South African president Cyril Ramaphosa arrives at White Home for talks with Trump
Donald Trump has simply greeted the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa on the White Home, the place the 2 leaders will maintain bilteral talks anticipated to deal with commerce and tariffs, but in addition on Trump’s notion of South Africa’s remedy of its white Afrikaner minority.
Key occasions
Trump strikes on swiftly to take the subsequent query and Ramaphosa doesn’t get an opportunity to reply to that.
Trump says “many individuals really feel they’re being persecuted” and he floats that buzzword “genocide” as he talks about white farmers “fleeing South Africa”.
And we’re straight in with a query for Trump about why the US ought to admit white Afrikaners as “refugees” when others from locations equivalent to Venezuela, Afghanistan and Haiti are having protected standing revoked.
Trump assaults NBC Information as faux information.
He then says: “They are saying there’s plenty of unhealthy issues happening in Africa and that’s what we’re going to be discussing immediately.”
He denies that the US isn’t letting others in, citing unlawful immigration through the southern border and his typical tropes about what sort of folks they’re.
Ramaphosa says he needs to “recalibrate relations”, saying the 2 have geopolitical points to debate and provides that he needs to debate with Trump South Africa’s vital minerals.
Ramaphosa says South Africa and the US are “longstanding companions” and he needs to “reset” the connection in mild of Trump’s commerce bulletins.
US formally accepts present of luxurious airplane from Qatar – New York Instances
The US has formally accepted the extremely controversial present of a luxurious jet from the Qatari royal household, in line with the New York Instances.
The Air Power has been requested to find out a technique to quickly improve it so it for use as a brand new Air Power One.
We’ll carry you extra on this as we get it.
Trump has begun this assembly with some (backhanded?) compliments for Ramaphosa, who he says is “revered in some circles, in others a bit of bit much less revered”.
He provides the South African president is “thought of controversial in some circles”.
After complimenting South African’s golfers, Trump says the 2 leaders can be discussing “some belongings you’ve learn within the media” together with the G20, and says: “We’ll see if we can assist on some issues in South Africa.”
This Oval Workplace assembly has the potential go full Zelenskyy, famous Politico this morning, given the months-long feud that has been brewing between Trump and Ramaphosa on various points.
You’ll do not forget that final week the Trump administration admitted 49 white Afrikaners to the US as refugees, with Trump repeating the falsehood that South Africa’s white minority faces “genocide” at house, a declare echoed by South African-born Elon Musk. Trump will little question press the South African president on this problem immediately. Per the Washington Submit:
Trump has for years centered on the plight of Afrikaners descended from the colonists who constructed and led the nation’s brutal apartheid regime. Trump’s deal with South Africa’s relationship to its White minority seems to heart on a brand new regulation that permits the federal government to expropriate land with out compensation in uncommon circumstances — a measure leaders have solid as a ‘ethical, social and financial crucial’ meant to assist dismantle the legacy of racial apartheid.
Cyril Ramaphosa himself has mentioned the Trump administration has “got the wrong end of the stick” on this issue of the legacy of the racial injustice of apartheid and his authorities’s efforts to rebalance South African society within the face of inequalities that persist three many years after white minority rule ended.
Certainly, the Trump administration has taken various aggressive actions on South Africa since Trump returned to energy, which Politico notes embody expelling its ambassador, ending all US assist to the nation, and threatening to boycott the G20 summit that can be hosted by the nation later this yr.
What’s extra, the GOP extra typically has taken problem with South Africa’s efforts to carry Israel to account for its assault on Gaza, through its case in opposition to Israel on the UN’s Worldwide Court docket of Justice which alleges that Israel has dedicated genocide in Gaza.
It’s certain to be fascinating, and I’ll carry you all the important thing traces right here.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa arrives at White Home for talks with Trump
Donald Trump has simply greeted the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa on the White Home, the place the 2 leaders will maintain bilteral talks anticipated to deal with commerce and tariffs, but in addition on Trump’s notion of South Africa’s remedy of its white Afrikaner minority.
Republican Home speaker Mike Johnson and conservatives from the Home Freedom Caucus will go to the White Home this afternoon over Donald Trump’s tax and immigration invoice, Related Press reviews.
Members of the Home Freedom Caucus mentioned progress is being made towards an settlement, however that they aren’t prepared but to help the bundle.
Andy Harris, a Maryland congressman and the group’s chair, mentioned the White Home had provided a proposal late on Tuesday that may be acceptable to his members, however that he didn’t suppose the bundle could be accomplished by Wednesday. “The runway is brief,” he informed reporters.
Chip Roy, a Texas congressman and one other member of the far-right caucus, mentioned “there’s an extended technique to go”.
Maya Yang
The justice division has reportedly opened a legal investigation into Andrew Cuomo, the previous New York governor and present frontrunner within the New York Metropolis mayoral race.
The investigation was launched after Republicans accused Cuomo of mishandling the state’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic, multiple outlets reported on Tuesday.
In a legal referral made by James Comer, a Republican consultant of Kentucky and chair of the Home committee on oversight and authorities reform, Comer really helpful Cuomo be “charged with making false statements to Congress”, saying that Cuomo lied on “quite a few events about materials points of New York’s Covid-19 nursing house catastrophe and the following cover-up”.
Cuomo confronted widespread calls for his resignation in February 2021 after allegations emerged that his administration was underreporting Covid-19-related deaths throughout the state’s nursing properties by as a lot as half.
The US military will change the data of transgender troopers to indicate solely their intercourse at beginning, in line with a report.
The military considers an individual’s intercourse to be “unchanging throughout an individual’s life”, in line with an inside memo seen by Reuters. It states:
Commanders will take rapid measures to replace personnel data and administrative techniques to replicate organic intercourse for all people.
The memo states that pronoun use when referring to people “should replicate their organic intercourse”, and that entry to “intimate areas” can be decided by a person’s organic intercourse.
The transfer is the newest by the Trump administration taking purpose at trans members of the navy regardless of years of service alongside all the opposite 2 million US troops.
Right here’s extra on the Trump administration’s acknowledgment that it deported eight migrants after reviews of a migrant flight to South Sudan.
In a briefing on Wednesday, immigration authorities mentioned the eight migrants had been convicted of crimes in the US, the Related Press reported.
The eight males had been from Cuba, Laos, Mexico, Myanmar, Vietnam and South Sudan, homeland safety officers mentioned, Reuters reported.
Authorities mentioned they’d been convicted of homicide, armed theft and different severe crimes, in line with Reuters. It cites homeland safety spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin as saying:
We performed a deportation flight from Texas to take away among the most barbaric, violent people illegally in the US. These are the monsters that the district decide is attempting to guard.
Immigration authorities refused to say what the migrants’ last locations could be, however mentioned their house international locations had refused to obtain the migrants.
US district decide Brian E Murphy in Massachusetts ordered an emergency listening to on Wednesday after immigrant rights advocates accused the Trump administration of deporting a couple of dozen migrants from international locations together with Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan in violation of a court docket order.
Decide Murphy dominated that the Trump administration must retain custody and control of these “at present being eliminated to South Sudan or to another third nation, to make sure the sensible feasibility of return” if he finds such removals had been illegal.
Trump official says US in search of to deport eight severe criminals however declines to verify South Sudan vacation spot
A homeland safety official mentioned on Wednesday that the US is in search of to deport eight migrants convicted of significant crimes, Reuters reviews, however declined to verify an allegation raised in federal court docket that the deportees had been certain for South Sudan.
We’ll carry you extra on this as we get it.
Fellow lawmakers have known as Gerry Connolly, who died this morning, a tireless public servant, and famous his work in latest months as his constituents – many tied to the federal authorities – grappled with cuts from the Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Doge activity pressure.
“Whilst he battled a tough most cancers analysis, Rating Member Connolly continued to push again in opposition to the unprecedented assaults on the federal employees in his district and throughout the nation,” Home Democratic chief Hakeem Jeffries mentioned in a press release.
Virginia’s Republican governor Glenn Youngkin additionally provided his condolences in a put up on X: “His many years of public service replicate a deep dedication to Virginia.” He didn’t say what steps could be taken to fill the Home seat.
We’re deeply saddened by the passing of Congressman Gerry Connolly. His many years of public service replicate a deep dedication to Virignia. Suzanne and I ship our heartfelt prayers to his household, mates, and all who mourn his loss.
— Glenn Youngkin (@GlennYoungkin) May 21, 2025
US abandons police reform accords sought over deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and seeks to retract prior findings of wrongdoing by police departments
The US justice division is abandoning efforts to safe court-approved settlements with Minneapolis and Louisville, regardless of its prior discovering that police in each cities routinely violated the civil rights of black folks, Reuters reviews.
Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant lawyer common for the division’s civil rights division, mentioned in a press release that her workplace will search to dismiss the pending litigation in opposition to the 2 cities and retract the division’s prior findings of constitutional violations.
Overbroad police consent decrees divest native management of policing from communities the place it belongs, turning that energy over to unelected and unaccountable bureaucrats, usually with an anti-police agenda.
She additionally introduced that the division can be closing out investigations and retracting prior findings of wrongdoing in opposition to the police departments in Phoenix, Arizona, Memphis, Tennessee, Trenton, New Jersey, Mount Vernon, New York, Oklahoma Metropolis, Oklahoma and the Louisiana state police.
The transfer comes 4 days earlier than the 25 Might five-year anniversary of the demise of George Floyd, a black man who was murdered in Minneapolis by Derek Chauvin, a white police officer who knelt on his neck as Floyd repeatedly pleaded that he couldn’t breathe. His killing, in addition to the killing of Breonna Taylor who was shot to demise by Louisville Police executing a no-knock warrant, sparked worldwide protests about racially-motivated policing practices through the last yr of Donald Trump’s first time period.
Louisville and Minneapolis had been the 2 most high-profile cities to be investigated through the Biden administration for systemic police abuse, and had been the one two cities that agreed in precept to enter right into a court-approved settlement with the DOJ often called a consent decree. Minneapolis additionally individually entered an identical kind of settlement with the state of Minnesota to reform its police practices.
Congress approved the justice division to conduct civil investigations into constitutional abuses by police, and the civil rights division launched 12 such “sample or apply” investigations into police departments together with Phoenix, New York Metropolis, Trenton, Memphis and Lexington, Mississippi. However throughout these 4 years it didn’t enter into any court-binding consent decrees, a difficulty that authorized consultants warned might put the division’s police accountability work liable to being undone.
Beneath Dhillon’s management, the civil rights division has misplaced greater than 100 of its attorneys by deferred resignation agreements, demotions and resignations. And final month, she demoted senior attorneys who dealt with police abuse investigations to different low-level assignments, equivalent to dealing with public data requests or adjudicating inside discrimination complaints.
These strikes are a part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to upend the civil rights division’s traditions of pursuing circumstances to guard the civil rights of among the nation’s most weak and traditionally disenfranchised populations.
Since January, it has paused probes of alleged police abuse, launched its first investigation into whether or not Los Angeles violated gun rights legal guidelines, and following Trump’s lead, modified the division’s stance on transgender rights and probed alleged antisemitism at US faculties involving pro-Palestinian protesters.
The division additionally lately ended a decades-old college desegregation order in Louisiana that took place within the wake of the supreme court docket’s Brown v. Board of Schooling case.
Decide orders US officers to look in court docket to reply questions on deportations to South Sudan
A federal decide has ordered US officers to look at an emergency listening to immediately to reply questions on their obvious deportation of immigrants to South Sudan and different international locations, The Related Press reviews.
US district decide Brian E Murphy in Massachusetts dominated late on Tuesday that the Trump administration must retain custody and control of these “at present being eliminated to South Sudan or to another third nation, to make sure the sensible feasibility of return” if he finds such removals had been illegal. Attorneys for the immigrants mentioned the administration seems to have begun deporting folks from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan despite a court order restricting removals to other countries.
The decide left the main points to the federal government’s discretion, however mentioned he expects the migrants “can be handled humanely”.
Attorneys for the migrants informed the decide that immigration authorities could have despatched as many as a dozen folks from a number of international locations to components of Africa. The attorneys say that violates a court docket order that folks have a “significant alternative” to argue that sending them to a rustic exterior their homeland would threaten their security.
The obvious elimination of 1 man from Myanmar was confirmed in an electronic mail from an immigration official in Texas, in line with court docket paperwork. He was knowledgeable solely in English, a language he doesn’t communicate nicely, and his attorneys realized of the plan hours earlier than his deportation flight, they mentioned.
A girl additionally reported that her husband from Vietnam and as much as 10 different folks had been flown to Africa on Tuesday morning, attorneys from the Nationwide Immigration Litigation Alliance wrote.
The attorneys requested Murphy for an emergency court docket order to forestall the deportations.
Murphy beforehand discovered that any plans to deport folks to Libya with out discover would “clearly” violate his ruling, which additionally applies to individuals who have in any other case exhausted their authorized appeals.
The decide summoned US officers to court docket immediately to determine the migrants impacted, tackle when and the way they realized they might be eliminated to a 3rd nation and what alternative they got to boost a fear-based declare. He additionally dominated that the federal government should present details about the whereabouts of the migrants apparently already eliminated.
South Sudan’s police spokesperson main common James Monday Enoka informed AP on Wednesday that no migrants had arrived within the nation and that in the event that they do, they might be investigated and once more “redeported to their appropriate nation” if discovered to not be South Sudanese.
The state division’s annual report on South Sudan, revealed in April 2024, says “important human rights points” embody arbitrary killings, disappearances, torture or inhumane remedy by safety forces and intensive violence primarily based on gender and sexual id.
South Sudan’s diplomatic relations with the US grew tense in April when a deportation row led to the revocation of visas and a ban on South Sudanese nationals.
Trump nominates Darryl Nirenberg as new US ambassador to Romania
Donald Trump has chosen Darryl Nirenberg, a lawyer and former Senate staffer, to function the subsequent US ambassador to Romania, Reuters reviews.
The White Home and state division have but to touch upon the result of Romania’s presidential election on Sunday, which was received by the centrist mayor of Bucharest, Nicusor Dan, who defeated a far-right candidate.
Nirenberg, a longtime Washington lawyer at present at Steptoe LLP regulation agency, was chief of workers for late Republican senator Jesse Helms and was a counsel for the Senate international relations committee.
The nomination requires approval by the Senate.
