‘Steps away’ from solution to get food and aid to Gaza, says state department
The state department said a solution to be able to deliver food aid to Gaza was “steps away” and an announcement was coming shortly, although it fell short of detailing what the plan would entail, Reuters reports.
Gaza is on the brink of catastrophe after two months of a total blockade by Israel, aid workers say, with many families down to one meal a day. Medical officials report rising cases of acute malnutrition, and community kitchens that served 1m meals a day are shutting down for lack of basic essentials. Aid agencies say they have distributed all remaining stocks of food. Dozens of bakeries that supplied vital free bread closed last month.
I’ll bring you more on this as we get it.
Key events
Peter Walker
My colleague Peter Walker has this very helpful explainer from a UK perspective of the key points of the US-UK trade deal that was announced to be under discussion today.
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Tariffs for UK cars imported into the US will be cut from 27.5% to 10%, up to a maximum of 100,000 cars a year, close to total exports last year (after that the tariff will be 25%). This was, Starmer said, a “huge and important reduction” – even if it is capped, and still a tariff.
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Agriculture is the most potentially tricky area of the deal, not least due to concerns among UK voters – and farmers – about chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef. The result was hailed by Downing Street as “a win for both nations”. As ever, the devil could be in the detail. Government officials said there had been no compromise on food standards, while the deal would open exclusive access for UK beef farmers to the US. But, it also includes £5bn worth of agricultural exports from the US to the UK, with the US agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, saying the deal would “exponentially increase our beef exports” to the UK.
Read Peter’s full piece here:
‘Everything dope, including the pope’: US celebrates Leo XIV as first American pontiff
Jenna Amatulli
Americans are celebrating after US cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who will be known as Pope Leo XIV, was announced as the next pope.
“Congratulations to Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just named Pope. It is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope. What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!” Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after the pope, who was born in Chicago, appeared on the Vatican balcony in Rome, Italy on Thursday.
Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson quipped on X about Prevost’s appointment:
Everything dope, including the Pope, comes from Chicago! Congratulations to the first American Pope Leo XIV! We hope to welcome you back home soon.
The US Embassy to the Holy See also lauded the new pope on X:
With joy we extend our heartfelt congratulations to the first Pope from the United States of America, His Holiness Robert Francis Prevost, as Pope Leo XIV, elected as the 267th Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church.
As Aaron Reichlin-Melnick of the American Immigration Council astutely notes on X, the new pope didn’t post on his X account at all in 2024, but in 2025 he has posted twice and reposted three times.
Of his own posts, Robert Prevost – now Pope Leo XIV – posted an article criticizing vice-president JD Vance’s take on Jesus, and posted another article critiquing Vance’s statements on the administration’s deportation policies. Two of his reposts were to do with the health of the late Pope Francis, and his most recent repost was criticism of Donald Trump and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele’s laughter at Kilmar Ábrego García (who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration and whose reeturn to the US the supreme court has ordered the administration to facilitate).
Earlier, Trump said he looked forward to meeting with the new pope, who he had “realised” was the first American to hold the position. How Pope Leo’s personal views will influence their relationship going forward will be interesting to see. Indeed, Trump had a difficult relationship with the late Pope Francis, a vocal critic of many of his policies – particularly his crackdown on immigration which, as recently as February this year, Francis called a “major crisis”.
Trump to pick new top DC prosecutor after controversial Ed Martin fails to secure Senate support over January 6 comments
Donald Trump said he will nominate a new candidate to serve as Washington DC’s top federal prosecutor, after his first pick Ed Martin, who holds the job on an interim basis, failed to garner enough support to advance in the Senate.
“I was disappointed. A lot of people were disappointed, but that’s the way it works sometimes,” Trump said in the Oval Office earlier. “We have somebody else that we’ll be announcing over the next two days who’s going to be great.” A spokesperson for Martin’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
A source close to the Senate judiciary committee earlier this week said the committee would not move forward with a vote before Martin’s interim term expires on 20 May.
Republican senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who sits on the committee, appeared to deal Martin’s nomination a fatal blow when he told reporters he could not support him because of Martin’s past comments which downplayed the January 6, 2021 US Capitol attack.
Senator Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the panel, said he was “relieved” that the nomination was withdrawn and that “Martin’s record made it clear that he does not have the temperament or judgment” for the top US law enforcement job for the nation’s capital.
Per Politico: “Martin has spent the last few years advocating for January 6 defendants and helping organize their legal defense. He has embraced conspiracy theories about the attack and the results of the 2020 election and he has spoken favorably about some of the most egregious perpetrators of the riot.
“He also has also drawn scrutiny for his evasive answers to the judiciary committee about his relationship with January 6 defendant Timothy Hale-Cusanelli, who had been accused of openly anti-Semitic behavior, and omission of dozens of appearances on Russian state media in recent years.”
It was unclear what is next for Martin. Trump said he would consider giving him another role in the administration, potentially in the department of justice.
Trump congratulates Robert Francis Prevost for being elected Pope Leo XIV – the first American to become pontiff
Donald Trump congratulated Pope Leo on his election to head the Catholic Church on Thursday, writing on Truth Social that it “is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope”.
US cardinal Robert Prevost, who took the name Leo XIV, is originally from Chicago. Trump went on:
What excitement, and what a Great Honor for our Country. I look forward to meeting Pope Leo XIV. It will be a very meaningful moment!
For more from the Vatican, my colleague Jakub Krupa has been live-blogging the moment:
UK farmers’ union says it will be looking ‘very closely’ at standards used to produce US beef
Helena Horton
Tom Bradshaw, president of the UK’s National Farmers’ Union, told the Guardian he is concerned the beef imported from the US will be produced to a lower standard than the UK product. He said:
80% of our beef diet comes from grass so it’ll be interesting to see exactly what the standards for the imported beef is. We are unclear on that as the details are still being worked on.
Many beef cattle are fed with soy, which can be bad for the environment as it comes from sensitive areas including the Amazon rainforest.
Bradshaw said the “main focus” in their recent lobbying was on hormone-treated beef, but said “the large US beef lots were also a big concern for our members – we will be watching that very closely.”
The US has vast factory farms for its beef, which outcompete those in the UK, farmers fear. Bradshaw added:
What we need to look at is how the US beef is produced, what are the health and welfare standards and what is the diet. [British] beef is one of the most sustainable in the world.
However, he said he was pleased the UK secured reciprocal access to the beef market, adding:
We’ve had a very clear ask that we wanted reciprocal access back, and the red lines on animal health and welfare standards have thankfully been maintained. We cannot see agriculture used as a pawn to shoulder the burden of tariffs.
US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said she hopes to expand today’s agreement to include “all meats” and that she will be visiting the UK next week to make this point, adding: “There is no industry that has been treated more unfairly than our agriculture industry.”
Bradshaw replied “good luck with that,” adding:
The [UK] government is trying to negotiate with the EU [which also has high food standards] at the same time so that sounds unfeasible.
US agriculture secretary says she hopes US-UK trade deal can be expanded to cover ‘all meats’
Helena Horton
The US-UK trade deal includes £5bn worth of agricultural exports. The farming sector in the UK has been very concerned about farmers being undercut with cheap products from the US, which has lower environmental standards for its food than the UK. They say the large beef feedlots in the US outcompete the smaller farms in the UK.
US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins told reporters:
This [trade deal] is going to exponentially increase our beef exports. American beef is the crown jewel of American agriculture for the world.
UK ministers have been clear that chlorinated chicken and hormone-treated beef will not be included in any deal, but Rollins said she hopes to expand today’s agreement to include “all meats” and that she will be visiting the UK next week to make this point, adding:
There is no industry that has been treated more unfairly than our agriculture industry.
Donald Trump, however, mentioned that US agriculture could end up being produced to higher health and environmental standards under the leadership of his health chief Robert F Kennedy Jr, adding:
Bobby Kennedy is probably heading towards your system.
The UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs sources said imports of hormone-treated beef or chlorinated chicken will remain illegal, and that the deal will open up exclusive access for UK beef farmers to the US market. They said only a few countries such as Australia have this access.
Trump asks supreme court to allow revocation of migrants’ legal ‘parole’ status
Away from the trade announcements, Reuters reports that Donald Trump’s administration asked the supreme court to intervene in its bid to revoke the temporary legal status granted by Joe Biden to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the US.
The justice department requested that the justices put on hold Boston-based US district judge Indira Talwani’s order halting the administration’s move to terminate the immigration “parole” granted to the migrants under Biden.
The dispute involves immigration “parole” – a form of temporary permission under American law to be in the country for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit”.
In a bid to reduce illegal crossings at the US border with Mexico, Biden in 2022 allowed Venezuelans who entered the US by air to request a two-year parole if they passed security checks and had a US financial sponsor. He later expanded that process to Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans.
About 530,000 people were paroled through the policy, allowing them to live and work in the US, before Trump took office in January.
Trump called for the end of these programs in an executive order signed on 20 January, his first day back in office. The department of domeland security moved to terminate the programs in March, including cutting short the two-year parole grants for about 400,000 people.
The administration said revoking the parole status would make it easier to place the migrants in a fast-track deportation process known as “expedited removal”.
The plaintiffs, a group of individuals granted parole and sponsors, sued administration officials claiming the government violated federal law governing the actions of agencies.
Talwani in April found that the law governing such parole did not allow for the program’s blanket termination, instead requiring a case-by-case review. The Boston-based 1st US circuit court of appeals declined to put that decision on hold.
Further to that, a US department of commerce press release includes further agricultural products that are part of the “unprecedented access” to the UK market as part of the future deal. It reads:
The deal removes longstanding UK market barriers creating a $5 billion opportunity of new exports for US farmers, ranchers, and producers. These exports include ethanol, beef, fruits, vegetables, animal feed, tobacco, shellfish, chemicals, textiles, and more. The US-UK trade deal will usher in a golden age of new opportunity for US exporters, establishing a long-sought level playing field for American producers.
That’s in line with what Trump posted on Truth Social earlier today. But it’s interesting to note that those other products weren’t included in the announcements from the White House or from the UK side.
We also have to remember that the details are not finalized on the future trade deal, so it’s unclear if the above is merely what’s been up for discussion as opposed to what’s been broadly agreed to.
More to the point – the UK already imports a small amount of fruit, vegetables, shellfish, animal feed, cereals, coffee, tea, cocoa, sugar, dairy, eggs, live animals, and meat from the US. According to the latest ONS figures that was only worth £1.1bn in 2023, with meat by far the smallest category, worth a mere £5.7m.
So it’s unclear just how “new” these markets are for US goods as the Trump administration is trying to frame it – it’s probably more accurate to say that those above categories are where the Trump administration thinks it could build on and grow its exports in existing areas. Sky News has a helpful breakdown.
In terms of how the two nations are framing the outlines of the future deal so far, there seem to be some key differences, for instance with regard to agriculture.
The White House fact sheet and Trump makes much of the access to be gained by the US agricultural sector to the UK market as part of an agreement. According to the fact sheet, the future deal includes access for “American beef, ethanol, and virtually all of the products produced by our great farmers”.
Again suggesting that an agreement would include ethanol and beef among other things, it goes on:
This trade deal will significantly expand US market access in the UK, creating a $5 billion opportunity for new exports for US farmers, ranchers, and producers.
This includes more than $700 million in ethanol exports and $250 million in other agricultural products, like beef.
By contrast, however, the UK Department for Business news release only mentions ethanol and beef and says the arrangement would be “reciprocal” (the White House details only American access to the UK market and doesn’t mention that it will work both ways).
The British department’s release reads:
In a win for both nations, we have agreed new reciprocal market access on beef – with UK farmers now benefiting from a quota for 13,000 metric tonnes. There will be no weakening of UK food standards on imports.
We will also remove the tariff on ethanol – which is used to reduce Greenhouse Gas emissions from road transport.
The US has long sought greater access to the British agricultural market, but hasn’t secured it amid concerns that US food products are produced to lower environmental and animal welfare standards than in the UK. You can read more about those concerns here.
Indeed when he spoke earlier to reporters, British PM Keir Starmer said with regard to agriculture:
We said we had red lines on standards, particularly in agriculture. We’ve kept to those standards.
He also said the deal would “grant unprecedented market access for British farmers without compromising our high standards”.
Here’s the White House’s fact sheet about the framework of the future US-UK trade deal (remember, the details are not yet finalized).
And here’s the UK Department for Business’s news release about it.
Andrew Sparrow
Starmer says he trusts Trump to stick to deal he has agreed
Q: How do you know President Trump won’t just post something on Truth Social ripping this all up?
Starmer says there is a written text. He says he and Trump trust each other.
We respect each other, the president and I, and we trust each other, and have trusted each other through this process, each of us mandating our negotiating teams to get the best deal for our respective countries.
Andrew Sparrow
Starmer ducks question about whether, despite deal, UK still worse off due to Trump’s tariffs
Q: [From the BBC] Is the UK better off under this deal than it was six months ago, before President Trump introduced his tariffs?
Starmer rejects the premise of the question.
The question you should be asking is, is it better than where we were yesterday?
And I think if you should come out when you finished asking me questions and talk to the workforce here, because what this does is to reduce to zero the tariffs on steel and aluminium. Look how important that is.
Reduces massively from 27.5% to 10% of tariffs on the cars that we export – so important to JLR, actually to the sector generally. But JLR in particular, who sell so many cars into the American market.
And of course, it also includes pharmaceuticals, some really important measures. Obviously, we don’t have tariffs yet [in pharmaceuticals], but we’ve got within the deal significantly preferential treatment whatever happens in the future. So this is hugely important for our pharmaceutical sector as well.
In addition to that, we said we had red lines on standards, particularly in agriculture. We’ve kept to those standards.
Andrew Sparrow
Starmer says deal means tariffs will be cut from 27.5% to 10% on 100,000 car exports to US every year
Following Trump’s press conference, British PM Keir Starmer also spoke about the deal and took questions from reporters. I’ll now post some of the key lines from that from my colleague Andrew Sparrow.
Starmer said:
This is a deal that will protect British businesses and save thousands of jobs In Britain, really important, skilled, well paid jobs. It will remove tariffs on British steel and aluminium, reducing them to zero. It will provide vital assurances for our life sciences sector, so important to our economy, and grant unprecedented market access for British farmers without compromising our high standards.
And he says the deal means US tariffs on cars from the UK will be cut from 27.5% to 10% for 100,000 vehicles every year.
Donald Trump has once again criticized Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, for not lowering interest rates.
Speaking to reporters, he said:
“If he would lower interest rates like China did, like I think UK did, like numerous other countries have done, it’s like jet fuel. It would be great, but he doesn’t want to do it. I think he doesn’t want to do it. Probably he’s not, he’s not in love with me. I think that’s right. It’s sort of a crazy reason, but that’s the way life is. Anybody in his position would be learned. It would be like jet fuel.”
Trump went on to claim that grocery and oil prices are down, saying that even without lowered interest rates, “We’re doing well.” He also claimed that “Eggs are down.”
Yet according to federal government data, since Trump’s inauguration, price hikes for food have increased and gas prices have largely stayed the same. Moreover, egg prices have increased, rising by almost 6% in March despite inflation dropping from 2.8% to 2.4% from February.
Callum Jones
In a sign of how quickly UK and US officials raced to announce an agreement, Donald Trump said on Thursday “final details” were still being written up.
For months, as economists warned his controversial trade strategy risked triggering a recession, Trump and his closest officials insisted it would set the stage for the White House to hammer out dozens of trade deals.
But earlier this week, the US president pushed back against “everyone” asking when such agreements would be struck. “We don’t have to sign deals,” he said in the Oval Office on Tuesday. “They have to sign deals with us. They want our market. We don’t want a piece of their market. We don’t care about their market.”
US deals with other leading economies including India and Japan, while repeatedly mooted by administration officials, have yet to come to fruition. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, claimed this week that talks were under way with 17 trading partners.
By Thursday morning in the Oval Office, Trump took a different tack. US officials had “many meetings planned”, the president said, noting that Bessent would be meeting Chinese counterparts in Switzerland on Saturday. “Every country wants to be making deals.”
Trump says deal ‘maxed out’ as UK ambassador calls it ‘starting point’
Donald Trump has called the deal between the UK and the US a “maxed-out deal.”
In response to the press question: “You said this was a comprehensive deal but [British ambassador] Peter Mandelson has said this is only a starting point” and whether he is overstating the reach and significance of the deal, Trump said:
“This is a maxed-out deal that we’re going to make bigger and we make it bigger through growth, but we have tremendous assets involved.”
He went on to add:
“There’ll be changes made, there’ll be adjustments made because we’re flexible, we’ll see things that we can do even better. But it’s very conclusive, and we, we think everyone’s going to be happy.”
Addressing reporters earlier, Mandelson said the deal “provides us with the platform, the springboard to what I think will be even more valuable for both our countries in the future.”
Mandelson also said this deal is “not the end” and is instead “just the beginning,” adding:
“There is more we can do in reducing tariffs and trade barriers so as to open up our markets to each other even more than we’re agreeing today.”
