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      Trump to Attend Notre-Dame Cathedral Reopening in Paris

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump will travel to France on Saturday for the reopening of the historic Notre-Dame Cathedral five years after it was ravaged by a fire, his first foreign trip since last month’s election and a symbol of how quickly global leaders are turning the page on the Biden presidency.Mr. Trump announced the trip on his online platform, Truth Social, calling it “an honor” to make public his plans to visit the “Magnificent and Historic” building. He credited President Emmanuel Macron of France with doing “a wonderful job ensuring that Notre Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so.”“It will be a very special day for all!” he wrote.The trip has been in the works for several days, according to people briefed on the planning. Mr. Trump and Mr. Macron have had at least one phone conversation, according to one of the people.President Biden is not expected to attend the reopening, but Dr. Jill Biden, the first lady, will be there, according to one of the people briefed.Mr. Trump has rarely left Mar-a-Lago, his private club and home in Palm Beach, Fla., since he won a second term by defeating Vice President Kamala Harris, who replaced President Biden on the Democratic ticket. The news of the trip was in some ways unsurprising. Mr. Trump loves ceremony and grandeur as it relates to construction sites, especially historic ones. And it marks his return to the world stage.But it is also the latest chapter in what has been a fraught relationship with European allies — and with Mr. Macron in particular.The French leader, who is facing domestic turbulence after a wave of anger from far-right and far-left forces, flattered Mr. Trump early in his first term as U.S. president. Mr. Macron invited Mr. Trump to attend the country’s Bastille Day celebration in Paris in 2017, and Mr. Trump went eagerly.But the relationship soured in 2018, when Mr. Macron endorsed the idea of a true European military defense, one that could counter Russia and China but also the United States. Mr. Macron’s approach chafed against Mr. Trump’s nationalism, at a time when far-right populists generally aligned with Trump were ascending in France and elsewhere in Europe. When the F.B.I. searched Mar-a-Lago for hidden classified documents in August 2022, some of the information federal agents took from the property related to Mr. Macron. More

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      Trump Names Charles Kushner as Pick for Ambassador to France

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      The announcement elevated Mr. Kushner, the father of President Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law and the recipient of a presidential pardon at the end of Mr. Trump’s first term.President-elect Donald J. Trump announced on Saturday that he would name Charles Kushner, the wealthy real estate executive and father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France, handing one of his earliest and most high-profile ambassador appointments to a close family associate.The announcement was the latest step in a long-running exchange of political support between the two men. Mr. Kushner received a pardon from Mr. Trump in the final days of his first term for a variety of violations and then emerged as a major donor to Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.“I am pleased to nominate Charles Kushner, of New Jersey, to serve as the U.S. Ambassador to France,” Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post announcing his choice. “He is a tremendous business leader, philanthropist, & dealmaker, who will be a strong advocate representing our Country & its interests.”Mr. Kushner, 70, pleaded guilty in 2004 to 16 counts of tax evasion, a single count of retaliating against a federal witness and one of lying to the Federal Election Commission in a case that became a lasting source of embarrassment for the family. As part of the plea, Mr. Kushner admitted to hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, a witness in a federal campaign finance investigation, and sending a videotape of the encounter to his sister.Mr. Trump granted Mr. Kushner clemency as part of a wave of 26 pardons he issued with roughly a month left in his first term, along with other close associates including Paul Manafort, his 2016 campaign chairman, and Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime ally and informal adviser.In addition to securing a pardon for himself, Mr. Kushner was instrumental in helping others seeking clemency elevate their cases, relying on his son as a bridge to help get applications in front of Mr. Trump.The case against Mr. Kushner was prosecuted by Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor who was then a U.S. attorney. Mr. Christie has since become a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s and continued to describe Mr. Kushner’s transgressions as severe.Mr. Kushner served two years in prison before his release in 2006.While widely seen as one of the most prized ambassador positions, the role Mr. Kushner will be nominated for could be complicated by the at times standoffish position Mr. Trump took toward President Emmanuel Macron of France during his first term.As president, Mr. Trump also expressed support for Mr. Macron’s far-right challenger in the 2017 French presidential election, Marine Le Pen, whose hard-line stance against immigration Mr. Trump praised.Mr. Macron, who has been a staunch supporter of both the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Ukraine, will serve until mid-2027. Mr. Trump has repeatedly questioned the value of Western support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia’s invasion, and has also publicly sparred with Mr. Macron over other contentious policy disagreements, including trade issues and the U.S. withdrawal from a nuclear deal with Iran. More

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      U.S. Condemns China’s Harsh Sentence for a Prominent Journalist

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      The sentencing of Dong Yuyu, a former Harvard Nieman fellow, signals that officials consider some exchanges between Chinese citizens and foreigners to be espionage.The State Department has denounced a Chinese court’s sentencing of a prominent journalist, Dong Yuyu, to seven years in prison and said it stood with his family in calling for his “immediate and unconditional release.”A court in Beijing announced the sentence on Friday for his conviction on charges of espionage. Mr. Dong, 62, a former Harvard Nieman fellow, has been held since February 2022, when officers from the Ministry of State Security, China’s main intelligence agency, detained him and a Japanese diplomat while they ate lunch in a restaurant.The officers released the diplomat after an interrogation, but prosecutors put Mr. Dong on trial behind closed doors in July 2023. He is the most prominent journalist imprisoned in mainland China.Matthew Miller, the State Department spokesman, said in a statement on Friday that Mr. Dong’s “arrest and today’s sentencing highlight the P.R.C.’s failure to live up to its commitments under international law and its own constitutional guarantees to all its citizens.” He used the initials of the formal name of the country, the People’s Republic of China.“We celebrate Dong’s work as a veteran journalist and editor, as well as his contributions to U.S.-P.R.C. people-to-people ties, including as a Harvard University Nieman fellow,” Mr. Miller added. “We stand by Dong and his family and call for his immediate and unconditional release.”R. Nicholas Burns, the U.S. ambassador to China and a former Harvard professor, also issued a statement of condemnation, calling the sentencing “unjust.”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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      Why I’m Not Giving up on American Democracy

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      In his dank Budapest prison cell in the mid-1950s, my father imagined he heard Dvorak’s “New World” Symphony. Though no one in my family had ever set foot in the actual New World, just knowing it existed brought my father solace during his nearly two-year incarceration.Locked up in Soviet-occupied Hungary’s notorious Fo Street fortress, my father was blessedly still unaware that his wife — my mother, a reporter for United Press International — ­occupied a nearby cell. Nor did he know that his two small children, myself and my older sister, were living with strangers paid to look after them by the American wire services, my parents’ employer. Their crime was reporting on the show trials and jailing of priests, nuns and dissidents that Stalinist satellites of the postwar era used to clamp down on dissent.My parents would find it bitterly disappointing that American conservatives, including Donald Trump, have come to admire their small European homeland, with its habit of choosing the wrong side of history, and even to see it as a role model. Prime Minister Viktor Orban has branded Hungary an “illiberal democracy” as he systematically rolls back hard-won freedoms, reinvents its less than glorious past and cozies up to Russia, Hungary’s former occupying power and my parents’ jailer.I recall a different Orban.On June 1989, I stood with tens of thousands of Hungarians in Budapest’s Heroes’ Square during the reburial of the fallen leaders of the 1956 uprising against the Soviet-controlled government. From the podium, a bearded, skinny youth captured our attention with a fiery speech. “If we are sufficiently determined, we can force the ruling party to face free elections,” he shouted, urging negotiations for the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Hungary. “If we are courageous enough, then and only then, can we fulfill the will of the revolution.” The 26-year-old speaker’s name was Viktor Orban.The events of 1989, when several members of the Eastern Bloc were throwing off the Soviet yoke, were thrilling. Hungary was taking small steps toward democracy, something that I experienced very personally. At my wedding in 1995 in Budapest, my husband, the diplomat Richard Holbrooke, announced in his toast, “In marrying Kati, I also welcome Hungary to the family of democracies.” Hungary’s president, Arpad Goncz, four years into his work to democratize the country, was also present.For a time, Mr. Orban, no longer bearded or skinny, head of the youth party Fidesz, befriended Richard and me. He invited us to dinner and the opera, and we hosted him in our New York apartment at a return dinner. (As it happens, the financier and philanthropist George Soros — whom Mr. Orban has aggressively attacked in recent years — was also present on that occasion.)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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      Trudeau Goes to Mar-a-Lago to See Trump Amid Tariff Concerns

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      Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada is the first G7 leader to visit President-elect Donald J. Trump in Florida since the election. He is under pressure to persuade Mr. Trump to back down from his tariff threat.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada on Friday night landed in Florida to see President-elect Donald J. Trump at Mar-a-Lago, two officials with direct knowledge of the visit said, after a threat by Mr. Trump to impose across-the-board tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico on Day 1.The visit makes Mr. Trudeau the first head of government from the Group of 7, a key forum of global coordination consisting of the world’s wealthiest democracies, to visit the president-elect.Mr. Trudeau and Mr. Trump were to dine together on Friday evening, one official said, along with a delegation of senior Trump allies poised for top trade and security positions in his new administration.Mr. Trudeau was accompanied on his visit by Dominic LeBlanc, Canada’s minister of public safety. The Canadian prime minister was expected to stay in the area overnight, but not at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and home in Palm Beach, Fla.The Trump transition team did not respond to requests for comment, and there was no information released about Mr. Trump’s schedule on Friday.Mr. Trudeau has been scrambling to formulate a plan to respond to the threat made this week by Mr. Trump to impose a 25 percent tariff unless Mexico and Canada take action to curb the arrival of undocumented migrants and drugs across their borders into the United States.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 Selects Jamieson Greer as Trade Representative

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday picked Jamieson Greer, a lawyer and former Trump official, to serve as his top trade negotiator. The position will be crucial to Mr. Trump’s plans of issuing hefty tariffs on foreign products and rewriting the rules of trade in America’s favor.Mr. Greer is a partner in international trade at the law firm King & Spalding. During Mr. Trump’s first term, Mr. Greer served as chief of staff to Robert E. Lighthizer, the trade representative at the time. He was involved in the Trump administration’s trade negotiations with China, as well as the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico.Before that, Mr. Greer served in the Air Force, where he was a lawyer who prosecuted and defended U.S. airmen in criminal investigations. He was deployed to Iraq.“Jamieson will focus the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative on reining in the Country’s massive Trade Deficit, defending American Manufacturing, Agriculture, and Services, and opening up Export Markets everywhere,” Mr. Trump said.The position of trade representative has historically been fairly low profile, but it has taken on greater importance under Mr. Trump. In his first term, the office helped wage a trade war against China, imposed substantial tariffs on its products and negotiated a series of trade deals.In his next term, Mr. Trump has promised to again make aggressive use of the government’s authority over trade. On Monday, he said he would impose tariffs on all products coming into the United States from Canada, Mexico and China on his first day in office.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 Tariff Threat Pits Canada Against Mexico

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      If President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threat of hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico was intended as a divide-and-conquer strategy, early signs show that it might be working.After his missive on Monday, in which he said he planned to impose a 25 percent tariff on all imports from both of the United States’ neighbors, Ottawa and Mexico City followed starkly different approaches.Mexico took a tough stance, threatening to retaliate with its own tariffs on U.S. goods. Canada, instead, emphasized that it was much closer aligned to the United States than Mexico.The trade agreement between the three North American nations has been carefully maintained over the past three decades through a delicate balance between the United States and its two key allies.As Mr. Trump prepares to take office, his willingness to tear that up to pressure the two countries on migration could open the door to the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement being replaced by separate bilateral deals with the United States.Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s finance minister, has tried to show that Canada is aligned with Mr. Trump’s hawkish attitude toward China.Blair Gable/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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      Trump Plans Tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico That Could Cripple Trade

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Monday that he would impose tariffs on all products coming into the United States from Canada, Mexico and China on his first day in office, a move that would scramble global supply chains and impose heavy costs on companies that rely on doing business with some of the world’s largest economies.In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump mentioned a caravan of migrants making its way to the United States from Mexico, and said he would use an executive order to levy a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until drugs and migrants stopped coming over the border.“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” the president-elect wrote.“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” he added. “We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”In a separate post, Mr. Trump also threatened an additional 10 percent tariff on all products from China, saying that the country was shipping illegal drugs to the United States.“Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through,” he said.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