President Donald Trump said he wasn’t worried about reports of a Russian military buildup along the border of Finland.

“I don’t worry about that at all. It’ll be very safe. Those are two countries, you’re gonna be very safe,” he said.

So far the moves seem to be the early stages of a larger, longer-term expansion, according to satellite images reviewed by The New York Times. So far, Russia has very few troops along the frontier, and the Finns say that none of this is much of a threat.

Seperately, the US president was asked during his ‘Golden Dome’ press briefing on Tuesday whether he has addressed Russia’s ventures in space with a space-based nuclear weapon and has told Russian President Vladimir Putin to stop.

“We haven’t discussed it, but at the right time we will,” Trump responded.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated this month that just the space-based components of the Golden Dome could cost as much as $542 billion over the next 20 years.

Additionally, Democratic lawmakers have voiced concern about the procurement process of the Golden Dome missile defense shield and the involvement of Trump ally Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has emerged as a frontrunner alongside Palantir and Anduril to build key components of the system.

In a letter sent to the acting US Defense Department Inspector General, a group of lawmakers, led by Senator Elizabeth Warren and congressman Greg Casar, requested a probe into the origins of the procurement process.

“If Mr. Musk were to exercise improper influence over the Golden Dome contract, it would be another example of a disturbing pattern of Mr. Musk flouting conflict of interest rules,” reads the letter.

The Golden Dome plan includes a massive array of surveillance satellites and a separate fleet of attacking satellites that would shoot down offensive missiles soon after lift-off.

Trump, who said the project would be completed by the end of his term in January 2029, said Alaska will be a big part of the program and named Florida, Georgia and Indiana as also benefiting from the project.

US immigration officials appear to have begun deporting migrants from Myanmar and Vietnam to South Sudan, Reuters reports.

Immigrant rights advocates accused the Trump administration of deporting around a dozen migrants in violation of a court order and asked a judge to order their return.

The advocates made the request in a motion directed to a federal judge in Boston who had barred the Trump administration from swiftly deporting migrants to countries other than their own without first hearing any concerns they had that they might be tortured or persecuted if sent there.

Lawyers for a group of migrants pursuing the class action lawsuit before US District Judge Brian Murphy said they learned that nearly a dozen migrants held at a detention facility in Texas were flown to South Sudan on Tuesday morning.

Chris Stein

Trump visits Capitol to urge House Republicans to pass ‘big, beautiful bill’

Donald Trump traveled to the Capitol on Tuesday to insist that the fractious House Republican majority set aside their differences and pass his wide-ranging bill to enact his taxation and immigration priorities.

In a speech to a closed-door meeting of Republican lawmakers in Congress’s lower chamber, the president pushed representatives from districts in blue states to drop their demands for a bigger State and Local Tax (Salt) deduction, and also sought to assuage moderates concerned that the legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, would hobble the Medicaid health insurance program.

“I think we have unbelievable unity. I think we’re going to get everything we want, and I think we’re going to have a great victory,” Trump said as he left the meeting.

But it is unclear if the president’s exhortations had the intended effect ahead of the Monday deadline that House speaker Mike Johnson has set to get the bill passed through the chamber, which Republicans control by a mere three votes. Following his meeting, at least one key lawmaker said he remained opposed to the bill as written, while others announced no changes to their position.

“As it stands right now, I do not support the bill,” said New York congressman Mike Lawler, one of the Republicans representing districts in Democratic-led states that are demanding a larger Salt deduction.

Read the full story by Chris Stein:

Donald Trump confirmed that Space Force general Michael Guetlein will oversee development of the ‘Golden Dome’ antimissile shield.

“We’re talking about $175bn total cost of this when it’s completed,” Trump said. “This is very important for the success and even survival of our country. It’s a very evil world out there.”

The project stems from a January executive order that called for an “Iron Dome for America”, taking cues from Israel’s Iron Dome, designed to counter short-range threats using technology. US military officials have described the Golden Dome as a “system of systems”, combining traditional defenses with emerging, largely untested technologies.

Trump said the “Golden Dome” will take two-and-a-half to three years to be completed.

Donald Trump announced $25bn for his “Golden Dome” defense initiative Tuesday afternoon.

The funding, included in what the president has dubbed his “big, beautiful bill”, will go toward an expansive air defense system designed to shield the entire US.

“This design for the Golden Dome will integrate with our existing defense capabilities, and should be fully operational before the end of my term,” Trump said. “Once fully constructed, the Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from the other side of the world, and even if they’re launched from space.”

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered a “comprehensive review” of the United States’ chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, an evacuation operation in which 13 US service members and 150 Afghans were killed at Kabul’s airport in an Islamic State bombing.

It was unclear how Hegseth’s review would differ from the many previous reviews that have been carried out – including by the US military, the state department and even Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in the House of Representatives.

Reuters reports that Hegseth could be accused of politicizing the matter. The Biden administration, which oversaw the 2021 pullout, mostly blamed the resulting chaos on a lack of planning and reductions in troops by the first Trump administration following a 2020 deal with the Taliban to withdraw American forces.

On the campaign trail, Trump frequently criticized Biden and his administration for the withdrawal.

In a memo, Hegseth said that after three months of reviewing the withdrawal, a comprehensive review was needed to ensure accountability for this event. He wrote:

This remains an important step toward regaining faith and trust with the American people and all those who wear the uniform and is prudent based on the number of casualties and equipment lost during the execution of this withdrawal operation.

In a statement accompanying the memo, he said Pentagon spokesperson and senior adviser Sean Parnell would lead the review. Other individuals who served in Afghanistan, such as Lt Col Stuart Scheller, who was publicly critical of the withdrawal while he was in the Marine Corps, would be a part of the review panel.

Senior US military officials, including then-defense secretary Lloyd Austin and then-top US general Mark Milley, have already appeared before lawmakers.

US Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, has also carried out an investigation into the Islamic State attack that killed the 13 US troops and dozens of Afghans during the last few days of the withdrawal.

Here is the clip of the Democratic senator Tim Kaine clashing with the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, over the Trump administration’s highly controversial move to admit 49 white South Africans to the US as “refugees”.

And here’s my colleague Robert Tait’s story:

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told the Senate foreign relations committee that the number of visas he has revoked was “probably in the thousands”, adding that he believed there was still more to do.

I don’t know the latest count, but we probably have more to do. A visa is not a right, it’s a privilege.

Earlier this morning, the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, couldn’t correctly state what habeas corpus is when pressed to define the concept by the Democratic US senator Maggie Hassan.

Asked what habeas corpus is, Noem claimed it’s “a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to –”.

As Hassan stated, habeas corpus is the principle that the government must provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people.

Noem went on to say she supported the constitutional right of the president to suspend habeas corpus but, as Hassan points out, that has never been done without the approval of Congress.

Here’s the very painful clip.

In an effort to pressure members of Congress to do more to reign in Doge’s “harmful and illegal cuts to federal programs”, a group of fired federal workers are sitting in on the House-side steps of the US Capitol.

According to the Fork Off Coalition, the group includes “federal employees illegally terminated by Doge; contractors on cancelled federal contracts; and other workers harmed by Doge”.

Earlier this morning, Donald Trump defended the justice department’s decision to charge the Democratic representative LaMonica McIver of New Jersey for allegedly assaulting law enforcement officers earlier this month.

McIver faces a felony assault charge over a physical confrontation with Ice officials outside an immigrant detention facility in New Jersey.

Pushing back on Democratic accusations that the Trump administration is pursuing charges for political purposes, the president alleged to reporters on Capitol Hill that McIver was “out of control”.

He added:

Those days are over. The days of woke are over. That woman – I have no idea who she is – was out of control. The days of that crap are over. We’re going to have law and order.

Politico writes: “The criminal complaint filed in US district court in Newark alleges McIver ‘slammed her forearm’ into one agent and ‘forcibly’ grabbed him. The Democratic congressmember is also accused of using ‘each of her forearms to forcibly strike’ another officer, according to the complaint, which includes multiple photos from video cameras worn by officers, as well as others mounted outside the facility.”

McIver and other Democratic politicians went to the Delany Hall detection center in Newark to protest its use to house immigrants, accusing the private prison company operating the facility of lacking the proper permits.

McIver has said she was the one who was assaulted by law enforcement as they arrested Newark mayor Ras Baraka.

Marco Rubio defends Trump administration’s admission of white Afrikaners as ‘refugees’

Robert Tait

The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, defended the Trump administration’s decision to admit 49 white Afrikaners from South Africa as refugees after Hillary Clinton’s former running mate, Tim Kaine, claimed they were getting preferential treatment because of their skin colour.

Kaine, a Democratic senator from Virginia, challenged Rubio to justify prioritising the Afrikaners while cancelling long-standing refugee programmes for other groups that have been more documented as victims of conflict or persecution.

The clash between the two men was Rubio’s most combative exchange in his first appearance before the Senate foreign relations committee since his unanimous approval by senators in confirmation hearing in January.

“Right now, the US refugee program allows a special program for Afrikaner farmers, the first group of whom arrived at Dulles airport in Virginia not long ago, while shutting off the refugee program for everyone else,” said Kaine.

Do you think Afrikaner farmers are the most persecuted group in the world?

In response, Rubio said:

I think those 49 people that came surely felt they were persecuted, and they’ve passed every sort of check mark that had to be checked off in terms of meeting their requirements for that. They live in a country where farms are taken, the land is taken, on a racial basis.

Trump has falsely asserted that white farmers in South Africa are undergoing a “genocide”.

Kaine asked why Afrikaners were more important than the Uyghurs or Rohingyas, who have faced intense persecution in China and Myanmar respectively, and cited the cases of political dissidents in Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, as well as Afghans under the Taliban.

“The problem we face there is the volume problem,” Rubio said.

If you look at all the persecuted people of the world, it’s millions of people. They can’t all come here.

Asked why Afrikaners were a special case, he said:

Because it’s a small subset, it’s a new issue, and the president identified it as a problem and wanted to use it as an example. But that’s different from having these refugee programs that were basically spending money to put people up in communities and accommodate them, and it was acting as a magnet to millions of people.

Kaine called the claims of persecution against Afrikaner farmers “completely specious” and pointed to the existence of Afrikaner ministers in South Africa’s coalition government, including the minister for agriculture.

He also contrasted the current refugee designation of Afrikaners with the absence of such a programme for the country’s Black majority during the apartheid era.

“There never has been a special programme for Africans to come in as refugees to the United States,” Kaine said, pointing out that special categories were allowed for people being persecuted for religious reasons under communist regimes. “[But] we’ve never allowed a special program to allow Africans into the United States in an expedited refugee status until now,” he said, “Afrikaner farmers living in a nation governed by a government of national unity that includes the main Afrikaner party.”

Referring to the US statutory standard of recognising a refugee claim as being a “well-justified fear of persecution”, Kaine asked:

Should that be applied in an evenhanded way? For example, should we say if you’re persecuted on the grounds of your religion, we’ll let you in if you’re a Christian but not a Muslim?

Rubio replied that US foreign policy did not require evenhandedness, adding:

The United States has a right to allow into this country and prioritise allowance of who they want to allow to come in. We’re going to prioritise people coming into our country on the basis of what’s in the interests of this country. That’s a small number of people that are coming.

Kaine responded: “So you have a different standard based on the color of somebody’s skin. Would that be acceptable?”

Rubio replied:

You’re the one talking about the colour of their skin, not me.

Trump’s budget cancels billions of dollars in infrastructure investments, environmental programs, research grants, and renewable energy. Maine representative Chellie Marie Pingree on Tuesday said this would amount to “effectively gutting this critical this critical sector”.

“This disregards the climate change concerns that we have,” she said to interior secretary Doug Burgum at a House committee hearing.

Scientists have long warned that world leaders must urgently phase out fossil fuels and boost green technology to avert the worse possible consequences of the climate crisis. But Burgum said that is not the threat the Trump administration is worried about.

“The existential threats that this administrations is focusing on are: Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon, and we can’t lose the AI arms race to China,” he said. “That’s the number one and number two. And if we solve those two things, then we, then we will, we will have plenty of time to solve any issues related to, you know, potential temperature change.

Oklahoma’s Tom Cole, the chair of the committee, claimed Biden’s “misnamed inflation Reduction Act and the American Rescue Plan” both “ignited the worst inflation outburst in 40 years.” These policies likely resulted in Trump’s re-election, he claimed.

But research shows that inflation dropped after the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, and that it enjoys widespread support.

Trump administration ‘making mockery’ of US refugee process by granting asylum to Afrikaners, says senator Chris Van Hollen

Faisal Ali

US senator Chris Van Hollen has accused the Trump administration of “making a mockery” of the US refugee process, turning it into a system of “global apartheid” by granting asylum status to white Afrikaners, while turning away refugees from war-torn countries, including Sudan, where he said a genocide is currently unfolding.

The first group of 59 Afrikaners began arriving in the US last week after Trump claimed the Afrikaners were victims of “unjust racial discrimination” and granted them asylum status. The move comes as the US has lifted legal protections in the US for refugees from many war torn countries.

Speaking in a Senate foreign relations committee hearing, Van Hollen, a Democrat, said he had voted to confirm Marco Rubio because he believed the secretary of state would defend democracy and human rights abroad — but said that he had “done the opposite”.

Van Hollen contrasted the decision by the Trump administration to dismantle the majority of USAID’s foreign assistance programs with the decision to allow Afrikaners to claim asylum in the US, calling it “despicable”.

You try to block the admission of people who have already been approved as refugees, while making bogus claims to justify such status to Afrikaners. You’ve made a mockery of our country’s refugee process turning it into a system of global apartheid.

Charles Kushner, the father of Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared, has secured US Senate confirmation to serve as the nation’s ambassador to France.

The elder Kushner’s confirmation late on Monday came a little more than four years after Trump, during his first presidency, pardoned him from his conviction on charges of tax evasion and other federal crimes.

Cory Booker of New Jersey was the only Democratic senator to vote in support of the nomination. His vote came after Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump – his wife and the president’s daughter – held a fundraiser for Booker as he successfully ran for the Senate in 2013.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska defected from her fellow Senate Republicans to vote against Charles Kushner’s appointment to the French ambassadorship, though that did not impede him from being confirmed by a 51-45 vote.

Kushner had been asked about his crimes during his confirmation hearing before the Senate foreign relations committee.

He pleaded guilty in 2005 to 18 charges that included tax evasion, retaliating against a federal witness and making false statements to the Federal Election Commission. The witness tampering charge involved his hiring a sex worker to seduce his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities. Kushner arranged to secretly record the encounter between the sex worker and his brother-in-law and then send the footage to his sister, the other man’s wife.

Trump pardoned Kushner for those crimes in December 2020 after Joe Biden had defeated him in that year’s election.

“My misjudgment and mistake was over 20 years ago,” Kushner said. “Since then, I’ve been pardoned by President Trump. But I don’t sit here before you today and tell you I’m a perfect person. I am not a perfect person. I made a very very, very serious mistake, and I paid a very heavy price for that mistake.”

The United States has expressed to the United Arab Emirates and other countries that they are turning the conflict in Sudan into a proxy war, secretary of state Marco Rubio told the Senate foreign relations committee earlier.

Rubio also said that Washington wanted to appoint a special envoy for Sudan but needed to find the right person.

Robert F Kennedy Jr said earlier that the MAHA commission report Donald Trump tasked him producing would come out on Thursday.

Trump signed an executive order to establish a commission to “Make America Healthy Again,” during Kennedy’s swearing in ceremony on 13 February and tasked it with investigating chronic illness and delivering an action plan to fight childhood diseases, starting with a report due within 100 days.

“You’ll see the report. It’s going to be released on Thursday. Everybody will see the report,” Kennedy told the Senate appropriations committee hearing in response to questions about the contents of the report and its impact on agriculture.

Earlier today, Donald Trump pressed Republicans in Congress to unite behind his sweeping tax-cut bill, but – despite his very optimistic front – apparently failed to convince a handful of holdouts who could still block a package that encompasses much of his domestic agenda.

In a closed-door meeting on Capitol Hill, Trump bluntly warned Republicans in the House of Representatives not to press for further changes to the sprawling bill, which would cut taxes and tighten eligibility for the Medicaid health program.

He strongly cautioned against further plans to make it more difficult for people to access Medicaid, a program for low-income Americans. One person in the room told Reuters Trump told the holdouts:

Don’t fuck around with Medicaid.

He also discouraged Republicans from seeking further carve-outs for state and local tax payments (SALT) – a niche issue that is especially important for moderate Republicans in high-tax states like California and New York.

But Trump failed to convince some lawmakers who are pushing for those provisions.

“The president I don’t think convinced enough people that the bill is adequate the way it is,” said Republican representative Andy Harris of Maryland, who leads the hard-right House Freedom Caucus and has been pushing for further Medicaid cuts.

Republican representative Mike Lawler, a New York moderate who is pushing to raise limits on deductions for state and local tax payments, likewise said Trump did not change his mind.

As it stands right now, I do not support the bill.

After the meeting, Trump predicted the package would ultimately pass the House, which Republicans control by a narrow majority of 220-213. “It was a meeting of love,” he said. He did not address Harris’ concerns.

Freedom Caucus members have been pushing for new work requirements on some Medicaid recipients to kick in earlier than is planned for 2029. But centrists have fought to protect the program, warning that steep cuts could imperil their majority in the 2026 congressional elections.

Trump said afterward the bill would eliminate “waste, fraud and abuse” in Medicaid but would not cause people to lose coverage.

Trump is pressing for every House Republican to vote for the bill, according to a White House official. As he arrived at the Capitol, Trump said Republican lawmakers who vote against it could “possibly” face a primary challenge in next year’s congressional elections.