AFP USA

The Trump administration asked the US Supreme Court on Thursday to back its bid to end the temporary protected status (TPS) shielding more than 350,000 Venezuelans from deportation.A federal judge in California put a temporary stay in March on plans by Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem to end deportation protections for the Venezuelan nationals.US District Judge Edward Chen said the plan to end TPS “smacks of racism” and mischaracterizes Venezuelans as criminals.”Acting on the basis of a negative group stereotype and generalizing such stereotype to the entire group is the classic example of racism,” Chen wrote.Solicitor General John Sauer filed an emergency application with the conservative-majority Supreme Court on Thursday asking it to stay the judge’s order.”So long as the order is in effect, the secretary must permit hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals to remain in the country, notwithstanding her reasoned determination that doing so is ‘contrary to the national interest,'” Sauer said.In addition, “the district court’s decision undermines the executive branch’s inherent powers as to immigration and foreign affairs,” he added.Former president Joe Biden extended TPS for another 18 months just days before Donald Trump returned to the White House in January.The United States grants TPS to foreign citizens who cannot safely return home because of war, natural disasters or other “extraordinary” conditions.Trump campaigned for the White House promising to deport millions of undocumented migrants.A number of his executive orders around immigration have encountered pushback from judges across the country.A federal judge in Texas ruled on Thursday that Trump’s use of an obscure wartime law to summarily deport alleged Venezuelan gang members was “unlawful.”District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, a Trump appointee, blocked any deportations from his southern Texas district of alleged members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA).Trump invoked the little-known AEA, which was last used to round up Japanese-American citizens during World War II, on March 15 and flew two planeloads of alleged TdA members to El Salvador’s notorious maximum security CECOT prison.The Supreme Court and several district courts have temporarily halted removals under the AEA citing a lack of due process, but Rodriguez was the first federal judge to find that its use is unlawful.

In signing a minerals deal, Ukraine has found a new way to tie the United States to its future, but it remains to be seen if it can guarantee long-term support from mercurial President Donald Trump.Two months after President Volodymyr Zelensky was unceremoniously kicked out of the White House following an on-camera clash with Trump, Ukraine renegotiated the deal he had been set to sign, with the Ukrainian leader hailing the signed version as truly equal.”Trump has already made clear that he will not back Ukraine’s accession into NATO, backing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s position that membership in the Western alliance is a red line, and he has repeatedly criticized the billions of dollars in US assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion in February 2022.But after earlier bristling at Trump’s demands for compensation for past aid, Ukraine managed through the deal to secure a US presence in a way relatable to the businessman Trump, experts said.The deal puts the Ukrainians “in their strongest position yet with Washington since Trump took office,” said Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council think tank’s Eurasia Center.”While the Trump administration put tremendous pressure on Ukraine to accept earlier deals, Ukraine managed to show that it is not just a junior partner that has to roll over and accept a bad deal,” she said.The deal does not speak of any debt owed by Ukraine, despite demands from Trump after he took office.- ‘Extortion’? -But one lesson from recent history could dishearten Ukrainians. Trump, critical of US involvement in Afghanistan, early in his first term reached an agreement with the country’s Western-backed president, Ashraf Ghani, to develop untapped mineral wealth.By the end of Trump’s term, the United States had effectively sidelined Ghani by negotiating a deal with the Taliban, who swiftly took over when president Joe Biden carried out the agreement and withdrew US troops.Some of Trump’s Democratic rivals dismissed the importance of the Ukraine minerals deal. Representative Gregory Meeks, the top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, in a statement called it “extortion” by Trump.Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said that the agreement was meaningless without Trump committing further weapons to Ukraine.”Right now all indications are that Donald Trump’s policy is to hand Ukraine to Vladimir Putin, and in that case, this agreement isn’t worth the paper that it’s written on,” Murphy said on MSNBC television.- Shift at least in short term -Robert Murrett, deputy director of Syracuse University’s Institute for Security Policy and Law, said it was too early to see how much of a security guarantee the deal would provide.But he said that from an economic perspective it can only be read as “something positive, in terms of giving the United States a long-term stake in Ukraine.””I think the other good indicator is a kind of acid test — the fact that the Kremlin is very, very unhappy with the deal,” he said.Gracelin Baskaran, director of the Critical Minerals Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that the language in the deal was striking, two months after the Trump-Zelensky clash.The agreement speaks of Russia’s invasion and raises the prospect of renewed US military assistance, by saying that security funding would be counted as US investment in the fund.She said that the deal was a means for “long-term economic recovery” and acknowledged that much could change over time.But in the short term, “it actually provides a Trump administration avenue for support” to Ukraine, she said.”This is a pretty big shift from where we were 60 days ago,” she said.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Thursday that a landmark minerals deal with the United States offered “equal” benefits for both sides, despite falling short of the explicit security guarantees Kyiv had sought.But Zelensky said more pressure was needed on Russia after its military response to the minerals accord signed on Wednesday was missile strikes on Kyiv and other towns that left at least two dead and 15 wounded.The agreement, which has taken months to negotiate, would see the United States and Kyiv jointly develop and invest in Ukraine’s critical mineral resources.US President Donald Trump initially described the arrangement as “money back” for the wartime aid Ukraine received under his predecessor Joe Biden.Ukraine said the new agreement is not linked to any past “debt” however. And US officials stressed that the accord signalled US support for Ukraine.”This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine over the long term,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in Washington.The agreement “changed significantly” during negotiations, Zelensky said in his daily address.”Now it is a truly equal agreement that creates an opportunity for quite significant investment in Ukraine.””There is no debt in the deal, and a fund — a recovery fund — will be created that will invest in Ukraine and earn money here,” he added.Kyiv and Washington planned to sign the agreement in February, but a White House clash between Trump and Zelensky derailed the talks.Ukraine hopes the deal will now pave the way for the United States to give security guarantees as it seeks to safeguard against future Russian attacks following Moscow’s three-year invasion.The agreement still needs to be ratified by Ukraine’s parliament.- ‘Be quiet and negotiate’ -Under the deal, Ukraine and the United States will establish a joint Reconstruction Investment Fund.Profits from the agreement will be invested exclusively in Ukraine for the first 10 years, after which profits “may be distributed between the partners,” Kyiv said.The new agreement does not give any specific US security commitments, but Washington argues boosting its business interests in Ukraine will help deter Russia.Moscow has kept up its attacks on Ukraine unabated, despite Trump’s efforts to broker a ceasefire.An overnight Russian drone strike on the Ukrainian port city of Odesa killed two people and wounded more than a dozen others, authorities said.”We need further pressure on Russia to force it to be quiet and to negotiate. The more effective the sanctions are, the more incentives Russia will have to end the war,” Zelensky said on Telegram following the attack.French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told AFP on Thursday, after Washington talks with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, that the European Union is preparing a 17th round of sanctions against Russia, describing President Vladimir Putin as the “sole obstacle” to peace in Ukraine.A bipartisan group of US senators lead by Republican Lindsay Graham and Democrat Richard Blumenthal also last month proposed legislation that would impose sanctions on countries friendly to Moscow if it disrupts efforts to end the war.Russia rejected a 30-day ceasefire proposed by the United States and Ukraine in March, demanding a halt in Western military aid for Kyiv.The United States warned that this week would be “critical” in determining whether it would walk away from efforts to broker an end to the three-year war.Putin has declared a surprise three-day truce from May 8-10, coinciding with Moscow’s large-scale celebrations for the 80th World War II Victory Day celebrations.

President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday released what it described as a comprehensive review of gender-related medical interventions for children and adolescents, warning of “significant risks” associated with puberty blockers and surgeries.The 400-page report was issued without named authors — a departure from scientific norms but nonetheless defended by the Department of Health and Human Services as a measure “to help maintain the integrity of this process.”Youth gender medicine is a highly polarizing issue in many countries, with medical professionals seeking to strike a balance between alleviating psychological distress, respecting patient autonomy, and ensuring that interventions are evidence-based and appropriate for developing bodies and minds.But the Trump administration’s record of hostility toward transgender people — including efforts to ban them from the military and erase language around gender identity from official documents — has raised questions about the objectivity of the review.The report states that gender-affirming treatments carry risks “including infertility/sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density accrual, adverse cognitive impacts, cardiovascular disease and metabolic disorders, psychiatric disorders, surgical complications, and regret.””Our duty is to protect our nation’s children — not expose them to unproven and irreversible medical interventions,” said Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health. “We must follow the gold standard of science, not activist agendas.”Aisha Mays, a family physician in California and member of the nonprofit Physicians for Reproductive Health, called the report “propaganda” that aimed “to delegitimize the perfectly safe, effective, and evidence-based health care that transgender people access to be who they are.””Being transgender, just like being cisgender, is not a choice nor can it be reversed by any medical or social method,” she added. “The same way cisgender people know who they are, so do trans people. The same way cis people receive gender-affirming care, so do trans people.”While Health Secretary and noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has drawn scrutiny for brash statements at odds with scientific consensus, the report itself is largely written in sober, academic prose and heavily cites medical literature.Still, it levels strong accusations — most notably against US medical associations, which it claims “may impede or even oppose evidence-based medicine when the professional or financial interests of their members are threatened by medical practice reversal.”The report also denounces terms like “assigned sex at birth,” arguing that it “suggests an arbitrary decision — not unlike ‘assigned seating’ — rather than the observation of a characteristic present long before birth, namely the child’s sex.”- Rare interventions -Its release follows a landmark review in the United Kingdom last year, led by retired pediatrician Hilary Cass, which urged “extreme caution” in prescribing hormone therapies to youth. The American Academy of Pediatrics, which supports access to medically necessary gender-affirming care and opposes legislation that restricts it, said it was “deeply alarmed” by the U.S. report.”For such an analysis to carry credibility, it must consider the totality of available data and the full spectrum of clinical outcomes rather than relying on select perspectives and a narrow set of data,” the group said, adding that its own guidelines were misrepresented.Despite intensifying political rhetoric, data show gender-affirming care among minors remains rare.A study in JAMA Network Open found that gender-affirming surgery occurred at a rate of 5.3 per 100,000 among adults, compared to 2.1 per 100,000 among minors aged 15 to 17; 0.1 among those aged 13 to 14; and zero cases among children 12 or younger.Another recent JAMA Pediatrics study reported that fewer than 0.1 percent of privately insured minors with a transgender or gender-diverse diagnosis received puberty blockers or hormones—and none were under 12.

US President Donald Trump confirmed Thursday that he was replacing his national security advisor Mike Waltz following a chat group leak, saying he planned to move him to the United Nations.In the first major cabinet shake-up of Trump’s new term, the president said Secretary of State Marco Rubio would now also serve as his “interim” national security advisor following Waltz’s departure.”I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations,” Trump said on Truth Social, confirming earlier reports that Waltz was being ousted.”Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role.”Trump did not give a reason for the move but Waltz had been under pressure over the so-called “Signalgate” scandal since late March.The editor-in-chief of The Atlantic magazine revealed at the time that Waltz had mistakenly added him to a group chat about US strikes on Yemen’s Huthi rebels on the commercial messaging app Signal.Officials on the group laid out the attack plan, including the timings that US warplanes would take off to bomb targets, with the first texts barely half an hour before they launched.Despite intense media speculation that Trump would fire Waltz over the scandal, the president repeatedly offered his backing and the national security advisor appeared to have ridden out the storm.In the end, however, the 51-year-old former congressman from Florida lasted just over 100 days of Trump’s second term, which has so far been more stable in terms of personnel than his first.Democrats will now turn up the heat on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who was the official who revealed the air strike details in advance, and who was also reported to have shared those details in a separate Signal group chat that included, among others, his spouse.”Now do Hegseth,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer posted on X.Waltz’s new role will also require Senate confirmation, ensuring that Signalgate will stay in the headlines.There was no immediate confirmation of US media reports that Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, would also leave the National Security Council.US media had reported that Steve Witkoff, a real estate magnate whom Trump has picked to lead US talks with both Russia and Iran, is in contention to replace Waltz in the longer term.- ‘SCALP’ -Waltz was among a number of White House staff targeted by right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who met with Trump urging a purge.Loomer, who is known for claiming that the September 11, 2001, attacks were an inside job, is reported to have successfully pushed for the dismissal of several senior US security officials she deemed disloyal to the president.After news of Waltz’s ouster was reported Thursday, Loomer appeared to take credit in a post on X, saying: “SCALP.”Waltz showed no sign that he knew of his imminent departure when appearing early Wednesday on Fox News, where he hailed the new US minerals deal with Ukraine.Waltz was also present at Trump’s televised cabinet meeting on Wednesday when he lavished praise on the president.”We’ve had 100 days of your leadership with respect, with strength,” Waltz said. “It’s an honor to serve you in this administration.”A former special forces officer, Waltz was seen as a moderate voice in the Trump administration when he was appointed, but reportedly clashed with other officials over his hawkish stance against Russia and Iran.Trump has pushed for Ukraine to reach a quick ceasefire deal with Russia, while reopening negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.The National Security Advisor’s role has been held in the past by some of the most high-profile officials in US history, including Henry Kissinger.But Waltz had been on borrowed time since Signalgate emerged as the first major scandal of the whirlwind start of Trump’s new term.On the text chain, Waltz sent real-time intelligence on the aftermath of an attack on the Huthis, writing that US forces had identified the target “walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”Hegseth revealed detailed timings of the US airstrikes on Yemen, putting him squarely in the Democrats’ crosshairs.

A federal judge in Texas ruled on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s use of an obscure wartime law to summarily deport alleged Venezuelan gang members was “unlawful.”District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, a Trump appointee, blocked any deportations from his southern Texas district of alleged members of the Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA).Trump invoked the little-known AEA, which was last used to round up Japanese-American citizens during World War II, on March 15 and flew two planeloads of alleged TdA members to El Salvador’s notorious maximum security CECOT prison.In a proclamation, Trump said Tren de Aragua was engaged in “hostile actions” and “threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States,” adding that Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro was pulling the strings.The Supreme Court and several district courts have temporarily halted removals under the AEA citing a lack of due process, but Rodriguez is the first federal judge to find that its use is unlawful.”The president cannot summarily declare that a foreign nation or government has threatened or perpetrated an invasion or predatory incursion of the United States,” the judge said in his 36-page order.”Allowing the president to unilaterally define the conditions when he may invoke the AEA, and then summarily declare that those conditions exist, would remove all limitations to the executive branch’s authority under the AEA,” Rodriguez said.”The president’s invocation of the AEA… exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” the judge said.The administration does not have the lawful authority, under the AEA, “to detain Venezuelan aliens, transfer them within the United States, or remove them from the country,” he added.- ‘Critically important decision’ -Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which brought the lawsuit seeking to halt the removals, welcomed the ruling.”The court ruled the president can’t unilaterally declare an invasion of the United States and invoke a wartime authority during peacetime,” Gelernt said.”Congress never meant for this 18th-century wartime law to be used this way,” he said. “This is a critically important decision that prevents more people from being sent to the notorious CECOT prison.”While prohibiting deportations under the AEA, Rodriguez said the administration could proceed with removals under the Immigration and Nationality Act.Trump won the White House election last November in large part on promises to combat what he repeatedly claimed is an invasion of criminal migrants.Trump has sent troops to the Mexican border, imposed tariffs on Mexico and Canada for allegedly not doing enough to stop illegal crossings, and designated gangs like TdA and MS-13 as terrorist groups.Attorneys for several of the Venezuelans already deported have said their clients were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.In the most publicized case to date, Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia was deported to CECOT before the Trump administration admitted he was sent there due to an “administrative error.”

Birds are facing a population crisis, but a lack of high-quality localized data has made it difficult to understand the drivers behind specific declines and to craft effective conservation responses.Now, a team of researchers has developed an innovative solution, combining vast amounts of data from a popular birding app with machine learning and advanced statistical methods to overcome the challenges posed by large-scale citizen science projects.Their study, published Thursday in Science, reveals that North American bird populations are being hit hardest in their traditional strongholds, as rapid environmental shifts — including climate change — disrupt these once-reliable refuges.”We have known for a long time that bird populations are declining,” lead author Alison Johnston, an ornithologist and ecological statistician at the University of St Andrews, told AFP. “What we aimed to do here was to look at better population trends in much more detail,” she said — data that is “a lot more tailored for conservation decisions and understanding what we can actually do on the ground.”A landmark 2019 paper also in Science found that North America had lost 2.9 billion breeding adult birds between 1970 and 2017 — a net loss of nearly a third. The 2025 US State of the Birds report found continued declines in nearly every ecological biome.Birds play vital roles in ecosystems, from pollinating plants and dispersing seeds to controlling pests. Their loss disrupts food chains, undermines forest health, reduces crop yields — and deprives people of the joy of watching species that have long been part of human culture.But the threats are diverse: from prairie loss impacting Baird’s Sparrows in the Midwest to Hawaiian birds threatened by rising seas and invasive predators, including cats.Johnston and colleagues turned to eBird, an open-source project, analyzing 36 million observations spanning 2007 to 2021 across North America, Central America, and the Caribbean.A major challenge with citizen science data is separating changes in bird populations from changes in how people watch birds. The team overcame this with several innovations: using only checklists where observers recorded all species seen; accounting for variables like observation time and distance traveled; and applying a machine learning model that controlled for shifting birding behavior.They validated the approach through thousands of simulations, ultimately focusing on 495 species for which the results proved reliable.Unlike previous monitoring that tracked trends at the state or regional level, their analysis looked at plots 27 kilometers by 27 kilometers (17 miles by 17 miles) — roughly the size of New York City.Key findings included that 97 percent of species had both areas of increasing population and areas of decline, revealing hidden complexity.Wood ducks for instance are declining in the Southeast US but thriving farther north, suggesting a climate-related shift.The study also found that 83 percent of species are shrinking fastest in areas where they were most abundant, particularly grassland and aridland breeders.The reasons aren’t fully known, but one theory is that birds adapted to rich environments may be less resilient to rapid change than those evolved for harsher conditions.Conversely, some aridland, forest, and generalist species are rebounding in parts of their range where they were once scarce — pointing to pockets of opportunity.The findings are already being used by wildlife agencies, for example in permitting wind energy projects to minimize impacts on species such as Bald Eagles.

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein’s lawyer claimed Thursday that one of his accusers had only made allegations of sexual assault to prosecutors so she could sue the wealthy Hollywood lynchpin.Miriam Haley, 48, is one of dozens of women who have accused Weinstein of harassment, sexual assault or rape — a list that includes Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Ashley Judd.Their accounts helped galvanize the #MeToo movement nearly a decade ago, but are being re-litigated as Weinstein faces a new trial in New York.Haley strongly rejected the attorney’s suggestion as she was cross-examined Thursday, saying that she had only spoken out to support and encourage other women who alleged Weinstein attacked them.”You didn’t mention a meeting at Claridge’s in London… You didn’t mention friendly emails… you told the press only part of the story,” Weinstein’s lawyer Jennifer Bonjean said of Haley’s media appearances denouncing her client’s behavior.”I told the part that was relevant to what I was trying to share,” said Haley.Weinstein’s 2020 convictions on charges relating to Haley and aspiring actress Jessica Mann were overturned last year by the New York Court of Appeals, which ruled that the way witnesses were handled in the original trial was unlawful.Back in a Manhattan courtroom, Haley has this week tearfully recalled the day in July 2006 when she says she accepted an invitation to visit Weinstein’s Soho apartment where the alleged assault happened. At the time, she was a showbiz production assistant looking for work.- ‘What happened to me’ -“I had (a) press conference to share what happened to me in support of the other women,” Haley said as Weinstein watched on.Haley denied that she went to the prosecutor, the Manhattan District Attorney (DA), only after she realized she could not sue Weinstein because of the statute of limitations.”At no point in that time did I think… there would be an option to get monetary compensation,” she said during the sometimes heated exchanges with Weinstein’s lawyer.The lawyer alleged that the only way Haley could bring a lawsuit was if prosecutors brought charges.”I didn’t know that,” Haley said.”Your interest in coming forward to the DA’s office only happened after you learned that you could sue him if they brought criminal charges,” Bonjean repeated.The former Miramax studio boss is charged in the New York retrial with the 2006 sexual assault of Haley and the 2013 rape of Mann. He also faces a new count for an alleged sexual assault of a 19-year-old in 2006.Weinstein — the producer of a string of box office hits such as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love” — has never acknowledged any wrongdoing.He is serving a 16-year prison sentence after being convicted in California of raping and assaulting a European actress more than a decade ago.

Washington and Kyiv have signed a new minerals deal that will see the United States invest in Ukraine’s rare earth and other deposits as it seeks to reduce military aid to the war-torn country.The deal came together after US President Donald Trump demanded compensation for US aid given to Ukraine under his predecessor Joe Biden’s administration, and follows weeks of delays following a spat in late February between Trump and Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky.Here’s what we know about the agreement — which lacks any explicit security guarantees for Ukraine:- What’s in the deal? – Under the terms of the deal announced on Wednesday, Ukraine and the United States will establish a joint Reconstruction Investment Fund.The fund will be controlled by a company with “equal representation of three Ukrainian and three American board members,” the US Treasury Department said in a statement. The agreement covers 57 types of resources, including oil and gas.If the United States decides to buy the resources, they will be given “first choice to either acquire them or designate the purchaser of our choice,” the Treasury Department said. The new fund “will receive 50 percent of royalties, license fees, and other similar payments from natural resource projects in Ukraine,” according to the US Treasury.Its profits will be invested exclusively in Ukraine for the first 10 years, after which profits “may be distributed between the partners,” Kyiv said.- What resources does Ukraine have? -Ukraine holds about five percent of the world’s mineral resources and rare earths, according to various estimates. But work has not yet started on tapping many of the resources and a number of sites are in territory now controlled by Russian forces.Ukraine also has around 20 percent of the world’s graphite, an essential material for electric batteries, according to France’s Bureau of Geological and Mining Research, and is a major producer of manganese and titanium.It also says it possesses one of the largest lithium deposits in Europe, which is yet to be extracted.Kyiv says “rare earth metals are known to exist in six deposits” and an investment of $300 million would be needed to develop a deposit at Novopoltavske, which it claimed was one of the world’s largest. – Does Ukraine have to repay the US? -Trump demanded compensation for US aid given to Ukraine under his predecessor Joe Biden’s administration. But under the terms of the deal signed this week, Ukraine will not be asked to pay back the billions of dollars it has received from the United States since Russia’s invasion of the country in February 2022.New military aid from Washington will be counted as its contribution to the fund, according to the text of the agreement.Ukraine said it will maintain full control over its subsoil, infrastructure and natural resources throughout the process.Kyiv noted that the agreement does not impact its bid for integration with the European Union.- What does US support mean for Ukraine? -Ukraine has said any deal would need to include long-term and robust security guarantees that would deter Russia from attacking again.But the text does not place any specific security obligations on the United States.It simply says that the United States “supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain the security assurances necessary to build a lasting peace.”However, a US Treasury statement notably mentioned Russia’s “full-scale invasion” of Ukraine — diverging from the Trump administration’s usual formulation of a “conflict” for which Kyiv bears a large degree of responsibility.”This is win-win for both sides,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business on Thursday. “I think this is a strong signal to the Russian leadership,” he said.burs-da/aha

Donald Trump’s national security advisor is to leave his post — the first major departure of the president’s new term — after being embroiled in a scandal over a chat group leak, US media reported Thursday.Mike Waltz and his deputy Alex Wong were both set to leave the White House, CBS News and others reported, while Fox News said Trump was expected to comment on the matter soon.The 51-year-old former congressman from Florida lasted just over 100 days of Trump’s second term, which has so far been more stable in terms of personnel than his first.Trump cycled through four national security advisors during his first presidency.A White House official did not confirm the reports, saying they “do not want to get ahead of any announcement.”Waltz showed no sign that he knew of his imminent departure when appearing early Wednesday on Fox News, where he hailed the new US minerals deal with Ukraine.”Nobody said (it) could be done. President Trump said ‘get it done’,” he said.Saying Trump has boosted US military recruitment, he added: “This is leadership at its finest, led by our commander in chief, who loves the troops and they love him.”Waltz also was present at Trump’s televised cabinet meeting on Wednesday.A former special forces officer, Waltz was seen as a moderate voice in the Trump administration when he was appointed, but reportedly clashed with other officials over his hawkish stance against Russia and Iran.Trump has pushed for Ukraine to reach a quick ceasefire deal with Russia, while reopening negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.- Chat group blunder -Steve Witkoff, a real estate magnate whom Trump has picked to lead US talks with both Russia and Iran, is in contention to replace Waltz, US media reported.Waltz had been under pressure since late March, when the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic Magazine revealed he had been mistakenly added to a chat on the commercial messaging app Signal about military attacks on Yemen’s Huthi rebels.Officials on the chat laid out the attack plan including the timings that US warplanes would take off to bomb targets, with the first texts barely half an hour before they launched.Despite intense media speculation that Trump would fire Waltz over the scandal, the president repeatedly offered his backing and the national security advisor appeared to have ridden out the storm.However, Waltz was among a number of White House staff targeted by a right-wing influencer and conspiracy theorist who met with Trump urging a purge.Laura Loomer, who is known for claiming that the September 11, 2001 attacks were an inside job, is reported to have successfully pushed for the dismissal of several senior US security officials she deemed disloyal to the president.After news of Waltz and Wong’s ouster was reported Thursday, Loomer posted on X: “SCALP.”Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has also faced pressure over the scandal.”1215et: F-18s LAUNCH (1st strike package)”, Hegseth wrote in one text, referring to F/A-18 US Navy jets, before adding that “Target Terrorist is @ his Known Location so SHOULD BE ON TIME.””1415: Strike Drones on Target (THIS IS WHEN THE FIRST BOMBS WILL DEFINITELY DROP, pending earlier ‘Trigger Based’ targets).”A short time later, Waltz sent real-time intelligence on the aftermath of an attack, writing that US forces had identified the target “walking into his girlfriend’s building and it’s now collapsed.”Reacting to Waltz’s reported dismissal on Thursday, top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer posted on X: “Now do Hegseth.”