called the Bundeswehr — which had suffered from years of neglect. Germany has met the 2% target thanks to the fund, but it will be used up in 2027.

Merz has said that “the government will in the future provide all the financing the Bundeswehr needs to become the strongest conventional army in Europe.” He has endorsed a plan for all allies to aim to spend 3.5% of GDP on their defense budgets by 2032, plus an extra 1.5% on potentially defense-related things like infrastructure.

Another top priority for Merz is to get Germany’s economy, Europe’s biggest, moving again after it shrank the past two years. He wants to make it a “locomotive of growth,” but Trump’s tariff threats are a potential obstacle for a country whose exports have been a key strength. At present, the economy is forecast to stagnate in 2025.

Germany exported $160 billion worth of goods to the U.S. last year, according to the Census Bureau. That was about $85 billion more than what the U.S. sent to Germany, a trade deficit that Trump wants to erase.

“Germany is one of the very big investors in America,” Merz told reporters Thursday morning. “Only a few countries invest more than Germany in the USA. We are in third place in terms of foreign direct investment.”

The U.S. president has specifically gone after the German auto sector, which includes major brands such as Audi, BMW, Mercedes Benz, Porsche and Volkswagen. Americans bought $36 billion worth of cars, trucks and auto parts from Germany last year, while the Germans purchased $10.2 billion worth of vehicles and parts from the U.S.

Trump’s 25% tariff on autos and parts is specifically designed to increase the cost of German-made automobiles in hopes of causing them to move their factories to the U.S., even though many of the companies already have plants in the U.S. with Volkswagen in Tennessee, BMW in South Carolina and Mercedes-Benz in Alabama and South Carolina.

There’s only so much Merz can achieve on his view that tariffs “benefit no one and damage everyone” while in Washington, as trade negotiations are a matter for the European Union’s executive commission. Trump recently delayed a planned 50% tariff on goods coming from the European Union, which would have otherwise gone into effect this month.

One source of strain in recent months is a speech Vice President JD Vance gave in Munich shortly before Germany’s election in February, in which he lectured European leaders about the state of democracy on the continent and said there is no place for “firewalls.”

That term is frequently used to describe mainstream German parties’ refusal to work with the far-right Alternative for Germany, which finished second in the election and is now the biggest opposition party.

Merz criticized the comments. He told ARD television last month that it isn’t the place of a U.S. vice president “to say something like that to us in Germany; I wouldn’t do it in America, either.”

Kim, Grieshaber and Moulson write for the Associated Press. Moulson reported from Berlin. AP writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s friendship and political alliance with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, who fueled Trump’s campaign with record amounts of cash before working at the White House by his side until last week, appears to be over, with both men leveling searing criticism against one another in a sharp public feud.

Musk had been criticizing the Trump administration over its signature legislation, known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” for its projected impact on the national debt throughout last week. But his calls to “kill the bill” on Wednesday prompted Trump, speaking to media from the Oval Office, to respond in kind.

“Elon and I had a great relationship, I don’t know if we will anymore,” Trump said Thursday. “And he hasn’t said bad things about me personally, but I’m sure that’ll be next. But I’m very disappointed in Elon.”

Musk, responding on his social media platform, X, took credit for Trump’s election victory. The billionaire entrepreneur, whose companies also include SpaceX and Tesla, contributed over $280 million to Trump and other Republicans during the 2024 presidential campaign.

“Without me, Trump would have lost the election, Dems would control the House and the Republicans would be 51-49 in the Senate,” Musk wrote. “Such ingratitude.”

The exchange broke open a feud that had been simmering for weeks out of public view. In private, Musk had relayed concerns over the bill to the president, while expressing disagreement with several other policies, including the establishment of an artificial intelligence campus in the Middle East and Trump’s announcement of global tariffs.

“I agree with much of what the administration does, but we have differences of opinion,” Musk said in a more muted tone last week, speaking in an interview with CBS.

“You know, there are things that I don’t entirely agree with. But it’s difficult for me to bring that up in an interview because then it creates a bone of contention,” he added. “So then, I’m a little stuck in a bind, where I’m like, well, I don’t wanna, you know, speak up against the administration, but I also don’t wanna take responsibility for everything this administration’s doing.”

In the Oval Office, Trump said he believed that Musk had turned on him after he rejected Musk’s recommendation for the head of NASA, a position that could benefit SpaceX, Musk’s spaceship company. He also said that Musk opposed provisions of Trump’s megabill that would phase out tax credits for electric vehicles.

“Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here. Better than you people. He knew everything about it — he had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we’re going to have to cut the EV mandate, because that’s billions and billions of dollars,” Trump said.

“People leave my administration and they love us, and at some point, they miss it so badly, and some of them embrace it, and some of them actually become hostile,” Trump added. “I don’t know what it is.”

But Musk denied he had been shown the bill, responding on X that he wouldn’t mind if the EV provisions remain in the text so long as others, which he said would balloon annual deficits, are cut.

“This bill was never shown to me even once and was passed in the dead of night so fast that almost no one in Congress could even read it!” Musk wrote. “Keep the EV/solar incentive cuts in the bill, even though no oil & gas subsidies are touched (very unfair!!), but ditch the MOUNTAIN of DISGUSTING PORK in the bill.”

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released an assessment on Wednesday estimating that the “big, beautiful bill,” which has passed the House and is under consideration in the Senate, would add $2.4 trillion to the national debt over the next decade, and result in 10.9 million Americans losing health insurance coverage over the same period.

At the beginning of the administration, Trump put Musk in charge of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a White House program that intended on cutting federal spending and reducing the deficit. Musk’s tenure in the role, designated as a special government employee, ended last week.

On X, Musk posted a collection of past remarks from Trump warning against growing deficits and congressional actions increasing the debt ceiling, adding, “where is this guy today?”

“Either you get a big and ugly bill or a slim and beautiful bill,” Musk added. “Slim and beautiful is the way.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has called on the US to apply more pressure on Russia to end its three-year-old war on Ukraine.

“You know that we gave support to Ukraine and that we are looking for more pressure on Russia,” Merz told US President Donald Trump at the start of their meeting on Thursday at the Oval Office.

Merz emphasised that Germany “was on the side of Ukraine”, while Trump likened the war to a fight between two young children who hated each other.

“Sometimes, you’re better off letting them fight for a while and then pulling them apart,” Trump said. He added that he had relayed that analogy to Russian President Vladimir Putin in their phone conversation on Wednesday.

Asked about Trump’s comments as the two leaders sat next to each other, Merz stressed that both he and Trump agreed “on this war and how terrible this war is going on,” pointing to the US president as the “key person in the world” who would be able to stop the bloodshed.

Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett said that, while the two men agreed that the war needed to end, how that happens “seems to be a point of contention”.

“What we saw there was the German chancellor suggesting and pointing out that … Russia continues to hit back at civilian targets, whereas, when it comes to Ukraine, the focus in the eyes of Germany has been strictly on military targets inside Russia,” she said from Washington, DC.

Halkett added that Trump revealed during the meeting that he “implored the Russian president not to retaliate for that attack that took place over the weekend … and Vladimir Putin said he was going to attack regardless.”

A ‘decent’ relationship

Thursday’s meeting marked the first time that the two leaders sat down in person. After exchanging pleasantries – Merz gave Trump a gold-framed birth certificate of the US president’s grandfather, Friedrich Trump, who immigrated from Germany – the two leaders were to discuss issues such as Ukraine, trade and NATO spending.

Trump and Merz have spoken several times by phone, either bilaterally or with other European leaders, since Merz took office on May 6. German officials say the two leaders have started to build a “decent” relationship, with Merz wanting to avoid the antagonism that defined Trump’s relationship with one of his predecessors, Angela Merkel, in the Republican president’s first term.

The 69-year-old Merz, who came to office with an extensive business background, is a conservative former rival of Merkel’s who took over her party after she retired from politics.

Merz has thrown himself into diplomacy on Ukraine, travelling to Kyiv with fellow European leaders days after taking office and receiving Zelenskyy in Berlin last week.

He has thanked Trump for his support for an unconditional ceasefire while rejecting the idea of “dictated peace” or the “subjugation” of Ukraine and advocating for more sanctions against Russia.

In their first phone call since Merz became chancellor, Trump said he would support the efforts of Germany and other European countries to achieve peace, according to a readout from the German government. Merz also said last month that “it is of paramount importance that the political West not let itself be divided, so I will continue to make every effort to produce the greatest possible unity between the European and American partners.”

Under Merz’s immediate predecessor, Olaf Scholz, Germany became the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States. Merz has promised to keep up the support and last week, pledged to help Ukraine develop its own long-range missile systems that would be free of any imposed range limits.

At home, Merz’s government is intensifying a drive that Scholz started to bolster the German military after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In Trump’s first term, Berlin was a target of his ire for failing to meet the current NATO target of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defence, and Trump is now demanding at least 5 percent from allies.

The White House official said the upcoming NATO summit in the Netherlands later this month is a “good opportunity” for Germany to commit to meeting that 5 percent mark.

During their meeting on Thursday, Trump described Merz as a good representative of Germany and also “difficult,” which he suggested was a compliment. He said US troops would remain in Germany and said it was positive that Berlin was spending more money on defence.

‘Ok with tariffs’

Another top priority for Merz is to get Germany’s economy, Europe’s biggest, moving again after it shrank the past two years. He wants to make it a “locomotive of growth,” but Trump’s tariff threats are a potential obstacle for a country whose exports have been a key strength. At present, the economy is forecast to stagnate in 2025.

Germany exported $160bn worth of goods to the US last year, according to the Census Bureau. That was about $85bn more than what the US sent to Germany, a trade deficit that Trump wants to erase.

“Germany is one of the very big investors in America,” Merz told reporters Thursday morning. “Only a few countries invest more than Germany in the USA. We are in third place in terms of foreign direct investment.”

The United States and the European Union are in talks to reach a trade deal, which would be critical for Germany’s export-heavy economy, but Trump said he would be fine with an agreement or with tariffs.

“We’ll end up hopefully with a trade deal,” Trump said. “I’m OK with the tariffs, or we make a deal with the trade.”

“Sometimes you let them fight for a little while.” Donald Trump said Russia and Ukraine are like two children fighting in a park and sometimes it’s better to wait before breaking them up. He was speaking in an Oval Office meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz who said America is in a strong position to end the war.

ISLAMABAD — Afghans who worked for the U.S. during its war against the Taliban urged President Trump on Thursday to exempt them from a travel ban that could lead to them being deported to Afghanistan, where they say they will face persecution.

Their appeal came hours after Trump announced a U.S. entry ban on citizens from 12 countries, including Afghanistan.

It affects thousands of Afghans who fled Taliban rule and had been approved for resettlement through a U.S. program assisting people at risk due to their work with the American government, media organizations, and humanitarian groups. But Trump suspended that program in January, leaving Afghans stranded in several locations, including Pakistan and Qatar.

Pakistan, meanwhile, has been deporting foreigners it says are living in the country illegally, mostly Afghan, adding to the refugees’ sense of peril.

“This is heartbreaking and sad news,” said one Afghan, who worked closely with U.S. agencies before the Taliban returned to power in 2021. He spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the issue, fearing Taliban reprisals and potential arrest by Pakistani authorities.

He said the travel ban on an estimated 20,000 Afghans in Pakistan could encourage the government to begin deporting Afghans awaiting resettlement in the U.S. “President Trump has shattered hopes,” he told the Associated Press.

He said his life would be at risk if he returned to Afghanistan with his family because he previously worked for the U.S. Embassy in Kabul on public awareness campaigns promoting education.

“You know the Taliban are against the education of girls. America has the right to shape its immigration policy, but it should not abandon those who stood with it, risked their life, and who were promised a good future.”

Another Afghan, Khalid Khan, said the new restrictions could expose him and thousands of others to arrest in Pakistan.

He said police had previously left him and his family alone at the request of the U.S. Embassy. “I worked for the U.S. military for eight years, and I feel abandoned. Every month, Trump is making a new rule,” said Khan. He fled to Pakistan three years ago.

“I don’t know what to say. Returning to Afghanistan will jeopardize my daughter’s education. You know the Taliban have banned girls from attending school beyond sixth grade. My daughter will remain uneducated if we return.”

He said it no longer mattered whether people spoke out against Trump’s policies.

“So long as Trump is there, we are nowhere. I have left all of my matters to Allah.”

There was no immediate comment on the travel ban from the Taliban-run government.

Pakistan previously said it was working with host countries to resettle Afghans. Nobody was available to comment on Trump’s latest executive order.

Ahmed writes for the Associated Press.

June 5 (UPI) — German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is in Washington on Thursday to meet with President Donald Trump in person for the first time.

Before their meeting, Merz had said that he was looking forward to his first face-to-face meeting with Trump after the two have previously spoken over the phone

“Our alliance with America was, is, and remains of paramount importance for the security, freedom, and prosperity of Europe. The United States is an indispensable friend and partner of Germany,” Merz posted to X Wednesday.

The topics of discussion are expected to range from tariffs and trade to Russia’s war on Ukraine and the state of the Middle East.

Trump and Merz reportedly speak with each other on a first-name basis, however, in a speech given Tuesday, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul described the current tone of German-U.S. relations as being “as rough as it has not been in a long time.”

Trump has also levied tariffs on all member nations of the European Union, Germany included, that will impose a 50% duty on all European goods starting July 9, a deadline that was extended from June 1 to allow more time for trade negotiations. The Trump administration has also upped tariffs on all aluminum and steel imports from 25% to 50%, with only Britain excluded.

Germany announced last week it will provide a nearly $5.7 billion military aid package to Ukraine that will finance long-range weapons to be produced by Ukraine, which Merz announced can be deployed by the Ukrainian military for use inside the borders of Russia. Trump, however, had ordered a pause on military aid to Ukraine in March shortly after his combative February meeting with Zelensky.

It is unclear if Trump has any issue with Germany’s aid for or relationship with Ukraine.

US president previously said it was ‘hard to make a deal’ with the Chinese leader as talks continue over trade.

United States President Donald Trump has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping by phone as the two countries continue to clash over trade relations, which Trump has sought to aggressively reshape through a series of tariffs.

The Chinese state media outlet Xinhua reported that the phone call on Thursday took place at the request of the US. Trump had said the day before that reaching a deal with China was proving difficult.

In the first readout of the call, Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social, “I just concluded a very good phone call with President Xi, of China, discussing some of the intricacies of our recently made, and agreed to, Trade Deal. The call lasted approximately one and a half hours, and resulted in a very positive conclusion for both Countries.”

“There should no longer be any questions respecting the complexity of Rare Earth products. Our respective teams will be meeting shortly at a location to be determined. During the conversation, President Xi graciously invited the First Lady and me to visit China, and I reciprocated,” he added.

Trump also noted the conversation was focused almost entirely on trade and that neither the Russia-Ukraine war nor the Iran nuclear talks were mentioned.

On Wednesday, Trump had posted: “I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!”.

For his part, Xi was quoted by Chinese State TV as saying after the call Thursday, the two countries should strive for a win-win outcome and that dialogue and cooperation are the only right choice for both. The two sides should respect each others’ concerns, he added.

Xi also stressed that the US should handle the Taiwan issue very “carefully”.

China and the US reached a 90-day agreement on May 12 to bring down tariffs amid a trade war initiated by the Trump administration, but tensions have remained high since then.

Washington imposed significant tariffs on Beijing, but eventually eased off amid concerns about the potential economic fallout of a sustained trade war between the world’s two largest economies.

Critics have accused Trump of causing enormous disruptions in the global economy and then backing down when China or the European Union hit back forcefully.

The Trump administration has also launched a crackdown on Chinese international students living in the US, threatening to revoke student visas of those associated with the Chinese Communist Party or who the government claims pose vaguely defined threats to US national security. More than 277,000 Chinese students were enrolled in US universities during the 2023-2024 academic year.

China said such steps, along with others targeting China’s technology sector, violate the temporary trade truce reached with the US in May.

“These practices seriously violate the consensus,” the Ministry of Commerce in Beijing said in a recent statement.

While disputes between Washington and Beijing over issues such as trade and technology have been a common feature of their relations for decades, these tensions have ratcheted up as Trump sets out to change what he sees as a global imbalance of commercial exchange between the US and other countries, including China.

On May 21, as they left the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim were fatally shot, and because they were employees of the Israeli Embassy and the suspect was associated with pro-Palestinian politics, the story was reported in the familiar mode of Middle East politics.

The questions that reporters and pundits have been asking are: “Was this antisemitic?” “Was this killing a direct result of Israel’s starving of Palestinians in Gaza?” “Was this another act of pro-Palestinian terrorism?” “Is this the direct result of ‘globalizing the intifada’?” While these are valid questions, they miss a central part of the story.

Only in the eighth paragraph of the New York Times report are we told that the night before the shooting, according to officials, the suspect “had checked a gun with his baggage when he flew from Chicago to the Washington area for a work conference” and, further, that officials said “The gun used in the killings had been purchased legally in Illinois.” (The Los Angeles Times article does not mention these facts.) This tragic shooting, however, is not unique.

In November 2023, a Burlington, Vt., man was arrested and charged with shooting three Palestinian college students without saying a word to them. (He has pleaded not guilty.)

In October 2018, a gunman entered the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh and shot and killed 11 Jews at prayer.

In 2015, three Muslim students were shot and killed by their neighbor in Chapel Hill, N.C.

This brief and very incomplete list of the literally hundreds of thousands of people who have been killed by guns in the U.S. in the last decade does not include the racist mass shootings in Buffalo, N.Y., and at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C.; the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.; or the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, at a music festival in Las Vegas in 2017. This macabre list also leaves out the thousands of people who have been shot and killed by law enforcement.

The elephant in the room — so fundamentally accepted that it largely goes unmentioned — is the deeply ingrained culture of violence in the United States. Gun ownership, police violence and abuse, and mass shootings are symptoms of that culture. However, the militaristic approach to international conflict (from Vietnam to Ukraine) and the disdain for nonviolent solutions are also grounded in this culture, as are the manosphere and the cruelty of predatory capitalism. Now we have a presidential administration that embodies this culture.

Kristi Noem, the secretary of Homeland Security, personifies this ethos of cruelty and violence when she is photographed in front of a cage full of humans in a Salvadoran jail known for torturous treatment of inmates or writing casually about killing her dog. Noem is a key player in the theater of cruelty, but she is not the only one, and the unparalleled star is of course President Trump.

Trump’s policy agenda is based on vengeance. He revels in the theatricality of violence of the world of mixed martial arts, and he signs executive orders that aim to destroy individuals, law firms and universities that have not bent the knee, and the economics of his “Big Beautiful” budget moves money from those in need to those who need for naught.

Now, the president wants a military parade on his birthday that will include tanks, helicopters and soldiers. Although Trump himself evaded the draft, and he reportedly called American soldiers who were killed in war suckers and losers, he likes the strongman aesthetic of an army that is at his beck and call. He exulted in the fact that “we train our boys to be killing machines.”

Although some want to draw a dubious line from pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations to the killings of Lischinsky and Milgrim, the direct line that should be drawn is the one that everyone seems to have agreed to ignore: a culture of violence coupled with the widespread availability and ownership of guns inevitably leads to more death.

The only way we get out of this cycle of violence is by addressing the elephant in the room.

Aryeh Cohen is a rabbi and a professor at American Jewish University in Los Angeles. @irmiklat.bsky.social

Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Istanbul for the second time in a month on June 2 to explore the possibility of a ceasefire. The talks lasted just over an hour and, once again, produced no meaningful progress. As with the May 16 negotiations, both sides claimed they had laid the groundwork for prisoner exchanges. But despite Ukraine’s offer to hold another meeting before the end of June, a deep and unbridgeable divide remains between Kyiv and Moscow.

More meetings are unlikely to change that. Russia continues to demand Kyiv’s capitulation to the full list of conditions President Vladimir Putin set at the war’s outset: Ukrainian neutrality, a government reshaped to suit Moscow’s interests, and the surrender of the Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions. Between the two rounds of talks, Putin even raised the stakes, adding a demand for a “buffer zone” in northern Ukraine.

Kyiv, meanwhile, remains resolute. It refuses to cede any territory and maintains that a full ceasefire along all fronts is a non-negotiable precondition for serious negotiations.

Still, both sides appear prepared to continue the diplomatic charade.

That’s because these talks are not truly about achieving peace or securing a lasting bilateral agreement. Neither side is genuinely negotiating with the other. Instead, both are using the forum to send messages to the United States – and to Donald Trump, in particular.

This dynamic persists despite Trump’s recent efforts to distance himself from the war he once claimed he could end within 24 hours of returning to the White House. That shift in rhetoric has been echoed by key figures in his administration. Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who just six months ago represented opposite ends of the Republican spectrum on Ukraine – with Vance nearly endorsing surrender to Putin, and Rubio among the Senate’s most vocal Ukraine hawks – have both signalled that Trump’s White House is no longer interested in mediating the conflict. Reflecting that disengagement, there was no high-level prenegotiation meeting between US and Ukrainian officials in Turkiye ahead of the latest talks, unlike those held in May.

Yet despite Rubio’s apparent reversal – likely intended to align with Trump – Ukraine still enjoys broad support in the US Senate, including from senior Republicans. A bipartisan bill aimed at codifying existing sanctions on Russia and imposing new ones – thereby limiting Trump’s power to roll them back – has garnered 81 Senate co-sponsors. The bill’s authors, Senators Lindsey Graham (R–South Carolina) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Connecticut), recently travelled to Kyiv to reaffirm their backing. Graham has suggested the bill could move forward in the coming weeks.

Still, Ukraine knows the bill stands little chance in the House of Representatives without Trump’s blessing. Despite Trump’s enduring animosity towards Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Kyiv has recently adopted a more deferential posture, particularly after their disastrous February meeting in Washington. The Ukrainian government quickly signed and ratified the so-called “minerals deal” that Trump demanded last month. A subsequent meeting between the two leaders – held on the sidelines of Pope Francis’s funeral – was notably more productive.

So far, Kyiv’s strategy of appeasement has yielded little change in Trump’s approach. While Trump has occasionally hinted at taking a tougher stance on Putin – usually in response to particularly egregious Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians – he consistently deflects when asked for specifics. For months, he has promised to reveal his plan for Ukraine “in about two weeks,” a vague assurance that remains unfulfilled. A new sanctions package reportedly prepared by his own team over a month ago still sits untouched.

Hoping that mounting battlefield violence or bipartisan pressure from the US Senate might force Trump to act, Kyiv presses on with negotiations. Just one day before the Istanbul talks, Russia launched a record-setting overnight assault on Ukraine, firing more than 430 missiles and drones. Ukraine responded forcefully: on June 1, it conducted a large-scale drone strike deep inside Russia, destroying dozens of military aircraft, including airborne command platforms and nuclear-capable bombers.

Yet these high-profile losses have done little to shift Putin’s strategy. He continues to use the negotiation process as a smokescreen, providing Trump with political cover for his inaction. Meanwhile, Russian forces are advancing, making incremental gains in northern Ukraine’s Sumy region – where they hope to establish a “buffer zone” – and pushing forward on the southwestern Donetsk front.

Ultimately, Ukraine’s ability to strike deep inside Russian territory, including potentially vulnerable targets like oil infrastructure, may have more bearing on the war’s trajectory than any outcome from the Istanbul talks. Yet neither military escalation nor stalled diplomacy seems likely to bring a swift end to the conflict.

Trump says he abhors the civilian toll of this war, even if he stops short of blaming Putin for starting it. But it is Trump’s lack of strategy – his hesitation, his mixed signals, his refusal to lead – that is prolonging the conflict, escalating its brutality and compounding its risks for global stability.

Trump’s advisers may call it “peace through strength,” but what we are witnessing is paralysis through posturing. Russia’s delegation in Istanbul was never a step towards resolution – it was a diplomatic decoy, shielding a brutal military advance. If Trump refuses to back a serious escalation in pressure on Moscow – through expanded sanctions and renewed military aid to Kyiv – he won’t just fail to end the war. He will become complicit in prolonging it. The choice before him is clear: lead with resolve, or let history record that under his watch, weakness spoke louder than peace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

A liberal group and social media users shared posts that say President Donald Trump’s “one big beautiful bill” for tax and spending would let him reschedule or eliminate elections.

“If the Senate passes the ‘one big beautiful bill’ and Trump signs it, that’s it. It becomes law,” said the viral graphic on Meta and X. “And here’s what that really means. He can delay or cancel elections – legally.” The post included a long list of other claims about what the bill would accomplish; for this fact-check, we are focusing on the elections claim.

The group Being Liberal, which calls itself “one of the oldest social media liberal political brands”, took down the graphic after we reached out for comment. The group told us it didn’t create the post and removed it because the elections claim wasn’t accurate.

The earliest reference for the graphic we found online was from an anonymous blog post on May 23.

The bill does not give Trump power to delay or cancel elections, an action that would be unconstitutional.

“The bill would not directly give the president any authority over elections,” said Eric Kashdan, senior legal counsel at the Campaign Legal Center, a group that advocates for voting rights and this year sued the Trump administration over a voter registration executive order.

A spokesperson for House Speaker Mike Johnson, Griffin Neal, told PolitiFact, “The bill obviously does not provide the President of the United States with the authority to cancel or delay elections.”

The US House passed the tax and spending bill May 22 and it now moves to the Senate, where lawmakers could make changes. Senator John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate majority leader, said he hopes the bill can be sent to Trump by July 4.

The bill includes one provision related to democracy and checks and balances; it would expand the executive branch’s power by curtailing judges’ ability to hold people in contempt of court. Provision critics said it could take away the courts’ power to restrain the federal government if it violates the Constitution or breaks the law.

We found no provision in the bill that says the president can delay or cancel an election.

In July 2020, amid the pandemic and a surge in voting by mail, Trump floated the idea of delaying the election. At the time, he was running for re-election.

But the Constitution empowers Congress to set the date by which states must choose their presidential electors, the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service found in 2020.

“Since 1845, Congress has required states to appoint presidential electors on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November, which represents the date by which voters in every state must cast their ballot for President,” the report said.

Congress still has that power, said Edward Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional law professor.

The Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 added a new definition of “Election Day” that makes it clear that a voting extension can occur only through state law specified in advance and under tightly restricted conditions, such as a catastrophe, Foley said.

That means Election Day “cannot otherwise be cancelled or delayed” and the president plays no role in any alteration of Election Day, Foley said.

Congress can change the Election Day date by enacting a new statute, as it did with the Electoral Count Reform Act, Foley said.

Erwin Chemerinsky, a University of California, Berkeley law professor, told PolitiFact nothing in the bill lets Trump cancel or delay elections.

“The Constitution provides that elections for Congress be held every two years and for President every four years,” Chemerinsky said. “There is no constitutional authority to cancel elections.”

Bill provision would make it harder for judges to find Trump in contempt of court

The bill includes a different provision that some experts called a threat to democracy, but not at the ballot box.

Section 70302 would make it harder for judges to find a defendant in contempt of court for ignoring a judge’s orders. Here’s how: The legislation would require plaintiffs to pay a security bond before a judge could find the defendant in contempt of court. That would mean judges could no longer waive the security bond requirement, something that frequently happens in cases against the government.

The section references a federal rule that says a court may issue a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order only if the plaintiff pays a security bond to cover costs and damages by any party “found to have been wrongfully enjoined or restrained”.

A security bond is an insurance policy to protect someone wrongfully accused of wrongdoing from financial losses during litigation, Kashdan said. The courts can require plaintiffs to pay money that the court holds until the end of the litigation

“If they win, they get their money back,” Kashdan said. “If they lose, and the person they sued had a right to do whatever it was they were prevented from doing during the lawsuit, they get to keep that money to help compensate them for any losses they experienced during the litigation.”

However, “those seeking such court orders generally do not have the resources to post a bond, and insisting on it would immunise unconstitutional government conduct from judicial review,” wrote Chemerinsky for the website Just Security, which publishes a Trump litigation tracker. “It always has been understood that courts can choose to set the bond at zero.”

A March White House memo that criticised organisations for suing the federal government said enforcement of the security bond rule “is critical to ensuring that taxpayers do not foot the bill for costs or damages caused by wrongly issued preliminary relief by activist judges and to achieving the effective administration of justice”.

The House bill provision raised concern among groups that have defended the judiciary’s role to provide a check on Trump’s power.

As of May 23, at least 177 court rulings have temporarily paused Trump administration actions, according to The New York Times.

Our ruling

Social media posts say the Republican tax and budget bill will let Trump “delay or cancel elections – legally”.

We found nothing in the bill that would let Trump cancel or delay elections. A provision would make it harder for judges to hold people in contempt of court, but that is not the same as cancelling elections.

Only Congress can change a presidential election’s date, not the president, and this bill doesn’t change that.

We rate this statement False.

June 4 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday issued a proclamation to “fully restrict and limit” entry of people from 12 foreign countries starting at 12:01 EDT Monday.

Citing national security concerns, Trump issued the ban on nationals from Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

Also, he partially restricted and limited entry from seven countries: Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

Of the 19 named nations, 10 are in Africa.

“These restrictions distinguish between, but apply to both, the entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants,” the order states about the two designations,” the proclamation reads.

There are exceptions for lawful permanent residents, existing visa holders, certain visa categories and individuals whose entry serves US national interests.

Later Wednesday, he posted a video on Truth Social announcing the bans.

“The list is subject to revision based on whether material improvements are made,” Trump said. “And likewise new countries can be added as threats emerge around the world, but we will not allow people to enter our country who wish to do us harm and nothing will stop us from keeping America safe.”

The proclamation reads: “As President, I must act to protect the national security and national interest of the United States and its people. I remain committed to engaging with those countries willing to cooperate to improve information-sharing and identity-management procedures, and to address both terrorism-related and public-safety risks. Nationals of some countries also pose significant risks of overstaying their visas in the United States, which increases burdens on immigration and law enforcement components of the United States, and often exacerbates other risks related to national security and public safety.”

White House deputy press secretary Abigail Jackson wrote on X: “President Trump is fulfilling his promise to protect Americans from dangerous foreign actors that want to come to our country and cause us harm. These commonsense restrictions are country-specific and include places that lack proper vetting, exhibit high visa overstay rates, or fail to share identity and threat information.”

On his first day in office on Jan. 20, Trump signed an executive order that it is the policy of the United States to “protect its citizens from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio was ordered to compile a list of countries “for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a partial or full suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries.”

The proclamation said: “Some of the countries with inadequacies face significant challenges to reform efforts. Others have made important improvements to their protocols and procedures, and I commend them for these efforts. But until countries with identified inadequacies address them, members of my Cabinet have recommended certain conditional restrictions and limitations.”

CNN reported Trump decided to sign the proclamation after the antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colo., though the system didn’t come to the United States from the restricted countries.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, of Colorado Springs, has been charged with a federal hate crime and he is facing 16 state counts of attempted murder on Monday. Soliman, an Egyptian national who spent time in Kuwait, entered California in August 2022 on a B2 visa that expired in February 2023 and his asylum claim was pending.

Alex Nowrasteh, who works for Cato Institute, a nonpartisan and independent public policy research organization, said the threat of foreign-born terrorists is rare.

“A single terrorist from those countries murdered one person in an attack on US soil: Emanuel Kidega Samson from Sudan, who committed an attack motivated by anti-white animus in 2017,” Nowrasteh wrote. The annual chance of being murdered by a terrorist from one of the banned countries from 1975 to the end of 2024 was about 1 in 13.9 billion per year.”

He also noted that travelers and immigrants from the 12 banned countries have a nationwide incarceration rate of 370 per 100,000 in 2023 for the 18-54 aged population, which 70 percent below that of native-born Americans. The data came from the U.S. Census and American Community Survey Data.

During his first term, Trump banned travel by citizens of predominantly Muslim countries, including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen. Amid legal challenges, it was modified and upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.

When President Joe Biden took office in 2021, he repealed it.

The Education Department accuses the Ivy League school of violating the Civil Rights Act and calls for its accreditor to take action.

The United States Department of Education has notified Columbia University’s accreditor that the Ivy League school allegedly broke federal anti-discrimination laws.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) claimed that Columbia University had “acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students”.

As a result, they said that Columbia violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, colour or national origin.

“Specifically, OCR and HHS OCR found that Columbia failed to meaningfully protect Jewish students against severe and pervasive harassment on Columbia’s campus and consequently denied these students’ equal access to educational opportunities to which they are entitled under the law,” the statement said.

It quoted Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, who accused Columbia University of ignoring the ongoing harassment of Jewish students on its campus since Israel’s war on Gaza began on October 7, 2023.

“This is not only immoral, but also unlawful,” McMahon said

She added that the accreditor, the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, has “an obligation to ensure member institutions abide by their standards”.

The commission is one of seven regional bodies that reviews colleges, universities and other institutions of higher education to ensure they meet the standards needed to grant degrees.

McMahon described accreditation institutions as the “gatekeepers of federal student aid” and explained that they decide which schools are eligible for student loans.

“We look forward to the Commission keeping the Department fully informed of actions taken to ensure Columbia’s compliance with accreditation standards including compliance with federal civil rights laws,” McMahon said.

The statement specified that the Education Department and HHS had come to their determination about Columbia University’s civil rights compliance on May 22.

The Ivy League school had been an epicentre for pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel student protest movements, with some of the first student encampments cropping up on its lawn in April 2024.

The university has remained in the news with arrests of high-profile student activists like Mahmoud Khalil in March and Mohsen Mahdawi in April.

Mahdawi has since been released, though he, like Khalil, continues to face deportation proceedings.

The administration of President Donald Trump has accused the demonstrators of creating unsafe conditions for Jewish students on campus, something the protest leaders have denied.

It reiterated that allegation in Wednesday’s statement, where it summed up the “noncompliance findings” that allegedly show Columbia at odds with civil rights law.

“The findings carefully document the hostile environment Jewish students at Columbia University have had to endure for over 19 months, disrupting their education, safety, and well-being,” said Anthony Archeval, acting director of the Office for Civil Rights at HHS, in the statement.

“We encourage Columbia University to work with us to come to an agreement that reflects meaningful changes that will truly protect Jewish students.”

The university did not immediately respond to a request by the Reuters news agency for comment.

The Trump administration and Columbia University were in negotiations over $400m in federal funding for the New York-based Ivy League school. Columbia agreed to a series of demands from the administration in a bid to keep the funds flowing, but the US government has not confirmed whether it will restore the contracts and grants that it paused.

In March, McMahon had said Columbia University was “on the right track” toward recovering its federal funding.

June 4 (UPI) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday ordered a suspension of international visas for new students seeking to attend Harvard University, accusing the school of failing to report “known illegal activity” carried out by its students.

In a proclamation, Trump said the suspension applies only to new nonimmigrant students who travel to the United States solely or primarily to attend the Massachusetts university. International students are allowed to enter the country to attend U.S. schools under the Student Exchange Visa Program.

Trump also gave Secretary of State Marco Rubio the authority to determine whether existing Harvard students in the country on visas should have theirs revoked.

Citing an increase in crime on the campus — which was also reported by The Harvard Crimson in 2023 — Trump said Harvard has failed in disciplinary actions. He said the school reported misconduct by three foreign students and provided “deficient” data on those incidents.

“Harvard’s actions show that it either is not fully reporting its disciplinary records for foreign students or is not seriously policing its foreign students,” Trump said.

The proclamation is the Trump administration’s latest of multiple attempts to block the Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students. He has taken issue with students’ anti-Israel protests over the war in Gaza.

A spokesperson for the university told NBC News it planned to fight the administration’s order.

“This is yet another illegal retaliatory step taken by the administration in violation of Harvard’s First Amendment rights,” the spokesperson said.

In May, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs blocked the Trump administration’s attempt to deny Harvard to admit international students. At the time Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem canceled the school’s SEVP certification.

“The administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus,” Noem said.

WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered his administration on Wednesday to investigate then-President Biden’s use of an autopen to sign pardons and other documents, increasing the pressure on his predecessor as House Republicans also requested interviews with members of Biden’s inner circle.

An autopen is a mechanical device that is used to replicate a person’s authentic signature, and presidents have used them for decades. However, Trump has frequently suggested that some of Biden’s actions are invalid because his aides were usurping presidential authority to cover up what Trump claims is Biden’s cognitive decline.

“This conspiracy marks one of the most dangerous and concerning scandals in American history,” Trump wrote in a memo. “The American public was purposefully shielded from discovering who wielded the executive power, all while Biden’s signature was deployed across thousands of documents to effect radical policy shifts.”

Trump directed Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and White House Counsel David Warrington to handle the investigation.

Meanwhile, House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, a Republican, requested transcribed interviews with five Biden aides, alleging they had participated in a “cover-up” that amounted to “one of the greatest scandals in our nation’s history.”

“These five former senior advisors were eyewitnesses to President Biden’s condition and operations within the Biden White House,” Comer said in a statement. “They must appear before the House Oversight Committee and provide truthful answers about President Biden’s cognitive state and who was calling the shots.”

Interviews were requested with White House senior advisors Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, former Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed and Steve Ricchetti, a former counselor to the president.

Comer reiterated his call for Biden’s physician, Kevin O’Connor, and former senior White House aides Annie Tomasini, Anthony Bernal, Ashley Williams and Neera Tanden to appear before the committee. He warned subpoenas would be issued this week if they refuse to schedule voluntary interviews.

“I think that people will start coming in the next two weeks,” Comer told reporters. He added that the committee would release a report with its findings, “and we’ll release the transcribed interviews, so it’ll be very transparent.”

Democrats have dismissed the effort as a distraction.

“Chairman Comer had his big shot in the last Congress to impeach Joe Biden and it was, of course, a spectacular flop,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the Maryland Democrat who served as the ranking member on the Oversight Committee in the previous Congress. “And now he’s just living off of a spent dream. It’s over. And he should give up the whole thing.”

Republicans on the committee are eager to pursue the investigation.

“The American people didn’t elect a bureaucracy to run the country,” said Rep. Brandon Gill, a freshman Republican from Texas. “I think that the American people deserve to know the truth and they want to know the truth of what happened.”

The Republican inquiry so far has focused on the final executive actions of Biden’s administration, which included the issuing of new federal rules and presidential pardons that they claim may be invalid.

Comer cited the book “Original Sin” by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson, which details concerns and debates inside the White House and Democratic Party over Biden’s mental state and age.

In the book, Tapper and Thompson wrote, “Five people were running the country, and Joe Biden was at best a senior member of the board.”

Biden and members of his family have vigorously denied the book’s claims.

“This book is political fairy smut for the permanent, professional chattering class,” said Naomi Biden, the former president’s granddaughter.

Biden withdrew from the presidential race last summer after a debate against Trump in which he appeared to lose his train of thought multiple times, muttered inaudible answers and misnamed different government programs.

The disastrous debate performance pushed questions about his age and mental acuity to the forefront, ultimately leading Biden to withdraw from the presidential race. He was replaced on the ticket by Kamala Harris, who lost the election to Trump.

Brown and Megerian write for the Associated Press.