President Donald Trump spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about ending the war in Ukraine, hosted the president of South Africa at the White House and threatened more stringent tariffs against the European Union this week. 

During South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s Oval Office visit on Wednesday, Trump got into a testy exchange with the South African leader about the treatment of White farmers there. Specifically, Trump aired a video that showed white crosses that Trump said were approximately 1,000 burial sites of White Afrikaner South African farmers. 

Trump has repeatedly asserted these farmers are being killed and pushed off of their land.

TRUMP TO MEET LEADER OF ‘OUT OF CONTROL’ SOUTH AFRICA AT WHITE HOUSE

Trump told Ramaphosa at the White House that the burial sites by the side of the road are visited by those who want to “pay respects to their family member who was killed.” 

“Now this is very bad. These are burial sites right here. Burial sites — over a thousand — of White farmers. And those cars are lined up to pay love on a Sunday morning. Each one of those white things you see is a cross. And there is approximately a thousand of them,” Trump said. “They’re all White farmers. The family of White farmers. And those cars aren’t driving, they are stopped there to pay respects to their family member who was killed. And it’s a terrible sight. I’ve never seen anything like it. On both sides of the road, you have crosses. Those people are all killed.”

“Have they told you where that is, Mr. President?” Ramaphosa said. “I’d like to know where that is. Because this I’ve never seen.” 

“I mean, it’s in South Africa, that’s where,” Trump said. 

“We need to find out,” Ramaphosa said.

The White House defended showing the clip and said that the video was “substantiated,” following reports that emerged after the encounter that said the crosses were from a memorial demonstration following the murder of a White farming couple, not actual burial sites.

Here’s what also happened this week:

Trump and Putin spoke over the phone on Monday to advance peace negotiations ending the war between Moscow and Kyiv. The call occurred just days after Russia and Ukraine met in Turkey to conduct their first peace talks since 2022. 

After the call, Trump said both countries would move toward a ceasefire and push discussions to end the war. But, Trump indicated that the U.S. would let Moscow and Kyiv take the lead on negotiations after his call with Putin. 

“The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know the details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of,” Trump said in a Monday post on Truth Social. 

TRUMP SAYS HE COULD ‘WALK AWAY’ FROM RUSSIA-UKRAINE TALKS, CITES ‘TREMENDOUS HATRED’ ON BOTH SIDES

Additionally, Trump has continued to distance the U.S. from the conflict this week, describing the conflict as a “European situation.” 

“Big egos involved, but I think something’s going to happen,” Trump told reporters on Monday. “And if it doesn’t, I’ll just back away and they’ll have to keep going. This was a European situation. It should have remained a European situation.”

Trump expressed similar sentiments on Wednesday when Ramaphosa visited and stated: “It’s not our people, it’s not our soldiers… it’s Ukraine and it’s Russia.” 

The White House condemned the fatal attack against two Israeli Embassy employees in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, labeling that incident an act of antisemitism. 

A gunman opened fire and killed Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum. The two were planning to get engaged next week in Jerusalem, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a press briefing.

Authorities arrested a pro-Palestinian man identified as 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago in connection with the attack, according to officials.

In response, Trump and other leaders of his administration said attacks like these must stop and said that those responsible will face justice. 

WHITE HOUSE DECRIES ‘EVILS OF ANTISEMITISM,’ VOWS JUSTICE AFTER FATAL SHOOTING OF ISRAELI EMBASSY STAFFERS

“These horrible D.C. killings, based obviously on antisemitism, must end, NOW!” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post. “Hatred and Radicalism have no place in the USA. Condolences to the families of the victims. So sad that such things as this can happen! God Bless You ALL!”

Leavitt later told reporters she’d spoken with Attorney General Pam Bondi and that those who conducted the attack would face prosecution. 

“The evil of antisemitism must be eradicated from our society,” Leavitt told reporters on Thursday. “I spoke to the attorney general this morning. The Department of Justice will be prosecuting the perpetrator responsible for this to the fullest extent of the law. Hatred has no place in the United States of America under President Donald Trump.”

Trump threatened to slap a 50% tariff on imports from the European Union on Friday amid ongoing trade negotiations and after locking down a trade deal with the U.K. 

The deal with the U.K. is the first historic trade negotiation signed following Liberation Day, when Trump announced widespread tariffs for multiple countries on April 2 at a range of rates. 

The administration later adjusted its initial proposal and announced on April 9 it would immediately impose a 145% tariff on Chinese goods, while reducing reciprocal tariffs on other countries and the EU to a baseline of 10% for 90 days. 

TRUMP SIGNALS CHINA ‘VERY MUCH’ INTERESTED IN SECURING TRADE DEAL AHEAD OF SWITZERLAND NEGOTIATIONS 

“Their powerful Trade Barriers, Vat Taxes, ridiculous Corporate Penalties, Non-Monetary Trade Barriers, Monetary Manipulations, unfair and unjustified lawsuits against Americans Companies, and more, have led to a Trade Deficit with the U.S. of more than $250,000,000 a year, a number which is totally unacceptable,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on Friday about the EU. 

“Therefore, I am recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union, starting on June 1, 2025,” he said. 

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later said in an interview with Fox News he hoped the warning would “light a fire under the EU” and signaled Trump’s threats stemmed from frustration negotiating with European countries on trade deals. 

“EU proposals have not been of the same quality that we’ve seen from our other important trading partners,” Bessent said. 

Fox News Digital’s Greg Norman contributed to this report. 

Like an espresso martini frappé, make-ahead piña coladas, and a spicy mango margarita. 

​Like an espresso martini frappé, make-ahead piña coladas, and a spicy mango margarita. 

There’s a provision tucked into President Donald Trump’s broadly ranging “big, beautiful bill” that could see Texas get billions of dollars in funds that it spent on the state’s border security under the Biden administration.

The legislation earmarked $12 billion for a grant program allowing states to be reimbursed for costs they incurred trying to stem the flow of illegal immigration during the Democratic administration.

The measure was added to the bill hours before the final vote – but Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the former chairman of the House Homeland Security and Foreign Affairs Committees, told Fox News Digital it was a product of months of negotiation.

“Early on, [Homeland Security Committee Chair Mark Green, R-Tenn., and I were discussing reconciliation going through the Homeland Security Committee. And, you know, there was about $70 billion for the border,” McCaul said. “Texas bore the brunt of the federal mission the last four years and deserves to be reimbursed. And so he agreed, had a conversation with Governor Abbott, and he agreed.”

HOUSE GOP TARGETS ANOTHER DEM OFFICIAL ACCUSED OF BLOCKING ICE AMID DELANEY HALL FALLOUT

While the text does not name Texas specifically, Fox News Digital was told that the measure’s inclusion was primarily sought by the Lone Star state’s congressional delegation.

The state of Texas, Fox News Digital was told, had incurred just over $11 billion in costs from Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts to keep the border in his state secure.

“The fact of the matter is, when you look at the costs that were borne, Texas had the lion’s share of [the burden] carrying out the federal mission when the Biden administration completely failed to deliver on border security,” McCaul said. “My state built the border wall and built detention facilities. We bore a lot of costs.”

Operation Lone Star alone cost Texas $11.1 billion, according to The Texas Tribune.

Rather than add it to the initial text of the bill, McCaul said, leaders opted to include it in a “managers amendment” that was added on Wednesday night along with several other issues that lawmakers needed more time to negotiate.

“The legislative process, it’s something I’ve gotten to know over my 20 years and how to get things done up here. And I thought, you know, the way we worked it was strategically very smart,” McCaul said. “It’s going to the Senate now. And Senator Cornyn is going to take it up, be the champion in the Senate.”

The Texas Republican first met with Abbott and Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on the matter in early February, Fox News Digital was told.

McCaul said he also worked closely on the push with Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas, who told Fox News Digital that “no state” carried more financial burden from the border crisis than Texas.

“Texas spent $11.1 billion on border security, including $5.87 billion on personnel costs and $4.75 billion on border wall and barriers. When the federal government failed to secure our border and protect our communities, Texans stepped up,” Pfluger said.

Johnson, for his part, thanked McCaul for his efforts in a public written statement.

“Thanks to Rep. McCaul, states that stepped up to protect Americans in the face of Biden’s border catastrophe will be reimbursed for doing the work the Biden Administration refused to do,” the speaker said. “Had those patriotic governors not taken action and used the resources of their state, the devastation from Biden’s wide-open border would have been significantly worse.”

MEET THE TRUMP-PICKED LAWMAKERS GIVING SPEAKER JOHNSON A FULL HOUSE GOP CONFERENCE

Green said of the need for the measure, “In the absence of help from the Biden-Harris administration, states were forced to take extraordinary measures to mitigate the crisis and protect their communities by building barrier systems and increasing law enforcement activity.”

And while McCaul and his colleagues’ efforts in the House do not guarantee that Texas will ultimately see those funds, it puts them one step closer to success.

The measure is one aspect in a multi-trillion-dollar bill that Republicans are working to pass via the budget reconciliation process. 

By lowering the Senate’s threshold for passage from 60 votes to 51, reconciliation enables the party in power to pass certain fiscal legislation while completely sidelining the minority – in this case, Democrats.

Trump directed Republicans to use reconciliation to advance his policies on taxes, immigration, energy, defense, and the national debt.

The Senate and House must pass identical versions of the bill before it gets to Trump’s desk.

McCaul told Fox News Digital that he was confident the measure would stay in the Senate bill after conversations with the Trump administration on the matter.

“I anticipate it will go forward,” McCaul said. “I’m, just proud that we were able to get this done. I’m very proud of what my state did to stop the flow of illegals and dangerous actors coming into the country.”

When reached for comment, Abbott told Fox News Digital, “This is a national issue that Texas was proud to address, and we are grateful for the allocation that reduces the financial burden that Texas incurred.”

Earlier this year, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) uncovered $4.7 trillion in untraceable Treasury Department payments. 

Prior to the discovery, Treasury Account Symbol (TAS) identification codes were optional for $4.7 trillion in Treasury Department payments, so they were often left blank and were untraceable. The field is now required to increase “insight into where the money is actually going,” the Treasury Department and DOGE announced in February. 

“Of the 1.5 billion payments that we send out every year, they are required to have a TAS, a Treasury Account Symbol. We discovered that more than one third of those payments did not have a TAS number,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government earlier this month. 

Fox News Digital asked Republican senators on Capitol Hill to respond to the approximately 500,000 in untraceable payments made by the Treasury Department each year. 

DOGE SAYS IT FOUND NEARLY UNTRACEABLE BUDGET LINE ITEM RESPONSIBLE FOR $4.7T IN PAYMENTS

“I’m not surprised at all, unfortunately,” Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kansas, said before adding, “They were leaving complete fields undone when they were filling out their financials, so this is a common theme. I’m not surprised.”

TOP 5 MOST OUTRAGEOUS WAYS THE GOVERNMENT HAS WASTED YOUR TAXES, AS UNCOVERED BY ELON MUSK’S DOGE

Sen. Eric Schmitt, R-Missouri, called for an investigation into where those payments actually went. 

“There’s so much waste. There’s so much fraud, There’s so much abuse in our government,” Schmitt told Fox News Digital. “I’m glad there was a laser-like focus on it. We ought to make many of those reforms permanent, but there probably ought to be some investigations here about where this money actually went. I mean this is taxpayer money. People work hard.”

After DOGE and the Treasury Department uncovered $4.7 trillion in untraceable funds, Marshall and Sen. Rick Scott of Florida introduced a bill in March requiring the Treasury Department to track all payments. 

The Locating Every Disbursement in Government Expenditure Records (LEDGER) Act seeks to increase transparency in how the Treasury Department spends taxpayer money. 

“When you hear about this story that they didn’t know where the money was going, it makes you mad because this is somebody’s money, this is taxpayers’ money when we have almost $37 trillion in debt, so this makes no sense at all,” Scott said. 

The Congressional Budget projects that interest payments on America’s national debt will total $952 billion in fiscal year 2025. That’s $102 billion more than the United States’ defense budget at $850 billion. 

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“We paid out more last year on our debt, $36 trillion in debt, with $950 billion in interest going to bondholders all over the world, including in China. That $950 billion didn’t go to build a bridge or an F-35. We paid more on the interest on debt than we did to fund our military,” said Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska. 

“That is an inflection point that when most countries hit, you look at history, that’s when great powers start to decline. So we have to get those savings.”

FIRST ON FOX: A group of House Republicans are requesting Fiscal Year 2026 spending bills to include language prohibiting federal funding for transgender experiments on animals. 

Republican Reps. Paul Gosar, Elijah Crane, Abraham J. Hamadeh of Arizona, Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Brandon Gill of Texas, Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Pete Stauber of Minnesota and Troy E. Nehls of Texas are urging the chairman and ranking member of the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies to prohibit transgender experiments on animals in its FY2026 appropriations bill. 

House Republicans have requested the committee include the following language: “None of the funds made available by this or any other Act thereafter may be used for research on vertebrate animals for the purpose of studying the effects of drugs, surgery, or other interventions to alter the human body (including by disrupting the body’s development, inhibiting its natural functions, or modifying its appearance) to no longer correspond to its biological sex.”

The letter, addressed to Chairman Rep. Robert Aderholt, R-Ala., and Ranking Member Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., points to the dozens of National Institutes of Health (NIH) grants issued during former President Joe Biden’s administration that are funding “wasteful and disturbing experiments to create ‘transfeminine’ and ‘transmasculine’ lab animals using invasive surgeries and hormone therapies.”

TRUMP ADMIN CUTS ADDITIONAL $1M IN FEDERAL FUNDING FOR ‘TRANSGENDER ANIMAL’ EXPERIMENTS

$10M IN TAXPAYER FUNDS SPENT CREATING TRANSGENDER ANIMALS: REP. NANCY MACE

“The transgender animals are then wounded, shocked, injected with street drugs and vaccines, and subjected to other disturbing procedures,” the House Republicans said in the letter, as Fox News Digital reported earlier this year. 

“President Trump has personally criticized these experiments on several occasions, and the Department of Government Efficiency has canceled millions in NIH grants funding transgender animal testing. However, many of these NIH grants funding gender transitions for lab animals are still active,” House GOP members said. 

President Donald Trump condemned transgender animal experiments during his joint address to Congress in March. The White Coat Waste Project, a government watchdog group that testified about transgender animal experiments on Capitol Hill earlier this year, told Fox News Digital there are still “29 active taxpayer-funded grants that have been used to fund transgender animal tests.”

“We urge you to include the language above in the FY26 Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies bill to ensure no more taxpayer dollars are wasted to fund transgender animal tests,” the Republicans said in the letter. 

The White Coat Waste Project, in a statement to Fox News Digital, touted their role in halting taxpayer-funded “transgender animal tests,” and celebrated the House Republicans’ bill, led by Gosar, to stop more federally funded experiments. 

“Thanks to White Coat Waste’s viral investigations and collaboration with Rep. Paul Gosar and others in Congress, the Trump Administration has slashed spending on wasteful experiments that subject lab animals to invasive surgeries and hormone therapies to crudely mimic gender transitions in kids and adults and then wound, shock and inject the animals with vaccines and overdoses of sex party drugs,” Justin Goodman, Senior Vice President of White Coat Waste Project, said. 

“These Trump cuts have already saved thousands of lab animals and millions of tax dollars, but dozens more NIH grants that funnel tax dollars to disturbing transgender animal tests are still active. Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to foot the bill for wasteful and cruel transgender animal tests, and Rep. Gosar’s commonsense effort to permanently defund them will ensure they won’t have to.”

President Donald Trump this week enjoyed one of his biggest legislative victories during his second administration.

“THE ONE, BIG, BEAUTIFUL BILL” has PASSED the House of Representatives!” Trump touted in a social media post Thursday.

The president’s post came soon after the GOP-controlled House passed Trump’s sweeping tax and spending cuts package by a razor-thin margin. The Republican-crafted measure is full of Trump’s campaign trail promises and second-term priorities on tax cuts, immigration, defense, energy and the debt limit.

Ahead of the House vote, two surveys released earlier in the week indicated that the president’s poll numbers remained underwater.

MIKE JOHNSON, DONALD TRUMP GET ‘BIG, ‘BEAUTIFUL’ WIN AS BUDGET PASSES HOUSE

The president stood at 46% approval and 54% disapproval in a national survey by Marquette Law School. And Trump was at 42% approval and 52% disapproval in a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

Most, but not all, of the latest national surveys place the president’s approval rating in negative territory, with a handful indicating Trump is above water.

HEAD HERE FOR THE LATEST FOX NEWS POLLING

Trump has aggressively asserted executive authority in his second term, overturning longstanding government policy and aiming to make major cuts to the federal workforce through an avalanche of sweeping and controversial executive orders and actions, with some aimed at addressing grievances he has held since his first term.

Trump started his second administration with poll numbers in positive territory, but his poll numbers started to slide soon after his late-January inauguration.

But two issues where the president remains at or above water in some surveys are border security and immigration, which were front and center in Trump’s successful 2024 campaign to win back the White House.

Trump stands at 56% approval of border security and 50% approval of immigration in the Marquette Law School poll, which was conducted May 5-15.

But Trump’s muscular moves on border security and immigration, which have sparked controversy and legal pushback, don’t appear to be helping his overall approval ratings.

“Immigration is declining now as a salient issue,” said Daron Shaw, who serves as a member of the Fox News Decision Team and is the Republican partner on the Fox News poll.

Shaw, a politics professor and chair at the University of Texas, said “immigration and especially border security are beginning to lose steam as one of the top three issues facing the country. Republicans still rate them fairly highly, but Democrats and independents, who had kind of joined the chorus in 2024, have moved on and, in particular, moved back to the economy as a focal point.”

Pointing to Trump, Shaw added that “when you have success on an issue, it tends to move to the back burner.”

Contributing to the slide over the past couple of months in Trump’s overall approval ratings was his performance on the economy and, in particular, inflation, which were pressing issues that kept former President Joe Biden’s approval ratings well below water for most of his presidency.

Trump’s blockbuster tariff announcement in early April sparked a trade war with some of the nation’s top trading partners, triggered a massive sell-off in the financial markets and increased concerns about a recession.

But the markets have rebounded, thanks in part to a truce between the U.S. and China in their tariff standoff as Trump tapped the brakes on his controversial tariff implementation.

Trump stood at 37% approval on tariffs and 34% on inflation/cost of living in the Marquette Law School poll. And he stood at 39% on the economy and 33% on cost of living in the Reuters/Ipsos poll, conducted May 16-18.

Doug Heye, a longtime GOP strategist and former RNC and Bush administration official, pointed to last year’s election, saying, “The main reason Trump won was to lower prices. Prices haven’t lowered, and polls are reflecting that.”

“With the exception of gas prices, there hasn’t been much of a reduction in prices,” Shaw said.

“Prices haven’t come down, and it’s not clear that people will say the absence of inflation is an economic victory. They still feel that an appreciable portion of their money is going to pay for basic things,” he added. “What Trump is realizing is that prices have to come down for him to be able to declare success.”

Latin America

The Fight Over American Involvement in Venezuelan Oil

Chevron’s license to operate in the Venezuelan oil fields will lapse soon—or will it?

Credit: ded pixto/Shutterstock

The Trump administration is sending mixed signals about the future of the American presence in Venezuela’s oil fields.

Special Envoy Ric Grenell told Steve Bannon Tuesday on the latter’s War Room program that President Donald Trump had authorized an extension of Chevron Corporation’s license for oil extraction in the South American country, where it runs a joint operation with Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, PDVSA. That assertion was contradicted the next day by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who stated in a post on his personal X account that “The pro-Maduro Biden oil license in #Venezuela will expire as scheduled next Tuesday May 27.”

Chevron’s presence in Venezuela has been a matter of some controversy for the administration, as the confusion surrounding the expiration of the license this past week demonstrates. Both Trump administrations have taken a hard line towards the repressive Maduro government, including imposing sweeping sanctions on the country in 2019 and asserting early this year that it is cooperating with the prison gang and drug cartel Tren de Aragua in perpetrating an invasion of American territory. The Chevron license, on the other hand, is a product of then-president Joe Biden’s failed attempt to achieve cooperation from Maduro by loosening the restrictions on American companies’ operations in Venezuela.

When Trump returned to office in 2025, his “maximum pressure” strategy on Venezuela seemed to have returned as well. The administration announced in March that it would be revoking Chevron’s license for Venezuelan drilling effective May 27. But that decision has received sharp pushback from some quarters.

Within the administration, Grenell has provided the most public support for a more transactional approach to the Venezuelan government. Shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Grenell met with Venezuelan officials and freed 6 Americans being held prisoner by the government, as well as obtaining an agreement that Venezuela would accept U.S. deportation flights. This week, Grenell also secured the release of American prisoner Joseph St. Clair, an Air Force veteran, as part of negotiations which reportedly included the possibility of extending Chevron’s operations in the country, potentially in exchange for the government accepting further repatriation flights. (The Trump administration recently revoked Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans living illegally in the U.S., meaning hundreds of thousands will be eligible for deportation).

Support for a new approach to Venezuela outside the administration has come from figures in right-wing media, including Bannon and Laura Loomer, as well as those in the oil industry like the former Florida Republican Party Finance Chair Harry Sargeant III, whose company, Global Oil Terminals, also operates in Venezuela. In an op-ed posted to X on May 8, Loomer contended that terminating Chevron’s license in Venezuela would simply turn Venezuelan oil fields over to China while depriving the U.S. of an important energy resource and squeezing domestic consumers.

This is sharply opposed by proponents of Trump’s oppositional “maximum pressure” strategy towards Maduro. Rubio, who asserted that Chevron’s license will expire as planned, has strongly supported a confrontational stance towards Maduro, as does Special Envoy for Latin America Mauricio Claver-Carone. In Congress, the approach has the backing of the three Cuban-American representatives, Mario Díaz-Balart (R-FL), María Elvira Salazar (R-FL), and Carlos Giménez (R-FL), who aggressively lobbied the incoming administration to revoke Chevron’s license earlier this year.

Those who support ending Chevron’s drilling operations with Venezuela argue that the company provides a significant source of financing for the autocratic government. Chevron’s ventures contribute over 200,000 barrels of oil daily to Venezuela’s production, nearly one quarter of all oil produced in the country. That production is worth hundreds of millions of dollars annually to cash-starved Venezuela. 

Chevron’s modern and efficient fleet is also much better equipped to operate the fields than its state-owned partner, PDVSA, which struggles with corruption, poor management, and the disruption caused by American sanctions. The gap left by Chevron could potentially be filled by Chinese companies, but China has pulled back significantly on investments in Venezuela in recent years. (It previously sank billions of dollars into the country between 2008 and 2017, but the economy of the country has crumbled and put returns on Chinese projects and financing at risk.)

At time of writing, Trump has made no comment on Chevron’s license, leaving its future in limbo. The next several days will be an important test of the administration’s position on Venezuela going forward: Will the license expire as planned, confirming a continuation of the “maximum pressure” approach of Trump I? Or will the administration follow up Grenell’s movement towards a more transactional approach to the Maduro government?

The post The Fight Over American Involvement in Venezuelan Oil appeared first on The American Conservative.