Trump says he’s considering taking $3bn in grants from Harvard and giving it to trade schools
President Donald Trump said on Monday he is considering taking $3bn of grant money away from Harvard University and giving it to trade schools across the United States.
His comments, which were made on Truth Social, come less than a week after his administration blocked Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students.
He wrote:
I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!
Key events
Olivia Empson
A recent former president of Harvard University urged people to “speak out” in defense of “foundational threats” to values such as freedom, autonomy and democracy in the US, as those whose deaths for such causes in war were being honored on Memorial Day.
Drew Gilpin Faust, the first female president of Harvard, also warned on Monday of US constitutional checks and the rule of law being “at risk” under the current administration, even as Donald Trump issued a fresh threat against the elite university as it seeks to repel his assaults on its independence and funding.
Faust wrote in a guest opinion essay for the New York Times:
We are being asked not to charge into … artillery fire but only to speak up and to stand up in the face of foundational threats to the principles for which [the civil war dead] gave the last full measure of devotion. We have been entrusted with their legacy. Can we trust ourselves to uphold it?
She highlighted, in particular, the principles fought and died for by Union soldiers in the US civil war and the roles played by assassinated US president Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and leading Black civil rights leader of the 19th century.
“We must honor these men,” she wrote.
The House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, also paid tribute to former New York congressman Charles Rangel in a post on X.
Charlie Rangel was a phenomenal patriot, hero, statesman, leader, trailblazer, change agent & champion for justice.
The Lion of Lenox Ave was a transformational force of nature.
Harlem, NYC & America are better today because of his service. May he forever rest in power.
The Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, paid tribute to former US representative Charles Rangel, who died on Monday aged 94.
Rangel was a “great man, a great friend, and someone who never stopped fighting for his constituents and the best of America”, Schumer wrote in a post on X.
The list of his accomplishments could take pages, but he leaves the world a much better place than he found it.
Former New York congressman Charles Rangel dies at 94
Former US representative Charles Rangel, a founding member of the Congressional Black caucus and chair of the house ways and means committee, died on Monday at the age of 94.
His death was confirmed in a statement provided by the City College of New York.
A Korean war veteran, Rangel defeated legendary Harlem politician Adam Clayton Powell in 1970 to start his congressional career and stepped down in 2016 after more than 45 years in office.
During that time, he was a founding member of the Congressional Black caucus, dean of the New York congressional delegation and, in 2007, the first African American to chair the powerful ways and means committee.
Hilary Beaumont
On 13 April, Tess McGinley was working in her Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) cubicle in Los Angeles, calling people who had lost their homes in the January wildfires, when her team was told to stop what they were doing and leave the office immediately.
McGinley, a 23-year-old team leader for AmeriCorps, the US agency for national service and volunteerism, was helping Fema by reviewing wildfire survivors’ cases to ensure they received housing assistance.
Over the past six weeks, she and her seven teammates had reviewed more than 4,000 cases and made hundreds of calls to survivors. Now, even as the team drove home after their jobs were cut, their government phones kept ringing. “Survivors just kept calling us … And we weren’t able to help,” McGinley said.
“I think of one survivor calling over and over, getting my voicemail, and thinking that Fema has abandoned them,” she added.
Read the full story: Trump’s mass federal cuts disrupt LA wildfire recovery: ‘It’s coming tumbling down’
The Trump family media company plans to raise about $3bn to spend on cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, according to a report.
The Trump Media & Technology Group, which is behind the Truth Social app and controlled by the president’s family, aims to raise $2bn in fresh equity and another $1bn via a convertible bond, the Financial Times reported on Monday, citing sources.
The terms, timing and size of the company’s capital raise could still change, according to the report. The paper says:
The plan is the latest example of the Trump family’s push into cryptocurrency, which has sparked concerns about conflicts of interest. The president has vowed to make the US the ‘crypto capital of the world’.
Trump says he’s ‘glad I missed that second term’ because of America’s 250th anniversary, World Cup and Olympics
Trump takes credit for the US hosting the 2026 Fifa soccer World Cup (alongside Canada and Mexico) and the 2028 Summer Olympics.
“We have the World Cup and we have the Olympics,” he says during his Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery.
“I have everything. Amazing, the way things work out. God did that – I believe that,” he says.
He does not, however, take credit for the 250th anniversary of the start of the American Revolutionary War, saying it “was not mine”.
I’d like to take credit, but I got the Olympics, I got the World Cup when I was president.
He says “in some ways I’m glad I missed that second term” because then he wouldn’t have been president for these milestones.
Trump notes that this Memorial Day is “especially significant” because this year marks the 250th anniversary of the start of the American revolutionary war.
He says the first American patriots who fell on the field of battle gave us the “freest, greatest and most noble republic ever to exist on the face of the earth”.
Trump says it is this republic that he is “fixing” after four “long and hard” years, during which he says people were “pouring through our borders unchecked” and “doing things that are indescribable”. He continues:
We’re doing so very well right now, considering the circumstances. We will do better than we’ve ever done as a nation, better than ever before. I promise you that.
Trump delivers Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery
Donald Trump begins his remarks by thanking his vice-president, JD Vance, who he says has been doing a “terrific job”, and his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, who is also “doing very well” and is a “tough cookie”.
Trump says people are gathered today on Memorial Day to pay tribute to the “immortal deeds” of American warriors who “answered their nation’s call” and have “given their last breaths”.
“We will never ever forget our fallen heroes, and we will never forget our debt to you,” he says.
Donald Trump has laid a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery and is expected to deliver remarks shortly at the cemetery’s amphitheater to commemorate Memorial Day.
David Smith
JD Vance is an Iraq war veteran and the US vice-president. On Friday, he declared the doctrine that underpinned Washington’s approach to international relations for a generation is now dead.
“We had a long experiment in our foreign policy that traded national defence and the maintenance of our alliances for nation building and meddling in foreign countries’ affairs, even when those foreign countries had very little to do with core American interests,” Vance told Naval Academy graduates in Annapolis, Maryland.
His boss Donald Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East signified an end to all that, Vance said: “What we’re seeing from President Trump is a generational shift in policy with profound implications for the job that each and every one of you will be asked to do.”
US foreign policy has previously zigged and zagged from isolation to imperialism. Woodrow Wilson entered the first world war with the the goal of “making the world safe for democracy”. Washington retreated from the world again during the 1920s and 1930s only to fight the second world war and emerge as a military and economic superpower.
Foreign policy during the cold war centered on countering the Soviet Union through alliances, military interventions and proxy wars. The 11 September 2001 attacks shifted focus to counterterrorism, leading to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq under George W Bush with justifications that included spreading democracy.
President Donald Trump is set to deliver remarks at Arlington National Cemetery on Monday to commemorate Memorial Day.
Trump will participate in the traditional wreath-laying ceremony and speak at the cemetery’s amphitheater, in what has been a somber occasion for US presidents.
Hamas has agreed to a proposal by US special envoy Steve Witkoff for a Gaza ceasefire, a Palestinian official close to the group told Reuters on Monday. In the president’s most recent comments on the conflict and humanitarian crisis there Donald Trump had said “Israel, we’ve been talking to them, and we want to see if we can stop that whole situation as quickly as possible.”
My colleague Aneesa Ahmed has our Middle East crisis specific live blog here.
The FBI will launch new probes into the 2023 discovery of cocaine at the White House during president Joe Biden’s term and the 2022 leak of the supreme court’s draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, FBI deputy director Dan Bongino has announced on X, Reuters reports.
Bongino also announced more resources for the FBI’s investigation into the placement of pipe bombs at the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee in Washington on 5 January 2021, the night before Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has drafted a plan to eliminate all limits on greenhouse gases from coal and gas-fired power plants in the United States, the New York Times reported on Saturday, citing internal agency documents.
The EPA argued in its proposed regulation that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants that burn fossil fuels “do not contribute significantly to dangerous pollution” or to climate change because they are a small and declining share of global emissions, according to the NYT report.
The EPA also said that eliminating those emissions would have no meaningful effect on public health and welfare, the report added.
According to the United Nations, fossil fuels are by far the largest contributors to global warming, accounting for more than 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions and nearly 90% of carbon dioxide emissions.
Trump says he’s considering taking $3bn in grants from Harvard and giving it to trade schools
President Donald Trump said on Monday he is considering taking $3bn of grant money away from Harvard University and giving it to trade schools across the United States.
His comments, which were made on Truth Social, come less than a week after his administration blocked Ivy League school from enrolling foreign students.
He wrote:
I am considering taking Three Billion Dollars of Grant Money away from a very antisemitic Harvard, and giving it to TRADE SCHOOLS all across our land. What a great investment that would be for the USA, and so badly needed!!!
French president Emmanuel Macron said on Monday that European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and US president Donald Trump had a “good exchange” and that he said he hopes they can get to the lowest tariffs possible.
“The discussions are advancing. There has been a good exchange between president Trump and president Von der Leyen and I hope we can continue on this road and return to the lowest possible tariffs that will allow for fruitful exchanges,” Macron told reporters during a trip to Vietnam.
Macron also said tariffs were not the right way to solve trade imbalances.
A weekend telephone call between US president Donald Trump and EU chief Ursula von der Leyen gave “new impetus” to trade talks, an EU spokesperson said on Monday.
After the conversation, Trump dropped his threat to impose 50% tariffs on imports from the European Union next month, restoring a 9 July deadline to allow for talks between Washington and the 27-nation bloc to produce a deal.
The EU spokesperson said von der Leyen had initiated the call, Reuters reported.
President Donald Trump has once again spent his morning ranting and raving on his own social media network Truth Social.
In an attempt to frame his posts as marking Memorial Day and posting in all-caps, he resorted to incoherent name-calling.
The current president of the United States of America wrote:
HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY TO ALL, INCLUDING THE SCUM THAT SPENT THE LAST FOUR YEARS TRYING TO DESTROY OUR COUNTRY THROUGH WARPED RADICAL LEFT MINDS, WHO ALLOWED 21,000,000 MILLION PEOPLE TO ILLEGALLY ENTER OUR COUNTRY, MANY OF THEM BEING CRIMINALS AND THE MENTALLY INSANE,THROUGH AN OPEN BORDER THAT ONLY AN INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT WOULD APPROVE, AND THROUGH JUDGES WHO ARE ON A MISSION TO KEEP MURDERERS, DRUG DEALERS, RAPISTS, GANG MEMBERS, AND RELEASED PRISONERS FROM ALL OVER THE WORLD, IN OUR COUNTRY SO THEY CAN ROB, MURDER, AND RAPE AGAIN — ALL PROTECTED BY THESE USA HATING JUDGES WHO SUFFER FROM AN IDEOLOGY THAT IS SICK, AND VERY DANGEROUS FOR OUR COUNTRY. HOPEFULLY THE UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT, AND OTHER GOOD AND COMPASSIONATE JUDGES THROUGHOUT THE LAND, WILL SAVE US FROM THE DECISIONS OF THE MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL. BUT FEAR NOT, WE HAVE MADE GREAT PROGRESS OVER THE LAST 4 MONTHS, AND AMERICA WILL SOON BE SAFE AND GREAT AGAIN! AGAIN, HAPPY MEMORIAL DAY, AND GOD BLESS AMERICA!
Follow-up posts included heaping praise on his own policy of tariffs and yet again claiming that the “golden age” of America is right around the corner.
Ben Makuch
Donald Trump has a long and colorful history with the Islamic State. He incorrectly blamed the founding of IS on his predecessor, said its infamous leader “died like a dog” while announcing his assassination, and rallied an international coalition that successfully ended its so-called caliphate.
So far, in his second presidency, his administration has much less to do with IS. But the terror group has still benefited from him.
Experts tell the Guardian that IS is capitalizing on Trump’s dismantling of the international order, his affinity for Benjamin Netanyahu’s government in Israel, and most of all – his most controversial cabinet appointment – in its recruitment propaganda.
In the US, IS supporters consuming that online messaging have become bona fide security threats in recent months, with a string of incidents dating back to before the presidential election.
On New Year’s Day in New Orleans, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, 42, a 13-year veteran of the US army, used a truck to kill fourteen partygoers in the name of IS. Earlier in May, Ammar Abdulmajid-Mohamed Said, 19, an ex-national guardsman, was arrested and charged with plotting a mass shooting at a military base near Detroit, on behalf of the group.
“The January 1 New Orleans attack and subsequent IS-linked arrests in the country demonstrate the continued influence the organization can project into the US,” said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism, who has tracked the terrorist group for several years.
“These incidents also highlight how IS leverages the online space through social media and messaging applications to spread its ideology and inspire supporters to plot attacks.”
