Senate testimony: U.S. intelligence chiefs are set to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday in a previously scheduled hearing, a day after it emerged that senior Trump administration officials had shared classified war plans in an encrypted group chat that also included a journalist. Read more ›
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Threat assessment: In their testimony to Congress about global threats, the nation’s top intelligence officials will have to choose: Do they stick with the long-running assessment that President Vladimir Putin of Russia is out to undermine the United States? Or do they talk about Mr. Putin in the way President Trump is describing him these days, as a trustworthy future business partner? Read more ›
Deportation conflict: The Justice Department refused to give a federal judge any further information about two flights of Venezuelan migrants it sent to El Salvador, escalating a standoff that began a week ago. The department said that sharing the information would jeopardize state secrets. Read more ›
Enjoli Liston
U.S. intelligence chiefs are scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, a day after it emerged that senior Trump administration officials had shared classified war plans in an encrypted group chat that also included a journalist, in an extraordinary breach of American national security.
Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence; John Ratcliffe, the C.I.A. director; and Kash Patel, the head of the F.B.I., were scheduled to give lawmakers their first public “Worldwide Threat Assessment” of President Trump’s second term, but the hearing was likely to be overshadowed by sharp questioning from Democrats over the security breach.
The White House confirmed on Monday that Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, had discussed plans for military strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen in a group chat on the Signal messaging app that included the journalist Jeffrey Goldberg, two hours before U.S. troops launched the attacks. Mr. Goldberg had detailed the breach in an article for The Atlantic, where he is editor in chief.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the intelligence committee, said on social media that the episode showed the Trump administration was “playing fast and loose with our nation’s most classified info, and it makes all Americans less safe.”
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who also serves on the intelligence committee, assailed the Trump administration for its “recklessness.” “Our service members need competent leadership,” she wrote on social media. “Their lives depend on it.”
Some Democratic committee members called for Mr. Hegseth to face questions before Congress. Senator Martin Heinrich of New Mexico said that Mr. Hegseth should explain how “such an irresponsible, reckless and likely illegal breach” had happened.
Senator Susan Collins, a Republican of Maine who also sits on the intelligence committee, said it was “extremely troubling and serious” that Trump administration officials had discussed classified information on an unapproved messaging platform.
Other Republicans offered a more muted assessment. Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana brushed off the episode, calling it “a mistake.”
According to Mr. Goldberg’s article, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio were also in the group chat. He said he had been added to the group by Michael Waltz, President Trump’s national security adviser.
The intelligence chiefs are likely to face questions about the breach on Wednesday as well, when they are scheduled to brief the House Intelligence Committee about the global threat assessment. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who sits on that committee, told CNN on Monday that his panel would send an inquiry to Ms. Gabbard’s office, and then would determine whether a fuller investigation was warranted.
Other lawmakers said they would also be examining the breach.
“There are always two sides to the story, but it’s a concern,” said Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and chairman of the Armed Services Committee. “Definitely we’ll be looking into it.”
Maya C. Miller contributed reporting.
Catherine Porter
Reporting from Paris
Just hours after opening its new program for American researchers called Safe Place For Science in reaction to Trump administration policies, Aix Marseille University received its first application.
Since then, the university in the south of France known for its science programs, has received about a dozen applications per day from what the school considers “scientific asylum” seekers.
Other universities in France and elsewhere in Europe have also rushed to save American researchers fleeing drastic cuts to jobs and programs by the Trump administration, as well as perceived attacks on whole fields of research.
At stake are not just individual jobs, but the concept of free scientific inquiry, university presidents say. They are also rushing to fill huge holes in collective research caused by the cuts, particularly in areas targeted by the Trump administration, including studies of climate change, public health, environmental science, gender and diversity.
If the movement becomes a trend, it could mean the reversal of the long-term brain drain that has seen generations of scientists move to the United States. And while at least some Europeans have noted that the changes in the United States provide a unique opportunity to build stronger European research centers, most academics say that competition is not the short-term motivation.
“This program is ultimately linked to indignation, to declare what is happening in the United States is not normal,” said Éric Berton, president of Aix Marseille University, which has earmarked 15 million euros (nearly $16,300,000) for 15 three-year positions.
He said the number of openings “wasn’t much,” but the goal was to “give them a little hope.”
In France, Aix Marseille University is considered a leader in the push to bring in American researchers.
Since that program started, a cancer research foundation in Paris announced it was immediately putting up 3.5 million euros to welcome American cancer researchers. And last week, two universities in Paris announced they were offering positions to American scientists whose work has been curtailed or halted by the Trump administration.
“We are researchers. We want to continue to work at the highest level in these fields that are being attacked in the United States,” explained El Mouhoub Mouhoud, the president of Université Paris Sciences et Lettres.
The university plans to welcome 15 researchers who are already working on shared projects in targeted areas including climate science, health, humanities and gender studies, said Mr. Mouhoud. As a result, the projects would continue unfettered and the American researchers could enjoy “academic freedom to do their research,” he said.
“That’s good for everyone,” Mr. Mouhoud said.
The alarms at European scientific institutions began sounding as the Trump administration started slashing jobs and freezing science grants as part of its broad cost-cutting measures.
Firings at U.S. centers deemed the pinnacle of science have been announced week after week including at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Geological Survey and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The National Institutes of Health, the world’s largest funder of biomedical research, fired 1,200 employees and put grant reviews on hold, essentially turning off the tap of government funding for research projects in labs across the country.
The cuts come as some federal agencies have removed terms from websites and grant applications that are deemed unacceptable to the Trump administration, which is seeking to purge the federal government of “woke” initiatives. Among the terms considered taboo: “climate science,” “diversity,” and “gender.”
Taken together, the actions have sent a chill through academia and research institutes, with scientists worried not just for their jobs but the long-term viability of their research.
“What we see today is actually censorship, censorship of fundamental values ,” said Yasmine Belkaid, president of the Pasteur Institute in Paris, who moved to France last year after 30 years in the United States, where she had led the National Institutes of Health’s Center for Human Immunology.
“We could lose a generation of science, a generation of scientists, something that we cannot recover from,” she added. “It is our duty collectively to make sure that science on the whole is protected.”
Philippe Baptiste, the French minister of higher education and research, has been among the most outspoken and active European leaders on the issue. Mr. Baptiste, who led the French National Center of Space Studies before joining the government, described the Trump administration’s decisions as “collective madness” that required a swift and robust response from around the world.
“They are making decisions” he said, “that call into question whole swathes of research not just in the United States, but the world because there are a huge number of programs that we do jointly with the United States — on earth observation, on climate, on ecology, on the environment, on health data, on space exploration. It’s incalculable.”
Speaking of scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with whom he worked closely in his past job, Mr. Baptiste said: “These people are of exceptional scientific quality, dealing with weather, climate and earth observation. And what’s the idea? To say that we can no longer work on these issues?”
Mr. Baptiste has been working with the presidents of French universities to come up with a government program. He has also pushed for a Europe-wide response, including drafting a letter, also signed by government ministers in 11 other European countries, which demands a coordinated effort and dedicated funding from the European Commission for startups, research and innovation.
More than 350 scientists signed a petition published this week in the French newspaper Le Monde, similarly calling on the European Commission to set up an emergency fund of 750 million euros to accommodate thousands of researchers working in the United States.
A European Commission spokesperson, Nika Blazevic, said a meeting was being planned to coordinate the most effective response to the Trump administration cuts to scientific research.
In Brussels, two sister universities — Vrije Universiteit Brussel and Université Libre de Bruxelles — said they planned to market to American students a program offering 36 postdoctoral positions open to international researchers from around the world.
The positions, largely funded by European Union money, will focus on research in climate, Artificial Intelligence, and other areas the schools view as socially important.
In the Netherlands, the minister of education, culture and science, Eppo Bruins, announced that he wanted to set up a fund “in the very short term” to attract leading scientists in a variety of fields. While he did not mention Mr. Trump directly, he hinted at it in a letter to the Dutch House of Representatives. “The geopolitical climate is changing, which is currently increasing the international mobility of scientists,” he wrote. “Several European countries are responding to this and are going to attract international scientific talent. I want the Netherlands to continue to be at the forefront.”
Ulrike Malmendier, a German economist who is member of Germany’s leading economic council, urged European governments to increase investment in science to attract out-of-work researchers from the United States. “The development in the U.S.A. is a huge opportunity for Germany and Europe,” Ms. Malmendier, who is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, told Germany’s Funke media group. “I know that a lot of people are thinking about leaving,”
Reporting was contributed by Jeanna Smialek from Brussels, Claire Moses from London, and Christopher F. Schuetze and Melissa Eddy from Berlin.
Sheryl Gay Stolberg
Sheryl Gay Stolberg covers health policy from Washington.
Babies are not ordinarily a fixture of closed-door White House meetings.
But when Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, convened a group of women this month for a discussion on nutrition and other topics, a healthy-eating activist who calls herself “the Food Babe” was stunned to see President Trump’s press secretary with her eight-month-old on her lap.
While several female cabinet secretaries looked on, the press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, lamented that baby formula seems healthier in Europe than in the United States, where a recent study found that many varieties are laden with added sugars. Last week, Mr. Kennedy met with formula makers and announced a push to expand options for “safe, reliable and nutritious infant formula.”
The activist, Vani Hari, was thrilled. “It was such an amazing opportunity to see some solidification of the MAHA agenda across the different cabinets,” she said, using the initials for Mr. Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” movement. She called the event “a dream come true.”
The gathering of “MAHA Moms,” as Mr. Kennedy calls the corps of influencers and activists who follow him, was one of a series of choreographed events held in recent weeks by Mr. Kennedy, who occupies a highly unusual place in Washington. The scion of a famous Democratic family, his embrace of Mr. Trump, his tendency to spin wild theories out of kernels of truth and his promotion of what critics say is quack medicine have made him one of the most polarizing figures in the cabinet, even as he has developed a loyal following of his own.
Yet even some critics of Mr. Kennedy applaud his focus on obesity and healthy eating. He makes powerful industries and civil servants uncomfortable, holding forth from his newly powerful perch as head of the Department of Health and Human Services on an eclectic menu of topics — offering up alternative remedy ideas one day while blasting industrial food companies the next.
Now companies and the government must contend with what might be called the Kennedy factor. So far, there has been little public pushback.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention posted information about vitamin A on its website after Mr. Kennedy promoted it as a measles treatment, to the consternation of public health officials who want him to advocate forcefully for vaccination.
A fast-food chain announced it had “RFK-d” its French fries by ditching seed oil for beef tallow, a type of rendered beef fat that is similar to lard, despite cardiologists who say it poses risks to the heart.
Infant formula makers, who came under scrutiny amid a shortage in 2022, said simply that they look forward to working with Mr. Kennedy. And after Mr. Kennedy instructed food executives to rid the food supply of artificial dyes, he followed up with a video message on social media: “They understand that they have a new sheriff in town.”
Mr. Kennedy declined an interview request.
It is far too soon to know whether Mr. Kennedy will make a real impact or whether these early steps are more posturing than substance. The Trump administration is taking actions that would seem to undermine his goals, such as disbanding an expert committee studying how to spare infants from a deadly bacteria that contributed to the decision in 2022 to temporarily shut down an Abbott Nutrition infant formula plant.
Mr. Kennedy could run into resistance from Congress. His disdain for the refined oils made from certain plants — seed oils like canola, soy and corn — and the ultra-processed foods that contain them has alarmed Republicans including Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa, whose farmer constituents receive subsidies from the government to grow the plants that produce the oils.
Mr. Kennedy opposes the subsidies. Mr. Grassley publicly instructed him to “leave agricultural practice regulations to the proper agencies,” including the Agriculture Department. Mr. Kennedy said he agreed.
“That’s talk; I want to see what the action is,” Marion Nestle, an emeritus professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, said of Mr. Kennedy’s ambitions to remake the food supply. “And if the only action is getting colors out of the food supply, that’s not enough.”
Public health experts still have serious concerns about Mr. Kennedy, whose skepticism of vaccines has colored his response to a Texas measles outbreak. Biomedical researchers say that if he really wanted to make America healthy, he would block Elon Musk’s Department of Governmental Efficiency from targeting the nation’s scientific enterprise by reducing jobs and cutting grants.
“I think he has to take the blame for it; he’s destroying science in America,” said Dr. Walter C. Willett, a pioneer in nutrition research at Harvard’s School of Public Health.
Yet so long as he is not talking about vaccines, Mr. Kennedy’s ideas are winning cautious support in some surprising places. Dr. Willett said he agrees with Mr. Kennedy that the National Institutes of Health should rebalance its research portfolio to spend more studying ways to prevent disease. Dr. Nestle praised him for taking on the food industry.
“When President Trump announced on Twitter that he was appointing R.F.K. Jr., he used the words industrial food complex,” she said. “I couldn’t believe that. It sounded just like me, and R.F.K. sounds just like me.”
At the height of the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Kennedy was identified as one of the top spreaders of misinformation by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which listed him as one of the “disinformation dozen.” His Instagram account was suspended in 2021, and reinstated in 2023 when he began his presidential bid.
Now, as the health department leader, Mr. Kennedy has a much bigger platform from which he can shape American attitudes and beliefs.
Some of his assertions, public health experts say, have been just plain wrong. Mr. Kennedy, for instance, told Sean Hannity of Fox News that immunity to the measles vaccine wanes over time and thus “older people are essentially unvaccinated.”
That contradicts the C.D.C. website, which says measles, mumps, rubella vaccines “usually protect people for life” against measles and rubella, but mumps immunity may decrease over time. Dr. William Schaffner, an infectious disease expert at Vanderbilt University, agreed, saying, “The data continue to support that measles vaccine protects the vast majority of people lifelong.”
Last week, Mr. Kennedy proposed banning cell phones in schools, an idea with bipartisan backing. But in addition to citing children’s mental health, he made another, unsubstantiated claim: that cell phones “produce electromagnetic radiation” that can cause cancer.
So far, Mr. Kennedy also appears to be largely ignoring government experts. He has not had any in-person or virtual briefings on measles from infectious disease experts at the C.D.C., according to two people familiar with the response to the Texas outbreak. Instead, he receives written reports from the agency.
An administration official said Mr. Kennedy meets daily with “career leadership” at H.H.S., the C.D.C.’s parent agency, to discuss matters including measles.
Health officials in Texas say Mr. Kennedy’s messages have been confusing. Dr. Katharine Wells, the director of public health in the city of Lubbock, said she is having trouble persuading parents to vaccinate their children because they think “vitamin A is protective, like the vaccine.”
But Kennedy allies were thrilled when the C.D.C. added a mention of vitamin A in its measles advisory on its website. Del Bigtree, Mr. Kennedy’s former communications director, lauded the move on a recent podcast. “My God,” he said, “do you see what a small step for mankind we just made?”
Mr. Kennedy is getting quiet advice from at least one person in the public health mainstream, Dr. Jeffrey D. Klausner, a professor at the University of Southern California who spent years with the C.D.C., including work on disease prevention in South Africa. Dr. Klausner, a neighbor of Mr. Kennedy’s in Los Angeles, said he is working to identify new members of the C.D.C.’s vaccine advisory committee, a panel Mr. Kennedy says is rife with conflicts of interest.
He said Mr. Kennedy has given him just one criteria: “He wants highly credentialed, unbiased people who can look at the science objectively.”
Despite his promise of “radical transparency,” Mr. Kennedy is offering Americans a highly curated version of himself. Like Mr. Trump, he speaks to the public largely through social media and Fox News.
In a sense, Mr. Kennedy is offering a new twist on Mr. Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan; he wants United States customers to be able to buy Froot Loops, the colored sugary cereal, with the same ingredients — dyes made from colored blueberries and carrots, instead of chemicals — used in Canada, and French fries to be cooked like they are in Europe.
Mr. Kennedy’s crusade against seed oils has caught the eye of executives at Steak ’n Shake, which says it will now cook its fries in Mr. Kennedy’s preferred frying agent, beef tallow — even though nutrition experts say there is no evidence that tallow, a saturated fat akin to butter, is healthier than seed oils.
“He says he’s following the science,” Dr. Willett said. “If you look at the scientific evidence, that doesn’t take you to the conclusion that beef tallow is better than seed oils.”
An Indianapolis-based restaurant chain, Steak ’n Shake announced the switch this month on social media with a picture of a ball cap in Mr. Trump’s signature MAGA red that declared, “Make Frying Oil Tallow Again.” Mr. Kennedy, who otherwise appears to be no fan of French fries, traveled to a Florida Steak ’n Shake with Mr. Hannity, of Fox, and picked away at a basket of them for the cameras.
“We’re very grateful to them for R.F.K.-ing their French fries,” he said.
Ms. Hari, the healthy-eating activist, called the Steak n’ Shake announcement “an interesting example of how we can make incremental changes to the food system to make it better than it was.” She said she intends to push Mr. Kennedy to make fast-food chains post all of their ingredients online.
Mr. Kennedy’s inner circle seems to be divided into two camps: those like Mr. Bigtree, who are drawn to him because of his stance on vaccination, and those like Ms. Hari and Calley Means, an author and health care entrepreneur, whose focus is nutrition and chronic disease. Mr. Means recently joined the White House as a special government employee to help carry out Mr. Kennedy’s agenda.
Mr. Kennedy has also inspired a MAHA movement in the states. On Monday, the governor of West Virginia signed legislation banning certain food dyes from school lunches.
Last week, Mr. Means was in Arizona, along with other Kennedy allies, to speak in favor of a “Make Arizona Healthy Again” bill that would ban certain chemicals from school lunch programs and prohibit candy, soda, chips and other junk foods from being purchased with the federal nutrition dollars formerly known as “food stamps.”
Helene Leeds, who with her daughter founded Step It Up, a weight loss program, also testified, and was identified as a “MAHA Mom” by the MAHA Alliance, a group that backs Mr. Kennedy’s agenda. The moniker gave her pause.
“It’s new for me to be called that,” she said. “I mean, absolutely, I stand for health in everything that I do.” She added: “I also look at myself as a MAHA leader.”
After the MAHA Moms meeting, the White House posted video of Mr. Kennedy and some of his guests on social media stumbling over how to pronounce food ingredients like riboflavin. Mr. Kennedy posted photos with a message to the women: “You got me where I am today, and I will not let you down.”
David E. Sanger and Julian E. Barnes
David E. Sanger writes about the re-emergence of superpower conflict, the subject of his most recent book. Julian E. Barnes has reported on intelligence issues from Washington and Europe.
News Analysis
When the nation’s intelligence chiefs go before Congress on Tuesday to provide their first public “Worldwide Threat Assessment” of President Trump’s second term, they’ll face an extraordinary choice.
Do they stick with their long-running conclusion about President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, that his goal is to crush the Ukrainian government and “undermine the United States and the West?”
Or do they cast Mr. Putin in the terms Mr. Trump and his top negotiator with Russia are describing him with these days: as a trustworthy future business partner who simply wants to end a nasty war, get control of parts of Ukraine that are rightly his and resume a regular relationship with the United States?
The vexing choice has become all the more stark in recent days since Steve Witkoff, one of Mr. Trump’s oldest friends from the real estate world and his chosen envoy to the Mideast and Russia, has begun picking up many of Mr. Putin’s favorite talking points.
Mr. Witkoff wrote off European fears that Russia could violate whatever cease-fire is agreed upon and a peacekeeping force must be assembled to deter Moscow. In an interview with Tucker Carlson, the pro-MAGA podcaster, Mr. Witkoff said the peacekeeping idea was “a combination of a posture and a pose” by America’s closest NATO allies.
It is a view, he said, that was born of a “sort of notion of we’ve all got to be like Winston Churchill, the Russians are going to march across Europe.” He continued: “I think that’s preposterous.”
Just over three years after Russian troops poured into Kyiv and tried to take out the government, Mr. Witkoff argued that Mr. Putin doesn’t really want to take over all of Ukraine.
“Why would they want to absorb Ukraine?” he asked Mr. Carlson. “For what purpose, exactly? They don’t need to absorb Ukraine.” All Russia seeks, he argues, is “stability there.”
“I thought he was straight up with me,” Mr. Witkoff said of Mr. Putin, a striking characterization of a longtime U.S. adversary, and master of deception, who repeatedly told the world he had no intention of invading Ukraine.
Of all the head-spinning reversals in Washington these days, perhaps it is the Trump administration’s view of Russia and its seeming willingness to believe Mr. Putin that leave allies, intelligence officials and diplomats most disoriented.
Until Mr. Trump took office, it was the consensus view of the United States and its allies that they had been hopelessly naïve about Russia’s true ambitions for far too long — that they had failed to listen carefully to Mr. Putin when he first argued, in 2007, that there were parts of Russia that needed to be restored to the motherland. Then he invaded Georgia, annexed Crimea and sent the military — out of uniform — to conduct a guerrilla war in the Donbas.
Still, sanctions were slow to be applied, and Europe was far too slow to rearm — a point Mr. Trump himself makes when he presses the Europeans for more funds to defend themselves.
Now, Mr. Trump refuses to acknowledge the obvious, that Russia invaded Ukraine. He has been openly contradicted by several European leaders, who say that even if the United States plans to seek a normalization of relations with Russia, they do not. “I don’t trust Putin,” the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, told The New York Times last week. “I’m sure Putin would try to insist that Ukraine should be defenseless after a deal because that gives him what he wants, which is the opportunity to go in again.”
But for the American intelligence agencies, whose views are supposed to be rooted in a rigorous analysis of covertly collected and open-source analysis, there is no indication so far that any of their views about Mr. Putin and his ambitions have changed. So it will be up to the new director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, and the new C.I.A. director, John Ratcliffe, to walk the fine line of describing Russia as a current adversary and future partner.
Mr. Witkoff headed down that road in his conversation with Mr. Carlson. “Share sea lanes, maybe send LNG gas into Europe together, maybe collaborate on A.I. together,” he said, after imagining a negotiated cease-fire in which Russia gets to hold the lands it now occupies and gets assurances that Ukraine will never join NATO. “Who doesn’t want to see a world like that?”
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the chamber’s Intelligence Committee, said comments by Mr. Witkoff and others in the Trump administration are deeply disorienting to American spies.
“If you grew up in the intelligence community knowing all the awful things Vladimir Putin had done and all of a sudden you have a change in posture where you completely take Russia’s side, how do you make sense of that?” Mr. Warner said.
Mr. Warner said the document that the intelligence community will unveil on Tuesday, its annual threat assessment, is very traditional and in keeping with previous versions of it. But what Mr. Trump’s intelligence leaders will say in testimony is not as clear. So far, Mr. Warner said, the administration’s comments on Ukraine have reflected anything but the traditional view of the threat from Russia.
The shifting American policy on Russia, Mr. Warner said, threatens intelligence partnerships. While America collects far more intelligence than other countries, he said, the combined contributions of key allies are substantial. And if their concerns about American policy and its faithful analysis of intelligence grow, they will share less.
Officials of several allies, while declining to speak on the record, pointed to several of Mr. Witkoff’s statements with alarm, saying they closely reflected Russian talking points. He endorsed Russian “referendums” in four key Ukrainian provinces that were widely viewed as rigged, with voters threatened with torture and deportation if they cast their ballot the wrong way. But Mr. Witkoff spoke as if they were legitimate elections.
“There have been referendums where the overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule,” he said. Shortly afterward, Oleksandr Merezhko, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Ukrainian Parliament, said on Monday that Mr. Witkoff should be removed from his position.
“These are simply disgraceful, shocking statements,” Mr. Merezhko told Ukrainian media. “He is relaying Russian propaganda. And I have a question: Who is he? Is he Trump’s envoy, or maybe he’s Putin’s envoy?”
President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine was more circumspect in an interview with Time magazine released on Monday. He said he believed “Russia has managed to influence some people on the White House team through information.” Earlier, he had talked about the “web of disinformation” surrounding Mr. Trump, saying it contributed to their famously poor relationship.
He noted that Mr. Trump had repeated Mr. Putin’s claim that retreating Ukrainian forces in western Russia had been encircled.
“That was a lie,” Mr. Zelensky said.
Constant Méheut contributed reporting from Kyiv.
Tyler Pager
Tyler Pager is a White House reporter.
President Trump said the planned trips to Greenland by several senior members of his administration later this week were “purely friendly.”
“People from Greenland are asking us to go,” he said during a cabinet meeting on Monday. “We have many, many requests from many, many people.”
But Greenland made clear that its officials were not among those who requested the visits.
“Just for the record, Naalakkersuisut, the government of Greenland, has not extended any invitations for any visits, neither private nor official,” the government posted on its official Facebook page.
In an interview with a Greenlandic newspaper published on Sunday, the territory’s prime minister, Mute B. Egede, called the trips “highly aggressive.”
Mr. Trump did not specify who had asked his representatives to visit Greenland, but Michael Waltz, the national security adviser, and Usha Vance, the second lady, are expected to travel there later this week. Mr. Waltz is expected to travel with the U.S. energy secretary, Chris Wright, and plans to tour an American military base.
Mr. Egede was particularly incensed about Mr. Waltz’s planned visit.
“What is the national security adviser doing in Greenland?” he asked in the newspaper interview. “The only purpose is to demonstrate power over us.”
He added: “His mere presence in Greenland will no doubt fuel American belief in Trump’s mission — and the pressure will increase.”
Ms. Vance is expected to travel separately and make several cultural stops, including Greenland’s national dogsled race, with one of her sons. The race’s organizers said they did not invite Ms. Vance but the event is open to the public.
Spokespeople for the White House, the National Security Council and Ms. Vance did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The trips come as Mr. Trump has continued to call for the United States to annex Greenland, a semiautonomous Danish territory. In his address to Congress on March 4, he said of Greenland, “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”
On Monday, Mr. Trump said that the visits by members of his administration were not “provocation.”
“We’re dealing with a lot of people from Greenland that would like to see something happen with respect to their being properly protected and properly taken care of,” he said. “They’re calling us. We’re not calling them.”
The U.S. delegation’s trip also comes at a delicate moment in Greenland’s politics. The territory’s new government has not yet been formed, as parliamentary elections were just held this month.
Mr. Trump has long been fixated on Greenland: During his first term, he inquired about buying the island. More recently, he has seemed interested in acquiring it by any means necessary. He sees Greenland as vital for U.S. national security interests to counter Russian and Chinese influence in the Arctic Circle region. The United States is also interested in the island’s rare earth minerals and other resources.
But Greenland is just part of the president’s broad vision for territorial expansion. He has mused about making Canada the 51st U.S. state, derisively calling former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “Governor Trudeau,” and he wants control of the Panama Canal. Just before taking office, Mr. Trump did not rule out using military or economic coercion as part of a bid to control Greenland or the Panama Canal.
Katie Robertson and David Enrich
One of President Trump’s former campaign managers, Chris LaCivita, on Monday filed a defamation lawsuit against The Daily Beast over its reporting on how much he was paid by the campaign.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia, accuses The Daily Beast of creating “the false impression that Mr. LaCivita was personally profiting excessively from his work on the campaign and that he was prioritizing personal gain over the campaign’s success.”
It centers on an article published Oct. 15, 2024, with the headline: “Trump In Cash Crisis-As Campaign Chief’s $22m Pay Revealed.” The article was written by Michael Isikoff, a freelance journalist, who was not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
The article stated that Mr. LaCivita, a manager of Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign, had negotiated a series of contracts and was paid millions of dollars over two years from the campaign. The allegations were repeated in several follow-up articles and discussed on a Daily Beast podcast.
According to the complaint, Mr. LaCivita’s lawyers on Nov. 5 demanded a correction and a retraction, saying public records from the Federal Election Commission conflicted with statements in the article.
The Daily Beast corrected its article a few days after the demand by changing the amount to $19.2 million from $22 million and clarified that the funds went to Mr. LaCivita’s consulting firm rather than to him personally. The headline was modified, and an editor’s note was appended to the article.
After Mr. LaCivita’s lawyers demanded further retractions in January, The Daily Beast removed a podcast episode titled “How Has Trump’s Campaign Manager Made $22 MILLION?” from its platforms.
Mark Geragos, a lawyer for Mr. LaCivita, said The Daily Beast “should have investigated and followed the money before publishing lies in order to get clicks and push their political agenda.”
The Daily Beast said in a statement that the outlet stood by its reporting on Mr. LaCivita.
“His lawsuit is meritless and a transparent attempt to intimidate The Beast and silence the independent press,” the statement said. “The Beast will defend itself vigorously and looks forward to following the money to confirm where every penny flowed in LaCivita’s L.L.C.”
The lawsuit is the latest recent instance of defamation and other legal actions that Mr. Trump and his allies have filed against news outlets and journalists whose coverage they claim was misleading or inaccurate.
Mr. Trump, for example, has outstanding lawsuits against CBS News, The Des Moines Register, CNN and the group that awards the Pulitzer Prizes. Mr. Trump’s advisers have also repeatedly threatened or filed such lawsuits. As recently as Friday, Elon Musk warned that one was “inbound” after a former congressman criticized him on television.
The legal actions and threats have coincided with efforts by the Trump administration to constrain mainstream news organizations. The White House has restricted The Associated Press’s access to the president. The Federal Communications Commission is investigating broadcasters. And Mr. Trump and allies like Mr. Musk have railed against news outlets and individual journalists, including by falsely claiming that they are government propaganda outfits.
To win defamation lawsuits, public figures like Mr. Trump and Mr. LaCivita must prove that defendants knew that what they were writing was false or acted with reckless disregard for its accuracy. That high bar was erected in a series of Supreme Court precedents that Mr. Trump and his allies are pushing to overturn.
