Newly elected PM had warned Canadians that Trump wanted to ‘break us, so that America can own us’
Good morning and welcome to our US politics blog as Donald Trump prepares to welcome his newly elected northern counterpart, Canada’s Mark Carney, to the White House.
At 11.30am ET the president is due to welcome Carney and the event will also include talks and a lunch. This is unlikely to be a straightforward meeting, Trump’s tariffs on Canada and even suggestions that it could become the “51st state” created anger over the border that helped propel Carney to power.
Donald Trump has said he is directing the administration to reopen and expand Alcatraz, the notorious former prison on an island off San Francisco that has been closed for more than 60 years. California Democrats called the idea “absurd on its face” and part of the US president’s strategy of political distraction. Other officials pointed to the closure of the prison complex in 1963, known for its brutal conditions, due to operational expense and the high number of (unsuccessful) escape attempts.
Trump announced his 100% tariff on films “coming into our country produced in foreign lands” one day after meeting with actor Jon Voight to discuss his proposals to bring film production back to the US – which only suggested that tariffs could be used “in certain limited circumstances”.
Donald Trump’s tariffs policy will trigger a “price shock” and possible shortages, and lead to public pressure on him to change his approach, the former vice-president Mike Pence has said. In one of his most wide-ranging critiques yet on the policies of the president he used to serve, Pence, speaking to CNN, derided the White House’s “wavering” support for Ukraine and declared – in direct contradiction of repeated assurances from Trump – that president Vladimir Putin of Russia “doesn’t want peace”.
Trump said Moscow and Kyiv want to settle the war in Ukraine and that Russian president Vladimir Putin was more inclined towards peace after the recent fall in the price of oil. “I think Russia with the price of oil right now, oil has gone down, we are in a good position to settle, they want to settle. Ukraine wants to settle,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Monday.
Mass protests have been called for 14 June, when Donald Trump plans to throw himself a military parade birthday party.
US intelligence officials concluded last month that the government of Venezuela is “probably not directing” the activities of Tren de Aragua gang members inside the United States. That undermines Trump’s claim that the Alien Enemies Act empowers him to deport suspected gang members.
The US Department of Education informed Harvard University on Monday that it was ending billions of dollars in research grants and other aid unless the school concedes to a list of demands from the Trump administration that would effectively cede control of the nation’s oldest and wealthiest to the government.
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