Vance calls US and Europe ‘real friends’ but says Trump wants self-sufficiency on defense – live | Trump administration

Sam Levine

A federal judge in Florida has used a routine court filing to lament the exodus of attorneys from the justice department.

US district judge Donald Middlebrooks of the middle district of Florida made the comments after four justice department attorneys all informed the court they would be withdrawing from the case because they were leaving the department. Usually, judges grant such requests without much fanfare.

But Middlebrooks took the opportunity to call out the lawyers.

“This case was expertly litigated by a team of lawyers from the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, specifically the Disability Rights Section. Now it appears that multiple members of that team are ending their tenure with the Department,” wrote Middlebrooks, who was appointed to the federal bench by Bill Clinton. “I will grant the Motions to Withdraw, but I do so with disappointment that capable litigators and dedicated public servants have felt moved to leave their positions with the Department of Justice.”

He went on to “commend” the lawyers for “the extraordinary efforts they took in arguing these important issues and granted their request to withdraw.

More than 250 lawyers have left or are planning to leave the civil rights division, a flood of departures that amounts to about a 70% reduction in personnel. The head of the division, a political appointee, has made it clear in new “mission statements” to each of the sections that their longstanding priorities will shift to more closely align with the president’s priorities.

Former and current employees have said that the reduction in personnel makes it virtually impossible for the division to enforce civil rights laws.

Court orders detained Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk returned to Vermont

Sam Levine

A federal appeals court on Wednesday granted a judge’s order to bring Turkish Tufts University student, Rümeysa Öztürk, from a Louisiana immigration detention center back to New England for hearings to determine whether her rights were violated.

A judicial panel of the New York-based US second circuit court of appeals ruled in the case after lawyers representing her and the US justice department presented arguments at a hearing on Tuesday.

Öztürk has been detained in Louisiana for six weeks following an op-ed she cowrote last year that criticized the school’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza. The court ordered her to be transferred to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) custody in Vermont no later than 14 May.

A district court judge in Vermont had earlier ordered that the 30-year-old doctoral student be brought to the state for hearings to determine whether she was illegally detained. Öztürk’s lawyers say her detention violates her constitutional rights, including free speech and due process.

The justice department, which appealed that ruling, said that an immigration court in Louisiana has jurisdiction over her case.

Robert Tait and Miranda Bryant

The Danish foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, has said he would call in the acting US ambassador to Denmark after the Wall Street Journal (paywall) reported the Trump administration ordered US intelligence agencies to step up surveillance on Greenland.

“I have read the article in the Wall Street Journal and it worries me greatly because we do not spy on friends,” Rasmussen told reporters during an informal meeting of EU foreign ministers in Warsaw on Wednesday.

“We are going to call in the US acting ambassador for a discussion at the foreign ministry to see if we can confirm this information, which is somewhat disturbing,” Rasmussen added.

The WSJ report, published last night, said high-ranking officials working under Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, issued the instruction to agency heads in a “collection emphasis message”. Such messages customarily help to set intelligence priorities and direct resources and attention to high-interest targets.

The Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency were all included in the message. It told chiefs to study Greenland’s independence movement and attitudes to American efforts to extract resources on the island, according to the report, citing two unnamed officials familiar with the matter.

The move, which will further alarm Denmark and Europe, underlines the seriousness of Trump’s intent to increase US influence over Greenland. Just last weekend, he refused to rule out using military force to gain control of the island. Denmark, a US ally and Nato member, has repeatedly vowed that Greenland is not available for sale or annexation.

Lorenzo Tondo in Palermo and Edward Helmore in New York

The Trump administration is planning to deport a group of migrants to Libya, according to reports, despite the state department’s previous condemnation of the “life-threatening” prison conditions in the country. Libya’s provisional government has denied the reports.

Reuters cited three unnamed US officials as saying the deportations could happen this week. Two of the officials said the individuals, whose nationalities are not known, could fly to Libya as soon as Wednesday, but they added the plans could still change. The New York Times also cited a US official confirming the deportation plans. It was not clear what Libya would be getting in return for taking any deportees.

Human rights groups condemned the reported plans, noting the country’s poor record on human rights practices and harsh treatment of detainees. Sarah Leah Whitson, the executive director of Democracy for the Arab World Now (Dawn), wrote on X:

Migrants have long been trafficked, tortured and ransomed in Libya. The country is in a civil war. It is not a safe place to send anyone.

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, wrote on the platform alongside a picture of a Libyan detention facility:

Don’t look away. This is what Libya’s migrant detention facilities look like. This is what Trump is doing.

Amnesty International called these places a ‘hellscape’ where beatings are common and sexual violence are rampant. There are reports of human trafficking and even slavery.

It comes as the Trump administration expands its aggressive efforts to negotiate the swift deportations of migrants to third-party countries which, as well as Libya, includes Angola, Benin, Eswatini, Moldova and Rwanda, as reported by CBS News and Reuters earlier this week. This is alongside its existing arrangement with El Salvador, which it has paid millions to detain hundreds of migrants in its notorious mega-prison.

Mark Oliver

US customers could face higher energy bills amid reports that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) plans to end the Energy Star program whose blue labels have certified energy efficiency on home appliances for more than 30 years, experts warn.

“If you wanted to raise families’ energy bills, getting rid of the Energy Star label would be a pretty good way,” said Steven Nadel, executive director of the non-profit research organization the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE).

The reports of Energy Star’s elimination come after Donald Trump has railed against showers and toilets that conserve water. In April, he signed an executive order to “restore shower freedom”.

The New York Times reported that staff were told: “The Energy Star program and all the other climate work, outside of what’s required by statute, is being de-prioritized and eliminated.”

President Donald Trump accused the US courts of preventing him from deporting “murders and other criminals” in a post on Truth Social.

“Our Court System is not letting me do the job I was Elected to do. Activist judges must let the Trump Administration deport murderers, and other criminals who have come into our Country illegally, WITHOUT DELAY!!!” the president wrote.

Recent reports have revealed the intentions of the Trump administration to deport immigrants to more countries other than the one designated as the immigrant’s country of origin, also called third-country deportations.

The US National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have partnered to research the causes of the autism spectrum disorder, creating a database of autism-diagnosed people enrolled in Medicare and Medicaid, the agencies announced today.

The partnership will “focus first on enabling research around the root causes of autism spectrum disorder” in order to help NIH build a real-world data platform using claims data, electronic medical records, and wearable consumer health-monitoring devices. The agencies said the project will comply with applicable privacy laws.

“We’re using this partnership to uncover the root causes of autism and other chronic diseases,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr said in a statement. “We’re pulling back the curtain—with full transparency and accountability—to deliver the honest answers families have waited far too long to hear.”

The Trump administration’s health department has already faced backlash for this project following the announcement that the NIH would be collecting the private medical records of many Americans from several different federal and commercial databases.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent described the upcoming meeting with Chinese officials on trade set to begin on Saturday as “negotiations.” He added that Peter Navarro, the White House trade adviser, will not be joining him and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at the discussions in Switzerland. He also declined to say which countries are close to reaching trade agreements with the US.

When asked during today’s House Financial Services Committee hearing whether discussions with China were considered advanced, Bessent replied: “I said, on Saturday, we will begin, which I believe is the opposite of advanced.”

After Wolfgang Ischinger thanks Vance and says he hopes he will come back to the Munich Security Conference again, the vice-president jokes:

I appreciate the invitation back. I wasn’t sure after February whether I’d get the invitation back, but it’s good to know that it’s still there.

Ischinger lightly interjects “we thought about it”, to which they both laugh.

Vance also congratulates Friedrich Merz after the conservative leader was elected German chancellor.

I know that we’ll have a conversation with him in the next couple of days.

Vance goes on to say that what he said in his February speech “applied as much to the previous American administration as much as it did to any government in Europe”.

In stark contrast to the tone of his February speech – as this whole Q&A session has been – Vance says he means “from the heart and as a friend” that “there’s a tradeoff between policing the bounds of democratic speech and debate, and losing the trust of our people”.

He says he accepts and understands that “some things are outside the realm of political debate” and every country will draw those lines slightly differently.

“We have to be careful that we don’t draw the lines in such a way that we don’t undermine democratic legitimacy,” he says.

It’s not: Europe bad, America good. It’s that I think we got a little bit off track, and I’d encourage us all to get back on track together. We’re certainly willing and able to participate in that work and I hope all of you are too.

Trump would like to see 5% spending on defense in Nato, Vance says.

European countries have “some catching up to do” as it hasn’t kept up with that, Vance says.

We really want and we really care about Europe being self-sufficient.

He says he regrets US foreign policy in the Middle East in 2003: “I frankly wish we had listened to our European friends.”

But on the need for Europe to play a bigger role in continental defense, he says “we are fundamentally right and it’s gratifying to see so many of European friends recognise that”.

I think we’re all aligned on it. It’s just a question of getting there and getting there quickly.

The US and China have not had a conversation about a strategic deal on Taiwan, Vance says.

He says the Trump administration is working to rebalance global trade in the interest of US workers and manufacturers, and that means China would have to take steps to boost domestic demand.

He says the rebalancing would also require cutting more trade deals with “some of our friends in Europe but also with some of our more adversarial nations”, adding that the goal was to do this while maintaining “at least an open dialog with [the People’s Republic of China].”

Vance describes US talks with Iran as “so far so good” and says there is a deal to be made that would “reintegrate Iran into the global economy” while preventing it from getting a nuclear weapon.

Iran getting a nuclear weapon is completely off the table for the American administration – no ifs, ands or butts.

Vance says he and Trump hate nuclear proliferation, so much so that Trump would be open to sitting down with Russia and China in the coming years to discuss reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world at large, Vance says.

But there is no way you get to that conversation if you allow multiple regimes all over the world to enter the sprint for a nuclear weapon.

And we really think that if the Iran domino falls, you’re going to see nuclear proliferation all over the Middle East – that’s very bad for us and for our friends.

Vance says the US has been “very happy with the Iranian response to some of the points that we’ve made”.

So far we’re on the right pathway.

He says the US doesn’t mind Iran having civil nuclear power, but they can’t also have an enrichment program that allows it to get to a nuclear weapon.

Vance says discussions between the United States and Europe were ongoing, saying Washington was pressing the European Union to lower its tariffs and regulatory barriers to improve the trading relationship.

In the same way that American markets have been open to European goods, we’d like a lot of European markets to be open to American goods.

He says there are agricultural and value-added manufacturing components to that, as well as opportunities for “American military software and hardware”.

He welcomes moves by Europe to expand its own defenses, but says US arms manufacturers should have an opportunity to participate more fully in those efforts.

Vance says the Trump administration wants Russia and Ukraine to agree on some guidelines for talking to each other directly, which he says would be necessary to end the war.

Vance says the US views the concessions that Russia had sought as too much.

Certainly the first peace offer the Russians put on the table, our reaction to it was: ‘You’re asking for too much.’

The Russians are asking for a certain set of requirements, a certain set of concessions, to end the conflict. We think they’re asking for too much.

But he says he is not that pessimistic about the chances for ending the conflict and direct talks between Russia and Ukraine is the next step the US wants to see.

Right now we would like the Russians and Ukrainians to agree to some basic guidelines for sitting down and talking to one another … We think that is the next big step we would like to take … We think it’s probably impossible for us to mediate this entirely without at least some direct negotiation between the two.

In marked contrast to his remarks back in February, Vance says he believes the US and Europe “are on the same team” and it was “ridiculous” to think a wedge could be driven between them.

He says he has a tendency to think of foreign policy purely in terms of “transactional values” – in terms of “what does American get out of it?” at the expense of the moral and humanitarian side of issues.

Vance says he believes that “fundamentally we have to be – and we are – on the same civilizational team”.

He and Trump believe this means “a little bit more European burden-sharing on the defense side” and “all of us” rethinking the “security posture of the last 20 years” which is “not adequate for the next 20 years”.

I do think we’re in one of these phases where we’re going to have to rethink a lot of big questions, but I do think we should rethink those big questions together. That’s a fundamental belief of both me and the president.

He adds:

I still think that this European alliance is very important but I think that for it to be important and for us to be real friends with each other – and I think we are very much real friends – we’ve got to talk about the big questions.

The vice-president JD Vance is due on stage at the Munich Leaders Meeting on global security taking place in Washington DC shortly for a Q&A led by Wolfgang Ischinger, a former German diplomat who chairs the annual Munich Security Conference.

Vance’s appearance earlier this year at that conference was nothing short of stunning and one of the most significant moments in the second Trump administration so far. As my colleague Patrick Wintour reported at the time, European leaders were left stunned as Vance “launched a brutal ideological assault on the continent, accusing its leaders of suppressing free speech, failing to halt illegal migration and running in fear from voters’ true beliefs”.

In a hostile, chastising speech that openly questioned whether current European values warranted defence by the US, Vance painted a picture of European politics infected by media censorship, cancelled elections and political correctness. He said:

If you are afraid of the voices, the opinions and the conscience that guide your very own people … If you’re running in fear of your own voters, there is nothing America can do for you, nor for that matter is there anything you can do for the American people.

His apparent disdain for Europe was also further revealed in leaked messages during the Signalgate scandal in which he told defense secretary Pete Hegseth: “I just hate bailing out Europe again.”

We’ll see if his tone is more amicable this morning.

A fan of renaming gulfs, Donald Trump plans to announce while on his trip to Saudi Arabia next week that the United States will now refer to the Persian Gulf as the “Arabian Gulf” or the “Gulf of Arabia”, none other than the Associated Press reports, citing two US officials.

The move has prompted a push back from Iranian leaders who called it “politically motivated”. On Wednesday, Iran’s current foreign minister weighed in, saying that names of Middle East waterways do “not imply ownership by any particular nation, but rather reflects a shared respect for the collective heritage of humanity”. Abbas Araghchi continued on X:

Politically motivated attempts to alter the historically established name of the Persian Gulf are indicative of hostile intent toward Iran and its people, and are firmly condemned.

Any short-sighted step in this connection will have no validity or legal or geographical effect, it will only bring the wrath of all Iranians from all walks of life and political persuasion in Iran, the US and across the world.

The Persian Gulf has been widely known by that name since the 16th century and it has become an emotive issues for Iranians, although usage of “Gulf of Arabia” and “Arabian Gulf” is dominant in many countries in the Middle East. The US military for years has also unilaterally referred to the Persian Gulf as the Arabian Gulf in statements and images it releases.

Trump can change the name for official US purposes, but he can’t dictate what the rest of the world calls it, as he has found several months after he declared that the US would refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America”.

The Trump administration is poised to kill federal research into pollution from satellites and rockets, including some caused by Elon Musk’s space companies, raising new conflict-of-interest questions about the billionaire SpaceX and Starlink owner.

The pollution appears to be accumulating in the stratosphere at alarming levels. Some fear it could destroy the ozone layer, potentially expose some people to higher levels of ultraviolet radiation or help further destabilize the earth’s climate during the climate crisis.

The two research projects would’ve had the potential to eventually lead to new regulations, costs or logistical challenges for Musk’s companies and the commercial space industry, experts say.

They were part of the office of atmospheric research at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa), which the Trump administration is now proposing to kill. The administration says it is “eliminating the federal government’s support of woke ideology”, but critics say it’s protecting a prolific donor and political ally.

“Obviously there’s political motivation, and Elon Musk’s business interests are tied up in Noaa’s work,” said Tim Whitehouse, executive director of the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility non-profit, which has filed a Freedom of Information Act request for emails around the projects.

These are programs the government wanted to build up, that had bipartisan support, and suddenly they’re being gutted with no rhyme, reason or adequate explanation.

‘Maduro did not close our bureau – Trump did’: Voice of America journalists speak out

Lauren Gambino

Carolina Valladares Pérez, a Washington-based correspondent for the government-funded international news service Voice of America, has reported from places where press freedom is severely restricted – war zones and autocratic states – in the Middle East and across Latin America. Intimidation and threats from state officials were not unusual – but she always managed to get the story out.

Now for the first time in her career, Valladares Pérez says she has been silenced – not by a faraway regime, but by the government of the United States.

“Nicolás Maduro did not close our bureau,” she said, of Venezuela’s authoritarian leader. “Donald Trump closed it. I find this astonishing.”

Valladares Pérez is one of hundreds of VOA journalists who remain shut out of their newsroom nearly two months after Trump signed a late-night executive order aimed at dismantling their parent company, the US Agency for Global Media (USAGM). The journalists had been hopeful they might be able to return to their broadcasts this week – VOA was even included in the rotation of news outlets assigned to cover the president as part of the White House press pool – but whiplashing court orders have clouded their path forward.

“We have 3,500 affiliates around the world – these are television stations, radio stations, digital affiliates, who depend on our content,” said Patsy Widakuswara, VOA’s White House bureau chief, who is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit challenging the president’s authority to gut an agency chartered by Congress.

The void is going to be filled by our adversaries – it already is.