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      Trump news at a glance: ‘I’m not joking’ – Trump says he could seek third term

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      Donald Trump has said there are “methods” – if not “plans” – to circumvent the constitutional limit preventing US presidents from serving three terms, in an explosive interview in which he also said he was “very angry” with Vladimir Putin, threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.In the interview, which aired Sunday on NBC, Trump told host Kristen Welker regarding a third term that “there are methods which you could do it”. Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of serving a third term but has often masqueraded it as a joke. But on Sunday, he confirmed he was “not joking”.Trump makes clear his interest in a third term is seriousIn the interview, Welker alluded to a purported loophole some Trump supporters have fantasized about finding in which he could be the running mate to his vice-president, JD Vance, or someone else in the 2028 election. The person to whom Trump would be the running mate in that scenario could then immediately resign after winning and being sworn in as president, letting Trump take over by succession.Trump said it was “far too early to think about” trying to defy the two presidential term limit, but asked if being president a third time would be too much work, he said: “I like working.”Read the full storyTrump says he’s ‘pissed off’ with PutinTrump has said he is “very angry” and “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow’s oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month.The abrupt change of direction came after Putin had tried to attack the legitimacy of Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump said. Appearing on Russian television, Putin had suggested Ukraine could be placed under a temporary UN-led government to organise fresh elections before negotiating a peace deal.Read the whole storyFinnish president plays a round of golf diplomacy with TrumpFinnish president Alexander Stubb said Trump was losing patience with Putin’s stalling tactics over the Ukraine ceasefire after spending several hours with the US president – including winning a golf competition with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday.Stubb, who also spent two days with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, last week in Helsinki suggested in a Guardian interview a plan for a deadline of 20 April, by which time Putin should be required to comply with a full ceasefire.Read the full storyThe Atlantic’s Goldberg dismisses Waltz’s Signal defense: ‘This isn’t the Matrix’.The Atlantic magazine’s chief editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, has dismissed as implausible the explanation offered by national security adviser Mike Waltz that his contact was “sucked in” to his phone via “somebody else’s contact”.“This isn’t The Matrix,” Goldberg told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday’s Meet the Press. “Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones.”Read the full storyMinnesota officials seek answers after Ice detains graduate studentOfficials in Minnesota were seeking answers in the case of a University of Minnesota graduate student who was being detained by US immigration authorities for unknown reasons.University leadership said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detained the student on Thursday at an off-campus residence. Officials said the school was not given advance notice about the detention and did not share information with federal authorities. The student’s name and nationality have not been released.Read the full storyAdvertising giant WPP cuts diversity references from annual reportThe British advertising giant WPP has become the latest company to cut the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” from its annual report as the policies come under attack from the Trump administration.The agency, which counts the US as by far its largest market, boasts the storied “Madison Avenue” agencies J Walter Thompson, Ogilvy and Grey among its top brands. In WPP’s annual report, which was released on Friday, the chief executive, Mark Read, told shareholders that “much has changed over the last year” due to political events.Read the full storyWhite House correspondents’ dinner cancels anti-Trump comedian’s appearanceComedy is off the menu at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner, a once convivial get-together for reporters to meet with federal governments officials that has become too fraught for light-heartedness amid the second Trump presidency.The dinner, scheduled for 26 April, is organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), and it typically features a post-meal comedic interlude where a comedian sets to work on the powerful. Beginning with Calvin Coolidge in 1924, every president has attended at least one WHCA dinner – except for Trump.Read the full storySmithsonian Institution braces for Trump rewrite of US historyVisitors have come in their millions to the Smithsonian Institution, the world’s biggest museum, education and research complex, in Washington for the past 178 years. On Thursday, Donald Trump arrived with his cultural wrecking ball.The US president, who has sought to root out “wokeness” since returning to power in January, accused the Smithsonian of trying to rewrite history on issues of race and gender. In an executive order entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”, he directed the removal of “improper, divisive or anti-American ideology” from its storied museums.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      Trump said he “couldn’t care less” if tariffs make car prices go up and is facing a backlash from some members within his own party over the measures.

      Candidates are gearing up for special elections in parts of Florida, Texas, Arizona and Wisconsin in what’s being seen as a litmus test of Trump’s first weeks in office.

      Catching up? Here’s what happened on 29 March. More

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      Trump says ‘there are methods’ for seeking third term in White House

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      Donald Trump has said there are “methods” – if not “plans” – to circumvent the constitutional limit preventing US presidents from serving three terms.In an interview aired Sunday on NBC, Trump was asked about his trying to stay in office beyond his second presidency, a specter he has repeatedly raised while sometimes claiming he is just joking.Trump told host Kristen Welker “there are methods which you could do it” – and this time made it a point to say he was not joking.“Well, there are plans,” Trump said to Welker. “There are – not plans. There are methods – there are methods which you could do it, as you know.”Welker alluded to a purported loophole some Trump supporters have fantasized about finding in which he could be the running mate to his vice-president, JD Vance, or someone else in the 2028 election. The person to whom Trump would be the running mate in that scenario could then immediately resign after winning and being sworn in as president, letting Trump take over by succession.Their argument would be that the constitution’s 22nd amendment only explicitly bans being “elected” to more than two presidential terms without saying anything about becoming the commander-in-chief on an additional occasion through succession.Vance has not indicated he is interested in participating in such a plan. And an election law professor at Notre Dame, Derek Muller, told the Associated Press that the constitution’s 12th amendment says “no person constitutionally ineligible to the office of president shall be eligible to that of vice-president of the United States.”Muller said that indicates that if Trump is not eligible to run for president again because of the 22nd amendment, he is not eligible to run for the vice-presidency, either.“I don’t think there’s any ‘one weird trick’ to getting around presidential term limits,” Muller said.Nonetheless, Welker theorized that Vance could somehow “pass the baton” to Trump.Trump replied, “Well, that’s one.”“But there are others too. There are others.”When pushed to detail those methods, Trump said, “No.”Trump then said it was “far too early to think about” trying to defy the two presidential term limit in the constitution to stay in office and that he was “focused on the current”. But asked if being president a third time would be too much work, he said: “I like working.”And asked if he was just joking, as he and his supporters like to say whenever he floats anti-constitutional ideas, he said: “No, no, I’m not joking. I’m not joking.”Trump’s comments came after he previously likened himself to a “king” – the royal title without term limits – on social media.In February, he prompted widespread outcry when he took to Truth Social following his executive order for New York City to rescind its congestion pricing program and wrote: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”The White House then proceeded to share Trump’s quote on social media, accompanied with a computer-generated image of the president grinning on a fake Time magazine cover while wearing a golden crown, behind him the skyline of New York City.Meanwhile, the Republican US House member Andy Ogles of Tennessee introduced a resolution in January expressing support for amending the constitution into allowing a president to serve up to three terms – under the condition that they did not serve two consecutive terms.Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Bill Clinton and George W Bush could not seek a third term under an amendment like the one posited by Ogles, which would stand virtually no chance of passing. Only Trump would be eligible for a third term because he won the presidency in 2016 and in November yet lost to Biden in 2020.Nevertheless, not all members of the Trump-led Republican party are on board with the idea of changing the constitution to let the president stay in power beyond the end of his second term in early 2029. After Trump’s “King” comments in February, the Republican US senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma said he would not back an unconstitutional third term under Trump.“I’m not changing the constitution, first of all, unless the American people chose to do that,” Mullin told NBC.To modify presidential term limits would require two-thirds approval from both the Senate and the House, as well as approval from three-quarters of the country’s state legislatures. Trump’s enablers do not have the numbers required in those various entities to easily get that approval democratically.The 22nd amendment was ratified after Franklin D Roosevelt served two terms following his election in 1932 – and was then re-elected in 1940 and 1944 amid the second world war. He died as president in 1945, and the 22nd amendment was ratified in 1951. More

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      Goldberg dismisses Waltz’s Signal leak defense: ‘Numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones’

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      Atlantic magazine editor Jeffrey Goldberg has dismissed the explanation offered by national security adviser Mike Waltz for how he was included in a Trump administration group text chat about – and in advance of – the recent bombing of Houthi rebels in Yemen.Goldberg said Waltz’s theory that his contact was “sucked in” to his phone via “somebody else’s contact” was implausible.“This isn’t The Matrix,” Goldberg told NBC’s Kristen Welker on Sunday’s Meet the Press, referring to the classic science fiction movie about humans unknowingly living in a simulated reality. “Phone numbers don’t just get sucked into other phones.“I don’t know what he’s talking about there.”Goldberg continued: “You know, very frequently in journalism, the most obvious explanation is the explanation. My phone number was in his phone because my phone number is in his phone.”Goldberg made waves when the magazine, over two days beginning 24 March, published details of a group chat that included senior Trump administration officials discussing a then imminent US attack on Houthi installations and senior personnel.The chat, on the Signal app, unnerved many in Washington about the security precautions being taken by neophyte administration officials to ensure national security, triggering several days of headlines over whether the texts amounted to a breach.Donald Trump on Sunday repeated his position that the disclosures were a mistake – and the president denied reports that Waltz had offered to resign. “No, he didn’t,” Trump said. “There was no reason for him to.”Earlier, Trump said Waltz is “a very good man, and he will continue to do a good job”.On Sunday, Goldberg claimed that Waltz is “telling everyone that he’s never met me or spoken to me – that’s simply not true”. Waltz had said during a meeting with Trump and ambassadors at the White House that he “never met” Goldberg.“There’s a lot of journalists … who have made big names for themselves making up lies about this president,” Waltz said, without offering evidence. Referring to Goldberg, he added: “This one in particular I’ve never met, don’t know, never communicated with, and we are looking into and reviewing how the heck he got into this room.”The national security council (NSC) confirmed the authenticity of the messages and said it was reviewing how Goldberg got into the Waltz-initiated chat. Theories range from unintentionally selecting Goldberg’s number; his number being under the name of a security official supposed to be included; to intentional sabotage.But Goldberg told NBC News: “This has become a somewhat farcical situation. There’s no subterfuge here. My number was in his phone. He mistakenly added me to the group chat. There we go.”Democratic US senator Mark Warner continued to press the issue on Sunday, saying the Republican White House officials involved in the Signal breach risked American lives.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“If you had been a traditional military officer or a CIA caseworker and you were this sloppy and careless with this classified information, you would be fired,” Warner, of Virginia, told host Martha Raddatz on ABC’s This Week. “No doubt about it.”Warner – a member of the Senate intelligence committee – said he, too, uses Signal because it is safer than texting. “I actually encourage people to use Signal. But that still doesn’t mean, because it’s safer, you can put classified information” on there, he added.Congressman Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican and former chairperson of the US House’s intelligence committee, told the same outlet that he welcomed a review into what has come to be known as Signalgate and “whether or not these types of conversations should occur”.Nonetheless, he said he considered the Houthi strikes “a great operation”.Susan Rice, who served as the national security adviser to former president Barack Obama, told the MeidasTouch podcast that the leak was “extraordinarily reckless” and “unprecedented”.Rice said even the existence of the conversations is classified.“This would never be tolerated in a normal administration,” Rice said. “They’d be fired on the spot.” More

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      Donald Trump says he is ‘very angry’ with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine

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      Donald Trump has said he is “pissed off” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine and threatened to levy tariffs on Moscow’s oil exports if the Russian leader does not agree to a truce within a month.The US president indicated he would levy a 25% or 50% tariff that would affect countries buying Russian oil in a telephone interview with NBC News, during which he also threatened to bomb Iran and did not rule out using force in Greenland.“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault, which it might not be, but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said.“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all … on all oil, a 25 to 50-point tariff on all oil.”The abrupt change of direction came after Putin had tried to attack the legitimacy of Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, Trump said. Appearing on Russian television, Putin had suggested Ukraine could be placed under a temporary UN-led government to organise fresh elections before negotiating a peace deal.Trump has previously called the Ukrainian president a dictator, but on Sunday he said: “I was very angry, pissed off” when Putin “started getting into Zelenskyy’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right location, you understand?”He said “new leadership means you’re not gonna have a deal for a long time, right” and that he wanted to exert pressure on the Kremlin, which has thrown up a string of questions about a peace settlement and only agreed to limited maritime and energy ceasefires so far.Trump repeated that “if a deal isn’t made, and if I think it was Russia’s fault, I’m going to put secondary sanctions on Russia”, but then indicated he would quickly back down if there was progress on a ceasefire.“The anger dissipates quickly” if Putin “does the right thing”, Trump said, adding that he expected to talk to his Russian counterpart this week.The US president also used the same short interview to tell Iran that if “they don’t make a deal” to curb their nuclear weapons programme, “there will be bombing. It will be bombing the likes of which they have never seen before”. Officials from both countries were engaged in negotiations, he added.He also mentioned fresh economic sanctions as an alternative. “There’s a chance that, if they don’t make a deal, that I will do secondary tariffs on them,” Trump said. “I am considering putting on secondary tariffs on Iran until such time as a deal is signed.”Secondary tariffs are a novel idea. The US introduced a 25% tariff last week on countries that buy crude oil and liquid fuels from Venezuela, the largest of which is China, after Trump accused the Latin American country of sending criminals and gang members into the US under the cover of migrants.Russian oil exports are already subject to a range of sanctions from the US, UK, EU and other G7 countries, leaving China and India as the two largest buyers, according to the International Energy Agency. What is not yet clear is whether the measures proposed would be effective once they come into force.Finland indicated it may have had a role in Trump’s intervention. A day before the interview, Trump spent time with his Finnish counterpart, Alexander Stubb, at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. The two men had breakfast and lunch and played a round of golf on an unofficial visit, Stubb’s office said.“My message in the conversations I have with the president is that we need a ceasefire, and we need a deadline for the ceasefire, and then we need to pay a price for breaking a ceasefire,” Stubb told the Guardian.“So, number one, we need a ceasefire date, and I would prefer that to be Easter, say, 20 April, when President Trump has been in office for three months. If by then it’s not accepted or is broken by Russia, there needs to be consequences. And those consequences should be sanctions, maximum sanctions, and we continue the pressure up until the 20th and then we’ll see what happens.”During a previous interview with NBC on Saturday, Trump said: “We’ll get Greenland. Yeah, 100%” and argued that while there’s a “good possibility that we could do it without military force … I don’t take anything off the table.”During the election campaign, Trump had said that he could end the Ukraine war within 24 hours, comments he more recently claimed were “a little bit sarcastic”. That has proved elusive and his tactics to force Russia and Ukraine into agreeing a ceasefire have so far been focused on bullying and pressurising Kyiv.Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, berated Zelenskyy at the Oval Office a month ago, which was followed by Washington cutting off intelligence and military aid. Kyiv then signed up to the principle of a 30-day ceasefire if the Kremlin would reciprocate in return for intelligence and aid being restored.Putin said earlier this month that although he was in favour of a ceasefire, “there are nuances” and any halt in fighting should “remove the root causes of this crisis”, a sweeping but vague demand.The Russian president and his allies have called for the demilitarisation of Ukraine, insisted that the presence of western troops as peacekeepers would be unacceptable and demanded the full annexation of four regions, three of which it only partially occupies.Two people were killed and 25 were injured in and around Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, in Russian attacks on Saturday night and Sunday morning. A military hospital was among the buildings struck. Ukraine’s general staff denounced what it said was a “deliberate, targeted shelling”, a rare acknowledgement of military casualties.Trump’s intervention follows a difficult week for the White House, during which senior administration officials were criticised for discussing attacks on Houthi rebels in Yemen on the Signal messaging app, which is not authorised by the Pentagon.The highly sensitive discussion, which included bombing plans, leaked because a journalist from the Atlantic magazine was mistakenly added to the chat by the US national security adviser, Mike Waltz. More

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      Minnesota officials seek answers after Ice detains graduate student

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      Officials in Minnesota were seeking answers in the case of a University of Minnesota graduate student who was being detained by US immigration authorities for unknown reasons.University leadership said Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detained the student on Thursday at an off-campus residence. Officials said the school was not given advance notice about the detention and did not share information with federal authorities. The student’s name and nationality have not been released.As the case remained largely a mystery, state and local leaders called on federal authorities to explain their actions.“My office and I are doing all we can to get information about this concerning case,” the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar said in a post on the social media site X. “We’re in contact with the University and understand they had no prior warning or information that led to this detainment.”She said that international students are “a major part of the fabric of life in the school and our community”.View image in fullscreenThe detained student was enrolled in business school at the university’s Twin Cities campus. University officials said the school was providing the student with legal aid and other support services.What prompted the detention is still unknown. Ice officials have not responded to an Associated Press email requesting comment.The Minnesota governor, Tim Walz, said on X that he was in touch with the US Department of Homeland Security.“The University of Minnesota is an international destination for education and research,” Walz wrote. “We have any number of students studying here with visas, and we need answers.”The Minneapolis mayor, Jacob Frey, also called the case “deeply troubling”.“Educational environments must be places where all students can focus on learning and growing without fear,” he wrote on X.Officials promised to release more information about the case once they had updates.US immigration authorities have been targeting people with ties to American colleges and universities as President Donald Trump seeks to crackdown on immigrants. Most of the detainees have shown support for Palestinian causes.The Trump administration has cited a seldom-invoked statute authorizing the secretary of state to revoke visas of noncitizens who could be considered a threat to foreign policy interests. More than half a dozen people are known to have been taken into custody or deported in recent weeks.In Minneapolis, the university’s graduate labor union organized a protest on Saturday outside the US citizenship and immigration services office downtown, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune. Dozens of people joined the rally to stand in solidarity with international students facing uncertain futures under the new Trump administration.“International students are huge assets to the University of Minnesota,” Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota said in a Facebook post. “They move thousands of miles away from their families and support systems to learn from the best and the brightest. I can’t imagine how terrified they are after learning ICE has detained one of their classmates.” More

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      Advertising giant WPP cuts diversity references from annual report

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      The British advertising giant WPP has become the latest company to cut the phrase “diversity, equity and inclusion” from its annual report as the policies come under attack from the Trump administration.The agency, which counts the US as by far its largest market, boasts the storied “Madison Avenue” agencies J Walter Thompson, Ogilvy and Grey among its top brands.In WPP’s annual report, which was released on Friday, the chief executive, Mark Read, told shareholders that “much has changed over the last year” due to political events.“In today’s complex world, a pressing question for brands and organisations is whether to engage on social issues in a more contested public arena, and how to navigate the expectations of different audiences with competing views on sensitive topics,” he wrote.The same document axed all references of “diversity, equity and inclusion”, “DE&I” and “DEI”. The policy attracted 20 mentions in the previous year’s report. The earlier document mentioned three times that the company was seen as a “diversity leader”.The omissions, which were first reported by the Sunday Times, included changes to how the company reports on measuring top executives’ non-financial performance, which contributes to the size of their short-term bonuses. In the new report, the phrasing has switched to “people and culture”.WPP declined to comment on whether the new wording was a response to anti-DEI policy moves by the Trump administration. The company said that, while the phrasing in its annual report had changed, the way in which executives’ short-term bonuses are calculated was unaltered.Within his first few days in office, Donald Trump instructed US government agencies to shut down their DEI programmes and federal employees working in diversity offices were immediately put on paid leave.Trump signed two executive orders targeting DEI programmes within the federal government. The first executive order largely scrapped the DEI efforts that took place under Joe Biden, who had ordered all federal agencies to come up with equity plans.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA second executive order effectively ended any DEI activities within the federal government. This order overturned a handful of executive orders from past presidents, including one from Lyndon B Johnson that was signed during the civil rights era that required federal contractors to adopt equal opportunity measures.The Financial Times recently reported that more than 200 US companies have removed references to “diversity, equity and inclusion” from their annual reports since Trump’s election. More

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      The Guardian view on attacks on lawyers: democracies must stand up for justice | Editorial

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      What the law says on paper is irrelevant if it cannot be upheld, or even stated clearly. That is why lawyers are targeted – with harassment, disbarment from the profession or even jail – by repressive regimes.Russia’s attempts to suppress the voice of the opposition leader Alexei Navalny did not end with his death in an Arctic prison colony. In a bleak coda, three of his lawyers have been jailed for several years. Vadim  Kobzev, Alexei Liptser and Igor Sergunin were found guilty of participating in an “extremist organisation” for relaying his messages to the outside world.The Center for Human Rights in Iran warned earlier this year that Iranian lawyers were being kicked out of the profession, arrested and jailed for representing protesters and dissidents. As its executive director, Hadi Ghaemi, noted: “Every lawyer imprisoned or disbarred represents many defendants whose rights have been trampled and now lack legal defence.”In China, where more than 300 human rights lawyers who had dared to take on sensitive cases were detained in 2015’s “709” crackdown, the pressure continues. As a grim joke had it at the height of the campaign, “even lawyers’ lawyers need lawyers” – those who represented arrested friends were then seized themselves.The unrelenting nature of the clampdown is particularly striking when, as one Chinese lawyer, Liang Xiaojun, observed: “We know we can’t win.” When the verdict is clear before a case has started, lawyers can only offer solidarity, spread their clients’ stories, and highlight the gulf between legal theory and reality. But in doing so, they challenge the official narrative. Targeting these lawyers didn’t just signal that resistance only invites further trouble. It attacked the concept of the rule of law itself, which lawyers had attempted to assert, hammering home the message that the party’s power was unassailable.The Council of Europe warned earlier this month that there are increasing reports of harassment, threats and other attacks on the practice of law internationally. The human rights body has adopted the first international treaty aiming to protect the profession of lawyer. Member states should now ratify this. Lawyers must be defended, as they defend others and the concepts of rules and justice.That message is more important than ever as the Trump administration turns on lawyers and judges as part of its broader assault on the institutions of US democracy and the principles that underpin them. The sanctioning of staff at the international criminal court is only the most flagrant example. William R Bay, president of the American Bar Association, told members in a recent letter: “Government actions evidence a clear and disconcerting pattern. If a court issues a decision this administration does not agree with, the judge is targeted. If a lawyer represents parties in a dispute with the administration, or … represents parties the administration does not like, lawyers are targeted.” Government lawyers too have faced “personal attacks, intimidation, firings and demotions for simply fulfilling their professional responsibilities”.Democratic governments and civil society must speak up for the law wherever it is threatened. Mr Bay is right to urge those in the profession to stand up and be counted. “If we don’t speak now, when will we speak?” he asks. The law still counts – both materially and culturally – in the US. Those who practise it need some of the courage in resisting abuses that their counterparts have shown elsewhere.  More

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      White House correspondents’ dinner cancels anti-Trump comedian’s appearance

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      Comedy is off the menu at the annual White House correspondents’ dinner, a once convivial get-together for reporters to meet with federal governments officials that has become too fraught for light-heartedness amid the second Donald Trump presidency.The dinner, scheduled for 26 April, is organized by the White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA), and it typically features a post-meal comedic interlude where a comedian sets to work on the powerful. Beginning with Calvin Coolidge in 1924, every president has attended at least one WHCA dinner – except for Trump.But this year, the WHCA, already at war with the White House over some news outlets’ restricted access to Air Force One and the Oval Office, selected Amber Ruffin, a Nebraska comedian known for mixing her humor with song-and-dance routines – and for frequently criticizing the Trump administration.The White House deputy chief of staff Taylor Budowich attacked the association for planning to spotlight Ruffin, opening a new front in a conflict between the president and the press that began when the administration said it – not the press association – would now organize the rotating pool of news media members covering the president.On Saturday, the WHCA announced it was dropping Ruffin’s comedic performance so the event’s “focus is not on the politics of division” but rather on honoring the work of the group’s journalist, according to association president Eugene Daniels.The decision essentially left the WHCA friendless. Budowich slammed the scrapping of Ruffin’s performance, labeling it a “cop out” and calling the entertainer “hate-filled”. He said it was “so sad that such a storied and consequential group has been so quickly driven into irrelevancy”.But others saw the WHCA’s decision as further evidence that the press, at large, has become too willing to bend to the administration’s wishes, especially after a series of media company settlements in seemingly winnable defamation cases as well as ongoing efforts by the White House to defund government-backed news outlets, including Voice of America.Ruffin, an Emmy- and Tony-nominated comedian, began her career as a writer for NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, a US talkshow with a stronger political bent than most. She recently joked about a dispute between the White House and the Associated Press over Trump’s executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America – a conflict that got the AP booted from the presidential plane and the Oval Office.“I was like ‘What! Now you care about deadnaming?’” Ruffin said, to laughs, a reference to the hostility that many conservatives aim at people who are transgender.Trump has a conflicted history with the association dinner. In 2011, then-president Barack Obama turned his comedic spotlight on Trump, who was in the audience, over Trump’s preoccupation with Obama’s birth certificate. Obama called the would-be president “The Donald” and said he should get back to issues that matter, “like did we fake the moon landing?”Trump won his first presidency five years later.The dinner itself has long come under scrutiny, with some questioning if a lavish, jovial get-together between the press and the government, who are highly co-dependent but have opposing interests, should be happening in the first place.The Hill decided to opt out of the dinner after comedian Michelle Wolf delivered a routine that the outlet’s chairperson, James Finkelstein, found “offensive” and “vulgar”.“There’s simply no reason for us to participate in something that casts our profession in a poor light,” he said.False kinship, elevated hostility, traffic in jobs between media and government, and other aspects of the relationship raise ethical questions for both.For instance, some have seen the recent scandal surrounding Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg’s being added to a group chat on Signal in which Trump cabinet members were discussing plans of a military strike as a journalistic coup. But others have questioned whether a journalist being inadvertently added to such a group – as was the case in Signalgate – could illustrate how close relationships between press and government members can get.Other matters which thrust the correspondents dinner under review include Trump administration’s restrictions on mainstream media access to Defence Department press cubicles as well as the president’s habit of asking where reporters work – and ignoring those whose employers displease him.The Washington Post recently questioned if the conflicts were contributing to a loss of appetite for the top-ticket, meet-and-greet event. A White House press veteran told the outlet that there was a growing sentiment that it should be scrapped.“It’s been a bad idea for a long time. It’s even more of a bad idea at this point,” New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker told the outlet. The Times has long opted out of the dinner.An unnamed White House reporter also told the Post that the dinner has “never has looked great, but now especially, are we really going to be mingling in our tuxes and our ball gowns with members of an administration that is curtailing press access”.Ron Fournier, a former Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, told the Post reporters would be better off simply calling sources and filing Freedom of Information Act requests. He said: “Why be around powerful people if the only way they’re using their power is to lie to the public and to demean your profession and to undermine the amendment in the constitution that your profession is built around?” More