Trump says he will talk to Putin on Tuesday as he pushes for end to Ukraine war

President Donald Trump said he would speak to Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday as he pushes to end the war in Ukraine, Associated Press reported. 

The U.S. leader disclosed the upcoming conversation to reporters while flying from Florida to Washington on Air Force One on Sunday evening.

“We will see if we have something to announce maybe by Tuesday. I will be speaking to President Putin on Tuesday,” Trump said. “A lot of work’s been done over the weekend. We want to see if we can bring that war to an end.”

Any such conversation could be a pivot point in the conflict and an opportunity for Trump to continue reorienting American foreign policy. European allies are wary of Trump’s affinity for Putin and his hardline stance toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who faced sharp criticism when he visited the Oval Office a little more than two weeks ago.

Although Russia failed in its initial goal to topple Ukraine with its invasion three years ago, it still controls large swaths of the country.

Trump said land and power plants are part of the conversation around bringing the war to a close, according to the Associated Press. 

“We will be talking about land. We will be talking about power plants,” he said.

Trump described it as “dividing up certain assets.”

Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff recently visited Moscow to advance negotiations, and he said earlier Sunday that a call between Trump and Putin could come soon.

During his conversation with reporters on Air Force One, Trump said he was pushing forward with his plans for tariffs on April 2 despite recent disruption in the stock market and nervousness about the economic impact.

 “April 2 is a liberating day for our country,” he said. “We’re getting back some of the wealth that very, very foolish presidents gave away because they had no clue what they were doing.”

Trump has occasionally changed course on some tariff plans, such as with Mexico, but he said he had no intention to do so when it comes to reciprocal tariffs, Associated Press reported. 

 “They charge us and we charge them,” he said. “Then in addition to that, on autos, on steel, on aluminum, we’re going to have some additional tariffs.”

UML Secretariat meeting to be held today

The 46th Central Secretariat meeting of the CPN-UML is taking place today.

According to UML's Publicity Department chief Rajendra Gautam, the meeting will be held to discuss the evolving political development and internal life of the party.

The meeting will be held at the UML central office in Chyasal, Lalitpur at 1 pm. 

Party chair KP Sharma Oli will preside over the meeting.

 

Trump administration deports hundreds of immigrants even as a judge orders their removals be stopped

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling, Associated Press reported.

U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday temporarily blocking the deportations, but lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, in a statement Sunday, responded to speculation about whether the administration was flouting court orders: “The administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order. The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory.”

The acronym refers to the Tren de Aragua gang, which Trump targeted in his unusual proclamation that was released Saturday

In a court filing Sunday, the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg’s decision, said it would not use the Trump proclamation he blocked for further deportations if his decision is not overturned.

Trump sidestepped a question over whether his administration violated a court order while speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday evening.

“I don’t know. You have to speak to the lawyers about that,” he said, although he defended the deportations. “I can tell you this. These were bad people.”

Asked about invoking presidential powers used in times of war, Trump said, “This is a time of war,” describing the influx of criminal migrants as “an invasion.”

Trump’s allies were gleeful over the results.

“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung, according to the Associated Press. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house immigrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”

Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Boasberg’s verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order but that the Trump administration clearly violated the “spirit” of it.

“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room,” Vladeck said.

The immigrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.

The law, invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.

Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”

Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone during the past decade. Trump seized on the gang during his campaign to paint misleading pictures of communities that he contended were “taken over” by what were actually a handful of lawbreakers, Associated Press reported. 

The Trump administration has not identified the immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador who had been arrested in the United States.

Existing Constitution doesn't recognize monarchy: Lawmaker Pant

CPN-UML lawmaker Raghuji Pant has said the attempts have been intensified to spread illusion and frustrations in the country while the abuse of some media and social sites has been noticed.

Airing his view in a special session of the House of Representatives (HoR) today, he said study suggests a positive change in the living standard of the majority of people with an improvement of their economic status.

He said in the 15 years since the country switched to a federal democratic system on May 28, 2008, the income of Nepali citizens increased by around three-fold with strengthened democracy," he said, comparing the country's economic scenario of the country during and after the monarchy.

But the false narrative has been spread, claiming that nothing significant happened in the country in the aftermath of the establishment of federal republic democratic, according to him.

 "The existing Constitution of Nepal does not recognize the monarchy," the legislator said, urging the bodies concerned to not dream of the possibility of restoration of monarchy.

He said the Nepali citizens do not want the monarchy restored and that it is worthless to spend time discussing the possibility of restoration of the monarchy. 

"A son from the Tarai had become the President, a woman from the far- east Nepal had become the President. Tomorrow, a person from the ethnic or other community may hold the post. What is the problem here," he questioned, highlighting the significance of an inclusive and diverse representation in the State power in the federal democratic republic system.