May

Trump makes baseless claims about white genocide in chaotic meeting with South Africa’s president – live | Trump administration

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The day so far

Another day, another shocking Oval Office meeting between Trump and a world leader. This time it was South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa, who was ambushed by the US president; Trump requested dimmed lights for video footage to be played purporting to show anti-white violence in the country and relentlessly peddled false accusations of “genocide” and Afrikaners being “executed” as justification for admitting them into the US as refugees. As if that wasn’t bad enough, Trump then held up printouts of news articles about what he said were killings of white South Africans, repeating “death, death, death” as he flipped through the pages.

In an effort to diffuse the chaos, Ramaphosa kept composed as he tried to explain to Trump that while violent crime affects people of all races in his country most victims are black, white people are not being persecuted there, and his government is trying to redress the enduring injustices of South Africa’s apartheid past. He even quipped that he was sorry he didn’t have a plane to give Trump, to which Trump said he wished he did. Ramaphosa said he was willing to talk with him about his concerns “outside of the media” – which is worth noting given the feeling expressed by many that Trump and JD Vance’s bust-up with Volodymyr Zelenskyy back in February was very much a made-for-TV humiliation of Ukraine’s president.

In other news:

The Trump administration formally accepted the controversial gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner from the government of Qatar, and directed the air force to assess how quickly the plane can be upgraded for possible use as a new Air Force One. The offer of the jet has set off a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of Trump, particularly following the president’s visit to the country last week to arrange US business deals. Here’s our write-up.
A federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier. US district judge Brian E Murphy made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent deportation of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries. On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the administration could not let a group of migrants being deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities. My colleague Maya Yang has the story.
The justice department moved to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, after the death of Breonna Taylor, saying it does not want to pursue the cases. The move shows how the civil rights division of the justice department is changing rapidly under Donald Trump, dismantling Biden-era work and investigating diversity programs. It also comes amid pressure on the right to recast Floyd’s murder, undermine diversity efforts and define liberal-run cities like Minneapolis as crime-ridden. Full story here.
The US army said it has no plans to recognize Donald Trump’s birthday on 14 June when he presides over part of the army’s celebrations of its 250th anniversary. Trump, who is turning 79 on the same day, will play a big role in the celebrations, which will cost between $25m and $45m, will see the army hold a parade down Washington’s Constitution Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares that cuts through the capital. The parade was not part of the original planning for the 14 June celebrations and was added this year, stoking criticism from Democratic lawmakers and others that Trump has hijacked the event. More here.
Trump nominated Darryl Nirenberg, a lawyer and former Senate staffer, to serve as the next US ambassador to Romania. Nirenberg, a longtime Washington lawyer currently at Steptoe LLP law firm, was chief of staff for late Republican senator Jesse Helms and was a counsel for the Senate foreign relations committee. The nomination will require Senate approval.
A federal judge rejected a bid by the US treasury department to cancel a union contract covering tens of thousands of IRS staff, in an early blow to Trump’s efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many federal workers. More on that here.
Democratic US representative Gerry Connolly died aged 75, his family said in a statement posted to his account on X this morning following the Virginia lawmaker’s cancer diagnosis last year. At the end of last month, Connolly announced he would be retiring from Congress at the end of this term and stepping back from his role as ranking member on the House oversight committee after finding out his cancer had returned. He died peacefully at home surrounded by family, their statement said.

Key events

Nesrine Malik

Here is an extract from this week’s edition of The Long Wave by my colleague Nesrine Malik that I think provides helpful context for what we witnessed in the Oval Office today. And if you haven’t already (!) you can sign up for the newsletter here.

Since the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump has made white farmers in South Africa one of his pet projects. It is an obsession that dates to his first term, where he amplified allegations by some Afrikaners that they are victims of “mass killings” and suffer from violence and discrimination by vengeful Black South Africans. There is nothing to support this claim. And yet, in March, Trump expelled the South African ambassador to the US, cut off aid and extended an invitation for political asylum to white farmers, even as the US all but halts all refugee admissions to the country. The first of those white South African “refugees” arrived in the US two weeks ago.

The source of this odd fixation is those around Trump, who “doesn’t have a sense of the world outside the United States” Jonathan Jansen, a professor of education in Stellenbosch, tells me, adding: “To know about South Africa, let alone its politics, [the president] must have whisperers,” who are telling him that there is a “white genocide”. Jansen suspects one of those is the South African-born Elon Musk, who has “a grievance against the country”.

Jansen believes South Africa’s hard line against Israel has fuelled animosity in Washington. Taking the Israeli government to the international court of justice “is not cool in the world of Trump”. I suggest a provocative factor may also have been how uncompromising and measured the South African government has been on the issue of white farmers when goaded by Trump. “This is true,” Jansen says. “[Cyril] Ramaphosa, with all his faults – and they are many – is a man of restraint.”

Despite the media focus on the [white supremacy] issue, Jansen calls for some perspective. He says that some white South Africans who claim racial discrimination are a small group of people who nurse an inflated sense of resentment because they still cannot accept that apartheid is over. “There are grievances with a Black government, which is very hard for some of my white brothers and sisters to accept, even after 30 years.”

Jansen says if one is to consider violent crime, “more Black people die than white people, even as a proportion of the population. Make no mistake, these are white supremacists who are drawn to a white supremacist. Their capacity for reflection is not very high.”

Despite the understanding in South Africa that the issue of white discrimination is a political stunt, Jansen notes the galling hypocrisy of it all, considering the effort that Black South Africans made to ensure peace after apartheid. “What riles is that you’re giving attention to people who for 350 years were oppressing us. My argument is: don’t get into a tizzy. But I also regard it quite seriously as a slap in the face for Black South Africans.”

The narrative that Black people now hold power over whites is a fiction that obscures the enduring suffering of apartheid. “Nothing has really changed for Black South Africans apart from the right to vote,” Jansen says. “Many still live in shacks. They still suffer food insecurity. They still have the highest rates of unemployment. We made these enormous concessions during the negotiations to avert a war under Mandela. Whites here would be treated, as they always were, as fellow citizens as opposed to colonisers. And then, on top of all of that, [there was] a truth and reconciliation commission during which people got away with murder – literally.”

On a personal level, Jansen says he will not hide the fact that he feels hurt. But there is comfort in the fact that “among ordinary Black South Africans, they don’t think this is worth spending time on … and the overwhelming majority of white South Africans really just want to make this country work. One sees this moment for what it is. There is another reality out there.”

Here’s my colleague David Smith’s write-up of the most tense Oval Office encounter since Trump’s bullying of Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February. In this encounter, Cyril Ramaphosa refused to take the bait as Trump ambushed him with false claims of white “genocide” and suggested that they “talk about it very calmly”.

David writes:

The biggest bone of contention [for the Trump administration] has been a South African land-expropriation law signed in January that aims to redress the historical inequalities of white minority rule. Ramaphosa denied that the law will be used to arbitrarily confiscate white-owned land, insisting that all South Africans are protected by the constitution.

And right at the end of David’s story is this helpful reminder of the post-apartheid context:

South Africa is one of the most unequal societies in the world. White people make up 7% of the country’s population but own at least half of the land. They are also better off economically by almost every measure.

Read the full story here:

The day so far

In other news:

The Trump administration formally accepted the controversial gift of a Boeing 747 jetliner from the government of Qatar, and directed the air force to assess how quickly the plane can be upgraded for possible use as a new Air Force One. The offer of the jet has set off a firestorm of bipartisan criticism of Trump, particularly following the president’s visit to the country last week to arrange US business deals. Here’s our write-up.
A federal judge ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier. US district judge Brian E Murphy made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent deportation of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries. On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the administration could not let a group of migrants being deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities. My colleague Maya Yang has the story.
The justice department moved to cancel a settlement with Minneapolis that called for an overhaul of its police department following the murder of George Floyd, as well as a similar agreement with Louisville, Kentucky, after the death of Breonna Taylor, saying it does not want to pursue the cases. The move shows how the civil rights division of the justice department is changing rapidly under Donald Trump, dismantling Biden-era work and investigating diversity programs. It also comes amid pressure on the right to recast Floyd’s murder, undermine diversity efforts and define liberal-run cities like Minneapolis as crime-ridden. Full story here.
The US army said it has no plans to recognize Donald Trump’s birthday on 14 June when he presides over part of the army’s celebrations of its 250th anniversary. Trump, who is turning 79 on the same day, will play a big role in the celebrations, which will cost between $25m and $45m, will see the army hold a parade down Washington’s Constitution Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares that cuts through the capital. The parade was not part of the original planning for the 14 June celebrations and was added this year, stoking criticism from Democratic lawmakers and others that Trump has hijacked the event. More here.
Trump nominated Darryl Nirenberg, a lawyer and former Senate staffer, to serve as the next US ambassador to Romania. Nirenberg, a longtime Washington lawyer currently at Steptoe LLP law firm, was chief of staff for late Republican senator Jesse Helms and was a counsel for the Senate foreign relations committee. The nomination will require Senate approval.
A federal judge rejected a bid by the US treasury department to cancel a union contract covering tens of thousands of IRS staff, in an early blow to Trump’s efforts to eliminate collective bargaining rights for many federal workers. More on that here.
Democratic US representative Gerry Connolly died aged 75, his family said in a statement posted to his account on X this morning following the Virginia lawmaker’s cancer diagnosis last year. At the end of last month, Connolly announced he would be retiring from Congress at the end of this term and stepping back from his role as ranking member on the House oversight committee after finding out his cancer had returned. He died peacefully at home surrounded by family, their statement said.

South Africa’s foreign ministry spokesperson said in a post on X that “there is no land confiscation”, after that chaotic White House meeting in which Donald Trump confronted president Cyril Ramaphosa with false claims of mass killings and land seizures from white people.

Lauren Gambino

Congressman Greg Casar, chair of the House progressive caucus, wants to talk to conservatives about the Republican effort to cut Medicaid. So he joined Donald Trump’s Truth Social.

In his first post, @repgregcasar stated the obvious: “I’m a progressive Democrat, and I know most users of this platform are more conservative than me.”

But the congressman said he shared some common ground with many of the president’s supporters.

“If you oppose cutting healthcare and want to take back our government from the billionaire class, I want to talk to you,” he said.

Polls have consistently found that most Americans, across party lines, oppose cuts to Medicaid.

The move is somewhat unusual. Few elected Democrats have joined Truth Social, the platform where Trump began regularly sharing his all-caps musings, often at odd hours, after being kicked off X and Facebook. His accounts have since been reinstated.

But after their 2024 loss to Trump, Democrats have been consumed by the debate over how to, in Washington parlance, “meet voters where they are”.

Casar, unveiling his new account in a Fox News op-ed, wrote that part of his rationale was ensuring “people know they are welcome in the Democratic Party even if they do not agree with us on every issue”.

I am a progressive Democrat and I do not plan on changing or obscuring my position on anything, but I want people to know that we are focused on making the lives of all working class people better. That means we as Democrats need to sound less judgmental and more focused on the issues that matter most to peoples’ lives, like the GOP cuts to Medicaid and Social Security.

US army says it has no plans to celebrate Trump’s birthday on 250th anniversary

The US army has said it has no plans to recognize Donald Trump’s birthday on 14 June when he presides over part of the army’s celebrations of its 250th anniversary.

Trump, who is turning 79 on the same day, will play a big role in the celebrations, which will see soldiers parachuting in to present him with a folded flag. The army will also hold a parade down Washington’s Constitution Avenue, one of the main thoroughfares that cuts through the capital.

The parade was not part of the original planning for the 14 June celebrations and was added this year, stoking criticism from Democratic lawmakers and others that Trump has hijacked the event.

Asked if there were any plans by the Army to recognize the president’s birthday, Steve Warren, an army spokesperson, told reporters at the Pentagon:

I don’t think we have a plan for that. This has been the army’s birthday … We’ve had 249 previous of these. We’re excited that the commander-in-chief is interested in the army’s 250th anniversary and that he will want to view it.

The celebrations will cost the army between $25m and $45m and will see M1A1 Abrams tanks and other heavy vehicles participating in a parade meant to honor the army’s history.

Trump administration South Sudan deportation attempt violated court order, judge says

Maya Yang

A federal judge has ruled that the Department of Homeland Security’s attempt to deport migrants to South Sudan was “unquestionably violative” of an injunction he had issued earlier.

Brian E Murphy, the US district judge in Massachusetts, made the remark at an emergency hearing he had ordered in Boston following the Trump administration’s apparent deportation of eight people to South Sudan, despite most of them being from other countries.

On Tuesday, Murphy ruled that the Trump administration could not let a group of migrants being deported to South Sudan leave the custody of US immigration authorities. In his order, Murphy wrote: “While the court leaves the practicalities of compliance to defendants’ discretion … the court expects that class members will be treated humanely.”

Last month, Murphy had issued an injunction that required any people being deported to a third country to receive due process. After reports of the apparent South Sudan flight, the judge told Elianis Perez, a justice department lawyer:

I have a strong indication that my preliminary injunction order has been violated.

At the beginning of Wednesday’s hearing, Perez declined to say where the plane carrying the migrants landed, citing “very serious operational and safety concerns”.

Perez also disputed Murphy’s finding that the migrants were not afforded the opportunity to challenge their deportations, Reuters reports.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Murphy said that he would leave the discussion of criminal penalties against the homeland security department for another day.

In an earlier briefing on Wednesday, a homeland security spokesperson acknowledged the deportation was occurring, but refused to say whether the final destination was South Sudan, a highly unstable country that has widely been described as on the verge of descending into another episode of civil war.

“We conducted a deportation flight from Texas to remove some of the most barbaric, violent individuals illegally in the United States. These are the monsters that the district judge is trying to protect,” the spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said.

McLaughlin went on to add:

It is absolutely absurd for a district judge to try to dictate the foreign policy and national security of the United States.

Because of safety and operational security, we cannot tell you what the final destination for these individuals will be.

South African billionaire Johann Rupert tells Donald Trump that South Africa needs technological help in stopping deaths in the country, which he said were not just of white farmers but across the board.

We have too many deaths … It’s not only white farmers, it’s across the board, and we need technological help. We need Starlink at every little police station. We need drones.

Here’s the moment Trump displayed printed copies of news articles that he said showed white South Africans who had been killed, saying “death, death” as he flipped through them.

Trump held printed copies of articles that he said showed white South Africans who had been killed, saying “death, death” as he flipped through them. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Trump ambushes Ramaphosa with false genocide claims

The meeting is ongoing but let’s just recap what just happened as Donald Trump greeted South African president Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House and how the conversation descended into the most contentious areas of dispute between the countries, most pertinently Trump’s repeated (false) claims of a “white genocide”.

South Africa rejects the allegation that white people are disproportionately targeted by crime. As Ramaphosa alluded to in the meeting, murder rates are high in the country and the overwhelming majority of victims are black.

After a friendly initial chat in which Trump complimented South African golfers and Ramaphosa said he wanted to talk about critical minerals and trade, Trump had the lights dimmed to play a video that purported to show evidence of a genocide against white farmers in South Africa.

Ramaphosa mostly sat expressionless while the video was played, occasionally craning his neck to look at it. Trump claimed the video showed the graves of thousands of white farmers. Ramaphosa said he had not seen that before, and that he would like to find out what the location was.

Trump then displayed printed copies of articles that he said showed white South Africans who had been killed, saying “death, death” as he flipped through them.

Ramaphosa said there was crime in South Africa, and the majority of victims were black. Trump cut him off to say: “The farmers are not black.”

Ramaphosa responded: “These are concerns we are willing to talk to you about.”

Trump baselessly claimed white farmers are being “executed” in South Africa after having their land taken away. Ramaphosa replied: “They’re not.”

In recent months, Trump has criticised South Africa’s land reform law aimed at redressing the injustices of apartheid and its genocide court case against Israel.

He has cancelled aid, expelled South Africa’s ambassador and offered refuge to white minority Afrikaners based on racial discrimination claims that Pretoria says are unfounded.

Trump has accused South Africa of seizing land from white farmers and of fuelling violence against white landowners with “hateful rhetoric and government actions”, an accusation he repeated in the Oval Office today.

Pretoria says these claims are inaccurate and “fail to recognise South Africa’s profound and painful history”, meaning its long history of domination by white colonialists, enshrined in the apartheid system.

The stakes of today’s meeting are high for South Africa. The United States is its second-biggest trading partner after China, and the aid cut has already resulted in a drop in testing for HIV patients.

Trump calls the G20 summit – countries representing about 85% of global GDP and three-quarters of world trade – a big deal and says he wants South Africa to “look good”.

South Africa holds the G20 presidency until November, when it will hand over the role to the United States.

Trump says his issues South Africa “have got to be resolved” and he says he’d like to see the relationship between the two countries resolved.