The Supreme Court on Monday allowed, for now, the Trump administration to remove legal protections for roughly 350,000 Venezuelans now living in the U.S., under a program that had protected them from deportation known as Temporary Protected Status (TPS).

The court’s decision allows the Trump administration to end TPS for this group pending appeal of the case, paving the way for possible deportations soon. A federal judge paused the administration’s plans on TPS a week before it was scheduled to end on April 7, resulting in the Trump administration filing an emergency application to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary, called the ruling “a win for the American people and the safety of our communities.”

The court’s unsigned brief did not elaborate on its reasons, which is common in emergency orders before the high court. The court did say that Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the application.

“From what we can tell, this is the single largest action in modern American history, stripping any group of non-citizens of immigration status,” Ahilan Arulanantham, the co-director for Center for Immigration Law and Policy at UCLA, and one of the lawyers representing the Venezuelans, told reporters Monday.

It’s unclear what happens now with the nearly 350,000 Venezuelans who got TPS in 2023. Arulanantham said one reading of the decision is that they have effectively lost their status and employment authorization.

The decision does not affects the approximately 250,000 Venezuelans who were given the protection in 2021, but lawyers said Monday’s order is not a good signal for them.

Under the law, the Secretary of Homeland Security has the power to grant TPS to immigrants of a specific country if conditions there “temporarily prevent the country’s nationals from returning safely, or in certain circumstances, where the country is unable to handle the return of its nationals adequately.”

The conditions include ongoing armed conflict and environmental disasters. People who have TPS cannot be removed from the U.S., and are allowed to get a work permit.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had moved to end an 18-month TPS extension granted by the Biden administration. Venezuelans affected by the move filed suit, alleging procedural violations and racial bias.

Venezuelans in the U.S. with TPS are divided into two buckets: those who got it in 2021 when the Biden administration initially designated Venezuela for TPS, and those who got it when the program was extended in 2023.

The Supreme Court decision applies to the 2023 group of immigrants. Those who got the protected status in 2021 are expected to lose it later this year when the Trump administration said it plans to let the current program expire.

About 8 million people have left Venezuela since 2014 due to political persecution, violence, and a lack of food and access to essential services. In 2024, Nicolás Maduro won a third six-year term in a race contested as fraudulent by the opposition. After protests broke throughout the country, Maduro’s forces arrested more than 2,000 people, including more than 100 minors.

Plaintiff Cecilia González left Venezuela in 2017. She said the ruling is nothing more than devastating.

“This administration and their cruel choices are disregarding any basic humanity that we are seeking for,” González told reporters Monday. “Returning to Venezuela is not safe at all — the administration has acknowledged the risk.”

Secretary Noem has said “permitting Venezuelan nationals to remain temporarily in the United States is contrary to the U.S. national interest.” In February, Noem said conditions in Venezuela have improved including “the economy, public health, and crime that allow for these nationals to be safely returned to their home country.”

At the same time, the U.S. State Department continues to advise Americans to not travel to Venezuela, the highest travel advisory level. “Do not travel to or remain in Venezuela due to the high risk of wrongful detention, torture in detention, terrorism, kidnapping, arbitrary enforcement of local laws, crime, civil unrest, and poor health infrastructure,” according to the advisory, reissued May 12.

The luxury Boeing 747 gifted to the U.S. government by Qatar is standing by at the San Antonio, Texas, airport, awaiting a specialized overhaul from a defense contractor so that President Trump can use it as the next Air Force One.

It’s not clear how quickly the plane — which touched off a firestorm of ethical, legal, political and security concerns just ahead of Trump’s trip to the Middle East last week — will be ready to take the skies with Trump aboard.

The Air Force will take ownership of the plane once the paperwork to pass it over is complete, and then the retrofit can begin, according to a U.S. official, who was not authorized to speak to reporters on the record.

The Air Force did not comment publicly on the plans, and the White House earlier Monday deferred all questions to the Air Force.

“The president, frankly, has nothing to do with it,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on Monday.

President Trump and Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at the start of a state dinner at the Lusail Palace in Doha on May 14, 2025.

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Brendan Smialowski/AFP

Qatar’s offer of the $400 million plane came to light as Trump was leaving for a trip that took him to Doha as well as stops in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. On that trip, Trump said Qatar intends to spend more than $1 trillion on business deals with the United States, including a big order of Boeing jets from Qatar Airways.

The White House said the plane was a gift to the Department of Defense, and would go through the legal protocols required when something is given to the government. Trump said he would not use the plane after he leaves office — though he wants to park it in his presidential library one day.

“I appreciate it very much. I would never be one to turn down that kind of an offer,” Trump said.

President Trump speaks to reporters in the press cabin of Air Force One as he departs Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, on May 16, 2025.

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Win McNamee/Getty Images Europe

Experts say retrofitting the plane would require years of work

But experts say outfitting a plane like this to make it suitable for use as the presidential aircraft normally would entail at least a few years of work, stripping the plane down and adding what’s necessary to make it safe enough to carry the president.

That timeline means it may not be ready until Trump is out of office. Shortcuts in the retrofit could create national security risks, experts said.

“They wouldn’t be able to install the kinds of capabilities you typically find on an Air Force One,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director of AeroDynamic Advisory, describing a retrofit timeline of less than four years.

“In terms of encrypted communications, to electronic warfare, to back-up power systems — it wouldn’t have any of that in that time frame,” Aboulafia said. “Anybody on that jet would be advised to use burner phones and watch what they say.”

Nicholas Veronico, a former NASA contractor who worked on 747s and is an author of a book on Air Force One, agreed that a shorter timeframe would be problematic.

“If the conversion can be done within a year and President Trump is flying around the world in this new less-than-Air-Force-One Air Force One, then he’s flying in a compromised airplane. And we’re putting our president at risk,” Veronico said.

Members of Congress have also sounded the alarm, including some of Trump’s Republican allies.

“I prefer a big, beautiful plane built in the United States, made in America, bought in America,” said Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.

Senate Democratic Leader Sen. Chuck Schumer has proposed banning the Air Force from retrofitting foreign planes as presidential aircraft.

Trump has bristled at the criticism, saying it wouldn’t make sense to turn down the gift.

“Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars when they can get it for FREE from a country that wants to reward us for a job well done. This big savings will be spent, instead, to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!,” Trump said on social media.

“Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country.”

NPR’s Tom Bowman and Deirdre Walsh contributed to this report.

Former President Joe Biden is accompanied by senior advisor Mike Donilon (L) and Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed last April.

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(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Former President Joe Biden is accompanied by senior advisor Mike Donilon (L) and Deputy Chief of Staff Bruce Reed last April.

(Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Joe Biden has stage four metastatic prostate cancer.

The former president made that announcement Sunday afternoon. It came just days before the publication of “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.”

An explosive book by journalists Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson. Original Sin chronicles what the authors say was Biden’s steep physical and cognitive decline.

Joe Biden repeatedly insisted he was capable of serving a second term. “Original Sin” argues his advisors and his family went to great lengths to hide that he wasn’t.

For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org.

Email us at [email protected].

This episode was produced by Tyler Bartlam. It was edited by Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sami Yenigun.

A federal judge on Monday blocked the Trump administration’s takeover of the United States Institute of Peace, saying the president exceeded his authority when he fired the board members and moved to dismantle the organization and its operations.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ruled the USIP president and board members were unlawfully fired by President Trump and should be reinstated. In her 102-page ruling, Howell also declared that the transfers of the institute’s assets, including its headquarters, seized in the administration’s takeover are null and void.

Trump’s attempted takeover of USIP, Howell wrote, “represented a gross usurpation of power and a way of conducting government affairs that unnecessarily traumatized the committed leadership and employees of USIP, who deserved better.”

Earlier this year, Trump fired the institute’s board members and president and ordered the institute’s operations be gutted. A team from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency then forcefully seized the institute’s headquarters and quickly moved to dismantle operations.

Five members of the board sued to try to block the takeover. Their lawsuit alleges that they were unlawfully removed from their positions and should be reinstated.

Status of USIP

The case before Howell revolved in large part around the question of whether USIP is part of the federal government, and if so, whether it’s part of the executive branch.

In their filings and in court, the fired board members have argued that USIP is not part of the federal government. The Trump administration, in contrast, has argued that the institute is part of government and falls under the executive branch, giving Trump the authority to remove the board.

In her ruling, Howell said USIP “is unique in its structure and function — neither a traditional executive branch agency nor an entirely private nonprofit corporation.”

Ultimately, Howell concluded that USIP must be considered part of the federal government but that it is not part of the executive branch.

“Instead, USIP supports both the Executive and Legislative branches as an independent think tank that carries out its own international peace research, education and training, and information services,” she wrote.

Because of that, Trump’s firing of the USIP board members was unlawful, and the actions that have occurred since then to gut USIP to its “statutory minimums,” remove its president, terminate the staff and transfer the institute’s property to the General Services Administration are unlawful as well.

CBS News President Wendy McMahon announced her resignation on Monday because “the company and I do not agree on the path forward.”

Left unstated but hanging over her announcement: CBS’ corporate parent, Paramount Global, and its controlling owner, Shari Redstone, are involved in settlement negotiations with lawyers for President Trump in an effort to settle his $20 billion lawsuit against CBS’ signature show, 60 Minutes.

McMahon made her announcement the morning after the final episode of this season’s 60 Minutes and just weeks after the resignation of the show’s veteran executive producer, Bill Owens. Owens said he no longer felt he could lead the show independently.

Both McMahon and Owens had told colleagues they adamantly opposed a settlement with Trump.

Last fall, CBS aired differing excerpts of then-Vice President Kamala Harris’s response to a question about the Israel/Gaza war on two different shows — 60 Minutes and Face the Nation. Trump accused the network of election fraud, claiming it was hiding her incoherence.

CBS called the differences a journalistic decision. Legal observers and media lawyers uniformly tell NPR that the network should prevail due to the First Amendment’s free speech protections, and that Trump does not have firm legal grounds for a case.

In January before Trump’s inauguration, a longtime CBS News executive, Susan Zirinsky, was named to monitor standards of the network’s major news programs. Journalists at 60 Minutes believed the appointment was primarily aimed at them. Zirinksy, a much acclaimed producer, is close with Redstone, who has been critical of CBS’ news coverage of Israel as well.

Because the broadcast licenses to CBS’ local stations would be transferred if the sale goes through, the Federal Communications Commission must approve the deal first. FCC Chair Brendan Carr has opened a formal investigation of CBS for the Harris interview and invited public comment. Carr has signaled his support for Trump’s lawsuit.

Redstone and Paramount executives have said privately they believe they need to resolve Trump’s suit —regardless of the merits — before federal regulators decide whether to approve the sale of the company to Skydance Media, according to several people with knowledge of events. (They were granted anonymity to allow them to speak about confidential transactions and negotiations.)

Paramount Global executives took inspiration from the Walt Disney Co.’s decision to settle a defamation suit against ABC News that included a multimillion-dollar payment to a future Trump foundation and an apology. Owens told his staff he would not sign off on any apology and McMahon made clear that she supported him fully in that.

Skydance is owned by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison, a Trump backer who is ultimately financing the deal. David Ellison has tapped former NBC Universal CEO Jeff Shell to lead Paramount Global, presuming the acquisition takes place.

It had appeared unlikely that McMahon’s tenure would survive such a deal.

In her parting note, McMahon thanked CBS viewers, writing, “Thank you for your trust. You hold us accountable, and you remind us why this work matters.”

McMahon came up through local news and was named co-president of CBS’s news division and stations in 2021. She took over the job two years ago on her own when her co-president, Neeraj Khemlani, left in a shakeup. She also oversaw syndicated programming.

In a statement to staff released publicly by the network, George Cheeks, the co-CEO of Paramount Global and chief of CBS, praised her tenure mostly in terms of her work in local stations. He notably did not address the backdrop to her decision.

“In a rapidly changing world, Wendy and her teams have worked diligently to articulate a vision and lay a foundation that adapts our news operations for the future,” Cheeks wrote.

The network did not comment on the status of settlement talks.

The year is 2019 and presidential hopeful Joe Biden is on a campaign swing in Iowa. During the event, Biden struggles to remember the names of one of his aides, Mike Donilon.

The issue? The two had known each other since 1981, with Donilon serving as one of Biden’s closest aides for decades and at one point had a White House desk just steps away from the Oval Office.

It’s one of several jarring moments reported in the new book, Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, by CNN’s Jake Tapper and Axios’ Alex Thompson. It chronicles Biden’s decline over his time in the White House, as well as efforts by his top staff to keep that decline hidden from voters.

Tapper and Thompson joined All Things Considered host Scott Detrow on Thursday to discuss the process of writing the book and why they felt now was the right time to publish.

President Biden delivers remarks during the CNN Presidential Debate in June 2024 in Atlanta.

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The upcoming book comes as Biden’s personal office announced in a statement Sunday that he has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer, which has metastasized to the bone. Biden, 82, was seen for further tests last week after a finding of a prostate nodule.

The diagnosis underscores the biggest vulnerability Biden faced during his final years in office.

Those close to Biden have defended him and his presidency, despite the book.

Last week, a spokesperson from Biden’s office said, “We’re still waiting for someone, anyone to point out where Joe Biden had to make a presidential decision or make a presidential address where he was unable to do his job because of mental decline.”

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Interview highlights

On the presidential debate night that sparked the book:

Tapper: Dana Bash, my co-moderator, and I had these iPads so that we could write to the people in the control room, because obviously we can’t talk to them and there was only one or two commercial breaks. And I wrote, “Holy Smokes,” during that first rambling, awful non-answer where he said, “We finally beat Medicare.” I just couldn’t believe it.

I mean, we had all seen him aging. We had all seen him tripping and misspeaking. We had all seen evidence of decline, but the Biden team, family and senior advisors were telling everybody, not just media and not just the public, but also Democratic donors and members of Congress: “He’s fine. He’s fine. He’s fine.”

Even today, the inner inner circle still thinks he could have won, still thinks that he could have been functioning and doing a great job as president until January 2029. It’s just delusion at this point. I mean, we can see it. We talked to a top Democrat who saw what everybody saw: how he didn’t seem great. He wasn’t on top of things. And look, this is a guy we’ve seen in public life. He’s been in public life since 1972. So, we have seen him age.

On using the phrase “cover-up”

Thompson: If it wasn’t a cover up, then why were so many people surprised by the debate? Beginning in fall of 2023, our reporting shows, based on the interviews of over 200 people, that there were two Bidens: there was a functioning Biden and non-functioning Biden. And that goes back to 2019. But he was almost always functioning Biden.

But beginning in 2023, the ratio of that functioning and non-functioning starts to change dramatically and also non-functioning Biden is getting worse. The White House, the people around them — we had one senior White House official who left because they were upset over what was happening and didn’t think he should be running for reelection.

Detrow: When you say nonfunctioning. What’s the best way to define that?

Tapper: I would describe it as unable to come up with the names of top advisers or close friends. I would say look, we’re all human. We all forget names. We all lose our train of thought. We all witness that in people who are aging.

We’re talking about to the point of you not being able to have a conversation. You are not able to come up with data, information, knowledge, names that you should have at the ready.

When he didn’t recognize George Clooney. That is somebody who is not only somebody he’d known for more than 15 years, not only somebody that he had had serious conversations about Darfur with, not only somebody that had raised millions of dollars for him and was co-hosting that very fundraiser. He’s also one of the most recognizable people in the world. So, I’m talking about that. I’m talking about what we saw at the debate, that non-functioning, I-cannot-articulate-a-sentence Biden.

Detrow: You were talking about the framing of the cover up. He’s giving speeches. He’s appearing in public. He’s carrying out the duties of the presidency. And yet, as you reported, there is a concerted effort to wall him off. What specifically was that circle of aides doing?

Thompson: The one top aide who left the White House said that they intentionally shielded him from other members of the administration, other members of the cabinet, other senior White House officials. The inner circle became smaller and smaller.

This White House official said that was intentional so that they did not realize the extent of the decline. You also saw the schedule become much tighter and more restricted.

The schedule just became much more oriented about making sure that the public and other aides did not see non-functioning Biden.

Detrow: What to you is the theory that makes the most sense about how we got to this point?

Tapper: We have a chapter in the book that goes into the legend of Joe Biden. Which I don’t mean in a pejorative sense, but just the story, the mythology of Joe Biden.

He has had a remarkable ability to get up after being knocked to the floor by fate, whether it’s having a debilitating stutter or the horrific tragedy that took the life of his wife and daughter or having two brain aneurysms etc., etc.

And he says in one of his memoirs, “Get up” was what his father used to say to him. And that’s the way you measure a man, your ability to get up. And that became not just a mythology, but almost a theology. And like any theology, skepticism was not permitted. And that is the inner circle of Biden.

“He can do it. He’s a game day performer. He’ll do it.” Everybody wrote him off in 2008 and then he became the best vice president in history. Everybody wrote him off in 2019, 2020 and then he beat Donald Trump. And he’s the only one that’s ever beaten Donald Trump. And that theology took root. It’s the theology of the President of the United States. And who is anybody to challenge that?

Detrow: I want to end this interview the way you start the book, that the morning after the election, Joe Biden woke up convinced he could have won.

Tapper: He still thinks that. He still thinks he could have won. He went on The View to prebutt this book, we think. And he was asked about that. And he said, “Well, look, I still got 7 million more votes than Donald Trump.”

And he’s talking about the 2020 election.

I have talked to his pollsters more than he ever has and they did not think that. When Chuck Schumer finally has the conversation with Biden in which he says that he thinks Biden should drop out. He says, “I’ve talked to your pollsters. They give you a 5% chance of winning.” And Biden did not know that because all the polling was interpreted through the spinmeisters around him, Donilon and [Steve] Ricchetti, and Biden’s shocked to hear that. When I talked with one of the pollsters about that story, 5%, he said it was probably more like 1%.

Former President Joe Biden’s office announced Sunday that he has been diagnosed with an “aggressive” form of prostate cancer, which has spread to his bones. But it said the cancer appears to be hormone-sensitive, “which allows for effective management.”

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer among men in the U.S. after skin cancer, and can often be treated successfully, according to the American Cancer Society.

It has an overall five-year survival rate of 97%, though that number is lower — 37% — in cases where the cancer has spread to other parts of the body.

Dr. Ben Davies, a professor of urology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine, told NPR’s Morning Edition that Biden “has a very bad version of it, probably the worst version you can get.”

The most common grading system for prostate cancer is called the Gleason score, which involves studying tissues under a microscope to assess how quickly the cancer cells can grow (small, closely packed cells get lower grades). Scores range from 6 to 10, with those of 8 or above treated as high-risk cancers.

Biden’s office says he has a Gleason score of 9.

While Davies doesn’t know the exact extent of Biden’s condition, he says there are some good options in front of the former president.

Those include hormonal treatments, like injections, to suppress the testosterone levels in his body so that the cancer “stops growing quite as fast and can almost melt away from the bones.”

That could also be paired with chemotherapy, which is typically used only in advanced prostate cancer. A third option is radiation therapy, which Davies says “has been proven to extend life in patients with newly diagnosed metastatic prostate cancer.”

“It’s not all doom and gloom, to be honest,” Davies said. “He can easily live 10 years with this disease.”

Biden’s office says he is reviewing treatment options with his doctors. Davies says Biden’s age, 82, doesn’t necessarily limit what’s on the table.

“It’s not really an age-specific thing,” he says. “It’s more the physiology, and how he can take the therapies that he’s getting.”

He did note that certain potential medications could “increase some of the frailty aspects of life.” Biden’s physical and mental fitness has been the subject of intense scrutiny during and since his time in office, with questions about the former president’s age and well-being ultimately forcing him to abandon his 2024 reelection bid.

In his first public comments on Monday, in which he thanked people for their support, Biden wrote that “cancer touches us all.”

“Like so many of you, Jill and I have learned that we are strongest in the broken places,” he tweeted, alongside a selfie of the couple and their cat.

How common is prostate cancer? 

The American Cancer Society (ACS) estimates there will be about 313,780 new cases of prostate cancer in the U.S. in 2025, and about 35,770 deaths.

In a statement, it said Biden’s diagnosis is a “reminder about the tragic impact of prostate cancer in the US, where about one in eight men will be diagnosed over their lifetime.”

“Although it is a highly survivable disease when caught in early stages, it is the second leading cause of cancer death in men,” it added.

The ACS says while the prostate cancer death rate decreased by about half from 1993 to 2022, its decline has slowed in recent years — likely reflecting a rise in cancers found at a later stage.

Meanwhile, it says, the number of cases diagnosed each year has increased by 3% each year since 2014.

Who’s at risk and what can they do about it? 

Risk factors for prostate cancer include age, race and family history. It develops more often in Black men and Caribbean men of African ancestry than those of other races and is usually seen after age 50. The ACS says about 6 in 10 prostate cancers are found in men over age 65.

Screening for prostate cancer typically involves a blood test and a digital rectal exam, and guidelines vary for when men should talk to their doctor about it.

The ACS recommends age 50 if they are at average risk, 45 if they are at high risk and 40 if they have more than one first-degree relative who had prostate cancer at an early age.

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recommends men aged 55 to 69 get screened for prostate cancer, and most men older than that should not get screened routinely.

Davies says that’s in part because most prostate cancers found at that age are indolent: growing slowly and not causing considerable pain.

“If you screened a population of patients for prostate cancer in their 80s, you would be … adding unwarranted worry to those patients,” he said. “So I would talk to your primary care physician about what it means to be screened, the pluses and minuses.”

Where does cancer research stand? 

Davies says research has allowed for significant advances in diagnosing and treating prostate cancer over the past decade.

“We’ve made major gains in prostate cancer care in the metastatic space over the past 10 years and really extended life,” he says.

Biden himself has long been a champion in the fight against cancer, which was personal for him years before his own diagnosis: His son Beau died of brain cancer in 2015.

As vice president, Biden led the Cancer Moonshot initiative, which brought federal resources together to accelerate progress in cancer research to “eliminate cancer as we know it,” aiming to reduce the cancer death rate by at least 50% within 25 years. He relaunched the program as president in 2022, with the goal of “making a decade’s worth of progress in cancer prevention, diagnosis, and treatment in five years.”

The Trump administration, on the other hand, has stifled federal funding for scientific research through funding freezes, rule changes and job cuts — which researchers say is hampering the fight against cancer and other diseases.

A report released last week by the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee found that the White House cut cancer research by 31% in the first three months of this year, compared to the same time frame in 2024.

“We will only make headway into prostate cancer care with careful and robust funding of our science institutions, which I’m really hoping will continue,” Davies said. “And that will pave the way for future people who get the disease the president has.”

MOSCOW — President Trump has been working the phones on Monday, holding calls with the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and European countries as he continues efforts to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.

Trump said this weekend on social media he would discuss how to stop the “bloodbath” between Russia and Ukraine and hoped Monday would be a “productive day” of calls. Vice President Vance said Monday before the calls that talks were at an “impasse.”

The phone diplomacy follows direct talks between Russian and Ukrainian delegations in Istanbul on Friday, where both sides said they would each exchange 1,000 war prisoners but failed to agree on an immediate ceasefire. The negotiations in Turkey were the first direct talks between Russia and Ukraine since the early days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has kept up Russia’s military pressure on Ukraine, launching mass drone attacks throughout the weekend, including a barrage on Sunday that Ukrainian authorities said was the largest since the conflict began.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt repeated Trump has “grown very frustrated with both sides of the conflict” but was keeping his options open.

As Vice President Vance prepared to depart from Italy, he told reporters, “I think, honestly, President Putin, he doesn’t quite know how to get out of the war.”

In a weekend interview on Russian state television, Putin insisted Moscow maintained both the force and means capable of meeting its military objectives. He said that would include security for residents in territories of Ukraine that Russia claims to have annexed but does not fully control.

Should Trump fail to convince Putin to agree to an immediate ceasefire, European leaders have urged Trump to join them in imposing an endgame round of additional sanctions and tariffs on Russian energy and banking.

Yet analysts in Moscow tell NPR the Kremlin has entered these negotiations convinced that time and a military advantage are on its side.

“Russia at this certain point can continue its military operations. Sanctions are inflicting harm but this harm is not critical for macro-economics of Russia,” Ivan Timofeev, head of the Russian International Affairs Council, said, noting the Russian army is making slow but steady gains.

“So in a year, Ukraine can find itself in a less favorable negotiating position,” he added.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A nonprofit watchdog group sued the Trump administration on Monday for “unlawfully withholding records” regarding President Trump’s actions against Harvard University, including efforts to revoke the institution’s tax-exempt status.

American Oversight — which recently sued the White House over its use of the messaging app signal Signal and often works to release government information under the Freedom of Information Act — filed the suit in D.C. District Court.

“Our lawsuit seeks to compel the IRS, the Department of Treasury and Department of Education to release records that they’re unlawfully withholding from the public,” Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, told NPR. “The documents that underlie this lawsuit could reveal potential political interference by the president in agency operations.”

A group of lawyers created American Oversight in 2017, in response to President Trump’s first term in the White House, according to its website.

The White House has criticized Harvard and other Ivy League schools for not doing enough to protect Jewish students on campus in the midst of protests against the war in Gaza.

In April, the Trump administration froze more than $2.2 billion in university grants after Harvard rejected the White House’s demands that it eliminate DEI programs, screen international students, and ensure “viewpoint diversity” in its hiring. In May, the White House said it would cut another $450 million in grants to Harvard, and Trump insisted the school should lose its tax-exempt status.

But the law bars the executive branch from using the Internal Revenue Service to target any particular taxpayer. Harvard has also sued the administration over its actions.

American Oversight said it made a FOIA request in April for White House communication records regarding Trump’s recent actions against Harvard, but “the IRS failed to comply with legal deadlines to produce the records,” according to a press release.

“We have experienced nothing but stonewalling,” Chukwu said, adding that she sees the lawsuit as not just about Harvard.

“Ultimately, this is about President Trump using the levers of the federal government to punish his critics and silence anyone who pushes back against his unlawful agenda,” Chukwu said. “Today it’s Harvard. Tomorrow, it can be any university, any nonprofit or foundation that stands up for the public good.”

Nearly all colleges and universities are tax-exempt organizations, along with many charities, religious institutions and some political organizations. Their tax-exempt status has also contributed to some elite universities amassing huge endowments; Harvard’s is the largest at more than $50 billion.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment shortly after the lawsuit was filed.