First white South African ‘refugees’ arrive in US as Trump claims they face ‘genocide’
The Trump administration has welcomed 59 white South Africans it has granted refugee status in the US for being deemed victims of racial discrimination, Reuters reports, in a move that has drawn criticism from Democrats and stirred confusion in South Africa.
Donald Trump has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world – even those fleeing war – but in February offered to resettle Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers, saying they faced discrimination.
Asked on Monday why white South Africans were being prioritized above the victims of famine and war elsewhere in Africa, Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that Afrikaners were being killed. “It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” Trump told reporters at the White House, going further than he has previously in echoing rightwing tropes about their alleged persecution.
He was not favoring Afrikaners because they are white, Trump said, adding that their race “makes no difference to me”.
South Africa maintains there is no evidence of persecution and that claims of a “white genocide” in the country have not been backed up by evidence. Treating white South Africans as refugees fleeing oppression has drawn alarm and ridicule from South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic issue it does not understand.
A state department official said the charter plane carrying the first 59 Afrikaners brought under Trump’s offer had landed at Washington Dulles airport. Some were heading to Democratic-leaning Minnesota, which has a reputation for welcoming refugees, while others planned to go to Republican-led states such as Idaho and Alabama, sources told Reuters.
Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the most senior Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, called the move “baffling”. In a statement on Monday she said:
The decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history.
Key events
US Customs and Border Protection reported that there were 8,383 arrests for illegal border crossings from Mexico in April, marking a 17% increase from 7,184 in March.
But this also marks a 94% decrease from nearly 129,000 in April 2024. March’s tally was the slowest monthly rate since 1967.
The Border Patrol averaged 279 arrests along the Mexican border in April, down from more than 10,000 a day on the busiest days of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Wall Street’s three major indexes climbed sharply on Monday, with the S&P 500 reaching its highest level since early March, following news of a temporary US-China agreement to ease tariffs.
The move offered some hope for relief in the ongoing global trade war that began in early April under Donald Trump.
The agreement sparked investor optimism, prompting a shift toward riskier assets and away from defensive investments. Still, there’s still some uncertainty over the long-term direction of trade policy and where final tariff levels would land.
“It’s a relief rally because there was a lot of anxiety and angst about tariffs between the US and China,” John Praveen, managing director at Paleo Leon in Princeton, New Jersey, told Reuters.
David Smith
Chris Van Hollen, a senator for Maryland, told an audience at the Center for American Progress thinktank in Washington: “To watch the Trump administration apply what I call their global apartheid policy by providing asylum or refugee status to some Afrikaners – white South Africans – while they shut everybody else out is just an outrageous insult to the whole idea of our country, and the whole idea of Dr King that at the end of the day it’s character that counts.”
“We have to call it out for what it is: it’s an application of the global apartheid policy by the Trump administration.”
Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, said in a statement: “It is baffling as to why the Trump administration is admitting Afrikaners for resettlement while continuing an indefinite suspension for thousands of legitimate asylum seekers who have fled persecution, often because their lives were at risk.”
Last year, the UN found no South Africans were eligible for refugee status. The decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history.”
The interior department announced it would fast-track permitting for a uranium mine in Utah, part of Trump’s effort to shorten environmental reviews and accelerate certain energy projects.
Secretary of the interior, Doug Burgum, said in a statement:
America is facing an alarming energy emergency because of the prior administration’s Climate Extremist policies. President Trump and his administration are responding with speed and strength to solve this crisis.
An environmental assessment of the Velvet-Wood mine will be completed in just 14 days, far shorter than the typical one-year timeline, the agency said.
The Episcopal Church’s migration service is refusing a directive from the federal government to help resettle white South Africans granted refugee status, citing the church’s longstanding “commitment to racial justice and reconciliation.”
In a letter released on Monday, Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe announced the step shortly before 49 South Africans arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington on a private charter plane and were greeted by a government delegation.
“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step. Accordingly, we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government,” reads the letter.
Pentagon halting gender-affirming healthcare for transgender troops – Reuters
The Pentagon is halting gender-affirming healthcare for transgender troops as it moves to kick them out of the US military, according to a memo seen by Reuters.
“I am directing you to take the necessary steps to immediately implement this guidance,” Stephen Ferrara, the acting assistant secretary of defense for health affairs, said in the memo.
The Pentagon referred questions to the Defense Health Agency, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Reuters first reported last week a memo showing that US defense secretary Pete Hegseth issued instructions to the Pentagon to start kicking out transgender troops who do not elect to leave on their own by 6 June.
The actions illustrate how Donald Trump’s administration intends to swiftly act to remove thousands of transgender service members after a supreme court ruling last week cleared the way for a ban to take effect.
There are 4,240 US active-duty and National Guard transgender troops, officials have said. Transgender rights advocates have given higher estimates.
Here are some pictures of the group of 59 white South Africans who have arrived to be resettled in the US after being granted refugee status by the Trump administration.
Trump has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world – even those fleeing war – but has offered to resettle Afrikaners, claiming baselessly this morning that they face racial discrimination and “genocide”.
South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has rejected their classification as refugees and said the US government has “got the wrong end of the stick”.
The day so far
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Donald Trump hailed a “total reset” in relations between China and the US after the countries agreed a 90-day pause to the deepening trade war that has threatened to upend the global economy, with tariffs to be lowered by 115 percentage points. “They’ve agreed to open up China,” he claimed at a press conference at the White House this morning, adding that he and Xi Jinping may speak towards the end of the week. Wall Street rose sharply after the announcement, with the benchmark S&P 500 jumping 2.7% and the Dow Jones industrial average climbing 2.4% during early trading in New York. The fentanyl-related tariff will still apply, and Trump stressed that sector-specific US tariffs on cars, steel and aluminium will be unaffected.
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The first white South Africans granted refugee status in the US arrived at Dulles international airport as Trump claimed baselessly that they faced “genocide”. Trump has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world – even those fleeing war – but in February offered to resettle Afrikaners saying they faced discrimination. South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa said the US government had “got the wrong end of the stick” and rejected the classification of Afrikaners as refugees. “They are leaving ostensibly because they don’t want to embrace the changes that are taking place in our country [since the end of apartheid], in accordance with our constitution,” he said. US senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the most senior Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, called the move “baffling”. In a statement she said: “The decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history.”
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Top Democrats in the Senate are pushing for a vote on the floor of the chamber censuring Donald Trump’s reported plan to accept a $400m luxury jet from the royal family of Qatar for use as Air Force One and later as a fixture in Trump’s personal presidential library. News of a possible gift of the luxury jet prompted immediate scathing criticism from senior Democrats. Senator Chris Murphy described the idea of Qatar handing over the jet as being “just wildly illegal” and said that he would object to “any military deal with a nation that is paying off Trump personally – we can’t act like this is normal foreign policy”. Though the Qatari government has stressed that no final decision has yet been made, Trump appeared to confirm it on Monday when he doubled down, saying he would be “stupid” to turn down the “great gesture” of a free plane. The president also said Boeing delays in delivering a new Air Force One make it a practical decision and claimed repeatedly that it wasn’t a personal gift. As well as Democrats, far-right Maga activist Laura Loomer was also dismayed, she said: “This is really going to be such a stain on the admin if this is true. And I say that as someone who would take a bullet for Trump. I’m so disappointed.”
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House Republicans unveiled the cost-saving centerpiece of Trump’s “big, beautiful bill”, at least $880bn in cuts largely to Medicaid to help cover the cost of $4.5tn in tax breaks. Influential senator – and staunch Trump loyalist – Josh Hawley warned that his party is suffering from an “identity crisis” over whether it stands for working Americans or rich corporate executives, signaling a worsening split among Trump’s congressional troops over the plans. In an opinion piece in the NYT, Hawley warned his fellow Republicans it would be “politically suicidal” to concede to huge cuts in the federal program that provides health insurance to more than 70 million low-income Americans.
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Trump unveiled an aggressive drug pricing strategy targeting pharmaceutical companies, promising to dramatically cut prescription drug costs for American consumers. Trump condemned the current pricing system as a “redistribution” that has allowed drugmakers to exploit US patients and signed an executive order that he says will lead to matching lower drug prices abroad. The president said the plan would reduce prescription drug and pharmaceutical prices in the US “almost immediately” by “30% to 80 or 90%”. The policy plan, dubbed “most favored nation”, would force pharmaceutical companies to match the lowest global prices, in effect ending what Trump describes as systematic overcharging.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed the possibility of Trump’s participation in talks with Russia in Turkey on Thursday calling it “the right idea”. Trump – now off on a trip to the Middle East – had earlier said: “I was thinking about actually flying over there. There’s a possibility of it, I guess, if I think things can happen, but we’ve got to get it done.”
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The Trump administration spent at least $21m transporting people to Guantánamo Bay on military aircrafts between between January and April, with the average flight cost totally over $26,000, NBC reported. The naval base there currently holds 32 migrants, according to a defense official, a tiny fraction of the 30,000 that Trump promised.
‘US government has wrong end of the stick’: white South Africans resettling in US are not refugees, says Cyril Ramaphosa
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa rejected the classification of a group of white South Africans as “refugees”, following their resettlement to the United States under a programme backed by Donald Trump.
Speaking at a conference in Ivory Coast, Ramaphosa said:
A refugee is someone who has to leave their country out of fear of political, religious or economic persecution – and they don’t fit that bill. They are leaving ostensibly because they don’t want to embrace the changes that are taking place in our country, in accordance with our constitution.
We are the only country on the continent where the colonisers came to stay, and we have never driven them out of our country.
He added:
We think that the American government has got the wrong end of the stick here, but we’ll continue talking to them.
Trump said South Africa’s leadership was traveling to see him next week, and that he would not travel to a G20 meeting there in November unless the “situation is taken care of”.
His secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said in February he was
skipping a G20 foreign minister’s meeting in South Africa, accusing the government there of “doing very bad things”.
The claim that minority white South Africans face discrimination from the black majority has become an established trope in rightwing online chatrooms, and been echoed by Trump’s South African-born ally Elon Musk.
Trump said earlier that the news media ignores the alleged persecution of white South Africans. He said, without evidence:
White farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa. If it were the other way around they would talk about. That would be the only story they’d talk about.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has cut all US financial assistance to South Africa, citing disapproval of its land policy and of its genocide case at the international court of justice against Washington’s ally Israel.
A spokesperson for the US Department of Health and Human Services said on Friday it was working with the state department to support the South Africans’ resettlement, without giving details about what kind of assistance they would receive.
The spokesperson added that more arrivals were expected in the coming months. The state department paid for Monday’s charter flight, someone familiar with the matter told Reuters.
First white South African ‘refugees’ arrive in US as Trump claims they face ‘genocide’
The Trump administration has welcomed 59 white South Africans it has granted refugee status in the US for being deemed victims of racial discrimination, Reuters reports, in a move that has drawn criticism from Democrats and stirred confusion in South Africa.
Donald Trump has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world – even those fleeing war – but in February offered to resettle Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers, saying they faced discrimination.
Asked on Monday why white South Africans were being prioritized above the victims of famine and war elsewhere in Africa, Trump claimed, without providing evidence, that Afrikaners were being killed. “It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” Trump told reporters at the White House, going further than he has previously in echoing rightwing tropes about their alleged persecution.
He was not favoring Afrikaners because they are white, Trump said, adding that their race “makes no difference to me”.
South Africa maintains there is no evidence of persecution and that claims of a “white genocide” in the country have not been backed up by evidence. Treating white South Africans as refugees fleeing oppression has drawn alarm and ridicule from South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic issue it does not understand.
A state department official said the charter plane carrying the first 59 Afrikaners brought under Trump’s offer had landed at Washington Dulles airport. Some were heading to Democratic-leaning Minnesota, which has a reputation for welcoming refugees, while others planned to go to Republican-led states such as Idaho and Alabama, sources told Reuters.
Democratic senator Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the most senior Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, called the move “baffling”. In a statement on Monday she said:
The decision by this administration to put one group at the front of the line is clearly politically motivated and an effort to rewrite history.
Deputy attorney general tapped to serve as acting librarian of Congress
Deputy attorney general Todd Blanche has been appointed to serve as the acting librarian of Congress, a justice department spokesman confirmed on Monday, Reuters reports, after Trump recently fired Carla Hayden.
The White House announced that Hayden was being fired as librarian of Congress on 9 May, citing in part her advancement of diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Hayden, who was the first woman and first African American in the role, headed an office that has overall management responsibility for the library and sets out policy on its programs and activities. Barack Obama appointed her in 2016 to a 10-year term in the role that needed Senate confirmation.
Blanche is the latest Trump administration official to be asked to serve in multiple roles at the same time. Secretary of state Marco Rubio is also serving as the acting archivist, as well as Trump’s national security adviser and the acting administrator of the US Agency for International Development. US army secretary Daniel Driscoll, meanwhile, is also serving as acting director for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. FBI Director Kash Patel also briefly served two roles, leading both the FBI and the ATF.
As Trump heads to Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE, the goal is to return with $1tn worth of deals and investment pledges, reports Axios citing two current and former US officials and two Arab officials.
“His regional agenda is business, business and business,” one Arab official told Axios, which notes “the geopolitical agenda is very much secondary”.
Axios writes:
Saudi crown prince Mohammed Bin Salman pledged $600bn in investments in the US over the next four years right after Trump took office. And the deals signed in Saudi Arabia will include at least $100bn in military sales as well as big energy and minerals deals.
The Qataris are also expected to announce $200-300bn in deals and investments, including a huge commercial aircraft deal with Boeing and a $2bn deal to purchase MQ-9 Reaper drones, a source with knowledge of the issue said. [Plus the offer to gift a certain $400m plane that we’ve been reporting about all morning].
The UAE already declared in March that it would invest $1.4tn in the US over the next decade.
Trump clearly sees the Gulf as a place where there’s big money to be made, for the US and for businesses like his. The Trump Organization announced a new luxury real estate deal in Qatar just two weeks ago, and also has projects in Jeddah, Dubai and Oman.
The UAE and Saudi Arabia are among the countries lobbying hard to gain access to advanced AI chips exported from the US. The Trump administration last week rescinded a Biden-era rule that aimed to block China’s access to advanced chips via third parties by capping how many could be exported to most countries. It has said it will replace it with a new rule, leaving open the question of whether the Gulf states will face any restrictions.
House Republicans unveil $880bn in Medicaid cuts that Democrats warn will leave millions without care
Here is more detail on the GOP’s planned cuts to Medicaid to fund Trump’s massive program of tax and spending cuts, from the Associated Press.
House Republicans unveiled the cost-saving centerpiece of Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” on Sunday, at least $880bn in cuts largely to Medicaid to help cover the cost of $4.5tn in tax breaks.
A preliminary estimate from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office said the proposals would reduce the number of people with health care by 8.6 million over the decade.
As Republicans race toward House speaker Mike Johnson’s Memorial Day deadline to pass Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts, more than a dozen House Republicans have told Johnson and GOP leaders they will not support cuts to the healthcare safety net programs that residents back home depend on. Trump himself has shied away from a repeat of his first term, vowing there will be no cuts to Medicaid.
Eleven committees in the House have been compiling their sections of the package as Republicans seek at least $1.5tn in savings to help cover the cost of preserving Trump’s 2017 tax breaks. But the powerful energy and commerce committee was instructed to come up with $880bn in savings. It reached that goal with the Medicaid cuts and rolling back Biden-era green energy programs.
Central to the savings are changes to Medicaid. To be eligible for Medicaid, there would be new “community engagement requirements” of at least 80 hours per month of work, education or service for able-bodied adults without dependents. People would also have to verify their eligibility to be in the program twice a year, rather than just once. This would probably lead to more churn in the program and present hurdles for people to stay covered, especially if they have to drive far to verify their income in person.
Many states have expanded their Medicaid rosters thanks to federal incentives, but the legislation would cut a 5% boost put in place during the Covid pandemic. Federal funding to the states for immigrants who have not shown proof of citizenship would be prohibited.
There would be a freeze on the so-called provider tax that some states use to help pay for large portions of their Medicaid programs. The extra tax often leads to higher payments from the federal government, which critics say is a loophole that creates abuse in the system.
The energy portions of the legislation include rollbacks of climate-change strategies Joe Biden signed into law in the Inflation Reduction Act. It proposes rescinding funds for a range of energy loans and investment programs while providing expedited permitting for natural gas development and oil pipelines.
