Key events
Robert Mackey
President Donald Trump has said he thinks Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ready to give up Crimea, despite his Ukrainian counterpart’s previous assertions on the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.
Speaking to reporters at an airport in New Jersey on Sunday a day after meeting with Zelenskyy at the Vatican, Trump said “Oh, I think so,” in response to a question on whether he thought Zelenskyy was ready to “give up” the territory.
Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine could not accept US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, after Trump accused him of intransigence on the issue. Zelenskyy on Friday insisted the territory was the “property of the Ukrainian people”. He did not immediately respond to Trump’s latest comments.
Two sets of peace plans published by Reuters on Friday showed that the US is proposing Moscow retain the territory it has captured, including the strategic Crimean peninsula.
Leyland Cecco
Canadians head to the polls in a federal election overshadowed by fury at Donald Trump’s threats to the country’s sovereignty and fears over his escalating trade war.
In the final days of a month-long campaign – described by all party leaders as the most consequential general election in a lifetime – the US president yet again re-inserted himself into the national discussion, with fresh threats to annex the country.
“We don’t need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state,” he told Time magazine on Friday.
Also overshadowing the final day of electioneering was a deadly attack at a bustling street festival in Vancouver that left the country reeling and forced the prime minister, Mark Carney, to briefly suspend his campaign in order to make sombre remarks to the nation.
Trump to step up crackdown on ‘sanctuary cities’ – report
President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday directing the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to identify within a month the cities and states that are not complying with federal immigration laws, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Last week, a federal judge blocked Trump’s administration from withholding federal funding from more than a dozen so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown.
China’s foreign ministry says Xi and Trump did not have a call recently
Good morning and welcome to our US politics coverage as China insisted that “no phone call” took place recently between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart, after Donald Trump said he had spoken with the Chinese leader.
The world’s two biggest economies are locked in an escalating tit-for-tat trade battle triggered by Trump’s levies on Chinese goods, which have reached 145 percent on many products.
In an interview conducted on 22 April with Time magazine and published Friday, Trump insisted Chinese leader Xi called him despite Beijing denying there had been any contact between the two countries over their bitter trade dispute.
The US president did not say when the call took place or specify what was discussed.
Asked about the comments Monday, foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said: “As far as I know, there has been no phone call between the two heads of state recently.”
“China and the United States are not conducting consultations or negotiations on tariff issues,” he added.
The trade dispute continues to rumble as the US prepares to mark Trump’s 100 first days in power with tumultuous changes at home and abroad. In other news:
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Canadians prepared to go the polls in an election overshadowed by fury at Trump’s threats to the country’s sovereignty and fears over his escalating trade war.
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Donald Trump appears to have warmed to Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the two presidents met at the Vatican, with the US leader emerging from talks with a plea for Vladimir Putin: “stop shooting”. Trump on Sunday said Zelenskyy “wants to do something good” for Ukraine and is “working hard”, adding he was also “surprised and disappointed” that Russia continued to strike Ukraine after discussions between his peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Putin.
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While speaking to reporters, Trump hinted at a two-week deadline to strike or at least make progress on a peace deal. Trump has previously threatened to walk away from negotiations if a swift agreement is not reached.
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More than 300 law enforcement officers from at least 10 federal agencies raided an illegal after-hours nightclub in Colorado Springs early on Sunday, arresting more than 100 people authorities said were undocumented immigrants and seizing guns, cocaine, meth and pink cocaine. More than a dozen active-duty military members were detained as well, authorities said.
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The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said “there is a path” to an agreement with China over tariffs after he had interactions with his Chinese counterparts last week in Washington, but he continued to defend Trump’s trade plan as “strategic uncertainty” amid accusations the White House was sending mixed signals over its policy.
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Trump’s private golf resort in South Florida will next week host one of the world’s leading purveyors of chlorine dioxide, a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed without evidence to be a cure for cancer, Covid and autism.
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House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and New Jersey senator Cory Booker were holding a sit-in protest and discussion on Sunday on the steps of the US Capitol in opposition to the Republicans’ proposed budget plan. Billed as an “Urgent Conversation with the American People”, the livestreamed discussion comes before Congress’s return to session on Monday, where Democrats hope to stall Republicans’ economic legislative agenda.
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Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the theft last week of the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse as she ate at a Washington DC restaurant, officials said on Sunday. Noem’s purse was nabbed on Easter Sunday and reportedly contained about $3,000 in cash and her keys, driver’s license, passport and homeland security badge. The homeland security department said Noem had cash in her purse to pay for gifts, dinner and other activities for her family on Easter.
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Trump said he would restore Columbus Day in full and shirk Joe Biden’s practice of celebrating an Indigenous People’s Day in parallel to the public holiday. “I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes,” he wrote on social media, accusing Democrats of trying to “destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much.”
