President Trump is now after something more than just rights to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals. Canada has a new leader. And why an enterprising matchmaker is putting a bounty on single men.
Here’s what to know today.
What Trump really wants from ZelenskyyAmerican and Ukrainian officials will meet in Saudi Arabia this week for high-stakes discussions, and President Donald Trump has privately made clear to aides that a signed deal for U.S. rights to rare earth minerals between won’t be enough to restart aid and intelligence sharing with the war-torn country, according an administration official and another U.S. official.
Trump wants the deal signed. But he also wants to see a change in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s attitude toward peace talks, the officials said, including a willingness to make concessions, such as giving up territory to Russia. Trump also wants Zelenskyy to make some movement toward elections in Ukraine and possibly toward stepping down as his country’s leader, the officials said.
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Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukraine in the aftermath of the U.S. pause in equipment and intelligence sharing this week, making Friday one of the deadliest days for civilians this year, according to the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine. Read the full story here.
Meanwhile, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., warned of potentially disastrous consequences for Ukraine if the Trump administration doesn’t restart military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.
Mystery surrounds the DOGE acting administrator
There isn’t any question about who is the public face of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency. Elon Musk's appearances at Trump's side in the Oval Office and at Cabinet meetings leave no room for doubt.
But there are many questions about who is nominally leading DOGE, the task force unit at the center of Trump’s efforts to streamline the federal government.
Near the end of February, the White House announced that a relatively low-profile health care data cruncher with a passion for simplifying access to electronic medical records had been named DOGE’s acting administrator. Amy Gleason, 53, previously worked on projects related to health data at the U.S. Digital Service, DOGE’s predecessor, overlapping with Trump’s first term and the Biden administration.
The White House has not provided details about why, exactly, it selected Gleason to lead DOGE, and her relationship with Musk remains unclear. Read the full story here.
More politics news:
- The Department of Homeland Security has begun performing polygraph tests on employees to determine who might be leaking information to the media about immigration operations.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled a funding bill to avert a shutdown at the end of the week and keep government running through September.
- Federal workers, including many veterans — spoke to NBC News about the serious mental health crises they’ve been grappling with amid firings and buyout efforts.
Canada has a new prime minister
Former central banker Mark Carney will become Canada’s next prime minister after the governing Liberal Party elected him its leader in a landslide vote over the weekend. Carney, 59, replaces Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who announced his resignation in January.
Carney will take over amid surging Canadian nationalism in response to Trump’s repeated threats of tariffs and his talk of making Canada the 51st state. Read the full story here.
5 injured in small plane crash in suburban Pennsylvania
A small plane crashed in a residential area of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, yesterday afternoon, hitting several cars and bursting into flames. All five people aboard the single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza survived and were taken to hospitals, authorities said. No one on the ground was injured.
The plane had just taken off from Lancaster Airport when it went down in the parking lot of the Brethren Village retirement community. The local police chief said the plane appeared to have skidded about 100 feet when it hit the ground. First responders were on the scene within three minutes and faced multiple intense fires.
Air traffic control radio traffic indicates that someone in the plane reported an open door on the aircraft shortly after takeoff and requested permission to return to the airport. Read the full story here.
Read All About It
- Israel cut off electricity to the Gaza Strip over the weekend, as it presses Hamas to accept an extension of the first phase of a ceasefire.
- Federal immigration authorities arrested a Palestinian graduate student who played a prominent role in protests against Israel at Columbia University, according to his attorney.
- International authorities are searching for a University of Pittsburgh student who disappeared while on a spring break trip to the Dominican Republic last week.
- Over a thousand civilians were killed in Syria in the deadliest eruption of violence since the fall of the Assad regime in December.
- The Buffalo Bills announced that NFL MVP Josh Allen signed a jaw-dropping contract extension worth $330 million.
Staff Pick: What's a real-life bachelor worth?
As more and more singles feel burnt out by the endless swiping of dating apps, in-person dating events are having a soaring comeback. But attendees and organizers are coming across the same problem: Tickets for women sell out, but men lag behind. So when Tommy Flaim was organizing his own cornhole dating league, he went on TikTok and offered a bounty for single men. Instead of paying for ads, Flaim offered friends and family of single men a $50 reward if they got a man to sign up. I went to the Lawn Club in New York City, an infamously tough dating scene, to see whether the risk paid off. — Doha Madani, senior breaking news reporter
NBC Select: Online Shopping, Simplified
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