For the first time since Henry Kissinger in the 1970s the same person will simultaneously serve as both Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio has been tapped to serve as interim national security adviser after President Trump announced that Mike Waltz This comes after Waltz inadvertently added The Atlantic's editor-in-chief to a group chat where sensitive information was shared about March strikes against the Houthis in Yemen. Vice President Vance denies that the move is a "firing." Before Rubio, Henry Kissinger led both the State Department and the National Security Council for two years under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Kissinger was hugely influential in shaping the post World War-II era of global politics If President Trump believes the move gives him more control he is "dead wrong," his former national security adviser John Bolton told Morning Edition The move may actually be "diminishing" his own control over the State Department and the various national security agencies And while it puts Rubio in an advantageous position But they are so fundamentally different that I think…that no one individual can really handle them particularly given the threats and challenges we face in the world today," Bolton said noting he was not intending to criticize Rubio who was also ambassador to the United Nations during the George W spoke to NPR's Michel Martin about why Trump may have made this change and how it might affect decision making in the White House This interview has been edited for length and clarity Michel Martin: So for people who don't keep up with this kind of thing what is the core responsibility of each job the national security adviser is in charge of coordinating discussions among the various departments and agencies that form part of the national security responsibilities of the president to help provide the president with the information that he needs to make decisions given the options that are available to him and the pros and cons of each to coordinate the implementation across the bureaucracy – State Department The Secretary of State is charged with being the lead diplomat for the United States running a 75,000-person department with embassies and consulates all over the world and really trying to achieve through diplomacy what the country's foreign policy objectives are Martin: My recollection from when I was a White House correspondent is that the national security adviser stuck pretty close to the president He or she would brief the president every day whereas the secretary of state was constantly on the road Bolton: I think Trump has had a longstanding suspicion of the National Security Council staff He believed elements of it represented the deep state and were trying to subvert his presidency So he may well think that minimizing the role of the NSC staff will be a plus for him reducing his own scope of control by combining these two roles But it certainly puts Marco Rubio in a very advantageous position indeed So from Rubio's point of view this is a real opportunity this is not as advantageous to President Trump as he may think that it would be Bolton: One of the criticisms of Kissinger that ultimately led Gerald Ford to split the positions again and make Brent Scowcroft was the Defense Department and other agencies felt that Kissinger biased decision making below the presidential level in his favor And it's one reason why the national security adviser is often called an honest broker that there are disputes between departments based on institutional disagreements that the NSC staff process is designed to help mitigate the whole idea that the secretary of state – really almost alone – should be by the President that much time will diminish the president's capacity through the bureaucracy to keep control of the State Department and keep control of the other agencies And when you diminish one aspect of one of the jobs you're going to tilt the system in a way that's ultimately disadvantageous to the president even though he may not see it that way and probably disadvantageous to the country Martin: So I also want to mention that Marco Rubio is also overseeing what's left of USAID and the National Archives although it seems clear that the president doesn't value the work of USAID You mention that the national security adviser is an honest broker I'm wondering if President Trump doesn't want an honest broker the president ultimately makes the decisions The issue is whether he makes informed decisions or whether he's surrounded by a bunch of yes men and yes women who here are the considerations you might want to take in mind The president will decide one way or the other but he can either make a spur of the moment decision And downplaying the role of national security adviser will lead to more displays of fealty by Trump's staff all of this is happening because President Trump removed Michael Waltz as national security adviser He nominated him to be ambassador to the United Nations what do you think it says that the president is sending Mike Waltz to the United Nations Bolton: I think he's exiling him to New York Different presidents have different styles and they listen to different people in different regards on different issues But there's no doubt if Waltz is in New York doing his job he's not in Washington talking to the president And you can give [him] the UN ambassadorship cabinet rank — really doesn't make any difference — just to show up around the table every once in a while I did it in the reverse way: UN ambassador first And I think that's a more normal line of progression than what we're seeing now Julie Depenbrock produced the radio version of this story Become an NPR sponsor Far-right German party was labeled a ‘confirmed rightwing extremist group’ by country’s domestic intelligence service Germany’s foreign ministry has hit back at the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, following his criticism of Germany’s decision to label the far-right Alternative für Deutschland party as a “confirmed rightwing extremist group” On Thursday, Rubio took to X and wrote: “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy – it’s tyranny in disguise. What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD – which took second in the recent election – but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes.” Rubio went on to say: “Germany should reverse course.” Read moreIn a response on X the German foreign ministry pushed back against the US secretary of state This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law It is independent courts that will have the final say We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped.” Germany’s response to Rubio comes after its domestic intelligence service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), designated the AfD as a “confirmed rightwing extremist” force on Friday The BfV’s decision marks a step up from its previous designation of the country’s anti-immigrant, pro-Kremlin and largest opposition party as a “suspected” threat to Germany’s democratic order. According to the BfV the AfD’s xenophobic stances based on an “ethnic-ancestry-based understanding” of German identity are “incompatible with the free democratic basic order” as indicated by the country’s constitution The spy agency added that the AfD “aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society to subject them to unconstitutional unequal treatment and thus to assign them a legally devalued status” It also said: “This exclusionary understanding of the people is the starting point and ideological basis for ongoing agitation against certain individuals or groups of people through which they are defamed and despised indiscriminately and irrational fears and rejection are stirred up.” The far-right party’s rise to popularity in Germany has come as a result of a broader wave of growing rightwing extremism across Europe Free newsletterA deep dive into the policies controversies and oddities surrounding the Trump administration Musk, who had been given the designation of a “special government employee” by the Trump administration, made back-to-back apparent fascist salutes during the president’s inauguration rally earlier this year during a Capitol Hill hearing that sought to explore supposed government censorship under Joe Biden Republican representative Keith Self quoted Joseph Goebbels the Nazi propaganda minister under Adolf Hitler “A direct quote from Joseph Goebbels: ‘It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion,’ and I think that may be what we’re discussing here,” he said He had a career-high 60 points but ended the season centering the fourth line and is a restricted free agent this summer Marco Rossi started the season as the Wild‘s top center and finished it as a fourth-liner a change in responsibilities that has the 23-year-old forward unsure of what his role with the team is going into the future Rossi addressed his situation Sunday at Xcel Energy Center where the Wild debriefed after being eliminated from the playoffs Thursday by Vegas in six games He called his meeting a “good talk” with both sides being honest assists (36) and points (60) as a top-six forward — which is what Rossi considers himself “and I always improve and especially with my work ethic Rossi was on the third line before getting shifted to the fourth Rossi was disappointed by the demotion but said that he has to respect it “He’s got some real bright years coming,” Zuccarello said “and he’s going to be a huge part of this team or whatever team he’s going to be [on] in the future.” The ninth overall pick in 2020 by the Wild Rossi is up for a new contract this summer as a restricted free agent “My agents are dealing with [it],” Rossi said “I’m not thinking about that right now,” and added that he’s still processing the team’s playoff exit and then you will think about those stuff.” after Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy challenged the play for offsides a video review showed that both of Nyquist’s skates entered the Vegas zone before the puck Nyquist accepted blame for the error and called the play “unfortunate.” it’s on me to stay onside there,” Nyquist said there’s a guy [Vegas’ Ivan Barbashev] in between And I was a thousand percent sure it was over the line Nyquist added that the linesman had a tough call to make but had he spotted the offsides before Hartman scored “the play blows dead and no one’s talking about this It’s just like an offside 20 other times during the game.” Nyquist, acquired from Nashville for a second-round draft pick in 2026 is an unrestricted free agent and he said he would welcome a return to the Wild He had two goals and five assists in 22 regular-season games but did not have a point in the playoffs who will be 36 at the start of the 2025-26 season Joel Eriksson Ek hopes to have core muscle surgery next week It’s an injury the center expects to be a non-issue by the time next season starts Eriksson Ek missed almost half the season hurt, beginning with the broken nose he suffered in Game No. 2. He was also sidelined for six weeks in the second half because of a lower-body injury. “When it builds up like that, for sure it gets hard,” Eriksson Ek said, “especially I think also mentally you get drained having those nagging things. It’s no fun, but it’s part of it. “Just going to try to get healthy and feel good.” Sarah McLellan covers the Wild and NHL. Before joining the Minnesota Star Tribune in November 2017, she spent five years covering the Coyotes for The Arizona Republic. Randy Johnson covers University of Minnesota football and college football for the Minnesota Star Tribune, along with Gophers hockey and the Wild. Wild The Wild's starting goaltender had a strong year but will be competing again for playing time in 2025-26 Adam Lowry scored on a tipped shot 16:10 into the second overtime and the Winnipeg Jets rallied to beat the St Louis Blues 4-3 on Sunday night to advance to the second round of the NHL playoffs The Russian star can become a free agent after next season but he says he wants to stay and the team finally has salary cap flexibility WASHINGTON (TNND) — A former congressional colleague of Secretary Marco Rubio of the State Department said Sunday the Cabinet official is taking on too many responsibilities who worked with Rubio on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 2011 to this past January explained during a CNN interview that the secretary should not both head the State Department and serve as national security advisor Warner and 98 other senators confirmed Rubio as secretary on Inauguration Day President Donald Trump announced Rubio would serve as national security advisor The Virginia lawmaker said he doesn’t see how anybody could do both jobs “One is actually trying to diplomatically work with friends and adversaries around the world the number of adversaries has gone up dramatically as Trump’s approach has been so awful to our allies,” Sen “The other around national security advisor has really grown into a major job Maybe slimming down some of that portfolio could make sense but I don’t see how any individual could do both of those.” Trump added in a post on social media platform Truth Social that Rubio will help in the “fight” to “Make America Warner noted the secretary is also the acting director of the United States Agency for International Development I don’t think – I think it's too much,” he explained CNN anchor and Chief Washington Correspondent Jake Tapper mentioned that the lawmaker thinks well of Rubio and that he’s an “able guy.” I've-I've worked very well with him for years,” Sen “I've been disappointed by some of the-the actions he’s taken as-as secretary in this kind of kowtowing to Trump.” Rubio has said he is implementing a “decisive” and “focused” “America First foreign policy agenda” that aligns with the Trump administration’s policies He’s also proud of the work the State Department has done since Inauguration Day to implement Trump’s agenda Have questions, concerns or tips? Send them to Ray at rjlewis@sbgtv.com The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is moving into the interview stage of an investigation into criminal allegations by the Marco Island police union against Chief Tracy Frazzano City Manager Mike McNees said he was given the OK to start looking at issues raised that are administrative or performance related Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 95 voted no confidence in Frazzano and outlined its complaints in a letter to McNees asking for Frazzano's removal from the position In October, the union submitted a 17-page document to McNees detailing the union's concerns with Frazzano's leadership after five years in the position. Also in October, union representatives met with McNees to discuss those complaints and allegations. FDLE assigned an investigator in November "They have received all documents as requested and will be moving to the interview stage of their inquiry," McNees wrote to the Marco Island City Council in a May 2 email he shared with the Naples Daily News McNees said he spoke with the FDLE agent and supervisor conducting the investigative inquiry "They did not provide an exact date for commencing the interview process "I will be reaching out to the union to begin the process of following each of those issues to ground as this process has already covered more than six months and needs to be brought to a close thoroughly but also with alacrity," McNees wrote "I look forward to its resolution," Frazzano said in an email to the Naples Daily News Monday "We will continue to work together at the Marco Island Police Department (MIPD) to meet the needs of our team The FDLE can only review criminal issues ― they do not review administrative or internal policy matters The agency at the time it assigned an investigator recommended McNees delay further administrative review until the FDLE makes its determination The union document pinpointed incidents it considers examples of Frazzano's "lacking in integrity and the overall direction in which she is leading the department." a Marco Island police officer and president of the local police union said May 5 that the union has "not had any communication with FDLE nor the city manager about the status of any investigation." "The Marco Island FOP has asked for updates from FDLE but requests have gone unanswered," Gray wrote in an email responding to questions from the Naples Daily News "The city manager has not communicated that any administrative issues were being addressed." "The Marco Island FOP member’s vote of no confidence (23-1) was over 6 months ago and the City of Marco Island has not addressed any of the member’s concerns," Gray wrote Frazzano began as police chief in Marco Island in August 2019 She moved to Marco Island from Montclair Township Frazzano was the first woman to become detective Frazzano is the first woman to lead the Marco Island department Frazzano also was an FBI National Academy distinguished graduate and a Department of Homeland Security fellow focusing on counterterrorism and security preparedness She holds a bachelor's degree from Rutgers University and two master's degrees Countries & Areas Bureaus & Offices About Marco Rubio, Secretary of State Now, in case you’re keeping track, this means that Secretary of State Rubio is now the Secretary of State, the National Security Advisor, the Acting USAID Administrator, and the Acting Archivist.  I mean, you’ve got a lot.  Now on X, Vice President J.D. Vance actually was very funny, remarking, quote, “I think he could take on a bit more.  If only there was a job opening for a devout Catholic…”  When does conclave start?  I think the 7th. Here now with more is Secretary of State Marco Rubio.  Mr. Secretary, you’ve got to admit that was pretty funny.  I like that. SECRETARY RUBIO:  No, we thought about it, but you have to – it’s an unmarried Catholic male.  You don’t have to be a priest.  Any – people don’t know that.  Any unmarried Catholic male can be pope, but I got married and I’m happily married, so I guess I’ll miss out on that one. QUESTION:  I know.  And by the way, you have a great – you’ve got a great family and your son’s a great football player and I know you’re very proud, and you should be.  Let’s start in Europe.  Let’s start with Putin.  You said this week may be the deciding week for him.  Clearly, the minerals deal yesterday was a big win for the President and the White House.  Where do we stand with Putin? SECRETARY RUBIO:  Well, let’s remind everybody this is not our war.  I mean, this is a war that started under Joe Biden.  For three years it went on.  They made no effort to sort of bring it to a conclusion.  And it’s a war that has no military solution:  in essence, Putin can’t take all of Ukraine; Ukraine can’t push the Russians all the way back to where they were in 2014.  And so the question here is, who is the only leader in the world that can talk to both sides and hopefully bring them to a deal, and that’s President Trump.  And that’s what he’s tried to do.  For a hundred days he has done efforts to bring about peace, to end the killing, to end the dying, to end the destruction.  You know that Ukraine – it’s going to cost hundreds of billions of dollars to rebuild that country. And so the President has tried.  Look, we’ve gotten closer.  We – for the first time – we haven’t known this for three years – we kind of can see what it would take for Ukraine to stop.  We can see what it would take for the Russians to stop.  The problem is those two positions are still a little far apart.  So at some point in time, it either has to be something that can happen or we all need to move on.  That’ll be a decision the President will have to make.  QUESTION:  Well, I will say this:  The consequences are really dire in every situation that you’re referring to.  Let me go back to Putin for one more second.  I mean, the mineral deal – I don’t think we can under – I don’t think we can overstate how important that’s going to be for Ukraine’s security, the relationship they will have now moving forward with the United States.  That’s a big part of the puzzle. And it makes you wonder – nobody ever dared to pick up a phone and even attempt or try to stop it from happening.  That to me is unconscionable. QUESTION:  In your heart, do you feel like – are you close?  I mean, you’re in the middle of this. SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.  Well, I’m glad you gave everybody that lesson because that’s – not only did it happen in 2014 under President Obama, but during that time the Obama administration refused to provide the Ukrainians any military weapons.  They would provide them blankets and sheets and towels and – but they wouldn’t give them weapons. Look, you asked how close we are.  I think we know where Ukraine is and we know where Russia is right now and where Putin is.  They’re still far apart.  They’re closer, but they’re still far apart.  And it’s going to take a real breakthrough here very soon to make this possible, or I think the President is going to have to make a decision about how much more time we’re going to dedicate to this. And you’re right about the minerals deal.  It’s good for America because we’ve invested a lot of money in this war.  It’s also good for Ukraine because it’s going to help them be able to develop their economy and rebuild when this war ends.  QUESTION:  Well, they’re going to need a lot of money to rebuild.  However, they are closer than they have ever been.  To me, a deal with Iran would have to include the following: Their enrichment would have to be stopped, their facilities shut down by Americans; we would need anywhere anyplace anytime American inspectors, not international inspectors.  Why in my heart of hearts do I not believe that the mullahs of Iran would ever agree to that, and do you agree that those should be the conditions? SECRETARY RUBIO:  If Iran wants a peaceful civil nuclear program, meaning they want nuclear power plants like other countries in the world have, there’s a way to do it.  And that is you build the reactors and you import enriched uranium to fuel those reactors.  That’s how dozens of countries around the world do it. The only countries in the world that enrich uranium are the ones that have nuclear weapons.  Iran is at – they’re claiming they don’t want a weapon, but they would be – what they’re basically asking is to be the only non-weapon country in the world that’s enriching uranium.  And the level at which they enrich it is really not relevant per se because, really, if you have the ability to enrich at 3.67 percent, it only takes a few weeks to get to 20 percent and then 60 percent and then the 80 and 90 percent that you need for a weapon.  QUESTION:  There’s a path forward.  The path forward has been given to them. QUESTION:  And now it’s a matter of whether or not they’re going to take it.  And the President was very, very clear he would lead the effort to stop them from ever achieving that nuclear weapon.  And that would mean – that statement was obvious in terms of that he would use military force to destroy those facilities.  We have the capacity, obviously, to do it. But back to this question:  Would we need American inspectors and American scientists to shut it down, and would that have to be part of the deal, and anywhere anyplace anytime American inspectors?  Would they have to agree to that in your mind? SECRETARY RUBIO:  I think you would have to allow Americans as part of – you can send – maybe there’ll be French inspectors, there’ll be Italian inspectors, there’ll be Saudis, whoever.  But I think you cannot basically say we will not allow any Americans. So I think if in fact – Iran likes to say they’re not interested in nuclear weapons.  They like to say all they want is peaceful nuclear energy.  Then they should not be afraid of inspections by inspectors of any kind, including Americans. And look, there’s a win here for Iran, okay?  They can actually have real economic development, can have real investment in their country, but they have to walk away from sponsoring terrorists, they have to walk away from helping the Houthis, they have to walk away from building long-range missiles that have no purpose to exist other than having nuclear weapons, and they have to walk away from enrichment.  These are not unreasonable requests.  There are countries all over the world that have nuclear energy and don’t enrich and don’t have long-range missiles and don’t sponsor terrorism.  That path is there for them.  It’s the path of peace.  And frankly, I pray and hope, and we’ll do everything we can to help convince them that they should take it.  QUESTION:  I have the same prayer that you do.  And they know what the consequences will be, and they will probably lose their nuclear sites, they’ll lose their refineries.  And if that’s the case, that would probably result in poverty and regime change.  Last question, China.  You’re right.  I view them, as you do, as our top geopolitical foe.  Things seem to be heated in public.  Are there any things going on behind the scenes that give you some hope that hopefully, for example, on trade and tariffs we can come to some type of agreement?  Because they put tariffs on basically every American product and it’s just – they’ve been ripping us off forever. I think there’s two questions.  Can we reach some sort of short-term accommodation with them?  That’s what they want.  I mean, the Chinese are reaching out.  They want to meet.  They want to talk.  We’ve got people involved in that.  Obviously, our Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is involved in those efforts and their talks will come up soon.  But I think there’s a broader question, and that is whether we shouldn’t – this is a wakeup call that we truly need to become a country that can make more things in America and not be as dependent on China.  We were far too dependent on China.  We allowed them through unfair trade practices to de-industrialize us and to use not just tariffs but non-tariff barriers, currency manipulation, dumping.  We’ve allowed them to use all of those things to — QUESTION:  Intellectual property theft. QUESTION:  Well, Godspeed, Mr. Secretary.  These are consequential and transformational times, and you’re right in the middle of all of it.  And we wish you the best for the sake of the world, and I hope some of these people understand the seriousness of the President.  Sometimes they might underestimate him. We use cookies to make our website work better and improve your experience. By continuing to use the site, you agree to our privacy policy. The administration admitted his deportation to his native El Salvador was a mistake.At a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday said the judiciary could not force the administration to try to return Abrego Garcia."The conduct of our foreign policy belongs to the president of the United States and the executive branch not some judge," Rubio told reporters.Reporting by Simon Lewis Daphne Psaledakis and Steve Holland; additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Erin Banco; Editing by Don Durfee and Suzanne Goldenberg Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab , opens new tab Browse an unrivalled portfolio of real-time and historical market data and insights from worldwide sources and experts. , opens new tabScreen for heightened risk individual and entities globally to help uncover hidden risks in business relationships and human networks. © 2025 Reuters. All rights reserved Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker nonprofit news organization that produces award-winning journalism who was one of the heavyweights in Novak Djokovic's team in recent years and has been coaching Jannik Sinner since 2024 has revealed the feelings of the Italian now that his three-month suspension is over The coach stated on Sky Sports Italia that the number one was eager to get back on the court: "We are very happy We couldn't stand being without competitions anymore something that never happens to tennis players We have implemented a more long-term athletic program," Panichi asserted This news is an automatic translation. You can read the original news, Marco Panichi, sobre la vuelta de Sinner: "Jannik ya no soportaba solo entrenar" Secretary of state. Acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Acting archivist for the National Archives and Records Administration. And now interim national security adviser to President Donald Trump. Like a Christmas tree bedecked with shiny ornaments of every shape and size, Marco Rubio, 53, has accumulated four titles starting with his confirmation as secretary of state on Jan. 20, the same day that Trump took his oath of office. It very well could be a record in the modern history of the U.S. government. And it adds to the immigrant success story that is core to the narrative of Rubio, a former senator from Florida whose father worked as a bartender and mother toiled as a housekeeper after they left Cuba for the United States. But the proliferation of titles raises questions about whether Rubio can play any substantial role in the administration if he is juggling all these positions, especially under a president who eschews the traditional workings of government and who has appointed a businessman friend, Steve Witkoff, as a special envoy handling the most sensitive diplomacy. Trump announced Rubio’s newest position in a social media post Thursday afternoon, a surprise twist in the first big personnel shake-up of this administration. The president had just ousted Michael Waltz from the White House national security adviser job as well as Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong. In the same post, Trump said Waltz would now be his nominee to be ambassador to the United Nations. Rubio’s appointment to yet another job — as if he were cloned in a B-grade sci-fi movie — was so sudden that Tammy Bruce, the State Department spokesperson, learned about it when a reporter read Trump’s social media post to her during a regular televised news conference. “Yeah, so that is the miracle of modern technology and social media,” Bruce said. “So that is an exciting moment here.” Scrambling to try to explain the events unfolding in real time, Bruce said: “We’ve seen him be at the White House several times a week, his close working relationship day to day with the president. They clearly have been in an environment where they’ve gotten to know each other very well.” The fact that Rubio now leads four bodies is a sign not only of the trust placed in him by Trump, but also of the close relationship he has with Susie Wiles, the veteran political operative who is Trump’s chief of staff. Of course, having four jobs also raises more practical issues: Does Rubio get a pay bump? Will he have time to hop around the globe to do diplomacy? How will he delegate his duties? There are precedents — sort of. From 1973-75, Henry Kissinger held two of Rubio’s jobs, secretary of state and national security adviser, in an experiment that was considered a failure. In the current Trump administration, two officials, Kash Patel, the FBI director, and Daniel Driscoll, the Army secretary, have both been interim head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives while also serving in their more prominent posts. But it might be more relevant to look outside the United States for examples. Xi Jinping, China’s leader, is general secretary of the Communist Party, president of China and chair of the Central Military Commission — still one job short of Rubio’s tally when counting his top titles (Xi is also the head of several party groups). The Senate unanimously confirmed Rubio to be secretary of state. But he entered the other jobs under controversial circumstances. Trump fired the head archivist, Colleen Shogan, in early February in an apparent act of retribution against the National Archives and Records Administration. Leaders of the agency had raised concerns about Trump’s holding onto boxes of classified documents at his home in Florida after he left office in 2021, though Shogan was not involved in that episode. Four days before Shogan’s firing, Rubio announced he was the acting administrator for USAID, as Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to Trump, and Pete Marocco, a political appointee in the State Department, were gutting the agency. Marocco and members of Musk’s government-slashing task force did the daily work of reducing the agency to a husk, cutting contracts and firing thousands of employees, but Rubio signed off on the moves. Rubio is moving the remnants of the agency into the State Department. Last week, he issued a chart on his planned department reorganization that shows him keeping the title of USAID administrator. Even before Trump appointed the top U.S. diplomat/archivist/aid agency administrator to be interim national security adviser, some analysts were pointing out the problems with Rubio holding all these positions. “Occupying two (or in Rubio’s case, three) roles at once is never ideal — directing government agencies and programs is a significant task that demands attention and focus,” said a post on the site of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a government watchdog group, in March. “But Rubio’s current positions are uniquely concerning.” The writer, Gabriella Cantor, pointed out the obvious conflict of interest: The archivist is supposed to ensure that other federal agencies, including the two Rubio is also leading, preserve records. Now, with the addition of the White House National Security Council, that becomes thornier. As for the question of Rubio’s salary (or salaries), the State Department did not reply when asked Thursday afternoon. Thursday night, Vice President JD Vance threw out an idea on social media for how Rubio could go even further as a one-stop shop for assuming new authorities. “I think he could take on a bit more,” Vance wrote. “If only there was a job opening for a devout Catholic…” Vance had visited Pope Francis in the Vatican last month just hours before the pope died. Rubio laughed about the suggestion in an interview on Fox News. “We thought about it,” he said. “Any unmarried Catholic male can be pope, but I got married and I’m happily married, so I guess I’ll miss out on that one.” Stay secure and make sure you have the best reading experience possible by upgrading your browser! The feud deepened late last week to embroil the foreign office, Rubio, Vice President JD Vance and Trump administration billionaire advisor Elon Musk. It also occurred at a complicated time for Germany — just days before the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II and Nazi Germany’s unconditional capitulation. Plus, a coalition deal between the center-right and center-left parties was just approved, and now Parliament is set to vote this week to elect conservative leader Friedrich Merz as the country’s new chancellor. Merz has not commented publicly on the intelligence service’s decision. Oleksii Makeiev, Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany, told German news agency DPA that he’s concerned about Alternative for Germany’s ties to Russia in light of the classification. The far-right party, known as AfD, has long faced criticism for Russia-friendly positions, and it opposes Germany’s stance toward the war in Ukraine. Berlin is Ukraine’s second-biggest weapons supplier after the United States. Germany’s Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution described AfD as a threat to the country’s democratic order, saying it “disregards human dignity” — in particular by what the agency called “ongoing agitation” against refugees and migrants. The agency said in its decision that the “ethnicity- and ancestry-based conception of the people that predominates within the party is not compatible with the free democratic order.” It cited the “xenophobic, anti-minority, Islamophobic and anti-Muslim statements made by leading party officials.” The party “aims to exclude certain population groups from equal participation in society, to subject them to treatment that violates the constitution, and thereby assign them a legally subordinate status,” the agency said. The move to classify the AfD, which placed second in national elections in February, as a right-wing extremist group means intelligence officials can now use informants and other tools such as audio and video recordings to monitor its activities nationwide. But it also risks fueling the party’s claims of political persecution. Far-right parties have been gaining ground across Europe, and AfD attracts international attention, including high-profile support from Musk and Vance. Party leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla on Friday condemned the move as “a severe blow to German democracy,” noting that the party has grown into one of the country’s most popular political forces. They alleged that it was politically motivated, a claim the government denies. “The AfD will continue to legally defend itself against these democracy-endangering defamations,” they said. AfD’s second-place finish during the elections cemented the party’s status as a factor that other politicians can’t ignore, but the so-called firewall, which mainstream German political parties have against working with far-right parties, has held. In his post Friday, Rubio called on Germany to undo the classification. “Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That’s not democracy — it’s tyranny in disguise,” he wrote. “What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD — which took second in the recent election — but rather the establishment’s deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes. Germany should reverse course.” The Foreign Ministry wrote that “this is democracy” in a post that replied directly to Rubio. “This decision is the result of a thorough & independent investigation to protect our Constitution & the rule of law,” the ministry wrote late Friday. “It is independent courts that will have the final say. We have learnt from our history that rightwing extremism needs to be stopped.” Vance, meanwhile, referenced the Cold War in his post on X. “The AfD is the most popular party in Germany, and by far the most representative of [the former] East Germany. Now the bureaucrats try to destroy it,” Vance wrote. “The West tore down the Berlin Wall together. And it has been rebuilt — not by the Soviets or the Russians, but by the German establishment.” Musk, who owns X, reposted Vance’s comments and added, “fate loves irony.” Vance met with Weidel in February, nine days before the national election, on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference. He assailed the firewall in a speech to the conference. “To many of us on the other side of the Atlantic, it looks more and more like old entrenched interests hiding behind ugly Soviet-era words like ‘misinformation’ and ‘disinformation,’ who simply don’t like the idea that somebody with an alternative viewpoint might express a different opinion or, God forbid, vote a different way, or even worse, win an election,” he told the audience. Musk has supported AfD for months, including a chat with Weidel that he livestreamed on X this year to amplify the party’s message. Musk told Weidel that he was “strongly recommending that people vote for AfD.” The audience for the livestream peaked at more than 200,000 X accounts. World & Nation World & Nation Subscribe for unlimited accessSite Map Her work has been cited in The Washington Post She has also frequently appeared on national television and radio You can get in touch with Sonam at s.sheth@newsweek.com either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio tore into Germany on Friday after its domestic intelligence service designated the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) as an extremist group Germany's decision to label AfD as a "proven right-wing extremist endeavor" makes it easier for the Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) to conduct some types of surveillance of the group The AfD was previously a "suspected" extremist group but its status as an extremist party has now been confirmed The agency added that its decision Friday came after a three-year review The AfD denies that it is an extremist party and has said its platform and emphasizes nationalism and traditional Christian values reflects the views of the German electorate "Germany just gave its spy agency new powers to surveil the opposition. That's not democracy—it's tyranny in disguise," Rubio wrote on X, formerly Twitter "What is truly extremist is not the popular AfD—which took second in the recent election—but rather the establishment's deadly open border immigration policies that the AfD opposes," he wrote The AfD came in second place in Germany's recent elections and has been backed by several Trump administration officials, including Vice President JD Vance and billionaire CEO Elon Musk who oversees the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) Musk endorsed the AfD on X in December and hosted a 75-minute video conversation with the party's co-leader Weidel told journalists that Musk personally called her to congratulate her on the party's performance in February's elections Vance also signaled his support for the AfD while appearing at the Munich Security Conference that same month apparently referencing other German political parties' efforts to keep the AfD out of mainstream politics Vance also met with Weidel during his trip to Germany BfV vice presidents Sinan Selen and Silke Willems in a statement: "The AfD's ethnic and descent-based understanding of the people which devalues ​​entire population groups in Germany and violates their human dignity." They added: "This understanding of the people is reflected in the party's overall anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim stance." AfD leaders Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla in a statement: "This deliberate interference in the democratic process of forming political will is clearly politically motivated The AfD will continue to legally challenge these defamatory actions that endanger democracy." The AfD can challenge BfV's reclassification in Germany's courts But despite finishing second in the most recent elections it will not participate in the country's next government after other parties formed a coalition to shut the far-right group out Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground Newsweek is committed to journalism that's factual and fair Hold us accountable and submit your rating of this article on the meter. Newsletters in your inbox See all emphasizing their importance in the cabinet and their defense of the Trump agenda By The President of the United States, Donald Trump, indicated this Sunday that Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio could be potential heirs to the leadership of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement During an interview with NBC News aired on the show 'Meet the Press' the leader refrained from making a definitive endorsement but asserted that the movement that has transformed the Republican Party can survive without him calling him "fantastic" and noting that he is playing a key role in the cabinet whom he described as "wonderful and brilliant." Rubio, who has taken on a leading role as Secretary of State and recently was appointed acting National Security Advisor following the departure of Mike Waltz has strengthened his profile within the inner circle of the president For his part, Vance, senator from Ohio and current vice president, has gained political weight as one of the main advocates of the Trumpist agenda When asked if Vance tops his list of potential successors for the 2028 elections Trump responded ambiguously: “It could be… but I don’t want to get involved in that.” he acknowledged that his position as vice president would give him an advantage although he did not rule out a potential internal competition: “I could be challenged by someone else.” The president also addressed the speculation surrounding a possible third term, fueled by the sale of hats with the slogan “Trump 2028” While he expressed feeling flattered by the support of his followers he reiterated that he is not considering that possibility referring to the 22nd Amendment of the U.S Trump concluded by stating that his goal is to complete a successful new term and "hand over power to someone A team of journalists committed to reporting on Cuban current affairs and topics of global interest we work to deliver truthful news and critical analysis Donald Trump himself dropped this bombshell on Truth Social: I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations From his time in uniform on the battlefield Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first I know he will do the same in his new role Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as National Security Advisor while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department we will continue to fight tirelessly to Make America Waltz had already made his escape from the House as a first-day White House appointee Now Trump was giving Waltz her dream job as a consolation prize after he got fired That must have been really humiliating to the very ambitious New Yorker he spent multiple decades as the ultimate eminence grise of American foreign-policy thinking To put it bluntly, Marco Rubio is not about to ascend to Kissingerian levels of influence and fame, as Edward Luce of the Financial Times noted: Please people resist writing about Rubio’s growing power Holding NSA and Sec State is not Kissingerian Rubio’s just been a more pliable toady than Waltz It’s also reasonably clear that the whole shuffle wasn’t some sort of carefully thought-out gambit premeditated by the stable genius in the White House or his staff. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce had to be informed by reporters of Trump’s moves during a briefing she was allegedly holding it’s just another day of chaos in the court of the Chaos King By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice and to receive email correspondence from us. Things you buy through our links may earn Vox Media a commission. Password must be at least 8 characters and contain: As part of your account, you’ll receive occasional updates and offers from New York, which you can opt out of anytime. Notifications can be managed in browser preferences. Marco Rubio once accused Trump of never working a day in his life. Now he has more jobs than anyone in government. Ethics watchdogs call his multiple roles ‘uniquely concerning,’ Alex Woodward reports I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our Privacy notice Secretary of State Marco Rubio has come a long way from “little Marco,” the name Donald Trump gifted his then-rival for the Republican nomination for president in 2016 when Rubio labeled him a “con artist” who cheated workers after never having worked a day in his life himself Rubio, nearly 10 years later, has more job titles than anyone in the Trump administration. It’s likely a record in modern American history, and makes Rubio the only person to hold both the titles of secretary of state and national security adviser at the same time other than Henry Kissinger Trump named Rubio as the acting national security chief after the departure of Mike Waltz, whose chat with top administration officials on the encrypted messaging app Signal — where they discussed plans to bomb Houthis in Yemen while a journalist was in the thread — has blown up into an international scandal drawing lawsuits and investigations. The Independent has requested comment from the White House He was unanimously confirmed by his now-former Senate peers but his appointments to other roles were embroiled in the president’s retribution campaign across the federal government now at the center of several legal battles and intense scrutiny from Democratic officials as the president and his allies crush agencies and purge disloyal staff Rubio directed the freezing of all foreign aid shortly after Trump entered office, fueling the effective shutdown of virtually all USAID missions, despite receiving warnings that the closure of the global relief program would lead to thousands of deaths and disease outbreaks He assumed the title of acting USAID administrator in February and is now moving what remains of the largely dissolved agency into the State Department After the resignations of the acting archivist and several senior staff members at the National Archives and Records Administration, which was at the center of the classified documents criminal case against the president before entering office Trump announced on Truth Social that Waltz was leaving the White House marking one of the first major shakeups in the administration shortly after the president and his allies celebrated his 100th day in office Trump announced Waltz as his nominee to serve as ambassador to the United Nations a role initially picked for Republican Rep whose nomination was withdrawn after the administration feared a Democratic candidate would win an upcoming election in her district while the GOP holds only the slimmest of majorities in Congress Rubio isn’t the first government official to hold multiple titles He’s also not the only one in the Trump administration to do so; far-right conspiracy theorist and FBI director Kash Patel were both appointed interim chiefs of the Bureau of Alcohol Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins was also appointed acting director of the Office of Government Ethics Occupying several roles “at once is never ideal — directing government agencies and programs is a significant task that demands attention and focus,” according to watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington “But Rubio’s current positions are uniquely concerning,” as he oversees the “unprecedented” and “rapid and potentially illegal dismantling” of USAID while Elon Musk and the so-called Department of Government Efficiency take “slash-and-burn approach” to the agency That raises “significant concerns” about the preservation of the agency’s records But Rubio is also leading the agency designed to protect them “This is where Rubio’s multiple appointments come to a head,” according to CREW “How can he be both the administrator of an agency that may be failing to follow the Federal Records Act and be the nation’s archivist responsible for ensuring that agencies follow that very law?” The announcement of Rubio’s appointment as acting national security adviser came as a surprise to his own spokesperson A reporter read Trump’s Truth Social post to State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce while she was in the middle of a briefing to reporters on Thursday. “It is clear that I just heard this, from you” she said. Appearing to scramble to explain whether she even knew that was a possibility, she said: “One thing that I certainly have learned is that things don’t happen until the president says there’s going to happen. So, the fact that that is — what was that, obviously, Truth Social? Yeah, so that is the miracle of modern technology and social media. So that is an exciting moment here.” Rubio has “worn several hats from day one” since entering the administration, she said. Asked whether she had any insights on the decision-making, she said: “No, I can’t, but thanks for asking.” Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies govt and politics"},{"score":0.776212,"label":"/law govt and politics/government"},{"score":0.758363,"label":"/law govt and politics/armed forces"},{"score":0.708473,"label":"/law govt and politics/politics/elections/presidential elections"},{"score":0.641162,"label":"/law govt and politics/government/government contracting and procurement"},{"score":0.630223,"label":"/law Now he has more jobs than anyone in government Ethics watchdogs call his multiple roles ‘uniquely concerning,’ Alex Woodward reports Grooming by Stephanie Lockwood for Exclusive Artist using Lab Series.Save this storySaveSave this storySave“I don’t drink alcohol,” Marco Calvani says while scanning a bar menu on a spacious Los Angeles restaurant patio I promised myself that I would stay away from alcohol for a couple of months Can you believe it?” He’s asking because there’s been a lot of partying and socializing as he gears up for the rollout of The Four Seasons—Netflix’s new comedy series cocreated by and starring Tina Fey Calvani spent last fall shooting the series; he spent the winter in upstate New York working on a new project with his writing partner He then flew to Brazil to be with his husband “Now we are happily rebuilding a routine,” Calvani says before ordering a mocktail I’m serious—for two months I know that I’ll be here so I’m committed.” If you didn’t know any better it might sound like being in Hollywood is getting to Calvani The Four Seasons marks his first acting credit in more than a decade providing what is easily the highest-profile role of his career: He stars alongside industry heavy hitters like Fey as warm and dishy as his Four Seasons character who (mostly) maintains a bright smile even as his marriage hits a few rough patches The performance feels so effortless that you’d never guess that Calvani stepped away from acting long ago the question remains: How did Calvani—a distinguished international playwright and theater director who just earned raves for his feature film directorial debut High Tide—get involved with this A-list crowd when he had no plans to act again Colman Domingo as Danny and Marco Calvani as Claude in The Four Seasons Calvani and Pigossi first met Domingo and his husband at an event for the LGBTQ+ nonprofit Family Equality in 2023 and then ran into each other again later that night at a house party hosted by Natasha Lyonne That’s where they really hit it off: “We just sat down and we smoked cigarettes and talked and danced,” Calvani says The couples stayed in touch; the following year Domingo suddenly asked Calvani to put himself on tape Calvani never told Domingo that he was a former actor Domingo did not tell Calvani what the project was either I think Colman needs me for one of his projects with some of his friends—he needs an Italian who brings a plate of lasagna and says something Italian It felt too big to be true—and too big for me It sounds awful and awkward to say this now Calvani was in Provincetown when he got his official Four Seasons callback He descended into his producer’s basement to act out scenes for Fey et al He’s spent the last few months thinking about why Domingo asked him to get on this ride in the first place I think he and Raúl saw that enthusiasm and joie de vivre and apparently I was a perfect host and a little bit of a clown too,” Calvani says between sips but I think Colman also felt that he was getting into a new territory himself I felt everybody was stretching their own skills.” Photograph by Jen Rosenstein.Calvani thought he was done with acting way back in 2000 and his goal had always been to make his own stuff anyway Calvani only set his sights on acting as a preteen because he’d heard someone say—he can’t remember when or where—that to be a great director and then I completely forgot that I wanted to be a director,” he says He started thinking about directing in the mid-2000s then eventually took on larger productions on both sides of the Atlantic including a few Neil LaBute plays in New York His style of writing is politically charged and dramatically intense “I didn’t want to be a ‘gay writer.’ I didn’t want to be a ‘gay director.’ I realized that I was getting a lot of internalized homophobia within me,” Calvani says “I’ve been a gay man all my life and a storyteller for most of it—25 years almost I never put gay characters at the center of my stories It never occurred to me to use that platform.” He catches me curiously nodding along “I was a gay immigrant in a country that I didn’t understand anymore and I stopped understanding myself,” he says a feature about an adrift undocumented immigrant from Brazil looking for connection in Provincetown “High Tide came out of this need of finding my place again in a world that was changing very radically,” he explains as well as decorated American actors Marisa Tomei and Bill Irwin It traveled the festival circuit last year and earned raves currently sitting at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes So Calvani was just beginning an auspicious filmmaking career when Domingo and Fey came calling The Four Seasons wasn’t something he’d ever say no to Calvani had to put off completing his second feature script and mostly bowed out of the High Tide press tour I’m back to acting at the moment where my baby is coming out The production found a way for him to jet to the film’s international premiere in Rio de Janeiro before immediately returning; he made it to a few other festivals nearby One day during shooting on The Four Seasons The New York Times reviewed High Tide and designated it a critic’s pick “It was Tina’s idea to call me CP,” Calvani says Photograph by Jen Rosenstein.When Calvani first got scripts for The Four Seasons I couldn’t see the layers that were boiling already underneath,” he says “Claude was written to be very flamboyant and very loud Calvani was concerned about playing a stereotype That old hesitancy about leaning into his queerness started rearing its head again But seeing his costars venture outside of their own comfort zones—Domingo doing comedy Fey operating in a less joke-heavy key—gave Calvani the confidence to do his thing too “I had an idea that being an actor was just not being afraid of anything and just being able to access everything being as nervous as I was—it was refreshing,” he says Calvani also worked to refine his character “All the Italian-ness that’s left in the script and onscreen in the episode Calvani is hardly seeking his next acting project; his real hope is that the Four Seasons PR boost helps get his next movie off the ground given the tough climate for indie financing should another offer like this come his way It’ll be tough for anything to to live up to the Four Seasons experience “It has an emotional depth that you don’t quite see at the beginning,” Calvani says “We all really went deep with each other in the most organic way.” Calvani and Domingo especially radiate a moving lived-in chemistry that remains all too rare among queer couples on television to look inward—and confront some personal fears the actor says he feels afraid these days just walking the streets without a passport He’s thought hard about putting himself out there on a big-ticket show like this one “To play an openly gay character in a pretty normalized and successful relationship on TV and use my whole body and my face and my voice—I was scared at a time like this,” he says He lets that heavy reality sit for a moment before beaming once again Met Gala 2025 Live Updates: A-listers Prepare for Fashion’s Biggest Night Hawk Tuah Opens Up About Her Crypto Scandal Revisit the Most Unforgettable Met Gala Looks Alan Alda on Life With Parkinson’s Designer Prabal Gurung Recalls His First Met Gala How Miriam Adelson Went From Big MAGA Winner to Casino Loser in Trump’s First 100 Days The UK Has Found Another Reason to Be Mad at Meghan Markle Why Are Americans So Obsessed With Protein How Sebastian Stan Became Hollywood’s Most Daring Shape-Shifter Meet Elon Musk’s 14 Children and Their Mothers (Whom We Know of) The former Florida senator landed the most coveted Cabinet seat in Trump's administration Brendan Cole is a Newsweek Senior News Reporter based in London He also covers other areas of geopolitics including China Brendan joined Newsweek in 2018 from the International Business Times and well as English You can get in touch with Brendan by emailing b.cole@newsweek.com or follow on him on his X account @brendanmarkcole Yevgeny Kuklychev is Newsweek's London-based Senior Editor for Russia He previously headed Newsweek's Misinformation Watch and Newsweek Fact Check He joined Newsweek in 2021 and previously worked at the BBC You can get in touch with Yevgeny by emailing y.kuklychev@newsweek.com Russian state media have reported Thursday that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio may attend Moscow's May 9 celebrations in Red Square to commemorate the end of World War Two Zvezda, a TV channel of the Russian defense ministry, cited an unnamed diplomatic source that the U.S. might be represented by Rubio at the show piece event for the Kremlin which parades Russian military hardware State Department told Newsweek in a statement: "We have no travel to announce at this time." Newsweek has contacted the Kremlin for a response There has been no other confirmation of the report and Russian state media is known for spreading misinformation The parade in Moscow's Red Square on May 9 marking the end of what is known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War is an important event for Vladimir Putin and has been shunned by most western leaders since Russia's invasion of Ukraine Media reports in February that President Donald Trump would attend the 80th anniversary were quashed by denials from both the U.S State media reporting that Rubio might attend could be a misinformation ploy amid stalled peace negotiations for a ceasefire in the war Putin started Zvezda, Russian for star, a state-owned nationwide TV network run by Russia's Ministry of Defense which pushes an anti-western stance and its pro-war information has led to it being sanctioned by the European Union and Canada In a Telegram post on Thursday representative may be a guest at the Victory Parade on May 9 and "it is possible that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio may take part." RBC, which was among Russian news outlets reporting Zvezda's claims Zvezda, a TV channel of the Russian defense ministry, reported that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio might attend the parade in Moscow on May 9.The channel quoted "a source in the diplomatic circles" that reportedly said that "The United States might be represented at a high… pic.twitter.com/Lz1dHlgsFi On Wednesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed comments by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Russia should be concerned about the parade which Russian outlets said suggested that Kyiv was looking to disrupt the event Also on Wednesday, Kyiv signed a deal with the U.S giving American access to Ukrainian minerals which is hoped will bolster Washington's commitment to providing security to the country against Russian aggression Zvezda on Telegram: "The United States may be represented at a high level It is possible US Secretary of State Marco Rubio might participate." State Department in a statement: "We have no travel to announce at this time." Russian media reported that the leaders of around 20 states will attend the parade, including China's president Xi Jinping, Serbian head of state Aleksandar Vučić as well as Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, who would be the only EU leader participating ET: This article has been updated with further information ET: This article has been updated with a State Department response Newsweek is committed to journalism that is factual and fair We value your input and encourage you to rate this article SECRETARY RUBIO:  I think it’s important to remind everybody that the Ukraine war is a terrible thing The United States has been helping Ukraine for over the last three years And the reason why I make that point is the President has spent 87 days at the highest level of this government repeatedly taking efforts to bring this war to an end We are now reaching a point where we need to decide and determine whether this is even possible or not but three meetings with Vladimir Putin to determine the Russian perspective on this and understand what it would take for them to end it and others – have had repeated engagements with the Ukrainians So we came here yesterday to sort of begin to talk about more specific outlines of what it might take to end the war to try to figure out very soon – and I’m talking about a matter of days not a matter of weeks – whether or not this is a war that can be ended we’re prepared to do whatever we can to facilitate that and make sure that it happens If it’s not possible – if we’re so far apart that this is not going to happen – then I think the President’s probably at a point where he’s going to say We’ll be ready to help whenever you’re ready to have peace But we’re not going to continue with this endeavor for weeks and months on end we need to determine very quickly now – and I’m talking about a matter of days – whether or not this is doable in the – over the next few weeks then we’ll have to – we have other priorities to focus on as well The State Department said yesterday that a framework had been presented – both sides: to the Ukrainians I’m not going to tell you what the framework says because when you start negotiating these things through the media and so forth It’s a framework that gets us into a position to see – look there are going to be differences; there’s no – no one’s saying this can be done in 12 hours But we want to see how far apart it is and whether those differences are – can even be narrowed if it’s even possible to get movement within the period of time we have in mind we’ve talked about outlines with both sides I thought we had positive meetings yesterday they have to take into account their views on all of this And we hope to hear back from them very soon The President feels very strongly about that He has dedicated a lot of time and energy to this and there are a lot of things going on in the world right now that we need to be focused on but there are a lot of other really important things going on that deserve just as much if not more attention So we want to do everything we can to be helpful and hopefully we’ll have another meeting early next week at some point where we’ll have some more definitive answers about how close we are to actually making progress In your conversations yesterday with the Europeans and the Ukrainians I’m sure you spoke about security guarantees for Ukraine in case of a ceasefire Could you give us a sense of what that could look like ready to back up any eventual European reassurance force for Ukraine that gets into a level of specifics that we’re not ready to discuss publicly yet the term “security guarantees” came up because they come up in every meeting Every sovereign nation on Earth has a right to defend itself Ukraine will have a right to defend itself and to enter into whatever agreements it wants to enter into on a bilateral basis with different countries and so forth but I don’t – and (inaudible) have to be part of any sort of conversation we recognize that Ukraine has to feel like it has the ability to defend itself from a future attack from anyone Every country in the world has that right I think everyone recognizes that Ukraine’s ability to defend itself is going to be a part – it’s its right as a country and will be a part of any agreement But we’re not working yet on that level of specifics I think that’s something we can fix and solve in a way that’s acceptable to everyone I think we have bigger challenges that we need to figure out whether it’s even possible within the short term I can tell you this:  This war has no military solution to it It’s not going to be decided with – neither side has some strategic capability to end this war quickly And so what we’re talking about here is avoiding thousands and thousands of people from dying over the next year We saw what happened last weekend with a missile strike in Sumy On both sides we’re going to see more of that But we’re not going to continue to fly all over the world and do meeting after meeting after meeting if no progress is being made So if they’re serious about peace – either side We’re going to move on to other topics that are equally if not more important in some ways to the United States is this process involving the Europeans going to be the process going forward now for Ukraine talks team will be attending talks in London next week it depends what the talks will be about next week if it’s just going to be a meeting to have another meeting I’m hoping that it’s a meeting where we’re going to get more specificity so people have to move around and get to their places and get back We’ll – but having another meeting somewhere in Europe is not going to be a problem and we can make that happen to have the right people there I’m willing to come myself if the meeting is going to be productive But I can – what was the first part of your question again QUESTION:  And is this going to be the process going forward we’ve always – we talk to our allies consistently I myself have had multiple engagements with not – the Germans but also the Italians have been at some of these meetings as well in the past So we’ve had these conversations with them before and it was – I think they were very helpful I think the UK and France and Germany can help us move the ball on this and then get this closer to a resolution I thought they were very helpful and constructive with their ideas There are probably elements of this as well I always remind everybody that part of the sanctions against Russia many of them are European sanctions that we can’t lift So they’re going to have to be involved no matter what This is happening on the continent of Europe and so obviously European powers will care deeply about what happens they have a stake in this and we recognize it and they – but in the end I think we all want the same thing billions of dollars supporting the Ukrainian side and – but now we’ve reached the point where we have other things we have to focus on We’re prepared to be engaged in this as long as it takes I think the President feels strongly that we’ve dedicated a tremendous – we’ve done more in 80 days than Biden ever did to bring this war to an end we’ve dedicated the – almost the entirety of the President’s first hundred days in office at the highest levels possible to trying to achieve a peace here we need to know now because we have other things we have to deal with In terms of your discussions with Foreign Minister Lavrov yesterday what gave you the indication that he’s also willing to move forward given that they hadn’t accepted the framework of the ceasefire already why you feel that (inaudible) be (inaudible move forward I spoke to Minister Lavrov yesterday because when we have these kinds of meetings it’s important for you to communicate to the other side otherwise they don’t know what happened; now they’re relying on rumors or whatever’s out there I said we had a meeting today with the Ukrainians but I think he has an understanding of some of the elements of it We thought it was positive that nobody rejected anything nobody got up from the table and walked away They’re going to go back to their capital And also wanted him to know that the French and the British and the Germans were very constructive and helpful And I think it’s important when you’re dealing with things like this especially with the Russians who we just haven’t communicated with for three and a half years I think it’s important that that communication happen And likewise when we’ve had meetings with Russians in the past or when Secretary – when Ambassador Witkoff has traveled to meet with Putin we’ve informed the Ukrainian side of what happens so that we don’t have a breakdown in trust and things of that nature Was there any discussion yesterday with your European counterparts on any of the Iran negotiations Are they also sharing the President’s vision of Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon they have an important decision to make very soon on snapback – on the snapback of sanctions – because Iran is clearly out of compliance with the current deal issued public statements saying Iran is as close as it’s ever been to nuclear weapons The President’s made clear Iran will not have a nuclear weapon We’re hoping that talks continue and that they’re fruitful and that they’re – that they can lead to something We would all prefer a peaceful resolution and a lasting one It has to be something that actually not just prevents Iran from having a nuclear weapon now not just for 10 years with some sort of sunset provision or the like Because I believe we should all anticipate that they’re about to get a report from the IAEA that says not just is Iran out of compliance but Iran is dangerously close to a weapon And then they’re going to have to make a decision about whether they want to reimpose these sanctions So that’s going to be a factor in all this and that’s why it was important we talk to them about it before our talks on Saturday We use cookies to make our website work better and improve your experience Secretary of state will take on dual role as national security adviser – and just like half a century ago Marco Rubio the child of undocumented Cuban immigrants will be the first person since Kissinger to hold the national security adviser and secretary of state positions at the same time Kissinger – who himself arrived on America’s shores as an immigrant – achieved that feat in September 1973 after being tapped to take over the state department following four tumultuous and high-profile years as Richard Nixon’s national security adviser during which he helped pave a historic opening to communist China and was – contentiously – awarded the Nobel peace prize for ending US involvement in the Vietnam war a scandal just gaining momentum at the time but which was ultimately destined to consume Nixon’s presidency But it left Kissinger free to conduct American foreign policy virtually single-handed at least until Nixon was forced from office Trump has just completed perhaps the most extreme first 100 days of US presidential history, producing a sea of uncertainty, upending the country’s international alliances, shattering democratic and legal norms at home, and leaving even its future status as the world’s leading democracy unsure. Read moreThis unpredictable landscape is what confronts Rubio in his new position An orthodox Republican in foreign policy matters has frequently appeared uncomfortable – occasionally miserable even – during the first three months at the state department under Trump never more so than during the disastrous clash with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in February when the Ukrainian president subjected to a public browbeating by the president and JD Vance in the Oval Office he had been one of Ukraine’s staunchest supporters against Russia’s invasion He then saw that principled position so openly and brutally overturned and was forced to justify the volte face in public as Trump has conspicuously sympathised with Vladimir Putin Equally galling has been Elon Musk’s gleeful gutting of USAID America’s main foreign assistance agency – which Rubio has previously championed and which fell within his purview as secretary of state – under the auspices of the tech billionaire’s unofficial “department of government efficiency” project The tensions led to a shouting match between the two men in front of Trump with Rubio reportedly responding aggressively to Musk’s accusation that he had failed in the mission of firing enough state department staff Rubio – who was once tipped as a future president – now suddenly finds himself in addition to being in charge of a still mighty department having direct access to the inner workings of the White House and to the president himself Even if it has come about thanks to the default of the less-than-surefooted Waltz – whose credibility never recovered from inadvertently inviting one of Trump’s least favourite journalists on to to a Signal chat about strikes on Yemeni Houthis – it is quite the turnaround It puts Rubio in the same vantage point from which Kissinger the renowned exponent of realpolitik and great power balances carved out a role as arguably the US’s most influential – if highly controversial – foreign policy strategist of the 20th century With Trump just as consumed with domestic political enemies as Nixon ever was it raises the unexpected question of whether Rubio can achieve the same level of prominence who would have guessed that the once-derided “Little Marco” would hold the levers of power of two separate institutions in his hands Log in to comment on videos and join in on the fun Watch the live stream of Fox News and full episodes Reduce eye strain and focus on the content that matters dubbed “Project 99,” but as always “We’re going to do a bunch of 800m simulation stuff,” Apex Athletics coach Chris Woods said The session was structured as a series of 800m-style breakdowns: Each set was separated by a 10-minute rest to allow full recovery “I thought that was going to feel worse,” Arop admitted afterward. “I was worried. But the 400m-200m is going to be the hardest part of the workout, so I have to get recovered in these next 10 minutes.” He lay on his back, feet up against a wall “That wasn’t easy,” Arop said immediately after the 400m rep Woods agreed that the second set was the most gruelling part of the session He also emphasized that to prepare for the multiple rounds of races at championships how quickly Arop recovers between efforts matters as much as the splits themselves “This workout has more rest than it does running,” Woods joked Arop got the green light to complete that last set “We survived–we always do,” he said after the workout He currently holds the North American records in both the 800m and 1,000m At the Miami Slam on Saturday, the 26-year-old won the 800m in 1:43.69–just a day after running a 1,500m personal best of 3:35.95. Including last month’s Kingston, Jamaica, Slam, he now ranks second overall with 14 points, just behind the U.K.’s Josh Kerr Get the digital edition of Running for your chosen platform: Donald Trump’s announcement Thursday that Secretary of State Marco Rubio would replace Mike Waltz to serve as the interim national security adviser appears to have taken the State Department completely by surprise When a reporter asked State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce during a press briefing about Rubio’s new role “It is clear that I just heard this from you,” Bruce said A flustered Bruce couldn’t answer questions about the announcement I have some insights as to the potential of certain things that might happen,” she vamped “You can have a general sense of what’s possible but I think that one thing certainly that I have learned is that things don’t happen until the president says they’re going to happen,” she added Bruce admitted she’d been caught off guard incredulously attributing Trump’s sudden announcement to “the miracle of modern technology.” If the State Department’s spokesperson wasn’t made aware of the announcement it’s likely that Trump’s decision was not given much time to marinate at the State Department raising questions about whether Rubio had any advance notice at all that he’d be taking on yet another government job Bruce’s apparent shock also raised even more questions about the circumstances surrounding Waltz’s sudden departure earlier Thursday who was responsible for precipitating the Signalgate scandal that rocked the White House will now serve as Trump’s ambassador to the United Nations the Trump adviser who accidentally invited a journalist to a war plans group chat on Signal was caught casually scrolling through his Signal messages during a Cabinet meeting Thursday Calls and messages to or from Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and Vice President JD Vance could be seen on his phone which appeared to have no privacy screen and the brightness raised to the max who was White House national security adviser at the time the photos were taken seemed to think it was a good idea to use Signal in a room full of reporters Trump announced Thursday that Waltz will be leaving his post as national security adviser Maybe he’ll find a privacy screen by the time he starts his new job The Trump family’s cryptocurrency business just got a $2 billion investment from a firm backed by the United Arab Emirates government The deal is rife with conflicts of interest Zach Witkoff—son of Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and founder of the Trump family’s crypto firm, World Liberty Financial—announced the deal at a conference in Dubai on Thursday will be using World Liberty Financial’s so-called stablecoin “We thank MGX and Binance for their trust in us,” Witkoff said This is a massive donation from a foreign government to the Trump family that will ultimately go toward a crypto exchange that has been monitored by the U.S government for two years for money laundering has not so coincidentally been pushing for a Trump pardon after he pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering laws the Trump family will be enriched beyond most people’s comprehension and they have the UAE government to thank for it One can predict that Trump is likely to treat the country very favorably from here on out again demonstrating that his power does have a price Trump changed his tune on cryptocurrency and used it to raise millions of dollars for his last campaign His firm has been incredibly lucrative since This current venture is an instance of Trump further thumbing his nose at our flimsy conflict of interest laws and selling his influence to the highest bidder Looks like Mike Waltz will land on his feet after being pushed out as national security adviser but evidently not enough to push him out of the administration entirely Waltz’s new job seems to indicate that there are limits to accountability in the Trump administration he arguably got one that comes with less scrutiny for now it appears that the only consequences for the White House will be some chairs being shuffled In the infamous meeting where she presented her so-called evidence to support the firing of several more traditionally neoconservative foreign policy hawks Loomer had wanted to present a supposedly damning video of Waltz to the president too Loomer claimed she’d been unable to show the video to Trump because Waltz had entered the room but she shared the video on Palmeri’s podcast.  Loomer played a 2016 advertisement for an anti-Trump PAC featuring Waltz in which he criticized Trump’s statement mocking service members who’d been captured in combat “It’s something that I just personally can’t stomach,” Waltz said in the video “So if you can’t stomach it, why do you want to work for President Trump? If you can’t stomach it, why do you want to work for the administration?” asked Loomer, who evidently has a strong stomach for moral bankruptcy, as she has described herself as “pro-white nationalist” and a “proud Islamophobe.”  The far-right activist clarified that she hadn’t been gunning for Waltz during the meeting if Michael Waltz is telling the president of the United States that these people are good people given the fact that he himself has made anti-Trump comments in the past?” she said.  he’s not exactly a Trump loyalist,” Loomer said.  Loomer was adamant she hadn’t been trying to get Waltz sacked and claimed she was simply doing her due diligence while stressing her own enduring loyalty to the commander in chief Laura Loomer tried to get Michael Waltz fired!’ I didn’t go in there trying to get him fired I was just making the point that I’m a Trump loyalist I never said—I never campaigned against Trump Michael Waltz was working with a PAC that was trying to actively campaign against Donald Trump in 2016 Michael Waltz is not going to have the same standard of loyalty that I have because he himself was a Trump hater So I was trying to explain that,” she insisted “But how would that not make Trump want to fire him?” Palmeri asked.  “I think it’s important that President Trump see these things,” Loomer replied She said that she didn’t know if Trump had been made aware of the video before tapping Waltz.  When Palmeri asked the White House whether Waltz had ever spoken to Trump about his critical comments a Trump administration official responded with the following statement: “Mike has supported President Trump since after the primaries of 2016 He is a steadfast supporter of the president’s America First agenda Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, are expected to leave their posts by the end of the day Thursday, but Trump announced that afternoon that he was nominating Waltz to serve as the ambassador to the United Nations.  Crucially, it’s not clear that Waltz was removed from his post over concerns about loyalty. The hapless national security adviser had been the subject of multiple scandals during his brief time in the Trump administration, including mistakenly inviting a reporter to join a Signal group chat about plans to bomb Yemen Donald Trump’s pick to head the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C., is running into roadblocks in the Senate Ed Martin’s confirmation vote won’t be taking place Thursday the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee saying “[i]t’s my understanding that we are not going to move forward on the Martin nomination.” The committee chair, Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, said in a hearing that Republicans need more time to vet Martin Clare Slattery told The New Republic that the “committee is still reviewing Martin’s responses to questions for the record and waiting for Martin to return a few routine background materials.” “Martin’s nomination could only be listed on the [committee] agenda once that process is complete,” Slattery said adding that a vote on Martin would take place at a future date Martin has has long been an election denialist and apologist for the Capitol insurrection, but Senate Republicans have other concerns about him too: He’s made several attacks against some of them standing against Republican priorities and insufficiently supporting the president with a long history of antisemitic comments who has posted pictures of himself dressed as Hitler attorney nominees don’t come with this much controversy or negative news coverage Will all of this be enough to sink Martin’s nomination Trump has ignored media criticism in his appointments before so he may very well force his Senate allies to ram Martin through regardless of how they feel A federal judge has barred the Trump administration from deporting immigrants on the basis of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 ruling Thursday that the use of the World War II-era policy to banish alleged Tren de Aragua gang members from the country without due process is illegal In a 36-page opinion District Judge Fernando Rodriguez ruled that Tren de Aragua’s presence did not constitute an “invasion,” as Donald Trump had previously claimed wrote that the administration had inappropriately invoked the law which only applies when the nation is facing an armed “The Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and “[Administration officials] do not possess the lawful authority under the AEA the White House made a spontaneous decision to defy a court order by deporting more than 200 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang to El Salvador under the cover of the wartime policy Even after a U.S. district court judge ordered that the immigrants should remain in the U.S. as they await trial, Trump officials thwarted the law and sent the men sky bound regardless Trump justified the infraction by claiming Venezuelan immigration into the country constituted an “invasion,” and described the current era as a “time of war.” The men were taken to a notorious prison in El Salvador known as CECOT government is paying El Salvador more than $20,000 per deportee to imprison the men In April, a U.S. circuit judge stated that the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to force immigrants out of the country had treated asylum-seekers worse than prior presidents treated actual German Nazis during World War II Mike Waltz spent his last moments as national security adviser publicly singing the praises of the man who decided to fire him Waltz and his deputy, Alex Wong, will both be leaving the Trump administration after a short tenure marked by blunders and controversy particularly the first Signalgate group chat Waltz’s first outpouring of flattery for the man expected to fire him came at the 100 Days Cabinet meeting on Wednesday in which each Trump Cabinet member went around the table and shared one thing they loved about their fearless leader “Mr. President, the last four years the world experienced a total lack of zero leadership under Biden. And then we’ve had 100 days of your leadership,” Waltz fawned starting with ‘There’ll be all hell to pay.’” Waltz kept this song and dance up into the next day “This is exactly what our modern force needs.” While it’s unclear when Waltz became aware of his firing it’s obvious that the compliments didn’t save him Waltz and Wong are expected to be out by the end of the day The White House’s closest link to the white nationalist agenda had a full-blown meltdown Thursday over reports that the administration had been spurned by El Salvador over the requested release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from a Salvadoran gulag During a White House press briefing White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller claimed that Abrego Garcia had “extensively documented membership in MS-13” and was a “clear and present danger to the safety of the American people.” Trump himself appears confused about Abrego Garcia’s connection to Latin American gangs. The president entered into a terse exchange with ABC News Tuesday night when he insisted that a doctored photo of supposed gang tattoos on Abrego Garcia’s knuckles was real Experts say the photo is apparently photoshopped Trump administration officials acknowledged in court filings last month that Abrego Garcia’s forced exit from the country was an “administrative error.” The Supreme Court has ordered the executive branch to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S “It is a sad reflection on the state of our media and many of the outlets represented in this room that you obsessively try to shill for this MS-13 terrorist,” Miller ranted Thursday chastising American news outlets for allegedly failing to cover the supposed rape and murder of American citizens at the hands of “the illegals that Biden was importing into our country.” Miller then scolded the Biden administration for abiding by the Constitution in providing due process to individuals that the deputy chief of staff derided as “Tren de Aragua terrorists,” referring to the Venezuelan gang Meanwhile, the U.S. government is paying El Salvador some $20,000 per deportee to imprison the men. Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has also insinuated he intends to make more money off the uncharged men: in March, Bukele posted plans to force the immigrants into labor camps under the country’s “Zero Idleness program.” Miller previously served as the senior adviser for policy and White House director of speechwriting during Trump’s first term. The far-right politico has made a name for himself for his vicious anti-immigrant policies which include proposals to build mass deportation camps and deploy the military and the National Guard to seal the border promising a forthcoming reality of “large-scale raids” and “throughput facilities.” leaked emails revealed that Miller promoted white nationalist articles and books especially on the idea that nonwhite people are replacing white people Donald Trump gave a completely incoherent response to a question about his crackdown on Harvard University and ended up ranting about fictional riots Smith asked Trump what he would say to those who view his attacks against the Ivy League school as “an attack on academic freedom and frankly if you look at what’s gone on—and people from Harlem went up and they protested and they protested very strongly against Harvard They happened to be on my side,” Trump said It was a very great compliment to me,” Trump continued The president appeared confused about the subject of the question, ranting about Harlem instead of Harvard and inventing a fictional riot in support of his war on higher education asked by Stephen A. Smith about his Harvard shakedown, Trump starts ranting about Harlem and says "I got a very high Black vote" pic.twitter.com/ZoKFaAx7xs Trump’s stumped response is particularly disturbing because Smith repeated the word “Harvard” three times in asking his question and was responding directly to something Trump had just mentioned but then felt it necessary to comment on the support of Black voters which was at that point entirely off topic There have been concerns over Trump’s cognitive decline since he first started to deliver weaving nonsensical stump speeches on the presidential campaign trail Now his divorce from reality manifests mostly in his disastrous economic policy as the president is more or less kept away from making lengthy addresses During an interview on ABC News Tuesday, Trump appeared to suggest that Kilmar Abrego Garcia literally had “MS-13” tattooed on his hand Trump had seen an image with these letters and numbers digitally added as a visual aid to the tattoos the government claimed proved his gang affiliation Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s star is rising inside President Donald Trump’s administration In addition to running the State Department the onetime Trump critic-turned-ally is also serving as acting administrator for USAID and now also Trump’s interim national security adviser That last title was added Thursday after Mike Waltz was ousted and came as a surprise even to some of Rubio’s staff It’s unclear how Rubio plans to juggle four jobs (“insomnia is helpful,” one Trump ally joked) but it is a sign of Trump’s confidence in the former Florida senator He’s widely liked internally and is seen as being in lockstep with Trump on foreign policy — Trump even shifted responsibility for Venezuela talks to him in March Rubio is one of the president’s most trusted Cabinet members Sign up for Semafor .css-w8sqnb{text-transform:capitalize;}principals You don't have permission to access the page you requested What is this page?The website you are visiting is protected.For security reasons this page cannot be displayed The Minnesota Wild’s 2024-25 season is officially over Maybe it’s because they jumped out to a 2-1 series lead before losing three-straight… but the Wild’s latest exit out of the postseason still has a shock factor that I’m not sure the entire fanbase has come to grips with yet and before long we’ll be thinking about 2025-26 and what the MN Wild will look like once they (hopefully) redo Kirill Kaprizov’s contract and spend some of the remaining cap space to acquire new talent Cap space that won’t be impeded by Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyout penalties No doubt, it should be an exciting offseason, and one that — according to Michael Russo (The Athletic) — will almost certainly include a trade of Marco Rossi who was relegated to the fourth line and played less than 12 minutes per game during the NHL Playoffs In a fiery interview with KFAN Radio Sunday morning, the longtime Minnesota Wild insider told KFAN host Dan Barreiro that he’s more convinced than ever that the 23-year-old former No 9 overall pick will be dealt at some point this offseason Russo puts the odds at “way higher than 75-80%” I’ve thought all year long that they’re going to trade him this summer and I think we’re talking probably way more than 75-80% [chance] now Part of that is because I don’t know if he’s going to be willing to [take] even what [the Wild] would be willing to offer him right now I don’t even know if that 5 year x $5 million contract they offered Marco Rossi was an incredibly important player for the Wild especially once Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek went down with injuries that cost them much of the second half Related: New Minnesota Wild Arena Name and Sponsor Revealed…? In fact, Rossi finished behind only Matt Boldy in assists (36) and points (60) Only Boldy and Kaprizov scored more goals than Rossi’s 24 He was also one of the only top-line regular season forwards who played in all 82 games where he centered mostly the first or second line and was on the ice for 18:15 per game MARCO ROSSI IN OVERTIME. WILD WIN pic.twitter.com/28cqDJbqmj the playoffs started and president of hockey ops Bill Guerin and his head coach John Hynes stuffed Marco Rossi down on the fourth line presumably deciding his smaller frame and finesse-style game isn’t fit for the NHL postseason Even with Gustav Nyquist and Freddy Goudreau playing poorly above him, Rossi never got off the fourth line. And while he did get run on the Minnesota Wild’s playoff power play, he still averaged just 11:08 total TOI behind only Yakov Trenin and Justin Brazeau Yet, Marco still potted 2 goals in six games and assisted on another We still aren’t sure how Marco Rossi feels about his fourth line relegation those surrounding the young Austrian are not happy with what they believe was mistreatment of Rossi Minnesota Wild mistreated him during the 2024-25 playoffs “I can tell you his camp is not happy with the way that he was deployed down the stretch It just felt like there was a double standard there was never elevated even though guys like Goudreau and Nyquist were absolutely awful in this series ‘well his fingerprints were on the winning goals in games five and six’ but I just think that [Rossi’s camp] feels like he was mistreated throughout this postseason.” You can’t blame those around Marco Rossi for being upset with how he was utilized during the Minnesota Wild’s latest attempt at a playoff run he made mistakes in the minutes he did get on the ice But as Russo pointed out during his KFAN interview Sunday Gustav Nyquist went offsides in the third period of game five and may have cost Minnesota the entire series there Rossi sat at the bottom of the Wild’s depth chart all series long “I think that ship has sailed on a short term deal I don’t think the Wild want to invest in him on seven or eight year deals and that 5×5 I don’t even know is on the table anymore…I don’t think he’s going to spell out publicly that maybe he wasn’t happy during these playoffs But I can tell from talking to people in his camp that they’re not happy and I think that now affects things because I don’t think where they feel he deserves to make money and term I don’t think the Wild are going to go that route and the usually spells out the beginning of of a player on a team.” More About: looks to eliminate 132 agency offices dedicated to efforts like advancing democracy and combating extremism On Tuesday, The Free Press had a major scoop: The State Department is launching its biggest shake-up in decades in an effort spearheaded by Secretary of State Marco Rubio thank you so much for being here with – sharing for the American people a very momentous day in the history of the State Department and the U.S Government in restoring free speech and America’s role as the beacon of free speech Could you tell the American people what that was we ended government-sponsored censorship in the United States through the State Department 10 years ago with this effort of let’s go after the messaging that al-Qaida and ISIS and others are putting to radicalize people we had this foreign interference in our election; we need to start targeting some of that stuff By 2020 it had grown into this movement of actually going after individual American voices And one of the ways that was being done wasn’t just directly Because the guy that was running this thing was actually a guy that was out there saying: Donald Trump talks just like a Russian spy But they were also taking money from this program and using it to fund these NGOs these third-party groups who were supposed to be Those groups were then tagging – they were literally tagging and labeling voices in American politics – Ben Shapiro were paying groups to attack Americans and to try to silence the voice of Americans These weren’t just a label they put on people They just renamed it and moved it somewhere else But now over the last few months we’ve worked on it and just taken it down and to the extent we’re spending money now – we are going to spend money on messaging; it’s going to be pro-American messaging and it’s going to be incentivizing and protecting free speech including countries that are allies of ours The best way to counter disinformation – if that’s what people are thinking is out there – the best way to counter disinformation is free speech — SECRETARY RUBIO: — is to make sure that what’s true has as equal or greater opportunity to communicate as what’s not true But when you turn disinformation into a weapon a label that you can use to go after people you don’t like anything that person’s saying is disinformation – well or I watch mainstream broadcasts – mainstream broadcasts every day that I know are disinformation They keep calling it “Maryland man” deported to El Salvador not “Maryland man” – El Salvador citizen deported to El Salvador senator yesterday said that this guy was a kidnapped American citizen and they published it in the article without any fact check So the important thing is that we have free speech so we can counter that SECRETARY RUBIO: That’s the way you handle that And – but we have instances now in Western countries where people are being arrested and they – a cop comes knocking on their door: You’re going to go to jail for 60 days for posting something online SECRETARY RUBIO: This is crazy stuff that’s happening around the – and the Vice President addressed this in his speech at the Munich conference back in February SECRETARY RUBIO: So we got a lot of work to do but the most important thing is we’re going to make sure that as we communicate to the world it’s going to be pro-American – things that build up what this country’s working on and explaining what we’re doing not attacking Americans who are exercising their First Amendment rights QUESTION: The classic work of the State Department in the 20th century QUESTION: And you mentioned this network that was paid through the State Department through grants and contracts And my understanding is that network also targeted the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy Darren Beattie who I believe played an important role in this restructuring as well QUESTION: And credit to you and to the under secretary One of the questions that remains – this is obviously amazing news to the entire American people about the defunding and the restructuring There are lingering questions about what was done during that period where we now have so many people wondering was I censored because of something the State Department did QUESTION: Was my news organization bankrupted And there are aggrieved parties; there’s an important historical record that needs to be unearthed; there are active lawsuits There are many reasons for a public disclosure effort on top of this development today Are there any efforts underway to be able to have a kind of GEC files So I think what we have to do now – and Darren will be big involved in that as well – is sort of document what happened Because one thing is to say it in a broadcast like this another thing is to actually put it on paper The first is because I think people who were harmed deserve to know that and be able to prove that they were harmed; and then the other is to make sure it never happens again SECRETARY RUBIO: So that 10 years from now when someone has a brilliant idea like this again – not-brilliant idea like this again – you can point to that and say That’s why accountability is important in these things because it doesn’t just provide justice and – but it also prevents it from happening in the future You have something you can point to at the same time and say these are the kinds of things we want to stay away from And it’s also a very important lesson here If I take you back 15 years and I ask somebody do you think we should be doing more to make sure ISIS and al-Qaida are not radicalizing people online SECRETARY RUBIO: But look what that turned into SECRETARY RUBIO: And I’m not saying I’m – obviously we don’t want ISIS radicalizing everybody some idea that starts out as innocuous or maybe even good intention becomes a weapon that can be turned into something else by someone else you have to understand that when you create something what you created and what it turns into are not necessarily the same thing especially when the people in charge change QUESTION: — takes on a life of its own So then that is to say you can commit to the American public now that there will be a transparency effort to actually — because I think as part of justifying doing all this SECRETARY RUBIO: So now I think there’s more in-depth and we’ll create a process for people that sort of point – we already know some of the higher-profile ones but there are more than higher-profile ones SECRETARY RUBIO: — who suddenly were labeled And I think this is going to require some cross-jurisdictional work because some of it’s going to require us to go back and prove SECRETARY RUBIO: And back in the middle of COVID – 2020 and tracking – we can prove that; people can show I got deplatformed by the old Facebook or by the old Twitter or whatever And if we could somehow with internal review create a linkage between some information that came from something the State Department paid for and an actual aggrieved party Because I think that one thing is to point to the high-profile cases but I think when people see that there were actually just individual everyday Americans that were deplatformed and for whatever – silenced because somebody associated with this program identified them I think that’s what’s really going to be eye-opening to a lot of people But we didn’t want to wait for that to take action SECRETARY RUBIO: But we obviously want to know the depth and the scope of this This is a program that has been shrouded in secrecy Journalists like Matt Taibbi have tried to FOIA for many of these grants and contracts and have encountered the stone wall QUESTION: I know that you’re a very busy man So the final question is on the international stage As you are repositioning the State Department to have the U.S once again be the global beacon for free speech and liberty we face threats around the world from censorship laws coming out of the European Union coming out of really a network of countries that have taken the legitimacy of things like the Global Engagement Center and said it’s okay in the Western world to have media literacy programs And many of those Global Engagement Center partner – ecosystem partners have been involved in the shaping of those foreign laws; many have – are actually – have been funded by the State Department and USAID being signatories on the EU Code of Disinformation which was threatened to be turned against Americans when Elon Musk famously had that X Space with Donald Trump during the election season So my question to you is: Is there any insights that you can provide to the American people about how the State Department is going to go about once again restoring free speech — QUESTION: — in a world where we are facing foreign threats from the European Union and Brazil and other places to Americans’ ability to talk to Americans so the first thing obviously is our number one priority is Americans So we don’t want to see an American who happens to be living in London or happens to be living in Europe post something online about American politics or any politics and all of a sudden they’re facing ramifications over there or they’re denied entry and something happens – “Oh we’re denying them into our country or we’re going to arrest them because they posted something while living overseas.” So our number one interest is the impact that it has on Americans which is the one I think the Vice President made very clear in Munich at the Security Conference – people freaked out about what he said What is it that links us with Western Europe What is it that links us with these – it’s our shared values And if that is eroded – if suddenly these become places where people are targeted because of what they said or what their opinion is – then one of the pillars of our shared interest beyond military cooperation or anything else And I think he made a very vibrant point that in some ways you are attacking – by attacking freedom of expression you are attacking one of the pillars of our shared interest I can tell you we were at a Oval Office meeting with the prime minister of the United Kingdom SECRETARY RUBIO: — situation that we raise when we interact with foreign interlocutors that’s always going to be an issue when you – certain countries around the world But when you’re dealing with Western European allies and that’s who you’re talking to about this stuff it really tells you how far it’s gone and how big a problem And so that’s a new thing for us to have to raise in those capitals And I personally witnessed the President and the Vice President raise it with multiple — And I think you’re going to continue to see an emphasis on that in our diplomacy and what we talk about And I think the actions today will send a message to those foreign bodies that what was done for a very brief period here really in the scope of our history is not a legitimate way to pursue international laws So – and just on the EU Digital Services Act I’d feel remiss if I didn’t mention that the EU commissioning body there threatened Elon Musk QUESTION: — a non-EU citizen — SECRETARY RUBIO: During the campaign in October QUESTION: And threatened them specifically not to talk about the unrest – the street protests in the UK at the time they’re now – we’re hearing they’re threatening a billion dollars in fines against X for noncompliance with disinformation And we’ve seen the head of their commission target non-EU citizens talking to non-EU citizens about non-EU territories And so this is just one of these things – as this code becomes mandatory in July – to know that the State Department is focused on protecting free speech both within and without is if a country or a group of countries in the case of the EU – although it considers itself sort of a country because these countries have given over a significant amount of sovereignty in order to become a member of the EU – when you have foreign entities taking actions that go after Americans for speech — SECRETARY RUBIO: — that becomes a foreign policy irritant for the United States It becomes an impediment in some cases to cooperate when they’re going – not just after a high-profile person like Elon threatening people that are opining about world events potentially threatening office holders in the United States so what if – what if an American political figure criticized something that was happening in Europe – imagine right now if all these people freaking out over Bukele in El Salvador were suddenly being threatened by some Western Hemisphere version of the EU – oh we’re going to come after you because you’re attacking the President of El Salvador SECRETARY RUBIO: So I think that this is a very legitimate issue for us to raise as a bilateral or in this case with the EU irritant in our foreign policy It has to become part of one of the things that we raise when we interact with them about the impact this is having on American citizens the number one priority of the State Department is to serve the national interest of the United States and the interest of the American people SECRETARY RUBIO: It’s the United States Department of State SECRETARY RUBIO: So that – we need to return that principle in everything we do And this is such a fair and frankly merciful way of doing this as well You don’t – it sounds like you don’t want the power to go after the other side for misinformation and things like this we could – I could build a whole building to go after that SECRETARY RUBIO: But the best way to do it is just to say they’re lying; here’s the truth SECRETARY RUBIO: That’s why we have things like this today SECRETARY RUBIO: And that’s why we’re able to interact with you and others Every day stuff is leaked in the press that’s reported on as fact SECRETARY RUBIO: Or stuff is reported and commentary – not – look Mainstream newspapers and mainstream media outlets report things as fact that are completely not true So our approach to that is not shut them down Our approach to that is to say they’re lying; here’s the truth then you recognize that some day in the future if you create this power to shut that down SECRETARY RUBIO: And I just think that begins to devolve very rapidly as we’ve seen with this experiment that they did QUESTION: You’re putting the censorship gun down and the American people are incredibly grateful for it So thank you so much for making the time today and thanks for your attention to this topic PoliticsNews EnergyAnalysis  PoliticsNews  SecurityNews  InternationalNews  SocietyCommentary  EducationCommentary   SecurityAnalysis  EconomyCommentary  InternationalCommentary  LawNews  LawCommentary  International News International News International Commentary Education Analysis  SecurityAnalysis  PoliticsAnalysis  Economy Commentary SocietyCommentary Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers remarks during a speech at the State Department on April 25 Debra Saunders is Washington columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal distributed by Creators.com WASHINGTON—Secretary of State Marco Rubio said this bombshell during Wednesday’s White House Cabinet meeting: “We had an office in the Department of State whose job it was to censor Americans.” Rubio offered that he is surprised a federal agency monitoring the social media posts and commentary of American citizens is not a bigger story Maybe that’s about to change after Rubio claimed that at least one person at the Cabinet meeting was a target of an office formerly known as the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. Who is it? The Beltway loves a guessing game. On April 16, the State Department posted an interview Rubio gave to former State Department official Mike Benz. During the exchange, Rubio spoke of how the State Department launched Global Engagement Center to combat messaging from al-Qaida, ISIS and other terrorist groups. But over the years Global Engagement Center devolved into a partisan machine that doled out taxpayer money to non-governmental organizations—known in federal acronym-speak as NGOs—that targeted conservatives including Ben Shapiro and The Federalist “American taxpayers, through the State Department were paying groups to attack Americans and to try to silence the voice of Americans,” Rubio maintained Rubio wrote in The Federalist: “GEC was supposed to be dead already When Republicans in Congress sunset GEC’s funding at the end of last year the Biden State Department simply slapped on a new name The GEC became the Counter Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference office they hoped to survive the transition to the new administration.” Who can forget what happened when COVID-19 called and government overreach led to the censorship of unorthodox viewpoints Ditto the infamous New York Post Hunter Biden laptop story which Democrats tried to bury ahead of the 2020 election which cost taxpayers more than $50 million per year spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” Rubio wrote “Was it me or Elon?” Vice President JD Vance quipped after Rubio’s Cabinet-room scoop “The worst offender in US government censorship & media manipulation is an obscure agency called GEC.” The sad part here is that a number of national security officials were not content to concentrate on their jobs because they preferred to use their powerful perches to muzzle contrary opinions They just can’t keep partisan politics out of the mix former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele tried to sabotage Donald Trump’s campaign by releasing a Democratic National Committee-funded “dossier” that made bogus claims about Trump and Russia It was a low-ball smear that lacked corroboration and still it repeatedly ran in major outlets including former CIA Deputy Director Mike Morell signed a letter that argued a New York Post story about Hunter Biden’s laptop “has the classic earmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign This Global Engagement Center story is not going away Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal So much of the staffing pattern at the State Department is locked up in such functions as Diplomatic Security and Overseas Building Operations which the department could hardly do without.  Yet, the criticism from both the Left and Right is understandable, considering that the meaning of the new organization chart released on April 22 is rather hard to decipher The position of undersecretary for civilian security There are fewer special envoys and ambassadors-at-large and it appears that the real staff reductions will occur at a later date Two things are certain. The first is that Secretary Rubio is willing to place an incredible amount of trust and confidence in the bureaucracy. As he told Meet The Press “…we’re going to ask the bureau heads and the assistant secretaries many of whom are career foreign service officers to look at their bureaus and their operations and suggest to us 15% reductions.”  That is a remarkable show of cooperation. When Rex Tillerson assumed control of the State Department in 2017, he was far more skeptical of the career employees. He came out of the hiring freeze with plans to reduce the number of A100 classes for incoming foreign service officers from five down to two The building had no time or ability to react to such an Ockham’s razor approach The second conclusion we can draw from these initial moves is that Secretary Rubio is willing to overlook the role that some bureaus played in promoting the radical policies of the Biden administration The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) where I spent most of my former career in government service establishing a DEI committee and designing performance standards in line with DEI priorities before the rest of the department had sorted itself out.  Part of that was surely the initiative of then-Assistant Secretary Brett Holmgren, a Biden administration political appointee who later became the head of the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) part of it was deeply embedded within the bureau itself as key individuals involved in DEI work for INR were promoted and helped develop an agenda for the entire department.  there is value in having dedicated experts who bring deep wells of institutional knowledge even if such true experts are few and far between Another approach would have been to return to first principles with INR and restore the original model under which it operated at its inception in the late 1940s and early 1950s The idea was to have merely an Office for Intelligence and Research (OIR) containing little more than a director and a small support staff who carried out essential functions of coordinating with the other intelligence agencies on critical affairs The other regional and functional experts were embedded within the policy bureaus where they could use their many years of expertise in the field and specialized technical knowledge to directly assist the desk officers and fill in rotational gaps at the embassies Anyone can see the high quality of the production that resulted by visiting the declassified files available to the public at the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) in College Park so too with other bureaus that drifted from their original purpose there are offices that duplicate the work of counterparts in other agencies There are Congressional mandates requiring the State Department to have dual-key authority over the delivery of military assistance or security training There is a clear administrative need for our diplomatic missions abroad to keep abreast of developments in the interagency process and the competing lines of effort the State Department was not designed to have large bureaus almost entirely staffed by civil servants sitting at desks in Washington who mostly provided commentary on the work of other federal government agencies.  he will not get sidetracked from his mission to improve government efficiency The opinions and characterizations in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of the U.S Image: Daniel Hernandez-Salazar / Shutterstock.com Stay in the know with The National Interest newsletter © Copyright 2025 Center for the National Interest We use cookies to enhance your browsing experience We use cookies to help you navigate efficiently and perform certain functions You will find detailed information about all cookies under each consent category below The cookies that are categorised as "Necessary" are stored on your browser as they are essential for enabling the basic functionalities of the site We also use third-party cookies that help us analyse how you use this website and provide the content and advertisements that are relevant to you These cookies will only be stored in your browser with your prior consent You can choose to enable or disable some or all of these cookies but disabling some of them may affect your browsing experience Necessary cookies are required to enable the basic features of this site such as providing secure log-in or adjusting your consent preferences These cookies do not store any personally identifiable data Functional cookies help perform certain functionalities like sharing the content of the website on social media platforms Analytical cookies are used to understand how visitors interact with the website These cookies help provide information on metrics such as the number of visitors Performance cookies are used to understand and analyse the key performance indexes of the website which helps in delivering a better user experience for the visitors Advertisement cookies are used to provide visitors with customised advertisements based on the pages you visited previously and to analyse the effectiveness of the ad campaigns SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you all for being here today It’s – I’m honored to be here with my counterparts the foreign ministers of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo for the – to witness the Declaration of Principles for peace in the eastern DRC It’s a declaration that establishes a fundamental understanding of regional governance and to end the fighting and allow the region to reach its full potential The eastern part of the Democratic Republic has seen 30 years of conflict Durable peace and long-lasting economic development is not going to be easy the foreign ministers of these respective countries demonstrates the beginning of a strong commitment to having the conversations that we need to have in order to reach a resolution I’m proud to work for a President who’s made peace He wants to see a peaceful resolution in many parts of the world but he wants to see a peaceful resolution here and important and key role in ensuring that that can happen And a durable peace in the Great Lakes region will open the door for greater U.S which will bring about economic opportunities and prosperity And it will also help advance President Trump’s prosperity agenda for the world a win-win for everyone involved – for the United States and they’ll bring good governance and ensure responsible reliable supply chains for things like critical minerals that benefit regional governments and our partners and allies as well combined with durable peace – and I would say durable peace comes before economic development; it’s impossible to do without the peace – it will also allow millions of displaced people to return to their homes to safer communities with new economic opportunities that have escaped generations The African Union and regional economic communities in Africa have done incredible work and we need to recognize that in bringing parties together and laying the foundation for these talks Our government here is focused on energizing these efforts So we’re going to be in close contact with our African Union partners to make sure we can bring this to fruition and to see that this better future reaches everyone I do want to especially thank our senior advisor and his counterparts in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda and we look forward to working with everyone involved to achieve this goal I should have turned to you rather than – I apologize Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Rwanda ladies and gentlemen:  Today marks not an end but a beginning a necessary step towards peace taken with resolve and purpose This moment carries particular weight for the Democratic Republic of the Congo the urgency of this initiative is not theoretical; it is human We sign this Declaration of Principles not as a symbolic gesture but as a political commitment: the reaffirmation of principles enshrined in international law and most recently echoed in the UN Security Council Resolution 2773 and verifiable of withdraw of all foreign troops from sovereign territory of the DRC We are clear in the Great Lakes region peace must come first and then – only when conditions are right – the careful reopening of a path to meaningful bilateral cooperation Too many past efforts have failed because sequencing was ignored and accountability postponed Peace and development cannot rely only on good intentions This is the only way to restore credibility not just among states but with the people who are waiting for peace to become real The signature of today’s Declaration of Principles heralds renewed hope resolve to complement and support regional and international efforts This initiative brings accountability and draws on hard lessons from past efforts that have failed to materialize So the good news is there is hope for peace We welcome the leadership of the United States of America a country that has shown steadfast support especially within the United Nation Security Council I would like to express our deep gratitude your extensive consultations across the region have brought nuance and your presence today underscores that diplomacy must listen understand the lived experiences of those most affected The Democratic Republic of the Congo recognizes and values this engagement of the United States We are also encouraged by U.S.-backed initiatives that promote secure mineral value chains and inclusive economic growth These efforts reaffirm that peace and prosperity are inseparable Each step towards stability is a step towards dignity This is the promise of responsible investment and a principle partnership with the DRC a country not only emerging from conflict but also at the core of finding solutions to global challenges To our countrymen and women in the Democratic Republic of the Congo we know you are watching this moment with concern You have every reason to expect more than promises You are entitled to actions that measure up to the suffering you have endured and from our shared unwavering belief that our sovereignty and our territory are not negotiable We are a nation that honors its responsibilities maybe even fate has given us the neighbors we have The borders we inherited as confirmed by the African Union are permanent and will never change and the wisdom to recognize that peace is not weakness we stand at a crossroads with peace within reach We stand as a nation dedicated to achieving lasting peace We welcome the support of a strong partner by our side And I voice a solemn hope that all parties will seize this opportunity just as we On behalf of President Paul Kagame and the Government of Rwanda I want to start by thanking President Donald Trump for enabling a real change in the conversation on how to resolve the situation in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo leading to the signing of the Declaration of Principles today I thank Secretary Marco Rubio and the United States Government for hosting us and I commend the positive role played by your Senior Advisor Massad Boulos and his team and other officials in the significant progress achieved thus far Today we are talking about the real issues the root causes that must be addressed to achieve a lasting peace in our region security as well as the return of refugees we are discussing how to build new original economic value chains that link our countries including with American private sector investment Our goal is a secure region – free of violent ethnic extremism – which is well-governed our region can be an engine of prosperity for all of our peoples and indeed Africa as a whole The Declaration of Principles opens the door to a definitive peace agreement giving fresh impetus to ongoing efforts of the Africa-led process under the East African Community and Southern African Development Community as well as the Doha track facilitated by the state of Qatar where we have seen important breakthroughs in recent days Our common aim is to conclude a comprehensive peace agreement as soon as possible but there are not shortcuts or quick fixes and we have to do the hard work to get it done right once and for all Rwanda is committed and we are ready to continue working together with all the partners involved to ensure the success of this initiative SENIOR ADVISOR BOULOS:  Secretary Rubio is signing as a witness the Declaration of Principles between the Government of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Government of the Republic of Rwanda This declaration commits the parties to mutual recognition of sovereignty and territorial integrity facilitating the return of displaced persons These are serious commitments from each side The Secretary’s presence here today as a witness signifies the importance the United States places on resolving this conflict to ensure both countries and their people prosper We’re looking forward to working with both sides to further our existing partnerships and foster win-win outcomes for all (The Declaration of Principles is signed.) SENIOR ADVISOR BOULOS:  This concludes the ceremony Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he is streamlining what he's calling a 'bloated' bureaucracy He's cutting about 700 positions and 132 offices at the State Department In an Substack post explaining some of his changes Rubio takes aim at the Bureau of Democracy writing that it "became a platform for left-wing activists to wage vendettas against 'anti-woke' leaders in nations such as Poland and to transform their hatred of Israel into concrete policies such as arms embargoes." under the control of the Coordinator for Foreign Assistance and abolished the Under Secretary for Civilian Security which used to oversee several offices now being closed One example is the Bureau of Conflict and Stabilization Operations set up after the Bush administration's war in Iraq The Department is planning to cut about 15 percent of its personnel though State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce says "no one is going to be walking out of the building" today Reduction in Forces (RIF) notices will go out later according to State Department officials briefed on the plan The ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations committee, Senator Jeanne Shaheen says reforms must be done with care. She warns that when "America retreats – as it has under President Trump – China and Russia fill the void." The Trump administration has notified Congress about the reorganization plan Democratic lawmakers have been clamoring for a briefing by Rubio following the dismantlement of the US Agency for International Development The remnants of USAID will be folded into the State Department The plan does not address the State Department's overseas footprint though some proposals seen by NPR have suggested there could be cuts of two dozen consulates and embassies President Donald Trump has appointed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to temporarily serve as national security adviser following the removal of Mike Waltz and his deputy Alex Wong While Rubio has stepped in on an interim basis other names are being floated as permanent replacements The national security adviser is one of the most influential positions in the U.S serving as the president's top aide on global affairs and security threats The person selected for this role would shape high-level decisions on foreign policy The choice may also signal broader changes in Trump's national security agenda Read More: Photos Show Mike Waltz Using Signal in Trump Cabinet Meeting Announcing his decision in a post on social media, Trump said it was essential that Stefanik retain her seat in the House to protect Republicans' razor-thin majority "I don't want to take a chance on anyone else running for Elise's seat," the president wrote on Truth Social on March 27 we have nothing to worry about come Election Day There are others that can do a good job at the United Nations." While her appointment to the national security role could risk narrowing the GOP's already tight House majority who remains close to Trump and aligned with his agenda A veteran of Trump's first administration, Richard Grenell served as U.S. ambassador to Germany and as the acting director of national intelligence. He serves the second administration as a special presidential envoy for special missions and as the interim executive director of the Kennedy Center In March, some conservatives floated Grenell as a potential candidate for U.S A Kremlin-released video showed Witkoff greeting Putin with a smile and saying, "It's so good to see you." He was accompanied by a translator, while Putin was joined by senior Russian officials. Witkoff, a former real estate developer, also helped secure the release of American teacher Marc Fogel from a Russian prison earlier this year No. The national security adviser is a presidential appointment and does not require Senate confirmation Unlike Cabinet-level positions or ambassadorships the role is part of the president's executive office and can be filled at the president's discretion This gives the White House flexibility to install or replace a national security adviser without going through a congressional vetting process Waltz left his role as national security adviser after Trump nominated him to serve as U.S The White House did not provide details about the transition Waltz's departure came after he added, without explanation, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic to a Signal chat used by Trump officials to coordinate national security discussions The chat included sensitive exchanges about military strategy and foreign policy The editor later published a detailed account of the incident including screenshots from the conversation While the White House has not confirmed any link between the incident and Waltz's reassignment the breach sparked internal scrutiny and concern Congress is set to vote on Waltz's nomination for U.S while Rubio oversees the White House's national security team in the interim Trump has not said whom he plans to appoint as Waltz's permanent successor Darren Criss, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical and as a Producer for "Maybe Happy Ending" This is the first time that the 38-year-old actor-singer-musician is nominated for a Tony Award. He received two Tony Award nominations – Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical for his role as Oliver in "Maybe Happy Ending" and as a producer of "Maybe Happy Ending" which is also nominated for Best Musical. This is also his first Tony Award nomination as a producer. Criss is also the fourth actor of Asian descent to receive a nomination in the Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Musical. The other actors include Ken Watanabe (2015 in "The King and I"), Lou Diamond Phillips (1996 in "The King and I"), and Mako (1976 in "Pacific Overtures"). Now married and a father of two, Criss said about his nomination, "I'd like to be very clear: before this morning I was already fully charged. "Since day one, 'Maybe Happy Ending' has been an ongoing, exponential miracle. And for the last several months, my battery has been in a constant state of overwhelming joy and gratitude. "So, in many ways, the air today in Seoul is no different. This morning's announcements aren't the reason why I show up to work or love what I do or love who I work with. They are, however, a fitting celebration of that same community, artistry and glorious collaboration- whose fruits of labor have been such an incredible gift to me. "And so, I gladly accept today's news with pride and the excitement that it may allow our little light to shine as brightly beyond the Belasco theater as possible. Criss made his Broadway debut in 2012 as J. Pierrepont Finch in "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." The revival had the three most lucrative weeks of its 11-month run with him in the leading role. His additional Broadway and off-Broadway credits include "Hedwig and the Angry Inch" as Hedwig (2014 and 2015 [North American Tour]), "American Buffalo" as Bobby (2022), and "Little Shop of Horrors" as Seymour (2024). The talented actor is Emmy, Golden Globe, SAG, and Critics Choice Award-winning actor. His role in "Maybe Happy Ending" and the Original Cast Recording of "Maybe Happy Ending" makes him eligible for a Tony Award and a Grammy Award, respectively, putting him steps closer to receiving the honorable EGOT title. Nicole Scherzinger, Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role in a Musical for "Sunset Blvd." When we watched Scherzinger in "Sunset Blvd.," she sizzled and delivered. Even the legendary Glenn Close, who portrayed Norma Desmond in the original 1994 production, had nothing but praise for the 46-year-old singer-actress. "Nicole's performance is an act of raw artistry and astounding bravery," Close wrote. Schzerzinger said of her first Tony nomination, "This has been a remarkable season on Broadway with many truly amazing women shining on stage. I wake up every morning and can't believe I get to be a part of this community. I feel so blessed. "Little Nicole always dreamed about doing this and to be recognized with a Tony nomination is a privilege and is deeply thrilling. I'm so grateful. "A huge thank you to the Wing and the League for this honor, but especially my champions Andrew Lloyd Webber and Jamie Lloyd. I'm thrilled for everyone at the St. James, including my friend and co-star Tom Francis and our designers Jack Knowles and Adam Fisher and orchestrator David Cullen." Ricamora, 46, will be up against Bob Odenkirk ("Glengarry Glen Ross"), Glenn Davis ("Purpose"), Gabriel Ebert ("John Proctor is the Villain"), and Francis Jue ("Yellow Face"). When he learned of his Tony nomination, Ricamora said, "Never thought I'd be playing Abraham Lincoln. Never thought our little Off-Broadway show would become this massive. Never thought I'd be nominated for a Tony. I guess never say never. So grateful for all the recognition this show has received from The Tony Awards." In an email interview, Ramos, the award-winning Filipino American costume and set designer for stage and screen, explained the significance of this Tony nomination for him. He said, "I continue to be very grateful to be honored for my work, but it is a special honor to be recognized for 'Maybe Happy Ending.' I have been working with Michael Arden for a couple of years now, so the show has a very special place in my heart. I am also very proud that the show is a beautiful representation of a truly Asian love story that also carries universal meaning for all audiences to connect with. Asked about working on the musical, which received 10 nominations, including the Best Musical, Ramos replied, "Working on 'Maybe Happy Ending' was an incredibly rewarding experience. To be recognized with 10 nominations, including Best Musical, is really a testament to the passion and dedication of the entire team. "For me personally, one of the biggest challenges was finding ways to honor the cultural specificity that sets the story about two robots in a future Korea while ensuring it felt universally accessible. Collaboration was key, working closely with the creative team, we wanted to make sure that we abided by the meticulous design aesthetic led by our amazing set designer, Dane Laffrey, who built the world that Oliver and Claire existed within." As for working with Darren Criss, who is the lead in the musical, Ramos said, "Working with Darren is a dream. I think Darren is such a consummate actor who thinks about all of the angles that would play in his performance, and I think that shows in his well-deserved Tony nomination. I'm also extremely happy to see that Darren is proud of his Filipino heritage." With all the Filipinos and Fil-Ams nominated for a Tony this year, Ramos stressed its importance for representation and for the Filipinos. "It's immensely significant. I have always and will continue to be an advocate for representation both on and offstage, and I feel incredibly honored to be representing Filipinos alongside so many talented Filipino artists this Broadway season. We're always pushing for excellence, so it's not surprising, but I will always be proud of what we accomplish as a people." For his next projects, Ramos said, "There are many exciting projects in the pipeline! "In August, I am producing 'Into the Woods' in Manila with Theatre Group Asia. Stateside, we just finished our 2025 Encores! season at New York City Center, where I serve as Creative Producing Director and have been working on many projects at Lincoln Center as their artist in residence. There is a lot to come that I am very excited about!" Marco Paguia is the talented musical director of the musical "Buena Vista Social Club" which is based on the book of Mario Ramirez and featuring the music recorded by the ensemble musician group, Buena Vista Social Club. Set in Havana, Cuba and spans from the 1950s to the 1990s, it follows the lives of four prominent musicians. Paguia, a music director, arranger, orchestrator and pianist based in New York, will be competing against David Cullen and Andrew Lloyd Webber ("Sunset Blvd."), Andrew Resnick and Michael Thurber ("Just in Time"), Will Aronson ("Maybe Happy Ending"), and Bruce Coughlin ("Floyd Collins"). He was also the music director for "Gutenberg! The Musical!," "Girl From the North Country," "Peter and the Starcatcher," and "Everyday Rapture" (Broadway). Paguia also played on the soundtrack to Steven Spielberg's "West Side Story" with the New York Philharmonic, conducted by Gustavo Dudamel. His arrangements and orchestrations have been performed at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center. —MGP, GMA Integrated News {{gallery.imageDetails.images.0.description}} Reporting by Daphne Psaledakis and Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Chris Reese and Cynthia Osterman Advocates for ideas and draws conclusions based on the interpretation of facts and data It is in our national interest that he succeeds All bureaucracies possess an urge to acquire new responsibilities and consume more resources It is not in their nature to check themselves and the State Department has been no exception to this rule Only outside intervention can break the cycle of bureaucratic self-aggrandizement In more than 60 years of combined State Department service we never saw officers rewarded for cutting staff in a system consistently focused on increasing budgets and staffing numbers we saw many examples of unnecessary or duplicated effort Once when we proposed a method for making visa issuance more efficient State Department personnel do not administer important government programs. They are employed primarily to advise and execute the foreign policies of the president. This does not require a large staff. In 1970, at the height of the Cold War, there were 3,000 foreign service officers. Today there are nearly 14,000 Clearly the State Department is ripe for cost-saving reorganization and staffing reductions Rubio has made an excellent start by announcing a reduction of domestic staff by 15 percent A major source of the State Department's growing inefficiency has been the unchecked creation of independent offices focused on specific issues such as human trafficking or food security Each new office comes with senior positions Over time these special interest offices moved the department further and further away from its core mission of defending American security and prosperity Rubio has taken a commendable step toreverse this process by eliminating 132 of the State Department's 734 offices and returning many issues to the regional bureaus that traditionally handled them We live in an age of rapid communication and easy travel which means that our vast network of 276 embassies and consulates can be reduced and reorganized in the name of efficiency Do we really need five consulates as well as an embassy in France confused lines of authority and gross overstaffing found in Washington is repeated in every one of our overseas posts we concluded that half the staff could have been sent home without the slightest impact on Saudi-American relations An additional source of inefficiency has been the explosion of domestic government agencies represented overseas as well as numerous defense and the intelligence agencies now comprise the bulk of most embassy staffs In many places the State Department has become little more than an innkeeper for other agencies These agencies all have their own distinct agendas promotions and onward assignments are all controlled by their home agency not the State Department or the ambassador Their attention is very often focused on maintaining their independence from State and achieving bureaucratic success within their own agency This creates not only many jobs of questionable value embassies without a single recognized leader reporting to the president Maintaining federal employees overseas is hugely expensive Interagency coordination is best done in Washington Policy execution overseas is best left to the one agency specifically charged with American diplomacy for reasons of both cost and unity of command overseas staffing by domestic federal agencies needs to be reduced the regional bureaus should handle most issues within the State Department and the State Department should handle most issue overseas Rubio was confirmed by the Senate with overwhelming bipartisan support He has recognized that cosmetic administrative change at the State Department will not stop a process of decline that has been going on for years he has demonstrated a willingness to undertake the significant strategic reforms needed to make the department more responsive to the president and more effective in dealing with foreign governments His efforts will certainly face opposition from long-entrenched special interest groups Rundell is a former chief of mission at the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and the author of Vision or Mirage Ambassador Michael Gfoeller is a former political advisor to the U.S Central Command and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations Both are fellows of the Benjamin Franklin Fellowship The views expressed in this article are the writers' own SECRETARY RUBIO:  Thank you.   QUESTION:  I want to start with the report that came out today from Gabe Kaminsky and Maddie Rowley and it’s about this major reorganization that is now underway in your State Department.  It is the largest shakeup at the State Department in decades – something like 132 offices are being cut; there’s many other details – and I want to understand the significance here beyond cost cutting.  How does this reorganization help advance American interests and the President’s foreign policy abroad?  I think that’s important to point out.  This is not a cost-cutting exercise although it certainly will provide savings to the American taxpayer.  This is a policy exercise and here’s why.  Foreign policy – mature foreign policy realistic foreign policy – requires the balancing of both policy geopolitical considerations and some level of idealism – the promotion of human rights or democracy and things of that nature.  So this sort of balance.    today those two entities are housed in two different places.  We have a group of people that are our regions – our embassies and our regional bureaus that oversee those embassies – and they’re involved in balancing our relationships with these countries; and then you have these other entities that are only so – looking at issues from a single-source standpoint: human rights These two have to be brought together.  And so we get rid of those bureaus that are what they call functional bureaus and instead we move that function – we’re not getting rid of a group of people that care about human rights but we’re putting those people in the regions and in the embassies so that all of our foreign policy is being balanced within those bureaus.  So say it’s Western Hemisphere; it’s being balanced within the Western Hemisphere and then ultimately empowering our embassies to pursue mature foreign policy that takes all of these factors into account.  So it really is about streamlining an entity that’s continued to grow.  If I – if I show you the org chart of what the State Department looked like in the ’70s and what it looks like today, it’s unrecognizable.  So we have to bring back some stability some organizational streamlining that allows us to further foreign policy in a way that balances all of the things we have to take into consideration when we pursue foreign policy and we can deliver it efficiently and fast.   One more point.  I know it’s been a long answer to a very short question but it’s important to talk about it.  As the Secretary of State I get these memos.  They’re called these decision memos.  And if you look at all of the boxes that have to be checked before it even gets to me in some cases it has to be checked by six or seven people in one bureau alone before it gets to me.  That’s way too long.  It almost renders the State Department irrelevant.  We have to shorten that approval process and the way to do it is to get rid of all of these offices that are all chiming in any one of whom could slow action for an indefinite period of time.    if you are a normal American and you don’t know much about the bureaucracy at the State Department and you just look at the headline out of today you will see that many of the offices that are being cut seem to broadly be about America’s soft power role in the world – things like the promotion of human rights promoting democracy abroad.  And I think critics of the administration are already saying in reaction to this news this is sort of yet another sign that the Trump Administration is pulling back from the world and leaving the vacuum to be filled by other contenders like China and Russia.  What does that perspective get wrong?  Is this a sign that America is no longer in the soft power business?   SECRETARY RUBIO:  Yeah.  Well, first of all, I’m not – I don’t think anyone should be too enthusiastic about China or Russia promoting human rights or democracy anywhere in the world.  So it’s not like they’re going to displace us from that.  No they don’t mean – I’m sorry.  They don’t mean displacing America from the human rights promotion business.   QUESTION:  Simply that in the same way that China advances its own interests in Africa through the Belt and Road Initiative —   QUESTION:  — America has historically after the Cold War advanced ours through many of these offices.    QUESTION:  And people say we should still be in that business and I think the Trump Administration has a different answer to that.  So —   but we’re going to do it in a way that’s balanced across all of our other equities.  So for example, we’re still going to be involved in those things but it’s going to be run at the embassy and regional level that has that title.  And so just – we need to be grown-ups here about how we talk about this.  Promoting democracy and human rights in our relations with some country in the Middle East is probably going to look different than it would with some country in Central America or South America.  That’s just a geopolitical reality.    we are going to have to have partnerships and alliances with countries whose system of government maybe is not like ours may not be like ours.  And we may not like that and it doesn’t mean we don’t wish it was different but we still have to have relations with these countries because it serves a geopolitical purpose So we have to have foreign policies in different parts of the world that are different and we have to have the regions and the embassies run it not some office in Washington that sort of applies the same standard all across the board.  That’s just not realistic foreign policy in today’s world.  I think if you asked the secretary of state and certainly the president “Is the national interest of the United States stability or democracy?” I think they might have said democracy instead of stability.  Was that view wrong?  Was it foolish?  I think it was a different world.  If you go back 20 years and we were often called in to do things because nobody else could or would.  We don’t live in that world anymore.  We now live in a world with a near peer adversary in China.  We live in a world where they have the ability to project power and destabilize.  We live in a world with a nuclear-armed North Korea with a nuclear-ambitious Iran.  We live in a world where there are both opportunities and real challenges in the Middle East.  We live in the world where in Africa countries are going in two directions:  Some are developing economically; others are falling into chaos.  It’s just a very different world.  the United States has to make a mature decision about how to prioritize the use of our national power.  There are some issues in the world that matter more than others from our national interest perspective.  That doesn’t mean we don’t care about some terrible humanitarian crisis somewhere on the planet but we can’t put that ahead of some critical long-term challenge to the national interest of the United States.    So we have entered an era where we have to – we are the most powerful country in the world but neither our power nor our resources have ever been infinite.  And so we have to prioritize them in a mature and sustainable way in this new era which we live in.  It’s a – in essence the world order is changing and we need to adjust our foreign policies to serve our national interest in that new world that’s taking shape.  let’s talk about what I think is arguably the biggest story in America right now which is the fight over deportations.  I’m curious how that should rank in terms of priorities that you just lined up for me but the President suggested in an Oval Office meeting with President Bukele of El Salvador that American citizens might be deported to El Salvador.    Here’s what he said.  He said that Bukele in addition to the prison – I think it’s pronounced CECOT; you’ll correct me if I’m wrong – might have to build new places to house deported American citizens.  And over the weekend a Republican from Louisiana – hardly a squish – he was unequivocal in saying that the President cannot do such a thing.  He said we have our own laws we have the 8th Amendment to the Constitution; we shouldn’t send prisoners to foreign countries.  So is he correct?  Should we take the President seriously but not literally in that Oval Office meeting?  Which is it?  the President talked about the most dangerous and vile criminals imaginable and the question is whether you could send them to be in a prison in some other country.  But the second point the President made – and I was there when he said it and I was there when said it in the past – is I don’t know about the legalities of that maybe that’s not possible because of our laws.  So he acknowledged that in his statement.  I think the broader point on deportations – and it’s the one that really is in the news these days – is we have people here illegally in this country from other countries and one of the things we’ve done at the State Department is work with those countries to take back their citizens to take back people that are – that’s where you deport people.  You deport them back to the country that they came from.  They are unlawfully in the country and that’s where they’re supposed to be returned and that’s what we’ve worked on doing.  they’ve been willing to take Tren de Aragua gang members because Venezuela was refusing to take them.  And this is now a designated terrorist organization one of the most dangerous gangs in the history of the world and we want them out of our country.  We don’t want them in our country.  QUESTION:  One of the things the President and you have done in the past 90-something days – it feels like it’s been a lot longer than that – (laughter) – has been to successfully – I cannot even imagine how long it’s felt for you – has been to successfully close the southern border.  And yet that story has been just totally overtaken with the story of some of these individual deportations that have captured the national conversation and that many people And so I want to just ask you a bigger question which is:  What message is the President trying to send with these deportations?  There’s – is it about deterring people from coming?  Or is it about terrifying people that have been here for years and might even have American children?  Should they be scared of deportation?  Like what is the message that the President and the State Department is trying to send?   so two things.  The State Department isn’t involved necessarily in the issue of migratory enforcement.  We’re involved in making sure that foreign countries take back the citizens that are in our country illegally of their countries.  So I would say two things.    mass migration is almost entirely based on an incentive system.  People were coming to this country under Joe Biden because they knew if they got to the border and claimed asylum they would be allowed to come in and they would be allowed to stay – almost 90 percent success rate if you said the magic words Now they know that if they come they won’t get to stay which is why it’s the most secure border we’ve had in modern history.  And in fact which is people that were on their way here sort of do a U-turn and go back.  We’ve seen that play out.  And that’s an enormous achievement That still leaves us with a fundamental challenge and that is that we have in this country millions of people – some who have been here many years some who have been here for a year and a half or two – who are unlawfully in the United States.  And it’s this simple:  If you say the speed zone is 70 miles an hour but people know they’re not going to get a ticket unless they go 90 miles an hour no one’s going to drive under the speed limit.  You have to have laws and laws have to be enforced.  If you don’t enforce your laws then your laws become meaningless.  And that’s what’s happened in this country over the last 20 years.  We were not enforcing our immigration laws they’re going to prioritize the most dangerous people dangerous criminals.  If you look at the manifest of these flights of people that are being deported these are some of the most vile human beings imaginable that we’re getting out of our country – sex offenders killers.  That’s who we’re prioritizing being sent out.    But let there be no doubt we have immigration laws and if you are in violation of those immigration laws you have no right to be in the country.  Now some will choose to leave voluntarily; others may get caught up and be forced to leave.  But we are – they are prioritizing the most dangerous.    you have to have – there’s no point in having immigration laws if you have no intent to enforce them.   let’s talk about Iran.  Both you and President Trump were profoundly opposed to Barack Obama’s nuclear deal known as the JCPOA the Iran deal.  And this is what the President said in 2018 when he withdrew from the deal:  “The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.”  You yourself called it disastrous.  Now it looks like the administration is heading into another deal.  So simple question:  What would a good deal with Iran look like?    we have good people negotiating that and involved in it obviously.  Let me just say a couple things about the previous deal and then I’ll compare it to now.  The previous deal was bad for a number of reasons.  It gave Iran immediate and full sanctions relief in exchange for enrichment capabilities that at any point could be weaponized in the future.  They got to keep that permanently they got to keep the sanctions relief permanently and they only had to live by the enrichment limitations for a defined period of time.  In fact right now we are entering that period of time in which the requirements of that deal would have expired.  So it was a bad deal all the way around.  We gave them permanent concessions for temporary concessions on their part.  So now we’ve reached that point.  and that is the worst thing that could – we do not want a war.  We do not want to see war.  This is not a president that campaigned on starting wars.  And as he has said very clearly Iran is not going to have a nuclear weapon and he reserves every right to prevent that from happening but he would prefer it not happen.  He would prefer that there not be need to resort to military force either by us or anybody else.  He would prefer that it be something that we can negotiate.    The Iranians have shown a willingness to talk.  We’re going to talk to them.  If there is a chance of peace we’re going to give peace and a peaceful resolution to this challenge every opportunity to succeed.  Our priorities remain the same.  If Iran wants a civil nuclear program they can have one just like many other countries in the world have one and that is they import enriched material.    we’re not going to negotiate this in the press we’re not going to negotiate this publicly because it undermines negotiations.  But there’s a pathway to a civil peaceful nuclear program if they want one.  But if they insist on enriching then they will be the only country in the world that doesn’t have a “weapons program,” quote-unquote but is enriching.  And so I think that’s problematic.  let’s give peace every chance here to succeed.  I don’t want to see a war the President certainly doesn’t want to see one either.  QUESTION:  Some who are watching these negotiations unfold and who have watched the JCPOA and then its unraveling are warning that this deal is on a path to be similar or weaker to the JCPOA.  And one of the reasons they’re saying that is because Steve Witkoff gave an interview in which he said that the goal should be to ensure that Iran’s uranium enrichment would be capped at something like 3.5 percent for civilian use and verified.  And the reason critics are saying that is a very bad sign is because they’re saying why shouldn’t the U.S.’s position be zero enrichment and the complete elimination of the program?  I think Steve subsequently followed up by clarifying that what he meant is that that would be the limit of what they would be allowed to import for their domestic program.  And they do that now.  They do have a nuclear reactor that imports Russian enriched material at 3.67 and that’s what you need for – but they don’t enrich it themselves.  So I think what Steve was – the point he was trying to make in that interview was he’s talking about the level of enrichment that they would be allowed – the level of enriched material that they would be allowed to import from outside like multiple countries around the world do for their peaceful civil nuclear programs.  QUESTION:  If the United States wanted to take out Iran’s nuclear program with a strike or – or is everything buried so deep underground that there’s no guarantee?  I think logistically – I probably don’t want to discuss all the logistics of it.  Suffice it to say that I do believe the United States has options but we don’t want to ever get to that.  We really don’t.  This is not —  QUESTION:  Maybe we could – maybe we could talk about it in a Signal group together.  SECRETARY RUBIO:  (Laughter.)  I’ll say this to you:  I’ll – let me put it to you this way okay?  We don’t want it to get to that point.  We’re not at a stage now where we’re going to be making threats or any things of this nature this is not a president that ran on the promise of starting wars or armed conflicts.  We’ve gotten involved in this Houthi situation; it’s a favor to the world that we’re doing because these guys basically had shut down shipping in the Red Sea.  That needed to end.  But this is not a president that’s looking to start wars.  He’s a president that’s looking to stop them and to prevent them.  That’s why we’ve been focused on Ukraine that’s why we’re having these talks with the Iranians.  I would tell everybody that this – we’re a long ways away from any sort of agreement with Iran.  We recognize it’s difficult and hard.  Oftentimes peace is.  But we’re committed to achieving a peaceful outcome that’s acceptable to everyone.  It may not be possible; we don’t know.  I don’t even know if Iran knows how to make a deal.  They’ve got their own internal political dynamics in their country they have to work through.  But we would want to achieve a peaceful resolution to this and not resort to anything else or even speculate about it at this point.  just one last question and then I want to go to Russia and Ukraine.  Tucker Carlson has said that a strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities – now I’m quoting from him – would “almost certainly result in thousands of American deaths at bases throughout the Middle East and cost the United States…billions of dollars.  Those aren’t guesses.  Those are the Pentagon’s own estimates.  A bombing campaign against Iran will set off a war and it will be America’s war.”  Is that true?  SECRETARY RUBIO:  I think – I – here’s what I can say:  Any military action at this point in the Middle East whether it’s against Iran by us or anybody else could in fact trigger a much broader conflict that will not be the sort of thing that people have become accustomed to watching on television but we took out a hundred fighters or whatever.  This’ll be more complex.  I think we have to recognize – and it’s important to be honest about it – Iran has taken – both under sanctions and because of sanctions relief under Obama they have spent billions of dollars developing military capabilities that we’re seeing being used in Ukraine right now with drones and the like.  Is the United States capable of defeating and confronting all that?  Absolutely we are.  But I think it’s important to understand it’s much more complex than it would have been 10 years ago or 5 years ago.    But that’s why we hope to avoid this.  So when you hear people make the points that they’ve made it’s true.  Any sort of armed conflict in the region is going to be much messier than what people are used to seeing and that we would want.  And that’s why the President is so committed to the peaceful resolution – the prevention of an armed conflict in this scenario.  Although he reserves every right to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon he’d prefer peace.  He has said that repeatedly.  And that’s why we want to end the war in Ukraine if that’s possible.  QUESTION:  Okay.  So let’s talk about that.  Is it possible?  On Sunday President Trump said he hoped that Russia and Ukraine would make a deal this week.  What are the remaining obstacles to such a deal?  Is there a chance that we could hear about a deal by the end of the week I don’t know about by the end of the week.  I’m hopeful that we can get to something quickly.  And I remain hopeful that we can get something done because this is a terrible war and it needs to end.  Here’s – because it has no military solution.  There is no military solution to this war.  We have to be frank.  Russia is not just going to roll over Ukraine and take the whole country and Ukraine’s not going to push them all the way back to where they were before 2014.  So what I would say we’re involved in is understanding what is the Russian position – we have a better understanding of that now because we’ve actually spoken to them after three years of not speaking to them – what is the Ukrainian position are these guys even in the same neighborhood?  Because if they’re in completely different ZIP codes then we may have to conclude that they’re so far apart that peace is impossible at this time.    We’ve done our best.  We’ve put a lot of time and energy at the highest levels of our government.  We’ll continue to be willing to do so as long as there’s a realistic path forward.  If at some point we determine that we’re just too far apart and not enough movement is happening we may need to move on to other priorities because there are a lot of important things happening in the world.  This is not our war.  We didn’t start this war.  We’re trying to help everybody end it.   but I hope not.  We should be optimistic.  We should be willing to do whatever it takes to bring the two sides closer.  And hopefully we can be successful.  But ultimately it’s not up to us.  It’s up to Russia and it’s up to Ukraine.  They have to make the decision that they’re willing to move closer to one another.  And we need to start to see progress.  QUESTION:  A lot of Republicans and a lot of conservatives have become skeptical of NATO as an institution.  They question the outsized funding the U.S whether or not it’s in our interest to remain in it.  Why is NATO a good idea if you still think it’s a good idea?  And what would you say to people in your party that think NATO should be dissolved?   I think there’s two separate issues involved.  Is NATO a good idea as a concept and as – yeah it is.  I think alliances are always good.  To be able to enter into a defense alliance with advanced economies and advanced militaries it’s a force multiplier for the United States.  So absolutely NATO is in our interest.    the question is what kind of NATO.  It has to be a NATO in which your partners are carrying their weight.  And when you see a NATO where you have countries that are spending 1 percent then that’s really not an alliance.  That’s a dependency.  Now there are other countries like Poland that are doing more than their fair share and there are other countries that frankly have not invested in their defense capabilities for almost three decades.    So what the President’s point has been is he wants to be in NATO but a NATO that’s real a NATO in which every partner is contributing at scale we’ve started to see movement.  We have.  We’ve started to see more and more countries dedicate more and more money to their – to their defense thanks to the pressure that President Trump has put on.  And by the way virtually every Republican president – I’m sorry – virtually every American president in the last 25 years has complained that NATO partners aren’t doing enough.  Trump – President Trump – is the only one that’s actually insisted on it in a way that’s actually gotten results.    So it’s on a good trajectory.  So NATO is good as long as NATO is real not the United States and a bunch of junior partners that aren’t doing their fair share.    QUESTION:  One of the areas where it’s unclear to many people if it’s strategic and a Trump sort of negotiating tactic or sincere is the question of tariffs.  And that’s because there have been sort of two messages coming out of the White House.  There’s the Peter Navarro school which is basically tariffs are an end in and of themselves; they’re a way to rebuild American industries that have suffered from foreign competitions.  And then the other view – and this is more the Treasury secretary – is they’re strategic they are a way to extract meaningful concessions from other countries and get them to move.  Which is it?   and I think both are legitimate.  I think there are some industries that are critical to the future of the United States and we have to have a domestic capability.  We have to be able to do things like build ships.  We have to be able to do things that are critical to our national security our pharmaceutical industry.  And then there’s the broader question of whether the state of current global trade is fair to the United States across multiple administrations and presidents in both parties we have allowed very dangerous trade imbalances to build up.    you can’t find an American car on the road.  Many American products are not allowed in all kinds of things they’ve put up.  That just can’t continue.  Maybe that made sense 50 years ago when these were poor developing countries that we hoped wouldn’t fall into the Soviet orbit but now these are advanced economies.  The EU – if you take the EU holistically its economy is the same as the United States.  These are advanced economies.  Why would there be such a massive trade imbalance between two advanced economies the EU and the United States?  That’s not sustainable.  That needs to be recalibrated and has to be fixed.    it’s an export-driven economy.  They can sell and export whatever they want into the U.S. but they severely restrict what we can send them.  That’s not sustainable.  That has to be confronted.  And we don’t have 10 years to figure this out now.  We have like one or three years to figure it out.    So I think it’s a combination of both industries that we need in our country and need to be protected but also the broader issue of resetting the baseline for global trade in a way that’s sustainable to the national interests of the United States.    QUESTION:  The Treasury Secretary reportedly told investors at this closed-door JP Morgan summit today – and I’m quoting from him – “There will be a de-escalation” – and then I’m reading – “in President Trump’s trade war with China in the very near future.”  And then he added this:  “No one thinks the current status quo is sustainable.”    I can’t answer for what he said.  I wasn’t in that meeting and I certainly don’t speak – it’s not – the State Department is not running the tariff negotiations.  I will say this:  As far as people are talking about the price that tariffs are going to have on the U.S economy, it’s also having a tremendous price on the Chinese economy.  That’s an export-driven economy.  Their entire economy is built not on consumption domestically but on what they can overproduce and dump onto economies all over the world – all over the world the Europeans had to stop them from selling electric cars because they were going to wipe out the European electric car industry.  So I think China is paying a heavy price.  So I would say without commenting on what the Secretary of Treasury said that there’s vulnerability to the Chinese side as well but at some point this issue had to brought to a head because the trade imbalance and the unfairness that exists between the Chinese and the United States is simply unsustainable.  It’s more than unsustainable.  It’s dangerous.  It’s geopolitically dangerous and it needed to be confronted and we can’t wait any longer to do it.  We’ve allowed this to go on for 25 years and it cannot continue or we’re going to wind up living in a world in which we depend on China for everything critical to our security and to our prosperity and that’s not a world that we intend to leave for our children and grandchildren.  QUESTION:  Is China the number one defense priority that America faces?  SECRETARY RUBIO:  I think China is the number one challenge on every front that I can imagine – geopolitically the President says this all the time and I agree:  We don’t blame the Chinese.  The Chinese have done what we would have done if we were the leaders of China.  They looked – we – the previous leaders in this country and around the world allowed them to cheat and steal and get these unfair advantages and they took them.  Why wouldn’t they?  But now it’s got to be fixed.  It’s got to be fixed.  QUESTION:  Let’s look just objectively at where we stand versus China.  The U.S Navy is the smallest it has been since World War I.  Our Army is the smallest it has been since World War II.  Our Air Force is smaller and older than it used to be.  And meanwhile China has the world’s largest army and the world’s largest navy.  They build more ships in a month – I think this will shock people – than we do in a year.  And meantime What are we doing to prepare for a possible war with China?  SECRETARY RUBIO:  What we want to do is prevent a war from China by being strong enough to make them understand that they could never win a war against the United States.  A war against China would be a terrible thing.  QUESTION:  I know.  But if they look —   SECRETARY RUBIO:  And the best way to prevent it —   QUESTION:  But if I’m China and I’m looking at that reality —   SECRETARY RUBIO:  And that’s how – that’s why it’s dangerous most expansive peacetime military buildup in the history of the world – not in modern history in the history of the world.  Meanwhile the United States has lagged behind for a variety of different reasons.  You talked about the Navy as an example.  We don’t have a shipbuilding industry.  We have some shipbuilding in the United States but not nearly at the scale the Chinese do.  It’s not just that we’re not spending the money on it; it’s we don’t have the ability to do it because we allowed the nation to be deindustrialized.  We allowed the United States to become deindustrialized especially since 1991 with both free trade agreements and the cheating that we allowed when we assumed the – allowed China to ascend to the World Trade Organization.    they were sent somewhere else – not just to China but other places but primarily to China.  That’s dangerous.  It cannot continue.  QUESTION:  In your Senate confirmation hearing you talked about how “The post-war global order is not just obsolete it is a weapon being used against us,” and that right now we are being “called to create a free world out of the chaos.”  And I think a lot of people have different explanations about how we got to a place where the post-war global order is obsolete but everyone is seeing the reality of that and I think feeling a lot of anxiety and concern from many different points along the political spectrum about what is going to replace it.  And I think some people are feeling that the U.S has almost accepted a declinist position and we’re now in a kind of managed decline.    So I’ve wanted for a while to ask you two questions:  Are we in decline and is the role of our leadership to manage it as best as they can?  And the second is:  What comes next?  What is the new global order going to look like and what are some of the parameters of the American position inside of it?  and that’s why we’re addressing that in the trade space.  I think we realized that mass migration is not something that we can just tolerate.  It undermines your country I think you look at our alliances around the world and I get it – you’re a country that has this vast social safety network that you have high taxes to pay for and you’re spending very little on your national security because America’s got your back.  That can’t be sustained.  We can’t continue to engage in that way.  That has to be corrected.  We talked about NATO a moment ago.  You think about all these conflicts going on in the world – we have to prioritize them.  I think if we become a country that spreads itself too thin that basically is trying to go 100 percent all in on five major conflicts around the planet even for the most powerful country in the world.  So I think we’re beginning to address that as – all of these challenges that could lead to American decline not because somebody else but because of the things we failed to do and that includes rebuild our industrial capabilities here at home.  One final point I would make is we are entering an era in which our foreign policy has to be more focused and that is that we have to clearly define what is our national interest and then we have to pursue that.  And that means balancing things that in the past weren’t balanced.  In the past it was democracy promotion at any cost or human rights promotion at any cost.  We’re not abandoning democracy we’re not abandoning human rights; we’re just saying that has to be part of the overall analysis when we decide where to spend our time and what to spend our money on.  the Emma Lazarus poem – “Give me your tired your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” – is that still true?  and there’s laws that allow people to come here every day.  The United States – every year on average about a million people legally enter the United States on a green card and five – three to five years later can become United States citizens.  We remain the most generous country in the world in terms of allowing people to come to the United States.  All we’re asking is that they do it through a process.  All we’re asking is that they – even the most generous charities in the United States generally require people that show up for help to fill out a paper and wait in line and sort of have their case evaluated.  but when it comes to our immigration policies no country in the world allows as many people to come in.  We just ask people to do it legally through an appropriate process.  What we can’t be is a country where you can just show up at the border and say I’m here and I’m here to stay no questions asked.  That’s lunacy.  QUESTION:  Secretary of State Marco Rubio thank you so much for the time.  I really appreciate it.