Contact Me By Email


What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White

What To Do When You're Stopped By Police - The ACLU & Elon James White

Know Anyone Who Thinks Racial Profiling Is Exaggerated? Watch This, And Tell Me When Your Jaw Drops.


This video clearly demonstrates how racist America is as a country and how far we have to go to become a country that is civilized and actually values equal justice. We must not rest until this goal is achieved. I do not want my great grandchildren to live in a country like we have today. I wish for them to live in a country where differences of race and culture are not ignored but valued as a part of what makes America great.

Monday, December 09, 2024

Live Updates: Police Arrest ‘Strong Person of Interest’ in Health Care C.E.O.’s Killing




December 9, 2024

BREAKING NEWS

Eric Adams stands with three other officials at a lectern.
Brittainy Newman for The New York Times

Police Arrest ‘Strong Person of Interest’ in Health Insurance C.E.O.’s Killing

The man was identified as Luigi Mangione, 26. He was carrying a handwritten



Jasmine Crockett Takes Nancy Mace To SCHOOL Over Her Pathetic Fearmongering

Desperate Haitians Who Fled to the Dominican Republic Are Being Sent Back in Cages

Desperate Haitians Who Fled to the Dominican Republic Are Being Sent Back in Cages

“Relations between the neighboring countries on the island of Hispaniola have long been frosty. They are now complicated by up to 10,000 deportations a week.

A group of people side by side under wearing light clothing.
Haitian migrants being deported in October at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.Erika Santelices/Reuters

By Hogla Enecia Pérez and Frances Robles

Hogla Enecia Pérez visited the Haiti-Dominican Republic border and interviewed migrants and social service workers helping them.

Cage-like trucks fitted with iron bars that appear designed to carry livestock line up every morning at the border between Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

The vehicles at the Elias Piña border crossing are not loaded with cattle, but with Haitians being deported by the Dominican immigration authorities. They include young men, pregnant women, unaccompanied children and some people who have never lived in Haiti.

Since October, more than 71,000 people have been deported to Haiti.

Rose-Mieline Florvil, 24, who lived in the Dominican Republic for less than a year, said immigration agents recently raided her house in Santiago, in the northern part of the country, one day before dawn and said something along the lines of “Black woman, come here.”

“I couldn’t run, because I’m pregnant,” she said.

The extraordinary wave of deportations — Dominican officials say the goal is 10,000 per week — reflects a stringent new immigration policy by a country with a complicated and racially charged history with Haiti.

The two nations share the island of Hispaniola, and the Dominican Republic, the far more prosperous of the two, has sounded increasingly loud alarms about shouldering the burden of what experts say is a failing state next door.

People stand behind white iron bars.
Haitians detained for deportation in a police vehicle between the Dominican Republic and Haiti.Ricardo Hernandez/Associated Press

Dire problems in Haiti — surging gang violence, a health infrastructure in ruins and a government with no elected leaders and unable to reverse the country’s slide — have set off an exodus of people seeking security and livelihoods.

As a result, Haitian migrants are using an increasing share of Dominican government services, including public health, officials say.

The Dominican authorities say they have had enough.

“The general feeling of the Dominican population is that we are providing social services greater than what the Dominican Republic is responsible for,” the foreign minister, Roberto Álvarez, said in an interview, “and that the international community has left us alone to attend to Haitian needs.”

Since Haiti’s last president was assassinated more than three years ago, the country has been convulsed by gang violence that has left more than 12,000 people dead and forced nearly 800,000 from their homes. (Nearly 200 people were massacred this weekend by a gang in one of Port-au-Prince’s poorest neighborhoods, according to the United Nations).

Dominican officials say their country should not serve as an escape valve for a crisis the world has largely ignored. Riding a wave of nationalism, the Dominican president, Luis Abinader, announced the stricter immigration policy in October.

Trucks in a caravan from the Dominican Republic transporting Haitians who lack papers to the border. More than 71,000 Haitians have been deported since October.Henry Romero/Reuters

Mr. Abinader said he had warned the United Nations that if the situation in Haiti did not improve, the Dominican Republic would take “special measures.”

In addition to the mass roundups, he said he would beef up controls on the border and deploy specialized units to crack down on the growing numbers of migrants and human traffickers, while respecting human rights.

“We don’t have to offer explanations to respect our immigration laws,” the president said.

But human rights organizations say the removals have been plagued with abuses and a lack of due process.

Eduardo Moxteya Pie, 29, who was born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents, said he had a police report showing that he had reported his national ID card, which proved Dominican citizenship, as lost.

Without the card, he was detained last month as he left his agricultural job and was taken to Haiti, where he lives in a shelter.

One 11-year-old boy at a migrant shelter in Haiti said he was caught during an early-morning immigration raid on the house where he had been staying in a town near the border.

A 17-year-old said he had been shot in the leg by a Dominican immigration officer during a raid of his home.

While the Dominican authorities have a right to control their border, human rights activists and deportees say immigration agents are sweeping Black people off the streets, regardless of their residency status.

Migrants have arrived in Haiti injured from beatings, and many others reported having been verbally harassed, said Laura d’Elsa, the protection coordinator for the United Nations’ International Organization for Migration, which helps run shelters along the border.

“Why are all these massive abuses taking place?” she asked. “It is extremely shocking to see, and the most extreme I have ever seen.”

Asked about accusations of mistreatment, the Dominican Republic’s interior ministry, which oversees immigration, requested questions in writing and then did not respond to them.

Haitian women looking for relatives in October through an opening in a gate at a migration center in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital.Erika Santelices/Reuters

Mr. Álvarez, the foreign minister, said that of the babies delivered in public hospitals, the share born to Haitian mothers had increased to 40 percent in October from nearly 24 percent in 2019.

About 147,000 Haitian children are enrolled in school in the Dominican Republic, costing about $430 million a year, he said.

The country resents claims by critics that its immigration policy is “racist and xenophobic,” Mr. Álvarez said. “All the countries do it, and none are accused of that.”

The two countries’ history is long and complex. After Haiti’s slaves revolted and formed their own independent Black nation in 1804, they led the entire island for 22 years. The Dominican Republic’s Independence Day marks its rupture not from Spain, the country that colonized it for nearly three centuries, but from Haiti.

Dominican leaders have historically promoted anti-Haitian sentiment. In 1937, Dominican troops, acting on orders of the dictator Rafael Trujillo, massacred thousands of Haitians.

Haiti’s foreign minister noted that the Dominican president chose to unveil the mass deportation plan on Oct. 2, the 87th anniversary of the massacre.

In 2010, the Dominican Republic changed its Constitution to eliminate the right to birthright citizenship for children of undocumented immigrants. Three years later, the country’s constitutional court ruled that the measure could be implemented retroactively — rendering stateless tens of thousands of people born in the Dominican Republic to Haitian parents.

“By racial profiling, they can be picked up and can be expelled from their own country of birth,” said Bridget Wooding, an immigration expert at a migration studies institute in Santo Domingo, the Dominican capital.

In October, shortly after the deportations began, Dominique Dupuy, Haiti’s foreign minister at the time, told a French news station that people were chosen “by the simple fact that they had Black skin.” Some of them were not even Haitian, she claimed.

A border wall is being built in Pedernales, Dominican Republic.Federico Parra/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Ms. Dupuy was forced out of her job a few weeks later by a transitional council running Haiti. Both she and the new foreign minister, Jean-Victor Harvel Jean-Baptiste, declined to comment.

In 2017, the last time a government survey was taken, there were nearly 500,000 Haitians in the Dominican Republic, and experts estimate the number may have doubled since then.

Many experts stress that Haitians work in industries like construction and agriculture that buoy the Dominican economy.

But many Dominicans resent their presence.

“If the international community is not going to assume its responsibility, Dominicans are going to defend what’s ours, our space, our territory, our nation, our identity,” said Pelegrín Castillo, vice president of the Fuerza Nacional Progresista party, which has led the nationalist movement.

Eduardo A. Gamarra, an international relations professor at Florida International University who served as an adviser to a former Dominican president, said the authorities there were right to feel that their international calls for help had gone unanswered.

“Anything really that happens in Haiti has a direct consequence on the Dominican Republic,” Mr. Gamarra said. “I don’t think that people really fully understand that.”

Still, the crush of deportations has overwhelmed nonprofit organizations at the border trying to help migrants.

At the Support Group for Returnees and Refugees, a shelter in Haiti near the Elias Piña border crossing, deported migrants swarm social workers, pleading for help.

José Alberto de los Santos, 17, said migration agents picked him up last month while he was working at a tire shop in Higüey, about 30 miles west of Punta Cana, a Dominican resort town on the eastern coast.

“I told them I was Dominican,” Mr. de los Santos said in perfect Spanish. “They asked me for my papers, and I told them I didn’t have them.”

Ms. Florvil, the pregnant woman, said the neighborhood north of the Haitian capital where she is from is now under gang control, so she has not returned. She makes what she can selling water near the Elias Piña border crossing.

“If we had a president in our country, I don’t think that Luis Abinader would mistreat us the way he is mistreating us today,” she said, referring to the Dominican leader. “He does it because he knows that we don’t have a president who speaks for us.”

Frances Robles is a Times reporter covering Latin America and the Caribbean. She has reported on the region for more than 25 years. More about Frances Robles

The $1 Trillion Private Health Insurance Scam

Sunday, December 08, 2024

Millions AT RISK Of Losing Healthcare After Insurers, Hospitals Drop Med...

Amnesty International: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza with Full U.S. Support

 

Amnesty International: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza with Full U.S. Support

 

 Amnesty International has released a landmark report that concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, making it the first major human rights group to do so. The nearly 300-page report examines the first nine months of the Israeli war on Gaza and finds that Israel’s actions have caused death, injury and mental harm on a vast scale, as well as conditions intended to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza. Both Israel and the United States have rejected Amnesty’s conclusion. Amnesty researcher Budour Hassan, who covers Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, dismisses the criticism and says, if anything, Amnesty’s intervention took too long because of how carefully the group gathered and verified its information. “We tried to be absolutely true to the definition of 'genocide' under the Genocide Convention,” says Hassan, who urges U.S. officials in particular to do more to stop the bloodshed. “If there is any country that has the capacity, the power and the tools to stop this genocide, it’s the United States. Not only has the United States failed to do so, it has consistently awarded Israel. It has consistently continued to flout the United States’ own laws in order to continue giving Israel the weapons — the very same weapons that are used by Israel to commit the genocide in Gaza.”

AMY GOODMAN: In a landmark report released Thursday, Amnesty International has accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza. It’s the first time a major human rights organization has labeled Israel’s actions in Gaza following the October 7th attacks of 2023 as genocide.

This is a video released by Amnesty International to accompany its new report. “'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza” is the name of this video. It features Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard and their Israel-Palestine researcher, Budour Hassan. It begins with a clip of former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant.

YOAV GALLANT: [translated] We are laying a complete siege on Gaza — no electricity, no food, no water, no fuel. Everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we act accordingly.

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: For over a year, we’ve witnessed utter carnage unfolding right before our eyes in the occupied Gaza Strip, with no end in sight. Many have described this carnage as the first live-streamed genocide, day after day. What has your government done to prevent this genocide? What have your political leaders done? What are they doing now?

ON-SCREEN TEXT: “'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”

NARRATOR: Israel has been waging an ongoing and devastating offensive on the occupied Gaza Strip. More than 43,000 Palestinians have been killed and tens of thousands injured, nearly 2 million displaced, neighborhoods flattened, aid and lifesaving supplies restricted — all sparking an unprecedented humanitarian catastrophe.

The term “genocide” has increasingly been used to describe Israel’s conduct in Gaza. But how can we assess whether what is happening is actually genocide? The first treaty to explicitly define and criminalize genocide in international law was adopted by the United Nations in 1948 in response to the atrocities of World War II. To prove genocide has taken place, you need to show that one or more acts prohibited by the Genocide Convention was carried out and that it was “committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” — in this case, Palestinians.

BUDOUR HASSAN: As part of Amnesty International’s research, we have documented Israel’s perpetration of three out of the five prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention since the 7th of October. These include killing members of the group, causing them serious mental or bodily harm and inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction. For example, this would include the destruction of essential infrastructure, including homes, agricultural land, water and sanitation infrastructure and infrastructure indispensable to the civilian population. They also include the mass repeated displacement under inhumane and unsanitary conditions. And they also include the deliberate obstruction of entry of lifesaving supplies and aid.

NARRATOR: It is clear the Israel authorities have deliberately inflicted these conditions and knew they would inevitably result in a deadly mix of hunger and disease, which brings us to the other important component of the crime: the intent to destroy.

ISRAELI SOLDIER: [translated] Three, two, one.

PRESIDENT ISAAC HERZOG: It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It’s not true, this rhetoric about civilians not were — were not aware, not informed. It’s absolutely not true.

BUDOUR HASSAN: The racist, dehumanizing and genocidal statements call for the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza and making Gaza unlivable. They provide evidence for Israel’s intent to physically destroy Palestinians. As part of Amnesty International’s research, we reviewed over 100 statements made by Israeli officials, and these statements clearly were echoed by Israeli soldiers on the ground.

BRIG. GEN. YOGEV BAR SHESHET: [translated] Whoever returns here, if they return here after, will find scorched earth — no houses, no agriculture, nothing. They have no future.

NARRATOR: Specific genocidal intent should be assessed through analyzing the most recent conflict, while taking into account a system of apartheid, a brutal occupation and the 17-year unlawful blockade of Gaza — a history of systematic human right violations built on the continuous dehumanization of Palestinians.

BUDOUR HASSAN: We have documented an unprecedented scale, speed and seriousness of inhumane acts in Gaza. Palestinians are facing overwhelming trauma and pain. We have interviewed parents digging up the remains of their children with their own hands. And we have documented the mixture of hunger and disease that has ravaged Gaza, all while the healthcare sector has collapsed completely.

AGNÈS CALLAMARD: This must stop. And for genocide to end, governments around the world must come together, and they must take action, resolute action. You must ask that they stop transferring weapons that are murdering children in their thousands and decimating entire Palestinian families. You must demand that justice be delivered, that all those responsible for the genocide be held to account. Perpetrators benefit from the inaction and the complicity of too many of our political leaders. No war criminals should ever be allowed to walk free, undisturbed, fearless. Let’s put all our instruments into action — national tribunals, universal jurisdiction, International Criminal Court. Governments must do everything in their power to end Israel’s genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Amnesty International Secretary General Agnès Callamard, part of a video Amnesty released along with its 296-page report detailing Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza.

Israel has rejected the charge of genocide, describing the report as, quote, “fabricated” and “based on lies.” This is Israeli Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Sharren Haskel.

SHARREN HASKEL: Amnesty International thinks that you’re stupid, because they think that in the 101 pages report that they actually produce, you will not read them. In this report, they actually altered and changed the legal terms and definition for what is a genocide, because Israel doesn’t meet those criterias. So Amnesty International had to alter it.

AMY GOODMAN: The U.S. State Department also said they, quote, “disagree” with Amnesty’s report and continue to find allegations of genocide “unfounded.”

For more on the report, we’re joined by Amnesty International researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Budour Hassan. She’s joining us from Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.

Budour, we saw you in this video report. If you can respond to what the Israeli government and the U.S. said, and tell us more about why Amnesty has taken this position, the first among international major human rights organizations, that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza?

BUDOUR HASSAN: Thank you for having me again, Amy.

Actually, if anything, the question that should be asked: Why did it take Amnesty this long to produce this report? Not why we have adopted this approach in the first place. And one answer to that is, if anything, we tried to be absolutely true to the definition of “genocide” under the Genocide Convention, but also to follow suit with the jurisprudence on genocide, including the main decisions taken by the International Court of Justice on what is genocide. And because we are talking about strict and narrow definitions, our report, and those who can read the legal section — and apparently the Israeli spokesperson failed to read that — will see that we absolutely adopt the definitions and the jurisprudence taken by the International Court of Justice, especially on the interpretation of what is specific intent.

And, in fact, this is why also it took us so long to produce this report, because we wanted to produce something that can be used by those who want to charge Israel with genocide. We wanted to produce strong enough evidence both for the commission of the prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention — in this case, killing Palestinians deliberately, inflicting them life-changing injuries, and inflicting upon them also conditions, destructive conditions, of life that would cause their slow death.

And we found that when we analyzed this conduct — and we based our analysis both on evidence collected on the ground through our fieldworkers, who have been working tirelessly on the ground in Gaza since the 7th of October, and also on the analysis of satellite imagery, on the analysis of all publicly available evidence that we could reach — we found that these prohibited acts were indeed committed.

And the next question was whether these acts were committed intentionally and with the specific intent to destroy Palestinians as a protected group or as such. And then we again followed the jurisprudence of the International Court of Justice, which is how you infer specific intent. You do infer it through two types of evidence. You do look at the pattern of conduct that the Israeli military has been adopting, which include the scale, severity and seriousness of attacks, the repetition of the attacks, the cumulative effects of these attacks, the totality of evidence that you can find on the ground. And secondly, you also look at the direct evidence, which is the statements that we heard from Israeli officials.

At Amnesty, we looked at more than 100 statements issued by Israeli officials, including 22 statements issued by high-ranking Israeli officials and military officers responsible for the war and security cabinets and responsible what is happening on the ground. We then looked at how these dehumanizing, derogatory and racist statements that called specifically for the destruction and annihilation of Gaza, for equating Palestinians in Gaza, all of them, to Hamas, and for calling for the large-scale destruction of life in Gaza — we saw how these statements were echoed by Israeli soldiers. We verified 62 videos in which soldiers appear to be echoing these statements while celebrating the destruction of Palestinian universities, mosques and agricultural lands.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go directly to the U.S. State Department, who — they have said they disagree with the conclusions of Amnesty’s report. This is an exchange between reporters Prem Thakker and Said Arikat in the State Department press briefing with State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel.

VEDANT PATEL: What I can say, as a spokesperson of the U.S. government and as a spokesperson of this administration, is that the findings of — the accusations of genocide, we continue to believe those to be unfounded. … to provide as it relates to that.

SAID ARIKAT: So, if you’ll indulge me just a little bit.

VEDANT PATEL: Sure.

SAID ARIKAT: I mean, look, we have seen almost 2 million people being forcibly moved from one place to another. This morning — this morning — al-Mawasi was bombed, an area that Israel designated as safe haven for people to go to. They bombed it. They killed 20 people. What does it take? Does it have — do the whole population of Gaza have to be annihilated for you to term it genocide? What are we waiting for on this issue, Vedant?

VEDANT PATEL: Said, I’m just not going to get into — 

SAID ARIKAT: Oh, sure. Fine.

VEDANT PATEL: — this rhetorical hypothetical.

PREM THAKKER: So, we’ve seen the targeting of thousands of journalists, medical staff, humanitarian workers, infrastructure workers; the total decimation of agriculture, religious sites, homes, residential blocks; the destruction of neighborhoods, memories, bloodlines. Northern Gaza is ethnically cleansed to a great extent. Doctors, including from America, say that they’ve seen kids deliberately sniped. How many acts of genocide does it take to make a genocide?

VEDANT PATEL: So, look, I am just — I appreciate what you’re trying to do with the way that you phrased that question, but let me just say again unequivocally that the allegations of genocide, we find to be unfounded.

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s the State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel responding to journalists Prem Thakker of Zeteo and Said Arikat of Al-Quds. If you can respond, Budour Hassan, as you sit there in the occupied West Bank, as you sit there in Ramallah, having just been a major part of producing this report of Amnesty International?

BUDOUR HASSAN: One question that was addressed was how long would it take for the United States to acknowledge the severity of what’s happening in Gaza. The United States administration is not only denying that a genocide is happening in Gaza, it’s denying that human rights violations are being committed by the Israeli authorities in Gaza.

And we know, Amy, probably in four or five years’ time, those very same people who are now denying that a genocide is happening, once they become retired officials, they will say, “It happened under our watch, and we did nothing to stop it.” And they will probably give speeches in which they are awarded money in order to come and say, “We knew that this was happening. We could not stop it.” And unfortunately, this has been happening so often.

And this is — if anything, it’s a damning indictment of the United States’ failure to stop Israel’s violation. If there is any country that has the capacity, the power and the tool to stop this genocide, it’s the United States. Not only has the United States failed to do so, it has consistently awarded Israel. It has consistently continued to flout the United States’ own laws in order to continue giving Israel the weapons — the very same weapons that are used by Israel to commit the genocide in Gaza.

AMY GOODMAN: You know, this reminds me of 30 years ago almost exactly, when Madeleine Albright was secretary of state and Bill Clinton was president, and they were continually challenged about what was happening in Rwanda. And they refused to use that term “genocide,” because if they did — well, can you talk about what it would mean, what it would trigger, if they used the word “genocide”? And by the way, in that case, they would later apologize and say they were wrong.

BUDOUR HASSAN: But what would these apologies — how would these victims read the apologies?

AMY GOODMAN: Right. Forget the apology. Talk about —

BUDOUR HASSAN: And I think it’s not only the guilt of — 

AMY GOODMAN: Forget the apology. Talk about what it would mean if they use the word “genocide.” What does that trigger internationally, in terms of the world bodies, at the U.N., and the response?

BUDOUR HASSAN: Obviously, considering that genocide is a crime under the ICC statute, and considering that we’re talking about something that is absolutely prohibited — genocide is never justifiable, not even in an armed conflict, which means that those who continue to arm Israel while it is committing genocide are guilty of being complicit. And complicity in genocide is also prohibited under the Genocide Convention. So, the States, part of why they are denying not only that genocide is being committed, but that war crimes and possibly crimes against humanity are also being committed, is that they don’t want to risk being accused of complicity in these crimes.

AMY GOODMAN: Finally, Budour, you are in Ramallah. You’re in the occupied West Bank. If you can talk about what’s happening in the West Bank right now, with members of the war cabinet talking about wanting to annex the whole area? What is actually happening on the ground?

BUDOUR HASSAN: Not to deflect the question, Amy, but just because this report that we worked on was not just addressed to the international community or the court, it was mainly addressed to the victims, I would just ask you to give me just a couple of seconds really just to talk about the victims.

We interviewed 212 people in Gaza, including victims of airstrikes. People who lost their entire families agreed to speak to us to share their experiences, their grief. We went back to interview some of those we interviewed way back in October and November. We went back to interview them in October this year to tell them about the report. And we saw how even a year — after a year had passed since they lost the entirety of their families, the scars of their loss never left them. One of the parents whom we interviewed again told us, “I don’t want people’s sympathy. I want my children back.” And we know that no one can really bring his children back, but he also added that “At least what we can do and what I want you to do is to fight as hell for me to get the justice that my children deserve.” This is a parent who lost his wife, all of his three children, his sister and his parents. And these stories happened all over again.

We also talked to people who face daily humiliation while they are waiting on queues for bread, for clean water for hours upon hours, people who were displaced repeatedly. Some were displaced for 12 times. And if anything, why these people would agree to talk to you is because they are waiting for justice, is because they believe that at least it is our duty to bear witness to the ongoing carnage and to name it for what it is: genocide.

Now, concerning what’s happening in the West Bank, I think all the attempts of Israel is to annex more and more land from the West Bank, including through military orders, including through designating land in the West Bank as state land. It’s part of Israel’s onslaught, and full-throttled onslaught, on Palestinian existence, on this land, on Palestinian memory, on Palestinian presence. This fight, this onslaught, takes many shapes, many forms. In Gaza, we see it in the form of genocide. In the West Bank, we see it in the form of slow but really clear dispossession and mass displacement. More than 300 households have been displaced in the West Bank since the 7th of October, 2023. But what is common between these — among this architecture of dispossession, displacement, dehumanization, be it in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, or the Gaza Strip, is Israel’s ongoing attempt, with the support of the United States, to erase Palestinians from this land.

AMY GOODMAN: Budour Hassan, I want to thank you so much for being with us and also comment that today is the anniversary of the death of Refaat Alareer. He was killed one year ago today in an Israeli strike. His last tweet, “The Democratic Party and Biden are responsible for the Gaza genocide perpetrated by Israel.” Refaat Alareer is known around the world. He was a professor at Islamic University and an award-winning poet. Budour Hassan, thank you so much for being with us, Amnesty International researcher on Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. We will link to Amnesty’s report, which has just concluded Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza. The report is called “'You Feel Like You Are Subhuman': Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza.”

Next up, All That Remains, a new Al Jazeera documentary, follows a 13-year-old girl named Leyan from Gaza who lost her leg in an Israeli attack. She is now in Philadelphia, one of a thousand child amputees in just the first two months of the Israeli attack on Gaza. Stay with us."

Amnesty International: Israel Is Committing Genocide in Gaza with Full U.S. Support | Democracy Now!

Trump Gives First TV Interview Since Election: Live Updates - The New York Times

Transition Live Updates: Trump Lays Out Agenda in Extended Interview

(Amendment XIV
Section 1.
All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.)
The New York Times
December 8, 2024
\
Pinned
“I’m really looking to make our country successful,” Mr. Trump said in the interview.Credit...Dave Sanders for The New York Times

President-elect Donald J. Trump outlined an aggressive opening plan for his second term in an interview that aired on Sunday, vowing to fulfill his campaign promises to crack down on immigration and to pardon some of his most violent supporters on the first day of his new administration.

In his first sit-down broadcast network interview since being re-elected, Mr. Trump said he would move on the initial day of his term next month to pardon his backers who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and to try to bar automatic citizenship for children born in the United States to immigrant parents.

Mr. Trump also indicated that he would also fire the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, out of personal pique because “he invaded my home” and was not sufficiently sure at first whether Mr. Trump’s wound during an assassination attempt this year was caused by a bullet or shrapnel. And he said that the members of Congress who investigated his role in the Jan. 6 attack should be prosecuted and thrown behind bars.

“For what they did, honestly, they should go to jail,” Mr. Trump said of former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, and the rest of the bipartisan House committee that looked into the attack. He said he would not direct his new attorney general or F.B.I. director to pursue it but indicated that he expected them to do it on their own. “I think that they’ll have to look at that,” he said, “but I’m not going to” order them to.

At the same time, speaking with Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” on NBC, Mr. Trump seemed to signal that he would not appoint a special counsel to investigate President Biden and his family, as he once vowed. And he signaled that he would not take the most assertive position on several other issues, saying that he would not seek to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve or restrict the availability of abortion pills. And although he vowed to end birthright citizenship, Mr. Trump said he would try to work with Democrats to spare immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, known as Dreamers, from deportation.

“I’m really looking to make our country successful,” Mr. Trump said when asked about investigating Mr. Biden and his family. “I’m not looking to go back into the past. I’m looking to make our country successful. Retribution will be through success.”

Mr. Trump sought to downplay fears of Kash Patel, the far-right loyalist he plans to nominate to take over the F.B.I., who has vowed to “come after” the president-elect’s perceived enemies and named about 60 people he considered “members of the executive branch deep state” as the appendix to a 2023 book.

“No, I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump said when asked if Mr. Patel would pursue investigations against political adversaries. But the incoming president left the door open to it. “If they were crooked, if they did something wrong, if they have broken the law, probably,” he said. “They went after me. You know, they went after me, and I did nothing wrong.”

Mr. Trump’s comments about sending members of the Jan. 6 committee to jail come as Mr. Biden’s top aides are debating whether he should issue blanket pardons before leaving office to people like Ms. Cheney who have drawn the president-elect’s ire. Mr. Biden and his team have grown increasingly concerned that the selection of Mr. Patel indicates that Mr. Trump will follow through on his threats of “retribution” against those who have crossed him.

To install Mr. Patel, Mr. Trump would have to fire Mr. Wray, who has a 10-year term under a law meant to avoid politicizing the F.B.I. Mr. Wray was originally appointed by Mr. Trump in 2017, but the president-elect made clear he was personally aggrieved against him for the F.B.I. search of his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022 for classified documents that he had improperly taken after leaving the White House, even though the search warrant was approved by a judge.

“I can’t say I’m thrilled with him,” Mr. Trump said. “He invaded my home. I’m suing the country over it. He invaded Mar-a-Lago. I’m very unhappy with the things he’s done.”

He also cited Mr. Wray’s comment after the assassination attempt in July that it was not initially clear whether Mr. Trump was hit by a bullet or shrapnel. “When I was shot in the ear, he said, ‘Oh, maybe it was shrapnel,’” Mr. Trump said. “Where’s the shrapnel coming from? Is it coming from — is it coming from heaven? I don’t think so.”

Mr. Trump did not explicitly say he would fire Mr. Wray, but he left little doubt about it. “It would sort of seem pretty obvious that if Kash gets in, he’s going to be taking somebody’s place, right?” he said.

He also said, however, that he does not plan to fire Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve and another Trump appointee with whom he has grown disenchanted. “No, I don’t think so,” Mr. Trump said. “I don’t see it.”

The president-elect said that on his first day in office next month, he would sign a raft of executive actions on the economy, energy and the border. Two specifics that came up during the interview were issuing pardons for Jan. 6 attackers and ending birthright citizenship for children born in the United States.

Asked if he would pardon “everyone” who attacked the Capitol, Mr. Trump said, “Yeah. But I’m going to be acting very quickly.” Pressed, he added, “First day.”

As for birthright citizenship, Mr. Trump said he would try to reverse the constitutional guarantee that anyone born in the United States is a citizen regardless of the status of their parents. Many legal scholars have said the president has no power to overturn the right to citizenship guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, which says that “all persons born” in the United States “are citizens of the United States.”

Mr. Trump was vague about how he would proceed and whether he would seek to reverse the common interpretation of the amendment through executive action that would surely be challenged in the courts. He left open the idea that he would instead have to amend the Constitution, which would be unlikely to happen since it would require either a constitutional convention or the support of two-thirds of both houses of Congress and the approval of three-quarters of the states.

“We’re going to have to get it changed,” Mr. Trump said. “We’ll maybe have to go back to the people. But we have to end it.”

He repeatedly said falsely that “we’re the only country that has it.” In fact, the World Population Review lists 34 other countries that also have unrestricted birthright citizenship, including Canada and Mexico.

But Mr. Trump suggested that he would look for a way to keep the so-called Dreamers in the country. “We have to do something about the Dreamers because these are people that have been brought here at a very young age,” he said. “And many of these are middle-aged people now. They don’t even speak the language of their country. And yes, we’re going to do something about the Dreamers.”

He said he would “work with the Democrats on a plan” and blamed them for not protecting Dreamers. But in fact, it was President Barack Obama who first took executive action in 2012 to spare about 700,000 Dreamers from deportation through a policy called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA.

Mr. Trump, by contrast, tried to rescind the policy, arguing that it was unconstitutional, only to be blocked by the Supreme Court on procedural grounds.

President-elect Donald J. Trump exaggerated the United States’ trade deficits with Canada and Mexico.Credit...Jorge Duenes/Reuters

President-elect Donald J. Trump, in his first sit-down broadcast interview since his re-election last month, repeated several false and inaccurate claims on a range of topics that were staples of his 2024 campaign.

In the interview, which aired on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Mr. Trump miscast the effect of tariffs, vastly overstated the number of unauthorized immigrants released under the Biden administration, falsely claimed that crime was at “an all-time high,” misleadingly described military spending under the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and exaggerated his own polling, among other specious statements.

Here’s a breakdown.

Trade and the economy

Mr. Trump wrongly claimed there was “no inflation” under his first term and that inflation did not begin occurring until a year and a half into the Biden administration. (Annual inflation generally hovered between 1 and 2 percent from 2017 to 2020, and had increased to 4.7 percent in 2021.)

He exaggerated the United States’ trade deficits with Canada and Mexico as $100 billion and $300 billion, describing the figures as a subsidy. (The trade deficit in goods and services was $41 billion with Canada and $162 billion with Mexico; a deficit simply means that one country’s consumers are buying more from the other nation, not giving money away.)

He falsely claimed that European nations “don’t take our cars, they don’t take our food product, they don’t take anything.” (Europe is the United States’ second-largest car export market and American goods exported to Europe totaled almost $415 billion in 2023.)

And he claimed that tariffs “cost Americans nothing.” (Economists overwhelmingly agree that the costs of tariffs are passed on to consumers.)

Immigration

Mr. Trump falsely claimed more than 13,000 immigrants who had committed murder were “released into our country over the last three years.” (The figure, from Immigration and Customs Enforcement data, referred to immigrants who were currently not detained by immigration authorities, though they may be in prisons or jails, and included those who had entered the country over the past 40 years.)

He falsely claimed that prisons in Venezuela “are at the lowest point in terms of emptiness that they’ve ever been.” (Venezuela’s prisons are overcrowded and the population is about level with that of 2021.)

He hyperbolically claimed that unauthorized immigrants in a Colorado town were “literally taking over apartment complexes and doing it with impunity.” (City officials said this had not happened.)

And he falsely claimed that “we’re the only country” that grants citizenship to any child born within its borders. (More than 30 others do.)

Other topics

Mr. Trump falsely claimed that “crime is at an all-time high.” (It is not).

He claimed that he “was able to get hundreds of billions of dollars put into NATO just by a tough attitude.” (He can claim some credit for more countries in the alliance meeting a goal of spending on their own militaries, but they made that pledge in 2014.)

And he claimed that “just prior to Covid coming in, I had polls that were the highest.” (He had a 48 percent approval rating in late February 2020, according to a Gallup poll, lower than all but three of his predecessors dating to Harry S. Truman at a similar time into their presidencies.)

Dec. 8, 2024, 12:01 p.m. ET

Representative Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican who is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, gave a tepid response on CBS’s "Face The Nation" when asked about Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard.

“I obviously differ a great deal in a number of areas with both her judgment and her background and experience, but what I do trust is the Senate process,” Turner said. “She will go through the process, and I think there’ll be significant debate and evaluation.”

Credit...Eric Lee/The New York Times
Dec. 8, 2024, 11:06 a.m. ET

Representative Byron Donalds, Republican of Florida and a staunch supporter of President-elect Donald J. Trump, said on ABC that the incoming administration would deport “at a minimum” two million undocumented immigrants. “The enticement of coming to America is not going to be what it was under Joe Biden,” he added.

Jerome H. Powell, the chairman of the Federal Reserve, speaking to lawmakers in July. His term as chair expires in 2026.Credit...Cheriss May for The New York Times

President-elect Donald J. Trump said he has no plans to fire the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome H. Powell, addressing an uncertainty that has been hanging over the politically independent central bank.

Mr. Trump said over the summer that he did not plan to fire Mr. Powell, but made that comment somewhat conditional on Mr. Powell doing “the right thing” — presumably lowering interest rates. He was more definitive in a new interview with NBC, airing Sunday morning.

“No, I don’t think so. I don’t see it,” Trump said when asked if he would remove Mr. Powell, whose term as chair expires in May 2026. “I think if I told him to, he would. But if I asked him to, he probably wouldn’t. But if I told him to, he would.”

Mr. Powell has said that he does not think that the president has the legal authority to remove him — a position many lawyers agree with, although the idea has never been tested in courts. Mr. Powell has also said that he would not leave the position if asked.

Fed officials are insulated from the White House, giving them a level of independence meant to allow them the freedom to make hard short-term decisions — like keeping interest rates high — that are good for the longer-term health of the economy.

Mr. Trump originally elevated Mr. Powell to the role of Fed chair in 2017, but quickly soured on his pick: He wanted Mr. Powell’s Fed to lower rates more quickly.

He flirted with firing or demoting the Fed chair, but found that doing so would be legally difficult, if not impossible. He settled for blasting the central bank and its leader on social media and in public remarks, calling Mr. Powell an “enemy” and Fed officials “boneheads.”

President Biden chose in 2021 to renominate Mr. Powell, who is now serving out a four-year leadership term that began the next year.

Dec. 8, 2024, 10:22 a.m. ET

The interview is over. Trump made news on a few fronts: saying he wants a deal over the "Dreamers"; saying he doesn't plan to fire the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell; claiming he won’t restrict access to abortion pills. But it was his mixed signals that were most revealing. He said he would not direct his Justice Department to prosecute his political enemies. But he also said that Jack Smith was “corrupt” and that the members of the Jan. 6 congressional committee belonged in prison. By picking staunch loyalists like Pam Bondi for attorney general and Kash Patel for F.B.I. director, Trump does not need to issue direct orders.

Dec. 8, 2024, 10:01 a.m. ET

Welker gets Trump to commit to releasing his full medical records given he’ll be the oldest president to be sworn into office. There are reasons to be skeptical about this, given Trump has given similar assurances in the past and has reverted to releasing brief and vague doctor notes.

Dec. 8, 2024, 10:01 a.m. ET

Trump repeats his promise that he will not make cuts to Social Security, but would make it “more efficient.” He also said he would not raise the eligibility age.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:59 a.m. ET

Trump claims he will deliver a message of “unity” and “success” in his second inaugural address. His first one — shorthanded as the “American carnage” speech — was notably dark.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:40 a.m. ET

Trump does not give an unequivocal yes when asked if he’d commit to the U.S. staying in NATO while he’s in office. “If they’re paying their bills, and if I think they’re doing a fair — they’re treating us fairly, the answer is absolutely I’d stay with NATO,” he says, repeating a statement he’s been making for the last couple of years on the campaign trail.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:35 a.m. ET

Trump says Ukraine should “probably” expect less aid from the U.S. when he gets into power. When she asks if he’s spoken to Putin, Trump first says he has not, and then he backtracks and says he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:34 a.m. ET

In this interview, Trump is sending clear public signals to his nominees that he wants retribution, although he is then saying he will not direct them to act. But by saying that Jack Smith is “corrupt” and that members of the Jan. 6 committee belong in prison, Trump is making no secret of what he wants his Justice Department to do.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:33 a.m. ET

Trump tells the host, Kristen Welker, that everyone who served on the congressional committee that investigated Jan. 6 should go to prison. But he then says “no,” when Welker presses him on whether he would direct his attorney general to send them to jail.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:31 a.m. ET

Welker pushes Trump on whether he’ll fulfill his campaign promise to appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after President Biden and his family. Trump says that no, he won’t do it, but adds that the decision will be up to Pam Bondi, his pick for attorney general.

Credit...Kenny Holston/The New York Times
Dec. 8, 2024, 9:31 a.m. ET

Trump is trying to distance himself from any efforts by his administration to investigate his political enemies, saying it will be up to his people at the Justice Department. But Trump appears to have confidence he will have leaders at the department who will do what he wants without having to ask.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:30 a.m. ET

Welker asks Trump whether he will direct his choice for F.B.I. leader, Kash Patel, to prosecute people on the list Patel has in his book of 60 people that he calls members of the “deep state.” Trump says no, but he then adds, tellingly: “If they think that somebody was dishonest or crooked or a corrupt politician, I think he probably has an obligation to do it.”

Credit...Haiyun Jiang for The New York Times
Dec. 8, 2024, 9:30 a.m. ET

Pressed further on whether Patel will pursue investigations against his political enemies, Trump says, “No, I don’t think so,” but when pushed on whether he wants to see this happen, he makes clear that retribution is still very much on his mind: “If they were crooked, if they did something wrong, if they have broken the law, probably. They went after me. You know, they went after me and I did nothing wrong.”

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:19 a.m. ET

Asked whether he will restrict the availability of abortion pills when he’s in office, Trump says no, but leaves himself a little wiggle room: “I’ll probably stay with exactly what I’ve been saying for the last two years. And the answer is no,” he says. Welker follows up by asking, “You commit to that?” And Trump says: “Well, I commit. I mean, are — things do — things change.”

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:18 a.m. ET

Welker presses Trump repeatedly on whether he plans to try to overturn Obamacare again, as he tried in his first term. Trump gives a rambling and unclear answer, but the overall impression is that he does not yet have a plan for a replacement. “If we come up with a better answer, I would present that answer to Democrats and to everybody else and I’d do something about it,” he said.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:18 a.m. ET

Trump makes two contradictory statements about his immigration plans. On one hand, asked whether his plan is to deport everyone who is in the U.S. illegally: “I think you have to do it.” But later, when asked about the “Dreamers” — people who were brought to America illegally as children — Trump claims he “will work with the Democrats on a plan” to help the Dreamers stay in the country.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:17 a.m. ET

Trump says he will not try to force the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, to step down. Trump does not have the legal authority to do that, so doing so would force a legal fight that would most likely roil markets and end up at the Supreme Court. Asked whether he plans to pressure Powell to quit, Trump says, “No, I don’t.”

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:17 a.m. ET

If any chief executives were hoping Trump would back away from his promised tariffs, this interview would have put an end to that. Trump insists that tariffs are “beautiful,” that they’ll make America rich, cost Americans nothing and he’s claimed, absurdly, that he’s “stopped wars with tariffs.”

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:14 a.m. ET

In his "Meet the Press" interview, Trump continues to say he disagrees with economists who say his tariffs will make goods more expensive for American consumers. But in her interview, Kristen Welker extracts a notable concession: Pressed on whether he can guarantee American families won’t pay more as a result of tariffs, Trump says: “I can’t guarantee anything. I can’t guarantee tomorrow.”

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:00 a.m. ET

This is Donald Trump’s first big TV interview since winning the election more than a month ago. That alone is remarkable; in the nine years I’ve covered Trump I’ve never seen him so willing to cede the spotlight as he’s been over the past month. Advisers say he was at the brink of physical exhaustion at the end of the campaign and has been content to mostly relax at Mar-a-Lago and receive a constant stream of flatterers, including world leaders.

Dec. 8, 2024, 9:00 a.m. ET

NBC released a preview of the interview that shows Trump standing by his embattled pick to lead the Pentagon, Pete Hegseth. Kristen Welker is likely to grill Trump about his other choices, including Kash Patel to lead the F.B.I., and press him on some of his most controversial plans, such as his desire to exact revenge against his political enemies.

President-elect Donald J. Trump was in Paris on Saturday for the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral.Credit...Dmitry Kostyukov for The New York Times

President-elect Donald J. Trump made a splashy re-entry onto the global stage on Saturday as he attended the reopening ceremony of the Notre-Dame Cathedral, sitting in the front row between President Emmanuel Macron of France and the French first lady, Brigitte Macron.

Mr. Trump was joined by Elon Musk, who is helping run Mr. Trump’s new government-efficiency panel. President Biden, whose international relevance wanes at the close of his term, was not present. Jill Biden, his wife and first lady, took her spot next to Mrs. Macron.

Mr. Trump’s first foreign trip since winning the presidential election in November provided a diplomatic undercurrent to the celebration of the cathedral, renovated since a 2019 fire. Before the ceremony, Mr. Trump arrived at Mr. Macron’s office at Élysée Palace, where the men shook hands and briefly hugged. Volodymyr Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, also met with Mr. Macron and Mr. Trump there, where he lobbied for Mr. Trump’s support in the war against Russia.

Mr. Zelensky and Mr. Trump last met in late September, when Mr. Trump was still a presidential candidate. Mr. Zelensky stood beside Mr. Trump silently that day as Mr. Trump told reporters that both sides wanted the Russia-Ukraine war to end, including its instigator, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Mr. Trump was among the last major leaders to arrive at Notre-Dame on Saturday, and when he did, he was greeted with muted applause. Mr. Zelensky had received a louder ovation.

What came next was more akin to a scene on the campaign trail: Mr. Trump walked down a rope line of world leaders, shaking their hands one by one, as the largely seated audience behind them watched. Some clutched their phones to record the moment. Afterward, Mr. Trump took a seat by himself, until the Macrons sat on either side of him.

Mr. Macron was eager to use the world stage to celebrate his government’s success in restoring the cathedral with a speed that critics had not expected. But the reopening arrived at an untimely moment for the government: Michel Barnier, France’s prime minister, lost a no-confidence vote on Wednesday, leaving it rudderless. Mr. Barnier was forced to resign, while Mr. Macron must pick his successor.

Mr. Trump also met on Saturday with Prince William in Paris.

Many nations are bracing for a second Trump administration, and some foreign leaders have already made clear their interest in working with the president-elect. Mr. Trump spoke with Mr. Macron by phone at least once as he planned his trip to Paris.

In the past, Mr. Macron has showered Mr. Trump with flattery, and he invited him to attend Bastille Day ceremonies in 2017. But their relationship deteriorated in 2018 when Mr. Macron supported the idea of a true European military defense, one that could counter rivals like Russia but also the United States.

President Emmanuel Macron of France poses with President-elect Donald J. Trump and President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine ahead of a trilateral meeting at the Élysée Palace in Paris.Credit...James Hill for The New York Times

President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine met with President-elect Donald J. Trump in Paris on Saturday, the first face-to-face encounter between the two since Mr. Trump won the U.S. presidential election last month after claiming that he would end the war in 24 hours.

Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky were brought together by President Emmanuel Macron of France at the Élysée Palace on Saturday evening, ahead of the Notre-Dame Cathedral’s grand reopening. It was a diplomatic coup for the French leader, who is otherwise facing a political crisis at home after his government fell this week.

While it was not immediately clear what was said in the meeting, Mr. Zelensky was expected to press Ukraine’s case to Mr. Trump, amid concerns that his pledge to end the war quickly could leave Kyiv sacrificing substantial territory to Russia and lacking the security guarantees needed to deter future aggression.

Mr. Zelensky said afterward that it had been a “productive meeting” and he thanked Mr. Trump for his determination and Mr. Macron for organizing the encounter.

“We talked about our people, the situation on the battlefield and a just peace for Ukraine. We all want to end this war as quickly and fairly as possible,” the Ukrainian leader said in a statement, adding that they had “agreed to continue working together.”

The meeting appeared to be part of a broader diplomatic push by Ukraine to engage with Mr. Trump’s incoming administration and influence its plans to end to the war with Russia in a way that aligns as much as possible with Kyiv’s interests. Earlier this week, a delegation of senior Ukrainian officials traveled to the United States to meet with several of Mr. Trump’s key appointees.

“What is happening now is just the first act of a prelude to the negotiations to come,” Volodymyr Fesenko, a Ukrainian political analyst, wrote in a post on Facebook about the Ukrainian delegation’s visit to the United States.

Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Zelensky were slated to attend the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, but it remained uncertain until the last moment whether they would meet. They eventually spoke at the Élysée Palace, in what appeared to be a carefully choreographed entrance.

Mr. Macron greeted Mr. Trump at the Élysée Palace at 4:45 p.m. local time. Around 45 minutes later, Mr. Zelensky’s car pulled into the palace courtyard. The Ukrainian president stepped out, ascended the red-carpeted stairs, and entered the 18th-century building to join the French and American leaders.

They posed for pictures ahead of the trilateral meeting, which lasted about 30 minutes. “United States, Ukraine, and France. Together on this historic day. Gathered for Notre-Dame. Let us continue our joint efforts for peace and security,” Mr. Macron wrote in a social media post which included a picture of them talking under the gilded halls of the Élysée Palace.

Then the three leaders shook hands at they exited the palace, heading to the reopening ceremony of Notre-Dame Cathedral.

The event had been seen by Ukraine as a chance to press its case to the dozens of world leaders in attendance. Mr. Zelensky said he had met with Karl Nehammer, the Chancellor of Austria, and Salome Zourabichvili, the president of Georgia.

Sounding out Mr. Trump on his plans to end the war has been a top priority for Ukraine. These plans have so far been unclear, but officials in Kyiv are concerned that Mr. Trump’s vague pledge to end the war in 24 hours could result in Russia keeping the territory it has captured and ignoring Ukraine’s demand to join NATO as a security guarantee to prevent further attacks.

Ukraine’s outreach to Mr. Trump’s team has coincided with an apparent shift in Kyiv’s public stance on peace talks. After years of vowing not to cede territory to Russia, Mr. Zelensky has recently suggested he would consider doing so as a way to end the war, in return for NATO membership. Ukraine, he added, would then seek to regain its occupied territory through negotiations.

The change in position has been seen as a way for Ukraine to show Mr. Trump that it is ready to make concessions as part of negotiations. By contrast, Ukraine officials have insisted that Russia didn’t want to engage in negotiations, especially as its troops are steadily gaining ground on the battlefield.

Before Saturday’s meeting, Mr. Zelensky had already spoken with Mr. Trump three times this year: in a phone call over the summer, during a meeting in New York in September and in another call shortly after Mr. Trump’s election last month.

In an interview with Sky News last week, Mr. Zelensky said he wanted to work with Mr. Trump “directly” and was open to his proposals. “I want to share with him ideas, and I want to hear from his ideas,” he said.

Trump Gives First TV Interview Since Election: Live Updates - The New York Times