Category Archives: Donald Trump

Keir Starmer hopes to exploit curious relationship with Trump in Ukraine talks

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PM has positioned himself as someone who can get along with US president while stressing Europe’s red lines

Asked behind the scenes at June’s G7 summit if he could explain why Donald Trump seemed to like him so much, Keir Starmer admitted he did not really know. Whatever the reason, when it comes to Ukraine, the UK prime minister is once again hoping to exploit this somewhat curious relationship.

As soon as it was announced that a string of European leaders planned to join Volodymyr Zelenskyy to back the Ukrainian president in crucial talks with Trump at the White House on Monday, it was obvious Starmer would be joining them.

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Trump hiked tariffs on US imports. Now he’s looking at exports – sparking fears of ‘dangerous precedent’

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Experts warn of destabilized trading relations after White House strikes deal with Nvidia to take a 15% cut of certain AI chip sales to Chinese companies

Apple CEO Tim Cook visited the White House bearing an unusual gift. “This box was made in California,” Cook reassured his audience in the Oval Office this month, as he took off the lid.

Inside was a glass plaque, engraved for its recipient, and a slab for the plaque to sit on. “The base was made in Utah, and is 24-karat gold,” said Cook.

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Three states to deploy hundreds of national guard troops to Washington DC

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South Carolina and Ohio join West Virginia in pledging troops, fueling protests that national guard should not be used for ‘a political policing mission’

Three states have moved to deploy hundreds of members of their national guard to the nation’s capital as part of the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul policing in Washington through a federal crackdown.

West Virginia said it was deploying 300 to 400 guard troops, while South Carolina pledged 200 and Ohio said it would send 150 in the coming days.

The moves announced on Saturday came as protesters pushed back on federal law enforcement and national guard troops fanning out in the heavily Democratic city following Donald Trump’s executive order federalizing local police forces and activating about 800 District of Columbia national guard members.

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Putin demands full control of Donetsk and Luhansk as condition for ending Ukraine war – live

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Putin told Trump he would halt further advances and freeze Ukrainian frontline where Russian forces occupy significant areas, sources say

For those who feared the summit on Ukraine might resemble Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938, the reality was worse.

The Guardian’s David Smith has this politics sketch from Anchorage:

Today, following a conversation with President Trump, we further coordinated positions with European leaders. The positions are clear. A real peace must be achieved, one that will be lasting, not just another pause between Russian invasions.

Killings must stop as soon as possible, the fire must cease both on the battlefield and in the sky, as well as against our port infrastructure. All Ukrainian prisoners of war and civilians must be released, and the children abducted by Russia must be returned. Thousands of our people remain in captivity – they all must be brought home. Pressure on Russia must be maintained while the aggression and occupation continue.

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Donald Trump reportedly delivered letter from first lady to Vladimir Putin

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White House officials said it mentioned the abductions of Ukrainian children by Russian forces in occupied territory

Donald Trump hand-delivered a personal letter from first lady Melania Trump to Russian leader Vladimir Putin raising the plight of Ukrainian and Russian children caught in the middle of the ongoing war between the two European countries, it was reported on Saturday.

The contents of the letter were unknown – but two Trump administration officials told Reuters that it mentioned the abductions of children resulting from the war that broke out after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

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Zelenskyy may be asked to cede land to Russia at Trump meeting in Washington

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Ukrainian leader to return to White House after Alaska summit between US president and Vladimir Putin

Ukraine’s president has said he will fly to Washington on Monday to meet Donald Trump after the Alaska summit amid speculation that the US president will ask him to cede territory to end the war.

Next week’s meeting will mark the first return to the White House for Volodymyr Zelenskyy since his infamous row with Trump and the vice-president, JD Vance, in the Oval Office in February.

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Trump says Xi told him China will not invade Taiwan while he is in office

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US president says Chinese counterpart told him ‘I am very patient and China is very patient’

The US president, Donald Trump, has said that his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, told him China would not invade Taiwan while Trump is in office.

Trump made the comments in an interview with Fox News on Friday, ahead of talks with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

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Democrats introduce joint resolution to end Trump’s ‘lawless’ DC takeover

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Legislation says special emergency conditions that would warrant federalization of DC police have not been met

Democratic lawmakers have introduced a joint resolution aimed at ending what they call Trump’s unlawful and unprecedented move to federalize the Metropolitan police department (MPD) in Washington DC.

Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking member of the House judiciary committee; DC’s non-voting House delegate, Eleanor Holmes Norton; and representative Robert Garcia, ranking member of the House committee on oversight and government reform, introduced the resolution on Friday, invoking the District of Columbia Home Rule Act of 1973.

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Ukraine says it has bombed Russian ship carrying drone parts at Caspian port

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Attack on cargo vessel more than 500 miles from frontline is show of force before Trump-Putin meeting

Ukraine says it has conducted a long-range drone attack on a supply ship that it claims was carrying drone components from Iran, striking it at a port north of the Caspian Sea, in a show of force hours before Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet for a summit in Alaska.

Photographs showed a partially sunken cargo vessel at Olya, near Astrakhan, more than 500 miles from the frontline. Ukraine’s military claimed credit for the attack and the overnight bombing of an oil refinery at Samara on the Volga River, deep inside Russia.

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First Thing: Newsom says California hopes to redraw maps in response to Texas plan

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Republican redestricting move aims to win House majority in midterms. Plus, plastic pollution talks fail in Geneva

Good morning.

California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, has said lawmakers would proceed with a redistricting plan to counter the Republican-led map drawing effort in Texas aimed at securing a House majority after the midterm elections.

Will Newsom go ahead if Texas stands down? No. The California plan will only take place if Texas, or another Republican-led state, redraws its map in favor of the GOP.

What else do experts say about Bhattacharya’s “public trust” claims? That the issue is not whether the vaccines have public trust, but whether they are safe and effective, which they “clearly” are and this must be communicated.

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Texas legislature to end special session without passing new electoral maps

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Governor Greg Abbott said he will immediately call another session as Democratic lawmakers signaled return to state

Texas lawmakers will adjourn their first special session without passing new congressional maps on Friday, though Governor Greg Abbott has said he will immediately call another session and Democratic lawmakers signaled they are likely to return to the state.

Abbott has pledged he will call consecutive special sessions until Democrats have returned. More than 50 Democrats left the state last month in order to deny a quorum in the legislature after Republicans announced plans to redraw the state’s congressional maps, at the request of Donald Trump, in order to gain five Republican seats.

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Trump reportedly called Norwegian minister ‘out of the blue’ to ask about Nobel prize

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US president told Norway’s finance minister he wants the Nobel peace prize, according to the Norwegian press

Donald Trump cold-called Norway’s finance minister last month to ask about a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, Norwegian press reported on Thursday.

The Norwegian outlet Dagens Næringsliv, citing unnamed sources, reported: “Out of the blue, while finance minister Jens Stoltenberg was walking down the street in Oslo, Donald Trump called … He wanted the Nobel prize – and to discuss tariffs.”

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Israel appears set to approve highly controversial 3,400-home West Bank settlement

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Finance minister Bezalel Smotrich has said he believes E1 plan will ‘bury the idea of a Palestinian state’

Israel appears set to give formal planning approval to a highly controversial settlement project for more than 3,400 new homes that has been frozen for decades and which critics say would split the occupied West Bank in half.

Strongly opposed by the international community, the so-called E1 plan would extend the existing Jewish settlement of Ma’ale Adumim towards Jerusalem, further cutting occupied east Jerusalem from the West Bank, and further separating the north and south of the territory.

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Sheinbaum’s expulsion of criminals is more about placating Trump than keeping Mexico safe

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Perhaps not coincidentally, the timing of tariff discussions was closely followed by the transfer of wanted criminals

Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has denied that the transfer of 26 alleged cartel members to the United States was part of any kind of deal with Washington and was instead about her country’s own security priorities.

This week’s expulsion marked the second time Mexico had sent top criminals to the US this year: in February, Mexican authorities handed over 29 cartel members, including druglord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was responsible for the murder of a DEA agent in 1985. The latest transfers took place after US authorities vowed that prosecutors would not seek the death penalty in any of the cases.

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Putin ready to make Ukraine deal, Trump says before Alaska summit

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US president’s comment that Russian and Ukrainian leaders may have to ‘divvy’ things up likely to raise alarm

Donald Trump has said he believes Vladimir Putin is ready to make a deal on the war in Ukraine as the two leaders prepare for their summit in Alaska on Friday, but his suggestion the Russian leader and Volodymyr Zelenskyy could “divvy things up” may alarm some in Kyiv.

The US president, who left the White House on Friday at 7.30am, implied there was a 75% chance of the Alaska meeting succeeding, and that the threat of economic sanctions may have made Putin more willing to seek an end to the war. “HIGH STAKES!!!” he posted on Truth Social as his motorcade idled outside the White House shortly after sunrise in Washington.

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Trump revokes Biden order promoting competition in the US economy

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Move further unwinds initiative to crack down on anti-competitive practices in agriculture, drugs and labor

Donald Trump on Wednesday revoked a 2021 executive order on promoting competition in the US economy issued by Joe Biden, the White House said.

The move by the Republican US president further unwinds a signature initiative by his predecessor, a Democrat, to crack down on anti-competitive practices in sectors from agriculture to drugs and labor.

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Lula says Trump would be put on trial in Brazil if January 6 riots took place there

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Brazilian president’s comments come amid US attempts to pressure judges in coup trial against Trump ally Bolsonaro

The Brazilian president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, has hit back at Donald Trump’s campaign against the South American country’s judiciary, claiming the US president would be put on trial in Brazil had the January 6 US Capitol attacks taken place there.

Trump has triggered what some experts call the greatest ever diplomatic rupture between the US and Brazil by slapping 50% tariffs on Brazilian imports and sanctioning a supreme court judge in an attempt to help his far-right ally, ex-president Jair Bolsonaro, avoid prison for allegedly trying to stage a coup after he lost the 2022 election to Lula.

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Alaska’s Juneau orders evacuations as record glacier flood looms

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Mendenhall Glacier outburst threatens homes, with scientists warning events are intensifying

Alaska’s capital city of Juneau is urging many residents to evacuate, bracing for the arrival of what could be record floodwaters flowing downstream from a basin dammed by the area’s Mendenhall Glacier, with the event being driven by climate change amid glacial retreat, according to a federal agency.

Summer glacial flooding, known as a glacial lake outburst flood, or GLOF, threatens parts of the city due to a combination of rainwater and snowmelt.

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Tennessee town approves plans to turn former prison into Ice detention center

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Officials in Mason voted to convert prison to Ice facility run by CoreCivic, US’s second-largest private prison operator

Officials in a rural Tennessee town voted on Tuesday to approve agreements to turn a former prison into an immigration detention facility operated by a private company, despite loud objections from upset residents and activists during a contentious public meeting.

The five-member board of aldermen in Mason, along with the mayor, Eddie Noeman, and vice-mayor, Reynaldo Givhan, met in a fire station garage to discuss converting the closed West Tennessee detention facility into a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention center run by CoreCivic Inc, America’s second-largest private prison operator.

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First Thing: National guard begins deploying on DC streets after Trump police takeover

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City’s mayor has hardened her stance on Trump’s ‘authoritarian’ actions. Plus, Israel intensifies bombing of Gaza killing 89 Palestinians in 24 hours

Good morning.

The Washington DC national guard began deploying on the city’s streets on Tuesday night, as the city’s mayor toughened her response to Donald Trump taking control of the city’s police force.

What did Washington’s mayor say? Muriel Bowser, the Democratic mayor of Washington, hardened her stance after treading a more diplomatic line earlier in the day. During a live event on social media on Tuesday night, she described the arrival of federalized national guard members as an authoritarian push. Other critics have said the move seeks to distract attention from political problems such as the Jeffrey Epstein files.

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