Trump to meet with the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg today
Maya Yang
Donald Trump will meet with Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, today.
In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump wrote:
Later today I will be meeting with, of all people, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor of The Atlantic, and the person responsible for many fictional stories about me, including the made-up HOAX on ‘Suckers and Losers’ and, SignalGate, something he was somewhat more ‘successful’ with.”
Trump went on to say that Goldberg is bringing along with him the Atlantic’s reporters Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker. He added that he was told by his representatives that the story the Atlantic is writing will be called “The Most Consequential President of this Century.”
I am doing this interview out of curiosity, and as a competition with myself, just to see if it’s possible for The Atlantic to be ‘truthful.’ Are they capable of writing a fair story on ‘TRUMP’?” he said in his Truth Social post.
In March, Goldberg found himself in the center of a scandal when White House national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added Goldberg into a private Signal group chat in which senior members of Trump’s administration – including vice president JD Vance and defense secretary Pete Hegseth – discussed attack plans on Yemen.
Following the Atlantic’s reporting of the group chat, Trump spun the scandal as not a major security breach by his administration but rather a media lapse.
Key events
Trump expected to sign deep-sea mining executive order on Thursday – report
Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday to advance the deep sea mining industry, the latest attempt to tap international deposits of nickel, copper and other critical minerals used widely across the economy, Reuters reports.
The order will likely fast track permitting for deep-sea mining in international waters and let mining companies bypass a United Nations-backed review process, Reuters previously reported.
Trump has taken several steps already to boost domestic production of critical minerals and combat China’s dominance of the industry that supplies the raw materials needed for a wide range of modern technologies and industries, especially those related to clean energy and defense.
Among other things, he has fast-tracked permitting on 10 mining projects across the United States and implemented an abbreviated approval process for mining projects on federal lands.
The International Seabed Authority – created by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the US has not ratified – has for years been considering standards for deep-sea mining in international waters, although it has yet to formalize them due to unresolved differences over acceptable levels of dust, noise and other factors from the practice.
Trump’s deep-sea mining order is likely to stipulate that the US aims to exercise its rights to extract critical minerals on the ocean’s floor, and to let miners bypass the ISA and seek permitting through the US Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s mining code, Reuters previously reported.
Federal judge blocks Trump from withholding federal funds from 16 ‘sanctuary’ cities and counties
A federal judge in San Francisco on Thursday blocked Donald Trump’s administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown.
Reuters reports that US district judge William Orrick issued the injunction at the request of 16 cities and counties nationally led by San Francisco that in a lawsuit filed in February argued that the administration was unlawfully trying to force local officials to cooperate with federal immigration arrests.
Those jurisdictions include the cities of Minneapolis, New Haven, Portland, St Paul, Santa Fe and Seattle. They argue that the administration is seeking to punish them for exercising their rights to limit the use of their resources for federal civil immigration enforcement.
The lawsuit challenged an executive order Trump signed that threatened to cut off federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions that limit or refuse to cooperate with federal immigration law enforcement, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
During his first term as president, Trump in 2017 signed a similar executive order targeting sanctuary jurisdictions. San Francisco sued then too, leading Orrick to block the policy in a ruling that was upheld by the San Francisco-based 9th US circuit court of appeals.
“Here we are again,” Orrick wrote on Thursday. He said a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Trump’s latest executive order was likewise warranted as the local jurisdictions had established that Trump’s order likely unconstitutionally imposed conditions on federal funding without congressional authorization and ran afoul of the localities’ due process rights.
The localities sued a day after the US Department of Justice sued the state of Illinois and the city of Chicago, seeking a court order blocking so-called sanctuary laws that the Democratic-led jurisdictions adopted that it said were interfering with Trump’s agenda.
Sanctuary laws prevent state and local law enforcement from assisting federal civil immigration officers. The Justice Department has since then also filed a lawsuit challenging a New York law that bars the Democratic-led state from sharing vehicle and address information with federal immigration authorities.
Trump says US and China met on Thursday to ease tariff war, refuting China’s insistence the two have not talked trade
The US and China held talks on Thursday morning to help resolve an ongoing trade war, Donald Trump said.
The US president told reporters at the White House on Thursday, declining to say to whom he was referring. “It doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China.”
Earlier on Thursday China had denied multiple assertions from the White House that the two countries were engaged in active negotiations over tariffs. Foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said China and the US had “not conducted consultations or negotiations on tariffs, let alone reached an agreement”. He added that reports to the contrary were “false”.
Trump had told reporters earlier in the week that “everything’s active” when asked if he was engaging with China, although this was contradicted when his treasury secretary said on Wednesday that there were no formal negotiations.
Both men have suggested this week that there might be an imminent softening of the US approach on trade issues with China, with Trump saying the taxes he has so far imposed on Chinese imports would “come down substantially, but it won’t be zero”. Scott Bessent added that there was an opportunity for a “big deal” between the US and China on trade, and that he expected a de-escalation of the “unsustainable” trade war.
Trump says he has his own deadline on Russian war in Ukraine and says he thinks Putin will listen to him
Donald Trump, who campaigned on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine on his first day in office, on Thursday said that he has his own deadline for the conflict and that Ukraine and Russia have to both negotiate.
“I have my own deadline,” he told reporters at ahead of his meeting at the White House with Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Støre.
Trump also said he thinks Russian president Vladimir Putin would listen to him on stopping the strikes on Ukraine, after urging Moscow’s leader in a Truth Social post earlier on Thursday to stop the attacks.
Asked by a reporter if he thought Putin would listen to him. “Yes,” Trump said, reports Reuters.
Trump Organization to fire legal adviser after Trump criticizes lawyer for Harvard work
As we reported earlier, Donald Trump has lashed out at a lawyer for the Trump Organization who is also representing Harvard University in its lawsuit against his administration, saying the company should fire him.
Trump’s post on his social media platform Truth Social did not name the attorney, but it appeared to describe prominent Washington lawyer William Burck of law firm Quinn Emanuel. The Trump Organization is run by Trump’s sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
Asked whether Burck still worked for the Trump Organization, Eric Trump said in a statement on Thursday:
I view it as conflict and I will be moving in a different direction.
He did not elaborate.
Burck is a lead attorney for Harvard in a lawsuit filed this week accusing the Trump administration of illegally moving to freeze more than $2bn in federal funding as part of a pressure campaign against the research institution and other schools.
In January, the Trump Organization said it retained Burck, a longtime Republican insider, as an outside ethics adviser to help develop and maintain internal policies to ward against conflicts of interest.
Burck and Quinn Emanuel did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Burck, a former White House lawyer for former president George W Bush, has also represented Steve Bannon and other Trump backers. Quinn Emanuel, with more than 1,000 lawyers, is a longtime law firm for Tesla CEO and Trump ally Elon Musk.
Harvard’s lawsuit is not the firm’s only case opposing the administration. Quinn Emanuel is separately representing wrongly deported man Kilmar Ábrego García in his lawsuit seeking his return from El Salvador to the US.
A hearing is scheduled for Monday in Boston in Harvard’s lawsuit against the Trump administration.
Trump to meet with the Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg today
Maya Yang
Donald Trump will meet with Jeffrey Goldberg, the Atlantic’s editor-in-chief, today.
In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump wrote:
Later today I will be meeting with, of all people, Jeffrey Goldberg, the Editor of The Atlantic, and the person responsible for many fictional stories about me, including the made-up HOAX on ‘Suckers and Losers’ and, SignalGate, something he was somewhat more ‘successful’ with.”
Trump went on to say that Goldberg is bringing along with him the Atlantic’s reporters Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker. He added that he was told by his representatives that the story the Atlantic is writing will be called “The Most Consequential President of this Century.”
I am doing this interview out of curiosity, and as a competition with myself, just to see if it’s possible for The Atlantic to be ‘truthful.’ Are they capable of writing a fair story on ‘TRUMP’?” he said in his Truth Social post.
In March, Goldberg found himself in the center of a scandal when White House national security adviser Mike Waltz accidentally added Goldberg into a private Signal group chat in which senior members of Trump’s administration – including vice president JD Vance and defense secretary Pete Hegseth – discussed attack plans on Yemen.
Following the Atlantic’s reporting of the group chat, Trump spun the scandal as not a major security breach by his administration but rather a media lapse.
Trump denies aid for Arkansas after storms that killed more than 40 people
Gloria Oladipo
Donald Trump has denied federal disaster relief funds to the people of Arkansas, which saw dozens of people die from a series of deadly tornados last month, so legislators are pleading for him to reconsider.
More than 40 people have been found dead after a series of tornados and severe storms hit Arkansas and neighboring states Mississippi and Missouri in March, according to CNN.
Given the scale of the disaster, the state’s Republican governor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, requested federal disaster aid as a part of an emergency declaration. That request was later denied by the Trump administration.
Reuters notes that the supreme court previously weighed in on Trump’s targeting of transgender troops during his first term in office, allowing the defense department in 2019 to enforce a more limited restriction that had let certain personnel diagnosed with gender dysphoria, after entering the military, to continue to serve.
In the Washington state case, seven active-duty transgender troops, a transgender man seeking to enlist and a civil rights advocacy group sued over the ban. In blocking the policy, US district judge Benjamin Settle called it an “unsupported, dramatic and facially unfair exclusionary policy” and that Trump’s administration had provided no evidence of any harm that had resulted from transgender individuals’ presence in the armed services.
The San Francisco-based ninth US circuit court of appeals declined the administration’s request to put Settle’s order on hold pending an appeal.
Trump has targeted the rights of transgender Americans in a series of executive orders including one stating that the US government will recognize only two sexes, male and female, and that they are “not changeable”. Trump also signed an order to end federal funding or support for healthcare that aids the transition of transgender youth and another one attempting to exclude transgender girls and women from female sports.
Trump administration asks US supreme court to allow enforcement of transgender military ban
Donald Trump’s administration asked the US supreme court on Thursday to allow implementation of his order banning transgender people from serving in the military, one of a series of sweeping directives by the president to curb transgender rights.
The justice department in a filing requested that the court lift Seattle-based US district judge Benjamin Settle’s nationwide order blocking the military from carrying out Trump’s prohibition on transgender service members while a legal challenge to the policy proceeds. Settle found that Trump’s executive order likely violates the US constitution’s fifth amendment right to equal protection under the law. The judge also said there was no evidence that trans troops harm military readiness.
Trump in January signed an executive order that cast the gender identity of transgender people as a “falsehood” and asserted that they are unable to satisfy the standards needed for service in the American armed forces. His order stated:
A man’s assertion that he is a woman, and his requirement that others honor this falsehood, is not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member.
The directive reversed a policy implemented under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden to allow transgender troops to serve openly in the American armed forces.
The Pentagon later issued guidance to implement Trump’s order, disqualifying from military service current troops and applicants with a history or diagnosis of gender dysphoria or who had undergone gender transition steps. The guidance allowed people to be considered for a waiver on a case-by-case basis if their service would directly support “war-fighting capabilities”.
Donald Trump said on Thursday that Boeing “should default China” for not taking the planes it committed to purchase.
“This is just a small example of what China has done to the USA, for years,” Trump said in a post on Truth Social.
Boeing is looking to resell potentially dozens of planes locked out of China by Trump’s tariff war after repatriating a third jet to the United States rather than store it without willing buyers.
Justice department brings first terrorism case against alleged high-ranking Tren de Aragua gang member
The justice department has charged an alleged high-ranking member of Tren de Aragua in Colombia with terrorism offenses, making the first case of its kind against a member of the gang the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization, the Associated Press reports.
The case is part of a broad push to target Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan gang that has been blamed for drug smuggling and violence in the US. Donald Trump has designated the gang a foreign terrorist organization and an invading force under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which has been used to justify the deportation of alleged gang members to a notorious El Salvador mega-prison.
The justice department’s application of a criminal statute primarily reserved in recent years for extremist groups such as the Islamic State and al-Qaida underscores the extent to which the administration is relying on a strikingly expansive definition of terrorism as it pursues a national security agenda focused on drug trafficking and illegal immigration.
“TdA is not a street gang – it is a highly structured terrorist organization that put down roots in our country during the prior administration,” attorney general Pam Bondi said in a statement. “Today’s charges represent an inflection point in how this Department of Justice will prosecute and ultimately dismantle this evil organization, which has destroyed American families and poisoned our communities.”
Jose Enrique Martinez Flores, 24, was charged in Texas federal court with drug offenses as well as conspiring to provide and providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization. Prosecutors described him as part of the “inner circle of TdA leadership”, and accused him of playing a role in the international distribution of cocaine.
He is in custody in Colombia awaiting further proceedings. The justice department said he faces up to life in prison.
The material support statute has long been a favored tool of the justice department to build prosecutions against people who are suspected of facilitating the operations of a militant group but not always carrying out violence themselves.
The addition of TdA to the state department list of foreign terrorist organizations enables the justice department to wield the statute against individuals suspected of supporting that group.
The announcement comes days after prosecutors announced what they said was the first case to bring federal racketeering charges, which were famously used to bring down the Mafia, against the Venezuelan street gang.
