ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday indicated that he may still speak with Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te — even after China has publicly urged him not to directly engage with the leader of the self-ruled island that Beijing claims as its own.

Trump first raised the idea last month on his way back from meeting President Xi Jinping in Beijing, saying that he intended to speak directly with Lai as he weighs whether to go ahead with a $14 billion arms sale for Taipei that Congress approved earlier this year.

The U.S. president on Friday suggested that a call with the Taiwanese leader is still in play. “I’ll always talk to him,” Trump told reporters when asked if he still intended on calling Lai.

Such a call would mark the first direct dialogue between sitting American and Taiwanese presidents in many decades, and Beijing has discouraged Trump against such an engagement.

The Chinese embassy in Washington in a statement to the Associated Press this week said that kind of phone call could undermine progress in the delicate U.S.-China relationship and urged the Republican administration to “handle the Taiwan question with utmost prudence” and “avoid sending wrong signals” to officials in the democratically run island that China views as a breakaway province.

Trump raised China’s ire when he took a congratulatory call from Taiwan’s then-President Tsai Ing-wen after winning the 2016 presidential election but before taking office.

Trump has raised the idea of a direct engagement with Lai even as he’s been more circumspect about whether he’ll move forward with a major arms package for Taiwan after hearing concerns about it from Xi in Beijing. Congress greenlit the arms deal in January but it still needs Trump’s approval,

The president said last month he sees arms sales with Taiwan as a “negotiating chip” in the administration’s approach to Pacific policy.

At last month’s Beijing summit, Xi warned Trump that the “Taiwan question” is the most important issue in ties between China and the U.S., and that the two nations will “have clashes and even conflicts” without proper handling of the matter, according to Chinese officials.

Trump’s discussion with Xi about the arms sales to Taiwan seemed out of step with the U.S. policy principles known as the Six Assurances. The nonbinding principles, formulated in 1982 under President Ronald Reagan, have helped guide the U.S. relationship with Taipei, according to analysts.

The second of the Six Assurances states that the U.S. “did not agree to consult with the People’s Republic of China on arms sales to Taiwan.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio during a series of congressional hearings earlier this week said that the United States’ Taiwan policy has not changed.

But Trump’s rhetoric has added a more foggy dynamic to the U.S.-Taiwan relationship, said Craig Singleton, a China expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

“Trump’s comments about Taiwan arms sales as a negotiating chip, combined with uncertainty around a possible Lai call, have created more ambiguity than Taipei would like,” Singleton said. “The real test is not the rhetoric. It is whether the pending arms package moves, and on what timeline.”

If the call were to happen, Lai has said he would emphasize to Trump that peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait are crucial for global security, and make the case that China was acting as the “destroyer” of the strait’s peace.

Lai said he also would tell Trump that Taiwan’s increasing defense budget was a response to threats, and purchases of U.S. arms would be an essential means to safeguard the strait’s stability.

In 1979, Washington ended diplomatic ties with Taiwan as part of recognizing the People’s Republic of China, and the Chinese have reacted strongly after other engagements by senior U.S. leaders with Taiwan’s leadership.

After an August 2022 visit to Taipei by then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and five other Democratic lawmakers, China responded with large-scale military exercises that included launching short-range ballistic missiles over the island.

The United States, under the “One China” policy, recognizes the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China, while still allowing for informal U.S. relations with the self-governing island.

At the same time, the U.S. has long agreed to ensure Taipei has the resources to defend itself though Washington has remained ambiguous about how far it will go militarily to counter Beijing should it decide to take Taiwan by force.

After Trump’s Friday comments, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington reiterated its position that it intends to “maintain close contact” with the U.S. on arms sales and other issues.

“We will leave it up to the U.S. to announce if there’s any arrangements for President Trump to speak with President Lai,” the office said in a statement.

China would view a phone call between Trump and Lai as more provocative than moving forward with the proposed arms sale to Taiwan, said Edgard Kagan, a former U.S. ambassador to Malaysia and senior State Department official handling East Asia policy issues under Trump and President Joe Biden.

Kagan added that it was notable that Trump continues to publicly state that such a call is a possibility after China had warned the U.S. administration against a Trump-Lai engagement.

If Trump bypasses a phone call with Lai, he may create the space to move forward with a new arms sales for Taipei while dulling the blowback from Beijing, said Kagan, who is now the China Studies chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

“This could give him the room to announce an arms sale, defuse the criticism that the U.S. is turning its back on Taiwan, and do it in a way that leaves the Chinese feeling there was some respect for their views,” Kagan added.

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Madhani reported from Washington.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military said it shot down four Iranian drones that were launched toward the Strait of Hormuz on Friday and then struck some of the Islamic Republic’s coastal surveillance radar sites in response.

“The attack drones posed an immediate threat to regional maritime traffic,” U.S. Central Command said on social media. The military is enforcing a blockade on Iranian ports in response to Tehran’s chokehold on the crucial corridor for global oil and natural gas shipments, which has sent energy prices spiking.

It was the latest in back-and-forth attacks that have strained the tenuous ceasefire in the war and efforts to reach a deal to extend that truce.

Earlier this week, Iranian drones heavily damaged a passenger terminal at Kuwait’s main airport, killing one person, wounding dozens and briefly closing the airfield.

Despite the attacks raising new concerns that the ceasefire could collapse, Trump reiterated this week that he’s certain his administration is on track to successfully wrap up the conflict.

“We’re going to win one way or another,” Trump told reporters Thursday in the Oval Office.

His administration also has touted the latest ceasefire agreed to this week by the Lebanese government and Israel after U.S.-brokered talks in Washington. That’s despite the Iranian-backed Hezbollah militant group rejecting the agreement and new attacks launched by both sides.

The fighting in Lebanon, where Israeli forces have seized large swaths of the south, also threatens efforts to end the Iran war and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Iran has demanded that any lasting truce extend to Lebanon.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — The U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles said Friday it had opened “multiple election fraud investigations” related to California’s elections and sent a prosecutor to the county’s vote-counting center.

The developments came a day after President Donald Trump made baseless claims of mass fraud in California’s drawn-out vote count from Tuesday’s primary. Late-tallied Democratic-leaning mail ballots were continuing to eat into the vote totals for the president’s preferred candidates for governor and Los Angeles mayor.

The announcement by U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli, Trump’s appointee as the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles, and the visit to Los Angeles County’s ballot tabulation center marked an escalation in the president’s campaign against the Democratic-dominated state, whose notoriously prolonged vote count has been a magnet for election conspiracy theories. Trump weighed in again Friday while participating in a roundtable discussion in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, claiming without evidence that Democrats were rigging the election.

“You look at what’s happening — it’s getting tighter and tighter and tighter,” he said. “And the people who were supposed to win, bad things are happening. It’s a crooked state.”

Trump has often said that changes to vote totals as late ballots are counted are a sign of fraud, when they’re merely a reflection of more ballots being counted.

On Thursday, Trump said his Department of Justice was investigating the California count. By Friday morning, Essayli posted on X about ongoing investigations without providing details, saying only that California’s elections have “serious structural vulnerabilities.”

An assistant U.S. attorney came to the main ballot processing center Friday morning, according to a statement from Mike Sanchez, a spokesman for Los Angeles County’s Registrar-Recorder. The prosecutor “was provided an overview of the public observation program, and participated in a walkthrough of the ballot processing operations,” Sanchez said.

He added that “election officials routinely host observers representing a wide range of interests.”

It was not the first time Trump’s Justice Department has taken an interest in California’s elections. Last fall, it sent observers to monitor polling sites in five counties, including Los Angeles, during the special election asking voters to change California’s congressional map.

Also on Friday, Republican Steve Hilton, who is Trump’s favored candidate for governor, called for a sweeping overhaul in California’s election laws to limit mail ballots to only those who request them, rather than being sent to all registered voters. He also called for an Election Day deadline to accept them rather than the seven-day grace period the state currently allows as long as they are postmarked by the final day of voting.

Hilton said in an interview that the U.S. attorney’s office might know more than his campaign does, but noted his team has been monitoring the count and has seen nothing that seems illegal.

“We certainly haven’t seen anything of that nature that would warrant legal action,” Hilton said.

Still, Hilton said the sluggish count has made California “a national and international laughingstock.” He proposed the state government send an emergency detachment of state workers to California’s 58 counties to speed up the vote count.

Jesse Salinas, president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officers, said he welcomed Hilton’s eagerness to help but the proposal would do no good.

“It’d be more disruptive than helpful at this point,” said Salinas, who’s also the clerk and registrar for Yolo County.

Anyone who handles a ballot or machine used in the vote-counting process would have to be trained by the very people working feverishly to tally mail ballots that poured in Tuesday. And, added Salinas, his own vote-counting facility is already full, with no more room for any additional staff.

Hilton, who has been endorsed by Trump, is battling two Democrats for one of the two slots on the November ballot. Reality television star Spencer Pratt, another candidate backed by Trump, is likewise competing with City Councilwoman Nithya Raman for the chance to face Mayor Karen Bass in the November election.

Because Democrats usually vote by mail, and held onto their ballots unusually late in the crowded primary, their votes are often tallied after those of more Republican-leaning voters who might have cast ballots early. The net effect is that Republican candidates appear at their high water marks in the first batch of returns on election night, only to see their leads whittled away in the days or weeks that follow, when election workers complete the lengthy process of tallying late-arriving mail ballots.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Several FBI analysts tied to the creation of a 2023 memo warning of a potential threat from Catholic “violent extremists” were fired Friday, according to their lawyer, the latest wave of terminations under the leadership of its director Kash Patel.

The fired employees included four intelligence analysts and a supervisory analyst. The FBI declined to comment.

“This action is manifestly unjust, completely unsupported by the facts, and subverts standard FBI policy and procedure,” their lawyer, David Laufman, said in a statement. “These individuals deserved far better for the exceptional and faithful public service they rendered to protect our country.”

The January 2023 intelligence product produced by analysts in the FBI’s Richmond, Virginia, field office emerged as a political flashpoint after it was issued, with Republicans in Congress repeatedly citing it as part of their broader contention that the FBI during the Biden administration was targeting conservatives.

Then-director Chris Wray repeatedly denied that charge and the FBI has said the document was quickly retracted and an internal review was launched. Merrick Garland, the attorney general under President Joe Biden, has said he was “appalled” by the memo.

Earlier Justice Department investigations into the memo challenged the analytical tradecraft but did not find intentional misconduct by the analysts involved.

The firings are part of a broader personnel purge under Patel, a Trump loyalist who over the last year, has pushed out dozens of employees who either contributed to investigations of the president or who were perceived as not in alignment with the administration’s agenda. The Justice Department has engaged in similarly sweeping firings of prosecutors since Trump took office last year.

In February, for instance, the FBI fired a group of counterintelligence agents who participated in the investigation into President Donald Trump over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

The Richmond memo, which emerged from a domestic terrorism investigation, sought to examine a potential link between what it called “Radical Traditionalist Catholic” ideology and racially and ethnically motivated extremists. It warned of the potential for violence and also highlighted what the authors described as “new avenues for tripwire and source development.” FBI leadership quickly condemned those findings once the document became public.

An internal FBI review described in a 2023 letter to Congress and based on interviews with 26 people “found that all individuals involved in the creation, review and approval of the product failed to adhere to analytic tradecraft standards and failed to recognize that the product, as drafted, equated the subjects’ interest in their self-described form of religion with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist (RMVE) ideology without sufficient evidence or articulable support.”

The failure to adhere to standards, including on proper domestic terrorism terminology, “created the appearance that the FBI conducts investigative activity based on religious affiliation,” the letter said. “One of the FBI’s most fundamental principles is that investigative activity may not be based solely on the exercise of rights guaranteed by the First Amendment.”

A Justice Department inspector general report in 2024 summarized the earlier FBI review by saying that though there were departures from proper analytic tradecraft, “no evidence of a malicious intent or an improper purpose” were found.

MS NOW earlier reported the firings.

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Tucker reported from Los Angeles.

By Dietrich Knauth

NEW YORK, June 5 (Reuters) – A Los Angeles jury on Friday sided with Johnson & Johnson in a lawsuit by the families of three women who alleged that the company’s talc products caused ovarian cancer, finding that J&J was not negligent when selling cosmetic talc products.

• The lawsuit was filed by the families of Mary Owens, Bonnie Tienken and Geneva Williams, who each died of ovarian cancer after using talc-based baby powder

• J&J said its products are safe, do not contain asbestos, and ​do not cause cancer

• J&J faces lawsuits from over 67,000 plaintiffs alleging that its baby powder and other talc products cause ovarian cancer

• Trials have resumed after J&J failed to resolve the lawsuits in bankruptcy court

• J&J has a mixed record in trials, winning some cases outright but also being hit with large verdicts in other cases

• J&J also prevailed in a jury trial in Oklahoma last week

• J&J stopped selling talc-based baby powder in the U.S. in 2020, switching to a cornstarch product

• The case was tried in the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles

• J&J vice president of litigation Erik Haas said on Friday that the case was based on “junk science”

• Ten of the 12 jurors found that J&J was not negligent when making and selling talc-based cosmetic powder, according to proceedings viewed on Courtroom View Network

• J&J has settled a majority of cases alleging that its products caused mesothelioma, a rare form of cancer associated with asbestos

• Nearly all of the remaining cases allege that talc products cause ovarian cancer

(Reporting by Dietrich Knauth, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Water has started flowing into the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool after President Donald Trump’s renovation, which included painting the basin a deep shade he called “American flag blue.”

This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers representing the federal government argued Friday that a court could not stop construction of a White House ballroom because it was already underway and because of the sensitive security concerns they say the structure is meant to address.

Attorney Yaakov Roth, speaking during an exchange with U.S. Appeals Court Judge Patricia Millett, said only Congress could halt the $400 million project. The administration has been asking the court to allow it to press on with the ballroom without congressional approval.

At issue is an April 16 order from U.S. District Judge Richard Leon for Trump’s Republican administration to halt aboveground work on the 90,000-square-foot (8,400-square-meter) ballroom. Leon, who was nominated to the bench by Republican President George W. Bush, allowed for construction to continue on belowground work on a bunker and other “national security facilities” at the site.

The hearing Friday centered on who has standing to challenge government steps once they have already been taken and whether that standing overrides national security.

In response to hypothetical scenarios put forward by Millett, Roth agreed that the government could bulldoze the Statue of Liberty and the White House — and the descendants of immigrants who came through Ellis Island and the enslaved people who built the White House would not have legal standing to oppose the move after the fact.

Millett, nominated to the bench by Democratic President Barack Obama, asked Roth when the construction on the ballroom was a “fait accompli?”

“Was it when you started doing the underground work, which is now totally completely integral and connected and inseparable from a massive ballroom on top?” she asked. “When did it become impossible for courts to stop this project?”

Roth replied: “I think it would have been improper to enjoin it even on Day One.”

The exchange was one of many during the two-hour hearing before the three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. The hearing concluded without a decision by the judges.

The National Trust for Historic Preservation sued to challenge the project in December, a week after the White House finished demolishing the East Wing to make way for a ballroom that Trump said would fit 999 people.

It is hard to determine how the judges might rule. While there were numerous questions for Roth over the administration’s authority and changing explanations of how it is moving forward, plaintiff attorney Tad Heuer also faced numerous questions.

The judges pressed Heuer on standing in the case and on how basic aesthetic questions can override the national security concerns.

“We have never opposed the underground construction of the bunker, which is where the government until recently has said the national security concerns lay,” Heuer said. He said construction should be halted until Congress weighs in.

“Congress can allow ballrooms to be built — it’s its property,” Heuer said.

Government lawyers have argued that the project includes critical security features to guard against a range of threats, such as drones, ballistic missiles and biohazards.

“These upgrades, alterations, and improvements are essential to protecting the President, his family, and his staff, as well as the White House itself, and the entire project flows from them,” they wrote in a court filing.

DENALI NATIONAL PARK AND PRESERVE, Alaska (AP) — A ranger in Alaska died after falling into a crevasse on North America’s tallest mountain, the National Park Service said.

Robin Pendery of Enumclaw, Washington was a seasonal mountaineering ranger assigned to Denali National Park and Preserve. She fell Thursday while on climbing patrol on Mount McKinley, and died despite immediate rescue efforts, the park service said.

The death is under investigation. It comes only a week after three climbers from a Latvian mountaineering expedition died after falling near a treacherous pass on McKinley. A fourth climber was rescued. They were part of a seven-person team traversing a route known for its exposed sections, where many climbers have died or been injured over the years.

McKinley stands at about 20,310 feet (6,190 meters), and Pendery fell near what’s known as the 14,000-foot (4,328-meter) camp.

“Our mountaineering rangers dedicate themselves to serving visitors and helping others in one of the most challenging environments in the world,” Denali Superintendent Brooke Merrell said in a statement Friday. “Today, we mourn the loss of a valued colleague, friend and teammate.”

WASHINGTON, June 5 (Reuters) – Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the U.S. Senate Banking Committee, prodded President Donald Trump’s derivatives regulator on Friday over recent reporting in The New York Times that reported on outside interference and favoritism allegedly benefiting the crypto and prediction markets industries.

• In a letter to Michael Selig, who took office in December as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and is the sole sitting commissioner of the five-member bipartisan agency, Warren cited reporting in the Times and elsewhere according to which agency leadership intervened to benefit companies backed by Trump allies and punished agency staff who stood in the way.

• CFTC representatives did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday. The White House told The Times last month President Trump faced no conflicts of interest.

• Crypto companies and prediction markets have benefited under Trump’s CFTC, which has dropped enforcement actions into the industries, and is working on friendly regulations with the stated purpose of sector growth.

• But congressional scrutiny of the prediction market sector is mounting amid concerns of insider trading.

• CFTC headcount is down sharply since last year to its lowest levels since the 2008 financial crisis and the agency’s enforcement activity has also fallen.

• “Taken together, these are concerning signs of a CFTC beholden to political pressures and interests of the wealthy insiders, unbound by the rule of law and failing to protect investors and market integrity,” Warren wrote.

(Reporting by Douglas Gillison in Washington; Editing by Aurora Ellis)

WASHINGTON (AP) — With virtually no strings attached, Congress is on the verge of providing a sizable infusion of cash to the Department of Homeland Security, powering President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda for the remainder of his term in the White House.

The nearly $70 billion package, which cleared the Republican-held Senate in a middle of the night vote and now heads to the House, was declared a “rotten bill” by the Democratic leader and an “ATM for ICE” by pro-immigrant advocates.

But for those aligned with Trump’s campaign promise for the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history, it all but guarantees an uninterrupted flow of money to carry out the administration’s immigration enforcement operations — and comes on top of some $170 billion Congress already approved for the department last summer, as part of Trump’s big tax breaks bill.

“We’re going to continue to arrest people, we’re going to continue to detain people and we’re going to keep deporting people,” Trump border czar Tom Homan told CBS News on Friday.

He hinted at summer sweeps of enforcement actions coming next to New York City.

The work of Congress comes at a pivotal time for the Republican president and his party as they face restless voters before the midterm elections. About one in three U.S. adults know someone who has been impacted by Trump’s immigration operations, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in April. And as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, most say it’s no longer a great place for immigrants.

The funding package from Congress is just a slim dozen-page bill that carries none of the usual guardrails or directives typically demanded in legislation. It turns loose $30 billion for Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations, and billions for the Border Patrol, and others, prepaying the department’s operations into 2029.

“Their options are limitless in terms of what they can do with this money,” said Vanessa Cardenas, the executive director at America’s Voice, a longtime advocacy organization for immigrants.

“That is such a hard thing to accept as a taxpaying citizen that our dollars are going to this massive, mass deportation machine, while Americans are struggling to meet health care costs, and have access to food and they’re paying so much in gas.”

The administration has sought to shift the debate over its immigration operations, installing new leadership at Homeland Security in the aftermath of violent scenes of immigration enforcement earlier this year and the shooting deaths of Americans Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.

Rather than the dramatic street sweeps, the administration is working behind the scenes on actions that are stripping immigrant groups of their ability to remain in the U.S., by doing away with Temporary Protected Status or making it more difficult to secure green cards.

The so-called Dreamers, young immigrants brought illegally to the U.S. as children, have reported delays in renewing their Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals status, exposing them to potential deportation.

But protests on American streets continue, including over detention conditions at the Delaney Hall facility in New Jersey.

At the same time, Homeland Security continues to hire more ICE agents — it’s hosting an employment fair next month in Florida — build more detention facilities and partner with countries around the world to take people who are being deported from the U.S.

In a statement, the department said Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin are “laser focused on ensuring the hardworking men and women” of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol are fully funded. It said the package from Congress “will ensure our critical national security operations continue despite any Democrat attempts to hold our great patriotic employees hostage in the future.”

Typically a funding package from Congress would run hundreds pages or more, with a range of specific instructions about how the money can be spent and on what timelines.

Congress, after all, holds the power of the purse, and often uses that constitutional role to put checks on the administration.

But after Democrats refused to fund Homeland Security earlier this year following the violence in Minnesota, Republicans retaliated by using the congressional budget resolution process to muscle the package through on their own, outside of the traditional appropriations channels.

It’s the same process both parties have used in the past, most recently on Trump’s 2025 tax cuts bill.

“All this important oversight doesn’t happen,” said Bobby Kogan, a former staff member of the Senate Budget Committee and now at the Center for American Progress, a think tank.

Overnight, Democrats in the Senate worked to exert that authority, offering amendments to ensure Congress had some say in the process. Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, for example, sought to protect “Dreamers” from deportation as their DACA renewals are being delayed. But those efforts all failed.

Meanwhile the administration is under enormous pressure to deliver on its promise to boost deportations to some 1 million a year, after the Republican president’s first year numbers fell short.

Mike Howell, president of the Oversight Project, is a leader of the Mass Deportation Coalition that is pushing the Trump administration to stick to its promises.

“Everyone’s talking about it like ICE is about to get another massive cash injection, and that’s not how I see it at all,” he said. “They’re getting like life-support money.”

“We’re not asking them to keep going,” Howell said. “We’re asking them to start.”

Howell said there’s little chance the Trump administration will be able to reach the president’s deportation goals unless it drops its priority to go after what they call the “worst of the worst.”

His group put out a framework earlier this year that proposes more comprehensive sweeps to arrest immigrants, particularly in the workplace. He also wants to see the Trump administration make it more difficult for immigrants who are in the U.S. to use the banking system, get social services and obtain drivers licenses. Republicans in Congress have offered bills tackling some of those issues.

The administration has been amping up its own rhetoric and recently posted a new website that characterizes immigrants as “aliens” — with outer-space themes — and suggests ways the White House is working to prevent people from staying in the U.S.