The billionaire and his Silicon Valley associates landed in the capital and immediately moved to cut the size of the federal government, reprising the playbook he used after buying Twitter in 2022.
Caroline Kennedy, a former U.S. ambassador and the only living child of President John F. Kennedy, urged senators Tuesday not to confirm her cousin Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as President Donald Trump’s health secretary. In a letter she later read aloud on social media, she called her cousin a “predator” who holds hypocritical and “dangerous” medical views.
His niece Dr. Kerry Kennedy Meltzer also made a bid at “derailing his nomination” Tuesday, Stat News said, sharing a “trove of private emails” showing her uncle “making false claims about Covid-19 vaccines,” flu shots and autism “in unguarded, personal moments.”
“I have known Bobby my whole life,” and “it’s no surprise that he keeps birds of prey as pets because he himself is a predator,” Caroline Kennedy said. “His basement, his garage, his dorm room were the centers of the action where drugs were available, and he enjoyed showing off how he put baby chickens and mice in the blender to feed his hawks. It was often a perverse scene of despair and violence.”
The siblings and cousins that Robert Kennedy “encouraged down the path of substance abuse suffered addiction, illness and death” while he rebounded to “misrepresent, lie and cheat his way through life,” she said. And he is now “addicted to attention and power,” profiting off his damaging “crusade against vaccination ” even as he vaccinated his own children.
Kennedy is among Trump’s “most vulnerable Cabinet nominees ,” The Washington Post said. Caroline Kennedy’s “testimonial may not sway Republicans,” but “it could shore up Democrats’ opposition.”
Caroline Kennedy’s “searing public denunciation of her cousin” was all the more “devastating” because she has “kept quiet” and avoided the spotlight for decades, The New York Times said. Her astute “timing all but ensures her concerns will be aired” in Kennedy’s Senate confirmation hearings Wednesday and Thursday.
The Justice Department (DOJ) on Wednesday moved to dismiss former special counsel Jack Smith’s case against Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, President Trump’s co-defendants
Anthony Davis will sit out at least a week after suffering an abdominal injury in the first quarter of the Lakers’ loss to Philadelphia on Tuesday.
Anwar ul-Haq confessed to shooting his 15-year-old daughter after she continued with her ‘objectionable’ postsA man who had recently brought his family back to Pakistan
A public showdown between the leaders of the US and Colombia has rippled across Latin America, increasing the anxiety many nations felt about the return of Donald Trump.
On Sunday, Trump imposed 25% tariffs on trade with Colombia after President Gustavo Petro turned back US military flights carrying deported Colombian migrants. The “dramatic clash” unsettled a region already reeling from Trump’s threatened tariffs on Mexico, his anti-immigration policies , and his threat to take control of the Panama Canal , said the Financial Times . China will likely view Trump’s unpredictability as “an ideal opportunity”.
The “dust-up” showed yet again that Latin America will “bear the brunt” of Trump’s policies, said CNN ‘s Patrick Oppmann. The rift “immediately galvanised” the region, with some leaders “quick to cheer Petro on”.
Latin America accounts for 21.3% of the US’s foreign trade, according to the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean : more than $1 trillion. By treating Latin American nations as if they were “still banana republics that would bend over backward to fulfil the US government’s wishes”, wrote Cruz Bonlarron Martínez in The Hill , Trump “gravely underestimates their power as a united bloc”.
But it’s not a united bloc, said Flavia Bellieni Zimmermann in the Australian Institute of International Affairs . Trump can call on two “key strategic allies”, including Argentina’s Maga-adjacent Javier Milei and Brazil’s former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro, who is seeking a comeback.
So far, Brazil’s centre-left President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has taken a “cautious approach” towards Trump, said Andre Pagliarini in The New Republic . There is currently “no clear coordinated strategy among Latin American leaders” for dealing with Trump.
Perhaps, but most “do not like how the US government is behaving”, said Quico Toro in The Atlantic . “Trump’s hyper-aggressive approach to Latin America risks tying up the region with a bow and leaving it on Beijing’s doorstep.”
Xiomara Castro, the president of Honduras and head of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), called an emergency summit of the region’s leaders following a request from Petro, which takes place tomorrow. The summit of the “leftist” regional body could “revive a unified anti-Trump block”, said CNN’s Oppmann.
Regardless of Trump’s threats, Latin American leaders are unlikely to defer to Trump, said Michael Shifter, a fellow at the Inter-American Dialogue think-tank in Washington.
“Celac is the platform for China in Latin America,” he told the FT. The summit is “a kind of proxy for showing [Washington] that if [it is] really going to punish us, then China’s willing to fill the gap”.
Princess Beatrice, who is ninth in line to the British throne, has welcomed her second child with her husband, millionaire property tycoon Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi.
Robert Menendez, a former senator from New Jersey, faces a potentially lengthy prison sentence after his conviction on federal corruption charges.
In the past few days, a crucial part of Donald Trump’s promise to carry out mass deportations — the deportations — have faced hurdles. We examined how deportation flights work and what happens when countries don’t accept deported migrants.