President orders Pentagon to scale back ‘inappropriate and hostile’ exercises with South Korea
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US president Donald Trump said he ordered the Pentagon to scale back “inappropriate and hostile” military drills with South Korea, hours before the exercises began on Monday.
Andy Burnham exchanged messages with someone impersonating Donald Trump’s chief of staff, the Guardian understands. The UK prime minister was in contact with an unknown individual pretending to be the senior White House aide Susie Wiles before concerns were raised about the incident. No messages of significance were sent and the suspicious activity was quickly reported to the appropriate authorities, it is understood.
Donald Trump’s son-in-law and envoy, Jared Kushner, held a rare meeting with Hamas’s political chief on Sunday in Egypt, in a new diplomatic effort to make progress in the stalled Gaza ceasefire. Kushner will meet on Monday with Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under pressure after rejecting the new 15-point, US-backed road map.
Republican senator Bill Cassidy – a medical doctor who voted to confirm anti-vaccine activist Robert F Kennedy as federal health secretary in early 2025 – on Sunday denounced Donald Trump’s “crazy, stupid” claims about the safety of the combined MMR vaccine for undermining faith in immunization.
Democrats on Sunday intensified their demands for answers from the Trump administration over conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln as the aircraft carrier’s nearly nine-month deployment continued fueling concern over crew morale, mental health and living conditions.
US attorney general Todd Blanche on Sunday declined to assure that the federal justice department he helms would always act independently of the White House and Donald Trump. “No, I’m not going to pledge that,” he said when asked about the topic by NBC’s Meet the Press host, Kristen Welker. “And no attorney general should ever pledge that.”
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