President Donald Trump has some thoughts on who should be the next Pope—that is, if it can’t be himself. “I’d like to be Pope. That would be my number one choice,” he joked to reporters on Tuesday, a prospect that Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-Sc) posted (hopefully facetiously) would have “many upsides.” It would certainly be a dramatic shift from the world’s first Latin American and first Jesuit Pope, who often sparred with Trump on issues of immigration, climate change and religion, to the first American, billionaire, and, critically, non-Catholic to serve as Pope—and concurrently with being President at that. But Trump did plug another dark-horse candidate who would also make history as the first American Pope. While he said he has no preference for who should replace the late Francis, he added, “I must say we have a cardinal that happens to be out of a place called New York who’s very good, so we’ll see what happens.” That cardinal is Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York. The 75-year-old is not on most lists of papabili—most likely to be elected Pope at the conclave that begins next week—although, as history has shown, the next Pope isn’t always who the media and the public expects. Ordained as a priest in 1976, Dolan was appointed as an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of St. Louis by Pope John Paul II, then as Archbishop of Milwaukee in 2002. In Milwaukee, he took on the role of rebuilding trust after a decades-long sexual abuse scandal wracked the church. He removed several accused priests and informed the Vatican of cases of abuse in 2003 to which the Vatican was slow to respond. But he was also found through bankruptcy filings in 2012 to have overseen payments of up to $20,000 to accused priests to incentivize them to agree to being laicized (the process of having their priestly status and powers removed), relocated some accused priests rather than removing them, and requested to transfer millions of dollars into a cemetery trust to shield church funds from lawsuits brought by victims. Still, experts say it’s unlikely that Trump’s backing will carry much weight. “The short answer is that it doesn’t seem very likely that Timothy Dolan will be elected pope,” Miles Pattenden, a historian of the Catholic Church at Oxford University, tells TIME. “It’s very doubtful that any cardinals will view President Trump’s endorsement favourably.” Dolan has come to be known as a “favorite cardinal” of Trump, delivering the traditional prayer at both the President’s first-term and second-term inaugurations. Dolan was part of an April 2020 conference call with Trump and other Catholic leaders, in which Trump called Dolan a “great gentleman” and “a great friend of mine,” to which Dolan responded that it was “mutual.” That year, Dolan said of Trump, “I really salute his leadership” during the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that Trump is “particularly sensitive to the, what shall I say, to the feelings of the religious community.” These comments drew criticism from other faith leaders. John Gehring, Catholic program director for Faith in Public Life, said: “There is a difference between dialogue and a kind of deferential coziness with a president who, frankly, has used cruelty as a political weapon and who abuses power. That’s what the concern was here. It was not that there was an engagement with this president.” More than 1,500 faith leaders signed onto an open letter to Dolan, calling on him to “Please speak truth to power and refrain from giving even the appearance that bishops have their hands on the scales in this [2020] election.” Earlier this year, Dolan said that Trump “takes his Christian faith seriously.” He’s also criticized the Democratic Party’s support for abortion rights. “I’m a pastor, not a politician, and I’ve certainly had spats and disappointments with politicians from both of America’s leading parties,” Dolan wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed slamming Democrats in 2018. “But it saddens me, and weakens the democracy millions of Americans cherish, when the party that once embraced Catholics now slams the door on us.” Still, Dolan has at times also criticized the anti-immigration rhetoric from both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, claimed in January that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ opposition to the White House’s mass deportation policy was motivated by financial interests as USCCB receives public funding through federal partnerships to provide services to asylum seekers—funding that was cut by the Trump Administration. Dolan called Vance’s comments “vulgar” and “very mean.” While generally considered orthodox, some of Dolan’s more controversial actions have departed from traditional conservatism. He said in 2018 that he “didn’t see anything really sacrilegious” about that year’s Met Gala theme, ‘Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination,’ and joked that he lent Rihanna a bejeweled mitre for her outfit. He also congratulated football player Michael Sam for coming out as gay in 2014, saying “Bravo,” “God bless ya,” and “good for him,” adding that the Bible teaches us “not to judge people.” Last year, however, following the funeral service for trans activist Cecilia Gentili at his cathedral, St. Patrick’s in Midtown Manhattan, Dolan said the priests “knew nothing” about Gentili’s background, and praised officiants for cutting it short. Some have insinuated that the next Pope is likely to be someone who shared Francis’ progressive values, because of the large number of cardinals that he appointed during his papacy—around 80% of the voting cardinals. Pattenden previously told TIME that that’s a misreading of Vatican politics: “It’s very simplistic to say cardinals just vote along ideological lines as though they’re part of political parties.” What does make this conclave different from previous ones, though, is that it will be the most geographically diverse in the church’s history—something Francis made a point of when appointing cardinals. That is likely to diminish the chances of an American Pope, particularly as there’s already reportedly concern that doing so would upset the global balance of power. “The general opinion within the upper ranks of the Catholic Church over the past 50 years has also been that America is powerful enough anyway without the Americans also winning the papacy,” Pattenden says. But, Pattenden adds, “there might be some advantages to an American pope which the cardinals may consider.” Specifically, that an American Pope can communicate well in English, “the global language,” which Francis could not. Ultimately, experts say cardinals aren’t typically overly influenced by public sentiment, whether that’s from Trump or social media posts of people’s favorite picks. “The College of Cardinals will not pay much attention—if any—to what he or any other head of state suggests,” says Carlos Eire, a professor of history and religious studies at Yale University, of Trump’s promotion of Dolan. “The church is their main concern, and they tend to view the election from that perspective. World politics might concern them to some extent, but not the opinions of lay people, much less the opinions of lay people who aren’t Catholic.”
At a rally in Michigan on Tuesday, April 29, held to mark the first 100 days of his second term, President Donald Trump smiled as the crowd chanted “three,” a call for the President to serve a third term. In response, Trump said: “Well, we actually already served three, if you count. But remember, I like the victories, I like the three victories which we absolutely had. I just don't like the results of the middle term.” Trump, who won his first election in 2016 but then lost to former President Joe Biden in 2020, appeared to once again be denying the results of the 2020 election. In actual fact, 2020 saw Trump fall short in key battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, where he was on Tuesday. During his rally, he also incorrectly stated that he won Michigan three times. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he won the 2020 election, arguing that voter fraud occurred. Two days after election day, whilst vote counting was still ongoing, he posted on social media “STOP THE COUNT!” And once major news outlets had confirmed Biden as the 46th President, Trump again remarked: "This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election." Amid this election denial, the riots of Jan. 6, 2021, occurred. Meanwhile, Trump’s comments at the rally come after much discussion and teasing of a possible third term, only strengthened by the fact the Trump Store is now selling “Trump 2028” merchandise. Due to the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. constitution, this is the second—and final—term that Trump can serve. But this has not stopped him and his Administration from talking about a third. In an interview with TIME on April 22, marking his first 100 days back in office, Trump was asked about the possibility of seeking a third term and how he had recently said he was “not joking” about pursuing that avenue. He said: “I'd rather not discuss that now, but as you know, there are some loopholes that have been discussed that are well known. But I don't believe in loopholes. I don't believe in using loopholes.” It echoed what he told NBC in an interview at the end of March, in which he said there are methods available to do it, something he emphasized he was not joking about. But in an interview with the Atlantic, published on April 28, Trump said that running for a third term in 2028 is not something he is looking into. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also recently shared a similar message, saying that Trump running for a third time “is not something that he is thinking of,” whilst joking that Trump 2028 hats are “flying off the shelves.”
This week marks 100 days since President Donald Trump took office for a second term. In that time, Trump has made several moves that affect abortion and reproductive health care access across the country. Within his first month in office, Trump acted quickly on a number of issues related to reproductive health. He pardoned several anti-abortion protesters convicted of violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law intended to protect abortion clinics and patients by barring people from physically blocking or threatening patients. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) said it would be curtailing prosecutions against people accused of violating the FACE Act. The Department of Defense rescinded a Biden-era policy that helped facilitate travel for active service members and their families to obtain certain reproductive health care services, including abortion. Internationally, the Trump Administration’s freeze on foreign aid halted reproductive health care services for millions of people. Trump also reinstated what’s known as the Mexico City Policy or the Global Gag Rule, a policy often implemented by Republican presidents that prohibits foreign organizations receiving U.S. aid from providing or discussing abortion care. Since February, the Trump Administration has taken additional actions that have limited or threatened access to reproductive health care. Here’s what else Trump has done on reproductive health care in his first 100 days—and what reproductive rights advocates fear could happen next. The Administration dropped a Biden-era lawsuit seeking to protect access to emergency abortions In March, the DOJ filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit it had inherited from the Biden Administration. The original lawsuit was about a federal law known as the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires emergency rooms that receive Medicare dollars to stabilize patients experiencing medical emergencies before discharging or transferring them, whether or not the patient is able to pay. The Biden Administration had argued that emergency abortion care is required because of EMTALA, and that Idaho’s near-total abortion ban conflicted with the federal law. The state of Idaho has rejected that claim. The Trump Administration dropping the lawsuit would have allowed Idaho to fully enforce its near-total abortion ban, even in medical emergencies. But the state’s largest health care provider, St. Luke’s Health System, had filed its own lawsuit a few months earlier in anticipation of the Trump Administration dropping the case, and a judge temporarily blocked Idaho from fully carrying out its ban. Abortion rights advocates condemned the Trump Administration's decision to drop the lawsuit. Amy Friedrich-Karnik—director of federal policy at the Guttmacher Institute, which researches and supports sexual and reproductive health—says the case was, at its core, about protecting people’s access to “life-saving care” in the most urgent situations. The Administration froze Title X funding for 16 organizations On April 1, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began withholding Title X funding from 16 organizations. Enacted in 1970, Title X is the country’s sole federally funded family planning program. The program, which does not fund abortion services, allocates more than $200 million a year for clinics that provide birth control, cancer screenings, STI testing, and other health care services for people from low-income households. HHS said it was withholding funds from the organizations in the Title X program “pending an evaluation of possible violations” of federal civil rights laws, and the President’s Executive Order that said undocumented immigrants are prohibited “from obtaining most taxpayer-funded benefits.” The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association (NFPRHA), a membership organization for family planning providers, and the American Civil Liberties Union have sued the Trump Administration over the freeze. According to NFPRHA, the freeze is threatening about $65.8 million in Title X funds, potentially affecting more than 840,000 patients. Reproductive rights advocates have said the freeze would prevent some of the most vulnerable community members from accessing a range of health care services. “When you go after Title X for contraceptive access, there’s a ripple effect across all types of reproductive health care,” Friedrich-Karnik says. Mass layoffs at HHS On March 27, HHS announced that it would reduce its staff from 82,000 to 62,000 full-time employees—about 10,000 from layoffs and an additional 10,000 from staffers who retired or resigned. Included in those cuts was eliminating “the majority of employees” in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) reproductive health division, according to the legal advocacy group Center for Reproductive Rights. A team at the CDC focused on compiling data on abortion access—including the number of people getting abortions and what methods they choose—has been eliminated, according to Shannon Russell, federal policy counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights. “It really stymies efforts to understand the impact of state abortion bans in the aftermath of [Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization],” Russell said during a press briefing. The staff working on the CDC’s Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS), which collected data on maternal and infant health, was cut. The team working on the National Assisted Reproductive Technology Surveillance System, which provided patients with information about options such as in vitro fertilization (IVF), was also eliminated. “This is really hampering HHS’s efforts to ensure that people are getting quality, essential reproductive health care and that they know their options,” Russell said. What experts anticipate could happen next Experts are waiting to see what actions the Trump Administration will take on mifepristone, a drug that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved for abortion use more than two decades ago. Years of research have proven that the drug is safe, but anti-abortion groups have tried—so far unsuccessfully—to challenge it in court, and during his confirmation hearing, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Trump has expressed an interest in launching further research into mifepristone. Russell said the Center for Reproductive Rights also anticipates that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) will seek to limit abortion care. In March, the VA submitted for review an interim final rule regarding reproductive health services; the details of the rule have not been publicized, but abortion rights advocates fear that the rule will reinstate the VA’s previous abortion ban, repealing a Biden-era policy that had allowed VA medical facilities to offer abortion counseling and abortion care to veterans and their beneficiaries in certain situations. Friedrich-Karnik says the Trump Administration could withhold additional Title X funds or place restrictions on grant recipients, as the Administration did during Trump’s first term. She adds that the DOJ may continue to take an anti-abortion stance in various cases, such as declining to prosecute protesters accused of violating the FACE Act. Trump’s actions on reproductive rights have drawn support from anti-abortion activists. Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, said in a statement that Trump “set the bar for a pro-life president” in his first term, and applauded the actions he’s taken within the first 100 days of his second term. In March, Trump said that he would be known as the “fertilization president,” and the New York Times reported last week that the White House has been evaluating ways to convince women to have children. But Russell criticized the Trump Administration for offering what she called “sweepstakes style incentives” to encourage people to have children without implementing policies to ensure that people have the support and resources they need to do so, while curtailing access to reproductive health care. “They have made it more dangerous to be pregnant,” Russell said, “and they've done nothing to ensure that people who want to grow or build their families are able to do so more affordably and more accessibly.”
On April 28, the House of Representatives passed the first major law tackling AI-induced harm: the Take It Down Act. The bipartisan bill, which also passed the Senate and which President Trump is expected to sign, criminalizes non-consensual deepfake porn and requires platforms to take down such material within 48 hours of being served notice. The bill aims to stop the scourge of AI-created illicit imagery that has exploded in the last few years along with the rapid improvement of AI tools. While some civil society groups have raised concerns about the bill, it has received wide support from leaders on both sides of the aisle, from the conservative think tank American Principles Project to the progressive nonprofit Public Citizen. It passed both chambers easily, clearing the House with an overwhelming 409-2 vote. To some advocates, the bill is a textbook example of how Congress should work: of lawmakers fielding concerns from impacted constituents, then coming together in an attempt to reduce further harm. "This victory belongs first and foremost to the heroic survivors who shared their stories and the advocates who never gave up," Senator Ted Cruz, who spearheaded the bill in the Senate, wrote in a statement to TIME. "By requiring social media companies to take down this abusive content quickly, we are sparing victims from repeated trauma and holding predators accountable." Here’s what the bill aims to achieve, and how it crossed many hurdles en route to becoming law. Victimized teens The Take It Down Act was borne out of the suffering—and then activism—of a handful of teenagers. In October 2023, 14-year-old Elliston Berry of Texas and 15-year-old Francesca Mani of New Jersey each learned that classmates had used AI software to fabricate nude images of them and female classmates. The tools that had been used to humiliate them were relatively new: products of the generative AI boom in which virtually any image could be created with the click of a button. Pornographic and sometimes violent deepfake images of Taylor Swift and others soon spread across the internet. When Berry and Mani each sought to remove the images and seek punishment for those that had created them, they found that both social media platforms and their school boards reacted with silence or indifference. “They just didn’t know what to do: they were like, this is all new territory,” says Berry’s mother, Anna Berry. Anna Berry then reached out to Senator Ted Cruz’s office, which took up the cause and drafted legislation that became the Take It Down Act. Cruz, who has two teenage daughters, threw his political muscle behind the bill, including organizing a Senate field hearing with testimony from both Elliston Berry and Mani in Texas. Mani, who had spoken out about her experiences in New Jersey before connecting with Cruz’s office during its national push for legislation, says that Cruz spoke with her several times directly—and personally put in a call to a Snapchat executive asking them to remove her deepfakes from the platform. Mani and Berry both spent hours talking with congressional offices and news outlets to spread awareness. Bipartisan support soon spread, including the sign-on of Democratic co-sponsors like Amy Klobuchar and Richard Blumenthal. Representatives Maria Salazar and Madeleine Dean led the House version of the bill. Political wrangling Very few lawmakers disagreed with implementing protections around AI-created deepfake nudes. But translating that into law proved much harder, especially in a divided, contentious Congress. In December, lawmakers tried to slip the Take It Down Act into a bipartisan spending deal. But the larger deal was killed after Elon Musk and Donald Trump urged lawmakers to reject it. In the Biden era, it seemed that the piece of deepfake legislation that stood the best chance of passing was the DEFIANCE Act, led by Democrats Dick Durbin and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In January, however, Cruz was promoted to become the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, giving him a major position of power to set agendas. His office rallied the support for Take it Down from a slew of different public interest groups. They also helped persuade tech companies to support the bill, which worked: Snapchat and Meta got behind it. “Cruz put an unbelievable amount of muscle into this bill,” says Sunny Gandhi, vice president of political affairs at Encode, an AI-focused advocacy group that supported the bill. “They spent a lot of effort wrangling a lot of the companies to make sure that they wouldn't be opposed, and getting leadership interested.” Gandhi says that one of the key reasons why tech companies supported the bill was because it did not involve Section 230 of the Communications Act, an endlessly-debated law that protects platforms from civil liability for what is posted on them. The Take It Down Act, instead, draws its enforcement power from the “deceptive and unfair trade practices” mandate of the Federal Trade Commission. “With anything involving Section 230, there's a worry on the tech company side that you are slowly going to chip away at their protections,” Gandhi says. “Going through the FTC instead was a very novel approach that I think a lot of companies were okay with.” The Senate version of the Take It Down Act passed unanimously in February. A few weeks later, Melania Trump threw her weight behind the bill, staging a press conference in D.C., with Berry, Mani, and other deepfake victims, marking Trump’s first solo public appearance since she resumed the role of First Lady. The campaign fit in with her main initiative from the first Trump administration: “Be Best,” which included a focus on online safety. A Cruz spokesperson told TIME that Trump’s support was crucial towards the bill getting expedited in the House. “The biggest challenge with a lot of these bills is trying to secure priority and floor time,” they said. “It’s essential to have a push to focus priorities—and it happened quickly because of her.” "Today's bipartisan passage of the Take It Down Act is a powerful statement that we stand united in protecting the dignity, privacy, and safety of our children," Melania Trump said Monday. "I am thankful to the Members of Congress — both in the House and Senate — who voted to protect the well-being of our youth." Support is broad, but concerns persist While the bill passed both chambers easily and with bipartisan support, it weathered plenty of criticism on the way. Critics say that the bill is sloppily written, and that bad faith actors could flag almost anything as nonconsensual illicit imagery in order to get it scrubbed from the internet. They also say that Donald Trump could use it as a weapon, leaning on his power over the FTC to threaten critics. In February, 12 organizations including the Center for Democracy & Technology penned a letter to the Senate warning that the bill could lead to the “suppression of lawful speech.” Critics question the bill’s effectiveness especially because it puts the FTC in charge of enforcement—and the federal agency has been severely weakened by the Trump administration. At a House markup in April, Democrats warned that a weakened FTC could struggle to keep up with take-down requests, rendering the bill toothless. Regardless, Gandhi hopes that Congress will build upon Take It Down to create more safeguards for children online. The House Energy and Commerce Committee recently held a hearing on the subject, signaling increased interest. “There's a giant movement in Congress and at the state level around kids' safety that is only picking up momentum,” Gandhi says. “People don't want this to be the next big harm that we wait five or 10 years before we do something about it.” For Mani and Berry, the passage of Take It Down represents a major political, legal, and emotional victory. “For those of us who've been hurt, it's a chance to take back our dignity,” Mani says.
It was an unusual display on the North Lawn of the White House: 88 yard signs with the faces of people the Trump administration says are criminals who had been arrested by immigration agents. President Donald Trump has launched harsh immigration actions in his first 100 days in office—detaining more people for immigration violations, allowing arrests outside schools and courthouses, and sending more than 200 Venezuelan men to be imprisoned in El Salvador. Trump is ramping up raids on workplaces to find those in the country unlawfully, and on Monday, signed an order directing his Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to send him a list of so-called sanctuary cities that aren’t doing enough to cooperate with his deportation efforts, according to Trump officials. The number of immigration arrests at workplaces has tripled since Trump took office, Trump’s border czar Tom Homan said Monday. “It’s going to triple again,” Homan said. Trump vowed on the campaign trail to bring back workplace raids, after the Biden administration had largely put a stop to such enforcement tactics. With the new order, Trump is threatening to cut federal funds to cities and states his Administration decides are blocking his mass deportation effort. In the executive order he signed Monday, Trump gave Attorney General Pam Bondi and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a May 28 deadline to publish a list of cities, counties and states that are obstructing "the enforcement of federal immigration laws” and told every agency to identify federal funds “for suspension or termination” that would otherwise be sent to those places identified as “sanctuary jurisdictions.” If Trump follows through with cutting federal funding to local governments, it would be just the latest example of his Administration usurping powers given to Congress under the Constitution. Already in his first three months in office, Trump has cut federal jobs and funding to agencies that were appropriated by Congress. Trump used incendiary language in his order, saying that state and local officials who obstruct immigration efforts are engaged in an “insurrection.” State and local officials, he wrote, “continue to use their authority to violate, obstruct, and defy the enforcement of Federal immigration laws. This is a lawless insurrection against the supremacy of Federal law and the Federal Government’s obligation to defend the territorial sovereignty of the United States.” Legal experts have warned that Trump’s comparing illegal immigration to an “invasion” and his painting those who oppose him as treasonous could be used as a false pretext for unlocking extraordinary presidential powers, including the Insurrection Act of 1807 and other laws designed for leading the nation in times of extreme national disasters and war. Over the past week, the Trump administration has increased the tempo of its immigration crackdown. Law enforcement agencies in Florida worked with Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Miami office to arrest 800 people last week who were allegedly in the country unlawfully. And the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security arrested 100 people and allegedly seized drugs and weapons in a joint raid Sunday on a night club in Colorado Springs, Colo., that the Trump administration says was being used by the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The new actions come as the Trump administration tries to push through barriers to its deportation actions. Trump’s Justice Department arrested a county judge in Wisconsin on Friday for allegedly helping an undocumented immigration avoid federal deportation officers, and the Trump administration is facing alarm and scrutiny for deporting three U.S. citizen children with their mothers. And Trump has flouted a Supreme Court order that he "facilitate" the release from prison in El Salvador of Kilmar Abrego Garcia after he was mistakenly deported from Maryland. In an April 22 interview with TIME, Trump said he had not asked El Salvador President Nayib Bukele to return Abrego Garcia “because I haven’t been asked to ask him by my attorneys”
At a rally in Michigan on Tuesday, April 29, held to mark the first 100 days of his second term, President Donald Trump smiled as the crowd chanted “three,” a call for the President to serve a third term. In response, Trump said: “Well, we actually already served three, if you count. But remember, I like the victories, I like the three victories which we absolutely had. I just don't like the results of the middle term.” Trump, who won his first election in 2016 but then lost to former President Joe Biden in 2020, appeared to once again be denying the results of the 2020 election. In actual fact, 2020 saw Trump fall short in key battleground states such as Georgia, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, where he was on Tuesday. During his rally, he also incorrectly stated that he won Michigan three times. Trump has repeatedly claimed that he won the 2020 election, arguing that voter fraud occurred. Two days after election day, whilst vote counting was still ongoing, he posted on social media “STOP THE COUNT!” And once major news outlets had confirmed Biden as the 46th President, Trump again remarked: "This is a fraud on the American public. This is an embarrassment to our country. We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election." Amid this election denial, the riots of Jan. 6, 2021, occurred. Meanwhile, Trump’s comments at the rally come after much discussion and teasing of a possible third term, only strengthened by the fact the Trump Store is now selling “Trump 2028” merchandise. Read More: Will Trump Seek a Third Term? The President Settles Ongoing Speculation Due to the 22nd Amendment of the U.S. constitution, this is the second—and final—term that Trump can serve. But this has not stopped him and his Administration from talking about a third. In an interview with TIME on April 22, marking his first 100 days back in office, Trump was asked about the possibility of seeking a third term and how he had recently said he was “not joking” about pursuing that avenue. He said: “I'd rather not discuss that now, but as you know, there are some loopholes that have been discussed that are well known. But I don't believe in loopholes. I don't believe in using loopholes.” It echoed what he told NBC in an interview at the end of March, in which he said there are methods available to do it, something he emphasized he was not joking about. But in an interview with the Atlantic, published on April 28, Trump said that running for a third term in 2028 is not something he is looking into. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt also recently shared a similar message, saying that Trump running for a third time “is not something that he is thinking of,” whilst joking that Trump 2028 hats are “flying off the shelves.”
This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox. It’s still April, but President Donald Trump is already letting Americans know that the October day widely acknowledged to be Columbus Day will in fact be Columbus Day, thank you very much. The move, announced over the weekend as the newest side dish on the culture-war buffet, is merely the latest signal to Trump’s MAGA base that he won’t bend to political correctness or progressive ideology that favors Indigenous Peoples Day, which under President Joe Biden co-existed on that date. Christopher Columbus—who never set foot in the United States yet nonetheless is taught in schools as having “discovered” America—is right up there among “cancelled” American icons with Confederate leaders like Robert E. Lee. For Trump and his basic understanding of history, Columbus is as core to the United States’ DNA as apple pie and Betsy Ross, and the interloper Indigenous Peoples Day is a pernicious effort to hijack it like a cancer. “The Democrats did everything possible to destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much,” the President posted Sunday on Truth Social, his alternative to the platform formerly known as Twitter. “They tore down his Statues, and put up nothing but ‘WOKE,’ or even worse, nothing at all! Well, you’ll be happy to know, Christopher is going to make a major comeback. I am hereby reinstating Columbus Day under the same rules, dates, and locations, as it has had for all of the many decades before!” To be clear: Trump does not have the power to unilaterally declare a national holiday. Nor did anyone “destroy” the holiday; Biden issued proclamations acknowledging Columbus Day annually. At the same time, he recognized Indigenous Peoples Day, but Congress has not designated it into a federal holiday. Similar action would be needed to delist Columbus Day from the ranks of federal holidays. Congress has not done so. Members of Congress tried a couple of times to demote Columbus by changing the holiday’s name, but those efforts fell short. Several statues of Columbus have been removed in recent years, but it’s not as if Ohio is going to rename its capital anytime soon. Even in true-blue Manhattan, Columbus Circle still has its 76-foot tall namesake at its center, a monument developed in response to the violent lynchings of Italian-American immigrants. October the 13th was always going to be Columbus Day, no matter what Trump said or did or tweeted. And, while implicitly saying Indigenous Peoples Day is no more, the President did not technically go that far. But his base sure heard what it wanted to. The presidency has always been a largely performative task, undertaken with the expectation that the public-facing aspect of the job requires a show. The gig is a 24/7 act, but Trump takes it to a new level as he nurses grievances and fuels division for his own movement’s gain. His latest announcement is a naked appeal to voters who feel a new era of politics is excluding them by de-elevating a colonizing explorer who, per elementary-school understanding, in 1492 “sailed the ocean blue.” The reality is far more complex for a figure who opened the door for a European expansionism that led to the decimation and enslavement of native-born Americans. As many as 56 million native-born Americans died as result of Europeans’ arrival here between 1492 and 1600, but the elementary-school poem is as catchy as ever. Political memory, similarly, has always been ripe for weaponization. There’s a dark link between history and nationalism, with the two feeding off each other to paint an ideal that can, at times, turn violent in defense of both an imagined past and systemic inequality. Just look at the rise of white Christian nationalism in the last half century that accompanied increasing civil rights—and the violence it has unleashed. It’s almost impossible to imagine the MAGA present in the absence of a nativist, nationalist antecedent. But the irony is that Columbus never stood on what is today mainland North America, despite becoming a rallying point after Italian-American immigrants were lynched in the 1890s. Columbus was a stand-in for the nation’s hagiographic origin story, much like the Mayflower or its Western pioneers. As Stephen Sondheim so wisely observed, children will listen to the tales they are told, and those myths are tough to shake once they take hold. It’s why everyone is Irish on Saint Patrick’s Day, and next Monday will see lines out the doors of our local taquerias for Cinco de Mayo—two holidays that barely rank in their purported homelands. All of which suggests that Trump is less interested in correcting history or justifying a holiday-weekend mattress sale than nudging his faithful to feel aggrieved—and then emboldened. With a wink and a bullhorn, Trump is teaching his base to never back down from their dug-in stances—even those based on invented histories they were taught in kindergarten.
Donald Trump wants the U.S. to be a leader in artificial intelligence. In January, he signed an executive order intended to enhance America’s "dominance" in AI. In early April, his Administration directed every federal agency to find and hire more people with experience designing and deploying artificial intelligence. On Wednesday, he signed yet another executive order on AI, this one about integrating it into the nation's schools. “AI is where it seems to be at," Trump said. But Trump’s erratic purge of the federal workforce has undermined those very efforts. The Biden Administration moved aggressively in its final 18 months to convince more than 200 AI technology experts to forgo the private sector for the federal workforce, through what was called the ”National AI Talent Surge.” The new hires were deployed throughout the government and used AI to find ways to reduce Social Security wait times, simplify tax filings, and help veterans track their medical care. Most of them were quickly pushed out by the new administration, multiple former federal officials tell TIME. The shift, say the former officials, represents an enormous waste of federal resources, as agencies across the Trump Administration are looking to draw workers with the very experience they just let go. It also means agencies may have to increasingly rely on costlier outside companies for that expertise. The White House and the Office of Management and Budget did not respond to requests for comment. Much of the loss of those AI experts came about when Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency fired hundreds of recent technology hires as part of its broader termination of thousands of employees on probation or so-called “term” hires, former officials who worked in those offices said. Others were fired when Musk’s team subsumed the U.S. Digital Service and when Musk eliminated a technology office at the General Services Administration. That office, called 18F, had helped various government agencies spin up new services, including the IRS’ popular free tax-filing program Direct File. Federal agencies are routinely on the lookout for tech workers, whose skills are in high demand and who can often draw far better salaries in the private sector. Hiring AI experts into government has been a major challenge, says Julie Siegel, who was a senior official in Biden’s Office of Management and Budget. “Everybody is trying to hire AI specialists, so AI was really hard, but we did this big push,” Siegel says. The Trump administration has laid out its own ambitious goals for recruiting more tech talent. On April 3, Russell Vought, Trump’s Director of the Office of Management and Budget, released a 25-page memo for how federal leaders were expected to accelerate the government’s use of AI. “Agencies should focus recruitment efforts on individuals that have demonstrated operational experience in designing, deploying, and scaling AI systems in high-impact environments,” Vought wrote. Putting that into action will be harder than it needed to be, says Deirdre Mulligan, who directed the National Artificial Intelligence Initiative Office in the Biden White House. “The Trump Administration’s actions have not only denuded the government of talent now, but I’m sure that for many folks, they will think twice about whether or not they want to work in government,” Mulligan says. “It’s really important to have stability, to have people’s expertise be treated with the level of respect it ought to be and to have people not be wondering from one day to the next whether they’re going to be employed.” In early 2024, Biden officials hired Angelica Quirarte, who had spent years pitching tech experts on becoming public servants. Quirarte says that coders and engineers are natural problem-solvers and are attracted to the challenge of working with huge data sets that can improve services for millions of people. Previously, she orchestrated a non-profit effort called Tech to Gov that recruited hundreds of technologists to work in federal and state government. In less than a year, Quirarte tells TIME, she helped hire about 250 AI experts. After Trump’s actions, she estimates about 10% of that cohort are still with the federal government. “It’s going to be really hard” for the Trump administration to hire more tech workers after such haphazard layoffs, Quirarte says. “It’s so chaotic.” Quirarte had initially intended to stay on during the Trump Administration and continue working to help improve federal hiring and expand AI training for the federal workforce. She had previously spent years in senior roles in California state government under different administrations. “I think transitions are healthy for democracies, when they’re approached with good intent and honor, and most of my work is not political,” Quirarte says. After 23 days in the Trump Administration, Quirarte decided she had had enough and resigned. “It was not an environment where you assumed good intent—you’re operating out of fear,” she says. “That’s not an environment where you can get good policy and good governing work done.”
On the eve of Canadians gearing up to vote in a federal election, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed President Donald Trump’s previous comments about making Canada the “51st state.” During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, April 27, host Kristen Welker questioned Rubio on whether or not the State Department has “taken any steps to carry out” Trump’s plans “as he has said, to annex Canada.” “What the President said, and he has said this repeatedly, is he was told by the previous Prime Minister [Justin Trudeau] that Canada could not survive without unfair trade with the United States, at which point [Trump] asked, ‘Well, if you can't survive as a nation without treating us unfairly in trade, then you should become a state,’” Rubio said. When asked if the U.S. still wants to make Canada the 51st state, Rubio responded with: “I think the President has stated repeatedly he thinks Canada would be better off as a state.” Rubio’s comments come after a back-and-forth between Canada’s former Prime Minister Trudeau and Trump about how Canada should deal with the pressures felt by Trump’s tariffs. Canada has also countered with a 25% tariff on goods imported from the U.S. Read More: These Are the U.S. Cities Most Vulnerable to Canadian Tariffs, a New Report Finds Trump has repeatedly said both on social media and to reporters that Canada could become the 51st state of the U.S. When asked in the Oval Office by reporters in February if there was anything Trudeau could “give” to Trump amid ongoing tariff discussions, Trump reiterated that as a state, there would be no tariffs on the country. “What I’d like to see; Canada become our 51st state,” Trump said. “If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that it would become a state.” Canada's current Prime Minister Mark Carney has also spoken out on Trump's persistent comments about annexing Canada. He said Trump raised the matter during a phone call in March. Speaking at a campaign press conference, Carney said: "To be clear, as I've said to anyone who's raised this issue in private or in public, including the President, it will never happen. In an April 22 interview with TIME, Trump doubled down on his previous statements and said he was “really not trolling” about making Canada the 51st state, arguing that America doesn’t “need anything from Canada.” “We’re taking care of their military. We're taking care of every aspect of their lives, and we don't need them to make cars for us. In fact, we don't want them to make cars for us. We want to make our own cars. We don't need their lumber. We don't need their energy. We don't need anything from Canada,” Trump said. “And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.” Trudeau—who announced his plans to step down in January as Canada’s Liberal Party leader—has previously told lawmakers and business leaders to take the threat of annexation seriously, with several outlets reporting that at a Canada-U.S. Economic Summit in Toronto in February, Trudeau suggested that Trump wants access to Canada’s critical minerals. “Mr Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing," he said. As mentioned, Rubio’s new comments land a day before Canada’s April 28 federal election, which could see a new leader in place for negotiations about tariffs with the United States. Trump’s comments have weighed heavily on the Canadian elections thus far, with the Liberal Party utilizing a Canadian wave of nationalism that has resulted from the ongoing trade concerns. The country’s next leader could decide the fate of Canada’s critical relationship with the U.S. and how that will look moving forward. “They're going to have a new leader. We'll deal with a new leadership in Canada,” Rubio said. “There are many things to work cooperatively with Canada on, but we actually don't like the way they treated us when it comes to trade, and the President has made that point when he responded to the previous Prime Minister.”
