(KANSAS CITY, Mo.) — Two Tesla Cybertrucks caught on fire at a dealership in Kansas City, Missouri, on Monday evening, the latest in a wave of similar incidents seemingly directed toward the electric vehicle company, according to the Kansas City Police Department.
Tesla vehicles, dealerships and charging stations have been vandalized, suffered arson and faced protests in recent weeks since the company’s CEO Elon Musk began his work at the White House spearheading the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE.
In this latest incident, a Kansas City Police officer in the area spotted smoke coming from one Cybertruck at a Tesla dealership on State Line Road shortly before midnight. The officer attempted to put out the flames using a fire extinguisher, but the fire spread to a second Cybertruck parked next to the original one, police said.
The Kansas City Fire Department ordered the bomb and arson unit to assist on the scene, the fire department said. Officials were able to put out the flames and the vehicles were “covered with a fire blanket to prevent reignition,” the fire department said.
“The circumstances are under investigation but preliminarily the fire is being investigated for the potential of being an arson,” police said in a statement on Monday.
There have been no arrests made for this incident, police said.
This follows a spree of similar incidents that have occurred across the country in the last few weeks.
Another fire was started at a Tesla Collision Center in Las Vegas on Tuesday, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department. Officials received notice that an individual had “set several vehicles on fire in the parking lot and caused damage to the property.”
Last week, “more than a dozen” shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Tigard, Oregon, according to Kelsey Anderson, the public information officer at the Tigard Police Department.
Additionally, three Teslas were vandalized in Dedham, Massachusetts on March 11, according to the Dedham Police Department. Officials said “words had been spray-painted” on two Tesla Cybertrucks, with all four tires of the trucks and a Tesla Model S being “reportedly damaged.”
Protests against the company have also occurred at dealerships nationwide. Illinois State Treasurer Michael Frerichs told ABC News the demonstrations and the company’s plummeting stocks — which have tumbled nearly 48% this year — can all “be tied to [Musk’s] time at DOGE.”
“It has been a distraction for the company and it’s been a problem for the brand,” Frerichs said.
In recent weeks, four top officers at the company have sold off $100 million in stock, according to filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Musk, the owner of X, said on Monday that his companies “make great products that people love and I’ve never physically hurt anyone, so why the hate and violence against me?”
“Because I am a deadly threat to the woke mind parasite and the humans it controls,” Musk said on X.
Musk has also reposted reactions that criticized previous Tesla attacks, calling an incident earlier this month in Seattle “crazy.”
A spokesperson for Tesla did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(LUBBOCK, Texas) — The measles outbreak in western Texas is continuing to grow with 20 additional cases confirmed, bringing the total to 279 cases, according to new state data published Tuesday.
Almost all of the cases are in unvaccinated individuals or in individuals whose vaccination status is unknown, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services (DSHS). Just two cases are among fully vaccinated individuals. At least 36 people have been hospitalized so far, the state said.
In the Texas outbreak, children and teenagers between ages 5 and 17 make up the majority of cases, at 120, followed by children ages 4 and under making up 88 cases, the DSHS data shows.
“Due to the highly contagious nature of this disease, additional cases are likely to occur in the outbreak area and the surrounding communities,” the DSHS said in its update.
Two likely measles deaths have been reported so far in the U.S. The first reported death was an Texas, according to the DSHS. The child did not have any known underlying conditions, according to the department.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended his choice to vote with the minority of his party to keep the government open last week and his position as leader in an appearance on “The View” on Tuesday.
His comments come as some Democrats have publicly raised questions about their confidence in Schumer’s role as party leader following his move to allow Republicans to advance their led funding bill.
Schumer doubled down on the assertion he made on the Senate floor ahead of Friday’s closely watched vote: The Republican funding bill, called a continuing resolution or CR, was bad, but a government shutdown would have been worse.
“I knew it was a difficult choice, and I knew I’d get a lot of criticism or my choice, but I felt as a leader I had to do it,” Schumer told “The View” hosts.
Schumer said he and fellow Democrats “hated” the funding bill because it creates a “slush fund” for President Donald Trump, his adviser Elon Musk and Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought to “push around.”
But a shutdown, Schumer said “would have devastation like we have never seen.”
He said it would have given the Trump administration the freedom to slash programs it views as nonessential, with little to no recourse for Democrats to pursue. Programs like Medicaid and SNAP or funding for mass transit could have been indiscriminately slashed, he said.
“You have two choices: one bad, the other devastating,” Schumer said. “One chops off one of your fingers, the other chops off your arm.”
He said he was being “trolled” by Trump when the president congratulated him for passage of the bill on Trump’s Truth Social platform.
“He was trolling me. I know this guy. He’s trying to confuse people he always tries to confuse people,” Schumer said.
As a leader, Schumer said he had to act to avert a crisis down the road that would have been caused by a shutdown. But his position has not quelled calls within his own party for new leadership after Democrats appeared to some to be lacking in a strategy during Friday’s vote.
Schumer defended his role atop the caucus from ongoing criticism.
Responding to concerns that the party is somewhat aimless without an official leader, Schumer said Democrats have many talented leaders.
“When we don’t have a president, there is a lot of leaders. We have a great bench,” he said. “As for the Senate caucus, of which I am the leader, I should be the leader.”
Schumer touted his ability to recruit talent to win seats in the Senate, pointing to the 2020 election when Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff successfully claimed both seats in Georgia.
He also likened himself to an “orchestra leader” conducting his caucus to help their talents come through.
“We have a load of talent in our caucus, and I’ll tell you one thing: We are united in going after Trump and showing the American people that he is making the middle class pay for the tax cuts on the rich.”
Schumer also promoted his new book, “Antisemitism in America: A warning.”
He encouraged a number of individuals to read the book, including the president.
“He doesn’t understand what Jewish people are like. And he does things that can lead to antisemitism,” Schumer said. “He should read the book. He could learn something.”
He also warned against the left “sliding into” antisemitism.
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.
Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. military is tracking strong early-year recruiting figures across the services, a signal it will meet or exceed 2024 performances, military officials told ABC News.
The Army and Navy, the two largest services and the most ailing from recruiting challenges, both say they’ve recruited at promising rates in the first quarter of fiscal year 2025, which began on Oct. 1. However, neither the Army nor the Navy could readily point out a reason, and the Navy said it is too early in the fiscal year to evaluate.
“We’ve seen momentum unlike anything we’ve [had] in a decade,” said Gen. James Mingus, the Army’s vice chief of staff, at a congressional hearing on Wednesday, March 12 — when he disclosed that five months into its recruiting year the Army had already signed up close to 73% of the year’s annual goal of 61,000 recruits.
The upward recruiting trends for the military services began last summer and have continued at a high pace. Some service chiefs projected then that the numbers would quickly surpass this year’s annual recruiting goals and build up the pool of recruits needed to start off the new recruiting year in October.
From 2023 to 2024, during the final year of the Biden administration, recruitment across the services jumped 12.5%, according to the Department of Defense.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said increased recruitments after President Donald Trump’s election were a reflection of a new mindset the Pentagon would promote to service members — a “warrior ethos” that Hegseth has said would focus away from diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives he said were a distraction from a focus on military lethality.
“I think we’ve seen enthusiasm and excitement from young men and women who want to join the military actively because they are interested in being a part of the finest fighting force the world has to offer and not doing a lot of other things that serve oftentimes, too often, to divide or distract,” Hegseth said after becoming secretary.
At his confirmation hearing to be secretary, Hegseth said the military’s strongest recruiting asset was the commander in chief himself. “There is no better recruiter in my mind for our military than President Donald Trump,” he told senators.
One commanding general of recruitment, Air Force Brig. Gen. Christopher Amrhein, told ABC News that “there is no one silver bullet” for recruiting, but he said the Air Force had “honed in on the right ingredients, and they’re all working.”
Alex Wagner, a former senior Pentagon official in the Biden administration, said Hegseth’s conception of recruiting by promoting a warrior ethos amounted to “little more than a restatement, not even a rebranding, of existing efforts.”
Hegseth’s approach brings “nothing new of any substance,” said Wagner, who, as Air Force assistant secretary for manpower and reserve affairs, was a civilian leader in recruiting.
“People want to come into the military for a number of reasons, but one of the key reasons is to be something bigger than yourself and to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States,” he added. “I think we’ve long been building a warrior ethos.”
In his address to a joint session of Congress earlier this month, Trump said the U.S. Army “had its single best recruiting month in 15 years.”
That claim may be a reference to the Army’s recruiting success this past January. A defense official told ABC News that in January, the Army recorded the highest average growth in contracts per day since January 2010.
Mingus attributed the turnaround to changes in “who you recruit, where you recruit, how we recruit, more professionalizing of our recruit[ing] force [and] expanding the population.”
“All of those things [that] we’ve been working [on] for the last 18 to 24 months, we believe are coming to fruition,” he said.
The president took the credit for steady recruiting gains among the services, falsely claiming in the address to Congress that “it was just a few months ago where the results were exactly the opposite.”
“I’m straight-up just saying that we should not have women in combat roles — it hasn’t made us more effective, hasn’t made us more lethal, has made fighting more complicated,” Hegseth said on the “Shawn Ryan Podcast” in November.
Critics have worried it could have a chilling effect on recruitment for groups including women and non-white men.
“In recent weeks, for the very first time, I’ve heard from a number of women, both in the service and who would consider the service, questioning whether or not the military is a place for them,” Wagner said. “Clearly this stems from the secretary’s firing of the military’s two most senior women, who earned their positions — and the respect of their peers — based solely on merit.”
Asked for demographic data on the first quarter 2025 figures, only the Air Force was able to answer ABC News’ query. A spokesperson said Air Force officials “weren’t tracking any significant demographic change” at this point.
A Navy spokesperson said it was “too early to tell” about demographics but pointed to successful early-year figures. Comparing the first quarter of fiscal year 2025 to that of fiscal year 2024, the Navy contracted 4,000 new sailors and shipped 5,000 more to boot camp, the spokesperson said.
It set its recruiting goal at its highest in 20 years, a turnaround from the pandemic era, when benchmarks and enlistments slumped.
“We are on pace to exceed recruiting goals in 2025,” said Adm. James Kilby, the Navy’s vice chief of naval operations, in the congressional hearing on Wednesday, March 12. “We’ve made some progress in the Navy, as the other services have. We have stopped the problem.”
The Navy spokesperson said the service makes assessments on figures on an annual basis but noted that some policies that enlarged the pool of recruits, including a preparatory course that helps potential sailors meet Navy academic and physical standards, have helped the effort.
The Navy’s prep course followed the success of the Army’s Future Soldier Preparatory Course that contributed close to a quarter of last year’s Army recruiting goal of 55,000 recruits.
“We did open up the aperture a little bit for people that want to serve in uniform, and we expanded various policies to increase opportunities for qualified candidates,” the spokesperson said.
Policies that open the aperture enable services to tap into a wider range of potential recruits — and the prep courses are intended to help them reach the academic or physical shape to meet standards.
Katherine Kuzminski, the director of studies at the Center for a New American Security, said the Army and Navy prep courses act as a sort of “pre-basic training” program.
Only 23% of youth are eligible based on service standards to serve in the military, and 9% of youth are interested in signing up, Kuzminski said, narrowing the pool to a “Venn diagram [that] does not necessarily overlap.”
The Air Force has also had a recruiting success story, said an Air Force Accessions Center spokesman, due largely to more recruiters in the field. The Air Force, under which the tiny Space Force is folded, has hiked its recruiting goals by 20% in 2025.
Wagner said the Biden administration had “initiate[d] a comprehensive review of military [entry] standards to ensure they made sense in the year 2025,” paving the way for it to meet its 2024 goals and even adjust them higher before the fiscal year ended.
Part of the approach was “making sure that our requirements were realistic, rather than an outdated vestige of a different era,” said Wagner, who also served under secretaries of defense in the Obama administration.
The Air Force during the Biden administration loosened body fat standards, which were stricter than the Army and Navy standards, he said, and it lifted a lifetime ban for airmen who tested positive for THC, as other military services had after recreational marijuana was legalized in parts of the United States.
Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin, in a March 3 post on X, said recruitment for December, January and February were at 15-year highs and that the delayed entry program, or the DEP, is at its largest in nearly 10 years.
The DEP, which allows services to recruit future service members and ship them to boot camp at a later date, is a product of sustained work, Wagner said.
“I mean, you don’t build the healthiest DEP in a decade over the course of five weeks, right?” he added.
It’s unclear whether early success for military recruiters is a consequence of Biden administration policies such as the prep courses or enthusiasm for the new president — or a combination of both.
It is too early to assign credit, Kuzminski said.
“We can’t dismiss the fact that perhaps [the current administration] did affect either American youth’s decision to join the military or, more likely, their parents’ willingness to let them go into the military, for some portion of those folks,” she said.
“But the reality is that over the last three years, we’ve seen a lot of structural changes that improved the recruiting enterprise as a whole,” she added.
The smallest military service, the U.S. Marine Corps, has been historically resilient to recruiting shocks like the pandemic.
A Marine official said in a statement to ABC News that the Marine Corps “consistently meets its required accession mission.” That “enduring success,” the official said, “is directly attributed to the hard work of our Marine Recruiters.”
(NEW YORK) — More than 20 million Americans in eight states were under red flag warnings Tuesday morning as severe winds and dry conditions have elevated the threat of fire danger.
The alarming forecast comes in the wake of a deadly tornado outbreak over the weekend in the Midwest and South, and wind-whipped wildfires that destroyed hundreds of homes in Oklahoma.
The National Weather Service on Tuesday issued red flag warnings for a large portion of Oklahoma — including Oklahoma City, Stillwater and Wichita Falls. The NWS office in Norman, Oklahoma, said possible wind gusts of up to 45 mph combined with low relative humidity and dry conditions are producing “critical to extreme” fire danger in Oklahoma and North Texas.
Extremely critical fire danger is also forecast Tuesday for the entire state of Kansas, parts of Arizona, a major portion of Missouri, eastern Colorado and West Texas, including the Texas Panhandle.
Other major cities under red flag warnings on Tuesday are Denver; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Kansas City and Springfield, Missouri; and the Texas cities of Austin, San Antonio and El Paso.
The areas under red flag warnings are being warned that the conditions are rife for fires to spread rapidly, which makes them extremely hard to contain.
Relative humidity across the alert areas is 15% to as low as 6%, and wind gusts are forecast to be between 40 and 75 mph.
The critical fire danger comes just as people are beginning to recover from devastating wildfires in Oklahoma and a series of tornadoes.
At least 42 people were killed amid more than 970 severe storm reports — including tornadoes, severe storms, dust storms and fires — across more than two dozen states over the weekend. A three-day tornado outbreak tore through at least nine states.
Raging wildfires in Oklahoma over the weekend left four people dead and more than 140 others injured, according to the state’s medical examiner.
The Oklahoma wildfires destroyed more than 400 homes and structures and burned at least 170,000 acres, prompting evacuations amid extreme fire weather conditions.
Wildfires also raged in Texas over the weekend. The biggest blaze was the Windmill Fire that ignited in Roberts County and quickly spread to 21,000 acres, the Texas A&M Forest Service said. The fire was 95% contained on Monday.
Parts of Gray County were temporarily under a mandatory evacuation due to the Rest Area Fire, the Texas A&M Forest Service said. The fire has burned an estimated 3,000 acres and was 30% contained as of Friday evening, according to the forest service.
ABC News’ Kenton Gewecke contributed to this report.
Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald 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.”
President Donald 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.”
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.
Karl Merton Ferron/The Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Many of the noncitizens who were deported pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act on Saturday did not have criminal records, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said in a sworn filing overnight.
In a sworn declaration, ICE Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Robert Cerna argued that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose” and “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
“While it is true that many of the [Tren de Aragua gang] members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time. The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” Cerna said.
The admission that many of the men lacked criminal records – and were deported on the assumption that they might be terrorists – comes as top Trump administration officials insist that the men were violent criminals, with President Donald Trump labeling them “monsters.”
Cerna wrote that some of the men have been convicted or arrested for crimes including murder, assault, harassment, and drug offenses, writing that ICE personnel “carefully vetted each individual alien to ensure they were in fact members of TdA.”
To determine whether a noncitizen was a “member of TdA,” he said law enforcement allegedly used victim testimony, financial transactions, computer checks, and other “investigative techniques.”
“ICE did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone,” Cerna said.
The declaration was included in the Trump administration’s recent motion to vacate Judge James Boasberg’s temporary restraining orders blocking deportations pursuant to the AEA.
“These orders are an affront to the President’s broad constitutional and statutory authority to protect the United States from dangerous aliens who pose grave threats to the American people,” Department of Justice lawyers argued.
Boasberg ordered the Department of Justice to submit, by noon Tuesday, a sworn declaration about how many noncitizens were deported under the AEA and when they were removed from the country.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is holding a high-stakes call with Russia’s Vladimir Putin on Tuesday as he tries to win his approval of a 30-day ceasefire with Ukraine.
Trump began the call with Putin at 10 a.m. ET and it was still ongoing as of 10:54 a.m. ET. Dan Scavino, the deputy chief of staff, posted on X that the call was “going well, and still in progress.”
The encounter is the first known call between Trump and Putin since peace talks between U.S. and Ukrainian officials a week ago in Saudi Arabia yielded Kyiv agreeing to an immediate, temporary stop to hostilities should Russia do the same.
“It’s a bad situation in Russia, and it’s a bad situation in Ukraine,” Trump said on Monday. “What’s happening in Ukraine is not good, but we’re going to see if we can work a peace agreement, a ceasefire and peace, and I think we’ll be able to do it.”
That positive assessment follows his prediction Sunday night that “we’ll see if we have something to announce — maybe by Tuesday,” saying “a lot of work” had been done over the weekend. “Maybe we can. Maybe we can’t, but I think we have a very good chance.”
Since then, Putin has been noncommittal on the proposal while fighting intensifies in Kursk.
Putin said he was “for” a ceasefire but raised concerns and set out his own conditions, such as certain security guarantees. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, meanwhile, has accused the Russian leader of obstructing peace and “prolonging” the war.
Trump on Monday said the only reason he was involved in negotiations is “for humanity.”
“A lot of people are being killed over there. And, we had to get Ukraine to do the right thing. It was not an easy situation. You got to see a little glimpse at the Oval Office, but I think they’re doing the right thing right now. And we’re trying to get a peace agreement done. We want to get a ceasefire and then a peace agreement,” he said.
Ukraine’s Zelenskyy will monitor the conversation between Trump and Putin with caution and great interest, a Ukrainian official informed about the matter told ABC News.
“We agreed to the U.S. ceasefire proposal with zero conditions, and if Putin is gonna start playing with Trump setting demands — it will not work,” the source added.
A key question moving forward is how far Trump will go in pressuring Russia to agree to a ceasefire and ultimately bring an end to the three-year conflict, which began when Putin’s forces invaded its sovereign neighbor.
The Trump administration took drastic steps in stopping military aid and pausing some intelligence sharing with Ukraine after the Oval Office clash between Trump and Zelenskyy. Those two tools resumed after Ukraine agreed to the ceasefire last Tuesday.
Plus, U.S. officials have said it would be unrealistic for Ukraine to return to its prewar borders and expressly ruled out its bid for NATO membership.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration has not publicly made similar demands of Putin.
Trump on Sunday said land and power plants were on the table for Tuesday’s discussion, as well as “dividing up certain assets” between the two countries.
“Well, I think we’ll be talking about land. It’s a lot of land. It’s a lot different than it was before the wars, you know. And we’ll be talking about land, we’ll be talking about power plants. That’s a big question, but I think we have a lot of it already discussed, very much by both sides,” he told reporters on Air Force One.
Trump last week said his administration could ramp up pressure on Russia but hoped it wouldn’t be “necessary.”
“There are things you could do that wouldn’t be pleasant in a financial sense,” he said. “I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia. I don’t want to do that because I want to get peace.”
ABC News’ Oleksiy Pshemyskiy and Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is ending U.S. Secret Service protection for former President Joe Biden’s adult children.
Trump made the announcement on his conservative social media platform on Monday evening.
Earlier Monday, as he toured the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., Trump was asked by a reporter about the security detail assigned to Hunter Biden as he vacationed in South Africa.
“That will be something I’ll look at this afternoon. OK. I just heard about it for the first time,” Trump responded. His Truth Social post came hours after the exchange.
Shortly after his inauguration, Trump revoked Secret Service protection for John Bolton, Mike Pompeo and Mark Milley, despite threats against their lives from Iran because of their work in the first Trump administration. He also removed the security detail assigned to Dr. Anthony Fauci, who faced threats over the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic.
“When you have protection, you can’t have it for the rest of your life,” Trump told reporters at the time.
Presidents, vice presidents and their families are given Secret Service protection throughout their time in office.
Former presidents and their spouses can keep their details for the rest of their lives after leaving office, unless they choose to decline it. Federal law also provides security for children of former presidents until age 16, though outgoing presidents can extend it. Hunter Biden is 55 and Ashley Biden is 43.
When Trump left office after the 2020 election, his four adult children and their two spouses received Secret Service protection for an additional six months.
Before leaving office, Joe Biden issued a controversial pardon for his son over tax evasion and federal gun charges. ABC News recently reported that Hunter Biden now finds himself in debt and without a permanent home, according to court documents.
Plus, Hunter Biden continues to be a target of Republican attacks, including criticism from Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
