A federal judge ruled Friday that President Donald Trump’s name was illegally added to the Kennedy Center and blocked the administration from closing it for major renovations. Congress gave the cultural and arts venue its name, the judge said, and only Congress can change it. Hours later the president said in a social media post that he would cease involvement in Kennedy Center renovations and return control of the historic venue to Congress.
Meanwhile Trump held a White House Situation Room meeting with his advisers as he looks to make a “final determination” on moving forward on a deal to extend a ceasefire with Iran. Trump confirmed the high-level talks a day after the AP reported that U.S. and Iranian negotiators had reached a tentative agreement to extend the fragile ceasefire by 60 days and start new talks on Iran’s nuclear program.
And former Attorney General Pam Bondi refused to answer questions on Trump’s involvement in the release of case files on Jeffrey Epstein as she defended the administration’s actions in a closed-door interview before House lawmakers. Lawmakers have scrutinized the Justice Department’s release of the files, which was delayed and revealed the personal information of potential victims.
Here's the latest:
US and China trade journalist expulsions days after Trump visits Xi in Beijing
The Trump administration has revoked the visa of a Chinese national working for state news agency Xinhua, an apparent reciprocal act to Beijing’s decision to expel a New York Times reporter.
A person familiar with the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity because it involves visa privacy confirmed the visa had been revoked. A State Department official confirmed there was a plan to revoke it.
The move followed China’s expulsion of Times correspondent Vivian Wang, apparently over the appearance of the Taiwanese leader in a DealBook event in which Wang had no role.
The Times, which first reported the reciprocal move, said it does not ask governments to revoke media credentials or otherwise interfere with the work of any journalist. It called for Wang’s reinstatement and urged both governments to “reverse this deterioration in journalist access.”
The Chinese Embassy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
— Didi Tang and Matthew Lee
US commander meets with Cuban military officials as Trump continues pressure on island nation
The top U.S. military leader in Latin America and the Cuban officials met Friday in what Southern Command characterized as a “brief exchange on operational security matters” near the U.S. Navy base on Guantanamo Bay.
Gen. Francis L. Donovan also “led a perimeter security assessment of the naval base and discussed force protection, safety of service members and their families, and operational readiness with base officials,” Southern Command said on the social platform X.
The meeting comes as the U.S. military maintains a presence of warships in the Caribbean Sea and the Trump administration applies pressure on Cuba with an oil blockade. Trump has warned that Cuba “is next” after capturing Venezuela’s autocratic leader in a January military operation.
Trump says he’s backing away from Kennedy Center renovation and returning control to Congress
Hours after a federal judge ordered his name removed from the arts institution, the president said the judge “should be ashamed of himself” in a social media post.
“Unless I am free to do what I do better than anyone else, bring this Institution back, physically, financially, and artistically, I have no interest in continuing what could only be a hopeless journey into ‘NEVER NEVER LAND,’” Trump said on his Truth Social platform.
Trump also said he has instructed his administration to “make all necessary arrangements” to have the center transferred to Congress.
Federal judge says New Hampshire must loosen requirements to prove citizenship to vote
New Hampshire must make voter registration easier by allowing applicants to attest to their U.S. citizenship if they don’t have the documents to prove it, the judge said.
The case was seen as the first major legal test of an election reform that has been pushed nationally by Trump and has gained favor among many Republicans, although U.S. District Court Judge Samantha Elliot said she was not deciding whether requiring proof of citizenship itself is constitutional.
Her ruling late Thursday night on a narrower question of New Hampshire law was significant, however, because it underscored the potential perils of implementing strict requirements for voters to document their U.S. citizenship so they can cast a ballot.
Kennedy Center board broke the law putting Trump’s name on the building, judge says, and blocks its closure for renovations
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper concluded Friday that the board “overstepped its statutory bounds” by unilaterally adding Trump’s name to the center. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, he said, and only Congress can change it.
The judge also ruled that the board’s March 16 vote to close the facility was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained” with no regard for its legal obligations.
“The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one,” he wrote.
Iran’s nuclear issues remain unresolved
A deal to extend the ceasefire and reopen the Strait of Hormuz “has not yet been finalized,” Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei told a state broadcaster on Friday.
On Thursday, U.S. Vice President JD Vance suggested negotiators were trying to strike general terms on Iran’s nuclear program, with the specifics to be hammered out in the ensuing talks.
Baghaei, however, said Friday that Iranian officials were “focused on the end of war and are not discussing the details of the nuclear plan at this point.”
Trump’s Situation Room meeting on Iran ceasefire has concluded
Trump has finished his meeting with national security aides to weigh a framework of an agreement that would extend the U.S. ceasefire with Iran by 60 days and kickstart new talks on Iran’s nuclear program, according to a senior administration official.
The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity, would not comment on whether Trump had made a decision to sign off on the tentative agreement following the roughly two-hour meeting.
— Aamer Madhani
Kennedy Center board broke the law putting Trump’s name on the building, judge says, and blocks its closure for renovations
U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper concluded Friday that the board “overstepped its statutory bounds” by unilaterally adding Trump’s name to the center. Congress gave the Kennedy Center its name, he said, and only Congress can change it.
The judge also ruled that the board’s March 16 vote to close the facility was “ill-informed and seemingly preordained” with no regard for its legal obligations.
“The trustees might have assessed the propriety of closure in a number of prudent ways. This was not one,” he wrote.
Rubio calls Lebanese president as Israel-Lebanon security talks begin at the Pentagon
The U.S. secretary of state had a phone call with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun to praise him for pursuing peace talks with Israel, as Israel and Lebanon held their first security-related meeting in Washington at the Pentagon.
Rubio “commended President Aoun’s courage and vision in pursuing direct negotiations with Israel, even as Hezbollah continues its attempts to derail those talks at the expense of the Lebanese people,” the State Department said in a statement Friday.
Talks between senior officials from Israel and Lebanon have been going on since last month but are complicated by the fact that Hezbollah, Israel’s target, is not participating in the discussions and has refused to accept their results.
Rubio told Aoun that Hezbollah “is entirely responsible for the ongoing fighting and emphasized the need for Hezbollah to immediately cease its attacks and provocations to enable de-escalation.”
Trump administration grants a rare reprieve, shielding 11,000 Lebanese from deportation
The decision on their Temporary Protected Status allows them to stay and work in the United States for another six months.
Unusually, the decision was automatic, meaning the administration missed the deadline to decide on whether to extend TPS for Lebanese people covered by the program.
The Department of Homeland Security said on Thursday that officials “were unable to make an informed determination on Lebanon’s TPS designation.” It comes amid ongoing fighting in southern Lebanon between Israeli troops and Hezbollah militants.
Republicans have harshly criticized the TPS program, which was created by Congress in 1990 to prevent deportations to countries suffering from natural disasters or civil strife.
White House moves to give political appointees more power over federal grants
Scientists say this would put critical research funding into the hands of partisans without relevant expertise. It would be the most sweeping change to the federal grantmaking process in years.
The proposed regulations would require senior appointees to review funding to see if it complies with the law and the president’s priorities. The rules would also give administration officials more freedom to terminate grants that have already been awarded, a process that could jeopardize millions of dollars in ongoing research.
The Office of Management and Budget claims the reforms are needed for greater accountability. It says the Biden administration wasted taxpayer dollars on “woke” programs.
Published Friday, the plan will enter a public comment period before a final rule will be issued.
Ex-Iowa school district leader who was arrested in Trump’s immigration crackdown gets 2 years in prison
Ian Roberts pleaded guilty in January to falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen and illegally possessing firearms, which together carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
He would serve the sentence before he is likely deported to his native Guyana in South America.
His lawyers had proposed that he be put on probation “to facilitate his removal from the United States.” Prosecutors recommended a sentence of more than three years, saying his likely deportation should not be a factor.
Louisiana lawmakers pass a new congressional map designed to pick up a Republican seat
The new map is also likely to leave the state with just one of its two majority-Black House districts represented by Democrats.
Approval of the new House map came a month after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the state’s current map as an illegal racial gerrymander, weakening the landmark 1965 federal Voting Rights Act. That decision intensified a national redistricting battle fueled by Trump’s efforts to protect the Republicans’ slim House majority in the midterm elections.
Louisiana Republicans had considered drawing a map giving the party a shot at winning all six of the state’s U.S. House seats. But that would have required adding more Black voters to Republican-held districts, potentially backfiring with losses. Some Republicans said a 5-1 map better protects U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson from facing a difficult reelection.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to sign the new map into law.
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Bondi interview concludes after 4 hours
Democratic lawmakers say former attorney general told them she would not answer questions about Trump’s involvement in the release of case files on Jeffrey Epstein.
She also said Todd Blanche, her former deputy who is now the acting attorney general, had overseen the publication of case files.
Bondi refuses to answer lawmakers’ questions about Trump’s involvement in Epstein files release
Bondi was on Capitol Hill for a closed-door interview in which she defended the administration’s actions before House lawmakers who are scrutinizing a process that was delayed and included personal information of potential victims.
Democratic lawmakers said Bondi told them she would not speak about the president in Friday’s interview and, accompanied by a lawyer from the Department of Justice, cited her ability to decline questions because she agreed to appear before the committee voluntarily.
“It’s a sham in there. They are not answering any questions,” said Democratic Rep. Dave Min during a break in the interview.
Trump says only the US and China are capable of removing Iran’s enriched uranium
The president in his online post also turned back to his on-and-off demand that the highly-enriched uranium buried under nuclear sites badly damaged during last year’s U.S. air bombardment of Iran be removed as part of a deal.
“The enriched material, sometimes referred to as ‘Nuclear Dust,’ which is buried deep underground with virtually collapsed mountains, caused by our powerful B2 Bomber attack 11 months ago, sitting on top of it, will be unearthed by the United States (which, it is agreed, is the only Country, along with China, with the mechanical capability of doing so!), in close coordination and conjunction with the Islamic Republic of Iran, plus the International Atomic Energy Agency, and DESTROYED,” Trump said.
Trump has offered mixed messages over the course of the three-month conflict on the importance of removing the enriched uranium. Earlier this month, he told Fox News’ Sean Hannity he’d “just feel better if I got” the uranium, but that “it’s more for public relations than it is for anything else.”
Louisiana Republicans are poised to pass new US House districts in wider redistricting fight
The state’s Republican-controlled Senate is poised to pass a plan Friday to help the GOP maintain control of the U.S. House in November, potentially becoming the latest Southern state to eliminate a majority-Black congressional district that elected a Democrat.
The state Senate is set to vote on a redistricting plan that would give Republicans a chance to pick up an additional seat in response to late April’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that Louisiana’s congressional district map constituted an illegal racial gerrymander.
An amended map overwhelmingly passed the House on Thursday. Once the final map clears the Legislature, Republican Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry is expected to sign it.
Hegseth meets with leaders of Vietnam and Singapore at Asian defense conference
U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has met with leaders from Vietnam and Singapore to discuss shared security interests, the Pentagon said Friday.
The separate meetings occurred on the sidelines during the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s annual defense and security forum in Singapore.
Hegseth praised Vietnam’s decision to join the Board of Peace and for committing troops and police to the International Stabilization Force in Gaza. Hegseth also applauded the modernization of Vietnam’s military and discussed opportunities to deepen cooperation, including on unmanned naval capabilities.
Hegseth and Singapore’s leaders discussed expanding the U.S. military’s presence in Singapore with rotational deployments from the Navy and Air Force. Meanwhile, Hegseth reaffirmed the American commitment to support advanced training for Singapore’s military in the U.S.
Pam Bondi defends administration’s release of Epstein case files as she testifies before lawmakers
The former attorney general stood behind the Trump administration’s release of the case files on Jeffrey Epstein as she testified Friday before House lawmakers scrutinizing a process that was delayed and included personal information of potential victims.
Bondi, who arrived Friday morning on Capitol Hill for her closed-door interview, was defiant in previous public testimony when she was confronted by lawmakers about the Epstein investigation. In her opening statement, she kept to the same tack.
“The bottom line is: justice and transparency in this matter have been delivered at the direction of President Trump and his administration,” she said, according to a written copy of her opening statement.
The transcribed Bondi interview gave lawmakers a chance to dig for information on the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files and other related matters, including the prison sentence of Epstein’s former girlfriend and confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell.
Trump meeting with aides to make ‘final determination’ on moving forward with Iran deal
The president says he’s holding a White House Situation Room meeting with his advisers.
Trump confirmed the high-level White House talks Friday, a day after The Associated Press and other news outlets reported that U.S. and Iranian negotiators had come to terms on a tentative agreement.
The deal would extend the fragile ceasefire by 60 days as new talks are held on Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
White House declines comment on judge’s ruling blocking payouts from ‘anti-weaponization’ fund
The White House referred all questions to the Justice Department, which didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
Plaintiffs’ attorneys from the legal advocacy group Democracy Forward are seeking a court order halting the fund’s implementation and preventing the Trump administration from disbursing any payouts from it. The federal suit claims there’s no legal basis or accountability behind the fund.
At least two other lawsuits, both filed separately in Washington, also are challenging the fund’s creation.
Rubio meets with Pakistani foreign minister as tentative Iran deal hangs in the balance
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has met with his Pakistani counterpart, Ishaq Dar, as a tentative deal to extend a fragile ceasefire with Iran hangs in the balance.
Neither Rubio nor Dar — whose country has emerged as a main player and mediator in talks to end the conflict — spoke or responded to questions from reporters as they posed for photographs at the State Department on Friday. Dar has been in the United States since earlier this week to attend meetings at the United Nations in New York.
The meeting came just a day after U.S. officials said an agreement in principle on a memorandum of understanding to extend the ceasefire, reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and return to talks on Iran’s nuclear program had been reached. That agreement, though, must still be approved by President Trump and Iran’s top leadership and there was no indication when that might happen.
Judge temporarily blocks payouts from Trump’s ‘anti-weaponization’ settlement fund
A federal judge has temporarily blocked Trump’s administration from paying any claims through a new $1.776 billion settlement fund for Trump allies who believe they were victims of a weaponized government.
U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema in Alexandria, Virginia, on Friday also barred the government from moving forward with the fund’s creation while litigation is pending to challenge it.
The judge scheduled a June 12 hearing for arguments on whether to extend the order blocking payouts from an “Anti-Weaponization Fund,” which the government created to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns.
The fund has created a fierce backlash since it was announced last week, with even Republicans pressing acting Attorney General Todd Blanche over the eligibility considerations and the possibility that even violent rioters at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, would be free to seek compensation.
Pam Bondi interview gets underway on Capitol Hill
The former attorney general is appearing before House lawmakers as they investigate how the government has handled the investigations into Jeffrey Epstein.
Bondi was ousted as attorney general last month, but her in her previous testimony to Congress she has been defiant in the face of lawmakers’ questions about how the Department of Justice handled the release of case files on Epstein. She is also accompanied today by Department of Justice officials — an arrangement Democrats have criticized.
Several survivors of Epstein’s abuse also appeared outside the House office room where the interview is happening behind closed doors. They pressed the committee chair, Republican Rep. James Comer, to closely question Bondi.
“We want justice for the survivors, we do,” Comer told them.
South Carolina Democrats expected to celebrate after failure of Trump-backed redistricting push
Democrats may be in a more celebratory mood than usual as they gather Friday in South Carolina, a state led almost entirely by Republicans.
The party is holding events days after the GOP-led state Senate shot down an effort backed by President Donald Trump to redraw House district lines to help Republicans this fall. That move was aimed at ousting longtime Rep. Jim Clyburn, the state’s lone congressional Democrat and a party powerbroker who’s been in office since 1993.
Friday’s gatherings kick off with the Blue Palmetto Dinner, an annual party fundraiser that typically showcases potential presidential contenders and the party’s national figures. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear will be the headliner.
Pam Bondi to face closed-door questioning from House lawmakers over Epstein files
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi is testifying before House lawmakers investigating Jeffrey Epstein’s sexual abuse cases, a long-awaited appearance that brings fresh scrutiny of the administration’s botched release of the Epstein case files.
Bondi was defiant in previous public testimony when she was confronted by lawmakers about the Epstein investigation. It’s unclear whether she’ll bring the same approach Friday, now that she is no longer in charge of the Justice Department. The session will be held behind closed doors.
The transcribed interview will give lawmakers a chance to dig for information on the Trump administration’s handling of the Epstein files and other related matters, including the prison sentence of his former girlfriend and confidant, Ghislaine Maxwell. The Justice Department moved Maxwell to a prison camp in Texas last August.
“I think she absolutely could clear up many missing pieces if she wanted to,” said Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Arizona Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. “Now it’s a question of whether or not she is willing to be transparent.”
Judge refuses to block Trump order to limit mail voting. There’s no immediate effect on the midterms
A federal judge has declined to halt Trump’s executive order creating a federal voter list and limiting mail voting, clearing the way for potential sweeping changes in how American elections are run shortly before this year’s midterm elections.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee in Washington, late Wednesday rejected the request by Democrats and civil rights groups that had argued Trump’s order would likely be found unconstitutional because the states and Congress, not the president, have the power to set election rules. Nichols agreed with the Republican Trump administration’s contention that it was too early to block the order because it has yet to be implemented.
Nichols’ ruling leaves the door open for further challenges when the Trump administration moves to implement the president’s directive. A separate lawsuit seeking to block the executive order is underway in Boston. No matter how rapidly the administration acts, no voting changes are expected during primary elections, which continue into next month.
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