Trump, Donald J

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      Trump Administration Plans to Send Migrants to Libya on a Military Flight

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      Human rights groups have called conditions in the country’s network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”The Trump administration is planning to transport a group of immigrants to Libya on a U.S. military plane, according to U.S. officials, another sharp escalation in a deportation program that has sparked widespread legal challenges and intense political debate.The nationalities of the migrants were not immediately clear, but a flight to Libya carrying the deportees could leave as soon as Wednesday, according to the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation.The decision to send deportees to Libya was striking. The country is racked with conflict, and human rights groups have called conditions in its network of migrant detention centers “horrific” and “deplorable.”The Libya operation falls in line with the Trump administration’s effort to not only deter migrants from trying to enter the country illegally but also to send a strong message to those in the country illegally that they can be deported to countries where they could face brutal conditions. Reuters earlier reported the possibility of a U.S. deportation flight to Libya.The planning for the flight to Libya has been tightly held, and could still be derailed by logistical, legal or diplomatic obstacles.The White House declined to comment. The State Department and Defense Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Wishes Aside, Censoring Racial History May Prove Difficult

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      Late last month, when two federal grants to the Whitney Plantation in Louisiana were rescinded, the Trump administration seemed to be following through on its promise to root out what President Trump called “improper ideology” in cultural institutions focused on Black history.After all, the plantation’s mission was to show visitors what life was truly like for the enslaved, contrary to the watered-down Black history that the president seemed to back.Then just as quickly, the grants were restored a few weeks later, the Whitney Plantation’s executive director said in an interview.Because the money had already been approved, “maybe it was an exposure for lawsuits,” the executive director, Ashley Rogers, said, “but who knows?”Ever since Mr. Trump issued an executive order in March decrying cultural institutions that were trying to “rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth,” sites like the Whitney Plantation have lived with such uncertainty. An order specifically targeting the Smithsonian Institution tasked Vice President JD Vance and other White House officials with “seeking to remove improper ideology from such properties.”But reversals like the one in Louisiana and actions by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture seem to indicate some misgivings about the president’s order. They also show that putting historical knowledge back into the bottle after decades of reckoning with the nation’s racist history will be more difficult than the administration believes.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Idea to Turn Alcatraz Back Into a Prison Draws Criticism From Tourists

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      Boatloads of tourists traipsed around Alcatraz Island on Monday morning and peered into tiny prison cells, learning about the most notorious inmates who stayed there — and the ones who tried to escape.The tour was standard at the revered San Francisco attraction, save for one topic that simply could not be avoided in the conversations echoing off the old cellblock walls.Can you believe that President Trump wants to convert Alcatraz back into a federal prison?The morning tour groups were full of international travelers, and many of them had received phone alerts about Trump’s plan or read news reports over breakfast. Some wondered if they might actually be among the last visitors allowed to wander the island. But nobody seemed to think the idea was nearly as brilliant as Mr. Trump thought it was.“I thought it was a joke,” said Philipp Neumann, who was visiting from Germany. “It’s a ruin, isn’t it, more or less?”A ruin, yes, with some buildings deteriorating so badly they no longer have roofs or complete walls. The cells have broken toilets, if they have any at all, with no running water or sewage system.The exterior walls of the cellblocks are so weak that they are reinforced with netting to prevent chunks of concrete from crumbling onto tourists’ heads. Bird deposits coat much of the island. All supplies from food to fuel must be brought in by boat.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      As Backlash to Trump’s Tariffs Grows, Europe Boycotts American Brands

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      A shifting perception of the United States amid President Trump’s trade war is prompting Europeans to pivot decisively away from U.S. goods and services.For motorcycle lovers in Sweden, Harley-Davidson is the hottest brand on the road. Jack Daniels whiskey beckons from the bar at British pubs. In France, Levis jeans are all about chic.But in the tumult of President Trump’s trade war with Europe, many European consumers are starting to avoid U.S. products and services in what appears to be a decisive and potentially long-term shift away from buying American, according to a new assessment by the European Central Bank.In April, Mr. Trump imposed a 10 percent blanket tariff on America’s trading partners, and threatened “reciprocal tariffs” on many of those, including the European Union. Companies like Tesla and McDonald’s are seeing customers in Europe put off by “Made in America.”“The newly imposed U.S. trade tariffs on European products are causing European consumers to think twice about what’s in their shopping cart,” the E.C.B. wrote in a blog post about its research on consumer behavior. “Consumers are very willing to actively move away from U.S. products and services.”Europeans had already begun testing grass-roots boycotts on American products, including Heinz ketchup and Lay’s potato chips, shortly after Mr. Trump took office. His threats to take over Greenland, part of Denmark, energized Danes to organize no-buy campaigns on Facebook. Tesla owners in Sweden slapped “shame” bumper stickers on their cars to distance themselves from Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive who is one of Mr. Trump’s top advisers.Motorcycles in a Harley-Davidson dealership in Paris. The E.C.B. study said that even households that could bear the brunt of higher prices were moving away from U.S. goods.Gonzalo Fuentes/ReutersWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Rwanda in Talks With Trump Administration to Take in Migrants Deported From U.S.

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      Discussions with the Central African country come as the Trump administration looks for more countries willing to accept deportees as part of a sweeping crackdown.Rwanda is in talks with the Trump administration to take in migrants deported from the United States, the central African nation’s foreign minister said late Sunday. It was unclear if a deal would involve migrants who had already been deported or those who will be in the future, but any deal would potentially make Rwanda the first African country to enter into such an agreement with the United States.Rwanda’s foreign minister, Olivier J.P. Nduhungirehe, said on Sunday that his country’s government was in “early stage” talks about receiving third-country deportees from the United States.“It is true that we are in discussions with the United States,” Mr. Nduhungirehe said in an interview with Rwanda TV, the state broadcaster. “These talks are still ongoing, and it would be premature to conclude how they will unfold,” he added.Rwanda’s government did not respond to a request for comment. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Rwanda has long positioned itself as a partner to Western nations seeking to curb migration, offering to provide asylum to migrants or house them as they await resettlement elsewhere, sometimes in return for payment. Mr. Nduhungirehe did not say whether Rwanda would be paid as part of any U.S. agreement.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Oil Prices Slide Further on Plans to Increase Supply

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      U.S. oil prices fell to around $56 a barrel after the OPEC Plus cartel said it would bring more oil to market.Oil prices resumed their downward slide after the OPEC Plus cartel of oil producers said over the weekend that it would pump more oil, despite concerns that President Trump’s trade war will curb demand.The U.S. benchmark oil price fell to around $56 a barrel, from $58 on Friday. For many companies, the steady decline means it will not be profitable to drill wells in the United States despite Mr. Trump’s calls for increased production.Prices were last around this level in early April, just before Mr. Trump said he would pause reciprocal tariffs on most countries for 90 days. That announcement led to rallies in both the stock market and the oil market, though oil prices have since waned.That is partly because OPEC Plus is raising output at the same time that economists are warning that higher tariffs on most American trading partners will slow global economic growth and potentially cause a recession in the United States.The eight countries that make up the OPEC Plus cartel said on Saturday that they would further ramp up production in June.Lower commodity prices are causing some companies to pull back. There are about 9 percent fewer rigs drilling wells in the Permian Basin, the top U.S. oil field, than there were this time last year, when oil was trading near $80 a barrel, according to Baker Hughes.On Friday, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest U.S. oil and gas companies, reported their lowest first-quarter earnings in years. Those financial results reflect the market before Mr. Trump further escalated tariffs on China in early April.“It is clear that this uncertainty is weighing on economic forecasts, causing significant volatility and raising the prospects of slower growth,” Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, told analysts. More

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      Trump Says He Will Put 100% Tariff on Movies Made Outside U.S.

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      Declaring foreign film production a national security threat, the president said he had asked his top trade official to start the process of imposing a tax on Hollywood.President Trump said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on movies “produced” outside the United States, proclaiming in a social media post on Sunday that the issue posed a national security threat. Mr. Trump said he had authorized Jamieson Greer, the United States Trade Representative, to begin the process of taxing “any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.” Mr. Trump added, “This is a concerted effort by other Nations and, therefore, a National Security threat.”The Motion Picture Association, which represents the biggest Hollywood studios in Washington, declined to comment. The association’s latest economic impact report, based primarily on government data and released in 2023, showed that the film industry generated a positive U.S. balance of trade for every major market in the world.As is often is the case with Mr. Trump’s declarations on social media, it was not entirely clear what he was talking about. Did he mean any movie, including independent foreign-language films destined for art house cinemas and movies that play exclusively on streaming services?Would such a tariff apply only to movies receiving tax incentives from foreign countries — or to any movie with scenes shot overseas? What about postproduction visual effects work? A single superhero movie can often involve a half-dozen or more specialized firms scattered around the world.Technically speaking, the vast majority of movies shown in American cinemas are produced in the United States — scripts written, preproduction planning handled, principal actors cast, footage edited and sound added. But Hollywood has increasingly turned to foreign locales for the cameras-rolling part of the moviemaking process because, as with so much traditional manufacturing, it is much cheaper.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Says He Wants Alcatraz Restored as a Prison

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      The project would be extraordinarily expensive at a time when the administration already plans to cut billions of dollars from the Justice Department’s budget.President Trump said on Sunday that he wanted federal law enforcement agencies to work on restoring Alcatraz, now a museum, to a functioning maximum-security prison.Repeating one of his constant refrains that the United States had become a dangerous, lawless place, Mr. Trump wrote on social media that he wanted Alcatraz, an island in San Francisco Bay, to be enlarged and rebuilt “to house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders. We will no longer be held hostage to criminals, thugs, and judges that are afraid to do their job and allow us to remove criminals, who came into our country illegally.”It was not immediately clear how his musing could be put into action, given that any such project would be extraordinarily expensive and that the administration already planned to cut billions of dollars from the Justice Department budget.Mr. Trump said he had instructed the Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department to work on his idea, along with the F.B.I. — a curious choice given that the bureau plays no role in incarcerating people convicted of crimes.A reopened Alcatraz, Mr. Trump wrote, would “serve as a symbol of law, order, and justice.” The prison captured the public imagination as the home of the “worst of the worst” until it was closed in 1963 and eventually turned into a popular museum attraction.In addition to holding the gangster known as “Machine Gun Kelly” and Al Capone — whose multiple indictments Mr. Trump often mentioned on the campaign trail to describe himself as unfairly persecuted — Alcatraz is most famous for the escape of three men in 1962. They were never found, and it remains unclear whether they survived the swim from the island, which is more than a mile from shore in cold water with strong currents. Today, Alcatraz is best known as a damp, frigid and nostalgic staple of tourist packages and children’s field trips.By comparison, the current federal super-maximum security prison in Florence, Colo., has never had an inmate escape.In California, Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator representing San Francisco, called Mr. Trump’s idea “absurd on its face” and the latest example of what he called the president’s “continuing unhinged behavior.”A spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom laughed when asked about the president’s order. “Looks like it’s Distraction Day again in Washington, D.C.,” Izzy Gardon, the governor’s director of communications, said.Mr. Gardon pointed out that it had been more than six decades since Alcatraz operated as a prison, and that turning it back into a facility to house inmates would take many years and significant federal investment at a time when the president has said he wants to slash spending.Maggie Haberman More