Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has announced a major shift in U.S. policy on Ukraine: The way forward, he told allies in Brussels, is to abandon the “illusory goal” of a return to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders and prepare for a negotiated settlement with Russia, backed up with an international force that won’t include U.S. troops. In the U.S., bad inflation numbers came in just as President Donald Trump planned to upend global trade by signing a broad reciprocal tariffs order.
And Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’s longstanding friendly rapport with Trump could be tested as his visit to Washington kicks off. Here's the latest:. Global reproductive health advocates decry shuttering USAID, reinstatement of global gag rule. Dilly Severin, executive director of the Universal Access Project at the UN Foundation, described Trump’s actions as “forfeiting our role as a leader in global health, including reproductive rights, health and justice.”.
Dr. Carole Sekimpi, senior director of MSI Africa, said the organization has lost $40 million in funding from the U.S. since Trump took office and warned there will be a spike in deaths of women and girls across the region due to losing “life-saving, time-sensitive” family planning services. “Women and girls woke up one morning and there was no care, whether it was contraception or HIV care,” she said. “There was no forewarning, so there’s a lot of panic.”.
The global gag rule, sometimes called the “Mexico City Policy,” requires foreign nongovernmental agencies to certify that they don’t provide or promote abortion if they receive U.S. federal funds for family planning assistance. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said he would seek to mitigate damage resulting from shutting down U.S.-funded global aid programs by issuing waivers to exempt emergency food aid and “life-saving” programs. But Sekimpi said it’s nearly impossible to restart the programs on the ground even with the waivers.
Danes jokingly petition to buy California as Trump seeks Greenland. The idea is a response to Trump’s talk about taking control of the vast and mineral-rich Arctic island from Denmark. The petition’s website claimed over 200,000 signatures by midmorning Wednesday. “We have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to make that dream a reality,” it says. “California will become New Denmark. Los Angeles? More like Løs Ångeles.”.
As for Disneyland in Southern California: “We’ll rename it Hans Christian Andersenland. Mickey Mouse in a Viking helmet? Yes, please.”. The petition comes with a disclaimer: “This campaign is 100% real … in our dreams. ▶ Read more about the Danish petition. Trump taps oil industry advocate for land agency, former Wyoming official for Fish and Wildlife. Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Colorado-based Western Energy Alliance, was named Bureau of Land Management director. Her group has long pushed for greater access by the oil and gas industry to public lands and increased mining.
Brian Nesvik led the Wyoming Game and Fish Department until last year. The BLM manages about 245 million acres of federal land, mostly in the West, while Fish and Wildlife oversees fish, wildlife, plants and their habitats. Both agencies are part of the Interior Department. Human rights expert praises Trump’s order restricting transgender athletes from women’s sports. Trump’s executive order “mandates the preservation of all-female athletic opportunities and locker rooms, ensuring privacy and dignity for women and girls,” said Reem Alsalem, the U.N. special rapporteur on violence against women and girls.
Alsalem is one of dozens of independent experts who work with the U.N. human rights office to keep tabs on human rights and is not a staffer of the United Nations. Affidavits reveal scope of US foreign aid eliminations by DOGE and other outsiders. The newly filed affidavits of U.S. Agency for International Development workers describe a lieutenant of Trump ally Elon Musk and other outsiders directing the immediate termination of hundreds of assistance programs, allegedly without required authorization or justification.
The groups are suing to roll back the dismantling of USAID by Trump’s Republican administration and Musk’s government-cutting teams. The affidavits were filed late Tuesday. One says that when USAID contract officers emailed agency higher-ups on Monday asking for the authorization and justification needed to cancel USAID programs abroad, a lieutenant of Musk's responded by asserting that the decisions came from the “most senior levels.”.
Trump’s ultimate power move could test the Supreme Court’s supremacy. Trump is clearly pressing the boundaries of the relationship between the executive and judicial branches. And that may test one of the most foundational cases in American constitutional law, Marbury v. Madison, which established the courts as the law’s final arbiters. Chief Justice John Marshall wrote in the 1803 ruling that while Congress makes the laws and the president enforces them, the courts decide whether the other branches have gone too far.
