President Trump is signaling that he will blame the Federal Reserve for any economic weakness that results from his trade war if the central bank doesn’t cut interest rates soon. In the process, he might also be seeking to delegitimize the historically independent institution in a way that could undermine its effectiveness. In a social-media post on Monday, Trump repeated last week’s demand that the Fed reduce interest rates now. “There is virtually...

Pete Hegseth didn’t become defense secretary because he had the resume of a great statesman. But President Donald Trump spent huge political capital getting Hegseth confirmed because the Pentagon chief mirrors Trump’s own riotous political identity and instincts. The point of his selection was to show the conventions and traits that normally define top national security officials don’t apply in the president’s tear-it-down second term. This is why Hegseth seems safe for now...

The self-proclaimed “world’s coolest dictator,” El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele, is offering Venezuela’s president a prisoner swap — 252 detainees, including many deported to El Salvador from America, in exchange for 252 of Nicolás Maduro’s political prisoners.  ‘The only reason they are imprisoned is because they opposed you and your electoral fraud,’ Nayib Bukele wrote in a taunting post to Nicolás Maduro about detainees in Venezuela.

As she left the James S. Brady Briefing Room in early April, Natalie Winters, the newly minted White House correspondent for Steve Bannon’s War Room, tried to describe the relationship between the White House press corps’ old guard and the “new conservative media” who’ve entered the briefing room in the early days of the second Trump administration. “You know when you’re at a party and you see someone who you don’t technically know, but you know them like through a friend from social...

Gang violence in Haiti has continued to further deteriorate the country's security and the crisis is reaching "a point of no return," according to the United Nations' top envoy for the Caribbean nation. Maria Isabel Salvador, the special representative of the U.N. Secretary-General for Haiti, issued her warning Monday during a Security Council briefing in New York City.

Imagine a country that invites the world’s best students to study there, only to deport them over a traffic violation. That country could soon be America, as the Trump administration has begun revoking the legal status of foreign students. The government has provided little to no explanation for this measure, and some students have sued over allegedly illegitimate revocations due to minor or discharged offenses that don’t merit termination of their visas....

El Salvador's president has offered to repatriate 252 Venezuelans deported by the US and imprisoned in his country - if Venezuela releases the same number of political prisoners. Nayib Bukele appealed directly to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in a post on social media. He said many of the Venezuelan deportees had committed "rape and murder", while Venezuelan political prisoners were jailed only because they opposed Maduro, whose re-election last year is widely disputed. Later...

The Maryland senator put a wedge between Trump and Salvadoran dictator Bukele and showed Democrats how to find their spines. Joan Walsh On Sunday, Senator Chris Van Hollen conquered all five morning talk shows. He was by far the most coveted guest after his return from El Salvador, where he stood down the country’s despot and secured a meeting with the illegally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Van Hollen delivered love from Abrego Garcia’s family and his growing legion of advocates and...

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has demanded El Salvador release hundreds of Venezuelans who were deported from the United States, who he described as being “kidnapped,” after his Salvadoran counterpart earlier proposed a prisoner swap. Speaking on a television broadcast on Monday, Maduro demanded that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele “provide proof of life for all the kidnapped young people,” allow their families and lawyers to visit the mega-prison where they’re being kept, and...

Mellona Takie can barely make it through a game of Uno these days, though on a recent afternoon she tries. Anything to keep her mind from going to a place so dark that she tried to take her own life in February, after the United States deported her, an East African, to Panama. “Even if I see something good, in my eyes, it’s bad,” says the woman in her late 20s, who fled mandatory military service in Eritrea, under a totalitarian government, and planned to seek political asylum in the U.S...