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Secretary of State Marco Rubio has made a gradual shift from his history of strongly supporting Ukraine leading up to the comments he made on Friday that the United States would “move on” if diplomatic efforts to end the war in Ukraine fail.
The former senator once championed a Ukraine aid bill a decade ago to send a “very strong message to Russia and to the world that the United States of America and her people are firmly on the side of Ukraine’s sovereignty and Ukraine’s desire for independence from Russia.”
“The first thing that I call for us to do is to provide Ukraine with more military equipment and more training. We should work with our NATO allies in the European Union to help equip and train the Ukrainian military forces so that they can protect this country now and moving forward,” Rubio said during a Senate floor speech in 2014.
In the years to follow, Rubio would heavily criticize Russian President Vladimir Putin, including calling him a “gangster” and “an organized crime figure” in 2015.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the secretary of state has openly supported providing Ukraine with necessary resources to defend themselves in the war. He told MSNBC in 2022 that “no matter what, there always has to be a real, legitimate Ukrainian state that we have a relationship with. And I don’t know why we can’t begin to openly say we will support them as long as they are willing to fight, even if it’s an insurgency.”
President Donald Trump’s election victory in 2024 kickstarted a shift in Rubio’s rhetoric around the issue. He defended Trump’s promise to end the war in 24 hours and praised Ukraine’s bravery, telling “The Today Show” in November, “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong in standing up to Russia, but at the end of the day, what we are funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion.”
Rubio’s comments on Friday that the US could end its efforts on ending the Ukrainian conflict emphasize the shift he has taken on the Ukrainian conflict amid mounting frustration within the Trump administration at the lack of progress.
President Donald Trump called Maryland Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen “fake” after he traveled to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the man mistakenly deported to the country.
“Look, he’s a fake. I know, I know them all. They’re all fake, and they have no interest in that prisoner. That prisoner’s record is unbelievably bad,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.
US officials have alleged Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, which the administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization — a claim his attorneys dispute and at least one federal judge has voiced skepticism toward.
Earlier, the president referred to Van Hollen as a “GRANDSTANDER!!!” in a post on Truth Social.
Van Hollen posted a picture after meeting with Abrego Garcia, which immediately sparked outrage from some on the right.
The Trump administration was quick to compare Van Hollen’s image with one of Trump meeting with Patty Morin, whose daughter was murdered by an undocumented Salvadoran immigrant in 2023, in the Oval Office earlier this week.
CNN’s Kit Maher contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump reiterated Friday that he does not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon ahead of a second round of high-stakes talks between the US and Iran this weekend.
“I’m for stopping Iran, very simply, from having a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. I want Iran to be great and prosperous and terrific,” Trump told reporters when asked if he would be open to letting Iran maintain a nuclear program.
He added, “With Iran, they can’t have a nuclear weapon, and if they have a nuclear weapon, you’ll be very unhappy. You’ll be very unhappy.”
Officials in the Trump administration have waffled on setting stricter lines on Iran, with US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling on Tehran to fully dismantle its entire nuclear program, not just the weapons component. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who represented the US last weekend in indirect negotiations with Iran, has said any final deal would require Iran to “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.”
Trump, who recently warned that the US will resort to Israeli-assisted military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites should Tehran fail to reach a deal with its interlocutors, in 2018 withdrew the US from the Iran deal that was negotiated by the Obama administration.
Witkoff is expected to hold talks with Iran, which will be mediated by Omani officials, on Saturday in Rome.
Gary Shapley will no longer be acting commissioner for the Internal Revenue Service, and deputy US treasury secretary Michael Faulkender will take on the role, according to a White House official and a source briefed on the matter.
The New York Times first reported Shapley’s ouster.
CNN has requested comment from the IRS and its parent agency, the Treasury Department.
Key context: The move ends a whiplash week at the IRS. Trump signed the paperwork appointing Shapley — the former IRS criminal investigator known for alleging the Justice Department slow-walked the investigation of Hunter Biden — on Tuesday, triggering panic among some career civil servants.
The outgoing acting commissioner, Melanie Krause, announced Shapley’s elevation in an agency-wide email on Wednesday, according to three sources.
“I have made the decision to step down as acting commissioner and today is my last day in the office before I transition into a leave status,” Krause wrote at the time. “I also have the privilege of sharing that President Trump has appointed Gary Shapley as the next acting commissioner.”
Two days later, Shapley is on his way out.
President Donald Trump seemed to downplay Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s warning that US patience for negotiations to end Russia’s war in Ukraine is running out, declining to put a specific timeline on potentially ending the talks.
Earlier Friday, Rubio told reporters after meetings with European and Ukrainian officials in Paris that if it is not possible to end the war in Ukraine, the United States needs to abandon its efforts and “move on.”
Trump offered a less hardline approach, saying that Rubio is “right” but projecting more optimism about the prospects of a deal.
Pressed on a timeline for the US to walk away, Trump said: “No specific number of days, but quickly, we want to get it done.”
He continued: “If, for some reason, one of the two parties makes it very difficult, we’re just going to say, ‘You’re foolish, you’re foolish. You’re horrible people,’ and we’re just going to take a pass — but hopefully we won’t have to do that.”
The president declined to say whether he is prepared to walk away completely from the talks or whether he would support Ukraine militarily if talks fall through.
Asked what progress he would need to see to continue negotiations, Trump said he would “have to see an enthusiasm to want to end it” from both sides, predicting he would know “soon.”
“I think we have a really good chance of getting it done. It’s coming to a head right now,” he said.
Watch analysis from CNN’s Matthew Chance on Rubio’s comments:
@cnnUS Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, told reporters in Paris that the US could ‘move on’ in a matter of days if it does not appear possible to end the war in Ukraine. CNN’s Chief Global Affairs Correspondent, Matthew Chance, reports. #rubio #trump #ukraine #cnn #news
President Donald Trump quipped about Harvard University on Friday during a swearing-in ceremony for Mehmet Oz, an alum of the school and Trump’s pick to serve as administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“Dr. Oz comes to this position as one of the nation’s most talented and beloved medical professionals. He graduated from Harvard University,” Trump said, pausing. “Ah, Harvard. Wow. How convenient, should we talk about Harvard?”
Others in the room seemed to acknowledge the irony, laughing.
Just the day before, Trump called Harvard “a joke” and said it should no longer receive federal funding.
Harvard has rejected the Trump administration’s demands for policy changes that the White House says are geared at combatting antisemitism. In response, the administration has frozen more than $2.2 billion in federal funding for the university, while the IRS makes plans to rescind its tax-exempt status.
A federal judge said today he would not “micromanage” the White House’s handling of its newly reworked press corps rotation, after the Associated Press complained that officials were violating his ruling striking down a ban President Donald Trump instituted against the news outlet earlier this year.
“I don’t intend to micromanage the White House,” US District Judge Trevor McFadden said during a hearing this morning, siding with arguments pushed by a lawyer for the White House that he should stay out of the dispute.
Though the judge acknowledged that under the newly reworked press corps rotation, the AP had not been picked frequently this week for a spot in the system, he said he was inclined to believe the White House’s new system was created “in good faith” and that it appeared to comply with his ruling from last week.
“It’s very hard to see how there’s compliance when the record shows that nothing has changed over three days,” McFadden said at one point. But, he added later, it was too soon to know whether the White House intended to completely shut out the AP from a spot in the rotation.
“Statistics are going to be pretty telling,” he said. “I agree that we are not yet at the point” that the White House’s decisions this week with respect to the AP are a clear violation of his ruling.
The White House said on social media today that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is not and will “never” return to the United States.
The official X account for the White House posted an edited screenshot of a New York Times article about Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s meeting yesterday with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador, striking through the original headline to make it read: “Senator Meets With Deported MS-13 Illegal Alien in El Salvador Who’s Never Coming Back.”
“Fixed it for you, @NYTimes. Oh, and by the way, @ChrisVanHollen – he’s NOT coming back” the White House wrote.
Remember: While Abrego Garcia had not been legally in the US prior to his deportation, a 2019 court order said he could not be returned to El Salvador and the Trump administration admitted in court documents he was deported there due to a clerical error.
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration must “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s return from CECOT, and the Supreme Court largely endorsed that order.
In recent days, however, Trump administration officials have denied that he was mistakenly deported and alleged he is a member of the MS-13 gang. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys dispute that claim, and at least one federal judge has voiced skepticism toward it.
The Trump administration has released about 10,000 pages of records on the 1968 assassination of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy.
The release of the records is part of President Donald Trump’s push to allow the public to inspect long-secret records pertaining to a series of high-profile assassinations in the 1960s — including former President John F. Kennedy and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. Trump signed an executive order directing the release of files dealing with those assassinations soon after he took office. Thousands of pages related to the JFK assassination were released in March.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said in a statement that, unlike the JFK assassination files, records dealing with RFK and MLK were not digitized. Gabbard said she directed a task force to help with their digitization.
It is not immediately clear what new information has emerged from the disclosure.
The assassination: RFK, a US senator from New York and former attorney general, was running for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968 when he was shot at a Los Angeles hotel on June 5, shortly after delivering a speech that marked his victory in the California and South Dakota primaries. He was 42.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the current Health and Human Services secretary who was 14 when his father was assassinated, said in a statement today that “lifting the veil on the RFK papers is a necessary step toward restoring trust in American government.”
A federal judge paused the Trump administration’s efforts to lay off nearly 1,500 of the 1,700 employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as she considers whether the mass firing violated an existing court halting the dismantling of the agency.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson will scrutinize the layoffs with an evidentiary hearing on April 28, during which there would be witness testimony, she said at an emergency hearing called this morning after the layoffs were announced yesterday. She is ordering the administration to turn over documents to the unions and other groups that have sued the administration over its efforts to take apart the agency.
The mass layoff “is not going to happen in the meantime,” Jackson said in court.
The CFPB’s new leadership has been reviewing the agency’s activities and staffing since February, Mark Paoletta, the agency’s chief legal officer, said in a declaration Friday. Previously, the CFPB’s activities have “pushed well beyond the limits of the law” and the agency has “engaged in intrusive and wasteful fishing expeditions,” he said.
“An approximately 200 person agency allows the Bureau to fulfill its statutory duties and better aligns with the new leadership’s priorities and management philosophy,” Paoletta said.
During today’s proceedings, Berman Jackson zeroed in on the command by an appeals court in a recent order that any terminations the agency conducted must come after a “particularized” assessment that such layoffs would not interfere with the agency’s ability to meet its statutory functions.
“I have concerns about whether agency is in compliance” with the court order, she said, expressing skepticism that such a review could happen within just a few days of the appeals court’s ruling.
A member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency kept Consumer Financial Protection Bureau staffers working for 36 hours straight to send out mass layoff notices at the agency, screaming at those he thought weren’t working fast enough, according to a declaration filed Friday in a legal case over the terminations.
“DOGE member Gavin Kliger managed the RIF. He kept the team up for 36 hours straight to ensure that the notices would go out yesterday (April 17). Gavin was screaming at people he did not believe were working fast enough to ensure they could go out on this compressed timeline, calling them incompetent,” said an unidentified member of the team working on the reduction in force, or RIF, notices. The person used a pseudonym in the filing for fear of retaliation.
The CFPB started sending RIF notices to about 1,500 of the 1,700 agency staffers yesterday.
US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson is holding an emergency hearing today to examine the layoffs. The hearing is ongoing.
Top White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett told reporters that he wants to look into “new legal analysis” before determining whether President Donald Trump can or should remove Federal Reserve Chair Jay Powell — a break from Hassett’s previous comments stressing the Federal Reserve’s independence.
In his 2021 book, Hassett wrote that Trump’s 2018 threat to fire Powell “would have savaged the reputation of the Federal Reserve Board as an objective and independent manager of the nation’s money supply.” He warned that “the credibility of the dollar would have been compromised” and “the stock market might have crashed.”
Trump suggested yesterday that he had the power to remove Powell, saying, “If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast.” Hassett, now director of the National Economic Council, declined to stand by that assessment. But he also said his opinion differed from his assertions in the 2021 book.
“I think that at that time, the market was at a completely different place and I was referring to the legal analysis that we had back then, and if there’s new legal analysis that says something different, then it would be a different market response, as well,” he said.
Pressed on whether firing Powell was an option, Hassett said: “The president and his team will continue to study that matter.”
A source familiar with negotiations for a Ukraine peace deal told CNN that Secretary of State Marco Rubio was “communicating the president’s views” with his comments that the US will “move on” if it’s not possible to end Russia’s war in Ukraine.
Characterizing the administration’s thinking on where things stand in the conflict, the source said that President Donald Trump “doesn’t have limitless patience for people to posture and play games.”
Rubio was communicating the “frustration” of the president about progress toward peacemaking not being “where he thought it would be at this point.”
The source pointed to Trump foreign envoy Steve Witkoff’s three meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as numerous meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss an end to the over three-year conflict.
“It’s time to get serious,” the source said.
Waning GOP support: Republican willingness to see the US play a role in backing Ukraine continues to erode, according to recent polling on the conflict.
A Pew Research survey, conducted in late March and released yesterday, finds Democratic-aligned adults are now 44 points likelier (67%) than Republican-aligned adults (23%) to say the US has a responsibility to Ukraine. That’s up from a 29-point gap in a poll taken just after the 2024 election, with the movement coming almost entirely among Republicans.
The poll also finds that GOP enmity toward Russia has softened somewhat over the past year, with 40% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now calling the country an enemy of the US, down from 58% in spring 2024.
CNN’s Ariel Edwards-Levy contributed to this report.
Nintendo will launch its new Switch 2 console in the United States for $450 — the same price it announced during the console’s April 2 unveiling — and will open preorders on April 24.
The announcement comes after Nintendo postponed US preorders, initially planned for April 9, to assess the impact of tariffs, and amid speculation the gaming giant could raise US prices because of President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Chinese imports.
While pricing for the console won’t change, Nintendo said accessories “will experience price adjustments from those announced on April 2 due to changes in market conditions.” The company also noted the price of “any Nintendo product” could change “in the future depending on market conditions.”
“We apologize for the retail pre-order delay, and hope this reduces some of the uncertainty our customers may be experiencing,” Nintendo said today in a news release. The console launches on June 5.
Unlike smartphones and computers, video game consoles, and some peripheral devices, don’t fall under any tariff exception for electronics.
The big picture: The Switch 2 is Nintendo’s biggest product launch in years. The first Switch became the world’s third-best gaming console. Its sequel will likely dictate the next decade for one of the world’s most recognizable and iconic entertainment companies.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has accused US envoy Steve Witkoff of “disseminating Russian narratives,” after the American diplomat made controversial comments about occupied parts of Ukraine.
Speaking during a news conference Thursday, Zelensky accused Witkoff of taking the “strategy of the Russian side.”
“I think it is very dangerous because he is consciously or unconsciously, I don’t know, disseminating Russian narratives. In any case, it does not help,” he said.
Witkoff touted his recent talks with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin — his third meeting with the Russian leader — in an interview with Fox News on Monday, describing the meeting as “compelling.”
Witkoff told Fox News that any peace deal in Ukraine will center on the “so-called five territories,” referring to Crimea, the Ukrainian peninsula Russia annexed in 2014, and the four mainland Ukrainian regions Russia has occupied since its full-scale invasion in 2022 – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
Some background: These four regions were illegally annexed during Russia’s full-scale invasion and Kyiv vehemently opposes giving them up. The Kremlin has since staged referendums on joining Russia in those regions, which were widely dismissed as a sham by the international community.
CNN has previously reported that voting in the regions had been carried out at gunpoint, with one resident saying the results were a foregone conclusion.
Witkoff’s comments on Monday prompted accusations that he was trying to parrot Moscow’s line. Oleksandr Merezhko, a member of Ukraine’s parliament, told CNN Tuesday that Witkoff “with all due respect… may be inadvertently trying to push pro-Russian narratives.”
Remember: It’s not the first time Witkoff has been accused of echoing Kremlin talking points. Last month, in a long interview with podcast host Tucker Carlson, Witkoff praised a “gracious” Putin and dismissed longstanding concerns across Europe that Putin would seek to invade further territory if given the opportunity. He also claimed that referendums in the four mainland regions of Ukraine annexed by Russia showed the “overwhelming majority of the people have indicated that they want to be under Russian rule.”
President Donald Trump didn’t mince words, attacking Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen after his trip to El Salvador to meet with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador’s mega-prison.
“Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland looked like a fool yesterday standing in El Salvador begging for attention from the Fake News Media, or anyone. GRANDSTANDER!!!” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Van Hollen posted a picture after meeting with Abrego Garcia, which immediately sparked outrage from some on the right.
“I said my main goal of this trip was to meet with Kilmar. Tonight I had that chance,” Van Hollen said in a post on X. “I have called his wife, Jennifer, to pass along his message of love.”
The Trump administration was quick to compare Van Hollen’s image with one of Trump meeting with the Patty Morin, whose daughter was murdered by an undocumented Salvadoran immigrant in 2023, in the Oval Office earlier this week.
“We are not the same,” the White House account posted on X.
Senior Israeli officials are expected to meet in Paris with Steve Witkoff, the US envoy to the Middle East, ahead of the second round of Iran talks scheduled for tomorrow, an Israeli official told CNN.
Israel’s Minister for Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s closest confidant — and Mossad Director David Barnea will meet Witkoff today, the official said.
Yesterday, Netanyahu’s office issued a statement defending the aggressive policy he has pushed toward Iran.
“As the Prime Minister has made clear more than once: Israel will not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons,” according to his office. The statement was issued after a New York Times report said the Trump administration had blocked Israel from preparing a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program as soon as next month.
The Prime Minister’s Office did not deny the veracity of the article, instead asserting that Israel’s actions have delayed Iran’s nuclear program.
“The Prime Minister has led countless overt and covert operations in the campaign against Iran’s nuclear program; it is only due to these operations that Iran does not currently possess a nuclear arsenal,” his office added.
Correction: A previous version of this post incorrectly reported where the meeting will be held. It is taking place in Paris.
Today is a gauntlet for President Donald Trump’s executive decisions in court, as multiple judges now are concerned that the Trump administration may be openly disobeying court orders and flouting fundamental rights.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the DC District Court holds a hearing at 11 a.m. ET over the firing of more than 1,000 workers at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week, that may disregard court rulings that the administration shouldn’t make cuts that would interfere with the agency’s work at this time.
And Judge Trevor McFadden, also in Washington, DC, hears arguments over whether the White House’s changes to its press corps are in violation of the Associated Press’ First Amendment rights, which the judge has said must be preserved.
Those two hearings are only the latest where judges look closely at accusations the administration is ignoring court orders, especially ones from trial-level district judges.
The accusations of Trump officials intentionally disobeying the courts has simmered all week in dual cases about the Trump administration deporting immigrants to be kept in a prison for terrorists in El Salvador.
Just after midnight Friday, the administration asked a federal circuit court to stop criminal contempt proceedings that have been launched by Judge James Boasberg in Washington. Those proceedings regard the administration sending planes of migrants to El Salvador despite Boasberg telling lawyers for the administration to turn the planes around because the deportations may not have been legal.
All of this comes less than 24 hours after one of the country’s longest-serving and well-respected conservative judges, J. Harvie Wilkinson III of the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals, a Reagan appointee, penned a seven-page order warning the Trump administration that it may be crumbling American democracy.
That, too, was in an immigration case where the administration has done little to facilitate the return of one migrant mistakenly sent to the Salvadoran prison.
“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home? And what assurance shall there be that the Executive will not train its broad discretionary powers upon its political enemies?” Wilkinson wrote, in an unusually bold statement.
US District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson scheduled an emergency hearing for 11 a.m. ET Friday to examine the mass layoffs that began Thursday at the embattled Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).
She is requiring that an official with personal knowledge of the scope of the mass terminations and how they’re being implemented be present at the hearing. She also demanded the Trump administration file certain internal documents related to the layoffs at 10 a.m. ET ahead of the hearing.
The Trump administration on Thursday started sending reduction in force, or RIF, notices to the majority of CFPB’s staff. About 1,500 of the agency’s 1,700 workers are being let go, according to the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which represents staffers at the agency and led the lawsuit against the administration’s efforts to dismantle the CFPB.
The CFPB was an early target of the Trump administration’s downsizing efforts, but its undoing was largely blocked in federal court. However, a federal appeals court last Friday said that the administration could further shrink the agency but not shutter it completely. The order made clear that the administration cannot trim the bureau down so much that it cannot carry out its statutory functions.
The unions and other groups that initially sued are arguing that it is “unfathomable that cutting the Bureau’s staff by 90 percent in just 24 hours” wouldn’t interfere with its obligations to carry out the mandates set by Congress.
The NTEU noted in a statement Thursday that the appeals court required the agency to “make a ‘particularized assessment’ with respect to employees if it was going to carry out a reduction in force.” The union questioned whether that could have been done in less than four business days.
Vice President JD Vance said the Trump administration feels “optimistic” they will ultimately be able to successfully negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war.
“I want to update the prime minister on some of the negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and also some of the things that have happened even in the past 24 hours,” Vance said in Rome at a bilateral meeting with Italy Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. “I think we have some interesting things to report on, of course, in private, some negotiations. I won’t prejudge them, but we do feel optimistic that we can hopefully bring this war, this very brutal war, to a close.”
This comes just hours after Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned that the Trump administration may “move on” from trying to end the conflict if their efforts prove futile over the next few days.
More on Rubio’s remarks: Asked to clarify what Rubio meant that the US would “move on,” a US official told CNN that the secretary of state was talking about the US moving on from negotiations and that the next few days will be important to figure out where things go from here.
A framework has been presented to both sides, Rubio and the State Department have said, which Rubio on Friday called a “broad framework” to determine whether the differences can be narrowed in this short timeframe. Rubio said it would be taken by the Ukrainians back to President Volodymyr Zelensky to discuss, and it was raised between Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on a call on Thursday.
If there’s no movement, the US official said, the administration will have to make significant policy decisions. Trump has threatened secondary sanctions and tariffs on Russia. But he has also said the US won’t continue to fund Ukraine indefinitely and that Europe needs to step up, the official noted.
So, in the coming days the administration wants to see if there can be an agreement on the framework or those bigger policy decisions are going to have to be made, the official said.
CNN’s Alex Marquardt contributed reporting to this post.
This post has been updated with additional information.
