Trump, Donald J

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      Canadians and Wayne Gretzky: Anatomy of a Relationship on Thin Ice

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      In tense political times, can “The Great One” be both a Trump supporter and a beloved hero in Canada? Some want him to pick a side. (Preferably the one to the north.)Where have you gone, Wayne Gretzky? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.In the meantime, a statue of Gretzky would have to do. The puck would drop soon, and outside the main doors to the arena, fans of the Edmonton Oilers swirled around the life-size bronze facsimile of Wayne Gretzky, Canada’s recently tarnished bigger-than-life hero.“I’d like him to be a little more Canadian,” said Rob Munro, a 43-year-old Oilers fan in a 1980s-era Mark Messier jersey. “I’m not anti-Gretzky, by any stretch. It’s just disappointing.”Mr. Gretzky, now 64, has long been frozen as an ideal — the ideal athlete, icon and Canadian. “The Great One,” he is still called, having led the Oilers to four Stanley Cup titles in the 1980s. He has stood as a national avatar for talent and decency for decades. “A true champion and gentleman of dedication and character,” reads a plaque at his bronze skates.Now Mr. Gretzky stands, silently, as a case study for what happens when heroes disappoint — and how quickly even the strongest allegiances can shift when stirred by Trumpian politics.“You were a great Canadian, but now you are not,” said Matthew Iwanyk, chief operating officer and host of Edmonton Sports Talk. “That is the majority sentiment you will get from Edmontonians.”Wayne Gretzky led the Oilers to four Stanley Cup titles in the 1980s, establishing himself as the greatest player in the history of the National Hockey League. David E. Klutho/Sports Illustrated, via Getty ImagesWe 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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      Justice Dept. Signals It Will End Challenge to Idaho Abortion Ban

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      The Trump administration is poised to roll back a Biden-era legal effort to blunt the effects of the overturning of Roe v. Wade.The Justice Department plans to drop a Biden-era challenge to Idaho’s law banning abortion in nearly all circumstances, a move that could end access to most abortions for women in the state whose pregnancy poses serious health risks, according to a court filing on Tuesday.The decision represents one of the first major steps under President Trump to roll back former Attorney General Merrick B. Garland’s efforts to blunt the impact of the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling overturning Roe v. Wade.The Trump administration plans to “dismiss its claims in the above case, without prejudice” as early as Wednesday, a lawyer with the department’s civil division wrote in an email to lawyers for the state’s largest hospital system.The action would effectively lift a federal appellate court’s hold on parts of the near-total ban, which was passed by the state’s Republican-controlled Legislature in 2020 in anticipation of the nullification of the national right to an abortion.Excerpts from the government’s email were included in a request in Federal District Court by the Boise-based St. Luke’s Health System for a new temporary freeze to give it time to adjust to the law, which bans all abortions other than those required to prevent a woman’s death, or in certain cases of rape or incest.Hospitals in Idaho need the temporary delay “to train their staff about the change in legal obligations” and to arrange logistics “to airlift patients out of state” if they require an abortion rendered illegal in Idaho, wrote Wendy J. Olson, a lawyer for the system.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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      What is Trump’s Crypto Reserve Plan?

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      The prospect of using taxpayer money to stockpile cryptocurrencies in a national reserve has drawn criticism from lawmakers and investors.The crypto market gives and takes: After President Trump’s plan for a national crypto reserve drew backlash from both Republicans and investors, the prices of digital tokens that would be involved soared higher — and then tumbled. (Bitcoin was trading at about $83,800 early on Tuesday, down nearly $10,000 from a day ago.)The plan has spurred a lot of questions about how it would work and the risks that would be involved.How would a national reserve work?Mr. Trump campaigned last summer on creating a federal Bitcoin stockpile and appointed the venture capitalist David Sacks as his crypto czar. Advisers have suggested holding on to any Bitcoin the government has already seized from criminals, recently estimated at about $17 billion.A bill proposed by Senator Cynthia Lummis, Republican of Wyoming, would direct the government to buy about 200,000 Bitcoin a year over five years, for a value of about $90 billion. (To help pay for that, the bill proposes taking $4.4 billion out of the Federal Reserve’s surplus, cutting into the Treasury Department’s coffers.) Of course, the digital token’s prices would probably rise in anticipation of those federal purchases.One unknown is whether Mr. Trump, in the face of divisions among Republican lawmakers on the idea of a reserve, would seek to test legal limits on his authority and create one unilaterally.Would taxpayer money be involved?That prospect drew the most criticism. Joe Lonsdale, a financier and Trump supporter, said it was “wrong to tax me for crypto bro schemes.” Another investor called the proposal an “unforced error” that would “enrich the insiders and creators of these coins at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.”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 Tariffs Hit Stock Markets

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      Global leaders are retaliating and investors have sold off stocks in Asia and Europe.Nowhere to hide as a new wave of U.S. tariffs sinks global stock markets.Franck Robichon/EPA, via ShutterstockNot just tough talk President Trump wasn’t bluffing, after all.Global markets plunged on Tuesday after U.S. tariffs went into effect on roughly $1.5 trillion worth of imports from Canada, Mexico and China, with another, and even broader, wave set to kick in as soon as next week.China and Canada have already responded, with Beijing targeting the American heartland with sweeping levies on imported food and halting log and soybean shipments from select U.S. companies. Mexico is expected to retaliate, too.The escalation has global business leaders increasingly worried about what will come next, as economists warn that consumers and companies will soon see higher prices. Warren Buffett offered a reminder of what the global economy is facing. “Tariffs,” the billionaire investor said this week, “are an act of war, to some degree.”Here’s the latest:Stocks in much of Asia and Europe fell on Tuesday, after the S&P 500 yesterday suffered its worst one-day decline this year. U.S. stock futures were down slightly on Tuesday.Hit especially hard on Tuesday were the shares of European automakers, including Volkswagen, BMW, and Daimler Truck. Levies could slam the sector, which is highly dependent on a complex cross-border supply chain.The CBOE volatility index, Wall Street’s so-called fear gauge popularly known as the VIX, jumped, posting its biggest one-day spike this year, according to Deutsche Bank.The sell-off also extended to cryptocurrencies (more on that below), and, in a new twist, the dollar.If global investors weren’t spooked before, they seem to be now. “The market finally took the Trump administration at its word, and the realization that the tariff talk wasn’t just a negotiating tactic is starting to sink in,” Chris Zaccarelli, an investment strategist for Northlight Asset Management, said in a research note yesterday evening.How long will the trade battle last? Analysts see reason for cautious optimism — at least on China. “We view Beijing’s responses as still strategic and restrained,” Xiangrong Yu, Citigroup’s chief China economist, said in a research note on Tuesday. He said a trade deal was still “plausible.”The Shanghai composite index closed slightly higher on Tuesday.Market watchers warn of deep repercussions should the trade war drag on. Trump seems to be digging in, telling reporters yesterday that there is “no room left for Mexico or for Canada.” A protracted fight could dent global growth and accelerate inflation, all of which could “hamstring the Fed,” Mark Haefele, the chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, told Bloomberg Television on Tuesday.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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      Justice Dept. to Review Election Tampering Conviction of Pro-Trump Clerk

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      The decision, revealed in a filing in a Colorado clerk’s bid to overturn her conviction, marks another example of President Trump’s Justice Department intervening to aid supporters or go after foes.The Justice Department said on Monday that it would review the conviction of the former clerk of Mesa County, Colo., who was found guilty of state charges last summer of tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against President Trump.The decision was the latest example of the Justice Department under Mr. Trump’s control seeking to use its powers to support those who have acted on his behalf and to go after those who have criticized or opposed him. It also played into the president’s effort to rewrite the history of his efforts to overturn the results of the election.Three weeks ago, the former clerk, Tina Peters, who was sentenced to nine years in prison on the state election tampering charges, filed a long-shot motion in Federal District Court in Denver effectively challenging the guilty verdict she received in August at the end of a trial in Grand Junction.But, in a surprise move, Yaakov M. Roth, the acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, filed a court brief known as a statement of interest on Monday, declaring that “reasonable concerns have been raised about various aspects of Ms. Peters’s case.” In the filing, Mr. Roth said the federal judge who received Ms. Peters’s petition this month should give it “prompt and careful consideration.”Mr. Roth said that the Justice Department was concerned, among other things, about “the exceptionally lengthy sentence” imposed on Ms. Peters by the judge in Grand Junction. He also questioned a decision by state prosecutors to deny her bail as she appeals her conviction as “arbitrary or unreasonable.”The review of Ms. Peters’s case was part of a larger examination of cases “across the nation for abuses of the criminal justice process,” Mr. Roth wrote. The scrutiny of Peters case, he added, was being conducted under the aegis of an executive order that Mr. Trump issued seeking to end the “weaponization of the federal government.”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 Administration Said to Drop Lawsuit Over Toxic Chemical

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      The Trump administration plans to drop a federal lawsuit against a chemical manufacturer accused of releasing high levels of a likely carcinogen from its Louisiana plant, according to two people familiar with the plans.The government filed the lawsuit during the Biden administration after regulators determined that chloroprene emissions from the Denka Performance Elastomer plant were contributing to health concerns in an area with the highest cancer risk of any place in the United States.The 2023 lawsuit was among several enforcement actions taken by the Environmental Protection Agency on behalf of poor and minority communities that have disproportionately borne the brunt of toxic pollution.The Denka plant is located in the predominantly Black community of LaPlace, La., in a region so dense with industrial facilities that it is known as “Cancer Alley.” Chloroprene is used to produce neoprene, a synthetic rubber that is found in automotive parts, hoses, beer cozies, orthopedic braces and electric cables.The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment. The agency intends to ask the United States District Court Eastern District of Louisiana this week to dismiss the lawsuit, according to the two people familiar with the decision, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss the case.The lawsuit had given the neighboring community a measure of hope that pollution levels might finally come down, said Robert Taylor, a founder of Concerned Citizens of St John Parish, a community group.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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      In Speech to Congress, Trump Is Expected to Boast About DOGE Cuts and Ukraine

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      President Trump is expected to boast about his assault on the federal bureaucracy and his efforts to upend global relationships during an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday, even as his administration faces lawsuits over his domestic agenda and Europe rebukes him over his treatment of Ukraine.Addressing his largest television audience since his return to power, Mr. Trump is expected to speak about the speed with which he has pushed through reductions in border crossings, cuts to government through the Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, and a slew of executive orders. He is also expected to emphasize the need to pass his legislative agenda, which includes some $4 trillion in tax cuts.“He’s going to talk about the great things he’s done: The border’s secure, the waste he’s finding with DOGE,” said Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, who speaks frequently with Mr. Trump. “He’s going to keep laying out his vision, where he wants the country to go.”For Mr. Trump, it will be a remarkable return to a chamber — and a prime-time, nationwide audience — he last addressed five years ago, before voters ousted him from office and replaced him with Joseph R. Biden Jr. Mr. Trump’s return has set in motion a rapid-fire series of actions designed to overturn decades of policy and diplomacy.During his first term, the president delivered an annual speech to Congress that included a mix of exaggerations and grievance-filled attacks on his enemies. He is poised to do the same again on Tuesday night, using one of the largest platforms that any modern president gets during his time in the Oval Office.Mr. Trump hinted on Monday that he might use the speech to extend his public feud with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine after the Oval Office blowup between the two leaders last week. Asked by a reporter whether a deal to share rare-earth minerals was still possible after the shouting, Mr. Trump said that “I’ll let you know,” adding: “We’re making a speech, you probably heard.”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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      He’s the Face of a White House Press Corps Under Attack by Trump

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      Eugene Daniels, president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, is pushing back on the administration’s hostility to reporters as he navigates a move to MSNBC from Politico.Eugene Daniels didn’t plan on being the face of the White House press corps in the dawn of a new administration hostile to the news media.But because of a clause in the bylaws of the White House Correspondents’ Association, an 800-strong group of journalists who report on the president, he was next in line after Kaitlan Collins, the CNN star who was elected 2024-25 president of the association, had to step aside because of a move to New York.Mr. Daniels, 36, a co-author of Politico’s Playbook newsletter, has now emerged as a key figure in an escalating fight between the Trump White House and the news media over press access and freedom. And he’s balancing his role at the association, which is unpaid volunteer work, with his career, moving this month to a new on-air job at MSNBC.“We’re all competitors, fierce competitors, and the White House beat is tough, but at the same time, when it’s time to stand together, folks actually do that,” Mr. Daniels said of the correspondents’ association in an interview. “It’s unfortunate that this is where we are.”The Trump administration has made no secret of its contempt for reporters, but its actions in recent weeks have shocked many news outlets.President Trump first directed his communications team to bar The Associated Press from the press pool, a rotating group of reporters that travels with the president, and from spaces like the Oval Office and Air Force One. That was in retaliation for The A.P.’s continued use of “Gulf of Mexico” after Mr. Trump’s executive order to change the geographical name to Gulf of America. (Dozens of media outlets, including CNN, The New York Times and Fox News, protested the decision, and The A.P. has filed a First Amendment lawsuit.)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