Canada's new prime minister, Mark Carney, is meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, a week after winning the job with a promise to confront the increased aggression shown by Trump.
As the two countries struggle to resolve Trump's trade war, the U.S. displayed his unique mix of graciousness and discourtesy. Shortly before Carney's arrival, Trump said on social media that the United States didn't need "ANYTHING" from its northern neighbor — a theme he revisited in the Oval Office alongside efforts to show warmth.
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Asked about reports that Trump's team was reaching a deal that would limit the tariffs on goods from the United Kingdom, the president showed no awareness of the potential terms.
"They're offering us concessions?" Trump told reporters. "I hope so. ... They do want to make a deal very badly."
Trump has previously said that his leverage in talks would be U.S. consumers, but he also appeared to suggest on Tuesday that foreign countries would also start buying more American-made goods.
"I think that the United Kingdom, like every other country, they want to, they want to be, go shopping in the United States of America."
When asked about the airstrikes India launched in Pakistani-controlled territory, Trump said he'd just heard about it an said, "It's a shame."
"I guess people knew something was going to happen based on a little bit of the past," Trump said. "They've been fighting for a long time. They've been fighting for many, many decades. And centuries, actually, if you really think about it."
He added: "I just hope it ends very quickly."
"As of today, it's 21, three have died," Trump said of the hostages being held by Hamas. He added, "There's 21 plus a lot of dead bodies" and that authorities were working to recover the remains of the deceased.
The president's comments came as Israel approved plans on Monday to seize the Gaza Strip and to stay in the Palestinian territory for an unspecified amount of time.
If implemented, the move would vastly expand Israel's operations there and likely draw fierce international opposition.
The costs of the U.S. munitions used against Houthi rebel targets in Yemen since March 15 totaled more than $750 million, a U.S. official said.
The Trump administration has dropped more than 2,000 munitions on more than 1,000 targets, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide additional details on the strikes.
Trump said earlier Tuesday that he's ordering a halt to the U.S. airstrikes.
The total is only a fraction of the overall price of the operation. It doesn't account for the costs of operating two aircraft carriers, their accompanying warships or the flight hours of the aircraft.
It also doesn't include the Houthis destroying seven U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drones, at a cost of more than $30 million apiece, or the loss of an F/A-18 fighter jet and tug from the carrier USS Harry S. Truman when it maneuvered to avoid a Houthi missile and the jet fell off the carrier.
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Associated Press reporter Tara Copp contributed.
President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Vice President JD Vance participated in an Oval Office swearing-in ceremony for Witkoff, who is a senior adviser and special envoy for the president.
Witkoff, a lawyer and friend of Trump's, was initially brought in to help the administration on Middle East matters. But Witkoff's portfolio has expanded to helping end the Russia-Ukraine war as well as negotiating the release of hostages in Gaza and the return of a detained American.
Trump is noting that the G7, a group of the world's leading industrialized democracies, used to be the G8 before Russia's membership was revoked.
Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump noted that the U.S. will be hosting an upcoming G7 summit. He referenced Russia's previous involvement in the group, and added that then-President Barack Obama was among the world leaders that pushed to remove the country.
Trump said he thought that decision was a "very foolish" because "it's a group of people sitting around a table. I've done it many times with them and you get to know it."
He even suggested that excluding Russia helped sparked its invasion of Ukraine, saying, "because of that, maybe, millions of people are dying."
But when asked if the U.S. would push to invite Russia when it hots the G7, Trump responded, "No, it's not good timing."
Trump says he has yet to give Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney the same "governor" nickname that he placed on Justin Trudeau, Carney's predecessor. The nickname was a slight meant to imply that Canada's leader would eventually be just one of many U.S. governors.
"As far as calling him Gov. Carney, no, I haven't done that yet, and maybe I won't," Trump said. "I did have a lot of fun with Trudeau. But I think this is, this is a big step. It's a good step up for Canada."
Trump added that the Tuesday meeting with Carney had been "great" and that he thought the ongoing relationship would be "strong."
In a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the bipartisan trio of Sens. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, and Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, expressed "deep concerns" over "federal actions that diminish the quality of and access to health care" at the Indian Health Service.
The senators said that while the IHS was itself exempt from a federal hiring freeze, it has impacted other positions that help the service provide health care and "continues to exacerbate existing clinical staffing issues." Last month, President Trump extended the hiring freeze to July.
The group also said it seems HHS was not taking substantial input from tribes on its actions, including the shifting of staff and services.
The three lawmakers called on Kennedy to "reevaluate all actions that jeopardize delivery of any health care services for American Indians and Alaska Natives."
Kennedy met with tribal leaders last month and called the service "a top priority."
Trump says fans traveling from abroad for the World Cup will have a "seamless experience," despite skepticism from some around the globe that they may not be welcome in the U.S.
The president said his government will ensure that "those traveling to America to watch the competition have a seamless experience during every part of their visit." Some overseas travelers have scrapped plans to come to the U.S. given the Trump administration's aggressive policies toward its allies and other nations.
But Trump insisted during a White House event celebrating the 2026 World Cup — which will be played in the U.S., Canada and Mexico — that officials were working "to make the World Cup an unprecedented success."
He added that the 2026 World Cup will be "the best-run soccer tournament the world has ever seen."
The U.S.-China Business Council wrote to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to express its deep concern over the White House's plan to review whether to suspend or end a tax treaty with China that has prevented double taxation on U.S. companies.
Should the tax treaty be terminated, U.S. companies doing business in China could face potentially higher tax rates and greater compliance burden in China, lessening or eliminating profits, the council wrote in the letter dated May 1. Ending the tax treaty also would disadvantage U.S. companies competing with others in the Chinese market, the council wrote.
A Feb. 21 White House memo said the U.S. would "use all necessary legal instruments to further deter United States persons from investing in" China's military-industrial sector.
A newly declassified U.S. intelligence assessment finds no evidence of coordination between the Tren de Aragua gang and senior Venezuelan officials.
The redacted memo contradicts statements that the Trump administration has used to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting Venezuelan immigrants it has labeled gang members.
"While Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States," the memo says.
A spokesperson for Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard rejected suggestions that the assessment contradicted Trump and noted the assessment did find links between the gang and mid- to lower-level Venezuelan officials.
Read the full memo here
Carney says he feels better about his country's relations with the United States after meeting with Trump, but he didn't see one meeting resolving the issues set off by Trump's tariff hikes.
"I wouldn't have expected white smoke coming out of this meeting," Carney told reporters after the Tuesday meeting, referencing the signal that a new pope has been selected.
Asked whether Carney had asked Trump to stop calling Canada the 51st U.S. state, Carney replied, "Yes, today." As to whether Trump would stop the rhetoric, Carney said, "I don't know. He's the president. He's his own person."
President Trump created the task force to prepare for the 2026 World Cup, which will bring the globe's premier soccer tournament to North America at a time when his on-again, off-again tariffs have ratcheted up tensions across the continent.
The task force, which Trump will chair, will coordinate the federal government's security and planning for the tournament, which is expected to draw millions of tourists to the United States, Canada and Mexico.
The 48-team tournament will pose challenges to the federal government when it comes to awarding visas to the players, officials and more than a million fans expected to visit.
Asked about his at-times-uncomfortable body language during his meeting with Trump, Carney said: "I'm glad that you couldn't tell what was going through my mind."
Carney at times appeared to be looking at the floor and occasionally struggled to get a word in during his Oval Office meeting with Trump — even sometimes raising his hand.
Asked about that by reporters afterward, the prime minister said, "I've been careful always to distinguish between wish and reality."
Carney noted that Trump again referenced the idea that Canada could somehow become the 51st U.S. state. Carney said afterward he personally made it clear Canada wasn't for sale and said it was "never going to happen."
"I look forward and not back, and I think we established a good basis today," Carney said.
In comments to reporters at the Canadian embassy in Washington after the closed-door meetings, Prime Minister Mark Carney said Tuesday's talks "marked the end of the beginning of the U.S. and Canada redefining" their joint cooperative relationship.
The prime minister said "now is the time to build" both at home and overseas, including with the U.S.
A federal judge has temporarily blocked the administration from dramatically shrinking the agencies, which fund libraries across the U.S., settle labor disputes with public sector workers and support state business contracting programs.
U.S. District Judge John McConnell Jr. in Rhode Island said Trump cannot unilaterally end the funding and programs for the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Minority Business Development Agency and the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service. All three agencies were established by Congress.
Trump's March 14 executive order directing them to cut as many staffers and programs as legally possible was "arbitrary and capricious," McConnell wrote in Tuesday's order.
"It also disregards the fundamental constitutional role of each of the branches of our federal government; specifically, it ignores the unshakable principles that Congress makes the law and appropriates funds, and the Executive implements the law Congress enacted and spends the funds Congress appropriated."
Twenty-one states sued over the executive order.
A retired U.S. brigadier general who failed to get through the confirmation process in the first Trump administration got renewed scrutiny for his political and anti-Islamic social media posts during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday.
Anthony Tata, a staunch supporter of the president, has been nominated to become the defense undersecretary for personnel. He was criticized for tweets in 2018 calling Islam the "most oppressive violent religion I know of," and calling former President Barack Obama a "terrorist leader" and referring to him as Muslim. The tweets were later taken down.
Read more about the hearing
Frank Bisignano will be taking over at a turbulent time for the agency, which provides benefits to more than 70 million Americans. He was confirmed in a 53-47 vote.
Bisignano's confirmation came after a monthslong series of announcements at the SSA of mass federal worker layoffs, cuts to programs, office closures and a planned cut to nationwide Social Security phone services, which were eventually walked back.
Many of the changes are driven by the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by billionaire adviser Elon Musk, who said this week that he is preparing to wind down his role with the administration.
The upheaval has made Social Security a major focus of Democrats, including former President Joe Biden, who said in his first public speech since leaving office that Trump has "taken a hatchet" to the program.
The State Department said the office will be folded back into the broader diplomatic mission.
The move will restore the Palestinian Affairs Unit at the embassy that President Trump created during his first term after moving the embassy from Tel Aviv and then closing down the consulate in Jerusalem, which had served as the main U.S. point of outreach to the Palestinians.
The Palestinian Affairs Unit reported directly to the U.S. ambassador to Israel, a move that was reversed in President Joe Biden's administration, which formalized it into an office that stepped up engagement with the Palestinians and reported directly to State Department headquarters in Washington.
"The United States remains committed to its historic relationship with Israel, bolstering Israel's security and securing peace to create a better life for the entire region," State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said. She did not mention how the change would affect relations with the Palestinian Authority.
The president's feud with America's elite universities is lending momentum to Republicans on Capitol Hill who want to increase a tax on wealthy college endowments by tenfold or more.
House Republicans already were considering a hike in the tax on college endowments' earnings from 1.4% to 14% as part of Trump's tax bill. As the president raises the stakes in his fight with Harvard, Columbia and other Ivy League schools, lawmakers are floating raising the rate as high as 21% in line with the corporate tax rate. It appears no decisions have been made.
Read more about college endowments
The White House confirmed in a statement that a review of Smithsonian properties is underway after an executive order calling for the removal of "improper ideology."
"We are undertaking a comprehensive review of the Smithsonian museums to assess alignment with the directives outlined in the executive order," Lindsey Halligan, a special assistant to the president, said in a statement. "We are committed to transparency and will share updates as the review progresses."
Officials did not elaborate on the details of how the review is being carried out.
A pastor and veteran of the Civil Rights movement who loaned books to the museum told The Associated Press that his items would be reviewed by a panel to determine whether they will remain at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.
The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed President Donald Trump's administration to enforce a ban on transgender people in the military, while legal challenges proceed.
The court acted in the dispute over a policy that presumptively disqualifies transgender people from military service.
The court's three liberal justices said they would have kept the policy on hold.
Just after beginning his second term in January, Trump moved aggressively to roll back the rights of transgender people. Among the Republican president's actions was an executive order that claims the sexual identity of transgender service members "conflicts with a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful, and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life," and is harmful to military readiness.
Dr. Vinay Prasad, a prominent critic of the pharmaceutical industry and the Food and Drug Administration, has been named to oversee the health agency's program for vaccines and biotech drugs.
FDA Commissioner Dr. Marty Makary announced the appointment Tuesday in a message to agency staff, praising Prasad's "long and distinguished history in medicine."
Prasad is the latest in a series of medical contrarians and critics of COVID-19 measures to join the federal government under President Trump.
Unlike political roles such as FDA commissioner, the job Prasad is stepping into has traditionally been held by an FDA career scientist. His appointment raises new questions about whether vaccines and other new therapies will face additional scrutiny from regulators.
Prasad replaces Dr. Peter Marks, FDA's longtime vaccine chief who resigned in March after clashing with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. over concerns about the safety of vaccinations.
Rwanda drew international attention, and some outrage, by agreeing to take in Britain's rejected asylum-seekers in a plan that collapsed last year. Now Rwanda says it is talking with the Trump administration about a similar idea — and it might find more success.
The negotiations mark an expansion in U.S. efforts to deport people to countries other than their own. It has sent hundreds of Venezuelans and others to Costa Rica, El Salvador and Panama but has yet to announce any major deals with governments in Africa, Asia or Europe.
Rwanda has argued that despite being one of Africa's most densely populated countries, it has space to help alleviate what many countries in Europe — and the United States — consider to be a growing problem with unwanted migrants.
Read more about Rwanda and third-country deportees
The U.S. trade deficit soared to a record $140.5 billion in March as consumers and businesses alike tried to get ahead of the president's latest and most sweeping tariffs, with federal data showing an enormous stockpiling of pharmaceutical products.
The deficit — which measures the gap between the value of goods and services the U.S. sells abroad against what it buys — has roughly doubled over the last year. In March 2024, Commerce Department records show, that gap was just under $68.6 billion.
According to federal data released Tuesday, exports for goods and services totaled about $278.5 billion in March, while imports climbed to nearly $419 billion. That's up $0.5 billion and $17.8 billion, respectively, from February trade.
Consumer goods led the imports surge — increasing by $22.5 billion in March. And pharma products in particular climbed $20.9 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis noted, signaling fears about future levies.
Republican Sen. Thom Tillis says he has told the White House he will not support Ed Martin, Trump's pick for top federal prosecutor in Washington, stalling the nomination in the Senate weeks before the temporary appointment expires.
The North Carolina Republican told reporters Tuesday that he met with Martin and opposes the nomination because of his defense of rioters who breached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Martin, a leading figure in Trump's campaign to overturn the 2020 election, spoke at a rally on the eve of the violent riot and represented defendants who were prosecuted for the attack.
"We have to be very, very clear that what happened on Jan. 6th was wrong," Tillis said. "It was not prompted. It was not prompted or created by other people to put those people in trouble. They made a stupid decision, and they disgraced the United States by absolutely destroying the Capitol."
For decades the federal government has positioned itself as committed to inclusive hiring and long-term retention across agencies. But as mass layoffs ripple through the federal workforce under President Trump's administration, disabled employees are among those being let go.
Amid the firings, rollbacks of accommodation guidance for businesses and skepticism of disability inclusion practices, advocates and experts wonder if the government's status as a "model employer" will hold true.
Trump has said he ended diversity, equity and inclusion programs because people should be hired based on work quality and merit alone.
However, under Schedule A, candidates already have to be qualified for the position with or without an accommodation. They don't get a job solely because they have a disability.
Disability advocates point to a slew of statements from Trump administration officials that indicate they view disabled workers as a liability.
Read more about disabled workers in government
Trump used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for only the fourth time in history, declaring that a Venezuelan gang had invaded the United States and its alleged members could be deported without regular legal process.
A Trump-appointed judge in Texas last week ruled the act can't be used against a gang. On Tuesday, District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein in New York came to the same conclusion.
The gang, Hellerstein wrote, "may well be engaged in narcotics trafficking, but that is a criminal matter, not an invasion or predatory incursion."
The appearance with Carney grew increasingly uncomfortable as it continued, with Trump repeatedly asserting that the United States has been "subsidizing Canada."
But the meeting never devolved like an earlier encounter with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
"We had another little blow up with someone else," Trump said. This is a very friendly conversation."
Trump, a former real estate developer, offered during the meeting with Carney to help former President Barack Obama build his presidential library.
Obama left office in 2017. His library is under construction in Chicago. Trump said it's taking too long and that, in and of itself, is "bad for the presidency."
"If he wanted help, I'd give him help," Trump said of Obama. "I'm a really good builder."
Trump also criticized California Gov. Gavin Newsom over a project to connect Los Angeles and San Francisco by rail, calling it "the worst cost overrun I've ever seen."