Trump, Donald J

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      Trump Gives Commencement Address at West Point, Stressing a New Era

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      The president said the graduating cadets would enter a service no longer subject to “absurd ideological experiments” or “nation-building crusades.”President Trump told cadets in a commencement address at the United States Military Academy at West Point on Saturday that they were the first graduates to serve in a “golden age” of the nation that was a result of his efforts to rebuild the military and reshape American society.Gone were the “nation-building crusades” in countries that “wanted nothing to do with us” and leadership that subjected servicemembers to “absurd ideological experiments here and at home,” Mr. Trump told the group of about 1,000 cadets.Wearing his red “Make America Great Again” hat, Mr. Trump leaned into his aggressive agenda to purge diversity, equity and inclusion programs from the government, military and virtually every facet of American life, in making his pitch that the nation was worth fighting for again.He took credit for building the military “better than ever before,” saying it had bolstered its recruitment numbers, morale and commitment to protecting America first. He drew applause from guests at times, such as when he discussed the issue of transgender athletes playing in female sports and hiring on merit over diversity.At the outset of his second term, he issued a spate of executive orders targeting programs and policies that aimed to help address systemic racism, which he deemed divisive and unpatriotic.He claimed that his predecessors had “subjected the armed forces to all manner of social projects and political causes, while leaving our borders undefended and depleting our arsenals to fight other countries’ wars.”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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      Fulfilling a Trump Pledge, U.S. Lifts Some Sanctions on Syria

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      President Trump had promised to lift sanctions during his trip to the Middle East, where he met with President Ahmed al-Shara of Syria.The Trump administration on Friday lifted several major sanctions on Syria, a first step toward making good on President Trump’s promise earlier this month to help the country’s new leader establish a stable government after the fall of the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad last year.The Treasury Department lifted regulations banning U.S. citizens and companies from making most financial transactions with Syrian citizens and entities, including Syria’s central bank, officials said. At the same time, the State Department announced it was suspending for six months other tough sanctions imposed on Syria under the 2019 Caesar Syria Civilian Protection Act.Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement that lifting the sanctions would “advance Syria’s recovery and reconstruction efforts” and “facilitate the provision of electricity, energy, water, and sanitation, and enable a more effective humanitarian response” in the country.The Assad government cracked down on an uprising in 2011, setting off a civil war that caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and forced a mass exodus of Syrians.In December, the Assad regime was finally overthrown by a rebel alliance after more than 10 years of fighting, and Ahmed al-Shara, a rebel leader, became president. Mr. al-Shara once led a branch of Al Qaeda but later broke with the jihadist group, and in recent interviews he has expressed support for democracy, presenting a more pragmatic, nationalist approach to governing.During his trip to Saudi Arabia this month, Mr. Trump agreed to meet with Mr. al-Shara, becoming first U.S. leader in a generation to shake hands with a Syrian head of state.Mr. Trump said he had reached the decision to lift the sanctions on Syria after speaking with Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who backed the anti-Assad insurgency, and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.“There is a new government that will, hopefully, succeed in stabilizing the country and keeping peace,” Mr. Trump said in Saudi Arabia on May 13. “That’s what we want to see in Syria.” More

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      Trump Is Immensely Vulnerable

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      How can Americans best defend their democracy from their president?In my last column, I recounted three lessons from other countries where popular movements have made headway challenging authoritarian rulers. Critics of President Trump have frankly been fairly ineffective — witness his election and the way his approval ratings have risen in some polls lately — but Trump does give us a great deal to work with. He is immensely vulnerable.Drawing upon these lessons from my last column, here are what I see as the most promising lines of attack for his critics:Trump is deeply corrupt. All presidents are accused of shady practices: Remember that President Barack Obama was said to have diminished the presidency by wearing a tan suit. But Trump is a felon who is using his office to enrich himself as no president has in history.The Times reported that more than $2 billion has flowed to Trump companies in just a month, and some of his ventures look alarmingly like opportunities for influence-peddling. How else do we explain his announcement that the biggest investors in his new cryptocurrency memecoin, $TRUMP, would get dinner with him? Some guests flew in from overseas for the dinner, held Thursday, and acknowledged earlier that they hoped to influence Trump and his administration’s policy on financial regulation.The Trump family started a different cryptocurrency outfit, World Liberty Financial, that received a $2 billion investment from the United Arab Emirates. Don Jr. is also starting a members club in Washington, with a $500,000 charge to join. And Saudi Arabia and Qatar are investing in Trump businesses, putting money in family bank accounts.Meanwhile, Trump is using the government to help his pal Elon Musk (who even knew that the world’s richest man was needy?). The White House South Lawn was turned into a temporary showroom for Tesla vehicles in March, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick urged people to “buy Tesla” stock, and American embassies reportedly have pushed impoverished countries to grant regulatory approvals for Musk’s Starlink system.Trump is hurting you in the pocketbook. One reason Trump won the presidency was voter resentment at inflation and economic weakness under Joe Biden. Now it’s Trump who is badly damaging the economy and hitting voters in the wallet.

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      Dance$ With Emolument$

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      When Donald Trump was headed for the Republican nomination in the summer of 2016, I took Carl Hulse, our chief Washington correspondent, to Trump Tower to meet him.Trump didn’t know anything about the inner workings of Washington. He proudly showed us his “Wall of Shame” with pictures of Republican candidates he had bested. His campaign office had few staffers, but it overflowed with cheesy portraits of him sent by fans: one of him playing poker with Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon and Teddy Roosevelt, and a cardboard cutout of him giving a thumbs up, flanked by Reagan and John Wayne.As we were leaving, Hulse warned Trump dryly: “If you ever get a call from our colleague Eric Lipton, you’ll know you’re in trouble.”“Eric Lipton?” Trump murmured.The president probably knows who Lipton is now, because the Pulitzer Prize-winning Times investigative reporter is tracking Trump on issues of corruption as closely as the relentless lawman in the white straw hat tracked Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.Lipton and The Times’s David Yaffe-Bellany were on the scene at Trump’s Virginia golf club Thursday night as the president held his gala dinner to promote sales of $TRUMP, the memecoin he launched on the cusp of his inauguration. (Melania debuted hers two days later.)Trump has been hawking himself in an absurdly grandiose way his whole life. But this time he isn’t grandstanding as a flamboyant New York businessman. He’s selling himself as the president of the United States, staining his office with a blithe display of turpitude.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 Seeks Extensive Student Data in Pressure Campaign to Control Harvard

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      Harvard and the federal government are locked in a battle that boils down to turning over records on international students. But Harvard says it is also about the First Amendment.The latest confrontation between Harvard University and the Trump administration began last month with a far-reaching demand for data on international students.Kristi Noem, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, sent a letter to Harvard requesting, among other things, coursework for every international student and information on any student visa holder involved in misconduct or illegal activity.Harvard rebuffed parts of the request, and the Trump administration retaliated on Thursday. In one of its most aggressive moves so far against the university, the government said Harvard could no longer enroll any international students, who account for about one-fourth of its total enrollment.It also expanded its request for records to include any videos of international students, on campus or off, involved in protests or illegal or dangerous activity.The conflict has only further raised the stakes over the future of America’s oldest and most powerful university.The administration’s attempt to vacuum up vast amounts of private student data opens a new front in Mr. Trump’s crackdown on dissent from his political agenda. The strategy is aimed at realigning a higher education system the president sees as hostile to conservatives by stamping out what it says is antisemitism on campus and the transgender and diversity policies it says are rooted in “woke” ideology.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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      Senators Visit Canada, Seeking a Reset Amid Trump’s Provocations

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      Democrats and one Republican made the trip, seeking to stabilize the U.S.-Canada relationship after President Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and suggested it should become the 51st state.A bipartisan group of senators on Friday arrived in Ottawa seeking to stabilize the United States’ relationship with Canada, determined to mend a once-tight alliance that President Trump has tested in recent months with tariffs and tough talk.Sporting lapel pins of the American and Canadian flags and red and white friendship bracelets, the group — four Democrats and a lone Republican — met with Prime Minister Mark Carney and senior Canadian officials in a bid to defuse the tension that has built up in recent months after economic pressure and political rhetoric from Mr. Trump that many Canadians have viewed as both destabilizing and deeply insulting.“We know how important Canada is to our states and how important the United States and the Canadian relationship is to both countries,” said Senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, after a day of meetings with government officials and business leaders.She was part of a delegation that included fellow Democratic Senators Tim Kaine of Virginia, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Peter Welch of Vermont, as well as Senator Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, the sole Republican.“We hope that this meeting will continue very positive discussions toward ensuring that some of the cracks that have appeared in the relationship in recent months are healed, and we move forward together,” Ms. Shaheen said.Those cracks include Mr. Trump’s tariffs, which disrupted regional economies dependent on trade with Canada, as well as rhetoric that many Canadians found demeaning. The president’s repeated remarks suggesting that Canada should become America’s “51st state” and that the United States was being exploited by the relationship were initially dismissed as misunderstood humor or unorthodox negotiation tactics. Now, they are widely viewed in the country as disrespectful and damaging to Canadian sovereignty.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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      National Security Council Staff Will Be Cut by Half

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      The drastic restructuring, revealed by Marco Rubio, the acting national security adviser, is likely to encourage the president’s preferred style of top-down decision-making in foreign affairs.Marco Rubio, the secretary of state who is also serving as the national security adviser, on Friday revealed a significant restructuring of the National Security Council, reducing the size of its staff by at least half, according to a person with knowledge of the move.The dramatic downsizing of the council, a coordinating body across departments that guides the president and his top aides on key policy decisions, comes as Mr. Trump has built his national security and foreign policy teams with officials who largely share his skepticism of foreign interventions, and who will not work aggressively to oppose that perspective.Rather than build decisions from the ground up incorporating an array of sources and offering a significant menu of different viewpoints, the changes are likely to help Mr. Trump conduct foreign policy debates in his preferred style, with advisers taking the president’s desired outcomes and finding a way to comply with them.Some National Security Council officials from other agencies are returning to their original offices, and others are being placed on administrative leave, effective immediately, said the person with knowledge of the move, who was not authorized to speak publicly. Some of the teams on the council that focus on specific regions or issues will be gutted, while others will be collapsed and folded into others. Still other teams will cease to exist.Andy Baker, Vice President JD Vance’s national security adviser, will serve as the deputy for the reconfigured council, alongside Robert Gabriel, whose current title is assistant to the president for policy.The changes were reported earlier by Axios. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The council has a core staff of presidential appointees supported by dozens of specialists who are detailed — or essentially on loan — from other departments and agencies across the government. Presidents have used the council in different ways, but it has had a central role in foreign policy events since its creation in 1947.Mr. Trump’s allies have long argued that the council had grown too large over time.Mr. Trump has also held a deep distrust for and suspicion of the council since the earliest days of his first term, in 2017. People who have worked for him over time say he believes it was the source of significant undermining of his policy views.Mr. Trump’s first impeachment involved testimony before Congress from Alexander S. Vindman, the council’s director of European affairs, who said the president pressed the Ukrainian leader, Volodymyr Zelensky, for an investigation into Joseph R. Biden Jr. and his family. At the time, Mr. Biden was one of Mr. Trump’s chief potential rivals in the 2020 election.In early April, Mr. Trump fired several N.S.C. aides after a meeting with the far-right activist Laura Loomer, who presented him with a list of people she suspected of disloyalty. More

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      These Are the U.S. Universities Most Dependent on International Students

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      The Trump administration’s threat to block Harvard from enrolling international students would remove more than a quarter of the university’s student body, a share large enough to rock its campus and, potentially, its tuition revenue.The move, frozen within 24 hours on Friday by a federal judge, also highlights the risk other universities face from an administration that has shown deep hostility toward higher education. N.Y.U., Johns Hopkins, Columbia and Carnegie Mellon have even larger international student shares than Harvard does.This metric that once reflected their international renown — and financial strength — now looks like a vulnerability. More