Trump, Donald J

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      Why Saudi Arabia Supports Trump’s Nuclear Talks With Its Rival, Iran

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      The agreements are shaping up to be very similar. But Gulf support for a nuclear deal shows how much the region has changed.Ten years ago, when former President Barack Obama and other leaders reached a deal with Iran to limit its nuclear program, Saudi Arabia was dismayed.Saudi officials called it a “weak deal” that had only emboldened the kingdom’s regional rival, Iran. They cheered when President Trump withdrew from the agreement a few years later.Now, as a second Trump administration negotiates with Iran on a deal that might have very similar contours to the previous one, the view from Saudi Arabia looks quite different.The kingdom’s Foreign Ministry issued a statement recently saying that it hoped the talks, mediated by neighboring Oman, would enhance “peace in the region and the world.”Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman even dispatched his brother, the defense minister Prince Khalid bin Salman, to Tehran, where he was received warmly by Iranian officials dressed in military regalia. He then hand-delivered a letter to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a man whom Prince Mohammed once derided as making “Hitler look good.”What changed? Relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have warmed over the past decade. As important, Saudi Arabia is in the middle of an economic diversification program intended to transform the kingdom from being overly dependent on oil into a business, technology and tourism hub. The prospect of Iranian drones and missiles flying over Saudi Arabia because of regional tensions poses a serious threat to that plan.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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      A Resurrection Faith Needs a Resurrection Church

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      Have you ever seen a person come back to life?I don’t mean literally. The Easter miracle of nearly 2,000 years ago is not so easily replicated. We don’t have the power to physically raise the dead. Instead, we Christians have faith that death is nothing more than a temporary separation from the people we love. The pain we feel at a funeral is a pain of absence, not the pain of permanent loss.No, I’m talking about something else — the resurrection and redemption when we see a person who is lost to darkness return to the light. It’s the dazzling smile when a young woman gets her one-year coin at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, or it’s in the tears of joy when an estranged husband and wife finally embrace again after repentance and forgiveness.Or it’s in a moment like I experienced in a small church in Kentucky. One Sunday evening, our pastor was preaching about the prodigal son, Jesus’ parable about a young, ungrateful man who left his home, squandered his fortune and returned home completely broken, expecting to face anger and retribution — only to be greeted by a father who ran to him, embraced him and declared, “My son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.”The pastor concluded his sermon with an altar call. “Some of you here are dead — you’re lost in a life you don’t want — but you can live again.”It was a simple call, one that pastors have made countless times in countless churches. Often they’re ignored. The congregation sings its final song and files out. But this time someone answered.From the back of the church, a young man choked out a single word: “Pastor?”It sounded like a question, as if he was asking for permission to come forward. When we looked back to see who’d spoken, I heard a gasp. The young man was a deacon’s son who had abandoned his faith long ago. He’d become angry and violent. He bullied kids in the church’s youth group. It was shocking that he’d even shown up at church.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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      A Timeline of the Trump Administration’s Use of the Alien Enemies Act

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      In the 36 days since President Trump invoked a powerful wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants accused of gang membership, a complex and high-risk legal battle has played out in the federal courts.The Supreme Court has weighed in twice, issuing orders limiting the government’s use of the law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The court’s latest order, which came around 1 a.m. on Saturday, blocked the deportations of Venezuelans held in Texas hours after the American Civil Liberties Union said the Trump administration was preparing to expel them without due process.At times, the Trump administration has been accused of disregarding judicial orders as it proceeds with its immigration policies and deportation efforts, deepening legal scholars’ concern that the country could be facing a constitutional crisis.Here is a timeline:March 14: The Trump administration issued an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act, but the order was not immediately made public. The proclamation said that the government was targeting the violent Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua, which it said was threatening an invasion of the United States. The Alien Enemies Act allows the government to detain and expel immigrants age 14 or older without a court hearing when the United States is invaded or at war. It is the fourth time the law has been invoked in American history.March 15: Fearing that the Trump administration was preparing to immediately expel Venezuelans in custody without hearings, the A.C.L.U. filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington seeking to block the president from invoking the law. The same day, the administration published the executive order. In a hastily scheduled virtual hearing, a federal judge in Washington, James E. Boasberg, was told by the A.C.L.U. that planes were leaving the United States with Venezuelans. He ordered the government not to deport anyone under the law and to return any planes that had already taken off, “however that’s accomplished.”March 16: On social media, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, published a video of men being led off a plane in handcuffs and taken into a prison in his country. Mr. Bukele posted an article about Judge Boasberg’s order and wrote, “Oopsie… Too late.” The Trump administration insisted it did not violate Judge Boasberg’s order. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement that federal courts “have no jurisdiction” over the president’s handling of foreign affairs.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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      Putin Declares One-Day Easter Truce in Ukraine War

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      President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said that from Saturday evening through Sunday, he had ordered his forces to “stop all military activity.” Ukraine’s leader said he was trying to “play with people’s lives.”President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia ordered his forces to “stop all military activity” against Ukraine from Saturday evening through Sunday, declaring an “Easter truce” that appeared aimed at showing an impatient Trump administration that Moscow was still open to peace talks.“We will assume that the Ukrainian side will follow our example,” Mr. Putin said in a meeting televised on Saturday with his top military commander, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov.Mr. Putin claimed that Kyiv’s response would shed light on Ukraine’s “desire, and, indeed, its ability” to take part in negotiations to end the war.In a post on social media an hour after Mr. Putin’s announcement, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine referred to it as Mr. Putin’s “next attempt to play with people’s lives.” Mr. Zelensky did not specify whether Ukraine would also observe a truce.Air-raid sirens rang out in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, around 5 p.m. local time, an hour before Mr. Putin’s cease-fire was due to start.“Ukrainian air defense and aviation have already begun working to defend themselves,” Mr. Zelensky said. Referring to Iranian-designed Russian drones, he went on: “Russian ‘Shaheds’ in our skies are Putin’s true attitude to Easter and to people’s lives.”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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      Can Trump Really Negotiate Peace in Ukraine, Russians Wonder

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      Many thought President Trump would be able to finish the war. Now they are not so sure.Many Russians cheered President Trump’s election because they thought he could make a deal for a negotiated peace in Ukraine that would satisfy the Kremlin.Three months into Mr. Trump’s second term, the disappointment in Moscow is palpable.In interviews, people in the Kremlin’s orbit have revealed frustration both with Mr. Trump’s whirlwind approach to the talks and with President Vladimir V. Putin’s apparent inflexibility in the negotiations. With Mr. Trump and his top diplomat warning on Friday that the United States could walk away from the discussion, some of them fear that a collapse in talks could lead to a further escalation of the fighting.Movement toward peace is going “much more slowly than it should be, and not the way one would want it to be,” said Grigory A. Yavlinsky, a liberal politician in Moscow who held a rare meeting with Mr. Putin in 2023 to urge a cease-fire. In the meantime, he said, Mr. Putin “is just fighting, he’s seizing the moment. He wants to achieve the maximum before substantive talks.”The question now is whether Mr. Putin climbs down from demands that seem little changed from the cease-fire conditions he outlined last summer, when he said Ukraine would have to agree not to join NATO and also withdraw from a large swath of territory before Russia stopped fighting.For now, the increasingly blunt warnings from Mr. Trump and his lieutenants that they could run out of patience have had little effect. Mr. Putin has not budged from his rejection of a monthlong cease-fire that Ukraine agreed to in March.On Saturday, Mr. Putin declared a one-day “Easter truce,” a tactic that appeared aimed at showing that Russia was still interested in peace.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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      Former Trump Staff Members Liken His Actions to Those of ‘Royal Despot’

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      A number of prominent Republicans, including several former members of the first Trump administration, have signed an open letter decrying the president for using his power to punish two former administration officials who criticized him, likening his actions to those of a “royal despot.”“For a president to personally and publicly direct the levers of the federal government against publicly named citizens for political reasons sets a new and perilous precedent in our republic,” the group wrote. “No matter one’s party or politics, every American should reject the notion that the awesome power of the presidency can be used to pursue individual vendettas.”Earlier this month, Mr. Trump issued two executive orders revoking the security clearances of Chris Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency under during Mr. Trump’s first term and rebutted his claims that the 2020 election had been rigged and stolen, and Miles Taylor, who once served as chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Taylor anonymously wrote a New York Times opinion essay in 2018 accusing Mr. Trump of rampant “amorality” and telling of an internal government “resistance.”Mr. Trump’s executive orders also revoked the security clearances of people and institutions affiliated with Mr. Krebs and Mr. Taylor, and called for investigations into their government tenures. The letter, signed by more than 200 people, criticized those actions as part of a “profoundly unconstitutional break” with precedent.“Behavior of this kind is more to be expected from a royal despot than the elected leader of a constitutional republic,” the signers wrote. “This is the path of autocracy, not democracy.”The letter’s signatories include Ty Cobb, a lawyer who led Mr. Trump’s response to a special counsel’s investigation of his ties to Russia during its early phases, and John Mitnick, who served as general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security until he was fired in 2019 after clashing with the White House.Mr. Cobb and Mr. Mitnick, like many of the other Republicans on the list of signatories, have been openly critical of Mr. Trump since parting ways with his administration.The letter was spearheaded by the State Democracy Defenders Fund, a group run by Norm Eisen, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution who served on the staff of the first team of House Democrats that worked to impeach Mr. Trump in 2019. More

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      Come With Me if You Want to Survive an Age of Extinction

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      Every great technological change has a destructive shadow, whose depths swallow ways of life the new order renders obsolete. But the age of digital revolution — the time of the internet and the smartphone and the incipient era of artificial intelligence — threatens an especially comprehensive cull. It’s forcing the human race into what evolutionary biologists call a “bottleneck” — a period of rapid pressure that threatens cultures, customs and peoples with extinction.When college students struggle to read passages longer than a phone-size paragraph and Hollywood struggles to compete with YouTube and TikTok, that’s the bottleneck putting the squeeze on traditional artistic forms like novels and movies.When daily newspapers and mainline Protestant denominations and Elks Lodges fade into irrelevance, when sit-down restaurants and shopping malls and colleges begin to trace the same descending arc, that’s the bottleneck tightening around the old forms of suburban middle-class existence.When moderates and centrists look around and wonder why the world isn’t going their way, why the future seems to belong to weird bespoke radicalisms, to Luigi Mangione admirers and World War II revisionists, that’s the bottleneck crushing the old forms of consensus politics, the low-key ways of relating to political debates.When young people don’t date or marry or start families, that’s the bottleneck coming for the most basic human institutions of all.And when, because people don’t pair off and reproduce, nations age and diminish and die away, when depopulation sweeps East Asia and Latin America and Europe, as it will — that’s the last squeeze, the tightest part of the bottleneck, the literal die-off.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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      Brace Yourself. Trump’s Trade War With China Will Get Even Uglier.

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      Voters elected Donald Trump in part because they wanted a fighter. But increasingly it seems that in international trade, he’s good at shaking his fist for the cameras but utterly outclassed when he steps into the boxing ring.Indeed, Trump may be more dangerous to his own side of a trade war than to the other guy.Even after Trump’s climb-down — declaring a 90-day pause on many of the “Liberation Day” levies that sent the stock market reeling — America’s tariff rates remain the highest in more than 90 years. They amount to an enormous tax hike on consumers, with researchers previously estimating that they might add something like $1,700 in costs per year to a middle-income American family. They’re a reason many economists fear that the United States is slipping into a recession.The most heated trade war is with China, and it’s there that I fear Trump has particularly miscalculated. He seems to be waiting for President Xi Jinping to cry uncle and demand relief, but that’s unlikely; instead, it may be the United States that will be most desperate to end the trade conflict.China does have serious internal economic challenges, including widespread underemployment and a deflationary loop with no end in sight. The trade war could cost China millions of jobs, and that raises some risks of political instability.Yet it’s also true that China has prepared for this trade war. I’m guessing some Chinese factories are already printing “Made in Vietnam” labels and preparing to ship goods through third countries. And China will fight with weapons that go far beyond tariffs.China buys agricultural products and airplanes from America, and it can almost certainly get what it needs elsewhere. But where is the United States going to get rare-earth minerals, essential for American industry and the military-industrial base?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