Trump says space force general will lead Golden Dome missile defense project – as it happened

The Trump administration said it will permit use of Covid vaccines by adults over 65 and those with certain medical conditions in the fall, raising questions about whether some people who want a vaccine will be able to get one.

Top officials for the Food and Drug Administration laid out new standards for updated Covid shots, saying they’d continue to use a streamlined approach to make them available to adults 65 and older as well as children and younger adults with at least one high-risk health problem.

But the FDA framework, published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine, urges companies to conduct large, lengthy studies before tweaked vaccines can be approved for healthier people.

It’s a stark break from the previous federal policy recommending an annual Covid shot for all Americans six months and older. In the paper and a subsequent online webcast, the FDA’s top vaccine official said more than 100 million Americans still should qualify for what he termed a booster under the new guidance.

Scientific advisers to the FDA are slated to meet Thursday to decide on the composition of the Covid vaccine to be made available in the fall.

A federal judge said that the Trump administration appeared to have violated his April court order by deporting a Burmese immigrant to South Sudan without giving him sufficient time to contest the removal, especially given the risk of being sent to a country that is not his own, The New York Times reports.

Judge Brian E Murphy in Boston made the remarks during a hearing in Federal District Court after immigration attorneys raised alarm that at least one other immigrant may also have been deported to South Sudan without due process.

“It sounds like this deportation would be a violation of my preliminary injunction,” Judge Murphy said.

He ordered Justice Department attorney Elianis N Perez to alert everyone involved in the flight that they could face criminal contempt charges if the court’s order was ignored.

He also directed her to determine the plane’s location and whether it could be turned around.

US immigration officials appear to have begun deporting migrants from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan, Reuters reports.

Immigrant rights advocates accused the Trump administration of deporting around a dozen migrants in violation of a court order and asked a judge to order their return.

The advocates made the request in a motion directed to a federal judge in Boston who had barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first hearing any concerns they had that they might be tortured or persecuted if sent there.

Lawyers for a group of migrants pursuing the class action lawsuit before US District Judge Brian Murphy said they learned that nearly a dozen migrants held at a detention facility in Texas were flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.

Donald Trump confirmed that Space Force general Michael Guetlein will oversee development of the ‘Golden Dome’ antimissile shield.

“We’re talking about $175bn total cost of this when it’s completed,” Trump said. “This is very important for the success and even survival of our country. It’s a very evil world out there.”

The project stems from a January executive order that called for an “Iron Dome for America”, taking cues from Israel’s Iron Dome, designed to counter short-range threats using technology. US military officials have described the Golden Dome as a “system of systems”, combining traditional defenses with emerging, largely untested technologies.

Trump said the “Golden Dome” will take two-and-a-half to three years to be completed. But the option that Trump chooses will determine its timeline and cost. The $25bn coming from Republicans’ budget bill is only set to cover initial development costs. The final price tag could exceed $540bn over the next two decades, according to the congressional budget office.

Donald Trump announced $25bn for his “Golden Dome” defense initiative Tuesday afternoon.

The funding, included in what the president has dubbed his “big, beautiful bill”, will go toward an expansive air defense system designed to shield the entire US.

“This design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defense capabilities, and should be fully operational before the end of my term,” Trump said. “Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from the other side of the world, and even if they’re launched from space.”

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a “comprehensive review” of the United States’ chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, an evacuation operation in which 13 US service members and 150 Afghans were killed at Kabul’s airport in an Islamic State bombing.

It was unclear how Hegseth’s review would differ from the many previous reviews that have been carried out – including by the US military, the state department and even Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Reuters reports that Hegseth could be accused of politicizing the matter. The Biden administration, which oversaw the 2021 pullout, mostly blamed the resulting chaos on a lack of planning and reductions in troops by the first Trump administration following a 2020 deal with the Taliban to withdraw American forces.

On the campaign trail, Trump frequently criticized Biden and his administration for the withdrawal.

In a memo, Hegseth said that after three months of reviewing the withdrawal, a comprehensive review was needed to ensure accountability for this event. He wrote:

This remains an important step toward regaining faith and trust with the American people and all those who wear the uniform and is prudent based on the number of casualties and equipment lost during the execution of this withdrawal operation.

In a statement accompanying the memo, he said Pentagon spokesperson and senior adviser Sean Parnell would lead the review. Other individuals who served in Afghanistan, such as Lt Col Stuart Scheller, who was publicly critical of the withdrawal while he was in the Marine Corps, would be a part of the review panel.

Senior US military officials, including then-defense secretary Lloyd Austin and then-top US general Mark Milley, have already appeared before lawmakers.

US Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, has also carried out an investigation into the Islamic State attack that killed the 13 US troops and dozens of Afghans during the last few days of the withdrawal.

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told the Senate foreign relations committee that the number of visas he has revoked was “probably in the thousands”, adding that he believed there was still more to do.

I don’t know the latest count, but we probably have more to do. A visa is not a right, it’s a privilege.

Earlier this morning, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, couldn’t correctly state what habeas corpus is when pressed to define the concept by the Democratic US senator Maggie Hassan.

Asked what habeas corpus is, Noem claimed it’s “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to –”.

As Hassan stated, habeas corpus is the principle that the government must provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.

Noem went on to say she supported the constitutional right of the president to suspend habeas corpus but, as Hassan points out, that has never been done without the approval of Congress.

Here’s the very painful clip.

In an effort to pressure members of Congress to do more to reign in Doge’s “harmful and illegal cuts to federal programs”, a group of fired federal workers are sitting in on the House-side steps of the US Capitol.

According to the Fork Off Coalition, the group includes “federal employees illegally terminated by Doge; contractors on cancelled federal contracts; and other workers harmed by Doge”.

Earlier this morning, Donald Trump defended the justice department’s decision to charge the Democratic representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey for allegedly assaulting law enforcement officers earlier this month.

McIver faces a felony assault charge over a physical confrontation with Ice officials outside an immigrant detention facility in New Jersey.

Pushing back on Democratic accusations that the Trump administration is pursuing charges for political purposes, the president alleged to reporters on Capitol Hill that McIver was “out of control”.

He added:

Those days are over. The days of woke are over. That woman – I have no idea who she is – was out of control. The days of that crap are over. We’re going to have law and order.

Politico writes: “The criminal complaint filed in US district court in Newark alleges McIver ‘slammed her forearm’ into one agent and ‘forcibly’ grabbed him. The Democratic congressmember is also accused of using ‘each of her forearms to forcibly strike’ another officer, according to the complaint, which includes multiple photos from video cameras worn by officers, as well as others mounted outside the facility.”

McIver and other Democratic politicians went to the Delany Hall detection center in Newark to protest its use to house immigrants, accusing the private prison company operating the facility of lacking the proper permits.

McIver has said she was the one who was assaulted by law enforcement as they arrested Newark mayor Ras Baraka.

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, defended the Trump administration’s decision to admit 49 white Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees after Hillary Clinton’s former running mate, Tim Kaine, claimed they were getting preferential treatment because of their skin colour.

Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, challenged Rubio to justify prioritising the Afrikaners while cancelling long-standing refugee programmes for other groups that have been more documented as victims of conflict or persecution.

The clash between the two men was Rubio’s most combative exchange in his first appearance before the Senate foreign relations committee since his unanimous approval by senators in confirmation hearing in January.

“Right now, the US refugee program allows a special program for Afrikaner farmers, the first group of whom arrived at Dulles airport in Virginia not long ago, while shutting off the refugee program for everyone else,” said Kaine.

Do you think Afrikaner farmers are the most persecuted group in the world?

In response, Rubio said:

I think those 49 people that came surely felt they were persecuted, and they’ve passed every sort of check mark that had to be checked off in terms of meeting their requirements for that. They live in a country where farms are taken, the land is taken, on a racial basis.

Trump has falsely asserted that white farmers in South Africa are undergoing a “genocide”.

Kaine asked why Afrikaners were more important than the Uyghurs or Rohingyas, who have faced intense persecution in China and Myanmar respectively, and cited the cases of political dissidents in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, as well as Afghans under the Taliban.

“The problem we face there is the volume problem,” Rubio said.

If you look at all the persecuted people of the world, it’s millions of people. They can’t all come here.

Asked why Afrikaners were a special case, he said:

Because it’s a small subset, it’s a new issue, and the president identified it as a problem and wanted to use it as an example. But that’s different from having these refugee programs that were basically spending money to put people up in communities and accommodate them, and it was acting as a magnet to millions of people.

Kaine called the claims of persecution against Afrikaner farmers “completely specious” and pointed to the existence of Afrikaner ministers in South Africa’s coalition government, including the minister for agriculture.

He also contrasted the current refugee designation of Afrikaners with the absence of such a programme for the country’s Black majority during the apartheid era.

“There never has been a special programme for Africans to come in as refugees to the United States,” Kaine said, pointing out that special categories were allowed for people being persecuted for religious reasons under communist regimes. “[But] we’ve never allowed a special program to allow Africans into the United States in an expedited refugee status until now,” he said, “Afrikaner farmers living in a nation governed by a government of national unity that includes the main Afrikaner party.”

Referring to the US statutory standard of recognising a refugee claim as being a “well-justified fear of persecution”, Kaine asked:

Should that be applied in an evenhanded way? For example, should we say if you’re persecuted on the grounds of your religion, we’ll let you in if you’re a Christian but not a Muslim?

Rubio replied that US foreign policy did not require evenhandedness, adding:

The United States has a right to allow into this country and prioritise allowance of who they want to allow to come in. We’re going to prioritise people coming into our country on the basis of what’s in the interests of this country. That’s a small number of people that are coming.

Kaine responded: “So you have a different standard based on the color of somebody’s skin. Would that be acceptable?”

Rubio replied:

You’re the one talking about the colour of their skin, not me.

US senator Chris Van Hollen has accused the Trump administration of “making a mockery” of the US refugee process, turning it into a system of “global apartheid” by granting asylum status to white Afrikaners, while turning away refugees from war-torn countries, including Sudan, where he said a genocide is currently unfolding.

The first group of 59 Afrikaners began arriving in the US last week after Trump claimed the Afrikaners were victims of “unjust racial discrimination” and granted them asylum status. The move comes as the US has lifted legal protections in the US for refugees from many war torn countries.

Speaking in a Senate foreign relations committee hearing, Van Hollen, a Democrat, said he had voted to confirm Marco Rubio because he believed the secretary of state would defend democracy and human rights abroad — but said that he had “done the opposite”.

Van Hollen contrasted the decision by the Trump administration to dismantle the majority of USAID’s foreign assistance programs with the decision to allow Afrikaners to claim asylum in the US, calling it “despicable”.

You try to block the admission of people who have already been approved as refugees, while making bogus claims to justify such status to Afrikaners. You’ve made a mockery of our country’s refugee process turning it into a system of global apartheid.

Charles Kushner, the father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, has secured US Senate confirmation to serve as the nation’s ambassador to France.

The elder Kushner’s confirmation late on Monday came a little more than four years after Trump, during his first presidency, pardoned him from his conviction on charges of tax evasion and other federal crimes.

Cory Booker of New Jersey was the only Democratic senator to vote in support of the nomination. His vote came after Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump – his wife and the president’s daughter – held a fundraiser for Booker as he successfully ran for the Senate in 2013.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska defected from her fellow Senate Republicans to vote against Charles Kushner’s appointment to the French ambassadorship, though that did not impede him from being confirmed by a 51-45 vote.

Kushner had been asked about his crimes during his confirmation hearing before the Senate foreign relations committee.

He pleaded guilty in 2005 to 18 charges that included tax evasion, retaliating against a federal witness and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission. The witness tampering charge involved his hiring a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities. Kushner arranged to secretly record the encounter between the sex worker and his brother-in-law and then send the footage to his sister, the other man’s wife.

Trump pardoned Kushner for those crimes in December 2020 after Joe Biden had defeated him in that year’s election.

“My misjudgment and mistake was over 20 years ago,” Kushner said. “Since then, I’ve been pardoned by President Trump. But I don’t sit here before you today and tell you I’m a perfect person. I am not a perfect person. I made a very very, very serious mistake, and I paid a very heavy price for that mistake.”

Robert F Kennedy Jr said earlier that the MAHA commission report Donald Trump tasked him producing would come out on Thursday.

Trump signed an executive order to establish a commission to “Make America Healthy Again,” during Kennedy’s swearing in ceremony on 13 February and tasked it with investigating chronic illness and delivering an action plan to fight childhood diseases, starting with a report due within 100 days.

“You’ll see the report. It’s going to be released on Thursday. Everybody will see the report,” Kennedy told the Senate appropriations committee hearing in response to questions about the contents of the report and its impact on agriculture.

Earlier today, Donald Trump pressed Republicans in Congress to unite behind his sweeping tax-cut bill, but – despite his very optimistic front – apparently failed to convince a handful of holdouts who could still block a package that encompasses much of his domestic agenda.

In a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Trump bluntly warned Republicans in the House of Representatives not to press for further changes to the sprawling bill, which would cut taxes and tighten eligibility for the Medicaid health program.

He strongly cautioned against further plans to make it more difficult for people to access Medicaid, a program for low-income Americans. One person in the room told Reuters Trump told the holdouts:

Don’t fuck around with Medicaid.

He also discouraged Republicans from seeking further carve-outs for state and local tax payments (SALT) - a niche issue that is especially important for moderate Republicans in high-tax states like California and New York.

But Trump failed to convince some lawmakers who are pushing for those provisions.

“The president I don’t think convinced enough people that the bill is adequate the way it is,” said Republican representative Andy Harris of Maryland, who leads the hard-right House Freedom Caucus and has been pushing for further Medicaid cuts.

Republican representative Mike Lawler, a New York moderate who is pushing to raise limits on deductions for state and local tax payments, likewise said Trump did not change his mind.

As it stands right now, I do not support the bill.

After the meeting, Trump predicted the package would ultimately pass the House, which Republicans control by a narrow majority of 220-213. “It was a meeting of love,” he said. He did not address Harris’ concerns.

Freedom Caucus members have been pushing for new work requirements on some Medicaid recipients to kick in earlier than is planned for 2029. But centrists have fought to protect the program, warning that steep cuts could imperil their majority in the 2026 congressional elections.

Trump said afterward the bill would eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicaid but would not cause people to lose coverage.

Trump is pressing for every House Republican to vote for the bill, according to a White House official. As he arrived at the Capitol, Trump said Republican lawmakers who vote against it could “possibly” face a primary challenge in next year’s congressional elections.

Secretary of state Marco Rubio said the US has not discussed the deportation of Palestinians from Gaza to Libya, but he said that Washington had asked other countries in the region if they would be open to accepting people in Gaza who want to move voluntarily.

“What we have talked to some nations about is if someone voluntarily and willingly says I want to go somewhere else for some period of time because I’m sick, because my children need to go to school, or what have you, are there countries in the region willing to accept them for some period of time?,” Rubio said, adding that he was not aware of Libya being included in that.

Rubio also told the Senate foreign relations committee that the United States was pleased to see the resumption of food shipments to Gaza, adding that the US understands that another 100 trucks are behind the initial ones to cross in to Gaza and more might enter in the coming days.

Robert F Kennedy Jr defended his management of the ongoing measles outbreak in the US, telling Republican senator Jerry Moran, of Kansas, that he’s urging people to get vaccinated against the virus, The Hill reports.

Moran asked Kennedy what the Department of Health and Human Services needed in order to best respond to the outbreak, which has surpassed 1,000 cases. Kennedy said:

The best way to prevent the spread of measles is through vaccination. We urge people to get their MMR vaccines. I spent a lot of time with the Mennonites and the MMR vaccine has millions of fragments of human DNA in it, from aborted fetal tissues, and that’s a religious objection for them that I have to respect.

We’ve done a better job at controlling measles since I came into this agency than any other country in the world. Today, we’re at 1,035 cases and we only added 27 cases last week.

As my colleague Jessica Glenza wrote recently, although Kennedy has tepidly endorsed the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine to prevent measles, he has also made false and inflammatory claims about the vaccine, including repeating the above false claim that it contains “aborted fetus debris”. The rubella vaccine, like many others, is produced using decades-old sterile fetal cell lines derived from two elective terminations in the 1960s.

The US is enduring the largest measles outbreak in a quarter-century. Centered in west Texas, the measles outbreak has killed two unvaccinated children and one adult and spread to neighboring states including New Mexico and Oklahoma.

The US eliminated measles in 2000. Elimination status would be lost if the US had 12 months of sustained transmission of the virus. As of 1 May, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported 935 confirmed measles cases across 30 jurisdictions. Nearly one in three children under five years old involved in the outbreak, or 285 young children, have been hospitalized.

Donald Trump said he was weighing what actions to take after the European Union and Britain moved ahead with major new Russia sanctions, but he gave no further detail.

“We’re looking at a lot of things, but we’ll see,” Trump told reporters as he left Capitol Hill following a meeting with fellow Republicans about their tax bill.

The UK and Europe earlier announced major sanctions against Russia as it became clear that yesterday’s call between Trump and Vladimir Putin had failed to deliver any meaningful concessions from Moscow.

The UK said its sanctions would target dozens of entities “supporting Russia’s military machine, energy exports and information war, as well as financial institutions helping to fund Putin’s invasion of Ukraine”.

Shortly after the EU approved sanctions targeting Russia’s shadow fleet of about 200 vessels and said that more sanctions were in the pipeline.

The Trump administration is working to reach an agreement that would allow Iran to have a civil nuclear energy program but not enrich uranium, secretary of state Marco Rubio said, but admitted that achieving such a deal “will not be easy.”

He told the Senate foreign relations committee that the administration was offering an “off-ramp” for Iran to pursue prosperity and peace.

It will not be easy, but that’s the process we’re engaged in now.

Secretary of state Marco Rubio told the Senate foreign relations committee that the Syrian transitional authority may be weeks away from potential collapse and full-scale civil war, defending Donald Trump’s decision to lift Syria sanctions and to engage with the interim government in Damascus.

It is our assessment that, frankly, the transitional authority, given the challenges they’re facing, are maybe weeks, not many months, away from potential collapse and a full-scale civil war of epic proportions, basically the country splitting up.

Senator Tammy Baldwin cites cuts to NIH medical research funding that threaten life-saving cures and projects related to cancer, Alzheimer’s and rare diseases. She asks Robert F Kennedy Jr whose decision it is to withhold thousands of federal grants and billions of dollars of funding.

Kennedy stumbles around the question before Baldwin asks if Doge is the one reviewing NIH grant awards.

She goes on to ask Kennedy whether research on Alzheimer’s, cancer and rare diseases were related to diversity, equity and inclusion, as grants for those programs have been held up. Baldwin ran out of time before Kennedy could respond, yielding her time.

Is funding for Alzheimer’s disease research centers DEI? … Is funding for cancer centers DEI? … Is funding for rare disease research DEI?

“This is a fun game we’re playing,” Kennedy replied. “Ask questions and don’t give me a chance to answer them. Don’t give me time to answer them.”

Members of the Senate appropriations committee from both parties are confronting health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr about his department’s budget request, which calls for steep cuts in funding research programs, The Hill reports.

Noting that the Trump administration is asking for a 26% reduction in HHS funding for its fiscal year 2026 budget, Republican Shelley Moore Capito, acting as chair of the hearing, said the US should be “funding the basic science”.

Hopefully very soon, this committee wants to work with you on improving HHS so that the agency can move more efficiently and fund the basic science. I’m concerned that our science, our country, is falling behind in biomedical research, and this should be a concern for all.

Democrat Tammy Baldwin reprimanded Kennedy for not providing more thorough explanations to Congress as to why his department is moving to cut jobs and shutter offices. She said the budget request would cause “irreparable harm” for US medical innovation.

What it is that we do know about your budget request, or what is happening at the Department of Health and Human Services, your fiscal year 2026 budget request cuts to the National Institutes of Health of $18bn. That would have a devastating impact on research into … life-saving cures and treatments for devastating diseases, setting back medical innovations by decades. It would push the brightest scientific minds to work in other countries. It would cede our leadership in biomedical research to China. It would also take away hope for millions of American families.

We don’t need to just reject this budget request, we need to reject what’s happening at HHS right now. We need to do that before you have caused irreparable harm.

The 3pm announcement will be Trump declaring that he has selected the path forward for his “Golden Dome” missile defense shield, a US official has told Reuters.

The vice chief of space operations, US space force general Michael Guetlein is expected to be at the event where the official, who declined to be named, said that it is likely he will be named as the lead on the controversial project.

Trump’s missile defense shield idea to protect the US from long-range strikes is estimated to cost billions of dollars, CNN reported yesterday, and the Pentagon submitted small, medium and large options to the White House for its development.

Per CNN’s report, Trump had been expected to announce “his preferred option – and its price point – in the coming days, a decision that will ultimately chart a path forward for funding, developing and implementing the space-based missile defense system over the next several years”.

A whopping “$25bn has been carved out in next year’s defense budget for the system, but the Congressional Budget Office has estimated the US could have to spend more than $500bn – over the course of 20 years – to develop a viable Golden Dome.

“The project will also present a bonanza for private contractors as the government won’t be able to build it alone, with companies including Elon Musk’s SpaceX in the running for highly lucrative contracts related to the system.”

Donald Trump will make an announcement at 3pm ET in the Oval Office alongside his secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, the White House said in an update to the president’s schedule.

I’ll bring you more on that as we get it.

Secretary of state Marco Rubio will testify this week before his former colleagues in Congress, some of whom have said they regret voting to confirm the ex-senator because he has not stood up to Donald Trump.

The Senate voted 99-0 to confirm the Florida Republican senator as the nation’s highest diplomat on 20 January, as Democrats joined Republicans in giving the president his first permanent second-term cabinet member just hours after Trump was sworn in.

During his friendly Senate foreign relations committee confirmation hearing on 15 January, Rubio promised a robust foreign policy focused on American interests, echoing Trump’s “America First” approach to global affairs.

Some Democrats who backed Rubio in January have said they regret their votes, as Trump has seized more control of the federal government than any modern president, including cutting funding plans that had been approved by Congress.

Rubio will tell the Senate committee on Tuesday that the $28.5bn budget request by the Trump administration for the 2025/26 fiscal year will allow his department to continue enacting Trump’s vision while cutting $20bn of “duplicative, wasteful, and ideologically driven programs”, according to prepared remarks published by the state department.

At the hearing, Rubio is likely to face tough questions about the decimation of foreign aid - Rubio was an advocate of such aid during his 14 years in the Senate - while slashing staff at the state department and USAID, which used to spend roughly $40bn a year and is being folded into the state department.

The administration is proposing a new $2.9bn America First Opportunity Fund (A1OF) that would take on foreign aid, building on “lessons we learned from USAID”, according to the prepared remarks.

“It will allow the department to respond rapidly to crises, engage proactively with critical partners like India and Jordan, support essential repatriation efforts, and confront strategic threats from near-peer competitors like China,” Rubio will say.

Senators are also likely to grill Rubio on Trump’s plans to unwind Syria sanctions, Rubio’s role in the administration’s immigration crackdown, the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza and efforts to end the war in Ukraine.

He may also face some questions over Trump’s suggestions that Canada could become the 51st US state and that the United States could acquire Greenland, which have angered some close US allies.

Trump is currently meeting with GOP leaders on Capitol Hill to call for his party to unite around his tax and spending cuts proposal.

“We have a very, very unified party,” Trump told reporters ahead of the meeting, piling on praise on House speaker Mike Johnson and Senate majority leader John Thune who have been desperately scrambling to rally holdouts to get Trump’s megabill over the line.

Asked what he will tell the fiscal hawks, Trump said: “I’m a bigger fiscal hawk. There’s nobody like me who’s a bigger fiscal hawk.”

He attacked Thomas Massie (representative from Kentucky and one such aforementioned fiscal hawk who often votes against his party) as a “grandstander” who “doesn’t understand government” and “should be voted out of office”.

Trump denied that the Republicans were touching Medicaid and claimed their only concern was waste, fraud and abuse. “We’re not touching it,” he said before blaming the Democrats. In fact, House Republicans have proposed an $880bn cut to Medicaid that could leave an estimated 13 million Americans without health insurance.

Per the Associated Press, Trump has implored GOP holdouts to “STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE.” But negotiations are slogging along and it’s not at all clear that the president’s top domestic priority of extending the tax breaks while pumping in money for border security and deportations and imposing new limits on Medicaid has the support needed from the House’s slim Republican majority.

Conservative fiscal hawks are insisting on quicker, steeper cuts to federal programs to offset the costs of the trillions of dollars in lost tax revenue. At the same time, a core group of lawmakers from New York and other high-tax states want bigger tax breaks for their voters back home. Worries about piling onto the nation’s $36tn debt are stark.

Johnson is determined to push the bill forward and needs Trump to provide the momentum, either by encouragement or political warnings or a combination of both.

A key committee hearing is set for the middle of the night Tuesday (around 1am ET) in hopes of a House floor vote by Wednesday afternoon.

A majority of US companies say they will have to raise their prices to accommodate Donald Trump’s tariffs in the US, according to a new report.

More than half (54%) of the US companies surveyed by insurance company Allianz said they will have to raise prices to accommodate the cost of the tariffs. Of the 4,500 companies across nine countries, including the US, UK and China, surveyed by Allianz only 22% said they can absorb the increased costs.

The unpredictability of US trade policy has also dented exporters’ confidence. The survey found 42% of exporting companies now anticipate turnover to decline between -2% and -10% over the next 12 months, compared to fewer than 5% before 2 April “liberation day” – when Trump unveiled his tariff policy.

Though Trump has pulled back on many of the levies he initially proposed, key tariffs remain in place, including a 10% universal tariff on all US imports, a 30% tariff on Chinese imports and extra tariffs on specific industries like metal and auto parts.

Trump has insisted that tariffs will make America “very wealthy again”, though it appears that American companies and consumers are simply expecting to pay higher prices as the tariffs settle into place. In April, consumer expectations of inflation reached their highest point since 1981, according to the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.

Instead of immediately raising prices, which could deter customers, many companies have spent months trying to get ahead of Trump’s tariffs by stockpiling goods to temporarily circumvent them.

Nearly eight out of 10 American companies said that they frontloaded shipments to China before Trump announced his tariffs, with 25% saying they had started to front-load before the November 2024 election.

US health and human services secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr dismissed the World Health Organization as bloated and “moribund” in a video shown to global health officials meeting earlier today for the body’s annual assembly in Geneva.

The United States, the UN agency’s top donor, announced it would withdraw from the WHO on the first day of Donald Trump’s presidency, leaving the organisation with a massive budget shortfall that it is seeking to address through reforms at this week’s assembly.

In a video recorded on Fox News and then streamed to the assembly RFK Jr said:

I urge the world’s health ministers and the WHO to take our withdrawal from the organisation as a wake-up call. We’ve already been in contact with like-minded countries and we encourage others to consider joining us.

His speech did not prompt any immediate response from the assembly. Diplomats and ministers mostly watched the address in silence.

Trump has accused the WHO of mishandling Covid and of being too close to China - allegations it denies.

Kennedy is an environmental lawyer who has long sown doubts about the safety and efficacy of vaccines that have helped curb disease and prevented millions of deaths for decades, and clashed with US lawmakers last week in a hearing disrupted by protesters.

In his comments to the WHO, Kennedy called it “mired in bureaucratic bloat, entrenched paradigms, conflicts of interest and international power politics”.

We don’t have to suffer the limits of a moribund WHO - let’s create new institutions or revisit existing institutions that are lean, efficient, transparent and accountable.

Kennedy’s comments were broadcast hours after WHO member states adopted an agreement to better prepare for future pandemics.

Kennedy said the accord would “lock in all the dysfunctions of the WHO pandemic response”.

At least 50 Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a prison in El Salvador had entered the United States legally, according to a review by the Cato Institute.

The report, published by the libertarian thinktank on Monday, analyzed the available immigration data for only a portion of the men who were deported to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), and focuses on the cases where records could be found.

“The government calls them all ‘illegal aliens.’ But of the 90 cases where the method of crossing is known, 50 men report that they came legally to the United States, with advanced US government permission, at an official border crossing point,” Cato said in its report.

This number aligns with broader trends among Venezuelan migrants, many of whom entered the country either as refugees or through a Biden-era parole program that granted two-year work permits to those with US-based sponsors.

“The proportion isn’t what matters the most: the astounding absolute numbers are,” reads the report. “Dozens of legal immigrants were stripped of their status and imprisoned in El Salvador.”

Cato’s analysis goes against the Trump administration’s justification for sending the men to El Salvador, saying that only undocumented people were deported.

Retiree and disability beneficiaries are worried about delays in payments, processing and services amid cuts being made to the US’s social security system under the Trump administration.

Angel Morgan, a 44-year-old disability benefits recipient in Nashville, Tennessee, said she felt like she was “running in circles” navigating long lines at her local social security office and difficulties in trying to make an appointment online to talk about her benefits and how to participate in the Ticket to Work program, which provides career development services for disability beneficiaries.

“I struggle with social settings and these things just make it worse. Trump doesn’t care about the struggles we go through and won’t quit until we are all bankrupt and either dead or wanting to die,” said Morgan.

An average of nearly 69 million Americans will receive social security benefits a month in 2025, most of them older people or those with disabilities.

The agency has been a significant target of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and its former leader Elon Musk, who has called social security “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time”.

Attacks on social security are not new – Republicans have long pushed to privatize social security and raise the retirement age to 69 years old – but the latest salvoes are having a profound impact on the agency and those who rely upon it.

South Africa’s government plans to offer a workaround of local Black ownership laws for Elon Musk’s Starlink internet service to operate in the country, Bloomberg News reported on Tuesday, citing three people familiar with the discussions.

The offer will come at a last-minute meeting planned for Tuesday night between Musk or his representatives and a delegation of South African officials traveling with president Cyril Ramaphosa, the report added, according to Reuters.

Musk objects to a law requiring that investors in the telecoms sector provide 30% of the equity in the South African part of the enterprise to Black-owned businesses.

President Donald Trump is expected to head to Capitol Hill on Tuesday to meet congressional Republicans as they aim to reach agreement on a sweeping tax-cut bill, with their narrow majority divided over the scope of spending cuts, reports Reuters.

Hardline Republicans in the US House of Representatives on Friday briefly blocked the advance of the bill – which nonpartisan analysts say could add $3tn to $5tn to the federal government’s $36.2tn debt – but relented on Sunday.

The bill would extend the 2017 tax cuts that were Trump’s signature first-term legislative achievement, and also add tax breaks on income from tips and overtime pay that were part of his populist push on the campaign trail.

According to Reuters, he is expected to try to unify the divided 220-213 House majority, including hardliners eager for deep spending cuts, moderates worried about protecting Medicaid and Republican lawmakers from coastal states eager to protect their constituents’ ability to deduct state and local taxes.

Republicans are looking to parliamentary maneuvres to bypass the objections of Democrats, who say the bill disproportionately benefits the wealthy and will take a deep bite out of social programs.

“I think he’ll urge people to get together and I think it’ll be an upbeat speech … I’m glad he’s coming,” said hardline Republican Representative Ralph Norman of South Carolina, one of the handful who voted against the bill on Friday.

House speaker Mike Johnson aims to pass the measure by Thursday, before the Memorial Day holiday weekend, setting the stage for the Senate to take it up next month.

“I’m very optimistic we will find the right equilibrium point to get this bill delivered,” Johnson told reporters on Monday, even as he acknowledged that some thorny issues were unresolved.

Hanging over Republicans is a move by credit-ratings firm Moody’s, which last week stripped the US federal government of its top-tier credit rating. It cited multiple administrations and Congress failing to address the nation’s growing debt. The Republican-controlled Congress so far has not rejected any of Trump’s legislative requests.

If the House passes the bill, the Senate will have to labor to pass a partisan bill that could differ significantly from the House’s.

“It’s not going to happen overnight. But it should happen in a timely way,” Senate majority leader John Thune of South Dakota told reporters on Monday, according to Reuters.

Republicans control the Senate by a 53-47 margin and at least one conservative, Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, has already stated reservations with the House’s Medicaid provisions.

The left-learning advocacy group Demand Justice plans to undetake a six-figure advertising effort as part of a new campaign to highlight Donald Trump’s continued attacks on the rule of law.

The adverting campaign, which will include online and print ads in national publications is part of a multi-pronged effort called “Justice Under Siege” will include polling, research, and educational initiatives focused on how the Trump administration is attacking the rule of law, a fundamental pillar of American society

“Since his inauguration, President Trump has repeatedly defied lawful court orders on issues ranging from illegally firing thousands of public servants to deporting lawful US residents without due process,” Maggie Jo Buchanan, the group’s executive director, said in a statement.

We’ll systematically document and expose this pattern of attacks on the rule of law, which is made even more alarming by congressional Republicans who aren’t just letting Trump get away with it, but actively participating through threats to defund courts, legislative stunts to take away the ability of the judiciary to check Trump’s overreach, and baseless impeachment efforts against judges whose rulings they disagree with.

The group has previously targeted major law firms who capitulated to Trump with posters around Washington DC near the offices of the firms in the US capitol.

Since taking office in January, Trump’s attacks on the rule of law have been brazen and unrelenting.

He has openly defied court orders halting deportations, called for a federal judge who ruled against him to be impeached, issued executive orders punishing law firms connected to political rivals, and used the power of his office to revoke the security clearance and investigate officials who spoke out against him.

There have also been an alarming rise in threats and harassment against federal judges in recent months as the president has escalated his attacks.

There has been little pushback from Republicans to Trump’s actions. Chief Justice John Roberts spoke out in defense of judges in March, saying:

For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate process exists for that purpose.

Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, the newest member of the court and one of its liberal members, said this monththat the attacks on judges “are not random. They seem designed to intimidate those of us who serve in this critical capacity.”

Qatar’s offer to give Donald Trump a $400m Boeing 747 airplane is a “normal thing that happens between allies,” prime minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani has said at an economic forum held in Doha.

Al Thani dismissed concerns about Qatar trying to buy influence with its key ally, after the Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer introduced a bill on Monday that would prevent any foreign aircraft operating as Air Force One amid ethical and security concerns.

“I hope that the United States looks to Qatar as a reliable partner in diplomacy that is not trying to buy influence,” Al Thani said.

Trump has shrugged off worries, saying it would be “stupid” to turn down the generous offer. He said the Boeing 747-8 would eventually be donated to his presidential library – a repository housing research materials from his administration, and that he had no plans to use it for personal reasons after leaving office.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday that the aircraft “will be accepted according to all legal and ethical obligations.”

“Retrofitting the Qatari plane would cost billions and could never even truly eliminate all catastrophic risks,” Schumer said on X.

The bill would prevent the US from spending taxpayer dollars to retrofit a foreign-owned plane for presidential use.

“There’s absolutely no amount of modifications that can guarantee it will be secure,” Schumer added.

In other developments:

• Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have held a rare phone call, which the US leader described as “excellent”, but the Kremlin refused to agree to a ceasefire in the war with Ukraine, despite pressure from Washington and European allies.

• Donald Trump lashed out at celebrities who endorsed Kamala Harris in late night and early morning screeds on Monday, saying he would investigate them to see if they were paid for the endorsements – repeating a common refrain on the right about the star-studded list of Harris supporters.

• At least 50 Venezuelan men sent by the Trump administration to a prison in El Salvador had entered the US legally, according to a review by the Cato Institute. Published by the libertarian thinktank on Monday, the report analyzed the available immigration data for only a portion of the men who were deported to El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot), and focuses on the cases where records could be found.

• Donald Trump’s administration can end legal protections that have shielded about 350,000 Venezuelans from potential deportation, the supreme court ruled on Monday. America’s highest court granted a request by Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, to revoke temporary protected status (TPS) for the Venezuelans while an appeal proceeds in a lower court.

• US representative LaMonica McIver, a Democrat, was charged with assaulting federal agents after a clash outside an immigration detention center in New Jersey, the state’s federal prosecutor announced on Monday.

• The former FBI director James Comey has brushed off criticism about a photo of seashells he posted on social media, saying it is “crazy” to think the messaged was intended as a threat against Donald Trump. “I posted it on my Instagram account and thought nothing more of it, until I heard … that people were saying it was some sort of a call for assassination, which is crazy,” Comey said in interview on MSNBC.

• The Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, who was released only weeks ago from federal detention, has crossed the graduation stage to cheers from his fellow graduates. The Palestinian activist was arrested by immigration authorities in Colchester, Vermont, while attending a naturalization interview.

• Donald Trump has signed into law the Take It Down Act, a measure that imposes penalties for online sexual exploitation that Melania Trump helped usher through Congress.