Plan to accept luxury jet from Qatar draws criticism from allies and rivals
President Donald Trump is ready to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a gift from the ruling family of Qatar during his trip to the Middle East this coming week – and American officials say it could be converted into a potential presidential aircraft.
The Qatari government said a final decision had not been made, AP reports.
However, Trump defended the idea – what would amount to a US President accepting an astonishingly valuable gift from a foreign government – as a fiscally shrewd move for the country.
“So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,” Trump posted on his social media site on Sunday night. “Anybody can do that!”
ABC News reported that Trump will use the aircraft as his presidential plane until shortly before he leaves office in January 2029, when ownership will be transferred to the foundation overseeing his yet-to-be-built presidential library.
The gift was expected to be announced when Trump visits Qatar, according to ABC’s report, as part of a trip that also includes stops in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the first extended foreign travel of his second term.
Laura Loomer, a far-right ally of Trump, said accepting Qatar’s plane would be a “stain” on the administration, adding that Qatar “fund the same Iranian proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah who have murdered US Service Members.”
The Democratic National Committee said the move was proof of Trump using the White House for personal financial gain, while Democratic lawmakers blasted the plan as “wildly illegal,” and “corruption in plain sight.”
Key events
Qatar has offered to donate a plane to the United States and details are still being worked out, White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.
“The Qatari Government has graciously offered to donate a plane to the Department of Defense. The legal details of that are still being worked out,” Leavitt said in an interview with Fox News.
Treasury secretary Scott Bessent said on Monday he believed US and China negotiators will meet again in the coming weeks to discuss a more detailed trade agreement, but he was not clear on when another meeting might take place.
In an interview with CNBC after initial talks in Switzerland, Bessent said the US was not looking to decouple its entire economy from China but will aim to protect its steel and semiconductor industries.
President Donald Trump said he will push to cut prescription drug prices by 59%, but gave no further details about his plan to lower medicine costs ahead of a health-related event at the White House later on Monday.
On Sunday, Trump said he would sign an executive order to pursue what is known as “most favored nation” pricing or international reference pricing. The Republican president previously tried to implement such a program during his first term in office but was blocked by the courts, Reuters reported.
“Drug prices to be cut by 59%” Trump wrote on Monday in capital letters on his social media platform as global pharma shares traded lower. Shares of US drugmakers fell between 2% and 3% after his weekend comments before Trump’s latest post Monday morning.
Trump is scheduled to hold an event at the White House with US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr. at 9:30am.
Drugmakers have been expecting an order focusing on the federal Medicare health insurance program for people aged 65 and older and disabled people, according to four drug industry lobbyists who said they had been briefed by the White House.
The US-China trade deal does not cover “de minimis” exemptions for e-commerce firms, a source briefed on the talks told Reuters on Monday.
The administration of US president Donald Trump ended on 2 May US duty-free access for low-value shipments from China and Hong Kong, removing the “de minimis” exemptions availed of many e-commerce firms.
President Donald Trump on Monday said in a post on Truth Social that Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander will be released by Palestinian militant group Hamas.
Hamas said earlier that it would release Alexander.
Around two dozen California State University students began a hunger strike last week to protest starvation in Gaza due to Israel’s aid blockade, marking the latest act of political protest on college campuses.
The strikers – students from San Jose State, Sacramento State, San Francisco State and CSU Long Beach – began their fast on 5 May
“We, the students of San Francisco, Sacramento, Long Beach, and San Jose State Universities, are beginning a united hunger strike in solidarity with the two million Palestinians at risk of starvation in Gaza,” Students for Justice in Palestine wrote in a press release. They are also pushing the university system to divest from weapons manufacturers, among other stated goals.
The hunger strikes come as Israel’s aid blockade in Gaza passes its second month, and is facing mounting international criticism for the millions of Palestinians pushed toward famine, as well as Israel’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich’s, recent assertion that “Gaza will be entirely destroyed.”
Max Flynt, a hunger striker and undergraduate student at San Francisco State University, cited the aid blockade as a decisive factor for organizing the strike. Flynt sets up daily on the campus quad with other organizers and strikers under a “Hunger Strike for Gaza” canopy. Organizers hold educational workshops and strikers have their vitals taken every few hours, but do not stay overnight.
“Many of the forms of protests that were used last year, specifically the encampments, have become effectively illegal in the United States,” Flynt said. “If we were to put up a tent today, the police would be called on us almost immediately.”
The first 49 white South Africans deemed victims of racial discrimination and granted refugee status under an offer by president Donald Trump were flying to the US on Monday in a move deepening frictions between the two nations, Reuters reports.
The US government has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world but is prioritising Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers.
Giving refugee status to white South Africans has been met with a mixture of alarm and ridicule by South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic political issue it does not understand.
It comes at a time of heightened racial tensions in South Africa over land and jobs that has divided the ruling coalition.
The charter plane carrying the 49 from Johannesburg was expected to arrive at Washington Dulles airport on Monday morning.
“The government unequivocally states that these are not refugees,” South African foreign ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri told local broadcaster Newzroom Afrika.
“But we are not going to stand in their way.”
Plan to accept luxury jet from Qatar draws criticism from allies and rivals
President Donald Trump is ready to accept a luxury Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet as a gift from the ruling family of Qatar during his trip to the Middle East this coming week – and American officials say it could be converted into a potential presidential aircraft.
The Qatari government said a final decision had not been made, AP reports.
However, Trump defended the idea – what would amount to a US President accepting an astonishingly valuable gift from a foreign government – as a fiscally shrewd move for the country.
“So the fact that the Defense Department is getting a GIFT, FREE OF CHARGE, of a 747 aircraft to replace the 40 year old Air Force One, temporarily, in a very public and transparent transaction, so bothers the Crooked Democrats that they insist we pay, TOP DOLLAR, for the plane,” Trump posted on his social media site on Sunday night. “Anybody can do that!”
ABC News reported that Trump will use the aircraft as his presidential plane until shortly before he leaves office in January 2029, when ownership will be transferred to the foundation overseeing his yet-to-be-built presidential library.
The gift was expected to be announced when Trump visits Qatar, according to ABC’s report, as part of a trip that also includes stops in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the first extended foreign travel of his second term.
Laura Loomer, a far-right ally of Trump, said accepting Qatar’s plane would be a “stain” on the administration, adding that Qatar “fund the same Iranian proxies in Hamas and Hezbollah who have murdered US Service Members.”
The Democratic National Committee said the move was proof of Trump using the White House for personal financial gain, while Democratic lawmakers blasted the plan as “wildly illegal,” and “corruption in plain sight.”
Opening summary
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you the latest news lines.
We start with the news that China and the US have agreed a 90-day pause to the deepening trade war that has threatened to upend the global economy, with reciprocal tariffs to be lowered by 115%.
Speaking to the media after talks in Geneva, the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said both sides had shown “great respect” in the negotiations.
Bessent said: “The consensus from both delegations this weekend was neither side wants a decoupling”.
The 90-day lowering of tariffs applies to the duties announced by Donald Trump on 2 April, which ultimately escalated to 125% on Chinese imports, with Beijing responding with equivalent measures.
China also imposed non-tariff measures, such as restricting the export of critical minerals that are essential to US manufacturing of hi-tech goods.
The US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, said China’s retaliation had been disproportionate and amounted to an effective embargo on trade between the world’s two biggest economies.
For the full story, see here:
In other news:
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Hamas announced on Sunday that it will release the last living American hostage in Gaza, Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American soldier who was kidnapped on 7 October 2023. Trump confirmed the news in a social media post, writing that Alexander, 21, “is coming home to his family”, while thanking mediators Qatar and Egypt.
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A group of 49 white South Africans departed their homeland on Sunday for the United States on a private charter plane having been offered refugee status by the Trump administration under a new program announced in February. They are the first Afrikaners – a white minority group in South Africa – to be relocated after Trump issued an executive order in February accusing South Africa’s Black-led government of racial discrimination against them.
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Mass terminations and billions of dollars’ worth of cuts at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have gutted key programs – from child support services to HIV treatment abroad – and created a “real danger” that disease outbreaks will be missed, according to former workers. Workers at the HHS, now led by Robert F Kennedy Jr, and in public health warned in interviews that chaotic, flawed and sweeping reductions would have broad, negative effects across the US and beyond.
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The US transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, plans to reduce the number of flights in and out of the Newark Liberty international airport for the “several weeks”, as the facility – one of the country’s busiest airports – struggles with radar outages, numerous flight delays and cancellations due to a shortage of air traffic controllers.
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A group of Quakers were marching more than 300 miles from New York City to Washington DC to demonstrate against the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigrants. Organisers of the march say their protest seeks to show solidarity with migrants and other groups that are being targeted by Trump.
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Trump said on Sunday he would sign an executive order to cut prescription prices to the level paid by other high-income countries, an amount he put at 30% to 80% less. The White House did not immediately offer more details on how the plan would work.
