South Africa’s President Just Apologized for Not Giving Trump a Plane

Amid one of Donald Trump’s most obvious corruption scandals, foreign leaders are now apologizing to the American president for not providing him with a multimillion-dollar bribe.

“I’m sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told Trump with a chuckle in a press conference Wednesday.

“I wish you did, I’d take it,” Trump responded without cracking a smile. “If your country offered the United States Air Force a plane, I would take it.”

“OK,” Ramaphosa said, likely surprised by the president’s seemingly serious response.

The two leaders met in the Oval Office Wednesday afternoon to discuss Trump’s recent unbacked claims that South Africa is experiencing a “white genocide.” Throughout the contentious meeting, Trump relentlessly argued that white South Africans are being killed at record rates, and even made him sit through an uncomfortably long video explaining the supposed mass murder of white Afrikaner farmers.

The press conference fell on the same day the Department of Defense announced it has officially accepted the $400 million jumbo jet as a gift from Qatar, which will be outfitted for Trump’s use to replace Air Force One.

“The secretary of defense has accepted a Boeing 747 from Qatar in accordance with all federal rules and regulations,” Sean Parnel, the Pentagon’s chief spokesperson, said Wednesday. “The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the president of the United States.”

The “gift” has been heavily scrutinized by lawmakers on both sides for its blatant corruption.

Trump said last week the Boeing 747 would go directly to his personal library once he leaves office, a clear violation of a 1966 law preventing presidents from keeping personal gifts worth more than $480.

Ramaphosa’s apology— joke or not—is a terrifying indication that accepting bribes from foreign leaders could soon become the norm, or even the expectation, for the Trump administration going forward.

A federal judge has ruled that the Trump administration violated a court order by sending immigrants to South Sudan who aren’t from that country.

“It was impossible for these people to have a meaningful opportunity to object to their transfer to South Sudan,” U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said in his ruling Wednesday, adding that the administration provided “plainly insufficient” notice to the immigrants.

“The Department’s actions in this case are unquestionably violative of this court’s order,” Murphy continued. On Tuesday, Murphy warned the government that those who took part in the flights could be subject to criminal penalties, and those could come in further court proceedings.

Murphy called for an emergency hearing only one day after learning in court from immigration attorneys that the Trump administration had sent two immigrants, one Vietnamese and the other Burmese, to South Sudan without any justification, and without giving them the chance to contest their deportation out of concern for their own safety. South Sudan is in the midst of violence and political unrest, with the State Department warning Americans not to visit.

Despite the Department of Homeland Security releasing the names and photographs of many of the people on the deportation flights before the hearing, the government still told Murphy that information about them was too sensitive to disclose in open court.

The Trump administration has routinely flouted court orders over its immigration policies, even when the Supreme Court ordered the government to facilitate the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom even administration lawyers admitted was mistakenly deported to El Salvador.

The White House continues to send immigrants to countries they don’t come from, such as Rwanda, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama and openly refuses to respond to any judicial oversight. Administration officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio even scoff at court orders that rebuke the administration. Will contempt charges cause the administration to follow the law?

This story has been updated.

Republican Representative Jim Jordan was called out so much over his party’s budget bill that he had to consult lawyers to see if the bill was upending federal law.

At a House Rules Committee meeting Wednesday morning, Democratic Representative Joe Neguse pointed out that language in the bill seeking to curtail federal judges from enforcing nationwide injunctions doesn’t just apply to immigration cases currently being litigated against the Trump administration, as Republicans want, but also to any federal case, retroactively.

“This is all cases! This is not immigration cases! The plain language of this statute that you have written applies to every conceivable case brought in a federal court, period,” Neguse said, tapping his desk for emphasis. “IRS cases. Patent cases. Immigration cases. If you have a constituent that sues the ATF, this provision applies to them.

“This is the point. And you can visit with your lawyers, and maybe they can provide you with the clarity, but it is unquestionably the case that this provision applies to every plaintiff,” Neguse continued, as Jordan actually consulted with attorneys seated next to him.

“I just want to say that the situation we’re trying to address is what’s been happening around the country,” Jordan responded, flustered, saying that one federal judge can “issue a decision that applies nationwide to all immigrants during that situation.”

“Why didn’t you put ‘nationwide’ in this language?” Neguse replied, waving the bill in the air.

“Well, we can look at the language—” Jordan stammered before Neguse interjected.

“It’s 6 a.m.! You’re voting on this thing in like 10 hours! What are we talking about?” said the Colorado Democrat.

This exchange between leading a House Democrat and Republican illustrates a major problem with Republicans’ so-called “big, beautiful bill”—it’s being put together quickly and broadly to accomplish many of Trump and the GOP’s priorities at once, from immigration to big budget cuts.

As a result, massive cuts have been proposed to essential programs like Medicare and Medicaid, and Trump’s desire to rein in federal courts that strike down his egregious immigration policies could severely upend the way the federal judicial system works. As Jordan demonstrated Wednesday, Trump and the GOP have a big wish list but have no idea what they’re doing.

Two years after they led an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden on allegations that the forty-sixth president benefited from his son’s business dealings in Ukraine and China, MAGA Republicans have decided that conflicts of interest are no longer worth mentioning—at least with regard to Donald Trump.

Testifying before Congress Wednesday, state secretary turned joint national security adviser Marco Rubio claimed that the Trump family’s business in the Middle East wasn’t anything out of the ordinary for a sitting president, despite the fact that Trump and his relatives appear to be making money hand over fist, thanks to Trump’s power over the White House.

“I don’t think this is a complicated question. President Trump is personally profiting from a deal with a foreign government while selling weapons to that same government who’s enabling a genocide,” said California Representative Sara Jacobs, referring to the United Arab Emirates’ “complicity” in the genocide of the Masalit community in West Darfur. “Policy aside, do you really think this isn’t a conflict of interest?”

“No you’re making claims—the president’s family owns a business, and they can conduct business anywhere in the world they want,” Rubio said. “The president never once raised business deals in UAE  when talking about—any president would have to have a relationship with the UAE.”

But Jacobs pointed out that Trump’s business dealings in the Middle East are not passive, as the forty-seventh president has “retained his ownership” of the companies. He has also continued to intertwine his image with his brands: On his cryptocurrency World Liberty Financial’s website, Trump’s image is plastered alongside text urging investors to “shape a new era of finance.”

“It literally says on the website that Mr. Trump and his family members own a 60 percent stake in this company. That’s silly,” Jacobs said. “I’m asking you a very simple question: Do you believe it’s a conflict of interest to have a president personally profiting from a deal with a foreign government while selling weapons to that same government who’s enabling a genocide?”

“I don’t accept the premise of your question,” Rubio replied. “I think this has nothing to do with personally benefiting from anything. This has to do with the fact that in order to conduct foreign policy in the Middle East, you have to deal with the UAE.”

Trump and his businesses have a huge financial stake in the Middle East, especially the UAE. Some of his real estate plans include a Trump-branded golf course in Qatar (as part of a $5.5 billion development project) and a $1 billion Trump hotel and residence in Dubai. Other investments include a $2 billion cryptocurrency stake by an Abu Dhabi firm in World Liberty Financial Coin. 

The family also revealed in December that it would be expanding its presence in Saudi Arabia, announcing Trump Tower Jeddah. The price tag for the building has not been made public, but one of the developers on the project, Dar Global, compared it to another $530 million Trump Tower in the city, reported Reuters.

The president has also come under intense recent scrutiny for accepting a super luxury jumbo jet from Qatari leadership, in an act that was widely interpreted as a foreign bribe, including by longtime supporters of the president’s agenda, such as far-right influencers Ben Shapiro and Laura Loomer. It was one of the most lavish gifts ever bestowed on a U.S. president.

Accepting gifts from foreign governments is a blatant violation of the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause, so in an effort to circumvent that, Trump has claimed that the plane is instead a donation to the Department of Defense. But his reported plans to shift ownership of the aircraft to his presidential library shortly before exiting office would effectively make that excuse null and void.

Donald Trump argued with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa Wednesday about whether there was a so-called “white genocide” in the latter’s own country.

During a press conference in the Oval Office, Trump was asked by one reporter, “What would it take for you to be convinced that there is no white genocide in South Africa?” 

Earlier this month, the U.S. president carved out an exception in his refugee ban to allow Afrikaners, white descendants of mainly Dutch colonizers in South Africa, to immigrate to the U.S., claiming that they were facing a “genocide.” 

Ramaphosa quickly stepped in. “Well, I can answer that for the president. It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends like those who are here,” he said.   

“It will take President Trump listening to them. I’m not going to be repeating what I’ve been saying,” Ramaphosa continued. “I would say that if there was Afrikaaner farmer genocide, I can bet you, these three gentlemen would not be here, including my Minister of Agriculture. He would not be with me. So, it’ll take him, President Trump listening to their stories, their perspective.”

“We have thousands of stories talking about it, and we have documentaries, we have news stories,” Trump replied, before turning the lights down to play a long clip from an unspecified documentary, which included a clip of the leader of the South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters party chanting, “Kill the Boers.” As the video played, Ramaphosa looked increasingly uncomfortable. 

After a long moment, Trump began narrating, “Now, this is very bad, these are burial sites, over a thousand, of white farmers.”

“It’s a terrible site, I’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump continued. 

“Have they told you where that is, Mr. President?” Ramaphosa asked. “I’d like to know where that is, because this I’ve never seen.”

“It’s in South Africa,” Trump shrugged. 

“We need to find out,” Ramaphosa replied. 

Trump was also asked what he hoped Ramaphosa would do about the violence against Afrikaners. 

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” Trump said holding print-outs of several articles. “Look these are articles over the last few days. Death, of… people. Death, death, death, horrible death. Death. I don’t know.” 

Trump continued to lament the deaths of white Afrikaners. “If this were the other way around it would be the biggest story. Now, I will say, apartheid—terrible,” Trump said. “That was the biggest story, that was reported all the time. This is sort of the opposite of apartheid.”

Ramaphosa invited John Henry Steenhuisen, South Africa’s minister of Agriculture who is white and from an opposition party, to address Trump’s claims. Steenhuisen admitted that the country had a “rural safety problem” that it was working to address. 

Steenhuisen also responded to the documentary clip Trump had shown. “The two individuals in that video that you’ve seen are both leaders of opposition minority parties in South Africa,” he said. 

“Now the reason that my party, the Democratic Alliance, which has been an opposition party for over 30 years, chose to join hands with Mr. Ramaphosa’s party was precisely to keep those people out of power. We cannot have those people sitting in the union buildings, making those decisions,” said Steenhuisen.

This story has been updated.

Donald Trump’s administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency threw a tantrum Wednesday when asked to explain how exactly his agency had decided to cancel nearly 800 grants focused on helping decrease the impact of climate change. 

Lee Zeldin lost his cool during a Senate hearing when Senator Sheldon Whitehouse asked him to explain conflicting accounts of the process for approving the cuts to 781 grants. Zeldin had stated in a prior House hearing to have “personally reviewed” each grant that was cancelled—but so had his deputy assistant administrators Daniel Coogan and Travis Voyles.

“It cannot be that Voyles personally, himself, conducted the review of 781, and that Coogan saw to it that it was individually done,” Whitehouse said, arguing that their stories didn’t quite match up. 

“It’s a crazy concept, Senator, but maybe more than one person was individually reviewing these grants. Maybe they were working on it for more than one day, Senator! How about that concept?” Zeldin snapped. 

“When their testimony is that they did it all on one day, no I do not. I do not agree with that,” Whitehouse replied. “He swore in court that he did it on one day. So you can’t now come in and say that that’s false.”

Zeldin ranted that while the decision had been made in one day, the process of “busting your ass” to review the grants had taken much longer, and the two argued over each other as Whitehouse referred to the testimony of Zeldin’s deputy assistants. 

“None of that is what he said, I’m using the facts as your employees stated them,” Whitehouse said.

“I conducted an individual review of everything, and that concept doesn’t work for you,” Zeldin cried. 

“When? When? When? When did you conduct an individualized review of 781 grants?” Whitehouse pressed. “Will you show me your schedule?”

“You don’t care about wasting money, but the Trump administration does, Senator,” the EPA head ranted. When Whitehouse repeated the question, Zeldin replied, “Our schedule is publicly released, we don’t put on the schedule every single moment of the day.”

Zeldin continued to rant, claiming that Whitehouse didn’t care about answering the taxpayers, becoming increasingly exasperated. “I don’t know what to say to you, you’re insisting on the fact—” Zeldin continued.

“I’m insisting on the facts, that’s exactly what I’m insisting on!” Whitehouse snapped. 

Zeldin continued to rant, “The American taxpayers, they put President Trump in office because of people like you, they have Republicans in charge of the House and Senate because of people like you, because you don’t care about 99 percent of this story, you don’t want me to go through the list of the all the waste and abuse—”

“No, what I want you to do is explain why the Department of Justice lawyers representing EPA in court under a duty of candor have said that everything you’ve just said isn’t true. That’s what I want. Get me that answer,” Whitehouse said, before yielding his time back to the chair.  

Donald Trump escalated his threats against Bruce Springsteen Wednesday with a stupid but shocking meme posted to Truth Social.

The eight-second edited video shows the president in a MAGA hat hitting Springsteen with a golf ball, taking the rock star down as he gets onstage. It was posted without a caption but is yet another indication that Trump’s absurd targeting of Springsteen may not be a joke.

On Monday, Trump said in a Truth Social post he planned to launch an investigation into how much money Kamala Harris paid celebrity musicians, including Springsteen and Beyoncé, to endorse her campaign.

“HOW MUCH DID KAMALA HARRIS PAY BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN FOR HIS POOR PERFORMANCE DURING HER CAMPAIGN FOR PRESIDENT? WHY DID HE ACCEPT THAT MONEY IF HE IS SUCH A FAN OF HERS? ISN’T THAT A MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION? WHAT ABOUT BEYONCÉ? … AND HOW MUCH WENT TO OPRAH, AND BONO??? I am going to call for a major investigation into this matter,” he wrote on Truth Social early Monday morning.

Springsteen’s production company was paid $76,000 by the Harris campaign after he performed at one of her rallies in October. But Trump’s tirade against the 75-year-old singer likely has more to do with Springsteen insulting him at a show in Manchester, England, last week.

“The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock ’n’ roll, in dangerous times,” Springsteen said. “In my home, the America I love, the America I’ve written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.”

As he often does with celebrities, Trump insulted Springsteen in a series of Truth Social posts before it became clear he actually wants government agencies to investigate him. Rolling Stone reported Tuesday that Trump’s plans to weaponize campaign finance laws against the pop culture icon could be a legitimate undertaking backed by lawyers and political advisers.

“So this is not something where Donald Trump is just ranting and raving about it all alone out there on an island,” Rolling Stone reporter Asawin Suebsaeng told TNR’s Greg Sargent.

“This is something where heavy hitters in the MAGA elite and in the Republican elite, even if they don’t really believe it on an intellectual level, are willing to give Trump space to cook and to be like, ‘Let’s see how far we can take this.’”

This story has been updated.

Each day, new and worse cuts keep appearing in the Republicans’ budget bill.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office issued a report Tuesday finding that the GOP’s budget bill would automatically trigger over $500 billion in automatic cuts to Medicare, exposing President Trump for lying that Medicare wouldn’t be touched. The CBO estimates that there would be about $45 billion in cuts in 2026, and $490 billion in cuts between 2027 and 2034.

House Democrats immediately pounced. At a House Rules Committee meeting early Wednesday morning, ranking member Jim McGovern asked Representative Brendan Boyle, the ranking member on the House Budget Committee, whether the bill would trigger cuts to Medicare.

“Look, this is really the breaking news, because when the Budget Committee kicked off this process approximately three months ago, there was a commitment by President Trump that there would be no Medicare cuts in this piece of legislation, and indeed, over the last several months, there has been no discussion of Medicare at all,” Boyle responded.

“Because of the size of the deficits, because of the PAYGO, or Pay as You Go Act, that would trigger sequestration of Medicare, and it would total over $500 billion. The official figure that CBO confirms is $535 billion in cuts to Medicare,” Boyle continued, adding that the bill doesn’t waive statutory PAYGO.

In March, Trump promised that there would be no cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security, with the White House even issuing a fact sheet attacking media reports that he and Elon Musk were open to such cuts. Now, though, the Republican budget bill includes $880 billion in cuts, largely to Medicaid, and Tuesday’s revelation confirms that Medicare cuts will be automatically triggered if the bill passes.

Some House Republicans are probably not going to tolerate Medicare cuts, with so many of the GOP’s elderly supporters depending on the program, and the budget needs almost unanimous Republican support to pass the House. Could these cuts sink the bill? And how will the White House explain that Trump won’t be keeping his promise?

Republicans want to add work requirements to Medicaid, but having to work themselves is apparently a problem.

Representative Ralph Norman was caught falling asleep in his chair late Tuesday as the House Rules Committee discussed the future of a Republican-led reconciliation bill that aims to strip Medicaid coverage from millions of Americans.

Conservative lawmakers have tried to jam the president’s “big, beautiful” bill through the legislature as quickly as possible, forcing themselves and their colleagues to debate its details when the American public isn’t watching, including over the weekend and in the dead of night.

The bill proposes cutting upward of $880 billion from the public health insurance program for low-income Americans in order to afford a multitrillion-dollar tax cut extension for multimillionaires and corporations.

But just a handful of days into the process, it’s clear that Republicans are struggling to keep up with their own terrible timing.

Norman’s siesta was definitely noticed by Democratic Representative Joe Neguse, who accused the tired politician Wednesday of having “snuck out for a little shut-eye” while the committee debated adding work requirements to the public health insurance program during another late-night hearing.

“Obviously, this isn’t reasonable. It does not make sense. It is not transparent to hold meetings at 3 a.m. on a bill of this size, and this scope, and this scale,” Neguse said. “You could just as easily [have] delayed it five hours, let the American public have an opportunity to listen to this debate, and then vote on the bill on Thursday.

“This false sense of urgency for five or six hours makes no sense,” Neguse added.

The Republican bill proposes kicking 8.6 million Americans off Medicaid over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office, though that figure could be the tip of the iceberg if the caucus successfully adds work requirements to the public health insurance program.

Such a move could eventually strip upward of 36 million Americans of their health coverage—half of Medicaid’s 72 million enrollees, according to a February report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which warned that eligible Medicaid recipients could get strung up in the bureaucracy of increasingly frequent eligibility checks, potentially lapsing coverage for individuals who are entitled to the benefit.

But tampering with the third rail of American politics comes at Trump’s behest, as his acolytes in Congress work to make an enormously expensive tax cut—that won’t add any noticeable benefit for the majority of Americans—more palatable to their base. Trump’s bill is estimated to add somewhere between $3.8 trillion and $5.3 trillion to the national debt.

Despite the pressure, Norman might have felt it kosher to doze off since he had, apparently, made up his mind on the votes days ago.

The South Carolina lawmaker was one of four Republicans to oppose the bill on Friday, when for a brief moment it appeared that the massively expensive tax extension wouldn’t pass muster with conservative budget hawks. But by Monday, Norman had changed his tune, telling Politico that he would advance it to the chamber floor during the committee’s Wednesday vote.

“Unless something changes,” Norman said, “the body has a right [to consider it].”

The Congressional Budget Office has reported that Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill will continue the longtime Republican tradition of giving tax cuts to the wealthy while spiting the poor. 

A CBO estimate Tuesday found that the GOP bill would decrease household resources for the poorest 10 percent in America, with households expected to lose 2 percent of their income by 2027 and 4 percent of their income by 2027 through the loss of programs like Medicaid, Medicare, and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. 

In contrast, the top 10 percent of Americans would see their income increase by  4 percent for households by 2027 and 2 percent by 2033, “mainly because of reductions in the taxes they owe.”

The CBO also noted that Trump’s bill would add $3.8 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. 

“The nonpartisan CBO’s unprecedented analysis has confirmed what Democrats have known to be true—the GOP Tax Scam will hurt working families the most while delivering massive tax breaks for billionaires like Elon Musk,” Democratic Senate Leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement. “Any claims otherwise are intentionally deceptive regarding the Republican plans to rip health care away from nearly 14 million Americans and take food out of the mouths of millions of people, including children and seniors.… For a party that claims to be for the working class, this analysis indicates the opposite.”

The Republicans are dismissing the report entirely. 

“The CBO score is wrong, the CBO has been wrong repeatedly, it was wrong when it projected budget surpluses with the Inflation Reduction Act, the Green New Deal,” GOP Representative Andy Barr claimed on CNN Wednesday morning. “It was wrong when they scored the first Trump tax cuts, they were wrong by over a trillion dollars. Why? Because the CBO doesn’t do this scoring dynamically, and what we know about this bill, it’s jet fuel for this economy.” 

“Congressman, you say the CBO is wrong, but you have—your fellow Republicans are concerned because the CBO is the only nonpartisan scorekeeper that Congress has,” CNN anchor Kate Bolduan replied.

It’s ironic that Barr brought up Trump’s 2017 bill, which also contained massive tax cuts for the rich that the GOP claimed would pay for themselves. They lied then too.