The remarks, which he made in the Oval Office in front of reporters, were Trump’s latest broadside against the judiciary, which he has said is inhibiting his deportation powers. Trump falsely claimed that countries like Congo and Venezuela had emptied their prisons into the United States and that he therefore needed to bypass the constitutional demands of due process to expel the immigrants quickly.

Constitutional Concerns Raised

“I hope we get cooperation from the courts, because we have thousands of people that are ready to go out and you can’t have a trial for all of these people,” Trump said. “It wasn’t meant. The system wasn’t meant. And we don’t think there’s anything that says that.”

He claimed that the “very bad people” he was removing from the country included killers, drug dealers and the mentally ill.

“We’re getting them out, and a judge can’t say, ‘No, you have to have a trial,’” Trump said. “The trial is going to take two years. We’re going to have a very dangerous country if we’re not allowed to do what we’re entitled to do.”

Backlash and Criticism

He made similar statements in a social media post on Monday in which he wrote, “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years.”

Trump’s remarks have drawn swift backlash.

Rep. Jonathan L. Jackson, D-Ill., wrote on social media: “‘We can’t give everyone a trial’ — excuse me, what?! That’s straight-up #dictator talk. Due process isn’t optional because it’s inconvenient. This is the United States, not a banana republic. If you want to shred the Constitution, just say so.”

Supreme Court Intervention

Trump’s comments came after the Supreme Court, early Saturday, temporarily blocked the administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members under the expansive powers of a rarely invoked wartime law.

Trump issued a proclamation last month invoking the Alien Enemies Act as a way to deport immigrants he alleged were members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan street gang. The law, which was passed in 1798, has been used only three times before in U.S. history, during periods of declared war.

The Supreme Court has ruled that those subject to the statute needed to be given the opportunity to challenge their removal.

The Trump administration has also been dogged by the case of a Salvadoran man living in Maryland who was deported because of an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court ordered the administration nearly two weeks ago to facilitate his return so he could go through the legal system in the United States, but the White House has so far not fulfilled that order.

The White House posted on social media that the man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was “never coming back.”

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Luke Broadwater / Doug Mills
c. 2025 The New York Times Company

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The new $150 million terminal at the airport is set to fully open in November. Already, a new passenger screening area is in operation. Airport officials provided elected officials and media a sneak preview Wednesday.

“Fresno truly is a destination city and it’s time that we had an airport that reflected that,” said Councilmember Tyler Maxwell, whose District 4 includes the airport.

The project includes a new terminal, baggage handling area, an international arrival and screening area, and an already opened 900-space parking garage.

The security screening area now features five machines, with a sixth to be added — up from four — and more spacious lines.

Several new restaurants will open, including Los Amigos. Ike’s Love & Sandwiches also has a “coming soon” sign in the terminal.

Goal: Add Direct Flights to Cabo San Lucas, Other Beach Cities

Henry Thompson, Fresno’s airport director, is optimistic the airport expansion will lead to more flights.

The new international flight screening area will allow the airport to process three times more passengers per hour, Thompson said.

“We’re in ongoing conversations with the airlines, and so we’re talking with airlines about increasing international capacity out of here. That’s increasing service to existing destinations, increasing service or adding service to new destinations, and then new airlines that don’t currently serve,” Thompson said.

What is the top destination that passengers want to travel to?

“Any beach destination. We don’t have a direct flight to a beach destination, so that’s where we’re working hard to fill that gap,” Thompson said.

The wish list includes Cabo San Lucas, Puerto Vallarta, and Hawaii.

Thompson said it is hard to pin down how many more flights the airport will see. Currently, FYI processes 2.6 million passengers a year. With expansion, he is hoping that could add another half-million.

First Mural Unveiled

The terminal will feature 15 new art projects, the first unveiled during a tour that airport officials gave media and elected officials on Wednesday.

The 47.5′-by-12.5′ foot mural greets passengers after security screening. It features such images as a jet from the 144th Fighter Wing next door; the Pacific Southwest Building; an agricultural field; and a scene depicting the national parks.

“The center is based on community and diversity. Everyone’s coming together to grow up their communities,” said Kelsey Gilles, who partnered with Colleen Mitchell-Veyna to paint the mural.

The Central Valley women said they spent three months on the project before transferring it piece by piece to the airport.

Gilles and Mitchell-Veyna have partnered on murals in Exeter, Hanford, and Madera.

The terminal will feature a terrazzo floor resembling a flowing river. A Polish-made sculpture is also scheduled.

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“I just thought it was absurd,” the Austin, Texas, immigration attorney said.

It was an apparent glitch in the Trump administration’s dismantling of another Biden-era policy that allowed people to live and work in the country temporarily. U.S. Customs and Border Protection is quietly revoking two-year permits of people who used an online appointment app at U.S. border crossings with Mexico called CBP One, which brought in more than 900,000 people starting in January 2023.

The revocation of CBP One permits has lacked the fanfare and formality of canceling Temporary Protected Status for hundreds of thousands whose homelands were previously deemed unsafe for return and humanitarian parole for others from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela who came with financial sponsors. Those moves came with official notices in the Federal Register and press releases. Judges halted them from taking effect after advocacy groups sued.

CBP One cancellation notices began landing in inboxes in late March without warning, some telling recipients to leave immediately and others giving them seven days. Targets included U.S. citizens.

Timothy J. Brenner, a Connecticut-born lawyer in Houston, was told April 11 to leave the U.S. “I became concerned that the administration has a list of immigration attorneys or a database that they’re trying to target to harass,” he said.

Lack of Formal Notification

CBP confirmed in a statement that it issued notices terminating temporary legal status under CBP One. It did not say how many, just that they weren’t sent to all beneficiaries, which totaled 936,000 at the end of December.

CBP said notices may have been sent to unintended recipients, including attorneys, if beneficiaries provided contact information for U.S. citizens. It is addressing those situations case-by-case.

Online chat groups reflect fear and confusion, which, according to critics, is the administration’s intended effect. Brenner said three clients who received the notices chose to return to El Salvador after being told to leave.

“The fact that we don’t know how many people got this notice is part of the problem. We’re getting reports from attorneys and folks who don’t know what to make of the notice,” said Hillary Li, counsel for the Justice Action Center, an advocacy group.

Fear and Confusion Among Recipients

President Donald Trump suspended CBP One for new arrivals his first day in office but those already in the U.S. believed they could stay at least until their two-year permits expired. The cancellation notices that some received ended that sense of temporary stability. “It is time for you to leave the United States,” the letters began.

“It’s really confusing,” said Robyn Barnard, senior director for refugee advocacy at Human Rights First. “Imagine how people who entered through that process feel when they’re hearing through their different community chats, rumors or screenshots that some friends have received notice and others didn’t.”

Attorneys say some CBP One beneficiaries may still be within a one-year window to file an asylum claim or seek other relief.

Notices have been sent to others whose removal orders are on hold under other forms of temporary protection. A federal judge in Massachusetts temporarily halted deportations for more than 500,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who came since late 2022 after applying online with a financial sponsor and flying to a U.S. airport at their own expense.

Maria, a 48-year-old Nicaraguan woman who cheered Trump’s election and arrived via that path, said the notice telling her to leave landed like “a bomb. It paralyzed me.”

Maria, who asked to be named only by her middle name for fear of being detained and deported, said in a telephone interview from Florida that she would continue cleaning houses to support herself and file for asylum.

Salomon reported from Miami. Associated Press writers Rebecca Santana in Washington and Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed.

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The retirement of the 80-year-old, 30-year veteran of the Senate comes as younger, more progressive Democrats and older, more establishment party leaders are debating what face of the party to put forward in next year’s midterm elections, when control of both chambers of Congress will be up for grabs.

“The decision of whether to run for re-election has not been easy. I truly love the job of being a United States senator,” Durbin, the chamber’s No. 2 Democrat, wrote on social media. “But in my heart, I know it’s time to pass the torch.”

President Donald Trump’s Republicans currently hold majorities in both the Senate and House of Representatives, and incumbent presidents’ parties have historically lost seats in Congress in midterm elections.

Trump’s approval rating currently stands at 42%, having slipped a few points since his January inauguration, Reuters/Ipsos polling shows.

Democrats will face an uphill battle to try to reclaim the Senate, where Republicans hold a 53-47 majority. They are defending four competitive seats, including in Minnesota, New Hampshire and Michigan, where popular incumbents opted not to seek reelection, and in Georgia, where first-term incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff is seeking reelection.

Republicans, by contrast, are defending just three seats seen as competitive by nonpartisan political ratings agencies, in Maine, North Carolina and Ohio. A Democratic sweep of all seven seats seen as competitive by nonpartisan political analysts would produce a 50-50 Senate where Republican Vice President JD Vance would hold the tie-breaking vote.

A Democratic majority would require the party to oust a Republican incumbent in a heavily conservative state, such as Texas, Kentucky or Florida.

Primary Contenders

Possible candidates for the Democratic nomination to succeed Durbin include U.S. Representatives Raja Krishnamoorthi and Lauren Underwood, as well as Illinois Lieutenant Governor Juliana Stratton.

Krishnamoorthi, 51, was born in New Delhi, India and raised in Illinois. He holds a position in House Democratic leadership. Like Krishnamoorthi, Underwood, 38, represents a northern Illinois district that includes parts of Chicago.

Republicans who so far have announced their candidacy include Doug Bennett, who has held a local government position and is a former candidate for a U.S. House seat; and John Goodman, an Air Force veteran who has worked in law enforcement.

The liberal Durbin has spent decades as an advocate of immigration reform and a defender of “dreamers,” those who were brought illegally into the United States as children and have grown up in America but are largely unable to win citizenship.

With Trump taking a hard-line approach toward immigrants, Durbin is unlikely to see millions of these youths win permanent residency or citizenship before he leaves office.

“His deep commitment to justice, his tireless advocacy for Americans in need, and his wisdom in leadership have left an indelible mark on this institution, the United States, and his beloved Illinois,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, a former Capitol Hill roommate of Durbin, said in a statement.

As the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee during President Joe Biden’s tenure, Durbin helped secure the confirmation of 235 appointments to the federal judiciary, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a number that surpassed Trump’s first-term tally by one and included a record number of women and people of color named to the bench.

—

(Reporting by Katherine Jackson and Richard Cowan; additional reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; editing by Rami Ayyub, Scott Malone and Diane Craft)

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British finance minister Rachel Reeves is due to meet Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent this week to push Britain’s case for a trade agreement with Washington that could lower or eliminate the tariffs imposed by Trump on UK exports.

Washington is preparing its terms for trade negotiations, aiming for London to reduce levies and other non-tariff barriers on a variety of goods, the report said, adding the Trump administration also aims to push for more relaxed rules on U.S. agricultural imports, including beef.

Trump imposed a 10% tariff on most imports from Britain and a 25% tariff on key sectors such as cars and steel.

It remains unclear if the U.S. will consider reducing its 10% tariff on Britain if London agrees to all of its trade demands, according to the Journal.

“The administration’s trade and economic team is working at breakneck speed to negotiate custom-tailored deals with our major trading partners. Any final decisions and agreements, however, will come from President Trump and President Trump only,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said when asked about the report.

Downing Street did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

—

(Reporting by Urvi Dugar; Additional reporting by Jeff Mason; Editing by Nia Williams and Christopher Cushing)

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Musk’s 130-day mandate as a special government employee in the Trump administration is set to expire around late May.

“I think starting probably next month, in May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk told investors on a conference call after the electric car marker reported results that topped Wall Street’s rock-bottom expectations.

Musk’s Tesla Faced Troubling Few Months

Tesla has faced a troubling few months as deliveries of its aging lineup of electric vehicles have nosedived, Musk’s political activities have drawn protests, and its stock has nearly halved from its December peak. Many investors had been calling for Musk to leave his work as Trump’s adviser and manage Tesla more closely.

Musk said the major work setting up his cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency initiative was done.

Under Musk’s leadership and with the stated aim of increasing efficiency, DOGE staff upended agencies in a sweeping restructuring that has challenged congressional authority and faced a series of lawsuits.

Musk, the world’s richest person, has defended his role as an unelected official who was granted unprecedented authority by Trump to dismantle parts of the U.S. government.

As of Tuesday, DOGE estimated on its website that it has saved U.S. taxpayers some $160 billion. However, the group’s calculations have been rife with errors, corrections and incomplete explanations.

—

(Reporting by Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco, additional reporting by Akash Sriram; Editing by Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker)

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Bill Owens, executive producer of television’s most popular and influential newsmagazine since 2019, said in a note to staff that it has “become clear that I would not be allowed to run the show as I have always run it, to make independent decisions based on what was right for ’60 Minutes,’ right for the audience.”

“The show is too important to the country,” he wrote. “It has to continue, just not with me as the executive producer.”

Dispute Over Editorial Independence

Trump sued “60 Minutes” for $20 billion last fall, claiming it deceptively edited an interview with his Democratic election opponent Kamala Harris. CBS denied it had done anything to give an advantage to Harris, and released the full transcript of its interview.

When Trump took office for his second term, his Federal Communications Commission chairman, Brendan Carr, announced CBS would be investigated for the same issue.

At the same time, CBS parent Paramount Global, run by Shari Redstone, is seeking approval for a merger with Skydance Media, founded by Larry Ellison. They are reportedly in mediation to settle the lawsuit with Trump, a prospect that has been bitterly opposed by Owens and others at “60 Minutes.”

Lawsuit and Merger Pressure Mount

With this backdrop, “60 Minutes” has run an extraordinary series of tough stories about the new administration since it took office. The president angrily denounced the show on social media after its April 13 episode featured critical stories about Ukraine and Greenland, saying CBS should “pay a big price” for going after him.

Owens was the third executive producer at the Sunday night newsmagazine, known for its ticking stopwatch. Only Don Hewitt, the show’s founder, and Jeff Fager preceded him. Owens did not immediately return a call seeking comment on Tuesday. Owens has worked at CBS News for 37 years, 25 of them at “60 Minutes.”

“Having defended this show — and what we stand for — from every angle, over time with everything I could, I am stepping aside so the show can move forward,” he said in the memo.

Broader Conflicts With the Press

CBS News’ top executive, Wendy McMahon, said in a statement that Owens “has led ’60 Minutes’ with unwavering integrity, curiosity and a deep commitment to the truth. He has championed the kind of journalism that informs, enlightens and often changes the national conversation.”

It was not immediately clear if any particular event triggered the decision, or if Owens was told he had to leave.

“60 Minutes” is famously insular, run as an independent fiefdom within CBS News, and Owens said that McMahon agrees that he should be replaced by a current producer there. His top deputy is Tanya Simon, daughter of the late “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon.

Trump has battled the press on several levels since taking office again. The FCC is investigating several media companies, the administration is working to shut down Voice of America and other government-run outlets, and The Associated Press has sued the administration for reducing its access to events because it has not renamed the Gulf of Mexico in line with Trump’s executive order.

David Bauder writes about media for the AP. Follow him at http://x.com/dbauder and https://bsky.app/profile/dbauder.bsky.social

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One proposal shared with aides would reserve 30% of scholarships for the Fulbright program, the prestigious, government-backed international fellowship, for applicants who are married or have children.

Another would give a $5,000 cash “baby bonus” to every American mother after delivery.

A third calls on the government to fund programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles — in part so they can better understand when they are ovulating and able to conceive.

Those ideas, and others, are emerging from a movement concerned with declining birthrates that has been gaining steam for years and now finally has allies in the U.S. administration, including Vice President JD Vance and Elon Musk.

Policy experts and advocates of raising the birthrate have been meeting with White House aides, sometimes handing over written proposals on ways to help or persuade women to have more babies, according to four people who have been part of the meetings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Related Story: California’s Aging Population Will Test Whether Its Demography Is Destiny

A New Cultural Agenda

Administration officials have not indicated what ideas — if any — they might ultimately embrace. But advocates expressed confidence that fertility issues will become a prominent piece of the agenda, noting that President Donald Trump has called for a “baby boom” and pointing to the symbolic power of seeing Vance and other top officials attend public events with their children.

“I just think this administration is inherently pronatalist,” said activist Simone Collins, referring to the movement to reverse declining birthrates.

The behind-the-scenes discussions about family policy suggest Trump is quietly building an ambitious plan to promote the issue, even as he focuses much of his attention on higher-profile priorities such as federal cuts, tariffs and mass deportations. Project 2025, the policy blueprint that has forecast much of Trump’s agenda so far, discusses family issues before anything else, opening its first chapter with a promise to “restore the family as the centerpiece of American life.”

Much of the movement is built around promoting a very specific idea of what constitutes a family — one that includes marriage between a man and a woman and leaves out many families that don’t conform to traditional gender roles or family structures. In contrast to the intense emphasis on cost cutting so far during Trump’s second term, this focus on families could result in spending more money to back a new set of priorities.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement that Trump “is proudly implementing policies to uplift American families.”

“The president wants America to be a country where all children can safely grow up and achieve the American dream,” she added. “As a mother myself, I am proud to work for a president who is taking significant action to leave a better country for the next generation.”

Concerns Over Declining Birthrates

Trump, Vance and Musk have cultivated the movement by publicly highlighting issues related to family policy and “pronatalism” — both in the lead-up to the election, and since Trump took office. Speaking to a crowd in January at the March for Life, an anti-abortion rally, Vance said he wanted “more babies in the United States of America” and more “beautiful young men and women” to raise them.

Last month, Trump pledged to be “the fertilization president.”

The coalition of people who want to see more babies born is broad and diverse. They are unified in their concerns about the U.S. birthrate, which has been falling since 2007, warning of a future in which a smaller workforce cannot support an aging population and the social safety net. If the birthrate is not turned around, they fear, the country’s economy could collapse and, ultimately, human civilization could be at risk.

But many in the movement have different reasons for wanting people to have more children — and often disagree on how to get there. Many Christian conservatives see declining birth and marriage rates as a cultural crisis brought on by forces in politics and the media that they say belittle the traditional family, encouraging women to prioritize work over children. They are pushing for more committed marriages and large families, while some who identify strictly as “pronatalists” are interested in exploring a variety of methods, including new reproductive technologies, to reach their goal of more babies.

“Pronatalism strictly speaks to having more babies,” said Emma Waters, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that led Project 2025. Waters, who says she is concerned about the birthrate but does not identify as a pronatalist, added: “Our ultimate goal is not just more babies but more families formed.”

Related Story: Trump Admin Reverses Course, Allows Idaho to Enforce Strict Abortion Ban

Focus on IVF and Infertility

The next major development on these issues is widely expected to come directly from the White House. Trump aides are preparing a highly anticipated report, to be released no later than mid-May, recommending ways to make in vitro fertilization more readily available and affordable. The White House pledged to produce the document in a February executive order reaffirming the president’s commitment to reducing the costs of IVF, a promise Trump made on the campaign trail without offering specific policy details on how he would do so.

Discussions around what the report should contain have highlighted divisions within the pro-family and pronatalist movement, according to several advocates involved in the conversations. While some in the movement — including Musk, who has fathered multiple children through in vitro fertilization — are extremely supportive of IVF, many anti-abortion Christian conservatives have serious misgivings about the procedure, which fertilizes a woman’s egg outside the body, and often leads to the loss of human embryos.

The Trump administration “is listening to a lot of different ideas and soliciting input on all of this,” said Lyman Stone, director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, who has pitched several policy ideas to the White House. “I think they’re still having a conversation about what they want to do.”

The most ambitious plans for family formation will not materialize right away, many movement leaders said. That is partially because, while other countries have tried a variety of approaches, it’s not yet clear what kind of policies will best incentivize people to have more babies — or whether those kinds of policy incentives are effective at all. Many ideas, like an expanded child tax credit or a “baby bonus,” would require an act of Congress.

The Heritage Foundation has been researching the question for over two years and is preparing to release a report in the coming weeks on how it believes the administration and Congress should counter declining birth and marriage rates, said Jay Richards, the director of the foundation’s DeVos Center for Life, Religion, and Family. The “newest and boldest” idea, Richards said, is a plan that offers tax credits to married couples with children, in which families receive more money back from the government for each additional child they have.

Heritage has also been prominent in efforts to shape what the White House might do on infertility and IVF. The group, which heralds its commitment to “protecting the unborn,” is skeptical of the procedure. Leaders at Heritage hope the administration will take a broader approach to combating infertility in line with the Make America Healthy Again movement largely led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary. The idea, called Restorative Reproductive Medicine, revolves around treating the “root causes” of infertility, and leaving IVF as a last resort.

“We need to channel the MAHA spirit and really dive deep into infertility,” said Waters, who recently co-wrote a Heritage report on infertility. “If the executive order’s goal is to increase access to infertility care, and keep costs down, the solution is not to push IVF for everyone.”

Waters has proposed directing the National Institutes of Health to expand its study of infertility and reproductive health conditions, including endometriosis. She has also proposed using government funds to promote programs that educate women on their menstrual cycles and their “natural fertility,” such as cycle-charting courses that many conservative Christian women use to try to prevent pregnancy without using birth control.

These kinds of programs could both help women identify the reasons for their infertility, Waters said, and also teach them when they’re able to conceive. They could be facilitated through school sex education programs, she added, or independent courses designed for adults.

Leading medical associations have been skeptical of this approach, calling it “political” and not based in science.

“These ideologies have been around for a long time, and they’re always rooted in religion,” said Eve Feinberg, a medical director of fertility and reproductive medicine at Northwestern University. “It’s not actual medicine.”

Still, there are opportunities for bipartisanship on these issues, which bring together unlikely coalitions to push for better family policies or more funding for infertility issues. While Feinberg took issue with Waters’ explanation of infertility challenges as far too simplistic, she agrees with some of her recommendations. More federal funding for infertility and reproductive health issues is a “wonderful idea,” Feinberg said, adding that women’s health “has been underfunded for so long.”

But the desire to increase funds to help mothers and babies could collide with other administration priorities. For instance, this month, the health department made large cuts to the Division of Reproductive Health, which handled issues related to in vitro fertilization and maternal health outcomes.

An official speaking on behalf of the department said its maternal and reproductive health programs would continue. “Under President Trump’s executive order to establish the MAHA Commission, Secretary Kennedy is determined to find the root causes of the chronic disease epidemic, including the toxins in our environment and food supply,” the official said.

Beyond the issue of fertility, the White House has received a wide range of policy recommendations designed to incentivize people to marry and have more children.

In an attempt to influence highly educated couples, Stone proposed that the government impose a quota for married applicants or applicants with children across all of its fellowship programs, including the Fulbright fellowship. The recipients are largely recent college graduates, many of whom are single and travel abroad alone.

“What the government is doing with these programs is conferring status,” Stone said. “That being the case, it’s bad for the government to blindly confer status on people for their singleness.”

Some within the administration and on Capitol Hill are interested in more sweeping legislative ideas for reversing declining birthrates. Several lawmakers are exploring legislation to offer new parents a “baby bonus,” a one-time payment of a few thousand dollars to the mother of the child, to be issued soon after her delivery, according to people familiar with the discussions. The “baby bonus” could also take the form of a young child or newborn supplement to the existing child tax credit.

Trump himself weighed in on the issue at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2023, with a statement that has become a rallying cry for many in the movement.

“We will support baby booms and we will support baby bonuses for a new baby boom,” Trump said.

“I want a baby boom.”

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Caroline Kitchener/Charity Rachelle
c. 2025 The New York Times Company

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Bruce, speaking to reporters at a regular news briefing, said the talks will go ahead and that President Donald Trump’s Ukraine envoy General Keith Kellogg would attend the discussions.

It was unclear whether the absence of Washington’s top diplomat meant that Trump had downgraded Washington’s expectations from the meeting, after saying on Sunday that he hopes Moscow and Kyiv will make a deal this week to end the conflict in Ukraine.

“In this particular instance, while the meetings in London are still occurring, he will not be attending. But that is not a statement regarding the meetings. It’s a statement about logistical issues in his schedule,” Bruce told reporters at a regular news briefing.

“General Kellogg is there, and so he will be having those conversations.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Bruce said in an interview on Fox Business Network’s “Mornings with Maria” program that she was leaving along with Rubio for London to continue talks, adding: “London has potential, and this is a good open door.”

The decision comes after warnings that the U.S. would walk away from efforts to broker a Russia-Ukraine peace deal unless there are clear signs of progress soon.

Since taking office in January, Trump has upended U.S. foreign policy, pressing Ukraine to agree to a ceasefire while easing many of the measures the Biden administration had taken to punish Russia for its 2022 full-scale invasion of its neighbor.

The U.S. president has repeatedly said that he wants to broker a ceasefire in Ukraine by May, arguing the U.S. must end a conflict that has killed tens of thousands and risks a direct confrontation between the U.S. and nuclear-armed Russia.

Europe has been increasingly concerned over the Trump administration’s overtures towards Moscow, after the failure so far of Trump’s efforts to secure a ceasefire in the war.

—

(Reporting by Humeyra Pamuk; Additional reporting by Susan Heavey and Simon Lewis; Writing by Daphne Psaledakis, editing by Deepa Babington)

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The visit was the latest bid by Democrats in Congress to amplify the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man whom Trump administration officials have admitted to erroneously sending back to his home country, and hundreds of other immigrants the administration has hastily deported.

Reps. Robert Garcia of California, Maxwell Alejandro Frost of Florida, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine E. Dexter of Oregon met with William H. Duncan, the U.S. ambassador to El Salvador, at the embassy in San Salvador on Monday morning. They urged the ambassador to raise the issue with Salvadoran officials and to press for transparency about Abrego Garcia’s detention.

Meeting With US Ambassador

The lawmakers said they had not been permitted by Salvadoran officials to meet with Abrego Garcia.

After their meeting, a U.S. Embassy official said the lawmakers’ concerns had been relayed to the Salvadoran government.

Related Story: Supreme Court Blocks, for Now, New Deportations Under 18th Century Wartime Law

Concerns Relayed, Meeting Denied

The official said it was the first time the embassy had raised questions to President Nayib Bukele’s administration about the treatment of more than 250 Venezuelan migrants now being held in Salvadoran custody.

At a news conference after the meeting, the Democrats denounced the Trump administration’s failure to comply with court orders, including a Supreme Court decision instructing the administration to take steps to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the United States.

“We left that meeting with absolutely zero indication that this administration is going to facilitate, or wants to facilitate, the return of Abrego Garcia back to the United States so he can go through due process,” Frost told reporters.

The lawmakers’ visit follows that of Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who traveled to El Salvador last week. After two days of resistance from Bukele’s government, Salvadoran officials allowed Van Hollen to meet with Abrego Garcia face-to-face, delivering him unexpectedly to the senator’s hotel for a meeting that appeared staged to emphasize how well he was being treated.

—

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Robert Jimison and Annie Correal/Daniele Volpe
c. 2025 The New York Times Company

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