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      Takeaways from Trump’s Military Parade in Washington

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      The events in the capital were overshadowed by an assassination in Minnesota and turmoil in the Middle East.On his 79th birthday, President Trump spent more than three hours on Saturday taking in the scene at a military parade commemorating the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army.The event, which was officially billed as a tribute to service and a showcase of American military history, was hailed by the president’s supporters as a show of strength and a savvy recruitment tactic.But his critics argued that the event was a further politicization of the military, especially after of a tense week in which Mr. Trump deployed the Marines in Los Angeles to quell protests.Here are key takeaways from the day and the parade:The day’s events were overshadowed by political violence and war.News on Saturday was dominated by a manhunt after the assassination of a Democratic state legislator in Minnesota and the attempted assassination of another.For most of the day, speculation raged about the killing of State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, and the shooting of State Senator John A. Hoffman and his wife, Yvette, who were both injured.At the same time, warfare escalated between Israel and Iran, with growing concerns about the possibility of a wider, regional war that could draw in the United States and other major powers.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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      Inside Trump’s Extraordinary Turnaround on Immigration Raids

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      President Trump’s decision to pause most raids targeting farms and hospitality workers took many inside the White House by surprise. It came after intensive lobbying by his agriculture secretary.On Wednesday morning, President Trump took a call from Brooke Rollins, his secretary of agriculture, who relayed a growing sense of alarm from the heartland.Farmers and agriculture groups, she said, were increasingly uneasy about his immigration crackdown. Federal agents had begun to aggressively target work sites in recent weeks, with the goal of sharply bolstering the number of arrests and deportations of undocumented immigrants.Farmers rely on immigrants to work long hours, Ms. Rollins said. She told the president that farm groups had been warning her that their employees would stop showing up to work out of fear, potentially crippling the agricultural industry.She wasn’t the first person to try to get this message through to the president, nor was it the first time she had spoken to him about it. But the president was persuaded.The next morning, he posted a message on his social media platform, Truth Social, that took an uncharacteristically softer tone toward the very immigrants he has spent much of his political career demonizing. Immigrants in the farming and hospitality industries are “very good, long time workers,” he said. “Changes are coming.”Some influential Trump donors who learned about the post began reaching out to people in the White House, urging Mr. Trump to include the restaurant sector in any directive to spare undocumented workers from enforcement.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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      Melania Trump Suits Up for the Military Parade

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      The first lady’s outfit was fully in line with the controlled and contained public image she had been crafting since the end of her husband’s first term.It wasn’t exactly dress whites, but it was dressy and white, with thin blue pinstripes and shiny silver buttons. And while it may not have had epaulets, it did have shoulder pads.As Melania Trump took her place next to her husband in the presidential viewing stand to watch the Army’s 250th anniversary parade, her suit suggested that if he was the commander in chief, she was his general. As he has his own uniform of Pavlovian patriotism (navy suit, white shirt and red tie), she has hers. Regalia takes all forms.As such, the suit was something of a riposte to those who would still see her as a reluctant political spouse: Whether or not she spends all her time in the White House, she’s there, and appropriately costumed for key scenes like this one.And it was fully in line with the almost militantly controlled and contained public image Mrs. Trump had been crafting since the end of her husband’s first term, when she wore an army green Alexander McQueen skirt suit to give her speech at the Republican National Convention in 2020. She even wore a trench coat, a garment originally made for British soldiers in World War I, to the White House Easter Egg Roll in April.Politics is a battlefield, she has always seemed to be saying, and you have to armor yourself accordingly. Even if only in a buttoned-up skirt suit, with stilettos on your feet instead of in your pockets.If this particular skirt suit — a double-breasted cotton twill blazer with a matching high-waisted pencil skirt — was a little more navy (or country club navy) than army, it still had an awfully regimental vibe.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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      Photos and Maps: ‘No Kings’ Day Protests Across the United States

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      Large crowds across the country have gathered to protest the Trump administration — in major cities like Philadelphia, Atlanta, New York and Chicago and in smaller, rural communities as well. The “No Kings” rallies, as the demonstrations were known, were planned for the same day as a military parade in Washington, D.C., that President Trump scheduled for the Army’s 250th anniversary, which also coincides with his 79th birthday.In Minnesota, where a gunman shot and killed a state lawmaker and her husband, and wounded a state senator and his wife overnight on Saturday, demonstrators came out to protest even though the events were officially canceled. Several protesters noted that it was important to show courage on a frightening day.The demonstrations follow more than a week of large-scale protests in Los Angeles against Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown and his decision to deploy the military there. More

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      Minnesota Gunman May Have Planned to Target ‘No Kings’ Protests, Police Say

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      Organizers of the protests said that all of the planned events in the state were canceled after a recommendation from Gov. Tim Walz.The man believed to have shot two Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota, one fatally, had papers in his car that indicated he may have been planning to target one of the “No Kings” protests taking place in cities across the country on Saturday.Minnesota state police posted a photograph of papers in the suspect’s car that had “NO KINGS” written on them. That’s the slogan for protests taking place in hundreds of cities that were organized by liberal groups to protest President Trump and his administration.Organizers of the protests said that they were canceling all of the planned events in Minnesota after a recommendation to do so from Gov. Tim Walz and other officials.Several thousand people had gathered outside of the State Capitol in St. Paul by early Saturday afternoon, about 25 miles from the shootings.Governor Walz said that people should “not attend any political rallies” in the state until the suspect was taken into custody.The police said that the suspect had a list of targets and that both of the state lawmakers who were shot were on the list.The gunman impersonated a police officer, the authorities said, and killed State Representative Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, at their home before going to the home of State Senator John A. Hoffman and shooting him and his wife, Yvette. The Hoffmans are being treated at a hospital.Bernard Mokam More

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      Trump Shifts Deportation Focus, Pausing Raids on Farms, Hotels and Eateries

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      The abrupt pivot on an issue at the heart of Mr. Trump’s presidency suggested his broad immigration crackdown was hurting industries and constituencies he does not want to lose.The Trump administration has abruptly shifted the focus of its mass deportation campaign, telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to largely pause raids and arrests in the agricultural industry, hotels and restaurants, according to an internal email and three U.S. officials with knowledge of the guidance.The decision suggested that the scale of President Trump’s mass deportation campaign — an issue that is at the heart of his presidency — is hurting industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.The new guidance comes after protests in Los Angeles against the Trump administration’s immigration raids, including at farms and businesses. It also came as Mr. Trump made a rare concession this week that his crackdown was hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses.The guidance was sent on Thursday in an email by a senior ICE official, Tatum King, to regional leaders of the ICE department that generally carries out criminal investigations, including work site operations, known as Homeland Security Investigations.“Effective today, please hold on all work site enforcement investigations/operations on agriculture (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and operating hotels,” he wrote in the message.The email explained that investigations involving “human trafficking, money laundering, drug smuggling into these industries are OK.” But it said — crucially — that agents were not to make arrests of “non criminal collaterals,” a reference to people who are undocumented but who are not known to have committed any other crime.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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      Voice of America Recalls Staff for Iranian Language News Service From Leave

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      Most of the staff of Voice of America, the federally funded news network, were put on administrative leave by the Trump administration in March.The Farsi language news broadcast for Voice of America was abruptly reactivated on Friday, calling back dozens of workers for the news network who had been put on paid leave as hostilities between Israel and Iran intensified, two staff members at the Farsi news service said.Voice of America, a federally funded news network that reports the news in dozens of foreign languages, had previously included a news service in Farsi, also known as Persian, the language most commonly spoken in Iran. Workers for the Farsi news service were among the vast majority of staff at Voice of America who were placed on paid administrative leave after President Trump signed an executive order gutting the news agency in March.Employees for the news service have since sued to have the service restored even as the Trump administration moves to all but eliminate the news network. Supporters of the network argued that the service provided credible news in places that lacked an independent press, while the White House accused it of leftist bias.Kari Lake, a senior adviser for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which oversees Voice of America, did not respond to a request for comment.In an email reviewed by The New York Times, workers for the Farsi news service were told they were recalled “effective immediately” and told to “report to your duty station immediately.” Workers were also told to ensure that their security credentials had been reactivated.About 100 staff members work at the Farsi news service. All the full-time staff members, about half of the total work force, were called back to work, a staffer at the Farsi language service said, but contractors have not been, creating problems as the news agency quickly ramped up production for a television broadcast late Friday evening.The website for Voice of America’s Farsi language service was updated with a collection of stories on the conflict between Israel and Iran on Friday.Journalists for Voice of America who were still on administrative leave lamented that staff members were only now being recalled in an emergency, adding that the situation in the Middle East showed why the network never should have been shut down.“After months off the air, we’ve already lost a lot of audience and credibility,” Patsy Widakuswara, a former Voice of America White House bureau chief who was placed on leave and is leading a lawsuit against Ms. Lake and the U.S. Agency for Global Media, said in a statement. “They should bring us all back so we can respond to breaking news in all parts of the world.”Jessica Jerreat, an editor at Voice of America who was also placed on leave, said in a statement that “by reducing programming since March, V.O.A. has cut off its audience right at the very moment they need it most.” More

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      Judge Reinstates Product Safety Regulators Fired by Trump

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      It’s the latest setback for President Trump in his effort to purge perceived political opponents from independent agencies.A federal judge in Maryland reversed President Trump’s firings of the three Democratic members of the five-member Consumer Product Safety Commission, which monitors the safety of products like toys, cribs and electronics.In the ruling, Judge Matthew J. Maddox of the Federal District Court in Maryland said that the law only allowed Mr. Trump to fire the officials for “neglect of duty or malfeasance,” while Mr. Trump had purported to fire them without cause.“Plaintiffs have performed ably in their roles,” Judge Maddox wrote, “and have never been accused of neglect of duty or malfeasance in office by either President Trump or President Biden.”It is the latest setback for Mr. Trump in his effort to purge perceived political opponents from independent agencies in the government, part of an assault on counterweights to his authority. Another federal judge ruled last month that Mr. Trump broke the law when he fired Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, an independent civil liberties watchdog.The three Democratic members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission, Mary T. Boyle, Richard L. Trumka Jr. and Alexander Hoehn-Saric, said in separate statements after Mr. Trump moved to fire them that they had been targeted for votes they cast to stop the importing of poorly made lithium-ion batteries and objecting to staffing cuts.Ms. Boyle’s term as a commissioner ends in October, and Mr. Trump will be able to pick her replacement, granting him a Republican-controlled majority on the commission. More