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.
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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.
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A coalition of entertainment unions, including the Motion Picture Association, called on Trump to endorse tax deductions that benefit the entertainment sector. The letter was sent in response to Trump’s announcement of a 100% tariff on films produced outside the United States. The letter was also signed by leading writers’ and actors’ guilds, and actors Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, two of Trump’s selected Hollywood advisers.
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House Republicans are pushing a plan to allocate up to $5bn annually for scholarships that would allow families to send their children to private and religious schools. This move marks an unprecedented effort to use public money to pay for private education. The proposal would advance Trump’s agenda of establishing “universal school choice” by providing families nationwide the option to give their children an education different from the one offered in their local public school.
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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’s three major indexes closed sharply higher following the news.
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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. 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”.
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Top Democrats in the Senate are pushing for a vote on the floor of the chamber censuring 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 and concerns from Republicans. 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.
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House Republicans presentedthe 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.
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Trump revealed an aggressive drug pricing strategy targeting pharmaceutical companies, promising to dramatically cut prescription drug costs for US 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%”.
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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 more than $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.
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A Democratic National Committee panel on Monday recommended that the organization invalidate an internal vice-chair vote that elevated activist David Hogg to the position, determining that the contest had not followed the party’s gender-parity rules.
n The decision by the DNC’s credentials committee, which forwards the resolution to the full body of the Democratic National Committee for approval, came after nearly three hours of what appeared to be tortured internal debate. If adopted, it could force Hogg, an activist who has infuriated DNC officials with his pledge to fund primary challenges against “asleep-at-the-wheel” Democrats, and Malcolm Kenyatta, a Pennsylvania state legislator, to run again for their positions.
n The committee’s ruling is ostensibly unrelated to Hogg’s activism – the credential challenge was brought by Kalyn Free, one of the candidates who lost the vice chair race to Hogg. Free argued that the party had not followed parliamentary procedure, putting female candidates at a disadvantage.
n But in a statement responding to the ruling, Hogg said it was “impossible to ignore the broader context of my work to reform the party which loomed large over this vote”.
n “I ran to be DNC Vice Chair to help make the Democratic Party better, not to defend an indefensible status quo that has caused voters in almost every demographic group to move away from us,” Hogg said. “The DNC has pledged to remove me, and this vote has provided an avenue to fast-track that effort.”
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A coalition of entertainment unions, including the Motion Picture Association, called on Trump on Monday to endorse tax deductions that benefit the entertainment sector.
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The letter was sent in response to Trump’s announcement of a 100% tariff on films produced outside the United States.
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The letter was also signed by leading writers’ and actors’ guilds, and actors Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone, two of Trump’s selected Hollywood advisers.
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“Returning more production to the United States will require a national approach and broad-based policy solutions,” reads the letter.
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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.
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“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.
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The Pentagon referred questions to the Defense Health Agency, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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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.
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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.
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There are 4,240 US active-duty and National Guard transgender troops, officials have said. Transgender rights advocates have given higher estimates.
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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 al
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