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China denies any recent phone call between leader Xi Jinping and Donald Trump Beijing on Monday denied that any recent call had taken place between Chinese leader Xi Jinping and US President Donald Trump. “As far as I know, there has been no recent phone call between the two heads of state. I want to reiterate that China and the United States are not engaged in consultations or negotiations on the tariff issue,” Guo Jiakun, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson, told reporters in a regular news conference.
Trump claimed Xi had called him in an interview with Time Magazine, published on Friday. “He’s called. And I don’t think that’s a sign of weakness on his behalf,” Time Magazine quoted Trump as saying.
Trump did not offer specifics on the call or when it took place. Trump did not wish to elaborate on his comments to Time Magazine when pressed by CNN on Friday. “I don’t want to comment on that, but I’ve spoken to him many times,” Trump said.
Trump's border czar to appear at White House press briefing after weekend of raids and deportations This morning, President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan is expected to appear at the White House press briefing, where he will highlight the administration’s efforts to secure the border. Immigration action has been a key focus of the Trump administration, and this weekend US Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the agency and state law enforcement in Florida arrested nearly 800 people over four days in a “massive, multi-agency immigration enforcement crackdown.” In Colorado, more than 100 immigrants , allegedly in the country illegally, were detained in Colorado Springs after an overnight raid at what authorities described as an underground nightclub in a strip mall.
Separately two children were deported to Honduras, a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old suffering from metastatic cancer, according to the mother’s attorney and civil rights and immigration advocacy organizations. It's a critical week for Ukraine war talks. Here's what we know US President Donald Trump has been frustrated that his efforts to broker a peace deal between Moscow and Kyiv after three years of war have so far fallen short, and the White House has since mounted an increasingly urgent push to strike a deal.
Following Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s meeting on Saturday, the US president said they discussed Crimea and that he believes Zelensky “wants to make a deal.” Trump also criticized President Vladimir Putin in some of his strongest comments against the Russian leader. “I want him to stop shooting, sit down and sign a deal,” Trump said Sunday.
Here’s the latest: The proposed deal: A US peace plan includes American recognition of Russia’s control over Crimea — the southern Ukrainian peninsula that Moscow illegally annexed more than a decade ago — and would grant Russia additional Ukrainian territory occupied since its full-scale invasion began in 2022, according to officials. Ukraine’s red line: Zelensky on Saturday conceded that Ukraine lacks the military might needed to retake Crimea by force, but has long said that making territorial concessions is a red line. Recognizing Crimea as Russian would also be illegal under Ukraine’s constitution .
Why is Crimea so sensitive? Crimea has been part of independent Ukraine since the country split from the Soviet Union in 1991. Russia has had a major naval base in the Crimean port city of Sevastopol for over 200 years. Moscow illegally annexed Crimea in 2014.
Critical week: Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Sunday that the coming week would be “very critical” in determining whether the US can continue trying to broker peace between Russia and Ukraine, suggesting Trump’s deadline for reaching a deal was swiftly approaching. Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov discussed Ukraine in a call on Sunday, the Russian foreign ministry said. North Korea admits fighting for Russia: Pyongyang publicly acknowledged for the first time that it deployed troops to fight for Russia against Ukraine, touting its combat sub-units’ contributions to “precious victory” in the invaded Russian region of Kursk .
Putin thanks North Korea: “Our Korean friends acted out of a sense of solidarity, justice and genuine comradeship,” Putin said Monday. “We pay tribute to the heroism, high level of special training and self-sacrifice of the Korean soldiers who, shoulder to shoulder with Russian fighters , defended our homeland as their own.” Russia ready to talk: Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has said that Russia is ready to enter war talks with Ukraine without preconditions, and that there needs to be signals from Ukraine for direct negotiations to resume.
The last direct negotiations on ending the conflict were in the spring of 2022. CNN’s Mariya Knight, Michael Rios, Daria Tarasova-Markina, Helen Regan, Darya Tarasova and Tim Lister contributed reporting A CNN poll released over the weekend shows Trump's declining approval ratings Donald Trump won back the Oval Office and took charge of the government amid the strongest poll numbers of his political career, but as the 100-day mark of his presidency approaches, Americans’ views of what he’s done so far have turned deeply negative, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds . Trump’s 41% approval rating is the lowest for any newly elected president at 100 days dating back at least to Dwight Eisenhower — including Trump’s own first term.
The poll, which was released yesterday, shows approval of Trump’s handling of the presidency is down 4 points since March , and 7 points lower than it was in late February . Just 22% say they strongly approve of Trump’s handling of the job, a new low, and about twice as many say they strongly disapprove (45%). Since March, Trump has seen notable drops in approval from women and Hispanic Americans (down 7 points in each group to 36% among women and 28% among Hispanics).
Partisan views of Trump remain broadly polarized, with 86% of Republicans approving and 93% of Democrats disapproving. But among political independents, the president’s approval rating has dipped to 31%, matching his first-term low point with that group and about the same as his standing with them in January 2021. Read more about the poll here .
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