(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday sent a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin telling him to make a deal now to end the war in Ukraine, threatening economic consequences if he doesn’t.
“It’s time to ‘MAKE A DEAL.’ NO MORE LIVES SHOULD BE LOST!!!” Trump wrote in a new social media post.
Trump indicated that if a deal isn’t made quickly, he would place high levels of taxes, tariffs and sanctions on Russia.
“Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT’S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don’t make a “deal,” and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries,” Trump said.
Trump then threatened that it can be done “the easy way, or the hard way.”
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on Monday night, Trump indicated he’d be speaking with Russian President Vladimir Putin in person.
“I’ll be meeting with President Putin,” Trump said, but didn’t say when that might happen.
Trump also indicated that Ukrainian President Volodymr Zelenskyy was willing to come to the negotiating table, but is unsure if Putin would, too.
“He told me he wants to make a deal. He wants to make — Zelenskyy wants to make a deal. I don’t know if Putin does,” Trump said.
During the ABC News debate in September, Trump claimed he would settle the war between Russia and Ukraine before he got into office.
At one point, he had also signaled that the war would be over within 24 hours of becoming president.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg; Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts pushed back against President Donald Trump’s call to impeach a judge whose ruling conflict with his administration’s priorities.
In a statement on Tuesday, Roberts issued a rare statement after Trump hurled insults at the federal judge who conducted a “fact-finding” hearing on Monday over whether the Trump administration knowingly violated a court order when it handed over more than 200 alleged gang members to El Salvadoran authorities over the weekend.
“This judge, like many of the Crooked Judges’ I am forced to appear before, should be IMPEACHED!!!” Trump wrote. “WE DON’T WANT VICIOUS, VIOLENT, AND DEMENTED CRIMINALS, MANY OF THEM DERANGED MURDERERS, IN OUR COUNTRY.”
“For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision,” Roberts said in the statement. “The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”
The statement signals a stark difference in opinion between the judicial and executive branches.
Trump argued on Tuesday that he should not be prevented from carrying out his immigration agenda, saying “I’m just doing what the VOTERS wanted me to do.”
Trump’s comments about Boasberg came after the federal judge blocked the Trump administration from deporting any noncitizens after the president’s recent proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
Boasberg, in verbal instructions during a hearing on Saturday, gave orders to immediately turn around two planes carrying noncitizens if they are covered by his order, including one that potentially took off during a break in the court’s hearing. However, sources said top lawyers and officials in the administration made the determination that since the flights were over international waters, Boasberg’s order did not apply, and the planes were not turned around.
On Monday, Boasberg questioned whether the Trump administration ignored his orders to turn the planes around, saying it was “heck of a stretch” for them to argue that his order could be disregarded.
Deputy Associate Attorney General Abhishek Kambli argued Monday during the “fact-finding” hearing convened by Boasberg that the judge’s directive on Saturday evening to turn around the flights did not take effect until it was put in writing later that evening.
Boasberg ordered the Justice Department to submit, by noon Tuesday, a sworn declaration of what they represented in a filing Monday — that a third flight that took off after his written order on Saturday carried detainees who were removable on grounds other than the Alien Enemies Act.
ABC News’ Devin Dwyer and Sarah Beth Hensley contributed to this report.
Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said on Sunday that he took issue with the Democratic response in the chamber to President Donald Trump’s wide-ranging address to Congress last week.
“I think the lack of a coordinated response in the State of the Union was a mistake, and frankly, it took the focus off of where it should have been, which is on the fact that the president spoke for an hour and 40 minutes and had nothing to say about what he would do to bring down costs for American families that were watching that lengthy address sitting at the kitchen table, hoping that he would offer something to help them afford a new home or pay the rent to afford health care or child care,” Schiff said on “This Week.”
Democratic lawmakers participated in various protests during Trump’s speech. Some female members of Congress wore hot pink to show resistance. Other Democratic members held signs that called out Elon Musk. Some decided to boycott the speech or leave early.
Schiff refuted Democratic strategist James Carville’s recent proposal in a New York Times op-ed that Democrats should “roll over and play dead” and wait for Republicans “to crumble beneath their own weight,” with the California senator instead saying that the right approach is focusing on “the economic well-being of Americans.”
“We need to have our own broad, bold agenda … to answer really the central question which is, if you’re working hard in America, can you still earn a good living?” said Schiff. “We need to be advancing policies and making the arguments about what we have to offer, not simply standing back and letting them collapse of our own corrupt weight. We need to effectively use litigation as we are. We need to effectively use communication to talk to new people in new ways as we are.”
Schiff also expressed frustration and disapproval of Trump’s whiplash tariff agenda.
Trump on Tuesday imposed a 25% tariff on goods coming from Canada or Mexico. The following day, he issued a one-month delay for auto parts. By Friday, Trump signed an executive order that extended the delay to all products under the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, USMCA, which is a free trade agreement signed during Trump’s first term. Roughly half of Mexican imports fall under USMCA and about 38% of imports from Canada fall under the agreement.
Schiff said that Democrats have to start responding to Trump’s tariffs and economic policies more effectively.
“This is deeply destructive, what they’re doing,” he said. “We need to make that case to the American people, because they’re going to feel it. But, you know, taking our eye off the ball, I think, is very dangerous, and so let’s be focused on what matters most to Americans. Let’s point out all the destructive harms they’re doing with you know, the cutting of services, the slashing of Medicaid, and what that’s going to mean for increased health costs and less access for people.”
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Six weeks into his presidency, Donald Trump addressed Congress and the nation Tuesday evening, laying out his goals for the next four years.
ABC News, along with PolitiFact, live fact-checked Trump’s speech statements that were exaggerated, needed more context or were false.
TRUMP CLAIM: Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control—and we are working hard to get it back down.
FACT-CHECK: Lacking context.
Though egg prices did increase under President Joe Biden, they have recently surged under Trump too — and that’s because of bird flu, which has led to the deaths of 136 million birds since 2022, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation.
While the price of eggs was consistently rising due to inflation under Biden’s administration, the first significant price hike occurred in 2022, when bird flu began infecting flocks of birds in the U.S. Egg prices rose from $1.93 per dozen to $4.82 per dozen over the course of just that one year, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The prices moderated again, back down to the $2-$3 range during the rest of Biden’s presidency — but have shot back up to a record-high $4.95 this January, again due to bird flu.
-ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett
TRUMP CLAIM: Trump won a mandate in the election
FACT-CHECK: This is in the eye of the beholder.
Trump’s victory was clear, but by historical standards, it was no landslide.
Trump has reason to celebrate winning both the Electoral College and the popular vote. In fact, he became only the second Republican to win the popular vote since 1988, after George W. Bush in his 2004 reelection win. Trump won each of the seven battleground states that political analysts said would decide the election.
In addition, the vast majority of U.S. counties saw their margins shift in Trump’s direction, both in places where Republicans historically do well and places where Democrats generally have an edge.On the other hand, Trump’s margins of victory — both in raw votes and in percentages — were small by historical standards, even for the past quarter century, when close elections have been the rule, including the 2000 Florida recount election and Trump’s previous two races in 2016 and 2020.
Trump’s victory also came without a big boost for down-ballot Republicans. Republicans lost a little ground in the House, which was already narrowly divided, and while Republicans flipped the Senate, Democrats won four Senate races in key battleground states even as former Vice President Kamala Harris was losing those states to Trump.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
TRUMP CLAIM: “We ended the last administration’s insane electric vehicle mandate, saving our auto workers and companies from economic destruction.”
FACT-CHECK: Needs context.
There was no electric vehicle mandate put in place by the Biden administration. The Biden Environmental Protection Agency implemented tailpipe emissions standards last March that established an average of allowed emissions across a vehicle manufacturer’s entire fleet of offered vehicles.
The standards would have only impacted cars from model years 2027 to 2032. The standards allowed for a range of useable technologies, including fully electric cars, hybrids and improved internal combustion engines. Trump did sign an executive order on his first day in office to revoke these new standards.
-ABC News’ Kelly Livingston
TRUMP CLAIM: The Paris Climate Accord was costing the U.S. “trillions”
FACT-CHECK: False.
Trump defended his decision to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, saying the pact was costing the U.S. “trillions of dollars.”
That’s untrue.
The Trump administration defended the decision to withdraw from the climate agreement, in part, based on projections by consultant NERA Economic Consulting. It concluded that restrictions on fossil fuel emissions would result in a higher cost of production, and a higher cost of production would translate into the closure of uncompetitive manufacturing businesses. Those closures, in turn, would mean fewer manufacturing jobs.
The consultant estimated that these losses and their knock-on effects beyond the manufacturing sector would amount to 1.1 million jobs lost by 2025 and 6.5 million by 2040. The loss of jobs results in a corresponding decline in gross domestic product, with a loss of $250 billion by 2025 that accelerates to $3 trillion by 2040.
So the climate agreement wasn’t costing the U.S. trillions of dollars. It hypothetically could.
But even if it did, the study says that the long-term projections did not factor in all of the offsetting job gains and GDP growth associated with a clean tech transition.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
TRUMP CLAIM: Elon Musk found people in the Social Security system as old as 369
FACT-CHECK: This is misleading.
Elon Musk shared a chart on X and said he found millions of people in a Social Security database over the age of 110, including 1 who was in the 360-369 age bracket.
The acting Social Security commissioner said that people older than 100 who do not have a date of death associated with their Social Security record “are not necessarily receiving benefits.” Recent Social Security Administration data shows that about 89,000 people aged 99 and older receive Social Security payments.
Government databases may classify someone as 150 years old for reasons peculiar to the complex Social Security database or because of missing data, but that doesn’t mean that millions of payments are delivered fraudulently to people with implausible ages.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
TRUMP CLAIM: “Gold cards” don’t need congressional approval
FACT-CHECK: Misleading.
Immigration experts say Trump can neither create a new green card program nor shut down an existing one without congressional action.
Trump announced a plan to give people legal permanent residency in the U.S. if they pay $5 million. The so-called “gold card” would be similar to a green card in that it would let people live and work in the U.S. permanently and provide a pathway to citizenship.
Trump has described the program as a way to cut the U.S. deficit and has said it would replace the EB-5 immigrant investor visa program. But he hasn’t provided an official document creating the program.
-PolitiFact’s Aaron Sharockman
TRUMP CLAIM: “Hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud” found by DOGE
FACT-CHECK: This is unverifiable.
This claim is unverifiable because DOGE has yet to release the entirety of its work or specify which cuts have been “fraud” as opposed to “waste.” DOGE has claimed to have saved $106 billion in total savings, not “hundreds of billions” in fraud, and even Elon Musk himself has said they have mostly found “waste” and “mostly not fraud.”
DOGE has claimed it has saved a total of $106 billion in federal money from a “combination of asset sales, contract/lease cancellations and renegotiations, fraud and improper payment deletion, grant cancellations, interest savings, programmatic changes, regulatory savings, and workforce reductions.” The figure remains unverifiable and DOGE’s website claims to have posted only 30% of the receipts supporting this total.
Even Musk himself said on Joe Rogan’s podcast last week that most of what DOGE is finding is “waste,” rather than outright fraud. “Only the federal government could get away with this level of waste. It’s mostly waste. It’s mostly not fraud, it’s mostly waste. It’s mostly just ridiculous things happening,” Musk said.
-ABC News’ Soo Rin Kim and Will Steakin
TRUMP CLAIM: There will be a little disturbance for Americans because of tariffs
FACT-CHECK: Lacking context.
The Yale Budget Lab estimates that the tariffs could cost the average household up to $2,000 annually. Cars and car parts are big exports from Canada and Mexico, and tariffs could increase the cost of a new car by over $3,000 per vehicle on top of last year’s average new car price of $44,811, according to JP Morgan Research. Most economists predict that prices, and therefore, inflation will go up, with consumers seeing higher prices for food, gasoline, clothes, shoes, toys and other household items.
-ABC News’ Soo Youn
TRUMP CLAIM: “Not long ago … 1 in 10,000 children had autism. Now it’s 1 in 36. There’s something wrong”
FACT-CHECK: Partially true but lacking context.
It’s unclear where Trump — and Kennedy, who repeats the same stat often — got the 1 in 10,000 number, though he is correct about the current number, which is 1 in 36, and he is correct that autism cases are rising.
In 2000, approximately 1 in 150 children in the U.S. born in 1992 were diagnosed with autism compared with 2020, during which one in 36 children born in 2012 were diagnosed, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Some psychiatrists and autism experts told ABC News it’s important to highlight the rising rates of autism, and that at least Trump and Kennedy are putting a spotlight on it.
“On the bright side, I think it is really important to place an emphasis on these very high rates,” Dr. Karen Pierce, a professor in the department of neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego and co-director of the UCSD Autism Center of Excellence, told ABC News.
-ABC News’ Mary Kekatos
TRUMP CLAIM: Mexican authorities handed over 29 of the biggest cartel leaders because of tariffs imposed on them, “They want to make us happy”
FACT-CHECK: True
Last week, while the Mexican security cabinet and the Mexican economy secretary were in D.C. for bilateral meetings with their U.S. counterparts to negotiate ahead of the possible imposition of U.S. tariffs on Mexico, Mexico announced they were handing over 29 criminals to the U.S.
One of these criminals had been requested by the U.S. for decades, Rafael Caro Quintero. He was wanted for the murder of DEA’s agent Kiki Camarena back in 1985.
While some of these criminals had their extradition suspended by Mexican judges, others had been detained for less than a week without the option to fight back their extradition in Mexico before they were sent to the US.
Although the Mexican government definitely bent some Mexican laws and were highly questioned, they defended the move by saying this was a matter of national security and that they acted within hours after receiving a request from the U.S. government.
Many in Mexico saw the move as a way to please President Trump and convince him to suspend or cancel the U.S. tariffs against Mexico.
-ABC News’ Anne Laurent
TRUMP CLAIM: India charges US auto tariffs higher than 100%, China’s average tariffs on our products is twice what we charge them, and South Korea’s average tariff is four times higher.
FACT-CHECK: False
India has historically imposed high tariffs on imported vehicles with rates as high as 125% but in a bid to improve trade relations with the U.S. they have reduced the highest rates on luxury cars from 150% to 70%. With other surcharges the tariffs still stands above 100% but the Indian government are actively reviewing their import tariffs.
China’s tariffs are actively changing due in part to the tit-for-tat trade war with the Trump Administration.
South Korea’s average tariff rate is around 13.4%. However, the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement signed in 2007 (effective 2012) reduced or eliminated most of the tariffs between the two countries. South Korea claims that as of 2024, the average tariff rate on imports from the U.S. is approximately 0.79% based on the effective tariff rate before duty refunds.
-ABC News’ Karson Yiu
TRUMP CLAIM: The U.S. has “spent perhaps $350 billion” on supporting Ukraine’s defense
FACT-CHECK: False
According to the special inspector general responsible for overseeing the spending related to the war in Ukraine, Congress has appropriated or otherwise made available $182.75 billion for the overall U.S. response to the war since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Of that money, about $119 billion has been for the direct benefit of Ukraine, including approximately $65.9 billion in military assistance.
White House officials have offered various explanations for how the Trump administration has arrived at the significantly higher figure of $350 billion, but most of the arguments rely on dubious logic–such as factoring in inflation–which has no bearing on the actual dollar amount appropriated by Congress.
Trump also said Europe has spent “$100 billion” on supporting Ukraine’s war effort; according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, European countries have spent around $140 billion to back Kyiv, and pledged another roughly $120 billion to the cause.
