More stories

  • in

    Creating art under Trump will become harder but it will remain vital | Seph Rodney

    One of the most pernicious effects of a bully’s intimidation is making victims afraid of being true to themselves, because it’s the essential and authentic parts of them that incite the bully’s contempt.During his first week in office Donald Trump issued a blitzkrieg of executive orders. Among them, Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity and Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing.” According to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, among the things these orders direct the administration’s agencies and staff to do are:
    Terminate diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, positions, and programs in the federal government; terminate equity-related grants and contracts; and repeal prior executive orders designed to ensure equal opportunity in the workplace, including a decades-old executive order from the Johnson Administration … ”
    In the art scene these moratoriums had almost immediate consequence. Cheryl Edwards, a visual artist and curator based in Washington DC, had been working on an exhibition titled Before the Americas which was to be mounted at the Art Museum of the Americas, a cultural venue managed by the Organization of American States (OAS), an organization established in 1948 that includes all 35 independent nations of the western hemisphere. In 2021 Edwards was approached by the current museum director, Adriana Ospina, and the previous director, Pablo Zúñiga, to, in her words, curate an exhibition to include African American artists in the DC area. They agreed on a framework engaging the question “Because we are people in a society that existed before slavery, how does that manifest itself in the work of artists in this area and the work of artists in their collection?” She was given a budget of $20,000 (with a $5,000 curator’s fee), the money being allocated by the previous US ambassador to the OAS under Joe Biden, Francisco O Mora. Edwards’s show was scheduled to open on 21 March, but she was informed by Ospina on 6 February that her show was “terminated”. Edwards attests this happened “because it is DEI”.Similarly, Andil Gosine, a Canadian artist and curator, who is also a professor of environmental arts and justice at York University in Toronto, invested several years into an exhibition at the same museum. His show, titled Nature’s Wild with Andil Gosine, was essentially a collaborative project with 50 artists, writers and technicians exploring the themes he had examined in his book of the same title. It was to include artwork by a dozen artists from across the Americas, many of them LGBTQ+ people of color. He received a phone call from Ospina on 5 February informing him that the show had been canceled, despite none of the funding for it coming from OAS (that came from Canada Council). For him that that was “heartbreaking news”. He says: “This is the most time, money and heart I’ve put into anything. This was going to be the pinnacle of my last 15 years of work in the arts.”View image in fullscreenWith his background in international relations (working at the World Bank after graduate school) Gosine understood that the museum’s response had to do with fear of losing their budget by showcasing queer artists in the wake of yet another executive order, this one promising a process of “Reviewing United States Support to all International Organizations”. He explains: “This is a content question, a gamble on how to deal with a shifting political tide: to conform enough, sacrifice some people, sacrifice your values to survive, and then maybe not get the budget.” According to the Congressional Research Service, in 2023 OAS had a budget of $145.2m, with the US contributing 57% of that. Having the United States rescind their support would clearly lacerate the organization’s operations. Nevertheless, Gosine thinks that their anticipatory acquiescence may be for nought. He asks how an organization that is fundamentally concerned with human rights and social justice can reinvent itself enough to mollify this vengeful and disdainful regime.The cancelation of art exhibitions negatively impacts the lives of curators, but these executive orders have an even more corrosive effect on the lives of artists – particularly those whose immigration status is in flux. Erika Hirugami, a formerly undocumented Mexican-Japanese immigrant, doctoral candidate at UCLA, and Los Angeles-based curator who has been working in the arts for 10 years, told me that the pressures placed on immigrants impel them to erase themselves, anticipating law enforcement officials incarcerating and deporting them. She attests that she knows more than 80 artists who “are terrified because having an exhibition at a museum that says that this artist is undocumented signals a reality that generates a kind of violence”.To better understand this, it helps to think of the work of the French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu, who extensively studied European art museum visitors in the 1960s, concerned with why most art museum visitor profiles seemed to be correlated with a certain socio-economic class. What he found was that given the proliferation of middle-class aesthetics throughout the museum, the majority of working-class people self-selected to not attend, feeling that the museum was not the place for them. He called this de facto rejection of the poor and working class “symbolic violence”, meaning a non-physical violence expressed through the imposition of social norms by a group with greater social power. Worse still, these norms are internalized by all social groups who come to believe that social hierarchy and inequality are natural and inevitable.View image in fullscreenHirugami explains that for artists who are undocumented, this administration has sought to normalize living in fear. Practically this means that some artists now forgo being paid for their work for fear of having their means of remuneration traced. Thus, their labor goes unrecognized and unpaid. To protect themselves some artists, according to Hirugami, go “zero social”, making themselves digitally invisible by taking down their websites and social media pages.Arleene Correa Valencia, a formerly undocumented artist living in Napa, California, understands this dread. “There’s no handbook to how to lose that fear,” she says. Valencia was an enrollee in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program, and a college student during the previous Trump administration, when she was under almost constant threat of losing her scholarship and means of staying in the country legally. Even now, having achieved permanent resident status, she still worries. “I still feel like I’m very much a target, especially having come to my residency as a Dreamer. There is this feeling that I did it the wrong way.”Less than two months after taking charge of the federal government, Trump and his agents have devised ways to not only erase certain artists and certain types of art; but also to compel these artists to erase themselves, in the name of self-protection. This is exactly the opposite of their most essential work: to engage the public to experience their work and to move them toward transformation. What is a possible solution? Valencia turns toward her art. She says:
    My practice has changed in that now I’m more grounded in knowing that my people have this beautiful language of painting. And with that I also, tattooed my head to recognize, my Indigenous background and my connection to Mexico. This is the time where we have to make our markings known, not just on our bodies, but in our work, marks that are true to ourselves.”
    Indeed, it’s crucial to refuse the option of doing violence to oneself by denying those very aspects of the self targeted in the culture war being waged by this administration. To maintain who you are can be its own kind of victory. More

  • in

    ‘Ruined this place’: chorus of boos against JD Vance at Washington concert

    JD Vance, the US vice-president, was booed by the audience as he took his seat at a National Symphony Orchestra concert at Washington’s Kennedy Center on Thursday evening.As the normal pre-concert announcements got under way, the vice-presidential party filed into the box tier. Booing and jeering erupted in the hall, drowning out the announcements, as Vance and his wife, Usha, took their seats.Such a vocal, impassioned political protest was a highly unusual event in the normally polite and restrained world of classical music.Vance ironically acknowledged the yelling and shouts of “You ruined this place!” with a smile and a wave.Audience members had undergone a full Secret Service security check as Vance’s motorcade drew up at the US’s national performing arts centre, delaying the start of the concert by 25 minutes.After news of the reaction to Vance at the concert emerged, Richard Grenell, interim director of the Kennedy Center who was recently appointed by Trump, said the crowd was “intolerant”.In February, Donald Trump sacked the chairman of the Kennedy Center board along with 13 of its trustees, appointing himself the new chair, bringing in foreign policy adviser and close ally Richard Grenell as interim leader, and naming new board members – among them, Usha Vance. She was on the board of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra from 2020 to 2022.“So we took over the Kennedy Center,” the president said at the time. “We didn’t like what they were showing and various other things. We’re going to make sure that it’s good and it’s not going to be woke. There’s no more woke in this country.”The new board members have recently been given their first tour of the centre, which is home to the Washington Opera as well as the National Symphony Orchestra and hosts about 2,000 performances a year.Perhaps unsurprisingly, Thursday evening’s concert programme – Shostakovich’s second violin concerto, with Leonidas Kavakos the soloist, followed by Stravinsky’s Petrushka – got off to a slightly shaky start before settling into its stride.Audience members nervously joked during the intermission about the apposite all-Russian programme, given Vance’s brutal dressing-down of the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, during an Oval Office blowup in February that played directly into the hands of the Russian ruler, Vladimir Putin.Resistance to Trump’s takeover of the traditionally bipartisan Kennedy Center has begun. The producers of the hit musical Hamilton have withdrawn from a run at the institution, due to take place in 2026, and a number of individual artists have also cancelled appearances.A group performing on the Millennium Stage in the centre’s foyer – traditional musicians Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman – had banners onstage with them reading “reinstate queer programming” and “creativity at the Kennedy Center must not be suppressed”.In a 2016 interview with the New York Times, Vance said he had not realised that people listened to classical music for pleasure as he reflected on his rise through the American class system after the overnight success of his memoir Hillbilly Elegy.“Elites use different words, eat different foods, listen to different music – I was astonished when I learned that people listened to classical music for pleasure – and generally occupy different worlds from America’s poor,” he said. “Unfortunately, this can make things a little culturally awkward when you leap from one class to the other.”But the public anger at Vance was brought on by the culture war that he and his allies have unleashed on Washington’s cultural institutions, especially the Kennedy Center.Vance has staked out a reputation as a cultural conservative and leaned into criticisms of “cancel culture”, saying that modern society was crushing the spirit of young men during an on-stage interview at the Conservative Political Action Conference (Cpac) in February.“I think our culture sends a message to young men that you should suppress every masculine urge, you should try to cast aside your family, you should try to suppress what makes you a young man in the first place,” he said at Cpac.“My message to young men is don’t allow this broken culture to send you a message that you’re a bad person because you’re a man.”Trump tweeted in February, in relation to the his takeover of the centre, “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA – ONLY THE BEST.” On Saturday, drag artists rallied outside the Kennedy Center to protest against the attacks on their work.In February The Kennedy Center announced the cancellation of a Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington DC concert scheduled to coincide with May’s Pride celebrations. More

  • in

    Trump administration briefing: Judge reinstates some fired workers, more tariff threats on EU

    A federal judge in California has granted a preliminary injunction to reinstate thousands of fired probationary workers at federal agencies as part of a lawsuit filed by the American Federation of Government Employees.The ruling by the judge William H Alsup applies to fired probationary employees at the Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of the Interior and the Department of the Treasury.Many of the at least 30,000 employees were fired with the cited reason being poor performance, though workers have disputed this based on positive performance evaluations. Alsup said it was a “lie” that the probationary workers who were fired had performance issues.Here is what else happened on Thursday:Judge orders administration to reinstate most fired probationary staffThe judge also forbade the office of personnel management from providing any guidance to federal agencies on which employees should be terminated. Alsup authorized depositions and ordered further briefing on whether the administrative channel for fired workers to appeal their terminations is available or has been destroyed due to firings at the appeals board and office of special counsel personnel.Tens of thousands of employees working for the federal government were as part of the efforts of Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” to slash the federal workforce and government expenditures.Read the full storyGreenland’s likely new prime minister rejects Trump takeover effortsGreenland’s probable new prime minister has rejected Donald Trump’s effort to take control of the island, saying Greenlanders must be allowed to decide their own future as it moves toward independence from Denmark.Jens-Frederik Nielsen, whose centre-right Democrats won a surprise victory in this week’s legislative elections and now must form a coalition government, said, “We don’t want to be Americans. No, we don’t want to be Danes. We want to be Greenlanders, and we want our own independence in the future.“And we want to build our own country by ourselves.”Read the full storyS&P 500 slides into correction territory as Trump trade wars spook investorsThe S&P 500, a key US stock market index, closed in correction territory on Thursday as the volatility of Donald Trump’s trade wars rattled investors.The index closed more than 10% down from its 19 February peak as Wall Street approaches the end of a second week of pressure.Read the full storyTrump asks court to allow order against birthright citizenshipDonald Trump’s administration has asked the US supreme court to allow his attempt at curtailing birthright citizenship to proceed. The justice department’s acting solicitor general, Sarah Harris, filed a request to the nation’s highest court, asking it to restrict orders issued by district judges in three states that blocked Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship restrictions.Read the full storyWhite House pulls CDC nominee on day of hearingThe Trump administration withdrew its nomination to lead the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the day he was due to face a confirmation hearing. Dave Weldon, a 71-year-old doctor and former Republican Florida congressman, did not face a hearing as planned.Read the full storyArrests at Trump Tower protest for Mahmoud KhalilProtesters organized by a progressive Jewish group occupied the lobby of Trump Tower in New York City to demand the release of Mahmoud Khalil, the Palestinian Columbia University student held by US immigration authorities. About 100 were arrested, and police said protesters faced charges including trespassing, obstruction and resisting arrest.Read the full storyHegseth to overhaul US military lawyersUS defense secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to start a sweeping overhaul of the judge advocate general’s corps as part of an effort to make the US military less restricted by the laws of armed conflict, according to two people familiar with the matter.Read the full storyChuck Schumer to vote for Republican funding bill to avert shutdownThe Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, said on Thursday he would vote for a Republican-written bill to fund federal agencies through September and avert a government shutdown.Schumer’s comments suggest that his members are prepared to provide the necessary votes to clear a procedural hurdle ahead, allowing the seven-month spending measure to advance to a final vote.Read the full storyTrump mulls 200% tariff on EU wine and champagneDonald Trump has threatened a 200% tariff on wine and champagne from European Union countries, in the latest threat of escalation in the global trade war started by the US president against the country’s biggest trading partners.Read the full storyLater in the day, a key US stock market index closed in correction territory as the volatility of Donald Trump’s trade wars rattled investors.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

    Canadians who visit the US for more than 30 days will be required to register with authorities and have their fingerprints taken as the Trump administration tightens migration rules.

    A group of Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit to block significant cuts to the Department of Education.

    The IRS could face a major staff reduction right after tax day, under a plan to be proposed by the “department of government efficiency”, CNN reports.

    Pete Buttigieg ruled out a run for Michigan’s Senate seat next year, which leaves the Democratic former transportation secretary available to seek the presidency in 2028, should he choose.

    Trump tariff bluster may not be pleasing Americans, a new poll finds. More

  • in

    Trump administration asks supreme court to uphold order curtailing birthright citizenship – live

    The Trump administration has appealed to the supreme court to uphold the president’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship, Reuters reports.Donald Trump signed the order shortly after taking office, but multiple federal judges have ruled against it in lawsuits filed by rights groups. Here’s more on the appeal, from Reuters:
    The Justice Department made the request challenging the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s order by federal courts in Washington state, Massachusetts and Maryland.
    The administration said the injunctions should be scaled back from applying universally and limited to just the plaintiffs that brought the cases and are “actually within the courts’ power.”
    “Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” the Justice Department said in the filing. “This court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched.”
    Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in office on January 20, directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
    The order was intended to apply starting February 19, but has been blocked nationwide by multiple federal judges.
    As our colleagues Anna Betts and Erum Salam reported on Wednesday, a government charging document addressed to Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident and green card holder who is currently being held in a Louisiana detention center, said that secretary of state Marco Rubio “has reasonable ground to believe that your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.The phrase “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” is a direct reference to a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives the secretary of state the power to expel non-citizens deemed to be a threat.As the New York Times reported this week, in 1996, when the Clinton administration tried to use this provision to deport a former Mexican government official, a federal judge ruled that this section of the law was “void for vagueness”, deprived the non-citizen of “the due process right to a meaningful opportunity to be heard”, and was “an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power”.That judge was Maryanne Trump Barry, the president’s eldest sister, who was nominated to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan in 1983, elevated to an appeals court by Bill Clinton, and passed away in 2023.Although a three-judge appeals court panel later overturned her ruling on procedural grounds, in an opinion written by then-Circuit Judge Samuel Alito, the forceful language of her opinion still resonates with the arguments of Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyers:“Make no mistake about it. This case is about the Constitution of the United States and the panoply of protections that document provides to the citizens of this country and those non-citizens who are here legally and, thus, here as our guests”, Judge Barry wrote. “The issue before the court is not whether plaintiff has the right to remain in this country beyond the period for which he was lawfully admitted…[t]he issue, rather, is whether an alien who is in this country legally can, merely because he is here, have his liberty restrained and be forcibly removed to a specific country in the unfettered discretion of the Secretary of State and without any meaningful opportunity to be heard. The answer is a ringing ‘no’”.Corks were not popping on Wall Street on Thursday, as stocks plunged again following Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 200% tariff “on all wines, Champagnes, and alcoholic products” from European Union countries if the trading bloc makes good on its threat to retaliate for steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the US president by adding a 50% tariff on American products, including Kentucky bourbon.The sharp drop in the S&P 500 meant that a the index is now in “a correction” — a term used when when stocks falls 10 percent or more from their peak.While the Wall Street Journal blamed the drop on “investors on edge over new tariff threats”, pro-Trump media outlets further to the right, like Newsmax, sought to play down the president’s role in the plunging markets. “This correction is overdue”, a guest on the far-right network assured viewers on Thursday. “Nothing to do with Trump. Nothing to do with tariffs”.As the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy noted in a podcast interview this week, the downturn began in the middle of February “when it became clear that Tump was serious about these tariffs, a lot of people on Wall Street thought he was bluffing”.Cassidy went on to explain that Trump appears to be wedded to a dream of undoing globalization and returning to a period in the 19th century when the United States was closer to being an autarky, a self-sufficient country, closed off from the rest of the world.That seems to jibe with Trump’s claim, in his announcement of the 200% tariff on Champagne, a form of sparkling wine that is only produced in the Champagne region of France, “This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the US”.The Trump administration has appealed to the supreme court to uphold the president’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship, Reuters reports.Donald Trump signed the order shortly after taking office, but multiple federal judges have ruled against it in lawsuits filed by rights groups. Here’s more on the appeal, from Reuters:
    The Justice Department made the request challenging the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s order by federal courts in Washington state, Massachusetts and Maryland.
    The administration said the injunctions should be scaled back from applying universally and limited to just the plaintiffs that brought the cases and are “actually within the courts’ power.”
    “Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” the Justice Department said in the filing. “This court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched.”
    Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in office on January 20, directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
    The order was intended to apply starting February 19, but has been blocked nationwide by multiple federal judges.
    The US Postal Service will reduce its staff by 10,000 through early retirements, and has signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge) to streamline its operations, postmaster general Louis DeJoy announced.USPS aims to reduce its workforce in 30 days, DeJoy said in a letter addressed to leaders of Congress – a much faster timeline than the 30,000 positions it reduced from fiscal year 2021.The postmaster added that Doge would help USPS “in identifying and achieving further efficiencies”.“This is an effort aligned with our efforts, as while we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done. We are happy to have others to assist us in our worthwhile cause. The DOGE team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems they can help us with,” DeJoy said.A dozen national Jewish organizations are condemning the Trump administration for detaining and attempting to deport Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil under the pretense of fighting antisemitism.“Arresting and/or deporting people because of their political views goes against the very foundation of our national identity and is profoundly un-American,” the groups wrote in a letter to homeland security secretary Kristi Noem today.The organizations, including J Street and T’ruah, warned that using antisemitism as justification for suppressing political dissent threatens both Jewish safety and democracy in the United States.The coalition are urging the administration to ensure Khalil receives due process and to stop “co-opting the fight against antisemitism” in ways that endanger vulnerable communities.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit back at the federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of federal workers fired during their probationary terms, saying they overstepped their bounds.Leavitt added that the administration would appeal the decision. Here’s her statement:
    A single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch. The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch – singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President’s agenda. If a federal district court judge would like executive powers, they can try and run for President themselves. The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order.
    Several Senate Democrats have announced their determination to block passage of a measure approved by House Republicans earlier this week to keep the government funded through September and prevent a shutdown that will begin after Friday.It’s a significant move, as it raises the possibility that funding will lapse after midnight on Saturday, potentially handing Donald Trump the ability to further undermine the federal government’s operations. But several Democratic senators say it’s a fight worth having.Mark Kelly of swing state Arizona said:
    I cannot vote for the Republican plan to give unchecked power to Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
    I told Arizonans I’d stand up when it was right for our state and our country, and this is one of those moments.
    Fellow Arizonan Ruben Gallego said much the same (it’s worth noting neither man is up for election next year):
    This is a bad resolution that gives Elon Musk and his cronies permission to continue cutting veterans’ benefits, slashes resources for Arizona’s water needs, and abandons our wildland firefighters.
    Newly arrived New Jersey senator Andy Kim is against it:
    Republicans have made it so Musk and the most powerful win and everyone else loses. I don’t want a shutdown but I can’t vote for this overreach of power, giving Trump and Musk unchecked power to line their pockets. I’m a NO on the CR.
    So is Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, both of New Mexico:
    We want to see the federal government funded and functional, and we have been fighting every day to force this administration to put the chainsaw down when it comes to the healthcare, education, and VA benefits our communities depend on.
    But we won’t stand by as Republicans try to shove through this power grab masquerading as a funding bill. For the people of New Mexico, we will vote ‘no’ on Republicans’ continuing resolution.
    The GOP controls the Senate but will need at least some Democratic support to get the spending bill through. Despite this opposition, there is also a chance that enough Democrats will get on board with the bill for it to be enacted.Donald Trump’s order to release billions of gallons of water from California reservoirs is widely viewed in the state as a waste of water.Despite that, the president believes it helped Los Angeles deal with its risk of wildfires, a contention he just repeated, using some odd phrasing, in the Oval Office:
    I broke into Los Angeles. Can you believe it? I had a break in, I invaded Los Angeles, and we opened up the water, and the water is now flowing down. They have so much water, they don’t know what to do. They were sending it out to the Pacific for environmental reasons, okay, can you believe it? And in the meantime, they lost 25,000 houses … Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.
    The facts tell a different story:On Greenland, Trump gets asked about his vision for potential annexation of the island.“Well, I think it will happen. I’m just thinking, I didn’t give it much thought before, but I’m sitting with a man that could be very instrumental,” he says, as he turns to Rutte saying “Mark, we need that for international security … as we have a lot of our favourite players, cruising around the coast.”Rutte distances himself from his comments on annexing Greenland, but says Trump is right talking about growing risks in the North Arctic.Trump is then asked about the recent elections in Greenland, and says “it was a good election for us.”“The person that did the best is a very good person as far as we are concerned, so we will be talking about it and it is very important,” he says.The president says the US “is going to order” 48 icebreakers, and that would help to strengthen US position “as that whole area is becoming very important.”“So we are going to have to make a deal on that and Denmark is not able to do that [offer protection],” he says.He then mocks Denmark saying they have “nothing to do with that” as “a boat landed there 200 years ago or something, and they say they have rights to it?” “I don’t know if that is true.”“We have been dealing with Denmark, we have been dealing with Greenland, and we have to do it,” he says.He again suggests Nato could be involved given its bases there, and says “maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers” there. He then asked defence secretary Pete Hegseth if he should send more troops there. “Don’t answer that Pete,” he laughs.Reporters took the opportunity to question Trump and whether he’s willing to let up on the tariffs he is levying on major trade partners like Canada.“No, we’ve been ripped off for years,” Trump said. “I’m not going to bend at all.”He went on to say that the country has nothing the US needs but added that he loves Canada and mentioned its contributions like former Canadian ice hockey player, Wayne Gretzky.You can follow our Europe live blog for more on Trump and Rutte’s comments happening now:The Trump-Rutte meeting is being held to discuss the costs of supporting Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia.Trump said hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent and “really wasted” on defense for Ukraine. He said: “It’s also a tremendous cost to the United States and other countries.” More