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President Donald Trump’s efforts to lower beef prices has divided top administration officials and some of his closest allies — prompting the White House to halt plans to temporarily reduce import tariffs, according to four people familiar with the talks.

The White House initially postponed Trump’s widely telegraphed plans for an executive order on beef imports last week to give officials more time to negotiate the scope before shelving it amid ongoing disagreements, according to four people who were granted anonymity to discuss private discussions.

The split highlights the dilemma the president faces in trying to balance consumers’ concerns about rising grocery prices with those of his supporters in the cattle industry. The average cost of ground beef on store shelves has increased by roughly 12 percent since last summer and more than 24 percent since Trump took office last year — a critical example of affordability pressures that have dogged Republicans in the lead-up to the midterms.

A senior White House official told POLITICO that the executive order is still “a work in progress.”

“What he wants at the end of the day is for something that will protect farmers and put farmers and ranchers in a good position,” the senior official said of Trump. “And so his directive to everyone was: ‘Get me the best possible thing I can sign that protects ranchers and farmers.’”

Top White House officials including National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller have pushed for executive action that they argue would lower prices for consumers without having a significant impact on ranchers, according to three of the four people familiar with the matter.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, meanwhile, has long opposed any plan that would increase imports and anger American ranchers.

One of the four people — a White House official close to the conversations — said last week’s executive order was delayed after Rollins “at the last minute went into the Oval and threw a fit.”

Another person familiar with the discussions said there were “several” other Cabinet-level officials beside Rollins “who expressed concerns regarding the executive actions directly” on Monday.

A USDA spokesperson told POLITICO that the department would not comment on private meetings between Trump and Rollins.

“But anybody who is remotely familiar with Secretary Rollins knows she doesn’t throw fits,” the spokesperson said. “The President, and the President alone, is leading the greatest team ever assembled to make America great again, and Secretary Rollins is proud to work as part of it.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday. The administration has said it continues to explore policy options to lower beef and other grocery prices.

Trump has fixated on ways to lower beef prices, holding private meetings with Cabinet officials and industry representatives at the White House to find solutions in recent months, even as the Iran war threatens to further inflate grocery costs and some White House officials warn that inaction on beef could cost Republicans in November.

“Should we lose the House in November, this beef fight will be one of the key moments of the year that show how efforts to respond to public demands were strangled” by Rollins, said the White House official close to the negotiations.

Trump told aides after returning from trade talks in China late last week that he couldn’t move forward with the reworked plan to temporarily ease tariffs on imported beef, according to one of the people familiar with the talks. The tweaked plan would have focused on waiving some tariffs on a certain amount of beef imports without reducing the tariffs across the board for 200 days.

One ag industry representative said they’re still anticipating the White House could make a move, arguing that it would be “a mistake to ever assume something is ‘dead’ in this administration. They have plenty of shelf space.”

Tanking the executive order would be a major win for ranchers and beef industry groups, which have argued that it would disincentivize long-term growth of the low domestic cattle herd and displace demand for U.S. beef.

“I genuinely believe Rollins is trying to do the right thing here,” one ag industry representative said.

Rollins acknowledged during a Fox Business interview Wednesday that a “perfect storm” of conditions is increasing beef prices.

“It’s really important as we continue our national security quest to ensure we’re able to feed ourselves and not rely on other countries,” Rollins said.

The American Farm Bureau Federation published an economic analysis last week showing that beef imports are already at a high level and that even a short-term reduction in tariffs would hurt beef producers “at precisely the moment ranchers are weighing whether conditions justify rebuilding the U.S. cattle herd.”

And farm-state Hill Republicans, who rarely break with Trump on agriculture policy issues, publicly bashed the idea of boosting imports.

“Facilitating the import of foreign beef is not the solution,” House Agriculture Committee Chair G.T. Thompson (R-Pa.) told POLITICO last week. “The administration needs to realize consumers have a choice when it comes to protein. And if they find they can’t afford one type of protein, there are multiple others, chicken and pork and turkey. So I don’t support opening our market to more imported beef.”

The White House has not briefed industry leaders or Capitol Hill on the status of the negotiations since officials delayed the executive orders last week.

“I’ve not gotten an update, but obviously I’ve paid close attention to all that,” said Rep. Adrian Smith (R-Neb.), who represents a top beef production state. “I want to make sure we get the policy right.”

The White House has postponed its planned ceremony for President Trump to sign a new executive order on AI and cybersecurity, per a note seen by Axios.

It's another setback for an effort that has been stalled by internal disagreements.

Major tech, AI and cyber CEOs had been invited to attend the ceremony this afternoon at the White House.

Per the note, the event has been postponed to a later date.

The Trump administration is awarding $2 billion in grants to nine quantum-computing companies in deals that include U.S. government equity stakes, the Commerce Department said.

The move accelerates the administration’s plans to boost the nascent industry, which has attracted a wave of investment from investors and businesses in recent months.

The department has agreed to give $1 billion of the package to IBM, a leader in the race to build computers that use quantum mechanics to solve problems much faster than traditional supercomputers. Coupled with advances in artificial intelligence, quantum computing has the potential to turbocharge scientific research, making it an economic and national security priority for President Trump.

IBM and other companies are working to develop specialized chips for quantum computing, a focus for the government in its bid to spur domestic supply chains. Chip maker GlobalFoundries is receiving $375 million in funding. The rest of the firms are expected to receive $100 million, except for startup Diraq, which is slated to get $38 million.

A slew of companies pursuing various approaches to quantum are slated to be awarded funds, including publicly traded firms D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing and Infleqtion.

The deals still need to be completed.

Premarket trading early Thursday pointed to large gains for the publicly traded companies involved, including about 7% for IBM and GlobalFoundries.

The funding for the quantum deals comes from the 2022 Chips and Science Act, which includes money for earlier stage technology projects. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has overhauled the office, asking semiconductor companies to increase their domestic investments and taking a nearly 10% stake in Intel, which has seen shares surge since the unusual deal.

The government will receive a minority equity stake in each quantum company, adding to a string of similar deals including rare-earths magnet maker Vulcan Elements and mining company MP Materials. The department didn’t provide details about the exact size and structure of each equity stake.

“The Trump administration is leading the world into a new era of American innovation,” Lutnick said in a statement.

The new funding comes as the administration works on an executive order focused on the industry, according to people familiar with the matter. Companies including Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google are also investing heavily in the space after recent quantum breakthroughs, attracting investors to the industry.

The sector is in a much better position and there is more line of sight to quantum really becoming a reality, a senior Commerce Department official said.

The Wall Street Journal previously reported the department was talking to quantum companies about funding and equity stakes.

Some tech analysts have said the quantum sector and others are too risky for the government to make equity investments, but Lutnick has argued that the deals are structured so taxpayers will ultimately benefit. The senior Commerce official said the agency did so many different deals to spread out its bets, acknowledging that it could take years for them to pan out.

“Everybody is excited about quantum because it is the next big thing. A lot of the expectations and hopes have yet to be realized,” said Dana Goward, president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, a charity advocating for policies and systems to protect GPS satellites, signals, and users. One application of quantum has the potential to replace GPS, tech analysts say.

Quantum executives say the amount of time it takes to make advancements in the field is falling thanks to the investments and research breakthroughs such as more powerful chips. “We think now the time frames have actually collapsed,” IBM Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said in a March interview. He compares quantum to where AI chips were a decade ago.

The other quantum startups expected to receive funding are Atom Computing, PsiQuantum, and Quantiniuum.

Iran said the latest proposal from the US has partly bridged the gap between the warring sides, as they seek to turn a fragile ceasefire into a peace deal.

Tehran is in the process of responding to a text submitted by the US, which “has narrowed the gaps to some extent,” the semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency reported on Thursday, without saying where it got the information. “Further narrowing requires an end to the temptation for war on Washington’s part.”

The exchange of messages is based on Iran’s 14-point text from several weeks ago, the Iranian foreign ministry said separately. That plan essentially suggests a short-term deal that would see Iran reopen the Strait of Hormuz and the US lift a blockade of Iranian ports, with the warring sides then going into deeper negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program.

Iran gave no indication of when it would formally answer the US. The Iranian foreign ministry reiterated it wants a commitment that fighting will end “on all fronts, including Lebanon.” It also called for the unfreezing of sanctioned assets.

Field Marshal Asim Munir, who has positioned himself as the most powerful person in Pakistan, is visiting Tehran on Thursday, ISNA reported. Islamabad is the main mediator between the sides.

The developments follow renewed threats of escalation between the US and Iran as their stand-off drags on.

US President Donald Trump told reporters on Wednesday that the US was in the “final stages” with Iranian diplomacy, sparking investor hopes a deal was close.

But the president then warned he may resume attacks in the coming days if Iran didn’t agree to his terms, a threat he has made multiple times since a ceasefire took effect on April 8.

“We’ll either have a deal or we’re going to do some things that are a little bit nasty,” he said. “But hopefully that won’t happen.”

Key sticking points between the sides include Iran’s nuclear enrichment and its stocks of highly-processed uranium. The US is demanding Tehran hands over the latter, due to fears Tehran may use it to build an atomic bomb, and commits to ending enrichment for at least a decade. Iranian leaders have balked at those in public.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian insisted the country was not on the brink of giving in. “Forcing Iran to surrender through coercion is nothing but an illusion,” he posted on X on Wednesday.

Another point of contention is Lebanon, where Israel — whose attacks on Iran alongside the US started the war in late February — is fighting Tehran-backed Hezbollah militants. Israel has resisted the idea of pulling its troops out the Arab country. A ceasefire on that front is fragile, with Israel and Hezbollah continuing attacks daily.

Axios, citing unnamed sources, reported that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had a tense call on Tuesday. It didn’t give details on what the US leader told Netanyahu, who has said he doesn’t trust Iran to abide by any peace deal and has signaled that strikes on the Islamic Republic must resume at some point.

The report came shortly after Trump told reporters that Netanyahu would “do whatever I want him to do.”

Earlier, Iran warned it would retaliate beyond the Middle East if the US or Israel renewed hostilities.

“If aggression against Iran is repeated, the regional war that had been promised will this time extend beyond the region,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency. The IRGC, which has gained even more influence over Iranian decision-making since the war erupted, vowed “crushing blows in places you do not expect.”

Iran has already restarted some of its drone production during the six-week ceasefire that began in early April, one sign it is rapidly rebuilding certain military capabilities degraded by US-Israeli strikes, according to two sources familiar with US intelligence assessments. Four sources told CNN that US intelligence indicates Iran’s military is reconstituting much faster than initially estimated.

The rebuilding of military capabilities, including replacing missile sites, launchers and production capacity for key weapons systems destroyed during the current conflict, means that Iran remains a significant threat to regional allies should President Donald Trump restart the bombing campaign, according to the four sources familiar with the intelligence. It also calls into question claims about the extent to which US-Israeli strikes have degraded Iran’s military in the long term.

While the time to restart production of different weapons components varies, some US intelligence estimates indicate Iran could fully reconstitute its drone attack capability in as soon as six months, one of the sources, a US official, told CNN.

“The Iranians have exceeded all timelines the IC had for reconstitution,” the US official said.

Drone attacks are a particular concern for regional allies. If hostilities resume, Iran could augment its missile production capability — which has been significantly degraded — with more drone launches, to continue firing at Israel and Gulf countries that are well within range of both weapons systems.

Trump has repeatedly threatened to resume combat operations against Iran if the two countries fail to reach a deal to end the war, including saying publicly on Tuesday that he’d been an hour from restarting bombing, meaning these military capabilities could come into play.

Iran has been able to rebuild much faster than expected due to a combination of factors, ranging from support it is receiving from Russia and China to the fact that the US and Israel did not inflict as much damage as the two countries had hoped, one of the sources told CNN. For example, China has continued to provide Iran with components during the conflict that can be used to build missiles, two sources familiar with US intelligence assessments told CNN, though that has likely been curtailed by the ongoing US blockade.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS last week that China is giving Iran “components of missile manufacturing” but declined to elaborate further.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun denied the allegation during a press conference, calling it “not based on facts.”

Meanwhile, Iran also still maintains ballistic-missile, drone-attack and anti-air capability despite the serious damage inflicted by US-Israeli strikes, according to recent US intelligence assessments, meaning the quick rebuilding of military production capacity isn’t starting from scratch.

A spokesperson for US Central Command declined to comment, saying the command does not discuss matters related to intelligence.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell told CNN in a statement that “America’s military is the most powerful in the world and has everything it needs to execute at the time and place of the President’s choosing.”

“We have executed multiple successful operations across combatant commands while ensuring the U.S. military possesses a deep arsenal of capabilities to protect our people and our interests,” Parnell added.

CNN reported in April that US intelligence assessed that roughly half of Iran’s missile launchers had survived US strikes. A recent report increased that figure to two thirds partially due to the ongoing ceasefire providing Iran with time to dig out launchers that might have been buried in previous strikes, according to sources familiar with the intelligence.

The US intelligence assessment total may include launchers that are currently inaccessible, such as those buried underground by strikes but not destroyed.

Thousands of Iranian drones still exist — roughly 50% of the country’s drone capabilities — two sources previously told CNN the intelligence indicated.

The intelligence also showed a large percentage of Iran’s coastal defense cruise missiles were intact, consistent with the US not focusing its air campaign on coastal military assets though they have been hitting ships. Those missiles serve as a key capability allowing Iran to threaten shipping traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

Taken together, recent US intelligence reports overwhelmingly suggest that the war has degraded Iran’s military capabilities, but not destroyed them, with the Iranians demonstrating they can effectively limit the long-term impact of the war by quickly reconstituting after those strikes.

That includes rebuilding its defense industrial base, which CENTCOM commander Adm. Brad Cooper said on Tuesday has been largely eliminated.

“Operation Epic Fury significantly degraded Iran’s ballistic missiles and drones while destroying 90% of their defense industrial base, ensuring Iran cannot reconstitute for years,” Cooper testified during Tuesday’s hearing before the House Armed Services Committee.

But Cooper’s testimony stands in stark contrast to US intelligence assessments examining Iran’s ability to rebuild its military capabilities and the timeline in which they are able to do so, with two sources telling CNN the intelligence is inconsistent with the descriptions provided by the CENTCOM commander.

One of the sources familiar with recent US intelligence assessments told CNN that the damage to Iran’s defense industrial base has likely set its ability to reconstitute back by a matter of months, not years. And some of Iran’s defense industrial base remains intact, which could further accelerate the timeline for reconstituting certain capabilities, the source noted.

US forces identified at least 10 mines planted by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz, CBS News reported on Wednesday, citing US officials with knowledge of the matter.

The mines were discovered following a recent US intelligence assessment.

A previous CBS report from March said there were at least a dozen underwater mines in the Strait, according to US intelligence reports.

Officials had said the mines were Maham 3 and Maham 7 Limpet mines, both manufactured in Iran, CBS reported.

The Maham 3 is a “moored naval mine that uses magnetic and acoustic sensors to detect nearby vessels without physical contact,” explained the report. It analyzes movement to determine the best time to activate, holding the capacity to engage targets within 10 feet.

The Maham 7, on the other hand, is known as a “sticking mine,” explained CBS. It is designed to rest on the seabed and relies on a combination of acoustic and three-axis magnetic sensors to detect nearby vessels. This mine targets medium-sized ships, landing craft, and smaller submarines.

The latest US assessments didn’t reveal the type of mines recently discovered, the report added.

The US Navy has spent weeks clearing mines from a route in the Strait of Hormuz meant for the safe passage of commercial ships.

The US warned that transiting the normal route could be “extremely hazardous” due to mines laid by Tehran, added CBS.

Iran announced this week that it is working with Oman to create a joint “mechanism” to control traffic through the Strait, said the report.

President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed a new effort to reach a deal with Iran in a difficult call on Tuesday, three sources said, with one source saying Netanyahu's "hair was on fire" after the call.

A revised peace memo was drafted by Qatar and Pakistan with input from the other regional mediators to try to bridge the gaps between the U.S. and Iran, the sources said. It comes with Trump vacillating over ordering a massive strike on Iran and holding out for a deal.

Netanyahu is highly skeptical about the negotiations and wants to resume the war to further degrade Iran's military capabilities and weaken the regime by destroying its critical infrastructure.

Trump continues to say he thinks a deal can be reached but that he's ready to resume the war if it isn't.

"The only question is do we go and finish it up or are they gonna be signing a document. Let's see what happens," he said on Wednesday at the Coast Guard Academy. Later on Wednesday, he said the U.S. and Iran were "right on the borderline" between getting a deal and resuming the war.

Trump also said Netanyahu "will do whatever I want him to do" on Iran, though he also said they had a good relationship. The two leaders have had temporary disagreements on Iran before but have remained closely coordinated throughout the war.

Iran has confirmed it's reviewing an updated proposal, but it has not yet shown any signs of flexibility.

Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt have been working over the last several days to refine the proposal to bridge the gaps, the three sources say.

According to two Arab officials and an Israeli source, Qatar recently presented the U.S. and Iran with a new draft. A fourth source said there is no separate Qatari draft, but that Qatar is just trying to bridge the gaps from the previous Pakistani proposal.

One Arab official said the Qataris sent a delegation to Tehran earlier this week for talks with the Iranians about the latest draft.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said Wednesday that negotiations were ongoing "based on Iran's 14-point proposal" and that Pakistan's interior minister was in Tehran to help the mediation. That's the second visit by the interior minister in less than a week.

The goal of the new effort is to get more tangible commitments from the Iranians over steps regarding their nuclear program, and more specifics from the U.S. as to how frozen Iranian funds will be gradually released, an Arab official said.

All three sources stressed it's unclear whether the Iranians will agree to the new draft or shift their positions significantly.

"As stated previously, Qatar has been and continues to support the Pakistani-led mediation efforts, we have been consistently advocating for de-escalation for the sake of the region and its people," a Qatari diplomat said.

On Tuesday evening, Trump held a lengthy and "difficult" call with Netanyahu.

Trump told Netanyahu that the mediators were working on a "letter of intent" that both the U.S. and Iran would sign to formally end the war and launch a 30-day period of negotiations on issues like Iran's nuclear program and opening of the Strait of Hormuz, a U.S. source briefed on the call said.

Two Israeli sources said the two leaders were in disagreement about the way forward, while the U.S. source briefed on the call said "Bibi's hair was on fire after the call."

The source said Israel's ambassador to Washington had informed U.S. lawmakers that Netanyahu was concerned about the call. An embassy spokesperson denied that characterization and said "the ambassador does not comment on private conversations."

Two sources noted that Netanyahu has been highly worried at previous stages of the negotiations, even as deals failed to materialize. "Bibi is always concerned," one source said.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesperson said that in order for talks to succeed, the U.S. would have to end its "piracy" against Iranian ships and agree to release frozen funds, while Israel would have to end its war in Lebanon.

Trump said the war could resume "very quickly" if "we don't get the right answer," but he was willing to give the talks a few more days. "If I can save people from getting killed by waiting a couple of days, I think it is a great thing to do."

An Israeli source said Netanyahu wants to come to Washington in the coming weeks for a meeting with Trump.

Officials in the White House denied delaying the evacuation of an American doctor who contracted Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after a report claimed officials were reluctant to bring him back to the United States.

After Dr. Peter Stafford, an American physician working in the DRC with a nonprofit Christian ministry, tested positive for Ebola, officials from the CDC and Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response reportedly advocated to send him to a facility in the U.S. with special biocontainment units.

However, White House officials allegedly said they did not want Stafford back in the United States, the Washington Post reported. Ultimately, Stafford was flown to Germany, where he is receiving care at Berlin’s Charite University Hospital.

White House Spokesperson Kush Desai called the Washington Post’s report “absolutely false” and said Stafford was flown to Germany because it’s 12 hours closer to the DRC than the United States and “time is of the essence.”

“Given that this American was in a very unstable part of the DRC, which as a whole is an unstable country, the Administration did what it could to most efficiently and effectively maximize this American’s odds of survival and minimize the odds of further transmission,” Desai said in a statement.

Stafford, 39, was treating patients in a remote area of the DRC when he fell ill. His location made it more complicated to evacuate him swiftly, requiring multiple flights, including one where he was placed in a containment tube.

Ebola, a deadly infection that spreads person-to-person through bodily fluids, damages blood vessels, which can lead to life-threatening symptoms such as excessive bleeding, vomiting, organ failure and more.

Four Ebola viruses cause disease. Stafford tested positive for the Bundibugyo virus, which has no approved vaccines and a fatality rate between 30 and 50 percent, according to the World Health Organization.

Early medical intervention through supportive care is “lifesaving,” WHO says.

Those familiar with the matter told the Washington Post that Stafford would have been most likely to go to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. However, the quarantine facility has 20 beds, 18 of which are occupied by people quarantining from exposure to the hantavirus abroad on a cruise ship.

If Stafford had been sent there, he would have been separated from his wife and four young children, who were with him in the DRC.

“The idea that the White House was concerned that bringing a sick American back home to receive the best standard of care would somehow be poor optics is not only false, but nonsensical,” Desai said, adding that the Charite Hospital of Germany is “internationally recognized as one of the best facilities in the world for the treatment and containment of viral diseases like Ebola, on par with leading facilities here in the United States.”

Stafford and his wife were working in the Nyankunde Hospital in the region of the DRC, where the Ebola outbreak is centered. Stafford had operated on a patient who may have unknowingly had Ebola. The patient died and was buried before they could be tested.

Days later, Stafford began feeling sick, a director with Serge, the nonprofit Christian ministry that Stafford was working with, told NBC News.

By the time Stafford was evacuated, he was unable to walk without assistance, suffering from a fever and nausea. Fever and nausea are both early symptoms of Ebola.

Stafford’s wife, Dr. Rebekah Stafford, was also exposed to a patient who tested positive for Ebola but remains asymptomatic. She and their four children have also been evacuated to locations where they can be monitored.

The Ebola outbreak is currently contained to the DRC and Uganda. Health officials are working quickly to keep the disease from spreading, though some experts have expressed concern that the lack of American intervention may make it more difficult to contain. Typically, the U.S. serves as a leader in controlling epidemics and pandemics.

When asked about the Ebola outbreak, Trump said he was “concerned” but highlighted it was only confined to Africa.

“President Trump has consistently taken great risks to ensure Americans exposed to deadly and contagious diseases are safely brought back home, from quickly evacuating diplomats from China at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic to more recently repatriating the Americans who were exposed to the recent Andes virus outbreak,” Desai said.

The White House resisted allowing an American doctor exposed to Ebola while working in the Democratic Republic of Congo to return to the United States, according to five people familiar with the Ebola response who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share internal discussions, delaying the evacuation and care of Peter Stafford, who was ultimately transported to Germany.

Infectious-disease physicians who have cared for Ebola patients say the mainstay of treatment is early recognition of infection coupled with effective isolation and advanced supportive care because an infection can progress within days to multi-organ failure.

Around the time that Stafford was transported, the wife and children of another missionary doctor from the same group returned to the United States, according to the head of the missionary group and a CDC official.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention medical experts assessed the family twice before clearing the family of physician Patrick LaRochelle to return. Authorities at the U.S. port of entry and state health department officials’ risk assessment also determined they had not been exposed to a high-risk patient with Ebola symptoms, according to a CDC official and an individual familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the response.

LaRochelle is asymptomatic, according to a statement from the missionary group.

The administration’s reluctance to bring an infected American back to U.S. soil marked a sharp contrast with the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak, when the first two American patients were evacuated to Atlanta for treatment. Donald Trump harshly criticized the move at the time, and individuals familiar with the current response say the optics of bringing a possible Ebola patient into the country remain a major concern inside the White House.

“How incompetent are our leaders allowing these Ebola infected people to come into our country with all of the problems and danger entailed!” Trump posted on Twitter in 2014.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai pushed back on the assertion that the White House did not want Stafford in the United States.

“This is absolutely false and another reason why the Washington Post is no longer worth the paper it’s printed on,” he wrote in an email. “The Trump administration’s top and only concern is ensuring the health and safety of American citizens. The Charite Hospital of Germany is internationally recognized as one of the best facilities in the world for the treatment and containment of viral diseases like Ebola, on par with leading facilities here in the United States.”

Satish Pillai, the CDC official managing the agency’s Ebola response, told reporters Tuesday that “the key issue here is ensuring the treatment is initiated rapidly and appropriately, and the initial location being Germany given the proximity and the access to the highest levels of care.”

When asked Wednesday in a press briefing if the White House had made the decision to not bring Americans back to the U.S., he said, “the plans for these individuals that have moved were made based on the conditions on the ground, the need to rapidly mobilize, as you know, that this was a very rapid set of circumstances that unfolded over the weekend.”

“This is what the situation was, and this is how we responded as quickly as we could,” Pillai said.

He also noted Stafford is in stable condition, and the risk to the United States remains low.

Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious-disease physician who has cared for Ebola patients in multiple deployments to outbreaks, said early treatment is vital.

“Ebola virus disease is a severe infection which can within a matter of days progress to shock, multi-organ failure and require advanced supportive care, which includes support for your kidneys, for your heart, for your lungs, and, in addition to that, to be able to access promising medical countermeasures, which there aren’t many for this [strain],” said Bhadelia, director of Boston University’s Center on Emerging Infectious Diseases.

“Those will be the reasons to bring someone who has a confirmed infection to care quickly,” said Bhadelia, who was not involved in the decision.

After the West Africa Ebola epidemic, the United States established facilities to treat dangerous pathogens, including Ebola. There are 13 “regional emerging special pathogen treatment centers” across the U.S. and three hospital systems with special biocontainment units that have cared for multiple patients with Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers, she said.

The United States has the capacity to bring back and care not just for the sick patient, but also those who are considered at high risk.

“I don’t think Germany is necessarily a lower standard of care. It’s just a slap in the face for us to say that we don’t have that capacity when we excel this,” she said.

The Ebola outbreak has been linked to nearly 600 suspected cases and 139 deaths in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and cases are expected to continue to rise.

Ebola is spread only when a person has symptoms, through contact with infected blood or bodily fluids or contaminated items such as clothing or bedding. It does not spread before symptoms appear or through water or air, according to the World Health Organization and the CDC. In rare instances, it can spread through oral, vaginal or anal sex because it can be in the semen of a person who is recovered from Ebola disease.

Stafford, a 39-year-old physician working in Congo for Serge Global Inc., a Christian missionary nonprofit, had been working as the only surgeon at a hospital serving a remote area of Congo when he began feeling sick Saturday, according to the group’s executive director. By the time he was transported out, he could not walk without assistance and was suffering from a fever and nausea.

U.S. officials said Friday they were closely monitoring reports of the Ebola outbreak in Congo. On Sunday, after a news briefing for the media, the CDC learned that Stafford had tested positive for the Bundibugyo virus. That Ebola strain has no approved vaccine or treatment, and has a fatality rate of 25 to 50 percent.

On Sunday evening, the CDC issued a statement saying it was “supporting interagency partners who are actively coordinating the safe withdrawal of a small number of Americans who are directly affected by this outbreak.”

It’s unclear when U.S. officials first learned Stafford had been exposed. As discussions took place among U.S. officials about how to evacuate him, the CDC and the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response advocated that he be evacuated to the United States, according to individuals familiar with the response.

They said Stafford could receive the highest standard of care at special facilities with biocontainment units, such as at the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, run by Nebraska Medicine and the University of Nebraska Medical Center, or Emory University Hospital’s Serious Communicable Diseases Unit, the individuals said. Both have been involved with handling patients from the hantavirus outbreak tied to a cruise ship.

The resulting back-and-forth delayed Stafford’s evacuation and treatment because “they would not allow him to be transported to the United States,” said one individual familiar with the response.

“The president and his people did not want him back in the United States,” another individual said.

Desai contested the assertions. He said Trump “has consistently taken great risks to ensure Americans exposed to deadly and contagious diseases are safely brought back home, from quickly evacuating diplomats from China at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic to more recently repatriating the Americans who were exposed to the recent Andes virus outbreak.”

He added, “The idea that the White House was concerned that bringing a sick American back home to receive the best standard of care would somehow be poor optics is not only false, but nonsensical.”

The most appropriate location for Stafford would have been the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, according to two people familiar with the response. But officials did not want to separate Stafford from his wife and children, who would also need to be quarantined at the separate facility at the University of Nebraska Medical Center.

The quarantine facility only has 20 beds. Eighteen of them are occupied by passengers who were potentially exposed to the hantavirus outbreak linked to the expedition ship. (Two passengers who had previously been at Emory have been transferred to Nebraska, according to a person familiar with the response.)

Stafford could not be immediately evacuated from eastern Congo. He was in a remote area, at least two hours away from the airport in Bunia, the capital of Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak, according to one person. Matt Allison, the executive director for Serge, told The Post on Tuesday that Stafford had to take multiple flights, including at one point being transferred in a specialized containment tube.

Serge also said that the physician LaRochelle, 46, was determined to have a potential Ebola exposure to a patient who later died. His wife, Anna, works as a nurse practitioner in the area but was determined by authorities to not have come into contact with any suspected Ebola cases, two federal officials familiar with the response told The Post.

Allison said the CDC concluded “Anna [LaRochelle] and her kids were not around patients with Ebola or people that had any symptoms of Ebola, and so out of an abundance of caution, we will ask you to actively monitor from your departure, but we are not concerned about any exposure.”

He noted they are undergoing daily monitoring for symptoms.

The LaRochelles had been working for the group in the area as team leads since 2018, according to a post on the Serge website.

“They hope to work in the Congo as long as God wills, and love being part of a Serge team, on mission for God’s glory,” Serge’s website says.

Stafford’s wife, Rebekah, who is also a physician, was separately exposed to Ebola by a pregnant woman getting an ultrasound who later died. Allison said the 38-year-old was isolating with her four children, ages 1 to 7.

Rebekah Stafford, her four children, and Patrick LaRochelle have left Congo and are “en route to other locations where they can be monitored in close proximity to expert care if needed,” Serge said in a statement Wednesday.

Sierra Leone has agreed to take in hundreds of West African migrants who are being deported ‌by the United States, its foreign minister told Reuters, the latest such deal by the Trump administration as it tries to accelerate removals.

The first flight of so-called third-country deportees will arrive in Sierra Leone on May 20, Timothy Kabba said, transporting 25 nationals from Senegal, Ghana, Guinea and Nigeria.

“Sierra Leone signed a Third Country National Agreement with the U.S. to accept 300 ECOWAS citizens from the U.S. per year with a ⁠maximum of 25 a month," Kabba said, referring to the West African regional bloc.

The U.S. has previously sent third-country deportees to African states including Democratic Republic of Congo, Ghana, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea and Eswatini, drawing criticism from legal experts and rights groups over the legal basis for the transfers and the treatment of deportees sent to countries where they are not nationals.

Sierra Leone's arrangement to accept only deportees from ECOWAS countries is similar to Ghana's. Reuters has previously reported on how deportees sent to Ghana, Equatorial Guinea and elsewhere on the continent have then been forced to return to their home countries despite receiving court-ordered protection in the U.S. meant ‌to ⁠prevent that from happening.

It is unclear whether the deportees sent to Sierra Leone will be allowed to stay there. A government spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday. Kabba did not say what Sierra Leone would get in return for taking in the deportees.

“It’s part of our bilateral relationship with the U.S. to assist with its immigration policy," he ⁠said.

In a report published in February, Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said the total cost of third-country removals was unknown, but that more than $32 million had been sent directly to five countries - Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, El Salvador, Eswatini and Palau.

The U.S. ⁠and Sierra Leone have been at odds on deportations before. In 2017, during the first Trump administration, Washington said the U.S. Embassy in Freetown would deny tourist and business visas to Sierra Leonean foreign ministry and immigration officials ⁠because the government was refusing to take in Sierra Leonean deportees.

The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the new agreement with Sierra Leone. The White House and the State Department have previously said the deportations are lawful.

The Trump administration says it can’t bring a Colombian woman back to the United States after deporting her to Africa — despite a court order demanding her return — because of the ongoing Ebola outbreak there.

The administration made that argument over the last few days in filings in federal district court for the District of Columbia. It’s the federal government’s latest justification not to return Adriana Zapata, 55, who fled torture in Colombia to try and reach family in North Bergen, New Jersey.

The administration deported Zapata to the Democratic Republic of the Congo despite that country’s prior statements that it couldn’t provide for her complex medical needs.

“I'm just really worried about losing her,” Lauren O’Neal, Zapata’s lawyer, told Gothamist. “I don't want her to die before we can get her back here.”

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement first spent more than a year searching for a country to send Zapata to because an immigration judge previously ruled she could not be sent back to Colombia due to credible safety concerns.

A federal judge last week ordered the government to return Zapata to the United States because the Congolese government never agreed to accept her, which the judge said likely made the deportation illegal. As part of that order, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security must file status reports every 72 hours on the efforts to bring Zapata back.

In the first status report, filed Friday evening, the department said it did not know Zapata’s location and was having trouble tracking her down. Homeland Security lawyers said the department was working “diligently” to find Zapata and claimed Zapata’s lawyers had not shared her location.

But Zapata’s lawyers responded in a filing the next day that the government had not even asked them for help. They also pointed out that the address of the hotel Zapata where is being kept in the DRC was included in earlier court filings, and that they again shared the address with Homeland Security officials after Friday's status report.

“She hasn't moved since they left her there,” O’Neal said. “It's never changed, and we had that readily available if their own clients aren't speaking with them.”

The department filed its second status report on Monday evening, along with a request to pause the order to return Zapata to America. The agency argues in that filing that even though it now has Zapata’s address it would be unsafe to bring her back to the United States because of a growing Ebola outbreak in the DRC. The filings are not publicly accessible online, but were provided to Gothamist by parties close to the case and verified by O’Neal.

Congolese health officials declared an outbreak in the country May 15 — about a month after Zapata's deportation — but there have been no cases in the capital, Kinshasa, where Zapata’s lawyers say she is staying.

The Department of Homeland Security, in its Monday filing, cites a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention order barring people from traveling to the United States from areas affected by the Ebola outbreak, issued the same day as that court filing.

In a response filed Tuesday, Zapata's lawyers point out the administration deported their medically frail client into a country now experiencing an Ebola outbreak, despite the DRC warning up front that it did not have the ability to care for her.

“ This is something they're using because it's convenient,” O’Neal said. “ That's not a reason to keep her in the DRC. That's a greater reason to bring her back.”

DHS also says it’s received new documentation from Congolese officials indicating the African nation had in fact accepted Zapata, which would undermine the judge’s reasoning for the return order.

“Defendants ask that the court permit them to develop a factual record and ensure that the court did not rely on erroneous information or evidence that may have been improperly presented with little time to question it,” the agency's lawyers wrote in the filing. “Returning plaintiff to the United States cannot easily be undone given the sensitive foreign policy and diplomacy issues involved.”

In their Tuesday response, Zapata's lawyers cast doubt on the idea that the government suddenly found documentation that the DRC had accepted to take her.

“At the May 13 hearing, the court asked defendants’ counsel — twice — whether defendants had any specific, individualized evidence that the DRC had accepted plaintiff. Defendants’ counsel confirmed, both times, that the agency’s sole reliance in removing plaintiff to the DRC was the general third-country bilateral arrangement — not any individualized acceptance of plaintiff,” Zapata’s lawyers wrote. “The agency cannot now, without any specifics, five days later, ask this court for additional time to ‘investigate’ an acceptance that the agency expressly disclaimed on the record at the hearing.”

The judge has not yet ruled on Homeland Security's motion to stay the return order. Zapata’s lawyers have since filed a new motion, asking the judge to order the government to release Zapata into the care of her family in New Jersey under ICE’s supervision, rather than being detained at another government facility.

“ If she's sent back to El Paso, into their detention center, we're just putting her right back into the wolf's den,” O’Neal said. “We're putting her right back with the very people who have displayed a definite propensity towards neglecting and outright abusing her, but definitely not medically treating her or giving her the medical attention that she so desperately needs.”

In court papers, Zapata describes a campaign of violence by her former intimate partner, who the suit says has professional and family ties to the Colombian National Police. It says he repeatedly raped her, beat her so badly he broke her teeth, stabbed her in her genitalia and cut cross-shaped scars into her chest. It also says her partner attacked her sister while he was in New Jersey.

Zapata was headed to her family in North Bergen when she was stopped at the Mexico-Texas border and placed in ICE detention in 2024. She’d been at a detention center in El Paso until she was sent to Congo.

In a previous ruling, Judge Richard Leon wrote that because Zapata was sent to a country unable to provide for her medical care, she “faces a daily risk of medical complications, up to and including death.”

Rep. Rob Menendez, the Democrat who represents North Bergen in Congress, said the Trump administration was disregarding the law in “astonishing” ways. He called on people to pay attention to Zapata’s case.

“It should matter to every American because if we don't speak up when things like this happening, that erosion of due process, that erosion of legal rights will eventually get to your doorstep,” Menendez said. “And do you want to wait until it's there, or do you want to say something now?”

The sudden shuttering of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) by DOGE in 2025 is associated with a rise in violent conflicts across Africa, according to a study published on May 14th in Science.

Days into Donald Trump’s second term, his administration began rapidly dismantling USAID, which had, up until that point, been the world’s largest national humanitarian donor. Elon Musk, who spearheaded the Department of Government Efficiency, announced that his team had fed the agency “into the woodchipper” in February 2025. Tracking models suggest the collapse of USAID may have already caused 762,000 preventable deaths, of which 500,000 are children, and the cuts could lead to more than nine million preventable deaths by 2030, according to a study published in February 2026.

Now, a team reports “the earliest evidence of the impact of cuts to USAID on the incidence of violent events” which suggests that “the radical cuts…led to an increase in conflict in the regions that received the most aid from the United States,” according to the new study.

“What we find is that with the USAID shutdown, there was a rapid increase in the likelihood of violence, the severity of violence, and the lethality of violence across nearly one thousand subnational administrative units across Africa,” said Austin L. Wright, study co-author and associate professor and director of strategic initiatives at the Harris School of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, in a call with 404 Media.

In regions that received the most support from USAID, the cuts were associated with a 6.5 percent probability of any conflict event, compared to regions that received no aid. To get a sense of the devastating impact of that statistic, here’s what the study reports:

“The probability of protests and riots was 10% greater, the number of conflict events increased by 10.6%, battle counts increased by 6.9%, and battle-related fatalities increased by 9.3%. Event-study analysis confirmed no preexisting differences in conflict trends between high- and low-exposure regions before the shutdown. Effects are of similar size, with a 12.3% relative increase in the number of conflict events.“

Between 2021 and 2024, USAID is estimated to have saved 91 million lives, about a third of which are children under 5 years old. The agency was created by John F. Kennedy in 1961 and, in the years preceding Trump’s shutdown of the agency, accounted for less than 1 percent of total U.S. federal spending.

The impact of aid on communities is complex and context-dependent. Aid may reduce conflicts in cases where the opportunity costs of violence are mitigated by an influx of resources, known as the “opportunity cost effect.” But aid can also fuel conflicts over the handling and distribution of those resources, known as the “rapacity effect.”

The collapse of USAID, which is unprecedented in its scale and speed, has produced the worst of both worlds, according to the new study.

“When those funds rapidly go away, it's a shock to the opportunity cost, and now it becomes more and more attractive to participate in what we might call the unproductive part of the economy, which is participating in violence, engaging in crime, and other activities,” Wright said. “But because the shutdown was so rapid, it didn't really have an opportunity to bind on the rapacity effect, because it's not as if the bridges, roads, or full-on infrastructure went away. The things that individuals or groups might fight over were still present.”

“It’s a bit of a ticking time bomb, because you're both removing the conflict-reducing side of aid, while leaving behind the conflict-enhancing part of aid,” he added.

To quantify the impact of the cuts on violence, Wright and his colleagues examined the Geocoded Official Development Assistance Dataset (GODAD), which monitors geolocated information regarding foreign aid disbursements, alongside the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED), which tracks violent events.

The overlapping datasets revealed macro-level patterns between aid distribution and violence in the wake of the cuts, including significant upticks of violence in areas that had previously received large amounts of aid, or where the population had less control over their government due to weaker executive constraints.

Moreover, this increase in conflict has persisted over the course of months and may continue in areas that fall into “conflict traps” defined by self-perpetuating cycles of violence.

These impacts are catastrophic for people who had relied on USAID, as evidenced by the estimated death tolls, and the increased risk of violent conflicts and upheavals. They also present new vulnerabilities for the United States and its allies. Though USAID had an altruistic mission, the agency also served as a vector of soft power and an early-warning system for tracking public health risks, like pandemics. The loss of the agency has already caused national security issues for the U.S., such as the seizure of discarded USAID supplies by Iran-backed Houthi groups in Yemen.

“Those insecurities don't stay where they're created; they travel,” Wright said. “That unfortunately means that the vulnerabilities that are being created at the moment will likely have long-run consequences of creating insecurity that directly impacts the safety of Americans.”

Moreover, Trump’s demolition of USAID prompted many allies in Europe to pull back on their own foreign aid, exacerbating the effects. Though other humanitarian organizations are struggling to mitigate the consequences, the loss of trust caused by the shutdown of USAID is likely permanent, with ominous long-term consequences.

“Even if you reactivated USAID and pretended as if it never went away, you can't reverse these effects because you've already communicated your bad faith behavior,” Wright said. “There is nothing quite like the reputational bomb of simply shutting down an agency, and what that does to the reputation that the U.S. might have if it ever wanted to reinitiate its interventions.”

“From the soft power lens, and a global lens, the reputational effects, I think, are tremendous and will create a bunch of wedges and inefficiencies,” he concluded. “If one simply wanted to restart USAID, it's going to cost much more to rebuild than simply the same budget all over again.”

Federal immigration agents in Pennsylvania arrested a grandfather who had assisted police in investigating his daughter’s killing, according to a new report.

Last February, Erasmo Zavala Almanza — a Mexican national living in Temple — faced a profound loss. His 20-year-old daughter was fatally shot, and her newborn baby critically injured by the child’s father, who then took his own life.

As Almanza cared for the recovering, orphaned infant, he cooperated with authorities in the homicide investigation, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. His assistance qualified him to seek a U visa, which offers a path to legal residency for undocumented immigrants who aid law enforcement.

Despite offering up his help and following through with the visa application, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrived at his home last month and took him into custody. Almanza, 50, is now being held at a detention facility in Clearfield County as he awaits possible deportation to Mexico.

His case reflects a broader shift in ICE policy under President Donald Trump, including the rollback of prior guidance that discouraged detaining crime victims or key witnesses.

Alamanza said in legal filings that he and his wife entered the U.S. illegally in 2004, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. They eventually settled in the Keystone State, where he found work in landscaping and roofing and maintained a clean criminal record. The couple later had two daughters.

In 2010, an immigration judge granted them voluntary departure, allowing them to leave the country without formal deportation or penalties. Court records show that Alamanza overstayed that deadline by upwards of one year before returning to Mexico. He reentered the U.S. in 2015 or 2016, and his wife followed later.

Tragedy struck on February 17, 2025.

Responding to reports of gunfire, Reading police arrived at a Locust Street home and found the couple’s 20-year-old daughter, Selena Zavala Hernandez, dead. Her newborn daughter, Selene, had been shot in the abdomen. Authorities identified the gunman as Jesus Peñaloza Cruz, who then turned the weapon on himself.

The injured newborn survived due to "extraordinary efforts” by law enforcement, who quickly transported her for “life-saving surgery,” The Philadelphia Inquirer reported, citing legal documents.

She spent months hospitalized, undergoing surgery and recovery, while Alamanza traveled back and forth from work to remain by her side. He and his wife later obtained legal guardianship of their granddaughter.

While this was going on, Alamanza cooperated with police in their homicide investigation. “When the police needed information, [Erasmo] was always there to give them the information they were seeking,” his wife told Spotlight PA.

In recognition of that cooperation, the Berks County District Attorney’s Office signed off on U visa applications for both Alamanza and his wife.

Created in 2000, the U visa program aims “to strengthen the ability of law enforcement agencies to investigate and prosecute cases of domestic violence, sexual assault, trafficking, and other crimes,” while also protecting victims, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Only 10,000 visas are doled out annually, often resulting in long wait times.

Three months after applying, Alamanza was arrested at his home by ICE agents, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. He now faces deportation proceedings, with federal officials maintaining that Alamanza is subject to a final order of removal — a claim his attorneys dispute.

ICE agents had previously been instructed to take a “victim-centered approach,” avoiding the arrest of known victims or witnesses in high-profile cases. However, after Trump returned to office in 2025 — pledging the largest deportation effort in U.S. history — the agency adopted new guidelines that no longer discourage such arrests.

Critics argue the shift could deter immigrants from cooperating with law enforcement.

“It’s absolutely atrocious,” Bridget Cambria, Almanza’s attorney, told the outlet. “An immigrant has no incentive to cooperate if they’re going to go to your house after you file [for a visa] and pick you up.”

This week, Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee released a report accusing the Trump administration of “actively sabotaging our justice system,” including by deporting witnesses, victims and defendants.

The Trump administration maintains it is enforcing existing law.

“If a judge finds an illegal alien has no right to be in this country, we are going to remove them. Period,” Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, previously told The Independent.

Recent polling indicates that many Americans are have concerns about Trump’s immigration crackdown. In a Pew Research Center survey released earlier this month, 58 percent of respondents said they are not confident Trump can make good decisions about immigration policy, while 41 percent said they are confident.

Beijing is holding up a proposed visit by the Pentagon’s top policy official as China pressures Donald Trump over a $14bn weapons package for Taiwan.

Elbridge Colby, under-secretary of defence for policy, has discussed a summer visit to Beijing with Chinese officials, according to people familiar with the talks. But China has signalled that it cannot approve a visit until Trump decides how he will proceed with the arms package.

The FT reported in February that the administration had compiled the weapons package after announcing a record $11.1bn arms sale in December. Beijing reacted angrily to that package and cancelled an earlier round of negotiations with Colby about a visit to China.

In an interview with Fox News following his summit with President Xi Jinping last week, Trump said he was holding the weapons “in abeyance” and added that it was a “very good negotiating chip”.

He later refused to say if he would approve the package, sparking anxiety in Taiwan. The administration planned to notify Congress about the arms sales in February but delayed the decision after criticism from Beijing.

Asked about the issue on Wednesday, Trump suggested that he would also talk to Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te.

Trump spoke to then president Tsai Ing-wen in 2016 when he was president-elect, but no American president has talked to a Taiwanese leader since Washington switched its diplomatic recognition for China from Taipei to Beijing in 1979.

“I suspect that Beijing will use any future trip by Bridge Colby or defence secretary Pete Hegseth as leverage to push the Trump administration to delay, divide or downgrade a prospective arms sales package for Taiwan,” said Zack Cooper, an Asia security expert at the American Enterprise Institute.

Hegseth became the first defence secretary to visit China since 2018 when he travelled with Trump to Beijing last week. It was the first time a Pentagon chief had visited China with a president.

The Pentagon said it did not comment on “potential travel” by officials. But a defence official told the FT that it was “committed to building on President Trump and secretary Hegseth’s historic visit to Beijing”.

“Secretary Hegseth, under-secretary Colby, and other key department officials already engage with their PRC [People’s Republic of China] counterparts on a regular basis, and they look forward to continuing doing so in a spirit of respect, realism and clarity,” the official said.

One person familiar with the situation said Colby would use the visit to China to discuss Hegseth returning to Beijing.

The Pentagon has been pushing to improve communication between the US and Chinese militaries in recent years, particularly as the People’s Liberation Army has conducted increasingly aggressive military exercises around Taiwan.

Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of US Indo-Pacific Command, has described the exercises as “rehearsals” for possible future military action against Taiwan, over which mainland China claims sovereignty.

“A Colby visit to China would provide an opportunity to convey US concerns about Chinese pressures and coercion against US partners and allies, its nuclear modernisation, and cyber and space activities,” said Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the German Marshall Fund.

Colby could also elaborate on the US national defence strategy that he helped draft and discuss military AI applications and crisis communications, Glaser added.

Trump faces a conundrum in deciding how to proceed with the $14bn package, which includes Patriot interceptor missiles and Nasams, advanced surface-to-air missiles. He has to weigh the possible impact on Xi’s expected reciprocal visit to Washington in September.

“The Chinese are well aware that President Trump is not going to end arms sales to Taiwan, but their ultimate goal is to delay the announcement of another major arms package until after Xi Jinping’s late September state visit to Washington,” said Dennis Wilder, a former top CIA China expert. “It is less a test of Trump’s commitment to assisting with Taiwan’s defence than an effort to save Xi any embarrassment.”

The Chinese embassy in Washington said it was “not familiar” with the situation regarding Colby. But it said China was “firmly opposed to the US’s arms sales to China’s Taiwan region”.

President Donald Trump said Wednesday that he’s preparing to speak with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te as part of his decision process on whether to approve a $14 billion arms sale to the self-governing island.

Trump’s comments may strain the relationship between the White House and Beijing, which the president worked in earnest to strengthen on a visit to China last week.

“l’ll speak to him. I speak to everybody. We have that situation very well in hand,” Trump told reporters Wednesday when asked if he planned to have contact with Lai ahead of making a decision on the arms sale.

The president added that “we’ll work on that, the Taiwan problem,” without elaborating. Trump’s statement to reporters follows comments he made on Air Force One last week that he planned to speak with the person “that’s running Taiwan.”

Direct leader-to-leader communications between the U.S. and Taiwan has been almost nonexistent since the U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. And any move by Trump to speak to Lai will infuriate Beijing, which claims Taiwan as Chinese territory.

Trump violated that norm when he took a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s then-President Tsai Ing-wen after winning the 2016 presidential election. U.S.-Taiwan ties are otherwise considered non-official, and are conducted through outposts in Washington and Taipei that lack official diplomatic status.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping worked to make Taiwan a key part of his two-day summit with Trump in Beijing last week. He “stressed to President Trump that the Taiwan question is the most important issue in China-U.S. relations,” Chinese officials said in a statement following the two leaders’ meeting.

Trump appeared receptive.

He spooked Taipei and Taiwan supporters on Capitol Hill by confirming last week that he had discussed “at length” the issue of U.S. arms sales to Taipei with Xi during the summit. That also upends decades of U.S. policy that bars the U.S. from consulting Beijing on such sales.

Trump compounded those fears by saying that he was holding off on the approval of a $14 billion arms sale to Taiwan as a “negotiating chip” with China. Withholding weapon sales to Taiwan would also violate the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, which commits the U.S. to “provide Taiwan with arms of a defensive character” to deter potential Chinese aggression.

Lai urged the Trump administration to continue arms sales to Taiwan in order to ensure “regional peace and security” in a Facebook post Sunday.

In what industry experts call an about-face for the Transportation Security Administration, the agency is ramping up efforts to privatize security at U.S. airports.

The recent government shutdowns, which left T.S.A. agents unpaid for months and led to long lines, have fueled a push to expand the Screening Partnership Program, which uses private contractors to staff security checkpoints, and to roll out a new voluntary public-private screening initiative called Gold+.

Twenty airports, including San Francisco International, currently participate in the Screening Partnership Program. While lines at airports like Houston’s Hobby, which uses T.S.A., extended outside terminals during the last shutdown, passengers often waited 10 minutes or less at the non-T.S.A. airports.

The T.S.A. seeks to spend an extra $477 million to allow smaller airports to join the Screening Partnership Program, according to its proposed budget, which also calls for eliminating more than 4,300 of its roughly 50,000 agents. Separately, the T.S.A. also recently introduced an expansion of this program to allow private contractors to deploy and manage screening equipment at checkpoints.

Details are scant about Gold+, which the agency announced to staff last week in a mass email that was first reported by the Gate Access newsletter. The email, obtained by The New York Times, states that the program would “enable closer collaboration with the private sector” and would be put in place “thoughtfully and in phases.” Another document, sent to top T.S.A. leaders at airports, estimates the transition to Gold+ could take seven to 11 months.

Neither the emails nor the Gold+ website provided specific information about airports, vendors or funding, but a T.S.A. spokesperson said Gold+ would be an “evolution of the Screening Partnership Program” tailored to airports and regulated by the T.S.A. Participating airports would get staffing, technology and maintenance at no additional cost to them, the website said.

For passengers, this could mean faster trips through checkpoints and fewer headaches during funding disruptions. The moves accompany recent efforts to speed up screening using biometrics and the planned opening of a remote screening center in the Boston suburbs for Delta and JetBlue passengers heading to Boston Logan International Airport.

Privatization emerged on Wednesday as a central focus of a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on T.S.A. modernization.

“We want airports to choose,” Chris Sununu, the chief executive of the industry trade group Airlines for America, told lawmakers. “But understand, during the shutdown, know where morale was highest? At the airports where they were privatized.” The security personnel at those airports were being paid.

Chris McLaughlin, the chief executive of Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, which uses T.S.A., echoed that what works for one airport may not for another.

Aviation industry leaders also complained to lawmakers that the T.S.A.’s financial and bureaucratic limits kept them from being able to quickly deploy new security technology.

Everett Kelley, the national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the union representing T.S.A. agents, said the group opposed privatization, telling lawmakers that the federal model that Congress built after 9/11 was “a lesson learned in blood.”

“We cannot go back to contracted-out aviation security and expect the lessons to hold,” Mr. Kelley said.

The T.S.A. replaced a patchwork of private security at U.S. airport checkpoints after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Unlike the firms that participate in the Screening Partnership Program, those pre-9/11 firms were not directly overseen by the federal government.

The T.S.A.’s pivot to a public-private security model like Gold+ is a “massive mind-set shift,” said Ajay Amlani, the chief executive of Aware, a biometric technology company that is eyeing Gold+.

“This is like the biggest opportunity for innovation that can improve the traveler experience and save taxpayer money at the same time,” Mr. Amlani said, pointing out a growing chasm between available technology and aging T.S.A. equipment.

Privatization is a “common model internationally,” said Jeff Price, a professor of aviation security at Metropolitan State University of Denver, but in the United States, it’s been a “third rail people wouldn’t touch.” But now, he added, there’s a greater appetite in Washington for a more hands-off approach.

“It’s a significant change that has risks,” said John Pistole, a former T.S.A. administrator who is advising on Gold+.

Critics point out that relatively few airports have signed up for the current private screening option, which has existed since 2004, and warn that travelers could see a lack of consistency.

But the T.S.A., in its email to employees, said that a “handful of airports” had already expressed interest in Gold+.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International, the world’s busiest airport, may be on that list. This week, the Atlanta City Council moved to study a private screening model at the airport, where, during the last shutdown, some travelers spent four hours in line.

A federal judge ordered the White House on Wednesday to preserve all presidential records including text messages exchanged among its top officials, telling the Trump administration that at least for now it must follow a law it had unilaterally declared unconstitutional.

The ruling by Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia blocks a Justice Department memo and White House guidance in April maintaining that President Trump’s White House records were his private property and that officials did not need to comply with the Presidential Records Act, particularly on preserving text messages.

“While the presidency is a singularly important institution, that gravity does not free it from modest constraint,” wrote Judge Bates, an appointee of President George W. Bush, adding, “Congress has validly determined that this act helps to maintain that trust by shining some light on the activities of the president and his aides.”

The order, which is set to take effect on Tuesday while the legal case moves forward, amounted to a major if temporary rebuke of an administration that has shown little regard for laws meant to provide the public a window into the workings of the government and create a detailed historical record of presidential decision-making.

At the heart of the case is the Presidential Records Act, a 1978 law enacted after Watergate that requires the safeguarding of all documents chronicling presidents’ official duties. Mr. Trump’s Justice Department claims that the law infringes on presidential powers, a position that Judge Bates noted was not shared by any previous president, including Mr. Trump in his first term.

“Such acquiescence is not dispositive, but it is illuminating,” Judge Bates wrote in his 54-page ruling. “It suggests that the post-Watergate settlement reflected in the records act adequately protects the president’s interests” by ensuring that his successors could be informed on his policy decisions.

By contrast, the government’s argument that Congress lacked authority to designate presidents’ documents as government property would “disable Congress and future presidents from reflecting” on history, he said, quoting Shakespeare’s line: “What is past is prologue.”

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, suggested that the administration would appeal, saying in a statement that the administration “will ultimately prevail.”

Ms. Jackson added that Mr. Trump was “committed to preserving records from his historic time in office” and that the Trump administration had said it would “maintain a rigorous records retention program” that would preserve all materials it deemed to have “historical value.”

During a court hearing this month, Judge Bates had questioned the rigor of the policy the White House had adopted.

His ruling excluded Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance because a higher court had prevented judges from “micromanaging” presidents’ “day-to-day operations” regarding records preservation. But it would force other top officials who would frequently exchange text messages and emails with Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance to preserve them. He included some officials by name, such as Susie Wiles, the president’s chief of staff, and Stephen Miller, the powerful adviser behind the administration’s immigration crackdown.

The American Historical Association and government watchdogs sued the White House in April, asking the courts to intervene after news of the Justice Department memo and White House guidance.

In its memo, the department had declared that the Presidential Records Act “aggrandizes” Congress “at the expense of” the executive branch. A day later, David Warrington, Mr. Trump’s White House counsel, issued guidance that appeared to relieve the president’s staff from some record-preservation duties, by advising that text messages need not be preserved unless “they are the sole record of official decision-making.”

The dispute continues a long history of Mr. Trump and his aides ignoring or skirting records laws. The Presidential Records Act formed the basis of Mr. Trump’s prosecution for taking White House records, including classified documents, to his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida after his first term. That case was later dropped after Mr. Trump was re-elected to another term.

Mr. Trump was known to tear up White House documents and leave them on the floor during his first term. Politico reported in 2018 that some administration officials even had to tape back together shredded documents to ensure compliance with federal laws. A month into Mr. Trump’s new administration, the White House sought to shield the Department of Government Efficiency from open records laws.

In August, the Department of Homeland Security told a government watchdog that the agency “no longer has the capability” to produce copies of top officials’ text messages amid its immigration crackdown. It was later revealed that the department ditched software that enabled automatic capture of officials’ text messages, citing national security concerns, and instead resorted to manual screenshots.

Rhode Island Hospital has begun releasing records related to treating children with gender-affirming care to a federal court in Texas, in response to a legal order for documents.

Records will be “anonymized and de-identified,” according to a Tuesday court filing, and will be held securely by the Texas court pending further legal decisions.

“No production to the court – not yesterday’s and none in the future – will include patient identifying information,” a Brown University Health spokesperson said on Wednesday. (Rhode Island Hospital is part of the Brown University Health system.) “Our actions are focused on ensuring we meet our legal obligations while safeguarding the confidential information entrusted to us.”

The Department of Justice had originally subpoenaed the medical records, including the identities and treatment information of children who received care at Rhode Island Hospital, in 2025 as part of a nationwide investigation into gender-affirming care. In April, a federal court in Texas ordered that Rhode Island Hospital comply with the subpoena for records by May 14.

Rhode Island legal groups mobilized against the order, and last week, a federal court in Rhode Island voided the DOJ’s subpoena. The DOJ appealed the Rhode Island decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston.

Then, on Monday, in an unusual legal move, the Texas court circumvented the Rhode Island judge’s decision, ordering that Rhode Island Hospital must send records to the court itself.

The Child Advocate of Rhode Island, an attorney charged with representing children in the state’s care, looked to stop the order for records by filing an emergency motion with the appellate court in Boston. The DOJ responded in a filing saying it would dial back its contested subpoena and no longer seek patient-identifying information.

On Tuesday evening, the Boston appellate court denied the Child Advocate’s motion. In its decision, the Boston appellate court said responding to the Texas Court’s order for documents would not constitute “irreparable injury,” since the health records would be anonymized, and that the Texas Court pledged that documents would not be shared with the DOJ unless directed by a higher court.

“While we are disappointed in this result, this decision is not the end of our fight to protect Rhode Island children’s medical privacy. We know that even if the DOJ is not receiving these records now, the uncertainty generated by this ongoing legal battle has been harmful,” The Child Advocate said in a statement. “We will do everything in our power to protect the privacy, dignity, and constitutional rights of the children in our state.”

Tuesday’s decision is the latest development in an ongoing dispute over health care for transgender youth.

The DOJ said it is seeking the records as part of a nationwide investigation into how gender-affirming care – like prescriptions for puberty blockers or hormones – could be violating the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, according to court records. The DOJ has issued more than 20 similar subpoenas across the country.

Legal opponents in Rhode Island say the subpoena for records at Rhode Island Hospital aims to harass families and discourage hospitals from providing gender-affirming care.

“DOJ issued the Subpoena as part of a coordinated campaign by the Trump Administration to eliminate access to medical care for gender dysphoria – lifesaving care that is recognized as medically necessary by every major medical association – even where it is expressly protected by state law, as it is in Rhode Island,” said Rhode Island’s Child Advocate, in a motion filed earlier this month.

The DOJ originally requested information, including patient identities, their clinical records, billing codes and insurance claims from Rhode Island Hospital dating back to 2020.

“Without this information, the Government cannot fully determine the scope of the violations, identify patterns of misbranding or fraudulent billing, or assess whether the conduct was undertaken with intent to defraud or mislead,” the DOJ wrote in an April petition to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Legal groups in Rhode Island said the order would violate children’s privacy rights.

“The records at issue include the most intimate details of vulnerable children’s lives, including their identities, diagnoses, gender identity, mental-health history, family circumstances, foster-care information, parent or guardian information, clinical assessments, consent records, and treatment histories,” Rhode Island’s Child Advocate wrote in a motion opposing the order.

Since then, the DOJ has said in a Rhode Island hearing, and in a filing with the First Circuit Court of Appeals, that it would accept anonymized records and no longer seek patient-identifying information.

Rhode Island Hospital said that it will take months to fully comply with the Texas Court’s request for records. In Tuesday’s filing, the hospital said that it would share some “non-privileged” information with the court by its deadline, and would send another cache of documents, plus a schedule for future releases, by Friday, May 29.

Meanwhile, the legal dispute over whether the Rhode Island Hospital must ultimately share medical records with the DOJ – and what information that includes – is ongoing. Cases are being considered in the First and Fifth Circuits, appellate courts in Boston and New Orleans.

A federal judge in Texas ordered a hospital in Rhode Island to produce documents in response to a subpoena that another federal judge had already quashed. He also issued a gag order against the hospital, blocking it from appealing the order in a court in its area, encouraging others to appeal, or aiding others in their appeals.

The Department of Justice (DOJ) has been on what judges have called a “fishing expedition” since July last year, when it first issued subpoenas to over 20 hospitals that provide gender-affirming care to trans youth. Those subpoenas have requested extensive documentation, including patient, provider, and treatment data, sometimes insisting that the data not be anonymized. The DOJ has also been accused of trying to “harass” and “intimidate” trans patients and their providers.

Judge Reed O’Connor has become a central part of these DOJ efforts. Last month, the DOJ petitioned O’Connor to issue an order to enforce its subpoena against Rhode Island Hospital (RIH). While such enforcement orders usually come from the district where enforcement is required (in this case, the District of Rhode Island) or from the district where the investigation is primarily housed, the DOJ has been accused of judge-shopping by instead taking its petition to O’Connor, whose courtroom is almost 2,000 miles from RIH. O’Connor is known for his anti-LGBTQ+ rulings and his loyalty to the current president.

The DOJ has also used O’Connor’s court to issue criminal subpoenas to some hospitals, which are harder to quash and carry steeper penalties for noncompliance than civil subpoenas.

When O’Connor issued the order to enforce the subpoena against RIH, Rhode Island’s Office of the Child Advocate, along with RIH, stepped in to protect the privacy of the state’s trans children. They petitioned Judge Mary McElroy of the United States District Court for the District of Rhode Island. McElroy quashed the underlying subpoena, saying that the “DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point in this case.” She did this without addressing O’Connor’s ruling, which left the Texas judge’s order with nothing to enforce

O’Connor has now responded with his own order, which appears to overstep his authority, and which, as out legal reporter Mark Joseph Stern of Slate suggested, “verges on impeachable conduct.” O’Connor is insisting that RIH provide the documents that were requested in the quashed subpoena directly to him, to be held “in-camera” by his court, while McElroy’s ruling is appealed by the DOJ.

While eight judges have now ruled against the DOJ’s subpoenas, O’Connor ruled that RIH’s noncompliance and subsequent petition to McElroy make them untrustworthy, so he wishes to hold the personal and private data of trans kids himself. He writes, “Therefore, in light of the parallel litigation, pending appeals, conflicting court orders, and RIH’s refusal to produce responsive documents, the Court finds it necessary and prudent for RIH to turn over all responsive documents compliant with the Court’s Enforcement Order to the undersigned. Such documents are to be held in camera by this Court, not available to the Government.”

O’Connor’s order only gave RIH until midnight Tuesday to start sending documents. Brown University Health, the organization that runs RIH, has said it will comply.

O’Connor’s order only gave RIH until midnight Tuesday to start sending documents. Brown University Health, the organization that runs RIH, has said it will comply.

O’Connor’s most egregious order also attempts to gag RIH, blocking the hospital from seeking relief from McElroy’s court, insisting that all appeals should go through his own court, the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, or the Supreme Court itself.

The Office of the Child Advocate did not take heed of O’Connor’s attempted gag order and quickly filed a motion to McElroy’s court, requesting that she weigh in by 10 p.m. A three-judge panel on the federal appeals court in Boston refused yesterday to block O’Connor’s order.