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    Secret Service Shoots Armed Man Near the White House

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    President Trump was in Florida at the time of the episode, during which a man held a gun and a confrontation ensued, the agency said.The Secret Service shot a man near the White House early Sunday after an “armed confrontation” with law enforcement officers, the agency said in a statement.President Trump was not at the White House at the time. He is spending the weekend in Florida at his Mar-a-Lago Club.Earlier on Saturday, the local police shared information with the Secret Service about a suicidal person who may have been traveling to Washington from Indiana. Around midnight, members of the Secret Service encountered the person’s parked vehicle near 17th and F Streets, about a block from the White House. A man was outside of the vehicle, the agency said.As officers approached, they saw that the man had a gun and then a confrontation ensued, during which the Secret Service shot the man, the agency said.He was transported to a hospital, and his condition was unknown, the Secret Service said. There were no reported injuries to anyone with the Secret Service.The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington is investigating the shooting. More

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      D.C.’s Planned Removal of Black Lives Matter Mural Reflects Mayor’s Delicate Position

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      Mayor Muriel Bowser’s decision comes amid calls by the president and other Republicans for more federal control of the city.On Wednesday morning in downtown Washington, D.C., Keyonna Jones stood on her artwork and remembered the time when she and six other artists were summoned by the mayor’s office to paint a mural in the middle of the night.“BLACK LIVES MATTER,” the mural read in bright yellow letters on a street running two city blocks, blaring the message at the White House sitting just across Lafayette Square. In June 2020, when Ms. Jones helped paint the mural, demonstrations were breaking out in cities nationwide in protest of George Floyd’s murder. The creation of Black Lives Matter Plaza was a statement of defiance from D.C.’s mayor, Muriel E. Bowser, who had clashed with President Trump, then in his first term, over the presence of federal troops in the streets of her city.But on Tuesday evening, the mayor announced the mural was going away.Ms. Jones said the news upset her. But, she added of the mayor in an interview, “I get where she is coming from.”The city of Washington is in an extraordinarily vulnerable place these days. Republicans in Congress have introduced legislation that would end D.C.’s already limited power to govern itself, stripping residents of the ability to elect a mayor and city council. Mr. Trump himself has said that he supports a federal takeover of Washington, insisting to reporters that the federal government would “run it strong, run it with law and order, make it absolutely, flawlessly beautiful.” In recent days, the administration has been considering executive orders in pursuit of his vision for the city.Potential laws and orders aside, the administration has already fired thousands of federal workers, leaving residents throughout the city without livelihoods and, according to the city’s official estimate, potentially costing Washington around $1 billion in lost revenue over the next three years.Given all this, Ms. Bowser, a Democrat, described her decision about Black Lives Matter Plaza as a pragmatic calculation.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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      Mike Johnson’s Chief of Staff Arrested for DUI After Trump Speech, Police Say

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      The U.S. Capitol Police said the chief of staff to Speaker Mike Johnson was arrested for drunken driving on Tuesday night after the top aide backed his car into a parked Capitol Police vehicle.The arrest came soon after President Trump, with Mr. Johnson presiding behind him, finished delivering his first address to a joint session of Congress since returning to office.“A driver backed into a parked vehicle last night around 11:40 p.m.,” a Capitol Police spokesman said in a statement. “We responded and arrested them for D.U.I.”Mr. Johnson’s office confirmed on Wednesday that Hayden Haynes, the speaker’s chief of staff, was involved in an “encounter” with Capitol Police on Tuesday night, releasing a statement that indicated that he would continue to hold his powerful post.“The speaker has known and worked closely with Hayden for nearly a decade and trusted him to serve as his chief of staff for his entire tenure in Congress,” Taylor Haulsee, Mr. Johnson’s spokesman, said in a statement about the arrest, which was reported earlier by NBC News. “Because of this and Hayden’s esteemed reputation among members and staff alike, the speaker has full faith and confidence in Hayden’s ability to lead the speaker’s office.”Mr. Haynes was released with a citation, rather than taken to jail, and would have a court date “within the coming weeks,” according to the Capitol Police. Since drunken driving cases in Washington, D.C., are prosecuted by the district’s attorney general rather than the U.S. district attorney’s office under the Justice Department, the Trump administration would have no apparent role in the case. More

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      Trump Officials Take Down List of Federal Properties for Possible Sale

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      On Tuesday, the Trump administration identified more than 440 federal properties that could be sold off, a list that included high-profile buildings like the headquarters of the F.B.I., Department of Justice and the Department of Health and Human Services.By Wednesday morning, the entire inventory had been taken down, replaced by an agency web page that said the list of properties was “coming soon.”The General Services Administration, an agency that manages the federal real estate portfolio, had already revised the list at least once. In the hours after it was published, about 100 properties, including many in the Washington, D.C., area, were removed.The changes stirred up confusion over the Trump administration’s plan to offload a vast amount of federal property. Officials at the General Services Administration said the “disposal” of the buildings could help save hundreds of millions of dollars and ensure that taxpayers do not have to pay for “underutilized federal office space.” But the list swiftly came under criticism by some Democratic lawmakers and others who worried about the potential impact on government services across the country.The agency did not immediately respond to inquiries as to why the list had been removed. More

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      ‘Dummies for Putin’: Democrats defend Zelenskyy after ‘shameful’ Trump meeting

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      Democratic lawmakers rushed to defend Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the Ukrainian leader was publicly berated by Donald Trump in a disastrous Oval Office meeting.The US president accused Zelenskyy of “gambling with world war three” while his vice-president, JD Vance, called the Ukrainian leader “disrespectful”, before cutting short talks aimed at kicking off the process of ending Kyiv’s three-year war with Russia.Zelenskyy abruptly left the White House soon after without signing a rare critical minerals deal with the US that Trump has said is the first step toward a ceasefire agreement that he is seeking to broker between Russia and Ukraine.Democratic senators came to Zelenskyy’s defense in statements condemning Trump and Vance’s “shameful” and “disgraceful” treatment of the Ukrainian leader.“Every time I’ve met with President Zelenskyy, he’s thanked the American people for our strong support,” Chris Coons, a Democratic senator from Delaware, wrote on X. “We owe him our thanks for leading a nation fighting on the front lines of democracy – not the public berating he received at the White House.”Adam Schiff, the California senator, said: ““A hero and a coward are meeting in the Oval Office today. And when the meeting is over, the hero will return home to Ukraine.”Chris Murphy, a Democratic senator from Connecticut, said: “What an utter embarrassment for America. This whole sad scene.” The Arizona senator Ruben Gallego added: “This is a disgrace.”Senator Chris Van Hollen from Maryland also described the scenes in the Oval Office as “beyond disgraceful”. The Illinois senator Dick Durbin added: “The people of Ukraine and President Zelenskyy deserve an apology.”“Trump and Vance berating Zelenskyy – putting on a show of lies and misinformation that would make Putin blush – is an embarrassment for America and a betrayal of our allies,” Durbin said. “They’re popping champagne in the Kremlin.”Trump and Vance “are doing Putin’s dirty work”, the Senate Democratic leader, Chuck Schumer, said after the calamitous meeting, adding that his party will “never stop fighting for freedom and democracy”.Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democratic senator from Rhode Island, also accused Trump and Vance of “acting like ventriloquist dummies for Putin”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhitehouse was part of a bipartisan group of senators who met with Zelenskyy earlier in the morning before his meeting with the president. The Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said the hour-long discussion showed “strong bipartisan support in the Senate for Ukraine’s freedom and democracy”.Klobuchar later addressed Vance directly in a social media post saying that Zelenskyy had thanked the US “over and over again” both privately and publicly.“Our country thanks HIM and the Ukrainian patriots who have stood up to a dictator, buried their own & stopped Putin from marching right into the rest of Europe,” she wrote. “Shame on you,” she said, referring to Vance.Tina Smith, another Democratic senator from Minnesota, called on her Republican colleagues to “speak out” in the name of “patriotism”. “Once, we fought tyrants. Today Trump and Vance are bending America’s knee,” she said.But Republican senators rushed to defend Trump, describing the president’s exchange with Zelenskyy as evidence that he was “putting America first”.Mike Lee, a Utah Republican senator, thanked Trump and Vance “for standing up to our country and putting America first”. The Indiana Republican senator Jim Banks also thanked Trump for “standing up for America”.“[Zelenskyy] ungratefully expects us to bankroll and escalate another forever war–all while disrespecting the President,” Banks wrote on X. “The entitlement is insulting to working Americans.” More

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      in US Politics

      Outcry as White House starts dictating which journalists can access Trump

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      The Trump administration announced it will take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.The move has immediately triggered an impassioned response from members of the media – including a Fox News correspondent who called it a “short-sighted decision”.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made the announcement during Tuesday’s press briefing, framing the move as democratizing access to the president.“A group of DC-based journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said.“Not any more. Today, I was proud to announce that we are giving the power back to the people.”The announcement upended more than 70 years of protocol of journalists – not government officials – determining which rotating reporters travel with the president on Air Force One and cover events in the Oval Office or Roosevelt Room.“Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team,” Leavitt said. She added that while legacy outlets would still be included, the administration would be “offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility” – notably podcasters and rightwing media.As the media reeled from the attack on the press pool, the three main wire services that routinely report on the US presidency released a joint statement protesting Donald Trump’s decision to bar the Associated Press from official events.Reuters and Bloomberg News joined AP in decrying Trump’s move to restrict AP’s access to the president. The top editors of each of the wires said the unprecedented action had threatened the principle of open reporting and would harm the spread of reliable information to individuals, communities, businesses and global financial markets.“It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press,” the three editors said.The standoff between Trump and AP began on 14 February when the White House announced it was indefinitely barring AP reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One. Officials said the step had been taken to punish AP for refusing to amend its style guide to change the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, as Trump had dictated.AP immediately sued over the restriction, but on Monday a federal judge declined to restore the wire service’s access to presidential events in the short term. Another hearing in the case, which is ongoing, is scheduled for next month.The White House wasted no time implementing the new policy over the composition of the press pool, ejecting a HuffPost reporter from Wednesday’s press pool rotation and removing Reuters from its traditional spot – just one day after the announcement. Also on Wednesday morning, Trump mused on legal action against journalists and publishers in a Truth Social post.“At some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general, to find out whether or not these ‘anonymous sources’ even exist,” Trump posted, adding: “maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!”The announcement triggered immediate alarm among journalists who argue that the role of the WHCA is to make sure Americans who use any of the major mediums – including radio, television, print, wires and photography – are able to get the same access to Trump’s world.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House,” posted Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox News senior White House correspondent and WHCA board member. “The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House press corps.”Heinrich added: “WHCA has determined pools for decades because only representatives FROM our outlets can determine resources all those outlets have – such as staffing – in order to get the President’s message out to the largest possible audience, no matter the day or hour.”In a separate missive on X, Heinrich also pointed out the press corps “from across a broad spectrum of tv, radio, print, stills, wires and new media” cover the White House full-time.“This is a short-sighted decision, and it will feel a lot different when a future Democratic administration kicks out conservative-leaning outlets and other critical voices,” she wrote.The WHCA president, Eugene Daniels, said the move “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States” and “suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president”. He noted the White House did not consult with the WHCA before making the announcement.Later on Wednesday, the White House denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.The White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘He believes he is the law’: anti-Maga conservatives view Trump as threat to constitution

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      Michael Fanone, the former police officer who defended the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, looked out at the attendees of the Principles First summit and denounced Donald Trump in the strongest possible terms for pardoning roughly 1,500 people who participated in the insurrection.“He pardoned them because he wants people to know that if you commit crimes on his behalf, he’s got your back,” Fanone said on Saturday. “They are operating under the assumption that, if they commit violent criminal acts on Donald Trump’s behalf, that he will pardon them for future violence.”Fanone’s words appeared prescient later that afternoon, when he and three other officers were confronted by Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group. Tarrio received a prison sentence of 22 years for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to his role in the insurrection, but Trump pardoned him last month. In a video that Tarrio shared on social media, he taunted Fanone and the other officers – Daniel Hodges of the Metropolitan police department and former Capitol police officers Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn – as “fucking cowards”.The intimidation continued the next day at the summit, when an email account bearing the name “Enrique T” sent a bomb threat to the organizers of the conference. The threat specifically named several summit speakers, including Fanone, as the targets of four pipe bombs. Tarrio denied any involvement in the incident, which turned out to be a false alarm, but still forced attendees to evacuate the conference room hosting the summit for about two hours as police officers conducted a security sweep.The threats underscored a message shared by nearly every speaker at the Principles First summit, which is considered a center-right alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference. One by one, speakers took the stage to voice their shared belief that Trump represents a fundamental threat to the rule of law and the integrity of the US constitution.“President Trump has diminished the rule of law in America,” Asa Hutchinson, a former Republican presidential candidate, said on Saturday. “President Trump, because the supreme court gave him immunity, believes he is the law.”Multiple speakers cited Trump’s recent clash with Janet Mills, the Democratic governor of Maine, as evidence of his autocratic tendencies. In a combative exchange that went viral online, Trump asked Mills, who was attending a White House event alongside other governors, whether she intended to comply with his executive order on transgender athletes.“I’m complying with state and federal laws,” Mills replied.Trump responded: “We are the federal law.”Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey who served as a close adviser to Trump before becoming one of the president’s most vocal Republican critics, described that comment as “the most important thing he has said in the last two weeks because that tells you exactly what he thinks”.“He believes that the attorney general of the United States is his personal lawyer,” Christie said at the Principles First summit on Saturday. “He believes the Department of Justice is to do what he instructs them to do.”Even as summit speakers warned of the serious threat that Trump and his allies pose to the foundations of US government, they implored attendees to stand up for their principles.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“I know these people. They are cowards,” said Tim Miller, a writer for the Bulwark and communications director for Republican former presidential candidate Jeb Bush. “Speaking out right now is a good in itself … Our job is to say no to this, to stand up to them and to not be afraid because they want you to be afraid, and you have no reason to be fearful of these little men.”Multiple speakers predicted Trump will eventually violate court orders and they urged any American who supported a robust democracy to protest the president’s unconstitutional acts when they occur.“People need to be in the streets. People need to be strongly reacting against it,” said Gregg Nunziata, executive director of the Society for the Rule of Law. “We really do need conservatives and Republicans to be in that number for this to work.”Mark Cuban, the billionaire entrepreneur who is considered a potential presidential candidate in 2028, but who told the conference on Saturday he does not plan on running, suggested that the “chaos” unleashed by Trump’s first month in office may provide an opening for the president’s critics to present an alternative vision for the country’s future.“The opportunity for the Democrats and businesspeople, and you for that matter, is to stand up and look for ways to create calm and order out of chaos,” Cuban said. More