White House | News

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has arrived at the White House for a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, where possible ways to end Russia's war against Ukraine are expected to be discussed.

European leaders who traveled to Washington for expanded negotiations with U.S. President Donald Trump on ending the war in Ukraine have begun arriving at the White House.

WASHINGTON: Azerbaijan and Armenia signed an initial US-brokered peace agreement during a meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday, a deal aimed at boosting economic ties between the two countries after decades of conflict, the White House said. White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly told reporters that Trump signed separate deals with both Armenia and Azerbaijan on energy, technology, economic cooperation, border security, infrastructure and trade. No further details were provided. The agreement includes exclusive US development rights to a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus, dubbed the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity.” US officials said the agreement was hammered out during repeated visits to the region and would provide a basis for working toward a full normalisation between the countries. Neither the joint declaration due to be signed nor the separate bilateral agreements with the US were released. It was not immediately clear how the deal being signed on Friday wou...

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned down an invitation from United States President Donald Trump to visit the White House over concern that he would setup a meeting with Chief of Army Staff Field Marshal Asim Munir, Bloomberg reported on Friday. Trump on Wednesday imposed an additional 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods, citing New Delhi’s continued imports of Russian oil in a move that sharply escalated tensions between the two nations after trade talks reached a deadlock. The new import tax, set to come into place in three weeks, will raise duties on some Indian exports to as high as 50pc — among the highest levied on any US trading partner. While the rupture in US-India ties was abrupt, there have been strains in the relationship. Delhi has repeatedly rebutted Trump’s repeated statements that the US brokered a ceasefire between India and Pakistan after four days of fighting between the nuclear-armed neighbours in May. Trump also hosted Pakistan’s army chief at the White House in the weeks following ...

A White House official said that a meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin is tentatively scheduled for the end of next week.

The White House Press Office confirmed to Cointelegraph that President Trump will sign an executive order allowing crypto exposure in US 401(k) retirement plans. US President Donald Trump will sign an executive order opening the door for cryptocurrencies to be included in 401(k) retirement plans, potentially reshaping how Americans invest their savings. The White House Press Office confirmed to Cointelegraph on Thursday that the order directs the US Labor Department to reevaluate restrictions around alternative assets in defined-contribution plans, including digital assets, private equity and real estate.  A senior White House official said the order instructs the labor secretary to clarify the department’s stance on alternative assets and provide guidance on fiduciary processes for offering these types of investments in retirement portfolios. Read more

Carving out clear jurisdictions for the SEC and CFTC may ease investor concerns over ambiguous securities laws. The long-awaited White House report on cryptocurrency policy recommendations may bring an end to years of regulatory uncertainty for digital asset companies, many of which have struggled with unclear guidance regarding securities laws. US President Donald Trump’s Working Group on Digital Assets released its crypto policy report on Wednesday, outlining recommendations on market structure, banking regulations and methods to bolster the US dollar’s dominance through stablecoins and crypto tax laws. One of the report’s key proposals is a division of responsibilities between the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The CFTC will gain authority over spot crypto markets, addressing longstanding concerns about overlapping or conflicting enforcement. Read more

A vote on prospective CFTC Chair Brian Quintenz was taken off the Senate Agriculture Committee’s agenda on Monday as the chamber heads into recess. The Senate Agriculture Committee has pulled a planned hearing on Brian Quintenz’s nomination to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), following a request from the White House just days before lawmakers leave for August recess. In an update to the committee’s schedule on Monday, chair John Boozman and ranking member Amy Klobuchar said lawmakers would not consider Brian Quintenz’s nomination to chair the CFTC. A spokesperson for the committee told Cointelegraph that consideration of Quintenz’s nomination was removed following a request from the White House. Cointelegraph reached out to the White House for comment but had not received a response at the time of publication. Read more

Brian Quintenz, Trump's CFTC nominee, has been stalled by the White House in the committee vote that could send his confirmation to the Senate floor.

The White House is seeking fines from several universities it says failed to stop antisemitism on campus, including Harvard University, in exchange for restoring federal funding, an official of US President Donald Trump’s administration said on Friday. The administration is in talks with several universities, including Cornell, Duke, Northwestern and Brown, the source said, confirming a report in the Wall Street Journal. The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the administration is close to striking deals with Northwestern and Brown and potentially Cornell. A deal with Harvard, the country’s oldest and richest university, is a key target for the White House, the official added. A spokesperson for Cornell declined to comment. Other universities did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Trump and his team have undertaken a broad campaign to leverage federal funding to force change at US universities, which the Republican president says are gripped by antisemitic and “radical left” ideo...

The White House on Thursday said that no visit of United States President Donald Trump was scheduled to Pakistan “at this time” after widespread reports of a trip. Earlier in the day, some local television news channels reported, citing sources, that Trump was expected to visit Pakistan in September. The news channels said that Trump would also visit India after arriving in Islamabad in September. The channels later withdrew their reports. The White House dismissed the rumours. “A trip to Pakistan has not been scheduled at this time,” a White House official said. Talking to Dawn.com on the reported visit earlier, Foreign Office Spokesperson Shafqat Ali Khan said: “We have no information about this matter.” Similarly, a US embassy spokesperson in Islamabad told Reuters, “We have nothing to announce,” and said that the White House might be able to provide confirmation on the president’s schedule. George W Bush was the last US president to visit Pakistan in 2006. US-Pakistan relations saw a major boost when Trum...

For years, United States President Donald Trump and his Republican allies benefited from conspiracy theories that fuelled the conservative MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement and targeted his political enemies. Now the persisting furore over files related to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein has forced Trump into an unfamiliar role: trying to shut a conspiracy theory down. Epstein, a wealthy financier and convicted sex offender, was facing federal charges of sex trafficking minors when he died by suicide in jail in 2019. He had pleaded not guilty, and the case was dismissed after his death. The saga burst back into the news last week after the Trump administration reversed course on its pledge to release documents it had suggested would reveal major revelations about Epstein and his alleged clientele. That reversal has enraged some of Trump’s most loyal followers. To contain the fallout, Trump and White House officials are weighing a range of options, including unsealing new documents, appointing a ...

White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt confirmed that US President Donald Trump, during a conversation with Volodymyr Zelensky, asked him about Ukraine's potential ability to strike Moscow and St. Petersburg.

A source tells Haaretz that U.S. Special Envoy Witkoff will leave for Qatar following the Israeli PM's meeting at the White House

Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside the White House ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s meeting with President Trump, condemning US-Israel ties and calling for an immediate ceasefire.

Palestinians in northern Gaza reported one of the worst nights of Israeli bombardment in weeks after the military issued mass evacuation orders on Monday, while Israeli officials were due in Washington for a new ceasefire push by the Trump administration. A day after US President Donald Trump urged an end to the 20-month-old conflict, a confidant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was expected at the White House for talks on a Gaza ceasefire, Iran, and possible wider regional diplomatic deals. But on the ground in the Palestinian enclave, there was no sign of fighting letting up. “Explosions never stopped; they bombed schools and homes. It felt like earthquakes,” said Salah, 60, a father of five children, from Gaza City. “In the news, we hear a ceasefire is near, on the ground, we see death, and we hear explosions.” Israeli tanks pushed into the eastern areas of the Zeitoun suburb in Gaza City and shelled several areas in the north, while aircraft bombed at least four schools after ordering hundreds of fami...

The absence of U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at today’s meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group could be a result of either his personal initiative or the official stance of the White House on curbing support for Ukraine, which will have drastically different consequences for future cooperation.

Pakistan’s crypto minister met with Trump’s digital asset leadership to promote cross-border cooperation and outline Bitcoin-powered infrastructure plans. Pakistan’s minister of state for crypto and blockchain, Bilal Bin Saqib, met with Robert “Bo” Hines, executive director of US President Donald Trump’s Council on Digital Assets, during a visit to the White House. The meeting focused on boosting cooperation between Pakistan and the United States in the digital assets space. Discussions covered a broad range of topics, including Bitcoin (BTC), potential partnerships and the future of decentralized finance, according to a report by 24NewsHD TV. One key area of dialogue was Pakistan’s newly announced Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. “It is my mission to position Pakistan as a global leader in digital assets,” Saqib said after the meeting. Read more

US President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping will likely hold a long-awaited call later this week, the White House said on Monday, as trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies ratchet back up. Trump reignited strains with China last week when he accused the world’s second-biggest economy of violating a deal that had led both countries to temporarily reduce huge tit-for-tat tariffs. “The two leaders will likely talk this week,” Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters outside the West Wing when asked whether Trump and Xi would speak. Trump and Xi have yet to have any confirmed contact more than five months since the Republican returned to power, despite frequent claims by the US president that a call is imminent. Trump even said in a Time magazine interview in April that Xi had called him — but Beijing insisted that there had been no call recently. Stock markets around the world mostly slid on Monday as the US-China tensions resurfaced. Trump in early April introduced sweepi...

U.S. President Donald Trump will soon announce a new candidate to serve as administrator of NASA, the White House said on Saturday, but did not explain why initial nominee Jared Isaacman was no longer in the running. Semafor, citing two people familiar with the matter, had earlier said the White House would pull Isaacman’s candidacy. […]