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Pope Leo XIV calls for end of Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and

Pope Leo XIV called Wednesday for sufficient humanitarian aid to be allowed into war-ravaged Gaza, where humanitarian agencies say a total blockade has sparked critical food and medicine shortages. Israel has, under massive pressure from the U.S. and other allies, started to allow more aid into Gaza this week, but it has not eased its military operations, and aid agencies say the amount of humanitarian goods entering the strip is nowhere near enough to meet the urgent needs of a battered civilian population.

The United Nations announced Monday that it had been cleared to send in aid for the first time since Israel imposed a total blockade on March 2, sparking severe shortages of food and medicine.

“The situation in the Gaza Strip is worrying and painful,” the pope said during his first weekly general audience in St. Peter’s Square. “I renew my heartfelt appeal to allow the entry of sufficient humanitarian aid and to put an end to the hostilities, the heartbreaking price of which is paid by children, the elderly, the sick.”

Leo, who was elected on May 8 to be the Catholic Church’s first U.S. pope, has made peace an early theme of his papacy, calling for a ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war.

Pope Leo XIV blesses the crowd at the end of his first weekly general audience at St. Peter’s Square, at the Vatican, May 21, 2025.

FILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty


The Israeli army has stepped up its offensive in Gaza in recent days, with the enclave’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health saying some 600 people have been killed over the last week alone. Israel says both the restrictions on aid and the stepped-up military campaign are aimed at pressuring Hamas — long designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. and Israel — to release the remaining 58 hostages held in Gaza and to accept a ceasefire on Israeli terms.

Israel has vowed to carry on with its war until the hostages, about 20 of whom are believed to be alive, are free, Hamas is defeated and disarmed and its leaders are sent into exile. The war was sparked by the Hamas-led, Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel, which killed some 1,200 people and saw 251 taken as hostages into Gaza.

The health ministry, which does not differentiate between combatant and civilian casualties, says more than 53,500 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s retaliatory war, many of them women and children.

Charity calls Israeli easing of Gaza blockade “a smokescreen”

The amount of aid Israel has started to allow into war-ravaged Gaza is not nearly enough and is “a smokescreen to pretend the siege is over,” the MSF aid group said Wednesday.

“The Israeli authorities’ decision to allow a ridiculously inadequate amount of aid into Gaza after months of an air-tight siege signals their intention to avoid the accusation of starving people in Gaza, while in fact keeping them barely surviving,” said Pascale Coissard, Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) emergency coordinator in the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis. “The current authorization for 100 [trucks] per day, when the situation is so dire, is woefully inadequate.”

“Meanwhile, evacuation orders are continuing to uproot the population, while Israeli forces are still subjecting health facilities to intensive attacks,” Coissard said.

Palestinians, struggling with hunger due to an Israeli blockade, wait in line to receive hot meals distributed by charity organizations in Jabalia Refugee Camp, in Gaza City, Gaza, May 17, 2025.

Mahmoud ssa/Anadolu/Getty


Israel said 93 trucks had entered Gaza from Israel on Tuesday, but the United Nations said the aid had been held up.

Asked Tuesday about Israel’s latest moves, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters in Washington that the Trump administration had been “pleased to see that aid is starting to flow in again.’

“I understand your point that it’s not in sufficient amounts,” he told a journalist. “But we were pleased to see that decision was made. I understand another 100 trucks are behind that and maybe more in the next few days.”

Rubio said the U.S. was working with the U.N.’s World Food Program “to walk through some of the ideas and plans they had for distribution” of aid inside Gaza, but he stressed that in the administration’s view, “ultimately the answer here is for this [war] to end, hopefully with the elimination of Hamas, because the people of Gaza deserve a more prosperous, peaceful future, which they will never have as long as Hamas exists.”

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Pentagon says it has accepted Boeing jet from Qatar that will be used for Trump

Washington — The Defense Department said Wednesday it has accepted a Boeing jet from Qatar that will be retrofitted and used to transport President Trump.

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth accepted the Boeing 747 “in accordance with all federal rules and regulations.” 

“The Department of Defense will work to ensure proper security measures and functional-mission requirements are considered for an aircraft used to transport the President of the United States,” Parnell said.

The New York Times first reported that the Pentagon had accepted the jetliner from the government of Qatar.

Hegseth’s acceptance of the plane comes days after sources confirmed to CBS News that the Qatari royal family would be donating aircraft for Mr. Trump’s use. The gift was first reported by ABC News. The jumbo jet will be donated to Mr. Trump’s future presidential library just before he leaves office.

Mr. Trump told reporters last week that the Qataris are “giving us a gift” and lamented that the current plane used for Air Force One is nearly four decades old. When the president is aboard either of the two Boeing aircrafts that are part of the presidential air transport fleet, its call sign is “Air Force One,” according to the Air Force.

“If we can get a 747 as a contribution to our Defense Department to use during a couple of years while they’re building the other ones, I think that was a very nice gesture,” Mr. Trump said. “Now I could be a stupid person and say, oh no, we don’t want a free plane.” 

The president has continued to defend the notion of receiving the plane from Qatar, writing on social media that the Boeing jet is being given to the Defense Department, and is a gift that will be used as a “temporary Air Force One” until new Boeing planes arrive.

“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! Only a FOOL would not accept this gift on behalf of our Country,” he wrote last week.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt also reiterated Monday that the plane is a donation to the nation and the Air Force.

“The government of Qatar, Qatari family, has offered to donate this plane to the United States Air Force, where that donation will be accepted according to all legal and ethical obligations,” she said. “It will be retrofitted to the highest of standards by the Department of Defense and the United States Air Force. This plane is not a personal donation or a gift to the president of the United States.”

Melissa Quinn

Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts.

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Trump administration asks Supreme Court to block effort to get information on DOGE

Washington — The Trump administration on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to halt a lower court order that required the White House’s Department of Government Efficiency to turn over information to a government watchdog group in a lawsuit that tests whether the task force is subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

The request from Solicitor General D. John Sauer arose out of a public records request made by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington that sought information about DOGE, its operations and personnel. The watchdog group went on to file a federal lawsuit based on that FOIA request, and, as part of the suit, sought categories of information through the discovery process about DOGE’s activities since President Trump took office.

Among the information CREW is seeking is a deposition with Amy Gleason, who the White House has said is the acting administrator of DOGE; a list of federal contracts or grants that DOGE personnel recommended for cancellation; and the names of all current and former DOGE employees, as well as details of their employment and who oversees them.

The district court granted most of CREW’s request for information, including to depose Gleason. U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper found that DOGE is likely subject to FOIA and said that the task force’s actions demonstrate that it has “substantial authority over vast swathes of the federal government.”

“Canceling any government contract would seem to require substantial authority — and canceling them on this scale certainly does. Again, USDS reportedly is leading the charge on these actions, not merely advising others to carry them out,” Cooper wrote in a March decision. 

He noted that DOGE likely has some independent authority to terminate federal employees, programs and contracts.

“Doing any of those three things would appear to require substantial independent authority; to do all three surely does,” Cooper said.

The Trump administration asked the federal appeals court in Washington to halt the order, which it agreed to do temporarily. Then, last week, a panel of judges on the appeals court lifted its stay, which clears the way for DOGE to hand over the documents sought by CREW. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said that the discovery ordered by the district court is “narrow” and appropriate.

DOGE now has until June 3 to turn over documents, and Gleason’s deposition must be completed by June 13.

The dispute over the efforts to learn more about DOGE, its work and employees turns on whether the task force is subject to FOIA, the federal law that allows members of the public to request access to records and information from federal agencies. FOIA does not apply to Congress, the federal courts and entities within the Executive Office of the President.

In the emergency appeal with the Supreme Court, Sauer argued that DOGE is a presidential advisory body housed within the Executive Office of the President tasked with providing recommendations to Mr. Trump and federal agencies on policy matters that are important to the president’s agenda. Sauer said that as a result of those functions, DOGE is exempt from FOIA.

Sauer claimed that the district court’s order requiring DOGE to hand over information through the discovery process to determine if it is covered by FOIA turns the public records law “on its head” and violates the separation of powers by subjecting it to “intrusive discovery.”

He warned that if it is allowed to stand, several components of the White House like the offices of the chief of staff, national security adviser, and other advisers to the president would be subject to FOIA.

“That untenable result would compromise the provision of candid, confidential advice to the president and disrupt the inner workings of the Executive Branch,” Sauer wrote. “Yet, in the decisions below, the court of appeals and district court treated a presidential advisory body as a potential ‘agency’ based on the persuasive force of its recommendations — threatening opening season for FOIA requests on the president’s advisors.”

Mr. Trump established DOGE when he returned White House as part of an effort to shrink the size of the federal government. The president has repeatedly said that Elon Musk is the head of DOGE, though Justice Department lawyers have said in court filings that he is not an employee of the entity and “has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.”

Questions about Musk’s role with DOGE eventually led the White House to declare Gleason as its acting administrator. Gleason worked as a senior adviser to the U.S. Digital Service, the precursor to DOGE.

Still, since its establishment, DOGE employees have fanned out across federal agencies to implement cost-cutting measures and were behind steep reductions in the federal workforce, as well as the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Many of DOGE’s efforts, as well as Musk’s role within the task force have been subject to legal challenges.

The Supreme Court is currently weighing an emergency appeal involving DOGE’s attempts to gain access to sensitive information kept by the Social Security Administration and was asked to intervene in a legal battle over reductions in force at 21 agencies.

Melissa Quinn

Melissa Quinn is a politics reporter for CBSNews.com. She has written for outlets including the Washington Examiner, Daily Signal and Alexandria Times. Melissa covers U.S. politics, with a focus on the Supreme Court and federal courts.

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Elon Musk’s pullback from politics comes after his last big investment was a flop

By SCOTT BAUER

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Wisconsin could go down as billionaire Elon Musk’s last big spend on a political campaign.

And it was a flop.

Musk, the richest person in the world, said Tuesday that he would be spending less on political campaigns. The announcement came as Musk is stepping back from his role in the Trump administration, saying he will spend more time focused on his businesses, and just seven weeks after the candidate he backed in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race lost by 10 percentage points.

Democrats in the swing state said Musk’s comments show that a party-led effort in this spring’s election, dubbed “People vs. Musk,” succeeded in making Musk and his money “toxic.”

“The people have won,” said Wisconsin Democratic Party Chairman Ben Wikler. “The biggest funder in Republican politics is taking his toys and going home.”

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FILE – Elon Musk presents a check for $1 million dollars during a town hall March 30, 2025, in Green Bay, Wis. (AP Photo/Jeffrey Phelps, File)

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Brandon Scholz, a retired longtime Republican strategist in the state, said that at least in Wisconsin, “after that court race he deserves to be labeled as toxic.”

But that doesn’t mean Musk couldn’t spend money on races in the state and nationally again, especially if the stakes are high and his money could make a difference, Scholz said.

“Does he bring with him a lot of baggage? Possibly,” Scholz said. “But over time, maybe not as much.”

Musk’s spending in this year’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race helped make it the most expensive court race in U.S. history. And it came just five months after Musk spent at least $250 million to help President Donald Trump win, reversing losses in Wisconsin and other battleground states four years earlier.

Musk was all-in on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, even making a personal appearance in Green Bay the weekend before the election wearing a cheesehead hat — popular with fans of the NFL’s Green Bay Packers — and personally handing out checks for $1 million to supporters. It was an extension of Musk’s high-profile role in the presidential race, where he campaigned alongside Trump and headlined some of his own rallies.

“It’s a super big deal,” he told the roughly 2,000-person crowd in the event center, where hundreds of protesters were rallying against his appearance outside. “I’m not phoning it in. I’m here in person.”

But his appearance — and money — didn’t work.

The candidate Musk backed lost Brown County, the home of Green Bay, by 3 percentage points, going on to lose statewide by more than three times that margin.

After the defeat, Musk has said little publicly about the race and his involvement in it. His popularity has also plummeted.

An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs poll taken two weeks after the Wisconsin court election found that just 33% of adults had a favorable view of the Tesla CEO, down from 41% in December.

Musk’s involvement in the race came at the same time he was the chain-saw-wielding face of the Trump administration’s effort to downsize the federal government.

His Department of Government Efficiency, also known as DOGE, has enacted deep cuts to the workforce and spending, in some cases seeking to shutter entire agencies, but it has fallen far short of its goals for reducing federal spending.

Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan, of Wisconsin, is one of the most liberal members of Congress and a loud critic of both Trump and Musk.

Pocan is skeptical that Musk truly will back away.

“I don’t believe any of it, first of all,” Pocan said. “This just means they realize how toxic Elon Musk is and the work he did through DOGE.”

Kelda Roys, a Democratic state senator, was also tempered in her excitement over Musk saying he plans to do a “lot less” political spending in the future.

“There’s a ton of other billionaire bros, I’m sure, willing and happy to step up in his place,” Roys said.

Musk could also get involved with future races, but in a much more low-profile way, said Scholz, the Republican.

“In Wisconsin, he had such a huge, huge, huge profile,” Scholz said. “He became the campaign. He became the story.”

Musk spent at least $3 million on the Wisconsin Supreme Court race himself. Musk-backed groups America PAC and a Rebuilding America’s Future spent another $19 million in support of the Republican-backed candidate Brad Schimel. That was part of more than $100 million spent on both sides.

America PAC spent at least $6 million on vendors who sent door-to-door canvassers across the state, according to the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. It was a reprise of what the group did last fall across the seven most competitive presidential battleground states, including Wisconsin, which were carried by Trump.

In addition to his political contributions, Musk paid three individual voters $1 million each for signing a petition in an effort to goose turnout. Musk also offered to pay $20 to anyone who signed up on his group’s site to knock on doors for Schimel and posted a photo of themselves as proof. His organization promised $100 to every voter who signed the petition against “activist judges” and another $100 for every signer they referred.

Musk himself hosted Schimel on his podcast and cast what was at stake in stark terms.

“A seemingly small election could determine the fate of Western civilization,” Musk said in a social media post on the April 1 election day. “I think it matters for the future of the world.”

Democrats made the race a referendum on both Musk and Trump’s agenda, successfully electing a judge whose victory ensures the Wisconsin Supreme Court will remain under liberal control until at least 2028.

Coincidentally, Musk’s announcement about spending less on political races came just hours after a liberal judge announced her candidacy for the 2026 Wisconsin Supreme Court race.

Wisconsin Appeals Court Judge Chris Taylor is challenging a conservative incumbent justice who sided with Trump in his unsuccessful lawsuit that attempted to overturn his 2020 loss in Wisconsin. The race will be decided in April, months before the midterms in which Democrats hope unease with Trump and Musk will help the party make gains.

Taylor appeared to be taking a similar approach to her campaign that the winning Democratic-backed candidate did this year.

“My campaign is going to be a campaign about the people of this state,” she told The Associated Press, “not about billionaires, not about the most powerful.”

Associated Press writer Thomas Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa, contributed to this report.

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Trump and Musk meeting with South Africa’s president at White House amid tense relations

President Trump is meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday, with South African-born billionaire Elon Musk present, for a critical conversation amid tensions between the U.S. and South Africa.

A White House official confirmed Musk will join the meeting with the two world leaders, as Mr. Trump echoes Musk’s claim that genocide is being committed against White Afrikaners. 

The U.S. accepted 59 White Afrikaners last week, granting them status as refugees. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said White farmers in South Africa have been targets of “genocide” — an allegation South Africa has rejected — and insists South Africa is “out of control.”

The South African government denies that White Afrikaners have faced racial discrimination. And Ramaphosa has deemed the individuals “cowards” for resettling in the U.S. 

Ramaphosa’s office said the White House meeting, set to begin at 11:30 a.m. ET, will offer a “platform to reset the strategic relationship between the two countries.” Mr. Trump has levied new tariffs on South Africa, as he has virtually everywhere else. 

Afrikaners are White South Africans of Dutch descent who have lived in South Africa for four centuries. In addition to English, Afrikaners have their own language, Afrikaans, which has its roots in Dutch and is one of 12 official languages of South Africa. 

The expedited process for the Afrikaners comes as the Trump administration is working to suspend the refugee admission program, drawing multiple court challenges.

In a tense exchange during a hearing on Capitol Hill Tuesday on budget matters, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio if the Afrikaners are more persecuted than the Uyghurs or Rohingyas, or dissidents in Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua, or than those who would be threatened by the Taliban, should they return to Afghanistan.

Kaine suggested the Trump administration is giving preference to Afrikaners due to the color of their skin, and asked Rubio why the U.S. should prioritize Afrikaners. Rubio said the Afrikaners are a “small subset.” 

“It’s a new issue,” Rubio said. “And the president identified it as a problem and wanted to use it as an example. But that’s different from having these refugee programs that were basically spending money to put people up in communities and accommodate them, and it was acting as a magnet.”

“Let me challenge you, and I’m just going to say for the public, if you want to understand about the quote, persecution, of Afrikaner farmers, go look at the composition of the South African government,” Kaine responded. “Since July of 2024, there’s a government of national unity. And the opposition party today — the ANC — the Afrikaner Party, the Democracy Alliance, is part of the governing coalition. They joined the governing coalition a year ago, and the leader of that party was given the remit of Agriculture Minister Jan Steenhuisen, and he is the leader of the former Afrikaner party, still widely representing Afrikaners. He is the minister of agriculture in South Africa right now. I assert that this claim that there’s persecution of Afrikaner farmers is completely specious.”

Kathryn Watson

Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.

Caroline Linton and

Sara Cook

contributed to this report.

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Trump Talks ‘Big, Beautiful Bill’: Don’t F*ck with Medicaid

President Donald Trump met with House Republicans on Tuesday to get his “big, beautiful” reconciliation budget passed, though several Freedom Caucus and State and the Local Tax (SALT) Caucus members remain unconvinced without further negotiations.

Massie, a staunch fiscal conservative who is no stranger to butting heads with Trump and fellow representatives over his unwillingness to support government spending, said he is still a “hard no” on the bill, the Washington Examiner reported.

He noted that the president was likely able to convince some members of the Freedom and SALT caucuses to “give up their fights”

“I predict they get the bill passed,” the congressman said. “He was very personal, very persuasive.”

Ahead of the conference with the president — where he spoke for over 90 minutes — Trump told reporters that he does not believe that Massie “understands government,” and that he should be “voted out of office.”

Speaking to the press following the meeting, Massie said, “I’m the only Republican right now that you can count on to vote against this vote… It’s not consequential to my vote today, like whether he endorses me or attacks me. It’s just not — doesn’t change the facts.”

The Kentucky Republican added that he was not “offended by anything [Trump] said” about him. 

Trump also directed his attention to Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), telling him to back off his demand for a higher limit on SALT deductions to be included in the reconciliation bill. 

“I know your district better than you do. If you lose because of SALT, you were going to lose anyway,” the president said in the closed-door meeting, sources told the outlet.

Lawler told reporters that while he “respect[st] the president,” he’s “not budging” on the issue as one of just three Republicans representing a blue district. 

“Look, the President can say whatever he wants, and I respect him, but the fact is, I certainly understand my district,” he argued. “I’m one of only three Republican members that won in a district Kamala Harris won, and I did so for reasons.”

“And so if they think we’re going to throw our constituents under the bus to appease [the Freedom Caucus], it’s not happening,” he added.

Rep. Nick LaLota (R-NY) was also unconvinced to change his mind regarding the $40,000 SALT cap —  while Trump believes raising the cap “benefit[s] Democrat governors.” 

“Those numbers last night didn’t work for me and the members of the SALT caucus,” LaLota said. “We need a little more salt on the table to get to yes. And I hope the president’s presence motivates my leadership to give us a number that we can go sell back at home.”

“All they need from this town is [a] little salt. I don’t think that’s unreasonable,” the New York representative added.

On Medicaid, Trump had a simple message: “Don’t f*** around with Medicaid.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), who has previously shared his concern about cuts to Medicaid, said Trump’s speech was “what the conference needed.”

Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) concurred, saying the president’s stance on Medicaid “reinforced the message I’ve been saying for a while: Don’t touch it.”

While Ralph Norman (R-SC) said he is still not fully a “go” on reconciliation, he told a gaggle of reporters that he thought Trump did a “great job” in the meeting. 

“One of the greatest speeches I’ve heard. And it’s real. It was off the cuff. And he said the right things,” the South Carolina congressman noted.

Freedom Caucus Chairman Andy Harris (R-MD) is also unconvinced to go for the bill following the meeting, but said that a solution is possible. 

“We’re still a long ways away, but we can get there — maybe not by tomorrow,” he said. 

Fellow Freedom Caucus members Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) and Eric Burlison (R-MO) also said they are still a “no,” but both noted that more negotiation is possible to get them on board.

“I think that there’s some things that we could move easily to make it more comfortable for a lot of people like myself,” Burlison said, according to the Washington Examiner. 

“I think you get the sort of vibe that everybody’s, you know, ‘rah, rah,’ and we’re together, and then everybody walks out of the room,” House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rick Crawford (R-AK) said after the meeting. “We’ll see. I mean, at the end of the day, people have to make a decision on their own, they have to calculate– I guess, the political calculation has to be made at home.”

Trump denied that he is “losing patience” with House Republicans, calling the Tuesday gathering a “meeting of love.”

A White House official told the outlet that the president “made it clear he’s losing patience with all holdout factions of the House Republican Conference, including the SALT Caucus and the House Freedom Caucus.”

“The President is clear: he wants EVERY Republican to vote yes,” the statement reads.

While Speaker Mike Johnson’s (R-LA) goal of getting the budget passed by Memorial Day looks shaky due to the current holdups, the bill has a chance if it passes through the Rules Committee on Wednesday.

Speaking with the press after Trump’s speech, the Speaker said there was “high energy and high excitement” inside the room.

“Failure is not an option,” he said, adding that he would meet with the “small subgroups” and “tie up the remaining loose ends.”

Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram. 



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China says Trump’s “Golden Dome” missile defense plan increases risk of “space becoming a battlefield”

China said Wednesday that the Trump administration’s plan to construct a so-called “Golden Dome” missile defense system to protect the U.S. from missile attacks carries “strong offensive implications” and will increase the risks of a global arms race and militarizing outer space. President Trump said Tuesday that his administration had “officially selected an architecture for this state-of-the-art system,” and that a budget package currently being deliberated by Congress would provide an initial $25 billion in funding for the project.

An unclassified assessment by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency shows the military expects to be contending with missile threats that are greater in “scale and sophistication in the coming decade,” noting specifically that “China and Russia are developing an array of novel delivery systems to exploit gaps in the current U.S. ballistic missile defenses.”

“North Korea has successfully tested ballistic missiles with sufficient range to reach the entire homeland, and Iran has space launch vehicles it could use to develop a military-viable ICBM by 2035, should Tehran decide to pursue the capability,” the DIA assessment said, warning that already, “there is no part of the homeland which cannot be struck by existing ICBMs.”

President Trump speaks alongside Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth in the Oval Office at the White House, May 20, 2025, in Washington, as he announces plans for a “Golden Dome” national ballistic and cruise missile defense system.

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But China, which has been deepening its ties with Russia while rapidly developing its missile and other military capabilities, including its nuclear weapons, accused the Trump administration of obsessing over U.S. defense at the risk of endangering global security.

“The United States, in pursuing a ‘U.S.-first’ policy, is obsessed with seeking absolute security for itself. This violates the principle that the security of all countries should not be compromised and undermines global strategic balance and stability. China is seriously concerned about this,” Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Wednesday during a regular briefing in Beijing, according to multiple international news agencies.

The White House plan “heightens the risk of space becoming a battlefield, fuels an arms race, and undermines international security,” she said. “We urge the United States to abandon the development and deployment of a global missile defense system as soon as possible.”

The U.S. military has said for years that China and Russia are already deploying weapons in space, with reports suggesting everything from laser weapons to Chinese satellites with the ability to disable or even capture American satellites. Last year, the U.S. warned Russia against deploying a nuclear-capable anti-satellite weapon that analysts believe could loiter in space for long periods of time before emitting a burst that would disable all satellites around it.

In Russia’s capital, meanwhile, the Kremlin said Wednesday that Mr. Trump’s plans would require consultations between Moscow and Washington, but a spokesperson said it was largely a “sovereign matter” for the U.S.

It was a softer stance than taken previously by the regime of President Vladimir Putin, which had recently published a statement saying the new American missile defense system would explicitly give Moscow an impetus “for a significant strengthening of the arsenal for conducting combat operations in space.”

Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House on Tuesday, as he made his announcement, that he’d not yet spoken with Putin about his plans, but he said he would, “at the right time.”

China and Russia, in a joint statement issued earlier in the month, called the Golden Dome project, “deeply destabilizing in nature,” and the two U.S. adversaries said it would turn space into “an arena for armed confrontation.”

Tucker Reals

Tucker Reals is CBSNews.com’s foreign editor, based in the CBS News London bureau. He has worked for CBS News since 2006, prior to which he worked for The Associated Press in Washington, D.C., and London.

Eleanor Watson and

Kathryn Watson

contributed to this report.

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Trump makes rare Capitol Hill visit to push GOP on budget package



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President Trump made a rare trip from the White House to Capitol Hill to pressure House Republicans to support his massive budget package. Nikole Killion has the latest.

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Watch Live: Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth Announce American Missile Defense System

President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announce a new U.S. missile defense system on Tuesday, May 20.

Reportedly dubbed the “Golden Dome,” Space Force General Michael Guetlein is expected to be named to lead the new initiative.

President Trump has long expressed his intention to create a new missile defense system to protect America, as far back as 2019 announcing a review of the nation’s defensive capabilities.

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Watch Live: Marco Rubio Testifies Before Senate Appropriations Committee

Secretary of State Marco Rubio testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee on Tuesday, May 20.

Secretary Rubio will be answering questions about the State Department’s proposed budget.

Rubio has been a key member of President Donald Trump’s second administration, working with the president and Vice President JD Vance to broker a ceasefire between India and Pakistan recently while continuing to support Trump’s efforts to end the war between Ukraine and Russia.

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