By Jeff Mason, White House Correspondent |
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It's week three of President Donald Trump's second term and, so far, he's started and paused trade wars with two allies and upended decades of U.S. policy in the Middle East. And it's only Thursday. |
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Latest U.S. politics headlines |
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Trade wars and change in policy |
Jeff Mason, White House correspondent, here. Trump was in Florida over the weekend when he made it official: the United States would levy 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico and a new 10% tariff on goods from China. The two North American targets promised retaliatory moves of their own (China did, too) and stock markets fell on Monday morning over fears of an escalating trade tit-for-tat. Skip forward a few hours and everything changed. First, Trump agreed to a deal with Mexico and paused the levies for a month; then he did the same with Canada. Markets recovered, and there was much rejoicing. I walked into a White House official's office that afternoon, and he was proud to opine that his boss got things done. One way to look at it, for sure. The trade war may have been put on pause, but the shocks continued. On Tuesday, ahead of a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, including yours truly, that he thought Palestinians should be resettled somewhere other than Gaza in a "beautiful, open place with some, you know, nice quarters there, nice housing." Then, at a press conference in the East Room, he dropped an even bigger rhetorical bombshell, read from notes written in his own hand: the United States would take over Gaza. It would own the strip. It would rebuild and create a new "Riviera of the Middle East." |
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His remarks stunned the world. A historian I spoke to called it ethnic cleansing to propose moving an entire people out of the land they call home. The United Nations chief suggested the same, in a warning to Trump, who this week also lobbed criticism at the UN directly and extended a freeze on funding for the Palestinian relief agency UNRWA. Regional leaders did not embrace Trump's Gaza idea either, despite Trump's insistence that it had been met with enthusiasm. Administration officials were forced on Wednesday to explain or, in some cases, walk back his remarks. The White House said Trump had not committed troops and, his promise to clear the rubble in Gaza notwithstanding, did not plan to pay for the effort. The next day, Trump said Israel would simply hand over Gaza once fighting there was completed and Palestinians were gone. So, no troops needed for that. This all came during a week in which Trump also moved to dismantle the development agency USAID, confirmed plans to shutter the Department of Education, used military flights to deport migrants and tackled government waste via the unprecedented power given to billionaire Elon Musk, unsettling government workers and U.S. development work worldwide. Consequential stuff, and there's more to come. |
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Trump doubled down this week on his press secretary's earlier claim that the administration had discovered and halted $50 million in wasteful spending to fund condoms for Gaza. In remarks on Monday, Trump said Musk's cost-cutting team found "$100 million on condoms to Hamas." But there was never any evidence that the humanitarian medical group named last week as the recipient of the money spent any of it on condoms, much less the roughly one billion condoms that $50 million would buy. Read the fact check. In this section, the Reuters fact-checking team addresses misinformation connected to the U.S. politics. Find more fact-checks from around the world here. |
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Heavy wind and rainfall howled across the Gaza Strip in the early hours of Thursday, a winter storm flooding tents housing displaced families and ripping off the plastic sheeting that sealed homes. Yet residents said Trump's announcement of plans to seize the enclave and expel them had only made them more determined to stay. |
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Palestinians walk past the rubble of buildings destroyed during the Israeli offensive, on a rainy day, amid a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in Gaza City February 6, 2025. REUTERS/Dawoud Abu Alkas |
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- February 6: U.S. Senate expected to confirm Russell Vought as director of the Office of Management and Budget
- February 7: Trump meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba at the White House
- February 10-11: Vice President JD Vance attends AI Action Summit in Paris
- February 11: Trump meets with Jordan's King Abdullah at White House
- February 12: U.S. House Oversight and Government Reform subcommittee, which is associated with Musk's DOGE effort, holds first meeting
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