NEW YORK: Donald Trump plans to visit New York’s Harlem neighborhood Tuesday after spending his second day in a lower Manhattan courtroom as a criminal defendant.
Trump was expected to stop by Sanaa Convenient Store, a tiny bodega that sells chips, sodas and other snacks. Trump aides said the former president and current Republican nominee chose the store because it has been the site of a violent attack on an employee. He will also highlight consumer inflation under President Joe Biden, aides said.
The visit would be Trump’s first campaign appearance since his criminal hush money trial began, making the presumptive GOP nominee the first former president in US history to stand criminal trial.
Trump will be confined to the courtroom on most days, dramatically limiting his movements and his ability to campaign, fundraise and make calls. Aides have been planning rallies and other political events on weekends and Wednesdays, the one weekday when court is not supposed to be in session. Plans also include local appearances Trump can make after court recesses each day.
Trump’s stop in Harlem demonstrates the former president’s determination to amplify familiar campaign arguments even within the strictures of being a criminal defendant.
In July 2022, Jose Alba, a clerk at the store in Hamilton Heights, a heavily Hispanic section of Harlem, was attacked by 35-year-old Austin Simon. The resulting altercation, captured on surveillance video, ended with Alba fatally stabbing Simon. Alba was arrested and charged with murder but the Manhattan district attorney dropped the charges within weeks, saying they could not prove Alba had not acted in self-defense.
On another evening in August 2022, according to the New York Post, owner Osamah Aldhabyani was in the store when a customer entered and an altercation between the two ensued. The customer was arrested, the newspaper reported.
Before his arrival, Trump’s campaign distributed materials to journalists criticizing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for his handling of the stabbing case, including the weeks Alba spent jailed at Rikers Island without bail. Bragg oversees the office now prosecuting Trump.
The former president’s local appearance also affirms his intentions to campaign in his home state, even though New York remains overwhelmingly Democratic. In 2020, Biden garnered more than 60 percent of the vote in the state and ran up even wider margins in New York City. Trump insists he can win New York in November anyway, and he has mused about holding rallies in the South Bronx and Queens, where the former president was born and grew up, and even Madison Square Garden.
“I may rent Madison Square Garden,” he said in an interview with Breitbart News. “That’s the belly of the beast, right?”
That would be a prohibitively expensive proposition, particularly as his campaign has worked to save cash as it confronts a fundraising gap with Biden.
“You know, the president is very keen on New York,” Chris LaCivita, Trump senior campaign adviser, told The Associated Press last month as he talked up the campaign’s efforts to put more states in play. Still, LaCivita laughed when asked whether he agrees. “I don’t get out in front of the boss. I do what the boss says. The boss drives,” he said.
Trump has argued that the ongoing influx of migrants to the city, where he grew his real estate empire and became a tabloid fixture, has made New Yorkers more willing to vote for him since his 2020 loss to Biden. The city has struggled to house the new arrivals, putting many up in city hotels.
“I think we have a chance. New York has changed a lot in the last two years,” he told Fox News host Maria Bartiromo. “The people of New York are angry. People that would have never voted for me because I’m a Republican — I mean they’re Democrats ... I think they’re going to vote for me. So I think we’re going to give New York a heavy shot.”
Trump cited the 2022 New York governor’s race, when Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul prevailed over Republican former Rep. Lee Zeldin — but by a much tighter margin than usual for her party’s statewide nominees.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a top Trump ally, said Monday that Trump will be campaigning all over the state while he’s forced to be on trial in New York.
“He’s going to make the best out of this,” she said, adding that “Democrats in New York and the judge and everyone, they’re really going to regret it.”
At the least, Trump, long a famous figure for New Yorkers, showed Tuesday that he can still turn heads in the city.
“Papito Trump is coming. Yeah!” said one passerby ahead of the former president’s arrival.
Lesandra Carrion, 47, who lives in the neighborhood, came out to see the former president when she heard he might be visiting.
She said she doesn’t agree with everything Trump says or does but declared that “he speaks the truth.” Carrion cited the rising migrant population and strained city resources. “I think that he will make a difference,” she said of Trump.
As for his troubles at the courthouse at the south end of Manhattan, Carrion was dismissive. “He’s going to beat that,” she said. “We all make mistakes at the end of the day. But he’s the truth and light. I feel that God is in him.”
Trump goes from court to campaign at a bodega in his heavily Democratic hometown
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Trump goes from court to campaign at a bodega in his heavily Democratic hometown
- The visit would be Trump’s first campaign appearance since his criminal hush money trial began, making the presumptive GOP nominee the first former president in US history to stand criminal trial
Maryland Sen. Van Hollen says he was denied entry to the El Salvador prison holding Abrego Garcia
- Van Hollen’s trip has become a partisan flashpoint in the US as Democrats have siezed on Abrego Garcia’s deportation as a cruel consequence of Trump’s disregard for the courts
- While Van Hollen was denied entry, several House Republicans have visited the notorious gang prison in support of the Trump administration’s efforts
Van Hollen is in El Salvador to push for Abrego Garcia’s release. The Democratic senator at a news conference in San Salvador that his car was stopped by soldiers at a checkpoint about 3 kilometers from the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, even as they let other cars go on.
“They stopped us because they are under orders not to allow us to proceed,” Van Hollen said.
US President Donald Trump and Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele said this week that they have no basis to send him back, even as the Trump administration has called his deportation a mistake and the US Supreme Court has called on the administration to facilitate his return. Trump officials have said that Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen who was living in Maryland, has ties to the MS-13 gang, but his attorneys say the government has provided no evidence of that and Abrego Garcia has never been charged with any crime related to such activity.
Van Hollen’s trip has become a partisan flashpoint in the US as Democrats have siezed on Abrego Garcia’s deportation as a cruel consequence of Trump’s disregard for the courts. Republicans have criticized Democrats for defending him and argued that his deportation is part of a larger effort to reduce crime. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt held a news conference on Wednesday with the mother of a Maryland woman who was killed by a fugitive from El Salvador in 2023.
The Maryland senator told reporters Wednesday that he met with Salvadoran Vice President Felix Ulloa who said his government could not return Abrego Garcia to the United States.
“So today, I tried again to make contact with Mr. Abrego Garcia by driving to the CECOT prison,” Van Hollen said, and was stopped.
Van Hollen said Abrego Garcia has not had any contact with his family or his lawyers. “There has been no ability to find out anything about his health and well being,” Van Hollen said. He said Abrego Garcia should be able to have contact with his lawyers under international law.
“We won’t give up until Kilmar has his due process rights respected,” Van Hollen said. He said there would be “many more” lawmakers coming to El Salvador.
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., is also considering a trip to El Salvador, as are some House Democrats.
While Van Hollen was denied entry, several House Republicans have visited the notorious gang prison in support of the Trump administration’s efforts. Rep. Riley Moore, a West Virginia Republican, posted Tuesday evening that he’d visited the prison where Abrego Garcia is being held. He did not mention Abrego Garcia but said the facility “houses the country’s most brutal criminals.”
“I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland,” Moore wrote on social media.
Missouri Republican Rep. Jason Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, also visited the prison. He posted on X that “thanks to President Trump” the facility “now includes illegal immigrants who broke into our country and committed violent acts against Americans.”
The fight over Abrego Garcia has also played out in contentious court filings, with repeated refusals from the government to tell a judge what it plans to do, if anything, to repatriate him.
Since March, El Salvador has accepted from the US more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants — whom Trump administration officials have accused of gang activity and violent crimes — and placed them inside the country’s maximum-security gang prison just outside of San Salvador. That prison is part of Bukele’s broader effort to crack down on the country’s powerful street gangs, which has put 84,000 people behind bars and made Bukele extremely popular at home.
Human rights groups have previously accused Bukele’s government of subjecting those jailed to “systematic use of torture and other mistreatment.” Officials there deny wrongdoing.
France hails ‘positive process’ at US, Europe, Ukraine talks
- A new meeting of is to take place next week in London
PARIS: France on Thursday praised “excellent” Paris talks involving top US, European and Ukrainian officials, saying they had launched “a positive process” as Kyiv’s allies seek to rekindle stalled ceasefire efforts.
“Today in Paris, we launched a positive process in which the Europeans are involved,” the French presidency said after meetings attended by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s special envoy and European representatives including President Emmanuel Macron.
A new meeting of envoys from the United States, France, Britain, Germany and Ukraine is to take place next week in London, officials said.
Trump says he’s in ‘no rush’ to end tariffs as he holds talks with Italy’s Meloni
- Trump administration has indicated that offers are coming from other countries and it is possible to do 90 deals during the 90-day tariff pause
- “We know we are in a difficult moment," Meloni said this week in Rome
WASHINGTON: President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is in “no rush” to reach any trade deals because of the revenues his tariffs are generating, but suggested while meeting with Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni that it would be easy to find an agreement with the European Union.
His administration has indicated that offers are coming from other countries and it is possible to do 90 deals during the 90-day tariff pause, but the president played down the likelihood of an accelerated timeline, saying any agreements would come “at a certain point.”
“We’re in no rush,” Trump said.
Meloni’s meeting with Trump will test her mettle as a bridge between the European Union and the United States. She is the first European leader to have face-to-face talks with him since he announced and then partially suspended 20 percent tariffs on European exports.
Meloni secured the meeting as Italy’s leader, but she also has, in a sense, been “knighted” to represent the EU at a critical juncture in the trade war. She was in close contact with EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen before the trip, and “the outreach is … closely coordinated,” a commission spokeswoman said.
“We know we are in a difficult moment,” Meloni said this week in Rome. “Most certainly, I am well aware of what I represent, and what I am defending.”
The EU is defending what it calls “the most important commercial relationship in the world,’’ with annual trade reaching 1.6 trillion euros ($1.8 trillion).
Trade negotiations fall under the authority of the commission, which is pushing for a zero-for-zero tariff deal with Washington. Trump administration officials, in talks with the EU, have yet to publicly show signs of relenting on the president’s insistence that a baseline 10 percent tariff be charged on all foreign imports. Trump paused for 90 days his initial 20 percent tax on EU products so that negotiations could occur.
The EU has already engaged with Trump administration officials in Washington. Maroš Šefčovič, the European Commissioner for trade and economic security, said he met on Monday with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.
Šefčovič said afterward on X that it would “require a significant joint effort on both sides” to get to zero tariffs and work on non-tariff trade barriers.
Meloni’s margins for progress are more in gaining clarity on the Republican president’s goals rather than outright concessions, experts say.
“It is a very delicate mission,” said Fabian Zuleeg, chief economist at the European Policy Center think tank in Brussels. “There is the whole trade agenda, and while she’s not officially negotiating, we know that Trump likes to have this kind of informal exchange, which in a sense is a negotiation. So it’s a lot on her plate.”
As the leader of a far-right party, Meloni is ideologically aligned with Trump on issues including curbing migration, promoting traditional values and skepticism toward multilateral institutions. But stark differences have emerged in Meloni’s unwavering support for Ukraine after Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
The two leaders are expected to discuss the war and Italy’s role in an eventual postwar reconstruction of Ukraine. Trump is expected to press Meloni to increase Italy’s defense spending, which last year fell well below the 2 percent of gross domestic product target for countries in the NATO military alliance. Italy’s spending, at 1.49 percent of GDP, is among the lowest in Europe.
Despite the differences on Ukraine and defense spending, Meloni is seen by some in the US administration as a vital bridge to Europe at a difficult moment for trans-Atlantic relations.
Trump is looking not only to discuss with Meloni how “Italy’s marketplace can be opened up, but also how they can help us with the rest of Europe,” according to a senior administration official who briefed reporters before the visit. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.
After being the only European leader to attend Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Meloni has responded with studied restraint as abrupt shifts in US policy under Trump have frayed the US-European alliance. She has denounced the tariffs as “wrong” and warned that “dividing the West would be disastrous for everyone,” after Trump’s heated White House exchange with Ukraine’s president.
“She has been very cautious,’’ said Wolfango Piccoli, an analyst at the London-based Teneo consultancy. “It is what we need when we have a counterpart that is changing every day.’’
Italy maintains a 40 billion euro ($45 billion) trade surplus with the US, its largest with any country, fueled by Americans’ appetite for Italian sparkling wine, foodstuffs like Parmigiano Reggiano hard cheese and Parma ham, and Italian luxury fashion. These are all sectors critical to the Italian economy, and mostly supported by small- and medium-sized producers who are core center-right voters.
“All in all, I think she will focus on the very strong economic and trade relations that Italy has with the United States, not just in terms of exports, but also services and energy,” said Antonio Villafranca, vice president of the ISPI think tank in Milan. “For example, Italy could even consider importing more gas from the US”
The meeting comes against the backdrop of growing concerns over global uncertainty generated by the escalating tariff wars. Italy’s growth forecast for this year has already been slashed from 1 percent to 0.5 percent as a result.
Zelensky says Ukraine has evidence of China supplying Russia with artillery
- Zelensky said Chinese President Xi Jinping had promised him Beijing would not sell or supply weapons to Moscow
KYIV: Ukraine has intelligence which shows China is supplying artillery and gunpowder to Russia, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday.
“We believe that Chinese representatives are engaged in the production of some weapons on the territory of Russia,” he told a press conference in Kyiv. Zelensky did not specify whether he meant artillery systems or shells.
The allegation is likely to upend relations between Kyiv and Beijing, already strained by Ukraine’s making public its capture of Chinese nationals fighting for Russia. China has so far tried to maintain an outward perception of neutrality in the three-year war prompted by Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Ukraine has previously called on China to use its influence over Russia to push it toward peace.
“We already have facts about this work by China and Russia to strengthen their defense capabilities,” Zelensky said, voicing his dismay as he said Chinese President Xi Jinping had promised him Beijing would not sell or supply weapons to Moscow.
Pope pays surprise visit to Rome prison
- Francis was greeted with applause from guards and staff at the facility
- The Vatican said he met with a group of about 70 inmates
VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis, still recovering from double pneumonia, paid a surprise visit on Thursday to Rome’s Regina Coeli, one of Italy’s most overcrowded prisons, to offer well-wishes to inmates ahead of Easter.
The 88-year-old pontiff, gradually making more public appearances as he recovers from the biggest health crisis in his 12-year papacy, made a short foray outside of the Vatican, as the prison is only about a five-minute drive away.
Francis was greeted with applause from guards and staff at the facility as aides rolled his wheelchair inside shortly after 3 p.m. (1300 GMT).
As during his two most recent public appearances, the pope was breathing on his own without the aid of oxygen tubes.
Francis stayed at the prison for about half an hour. The Vatican said he met with a group of about 70 inmates. “I wanted to be close to you,” he said, according to the Vatican. “I pray for you and your families.”
The Catholic Church on Thursday celebrates Holy Thursday, the day of Jesus’ Last Supper with his apostles on the night before he died. It is the first of four days of celebrations leading to Easter, the most important Christian holiday, on Sunday.
Francis, pope since 2013, has visited prisons throughout his papacy, often on Holy Thursday.
Regina Coeli, a former 17th-century monastery in the touristy Trastevere neighborhood, is primarily a men’s prison. It currently houses about 1,100 prisoners, nearly double its official capacity of 628 inmates, according to the Italian justice ministry.
The pope last visited the prison in 2018.
Francis nearly died during his five-week bout of double pneumonia. His medical team have urged him to take two months’ rest after leaving hospital to allow his body to fully heal.
The pope initially remained out of view after returning home to the Vatican on March 23 but has now made several brief public appearances.
It is not known how much the pope will participate in the Vatican’s calendar of celebrations leading to Easter.
Asked by journalists who approached his car as he was leaving the prison about how he would celebrate Easter this year, Francis smiled and responded in a soft voice: “As I can.”
