Key occasions
Mike Pence rebukes Trump over tariffs and ‘wavering’ help for Ukraine
Robert Tait
Donald Trump’s tariffs policy will set off a “worth shock” and potential shortages, and result in public strain on him to vary his strategy, the previous vice-president Mike Pence has mentioned.
In one in every of his most wide-ranging critiques but on the insurance policies of the president he used to serve, Pence, speaking to CNN, derided the White Home’s “wavering” help for Ukraine and declared – in direct contradiction of repeated assurances from Trump – that President Vladimir Putin of Russia “doesn’t need peace”.
Pence’s feedback got here in an interview after receiving the John F Kennedy Profile in Braveness award in recognition of his refusal to bow to strain from Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election when he presided over Congress’s certification of the outcomes on 6 January 2021.
The vice-president’s willpower to hold out his constitutional position and certify Joe Biden’s victory presaged an assault on the US Capitol by a violent mob, who chanted “dangle Mike Pence”, because the vice-president was spirited to security by safety personnel.
Pence informed CNN’s Kaitlan Collins that Trump’s determination to pardon about 1,600 convicted rioters after he returned to workplace in January “despatched the flawed message”.
“I used to be deeply disillusioned to see President Trump pardon folks that engaged in violence in opposition to regulation enforcement officers that day,” he mentioned.
US cancels FDA bargaining session over layoffs, union says
The Trump administration final week canceled the primary bargaining session scheduled with the US Meals and Drug Administration’s largest employees union since its capacity to symbolize authorities employees was quickly restored by a federal court docket, in accordance one of many union’s bosses.
President Donald Trump in March signed an government order that excluded companies from collective bargaining obligations that he mentioned “have as a major operate intelligence, counterintelligence, investigative, or nationwide safety work.”
The order utilized to the FDA, in addition to companies underneath the Justice, State, Protection, Treasury and Veterans Affairs departments, Reuters stories.
Senior US district decide Paul Friedman on 25 April issued an injunction to dam the chief order from being applied, pending the end result of a lawsuit by the Nationwide Treasury Workers Union (NTEU), which represents about 160,000 federal workers together with as many as 9,000 FDA employees.
Robert Mackey
The US Division of Schooling knowledgeable Harvard College on Monday that it was ending billions of {dollars} in analysis grants and different assist except the varsity accedes to a listing of calls for from the Trump administration that might successfully cede management of the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college to the federal government.
The information was delivered to Dr Alan Garber, Harvard’s president, in a deeply partisan letter from Linda McMahon, the schooling secretary, which she additionally posted on social media.
“This letter is to tell you that Harvard ought to not search grants from the federal authorities, since none shall be supplied,” McMahon wrote.
The primary motive for the crackdown on Harvard is the varsity’s rejection of a long list of demands from the Trump administration’s antisemitism taskforce, prompted by campus protests in opposition to Israel’s brutal navy marketing campaign in Gaza following the Hamas-led assaults of seven October 2023. McMahon additionally accuses the college of “a scientific sample of violating federal regulation”.
As Garber explained in a message to the Harvard neighborhood final month, the college determined to sue the federal authorities solely after the Trump administration froze $2.2bn in funding, threatened to freeze an extra $1bn in grants, “initiated quite a few investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the schooling of worldwide college students, and introduced that it’s contemplating a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt standing”.
The federal government’s “sweeping and intrusive calls for would impose unprecedented and improper management over the college”, Garber wrote.
Opening abstract
Good morning and welcome to our US politics weblog as Donald Trump prepares to welcome his newly elected northern counterpart, Canada’s Mark Carney, to the White Home.
At 11.30am ET the president is because of welcome Carney and the occasion will even embody talks and a lunch. That is unlikely to be an easy assembly, Trump’s tariffs on Canada and even solutions that it may develop into the “51st state” created anger over the border that helped propel Carney to power.
In his victory speech only a week in the past, Carney claimed that Trump wanted to “break us, in order that America can personal us”, including: “That can by no means, ever occur.”
The next day they did have what Trump described as an “extraordinarily productive” name and later he mentioned wished a “excellent relationship” with Canada. In fact, with Trump, issues are by no means predictable, so let’s see how at present performs out.
Amid the talks, prone to centre on the tariff subject, the pair appear unlikely to debate one other main topic we’ll be protecting at present – Trump’s move to block grant funding for Harvard until it meets his demands.
The Canadian economist and central banker is a Harvard graduate and served on the Board of Overseers, Harvard’s second-highest governing physique, earlier than resigning earlier this yr to take up his position main the Liberal occasion.
In different information:
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Donald Trump has mentioned he’s directing the administration to reopen and develop Alcatraz, the infamous former jail on an island off San Francisco that has been closed for greater than 60 years. California Democrats known as the concept “absurd on its face” and a part of the US president’s technique of political distraction. Different officers pointed to the closure of the jail complicated in 1963, recognized for its brutal situations, resulting from operational expense and the excessive variety of (unsuccessful) escape makes an attempt.
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Trump introduced his 100% tariff on movies “coming into our country produced in foreign lands” at some point after assembly with actor Jon Voight to debate his proposals to convey movie manufacturing again to the US – which solely instructed that tariffs may very well be used “in sure restricted circumstances”.
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Donald Trump’s tariffs policy will set off a “worth shock” and potential shortages, and result in public strain on him to vary his strategy, the previous vice-president Mike Pence has mentioned. In one in every of his most wide-ranging critiques but on the insurance policies of the president he used to serve, Pence, speaking to CNN, derided the White Home’s “wavering” help for Ukraine and declared – in direct contradiction of repeated assurances from Trump – that president Vladimir Putin of Russia “doesn’t need peace”.
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Trump mentioned Moscow and Kyiv need to settle the conflict in Ukraine and that Russian president Vladimir Putin was extra inclined in direction of peace after the current fall within the worth of oil. “I feel Russia with the value of oil proper now, oil has gone down, we’re in a superb place to settle, they need to settle. Ukraine needs to settle,” Trump informed reporters within the Oval Workplace on Monday.
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Mass protests have been called for 14 June, when Donald Trump plans to throw himself a navy parade celebration.
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US intelligence officers concluded final month that the federal government of Venezuela is “most likely not directing” the actions of Tren de Aragua gang members inside america. That undermines Trump’s declare that the Alien Enemies Act empowers him to deport suspected gang members.
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The US Division of Schooling knowledgeable Harvard College on Monday that it was ending billions of {dollars} in analysis grants and different assist except the varsity concedes to a listing of calls for from the Trump administration that might successfully cede management of the nation’s oldest and wealthiest to the federal government.
