Americans have grown accustomed to dramatic shifts in policy each time control of the White House changes between parties. But across a wide range of domestic and foreign policy issues, President Donald Trump is now pursuing structural changes to the federal government that could prove very difficult for the next Democratic president to undo. On many fronts, Trump is seeking not just to reduce spending or to roll back regulation, but to hollow out the federal government’s institutional capacity to influence events both domestically and internationally. Far more aggressively than in his first term, Trump is unraveling many of the…
President Donald Trump’s promised tariffs are a day away – and they’ll go into effect sooner than some had expected. As in, immediately, the White House said Tuesday. Although many details remain unknown, perhaps even to Trump himself, the administration’s “Liberation Day” trade policy announcement is expected to be the most aggressive tariff move yet by the most tariff-obsessed president in modern history. Trump is meeting with his trade team Tuesday and the tariffs he announces at a Rose Garden ceremony at 4 pm ET Wednesday will go into effect “immediately,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday a…
Several top Trump administration officials are facing scrutiny for sending detailed operational plans and other likely highly classified information about US military strikes on Yemen to a group chat on a messaging app that inadvertently included the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg. The mistake amounts to an unprecedented breach of security by some of President Donald Trump’s most senior national security officials and raises questions about whether they violated the Espionage Act, which makes it illegal to mishandle national defense information. Normally, discussions of this nature occur in a sensitive compartmented information facility (SCIF), a highly secure area to discuss classified information. A…
President Donald Trump says he has had an “extremely productive call” with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney amid a spike in tensions and an escalating trade war between the United States and its northern neighbour. In a social media post describing the call on Friday, the US president sounded conciliatory towards Canada. Notably, Trump referred to the Canadian leader by his correct title as prime minister after months of calling Carney’s predecessor Justin Trudeau “governor”. “I just finished speaking with Prime Minister Mark Carney, of Canada,” Trump wrote. “It was an extremely productive call, we agree on many things, and will be meeting immediately…
President Donald Trump says he pardoned Trevor Milton, the CEO of now-defunct hydrogen and electric truck firm Nikola, in part because he believed Milton was persecuted for supporting Trump’s political ambitions. In October 2022, a New York jury convicted Milton on federal charges of securities fraud and wire fraud. Prosecutors in the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York had accused Milton of making false and misleading statements about “nearly all aspects of the business” as it pertained to developing electric and hydrogen-powered trucks, as well as defrauding the public through social media and podcast interviews. He…
Close to 70,000 South Africans have expressed interest in moving to the US following Washington’s offer to resettle people from the country’s Afrikaner community, a business group has said. The South African Chamber of Commerce in the USA (Saccusa) said its website received tens of thousands of registrations from those seeking more information. In a February executive order, President Donald Trump said Afrikaners – descendants of mainly Dutch settlers who arrived in the 17th Century – could be admitted as refugees as they were “victims of unjust racial discrimination”. Relations between the US and South Africa have become increasingly strained…
Elise Stefanik’s swift rise was a barometer of the power of Trumpism. But a sudden interruption in her ascent reveals warning signs for the White House and caps a tough week in which the inevitable reverberations of President Donald Trump’s political shock therapy began to threaten his agenda. Trump withdrew Stefanik’s nomination to serve as US ambassador to the United Nations on Thursday, indicating concern about a special election in her seat given the already-tiny Republican majority in the House. It was a bitter blow for the New York Republican that will deprive her of a platform she could have used…
Elon Musk says that his AI venture xAI has acquired his social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. In an X post Friday, Musk said the all-stock transaction values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion. Musk paid $44 billion for Twitter in 2022. “xAI and X’s futures are intertwined,” Musk wrote on X Friday. “Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent.” The move may be aimed at protecting investors, who helped him buy purchase X, from losing money. Both X and xAI are privately held and share some…
President Donald Trump made multiple false claims in a Friday speech at the Department of Justice in which he discussed the legal system and crime but also a wide range of other topics, including immigration, the war in Ukraine and former President Joe Biden. Trump also made numerous allegations for which he provided no evidence, alleging unspecified “egregious crimes” in the government during the Biden administration, corruption among unspecified judges, illegality by media outlets that he claimed cover him too negatively and “crooked” behavior by law firms connected to cases involving Trump. rump’s prosecutions and Biden: Trump repeated his regular unsubstantiated claim that former President…
Columbia University’s interim president has resigned her role just one week after the Ivy League university agreed to change several policies to satisfy demands from the Trump administration. Katrina Armstrong had led the university since August, after the previous president resigned over her handling of protests against Israel’s military operation in Gaza. Columbia has drawn ire from Donald Trump, who claims that it and other schools have tolerated antisemitism and the harassment of Jewish students. Trump has already threatened to withhold some $400m (£309m) in federal funding for the school as his administration continues to target those involved in campus…
