The Latest: Trump called Netanyahu ‘crazy’ and says Israel is complicating peace talks with Iran
President Donald Trump, in an interview released Wednesday, confirmed an earlier report that he criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “crazy," and says he's “a little bit perturbed” that Israel’s fighting with Hezbollah in Lebanon is holding back peace talks with Iran.
The Trump administration is sticking with a deal to permanently drop tax claims against Trump, an extraordinary flex of executive power that could help shield the president from further examination of his finances and legal conduct, even as it scraps a $1.8 billion fund to compensate the Republican president's allies amid a fierce political backlash.
Trump's endorsements helped end the political careers of two senators and a congressman deemed insufficiently loyal, but he couldn't lift Rep. Randy Feenstra to victory in Iowa’s Republican primary, setting up a Democratic opportunity to pick up a governorship. See other AP coverage of Tuesday's primary results here.
The Latest:
The Homeland Security secretary said his agency is ready to help protect security at World Cup games across the U.S., but still has “a lot of work to do” ahead of the first game June 12 in Los Angeles.
“I feel very comfortable where we’re at, and we feel like we have a zero-fail mission. But it’s going to be complicated,” Mullin told the House Committee on Homeland Security on Wednesday.
Millions of fans will be coming to the U.S., for the equivalent of “78 Super Bowls in 38 days,” he said, and “we have some very complicated countries that are going to be playing each other that have a tremendous amount of dislike against each other.”
He credited state and local officials at host sites for their cooperation with federal agencies, and said “I hope when FIFA is over, we can show that we can work together and continue to keep our cities and our streets safe.”
The secretary of state says he hopes the latest round of high-level political talks between Israel and Lebanon will result in a joint statement on ending hostilities.
In testimony before lawmakers that started Wednesday shortly after the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the U.S. began meeting at the State Department for a second day of negotiations, Rubio said the aim of the talks is to “produce a joint statement and an action plan on a track for security in that country, independent from Hezbollah, independent from nefarious influence.”
The conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, which is not participating in the talks, has become a major sticking point in efforts to end the war in Iran. Wednesday’s discussion is the fourth between the two countries and follows a meeting focused on security issues that was held at the Pentagon on Friday.
On the second day of back-to-back Capitol Hill hearings, Rubio was pressed by a senior Democrat on whether he warned Trump about the scope of Iran’s response if the U.S. were to strike.
“Did you warn President Trump, before the Iran war began, that this conflict would drive up cost on gas, food, travel and the president? Yes or no?” asked Rep. Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
“The president and the full administration was aware that there would be consequences to action,” Rubio responded. “But the consequences of Iran having a nuclear weapon were worse.”
Rubio’s comments come despite reporting that Trump and U.S. officials underestimated Iran’s retaliation to an attack, including its closure of the Strait of Hormuz and strikes on Gulf countries. The president himself has previously said no one thought Tehran would close the critical waterway.
Wyden questioned Bessent on whether the Trump administration would drop the IRS plan to confer audit immunity on Trump, as part of a settlement agreement to end the president’s $10 billion lawsuit against the IRS.
Wyden referred to acting Attorney General Todd Blanche’s Tuesday testimony to lawmakers that the Trump administration is scrapping plans for a $1.8 billion fund that would have compensated allies of the Republican president.
Wyden asked Bessent: “Does the IRS audit immunity given to Trump, his family, and his businesses still stand?”
“There’s continuing litigation and I’m unable to comment on ongoing litigation,” Bessent said.
Setting the tone for a hearing scheduled to examine Treasury’s budget, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said in his opening remarks that lawmakers would question U.S. Scott Bessent on the IRS plan to drop any probes of Trump, his family or the Trump organization over whether they have paid their fair share of taxes.
The administration has dropped plans to create a $1.8 billion fund to compensate the Republican president’s allies, but is sticking with a deal meant to resolve Trump’s $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. The U.S. is “forever barred and precluded” from examining or prosecuting Trump, his sons and the Trump organization’s current tax examinations, according to a one-page Justice Department document.
“Secretary Bessent owes the committee an explanation of what the Treasury knows about the dirty settlement, that’s because his department was involved from beginning to end,” Wyden said.
A prolonged disruption of energy supplies from the Middle East due to the Iran war would deal a severe blow to the global economy, sending some countries into recession and spreading inflation and higher unemployment, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a report Wednesday.
Hardest hit would be Asian economies that depend on crude oil, fuel and natural gas from the Persian Gulf, and poorer countries where people spend more of their incomes on fuel and food, the OECD said. The report analyzes two scenarios:
1. Prolonged disruption: Global growth slows from 3.4% last year to 2.1% this year and 1.8% in 2027, potentially pushing some economies into or close to recession.
2. Time-limited disruption, in which energy production and Gulf shipments start to return to pre-war levels in the middle of this year: Growth would slow to 2.8% this year and rebound to 3.1% next year.
Markwayne Mullin is in Congress again, this time in the House, after fielding fierce questions from skeptical Democratic senators over his short tenure leading Homeland Security.
As Mullin walked into the hearing room Wednesday, protesters in the hallway could be heard yelling that he’s an “embarrassment.”
Democrats slammed Mullin on Tuesday over his department’s immigration policies and accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement of mistreating detainees at a facility in New Jersey.
Mullin pushed back, saying that officers were following laws set forth by Congress and defended treatment of migrants at Delaney Hall.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio is facing questions from lawmakers for the first time this week since the Iran war was launched in late February.
The focus of Wednesday's House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing is the State Department budget. But it’s likely to veer into issues concerning the Iran war, arms sales to Taiwan and an Ebola outbreak in Africa.
When nearly all the scheduled musical performers pulled out of a concert series marking America’s 250th anniversary, Trump responded by making himself the headlining act of the Great American State Fair.
That put to rest any possible scenario where a president who has built his personal and political persona on seizing the spotlight might cede the stage to avoid overshadowing a celebration bigger than himself — like, for example, the World Cup, where he said he’ll present the golden trophy to the winning team.
From his reality shows to the hours he’s spent entertaining at events to his evident pride in showing off his properties to his overhaul of the White House, Trump can be a gracious, personable and highly watchable master of ceremonies. But he also tends to make every event about himself.
Asked in an interview if acting attorney general Todd Blanche would get the post full-time, Trump said, “I think he will.”
The president said his former personal attorney is doing a “very good job” at the Justice Department. He told the “Pod Force One” podcast that he did not have any other candidates in mind.
“I wanted to see how he’s received,” Trump said of Blanche. “And he’s done a very good job. But I’ve known him a long time.”
Blanche has been the deputy attorney general and became the acting leader of the Justice Department in April after the departure of Pam Bondi as attorney general.
Blanche would need to be nominated and confirmed by the Senate to shift from acting to the official attorney general.
The U.S. president said that Iran’s supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father, is “involved” in peace talks for ending the war.
“They have a lot of respect for him,” Trump said in an interview with The New York Post’s “Pod Force One.”
Trump said Khamenei is not doing well to do injuries sustained in an airstrike, but “they say he’s giving approval because that’s the way it has been for a long, long time.”
The president added, “We seem to be getting along quite well,” but said he had not previously thought about meeting with Khamenei until he was asked about the possibility in the interview.
Trump said the U.S. had gone through two “sets” of Iranian negotiators who were now gone, as well as some of the third set of Iranian negotiators.
The president said in a podcast interview that oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz could be blocked through the summer, as the extent of progress in peace talks with Iran remain unclear.
Trump said he thought it was “unlikely” that the strait would stay closed that long, but he acknowledged to The New York Post’s “Pod Force One” that the U.S. blockade stopping tankers with Iranian oil could go through the Labor Day holiday on Sept. 7.
“I don’t know. I mean, I think it could be (closed through Labor Day), but I think it’s unlikely. I think that we’ll have it. I think this will resolve itself fairly quickly,” Trump said.
Continued shortages of oil and natural gas could keep global prices elevated and inflict levels of inflation on the U.S. and other countries that could hamper growth.
The U.S. president confirmed an earlier Axios report that he criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as “f---ing crazy” in a Monday phone call, saying he was “a little bit perturbed” that Israel’s fighting of Hezbollah in Lebanon was holding back peace talks with Iran.
Trump has yet to show clear progress in talks to resolve the war with Iran and cement his goals of that country agreeing to abandon its development of nuclear weapons and reopening the Strait of Hormuz for oil and natural gas shipments.
“We’ve worked very well together. I like Bibi a lot. And I work very well with him,” Trump told The New York Post’s “Pod Force One.”
Trump has emphasized in the past that he wanted to be a president who brought peace, but his comments suggested his affinity with Netanyahu reflects their mutual connection over being on a war footing.
“I’m a wartime president,” Trump said. “He’s a wartime prime minister.”
If Democrats hope to compete in red-state Senate contests this fall, they may have to abandon their party’s nominees and rally around independents.
That’s one of the takeaways after voters on Tuesday finalized general election matchups in Montana and South Dakota, where little-known Democrats earned their party’s nominations. In both states, however, higher-profile independent candidates also qualified for the general election ballot.
It’s much the same in Idaho and Nebraska, which held Senate primaries last month. Democratic leaders in Nebraska are openly endorsing independent Dan Osborne over their party’s nominee, who has promised to drop out to make it easier for Osborne to win.
In Montana, independent Senate candidate Seth Bodnar, the former University of Montana president, looks like the strongest opponent to Republican Kurt Alme — on paper, at least. Bodnar raised more money than all of the five Democratic primary candidates combined. He’s even significantly outraised Trump-backed Alme.
For generations, the federal government enforced civil rights laws with an eye toward remedying historic, systemic discrimination against Black people and other people of color. The Justice Department pressed schools to desegregate. The Education Department worked to promote equal opportunity and held schools accountable for racial bias.
But under the Trump administration, efforts to address deep-rooted inequities for students of color are being cast as discriminatory against white students. Programs that have long withstood legal scrutiny are now quick to be deemed “ illegal DEI ” — diversity, equity and inclusion — by the White House. Schools that do not comply have faced threats to their funding, and in some cases, lost federal grants.
Civil rights attorneys describe the administration’s actions as a complete inversion of legal history.
The U.S. government has opened investigations or joined litigation over a wide range of efforts to address racial inequality. The Justice Department is investigating programs to increase the number of teachers of color in Rhode Island and Iowa. And grants to districts to train teachers or recruit school mental health workers have been discontinued for mentions of diversity in recruitment.
Trump signed an executive order on oversight of artificial intelligence Tuesday, less than two weeks after postponing a White House ceremony over his concerns that a similar policy could dull America’s technological edge.
The order establishes a framework for the federal government to vet the national security risks of the most advanced AI systems for up to a month before their public release. Participation by AI developers would be voluntary, the order says.
“Advanced AI capabilities make our Nation stronger, but also introduce new national security considerations that require coordinated action across executive departments and agencies,” the order says.
It was not immediately clear to what extent the order differed from the one Trump declined to sign on May 21.
The order says the government would have only 30 days to review an AI system, a shorter time frame than some in the industry were expecting. A longer time period might have been seen as too burdensome for a fast-moving and highly competitive industry.
The Trump administration is proposing that tariffs of 10% or more be imposed on products from dozens of major trading partners following a probe into imports of goods allegedly made with forced labor.
The report released early Wednesday by the U.S. Trade Representative said Canada, Mexico, Taiwan and the United Kingdom and some other countries and territories would face 10% additional tariffs for allegedly failing to enforce a forced labor import ban.
A 12.5% additional tariff would be imposed on China, Japan, India, South Korea, Brazil and Switzerland and dozens of other countries.
“The failure of our most important trading partners to address the importation of goods made with forced labor is unacceptable. This creates a dynamic where American workers are forced to compete globally on an unlevel playing field,” USTR Ambassador Jamieson Greer said in a statement.
He added that “each of our trading partners must do more to ensure that trade does not perversely encourage and entrench forced labor globally.”
The USTR said failure to prevent such imports is “unreasonable and burdens or restricts U.S. commerce.”
The Trump administration is scrapping plans for a $1.8 billion fund that would have compensated allies of the Republican president, the Justice Department’s top official said Tuesday in retreating from a program that faced a fierce political backlash that had threatened to stall key elements of the White House agenda.
“We are not moving forward with the fund, period,” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said in response to questions at a House hearing on the Justice Department budget.
“Not moving forward ever?” asked Rep. Grace Meng, a New York Democrat.
“Correct,” Blanche answered.
The blunt declaration marked an extraordinary and rare Trump administration turnabout in the face of mounting political opposition to a fund that officials said was meant to compensate people who believe they have been improperly targeted by the criminal justice system. Since the establishment of the fund two weeks ago, it’s been paused by a judge and lambasted by Democrats and Republicans alike, who said they were troubled by a lack of oversight and the potential for payouts to participants in the violent Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
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