WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is stepping up pressure on trading partners to quickly make new deals before a Wednesday deadline, with plans for the United States to start sending letters Monday warning countries that higher tariffs could kick in Aug. 1.

That furthers the uncertainty for businesses, consumers and America’s trading partners, and questions remain about which countries will be notified, whether anything will change in the days ahead and whether President Donald Trump will once more push off imposing the rates. Trump and his top trade advisers say he could extend the time for dealmaking but they insist the administration is applying maximum pressure on other nations.

Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, told CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Trump would decide when it was time to give up on negotiations.

“The United States is always willing to talk to everybody about everything,” Hassett said. “There are deadlines, and there are things that are close, so maybe things will push back past the deadline or maybe they won’t. In the end the president is going to make that judgment.”

Stephen Miran, the chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, likewise said countries negotiating in good faith and making concessions could “sort of, get the date rolled.”

The steeper tariffs that Trump announced April 2 threatened to overhaul the global economy and lead to broader trade wars. A week later, after the financial markets had panicked, his administration suspended for 90 days most of the higher taxes on imports just as they were to take effect. The negotiating window until July 9 has led to announced deals only with the United Kingdom and Vietnam.

Trump imposed elevated tariff rates on dozens of nations that run meaningful trade surpluses with the U.S., and a 10% baseline tax on imports from all countries in response to what he called an economic emergency. There are separate 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum and a 25% tariff on autos.

Since April, few foreign governments have set new trade terms with Washington as the Republican president demanded.

Trump told reporters Friday that his administration might be sending out letters as early as Saturday to countries spelling out their tariff rates if they did not reach a deal, but that the U.S. would not start collecting those taxes until Aug. 1. On Sunday, he said he would send out letters starting Monday — “could be 12, could be 15” — to foreign governments reflecting planned tariffs for each.

“We’ve made deals also,” Trump told reporters before heading back to the White House from his home in New Jersey. “So we’ll get to have a combination of letters, and some deals have been made.”

He and his advisers have declined to say which countries would receive the letters.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent rejected the idea that Aug. 1 was a new deadline and declined to say what might happen Wednesday.

“We’ll see,” Bessent said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I’m not going to give away the playbook.”

He said the U.S. was “close to several deals,” and predicted several big announcements over the next few days. He gave no details.

“I think we’re going to see a lot of deals very quickly,” Bessent said.

Later Sunday, Trump vowed to impose more tariffs against the BRICS bloc of developing nations, which had condemned tariffs increases at its summit in Brazil. Trump said in a post on his social media platform that any country aligning itself with what he termed “the Anti-American policies of BRICS” would be levied an added 10% tariff.

Trump has announced a deal with Vietnam that would allow U.S. goods to enter the country duty-free, while Vietnamese exports to the U.S. would face a 20% levy.

That was a decline from the 46% tax on Vietnamese imports he proposed in April — one of his so-called reciprocal tariffs targeting dozens of countries with which the U.S. runs a trade deficit.

Asked if he expected to reach deals with the European Union or India, Trump said Friday that “letters are better for us” because there are so many countries involved.

“We have India coming up and with Vietnam, we did it, but much easier to send a letter saying, ’Listen, we know we have a certain deficit, or in some cases a surplus, but not too many. And this is what you’re going to have to pay if you want to do business in the United States.”

Canada, however, will not be one of the countries receiving letters, Trump’s ambassador, Pete Hoekstra, said Friday after trade talks between the two countries recently resumed.

“Canada is one of our biggest trading partners,” Hoekstra told CTV News in an interview in Ottawa. “We’re going to have a deal that’s articulated.”

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has said he wants a new deal in place by July 21 or Canada will increase trade countermeasures.

Hoekstra would not commit to a date for a trade agreement and said even with a deal, Canada could still face some tariffs. But “we’re not going to send Canada just a letter,” he said.

___

Price reported from Bridgewater, New Jersey. AP Business Writer Matt O’Brien in Providence, Rhode Island, contributed to this report.

The new grant follows the June 1 firebomb attack in Boulder on a group of people marching in support of Israeli hostages. The grant’s announcement also fell on the day that the death of one of the firebombing victims, Karen Diamond, was announced. She died Wednesday.

“Sadly, as antisemitism and other forms of hate and instances of violence are on the rise, we know that our places of worship, religious schools, and other places of gathering in communities face increased risk,” Polis said in a statement. “This additional support will help ensure that upgrades are made to increase safety.”

The new money builds on the annual $1 million in grants available through the Colorado Nonprofit Security Grant program that was established by law in 2022. The new money comes from an emergent needs fund established during COVID-19 recovery, according to the governor’s office.

The new grant will go to organizations with emerging security needs. The Colorado Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management and the Colorado Department of Public Safety will develop the specific criteria for the new money and announce them soon, according to the news release about the grant.

Mohamed Sabry Soliman, the man suspected of carrying out the firebombing attack, faces more than 100 state and federal charges, including first-degree murder and violating federal hate crime law.

Updated at 10:54 a.m. July 1, 2025: This article has been updated to correct the timing of Karen Diamond’s death.

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WASHINGTON — Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, said late Saturday that he had dropped his contentious plan to sell millions of acres of public lands from the sweeping domestic policy package that the Senate will soon begin debating.

Lee made the nighttime announcement on social media after it became clear that the plan faced insurmountable opposition from within his own party. At least four Republican senators from Western states had said they planned to vote for an amendment to strike the proposal from the bill.

The plan had also triggered intense pushback from conservative hunters and outdoorsmen across the American West, who had warned that it threatened the lands where they hunted and fished.

“Over the past several weeks, I’ve spent a lot of time listening to members of the community, local leaders and stakeholders across the country,” Lee wrote on the social platform X on Saturday. “While there has been a tremendous amount of misinformation — and in some cases, outright lies — about my bill, many people brought forward sincere concerns.”

The provision would have required the Bureau of Land Management to sell as much as 1.225 million acres of public property in 11 Western states. Proponents had argued that the region has a severe shortage of affordable housing and that developers could build new homes on these tracts.

In his post, Lee said that, because of the strict rules governing the budgetary process that Republicans are using to pass the bill, he was “unable to secure clear, enforceable safeguards to guarantee that these lands would be sold only to American families — not to China, not to BlackRock, and not to any foreign interests.”

It was not immediately clear whether the budgetary process would have allowed Lee to prohibit certain businesses or foreign countries from purchasing land. The process, known as reconciliation, allows bills that affect government revenues to pass the Senate on a simple majority vote, avoiding a filibuster.

A spokesperson for Lee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The four Republicans who opposed the plan were Sens. Steve Daines and Tim Sheehy of Montana and Jim Risch and Mike Crapo of Idaho. While opponents acknowledged the housing shortage as a serious problem, they rejected a public lands sell-off as a solution.

“One of the greatest gifts we’ve ever had in America is the public lands that have been passed down generation to generation,” Sheehy said in an interview Saturday before the proposal was struck from the package.

“Especially for us in Western states, it’s our way of life for hunting and fishing,” he continued. “I believe Mike Lee knows that, too, and I don’t believe he’s acting in bad faith at all.”

A previous version of Lee’s plan had called for the BLM and the U.S. Forest Service to sell between 2.2 million and 3.3 million acres of public lands. But the provision was stripped from the bill by the Senate’s parliamentarian, the nonpartisan official who enforces the chamber’s rules.

The latest version of the plan would have allowed individuals and companies to buy up to 2 square miles of land at a time, with no limit on how much property they could ultimately purchase. Only land within 5 miles of a population center would have been eligible to be sold.

In addition to the four Republican senators who opposed the plan, five House Republicans said Thursday that the land sell-off was a “poison pill” that would cost their votes for the package. The opponents in the House included Rep. Ryan Zinke, R-Mont., who led the Interior Department during Trump’s first term.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son and an avid hunter and outdoorsman, had been publicly silent on Lee’s plan while it was under consideration. But Sunday morning, he wrote on X that the proposal’s withdrawal was a “huge win for our public lands!”

Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., celebrated the plan’s demise while warning other lawmakers not to attempt to resurrect it.

“To those already plotting to go after our public lands another way: Don’t. Unless you like losing,” Heinrich said in a statement Saturday.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Debate is underway in the Senate for an all-night session Sunday, with Republicans wrestling President Donald Trump’s big bill of tax breaks and spending cuts over mounting Democratic opposition — and even some brake-pumping over the budget slashing by the president himself.

The outcome from the weekend of work in the Senate remains uncertain and highly volatile, and overnight voting has been pushed off until Monday. GOP leaders are rushing to meet Trump’s Fourth of July deadline to pass the package, but they barely secured enough support to muscle it past a procedural Saturday night hurdle in a tense scene. A handful of Republican holdouts revolted, and it took phone calls from Trump and a visit from Vice President JD Vance to keep it on track.

GOP Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina announced Sunday he would not seek reelection after Trump badgered him for saying he could not vote for the bill with its steep Medicaid cuts. A new analysis from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office found that 11.8 million more Americans would become uninsured by 2034 if the bill became law. It also said the package would increase the deficit by nearly $3.3 trillion over the decade.

But other Senate Republicans, along with conservatives in the House, are pushing for steeper cuts, particularly to health care, drawing their own unexpected warning from Trump.

“Don’t go too crazy!” the president posted on social media. “REMEMBER, you still have to get reelected.”

All told, the Senate bill includes some $4 trillion in tax cuts, making permanent Trump’s 2017 rates, which would expire at the end of the year if Congress fails to act, while adding the new ones he campaigned on, including no taxes on tips.

The Senate package would roll back billions in green energy tax credits that Democrats warn will wipe out wind and solar investments nationwide, and impose $1.2 trillion in cuts, largely to Medicaid and food stamps, by imposing work requirements and making sign-up eligibility more stringent.

Additionally, the bill would provide a $350 billion infusion for border and national security, including for deportations, some of it paid for with new fees charged to immigrants.

If the Senate can pass the bill, it would need to return to the House. Speaker Mike Johnson has told lawmakers to be on call for a return to Washington this week.

Democrats ready to fight all night

Unable to stop the march toward passage of the 940-page bill, the Democrats as the minority party in Congress is using the tools at its disposal to delay and drag out the process.

Democrats forced a full reading of the text, which took some 16 hours. Then senators took over the debate, filling the chamber with speeches, while Republicans largely stood aside.

“Reckless and irresponsible,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan. “A gift to the billionaire class,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

Sen. Patty Murray, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, raised particular concern about the accounting method being used by the Republicans, which says the tax breaks from Trump’s first term are now “current policy” and the cost of extending them should not be counted toward deficits.

“In my 33 years here in the United States Senate, things have never — never — worked this way,” said Murray, the longest-serving Democrat on the Budget Committee.

She said that kind of “magic math” won’t fly with Americans trying to balance their own household books.

“Go back home and try that game with your constituents,” she said. “We still need to kick people off their health care — that’s too expensive. We still need to close those hospitals — we have to cut costs. And we still have to kick people off SNAP — because the debt is out of control.”

Sanders said Tillis’ decision not to seek reelection shows the hold that Trump’s cult of personality has over the GOP.

“We are literally taking food out of the mouths of hungry kids,” Sanders said, while giving tax breaks to Jeff Bezos and other wealthy billionaires.

GOP leaders unfazed

Republicans are using their majorities to push aside Democratic opposition, and appeared undeterred, even as they have run into a series of political and policy setbacks.

“We’re going to pass the ‘Big, beautiful bill,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the Budget Committee chairman.

The holdout Republicans remain reluctant to give their votes, and their leaders have almost no room to spare, given their narrow majorities. Essentially, they can afford three dissenters in the Senate, with its 53-47 GOP edge, and about as many in the House, if all members are present and voting.

Trump, who has at times allowed wiggle room on his deadline, kept the pressure on lawmakers to finish.

He threatened to campaign aginst Tillis, who was worried that Medicaid cuts would leave many without health care in his state. Trump badgered Tillis again on Sunday morning, saying the senator “has hurt the great people of North Carolina.”

Later Sunday, Tillis issued a lengthy statement announcing he would not seek reelection in 2026.

In an impassioned evening speech, Tillis shared his views arguing the Senate approach is a betrayal of Trump’s promise not to kick people off health care.

“We could take the time to get this right,” he thundered. But until then, he said he would remain opposed.

Democrats can’t filibuster, but can stall

Using a congressional process called budget reconciliation, the Republicans can rely on a simple majority vote in the Senate, rather than the typical 60-vote threshold needed to overcome objections.

Without the filibuster, Democrats have latched on to other tools to mount their objections.

One is the full reading of the bill text, which has been done in past situations. Democrats also intend to use their full 10 hours of available debate time, now underway.

And then Democrats are prepared to propose dozens of amendments to the package, a process called vote-a-rama. But Republicans late Sunday postponed that expected overnight session to early Monday.

GOP senators to watch

As Saturday’s vote tally teetered, attention turned to Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, who was surrounded by GOP leaders in intense conversation. She voted “yes.”

Several provisions in the package are designed for her state in Alaska, but some were out of compliance of the strict rules by the Senate parliamentarian.

A short time later, Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., drew holdouts Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, Mike Lee of Utah and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming to his office. Vance joined in.

Later, Scott said, “We all want to get to yes.”

___

Associated Press writers Ali Swenson, Fatima Hussein and Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

The so-called roadless rule adopted in the last days of Bill Clinton’s presidency in 2001 long has chafed Republican lawmakers, especially in the West where national forests sprawl across vast, mountainous terrain and the logging industry has waned.

The roadless rule impeded road construction and “responsible timber production” that would have helped reduce the risk of major wildfires, Rollins said at the annual meeting of the Western Governors Association.

“This move opens a new era of consistency and sustainability for our nation’s forests,” Rollins said.

The rule has affected 30% of national forest lands nationwide, or about 59 million acres (24 million hectares), according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the agency over the Forest Service.

State roadless-area rules in Idaho and Colorado supersede the boundaries of the 2001 roadless rule, according to the USDA, meaning not all national forest land would be affected by a rescission.

The announcement comes amid recent talk of selling off federal lands in part to improve housing affordability, an idea criticized by Democrats as a public land grab. Selling public lands drew a mixed reception from governors at the same meeting.

Several hundred protesters gathered outside the summit in Santa Fe, chanting ‘Not For Sale’ and drumming.

The roadless area change meanwhile marks a sharp turnaround from the Biden administration, which far from opening up more areas to timber harvesting sought to do more to restrict logging and protect old-growth forests.

Environmental groups, who want to keep restrictions on logging and road-building for places such as Alaska’s Tongass National Forest, criticized the possibility of rolling back the protections.

“Any attempt to revoke it is an attack on the air and water we breathe and drink, abundant recreational opportunities which millions of people enjoy each year, havens for wildlife and critical buffers for communities threatened by increasingly severe wildfire seasons,” Josh Hicks, conservation campaigns director at The Wilderness Society, said in a statement on the USDA’s plans.

Contrary to what Rollins said about reducing wildfire risk, logging exacerbates climate change and makes wildfires more intense, said Center for Western Priorities political director Rachael Hamby.

“This is nothing more than a massive giveaway to timber companies at the expense of every American and the forests that belong to all of us,” Hamby said in a statement.

In Alaska, home to the country’s largest national forest, the Tongass, the roadless rule has long been a focus of litigation, with state political leaders supporting an exemption to the rule that they argue impedes economic opportunities.

During the latter part of President Donald Trump’s first term, the federal government lifted restrictions on logging and road-building in the Tongass, something the Biden administration later reversed.

Trump in January called for reverting to the policy from his first term as part of an Alaska-specific executive order aimed at boosting oil and gas development, mining and logging in the state.

The Tongass is a temperate rainforest of glaciers and rugged coastal islands. It provides habitat to wildlife such as bears, wolves, salmon and bald eagles.

Bohrer reported from Juneau, Alaska. Mead Gruver in Cheyenne, Wyoming, Matthew Daly in Washington, D.C., and Matthew Brown in Helena, Montana, contributed to this report.

The jury ruled that Lindell and his media company, Frankspeech, must pay $2.3 million in damages for his attacks on Eric Coomer, the former director of security for Denver-based Dominion. The jury found that three of the 10 cited attacks leveled by Lindell or published on his platform amounted to defamation.

Coomer sued Lindell in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado in April 2022. He alleged the MyPillow CEO, a prominent backer of President Donald Trump and the president’s false claims that he won the 2020 election, defamed him when he called him a traitor, and claimed to have proof — in effect, directly accusing Coomer of committing a crime.

Coomer said Lindell’s attacks led to severe emotional and physical distress, death threats and the loss of his career in election security. Coomer had asked for more than $2 million in economic damages and another $60 million in non-economic and punitive damages.

Charles J. Cain, one of Coomer’s attorneys, said after the verdict that there were “mixed emotions in the sense that he’s been through a lot, and he’s still going to be looking over his shoulder even after this one.”

He added that he hopes the jury’s findings serve as a deterrent against election workers being targeted, but acknowledged, “We don’t believe this will stop the conspiracy theories.”

Lindell, in a scrum with media after the verdict, called the lawsuit “lawfare” and pledged to appeal. He emphasized that the jury found several of the statements in the case were not defamatory and that his most prominent company, MyPillow, was found not guilty of defamation.

“It’s a huge breakthrough about free speech and my First Amendment right,” Lindell said.

He also said he didn’t plan to stop commenting on election security.

“I will not stop talking until we don’t have voting machines in this country,” Lindell said.

During closing arguments last week, Lindell’s attorneys rebutted the defamation claim by saying Lindell believed the allegations he was making, and that it was protected speech under the First Amendment. Defense attorney Jennifer DeMaster accused Coomer and his attorneys of acting as a “ministry of truth” that sought to police criticism.

“The only thing that matters is if Mr. Lindell believes these things are true,” DeMaster said during closing arguments. “That is the crux. That is the only thing that matters when it comes to our beloved First Amendment.”

Cain countered that Lindell stepped further than criticism of the government with his specific claims that Coomer committed treason and that he had evidence of such crimes.

“(Coomer) was accused of a crime — not an alleged crime, as you see on the TV news broadcast, an actual crime. And (with the suggestion) that there was evidence for that crime,” Cain told the jury in closing remarks Friday. “That is defamation.”

Lindell has pleaded poverty during the trial and claimed he spent his fortune hunting for evidence of election fraud and defending legal cases related to his accusations. After the verdict, he said he is “millions in the hole.” 

False claims of election rigging led to several high-profile lawsuits and big-dollar settlements. Fox News settled a lawsuit from Dominion for $800 million. The right-wing media organizations Newsmax and One America News each settled separate defamation lawsuits filed by Coomer.

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LOS ANGELES — Democratic U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla on Thursday was forcefully removed from Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s news conference in Los Angeles and handcuffed by officers as he tried to speak up about immigration raids that have led to protests in California and around the country.

Video shows a Secret Service agent on Noem’s security detail grabbing the California senator by his jacket and shoving him from the room as he tried to speak up during the DHS secretary’s event. Padilla interrupted the news conference after Noem delivered a particularly pointed line, saying federal authorities were not going away but planned to stay and increase operations to “liberate” the city from its “socialist” leadership.

“I’m Sen. Alex Padilla. I have questions for the secretary,” he shouted in a halting voice.

Scuffling with officers outside the room, he can be heard bellowing, “Hands off!” He is later seen on his knees and then pushed to the ground and handcuffed in a hallway, with several officers atop him.

The shocking scene of a U.S. senator being aggressively removed from a Cabinet secretary’s news conference prompted immediate outrage from his Democratic colleagues. Images and video of the scuffle ricocheted through the halls of Congress, where stunned Democrats demanded an immediate investigation and characterized the episode as another in a line of mounting threats to democracy by President Donald Trump’s administration.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said what he saw “sickened my stomach.”

“We need immediate answers to what the hell went on,” the New York senator said from the Senate floor. “It’s despicable, it’s disgusting, it’s so un-American.”

In a statement, DHS said that Padilla “chose disrespectful political theater” and that Secret Service “thought he was an attacker.” The statement claimed erroneously that Padilla did not identify himself — he did, as he was being pushed from the room.

“Padilla was told repeatedly to back away and did not comply with officers’ repeated commands,” the statement said, adding that “officers acted appropriately.”

The fracas in Los Angeles came just days after Democratic U.S. Rep. LaMonica McIver was indicted on federal charges alleging she assaulted and interfered with immigration officers outside a detention center in New Jersey while Newark’s mayor was being arrested after he tried to join a congressional oversight visit at the facility. Democrats have framed the charges as intimidation efforts by the Trump administration.

It also follows days of rising tension between Trump and Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom over the federal military intervention in California. In a speech earlier this week, the governor warned that “democracy is under assault before our eyes.”

Emerging afterward, Padilla said he was removed while demanding answers about the Trump administration’s “increasingly extreme immigration enforcement actions.” He said he and his colleagues had received little to no response to their questions in recent weeks, so he attended the briefing for more information.

“If this is how this administration responds to a senator with a question … I can only imagine what they are doing to farmworkers, to cooks, to day laborers throughout the Los Angeles community, and throughout California and throughout the country,” he said.

Noem told Fox LA afterward that she had a “great” conversation with Padilla after the scuffle, but called his approach “something that I don’t think was appropriate at all.”

The White House accused Padilla of grandstanding.

“Padilla didn’t want answers; he wanted attention,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said. “It’s telling that Democrats are more riled up about Padilla than they are about the violent riots and assaults on law enforcement in LA.”

Padilla, the son of immigrants from Mexico, has been a harsh Trump critic and his mass deportations agenda. In a social media post, he said of recent federal immigration raids in Los Angeles, “Trump isn’t targeting criminals in his mass deportation agenda, he is terrorizing communities, breaking apart families and putting American citizens in harm’s way.”

Padilla in 2021 became the state’s first Latino U.S. senator when he was selected by Newsom to fill Kamala Harris’ Senate seat after she was elected vice president. At the time, Padilla was the state’s chief elections officer.

Harris wrote in a social media post Thursday that Padilla “was representing the millions of Californians who are demanding answers to this administration’s actions in Southern California.” She called his forceful removal “a shameful and stunning abuse of power.”

Democratic senators quickly gathered in the chamber, denouncing the treatment of their colleague — a well-liked and respected senator — and urged Americans to understand what was happening.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said Trump is making this country “look more and more like a fascist state.”

“Will any Republican senator speak up for our democracy?” Warren pleaded.

Sen. Tina Smith, D-Minn., called on Noem to resign, saying that there was no justification for Padilla’s treatment and that the Trump administration needed to be held accountable.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., accused Padilla of “charging” Noem and indicated that the behavior “rises to the level of a censure.”

“My view is it was wildly inappropriate,” Johnson, a Trump ally, told reporters outside the House chamber as Democrats walking past shouted over him, “That’s a lie!”

“A sitting member of Congress should not act like that,” Johnson said, loudly speaking over reporters’ questions. “It’s beneath a member of Congress. It’s beneath the U.S. senator.”

Senate Republican leader John Thune said he has spoken to Padilla and is trying to reach Noem but hasn’t yet connected with her.

“We want to get the full scope of what happened and do what we would do in any incident like this involving a senator and try to gather all the relevant information,” the South Dakota senator said.

The No. 2 Republican, Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming, said that he was unaware of what happened but that Padilla should have been at work in Washington.

The stark incident comes as Congress faces increasing episodes of encroachment on its authority. As a coequal branch of the U.S. government, the Trump administration is exerting its executive powers in untested ways.

As part of their work in Congress, lawmakers are responsible for providing oversight of the administration, its agencies and actions.

Several senators and representatives have been exercising their oversight roles by surveying the treatment of immigrants and others being detained as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation operation.

From the steps of the U.S. Capitol, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries said what happened to Padilla “was un-American” and those involved must be held accountable.

“This is not going to end until there is accountability and until the Trump administration changes its behavior,” he said.

Mascaro reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Mary Clare Jalonick and Seung Min Kim in Washington and Jaimie Ding contributed to this report.

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BILLINGS, Mont. — President Donald Trump on Thursday ordered government agencies to consolidate their wildland firefighting into a single program, despite warnings from former federal officials that it could be costly and increase the risk of catastrophic blazes.

The order aims to centralize firefighting efforts now split among five agencies and two Cabinet departments. Trump’s proposed budget for next year calls for the creation of a new Federal Wildland Fire Service under the U.S. Interior Department.

That would mean shifting thousands of personnel from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Forest Service — where most federal firefighters now work — with fire season already underway. The administration has not disclosed how much the change could cost or save.

Trump in his order cited the devastating Los Angeles wildfires in January as highlighting a need for a quicker response to wildfires.

“Wildfires threaten every region, yet many local government entities continue to disregard commonsense preventive measures,” the order said.

The Trump administration in its first months temporarily cut off money for wildfire prevention work and reduced the ranks of federal government firefighters through layoffs and retirement.

The order makes no mention of climate change, which Trump has downplayed even as warming temperatures help stoke bigger and more destructive wildfires that churn out massive amounts of harmful pollution.

More than 65,000 wildfires across the U.S. burned almost 9 million acres (3.6 million hectares) last year.

Organizations representing firefighters and former Forest Service officials say it would be costly to restructure firefighting efforts and cause major disruptions in the midst of fire season.

A group that includes several former Forest Service chiefs said in a recent letter to lawmakers that consolidation of firefighting work could “actually increase the likelihood of more large catastrophic fires, putting more communities, firefighters and resources at risk.”

Another destructive fire season is expected this year, driven by above-normal temperatures for most of the country, according to federal officials.

A prior proposal to merge the Forest Service and Interior to improve firefighting was found to have significant drawbacks by the Congressional Research Service in a 2008 report.

But the idea more recently got bipartisan support, with California Democratic Sen. Alex Padilla and Montana Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy sponsoring legislation that is similar to Trump’s plan. Before his election last year, Sheehy founded an aerial firefighting company that relies heavily on federal contracts.

In a separate action aimed at wildfires, the Trump administration last month rolled back environmental safeguards around future logging projects on more than half U.S. national forests.

The emergency designation covers 176,000 square miles (455,000 square kilometers) of terrain primarily in the West but also in the South, around the Great Lakes and in New England.

Most of those forests are considered to have high wildfire risk, and many are in decline because of insects and disease.

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SAN DIEGO — President Donald Trump’s plan to begin “phasing out” the federal agency that responds to disasters after the 2025 hurricane season is likely to put more responsibilities on states to provide services following increasingly frequent and expensive climate disasters, experts said.

“We want to wean off of FEMA and we want to bring it down to the state level,” Trump said Tuesday in an Oval Office appearance with administration officials about preparations for summer wildfires.

Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have repeatedly signaled their desire to overhaul, if not completely eliminate, the 46-year-old Federal Emergency Management Agency. While there has been bipartisan support for reforming the agency, experts say dismantling it completely would leave gaps in crucial services and funding.

“It just causes more concern on how states should be planning for the future if the federal government’s not going to be there for them,” said Michael Coen, FEMA chief of staff during the Obama and Biden administrations.

Disaster response is already locally led and state-managed, but FEMA supports by coordinating resources from federal agencies, providing direct assistance programs for households and moving money to states for repairing public infrastructure.

Trump said Tuesday he wants to “give out less money,” and to “give it out directly,” sidestepping FEMA programs. He said he did not know who would distribute the funds, saying they could come “from the president’s office” or DHS.

“I was left with the impression that he doesn’t really understand the scale of what FEMA manages on a yearly basis with a budget of over $30 billion,” said Coen.

Dismantling FEMA, or even changing how much of the costs it shares with states in the event of a major disaster declaration, would require action from Congress, including amending the 1988 Stafford Act, which outlines FEMA’s roles and responsibilities and the cost share between the feds and the states.

Declaring fewer major disasters or giving less federal support could put an untenable financial burden on states, said Sara McTarnaghan, principal research associate at the Urban Institute.

“Very few of them would have had enough funds set aside to anticipate the federal government stepping back from its historic role in disaster recovery for major events,” McTarnaghan said.

A recent Urban Institute analysis found that between 2008-2024, quadrupling the economic threshold of when major disasters are declared would have shifted $41 billion in public assistance costs alone to state and local governments.

“I think the trade off for states and communities is going to be, do we accept a less full recovery or do states draw on other resources to meet these goals and needs, perhaps at the cost of investments in other kinds of social programs or functions of the state,” said McTarnaghan.

Not all states will be able to generate much more revenue, she added.

“The confluence of states that have really high disaster exposure and states that have relatively limited fiscal capacity are overlapping in many ways,” she said. “That’s the case for a lot of states along the Gulf Coast that we’re concerned about going into hurricane season but also the case for some Midwestern states that face issues with severe convective storms.”

Trump dismissed the idea that states can’t handle the bulk of disasters on their own.

“The governor should be able to handle it and frankly if they can’t handle the aftermath, then maybe they shouldn’t be governor,” he said.

He suggested that some of the gaps could be filled by more collaboration among states. Noem said FEMA is building communication and mutual aid agreements among states “to respond to each other so that they can stand on their own two feet.”

A national mutual-aid structure called the Emergency Management Assistance Compact already exists, but its operations are typically reimbursed by the federal government, said Coen. “There’s already robust communication between states. The confusion is what they can expect from the federal government.”

Regarding the current hurricane season, which began June 1, Noem said FEMA “stands prepared.” But there have already been changes to how the agency operates. It suspended its door-to-door canvassing program that helped enroll survivors for assistance. More than 2,000 FEMA staff, around one-third of the full-time workforce, have left or been fired since January.

After severe weather this spring, some states waited as long as eight weeks for approval on their disaster declaration requests, and several requests are still pending. Trump has not approved any requests for hazard mitigation assistance since February, a typical add-on to individual and public assistance that helps states build back in more resilient ways.

A FEMA review council established by Trump and co-chaired by Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will submit suggestions for reforms in the next few months, according to Noem.

In its first meeting in May, Noem told the group of governors, emergency managers, and other officials primarily from Republican states that Trump is seeking drastic change.

“I don’t want you to go into this thinking we’re going to make a little tweak here,” she said. “No, FEMA should no longer exist as it is.”

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With an uncharacteristically feistiness, Speaker Mike Johnson took clear sides Sunday in President Donald Trump’s breakup with mega-billionaire Elon Musk.

The Republican House leader and staunch Trump ally said Musk’s criticism of the GOP’s massive tax and budget policy bill will not derail the measure, and he downplayed Musk’s influence over the GOP-controlled Congress.

“I didn’t go out to craft a piece of legislation to please the richest man in the world,” Johnson said on ABC’s “This Week.” “What we’re trying to do is help hardworking Americans who are trying to provide for their families and make ends meet,” Johnson insisted.

Johnson said he has exchanged text messages with Musk since the former chief of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency came out against the GOP bill.

Musk called it an “abomination” that would add to U.S. debts and threaten economic stability. He urged voters to flood Capitol Hill with calls to vote against the measure, which is pending in the Senate after clearing the House. His criticism sparked an angry social media back-and-forth with Trump, who told reporters over the weekend that he has no desire to repair his relationship with Musk.

The speaker was dismissive of Musk’s threats to finance opponents — even Democrats — of Republican members who back Trump’s bill.

“We’ve got almost no calls to the offices, any Republican member of Congress,” Johnson said. “And I think that indicates that people are taking a wait and see attitude. Some who may be convinced by some of his arguments, but the rest understand: this is a very exciting piece of legislation.”

Johnson argued that Musk still believes “that our policies are better for human flourishing. They’re better for the US economy. They’re better for everything that he’s involved in with his innovation and job creation and entrepreneurship.”

The speaker and other Republicans, including Trump’s White House budget chief, continued their push back Sunday against forecasts that their tax and budget plans will add to annual deficits and thus balloon a national debt already climbing toward $40 trillion.

Johnson insisted that Musk has bad information, and the speaker disputed the forecasts of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that scores budget legislation. The bill would extend the 2017 Trump tax cuts, cut spending and reduce some other levies but also leave some 10.9 million more people without health insurance and spike deficits by $2.4 trillion over the decade, according to the CBO’s analysis.

The speaker countered with arguments Republicans have made for decades: That lower taxes and spending cuts would spur economic growth that ensure deficits fall.

Russell Vought, who leads the White House Office of Budget and Management, said on Fox News Sunday that CBO analysts base their models of “artificial baselines.” Because the 2017 tax law set the lower rates to expire, CBO’s cost estimates, Vought argued, presuming a return to the higher rates before that law went into effect.

Vought acknowledged CBO’s charge from Congress is to analyze legislation and current law as it is written. But he said the office could issue additional analyses, implying it would be friendlier to GOP goals. Asked whether the White House would ask for alternative estimates, Vought again put the burden on CBO, repeating that congressional rules allow the office to publish more analysis.

Other Republicans, meanwhile, approached the Trump-Musk battle cautiously.

“As a former professional fighter, I learned a long time ago, don’t get between two fighters,” said Oklahoma Sen. Markwayne Mullin on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

He even compared the two billionaire businessmen to a married couple.

“President Trump is a friend of mine but I don’t need to get, I can have friends that have disagreements,” Mullin said. “My wife and I dearly love each other and every now and then, well actually quite often, sometimes she disagrees with me, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t stay focused on what’s best for our family. Right now, there may be a disagreement but we’re laser focused on what is best for the American people.”

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Associated Press journalist Gary Fields contributed from Washington.

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