U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy meet in the Oval Office of the White House on February 28, 2025. (Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images)
“An utter embarrassment for America. This whole sad scene,” wrote U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy.
A White House meeting on Friday between U.S. President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy rapidly devolved into chaos as the two American leaders took turns berating Zelenskyy with television cameras rolling and the global public looking on.
Both Trump and Vance bizarrely demanded that Zelenskyy show more gratitude for the military aid the U.S. has provided Ukraine since Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022 and pressured him to accept an as-yet-undefined deal to end the war.
Vance told Zelenskyy he must “say thank you” and chided him for “trying to fight it out in the American media when you’re wrong,” but Trump intervened to say, “I think it’s good for the American people to see what’s going on here… that’s why I kept this going so long.”
“You have to be thankful,” Trump told the Ukrainian president, who has repeatedly thanked the American public for the U.S. government’s military assistance.
“You don’t have the cards,” Trump continued as Zelenskyy tried in vain to interject. “You’re buried there, your people are dying, you’re running low on soldiers.”
"You've gotta be more thankful" — remarkable scenes out of the White House as Trump and JD Vance team up to do Putin's bidding and demean Zelenskyy pic.twitter.com/wjp8UfqN0G
Insisting that Russian President Vladimir Putin can’t be trusted to uphold a bilateral cease-fire, Zelenskyy is demanding security guarantees against a future Russian attack in any agreement to end the conflict—a demand that Trump has thus far rejected.
“Your country is in big trouble,” Trump, who falsely suggested last week that Ukraine started the war, told Zelenskyy during the Oval Office meeting, which was meant to kick off talks regarding U.S. access Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
Zelenskyy left the White House on Friday without signing a minerals deal.
“You’re either going to make a deal or we’re out,” Trump told Zelenskyy during Friday’s meeting, a clear threat to withdraw U.S. support for Ukraine. “And if we’re out, you’ll fight it out and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty.”
Trump to Zelensky: "Your country is in big trouble. No, no, you've done a lot of talking. Your country is in big trouble. You're not winning this." pic.twitter.com/SDmKGXMgNl
Observers were aghast at Trump and Vance’s conduct during Friday’s meeting, which was likened to an ambush. At one point, as Trump responded dismissively to Zelenskyy’s call for security guarantees as part of any cease-fire deal, Ukraine’s ambassador to the United States was seen with her head in her hands.
“Wow. Just wow,” said CNN‘s Dana Bash following the meeting.
Zeteo‘s Mehdi Hasan wrote on social media that it is “insane that this just happened.”
“We are governed by children,” he added.
Watch the full exchange:
WATCH: Full Heated Exchange between President Trump, Vice President Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in the Oval Office. pic.twitter.com/oMJUGPqbSU
U.S. lawmakers also voiced disgust over Trump and Vance’s behavior, with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) writing that the meeting was “an utter embarrassment for America.”
Shortly after the meeting concluded, Trump took to his social media platform to accuse Zelenskyy of disrespecting the U.S. “in its cherished Oval Office.”
“He can come back when he is ready for peace,” Trump added as backlash over his treatment of Zelenskyy continued to pour in.
“Trump berates Zelensky, the leader of a democratic country courageously fighting Russian imperialism, while he allies himself with Putin, a dictator who started the bloodiest European war in 80 years,” U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote on social media.
“Sorry, President Trump,” Sanders added. “We believe in democracy, not authoritarianism.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) speaks at Ritchie Coliseum on the campus of the University of Maryland on June 24, 2024 in College Park, Maryland. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
“Today’s mass layoffs of NOAA staff signals a grim new reality: one where career federal scientists will be recklessly discarded,” said one campaigner.
Critics on Thursday decried the Trump administration’s firing of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration staffers, part of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency’s plan to eviscerate the federal government.
Following the playbook of Project 2025, a blueprint for gutting the federal government, the Commerce Department this week fired hundreds of NOAA staffers, many of them specialized climate scientists and weather forecasters.
In addition to issuing weather watches and warnings, NOAA monitors and studies the planet’s climate.
We’re mobilizing scientists to protect NOAA and we need you too. Get involved:
U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen’s (D-Md.) office said in a statement that the senator stressed that the firings “would be plainly unlawful and pointed to the Merit Service Protection Board’s decision yesterday that stayed the terminations of multiple federal employees on probationary status.”
“I take this opportunity to remind the department of its legal obligation to notify the Senate and House Committees on Appropriations regarding the large-scale termination of employees,” the senator added. Specifically, Section 505 of Title V, Division C of Public Law 118–42—a provision of the American Relief Act, 2025 (Public Law 118–158)—states, in part:
None of the funds provided under this act, or provided under previous appropriations acts to the agencies funded by this act that remain available for obligation or expenditure in fiscal year 2024… shall be available for obligation or expenditure through a reprogramming of funds that… reduces by 10% funding for any program, project, or activity, or numbers of personnel by 10%; or…results from any general savings, including savings from a reduction in personnel, which would result in a change in existing programs, projects, or activities as approved by Congress; unless the House and Senate Committees on Appropriations are notified 15 days in advance of such reprogramming of funds.
“Other agencies in my subcommittee’s jurisdiction have cited ‘ poor performance‘ to move forward with drastic layoffs,” Van Hollen added. “This has been exposed as a lie. Many terminated probationary employees have already come forward with evidence of recent glowing performance reviews, laying bare the flimsy pretext of these firings as gross misrepresentations of fact. The department must not become a purveyor of such lies and must comply with its legal obligations.”
Juan Declet-Barreto, senior social scientist for climate vulnerability in the Climate and Energy Program at Union of Concerned Scientists, said in a statement that “today’s mass layoffs of NOAA staff signals a grim new reality: one where career federal scientists will be recklessly discarded, and the lifesaving science they do will be significantly undermined.”
“When testifying under oath, Howard Lutnick assured congressional members that if confirmed as commerce secretary, NOAA wouldn’t be dismantled under his watch—a promise that was broken today,” Declet-Barreto added. “It seems either Lutnick willingly lied to Congress and the American people or that he has caved in record-breaking time to the destructive agenda of the Trump-Musk regime.”
Oceana U.S. vice president Beth Lowell said that “our oceans have become political carnage, but the real victims are hardworking Americans—the people you care about—and our future generations.”
“These are American jobs that warn us about severe weather, protect our most vulnerable marine life like whales and turtles, ensure abundant fisheries, and maintain a healthy ocean for those whose livelihoods depend on it,” Lowell added. “We’re calling on Congress to save NOAA from these disastrous cuts, while also protecting American jobs, communities, and the oceans.”
More than 2,000 scientists have signed a letter to members of Congress and the Commerce Secretary urging protection of NOAA.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Lee Zeldin, administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, talks with reporters in Washington, D.C. on February 18, 2025. (Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc. via Getty Images)
“Lee Zeldin is willing to go so far as to break established law to pay back the corporate executives and polluters who spent millions to get Donald Trump elected,” said one climate leader.
Climate advocates said Wednesday that the Trump administration will be abdicating its “clear legal duty to curb climate-changing pollution” if it moves forward with repealing the 16-year-old scientific finding that has underpinned the federal government’s actions to protect people and the planet from fossil fuel emissions.
As The Washington Post reported, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin is pushing the White House to repeal the endangerment finding, an official determination announced in 2009 that affirmed what the fossil fuel industry had known for decades: that emissions of greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and methane cause planetary heating and threaten public health.
The finding gave the government the authority to regulate such pollution.
For several days, the White House and EPA refused to release the results of a 30-day review of the endangerment finding, which President Donald Trump called for under an executive order he issued on his first day in office.
Three people with knowledge of the issue, who remained anonymous, told the Post that former EPA Chief of Staff Mandy Gunasekara—who wrote the chapter on the agency in the right-wing policy agenda Project 2025—has been advising the administration on the potential repeal of the endangerment finding.
Another former official from Trump’s first term, attorney Jonathan Brightbill, is also providing legal advice on repealing the scientific finding, which has provided the basis for federal regulations on automobile, aircraft, and power plant emissions.
By repealing the endangerment finding in place, the administration would throw out thousands of scientific studies showing how fossil fuel emissions heat the planet and are linked to heart disease, lung cancer, asthma, and other life-threatening health problems—and clear the way to overturn climate policies introduced by former President Joe Biden.
Denying the science underpinning the finding, said Green New Deal co-sponsor Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), makes the administration “a danger to our country.”
I challenged Lee Zeldin to his face on the endangerment finding. I knew he wouldn’t stand up to Trump's fossil fuel donors. If this admin wants to say that climate-fueled hurricanes, wildfires & droughts aren't a danger to our country, the admin itself is a danger to our country.…
Rachel Cleetus, policy director with the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Climate and Energy Program, said that any attempt by the Trump administration to gut the endangerment finding would be “fully challenged in court.”
“Eliminating the endangerment finding would be a giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, which has spent decades lying to the public about the harms of their product,” said Cleetus. “The science backing the EPA’s finding is rigorous and unequivocal—heat-trapping emissions pose serious threats to public health and well-being. EPA has the authority and legal obligation under the Clean Air Act to regulate sources of these pollutants, including vehicles, power plants, and oil and gas operations.”
Ben Jealous, executive director of the Sierra Club, also warned that the organization “will meet [the EPA] in court” if it moves forward with the repeal.
“Lee Zeldin is willing to go so far as to break established law to pay back the corporate executives and polluters who spent millions to get Donald Trump elected,” said Jealous. “This breathtakingly illegal power grab defies both the Supreme Court and Congress, and if Trump agrees to this plan, the Sierra Club will meet them in court. We will never allow any administration to sell out the climate, our health, our clean air, and our future.”
Zeldin is reportedly recommending that the finding be repealed weeks after wildfires destroyed more than 12,000 homes and other buildings in the Los Angeles area and after meteorologists reported a record 143 days last year of 100°F heat or higher last year. More than 100 people were killed last year by Hurricane Helene, which damaged about 74,000 homes.
“If the Trump EPA proceeds down this path and jettisons the obvious finding that climate change is a threat to our health and welfare, it will mean more polluted air and more catastrophic extreme weather for Americans.”
Experts found that the fires that devastated Los Angeles were made 35% more likely by dry, hot weather conditions and that planetary heating made Helene more dangerous and destructive.
“Any recommendation to strike the finding would be a bad-faith attempt to circumvent the law and best available science with the sole aim of boosting fossil fuel use and the profits of polluting companies,” said Cleetus. “Meanwhile, people around the nation, especially in communities acutely exposed to climate impacts or pollution, will pay the price.”
Dominique Browning, director and co-founder of Moms Clean Air Force, said the new reporting revealed that Zeldin “is contaminating EPA with a virulent strain of climate denial that has seized hold of many of the Trump administration’s Cabinet members.”
Browning noted that the EPA issued its determination in 2009 in response to the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case Massachusetts v. EPA, which established that the agency has the authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
“EPA’s action respected the ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Browning. “It respected the bedrock science and respected what we all know to be true: Families across the country are experiencing the extreme weather fueled by climate emissions. With every new supercharged wildfire, hurricane, flood, and heatwave, the danger takes on a terrifying intimacy: Think of the summers that have become too hot for children to play outside, of the lifetime trauma of losing a home in a flood or fire.”
“Administrator Zeldin’s recommendation to strike down the endangerment finding will only bolster the billions of dollars of profit being made by the oil and gas industry—while ransacking our children’s safety,” Browning said.
David Doniger, senior strategist and attorney for climate and energy at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said Zeldin’s reported plan “only makes sense if you consider who would benefit: the oil, coal, and gas magnates who handed the president millions of dollars in campaign contributions.”
The fossil fuel industry poured nearly $450 million into Trump’s campaign, and the president promised to roll back climate regulations if oil and gas companies donated heavily to him in what critics called a quid pro quo.
“This decision ignores science and the law,” said Doniger. “Fifteen years ago, the EPA determined that climate pollution endangers our health and well-being. The Denali-sized mountain of scientific evidence behind that decision has only grown to Mount Everest–size since then. The courts have repeatedly upheld the EPA’s legal authority and its scientific conclusions.”
“This is the clearest example of the Trump administration putting polluters over people, and that’s saying a lot,” Doniger added. “If the Trump EPA proceeds down this path and jettisons the obvious finding that climate change is a threat to our health and welfare, it will mean more polluted air and more catastrophic extreme weather for Americans. We will see them in court.”
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.
Experienced climbers scale a rock face near the historic Dumbarton castle in Glasgow, releasing a banner that reads “Climate on a Cliff Edge.” One activist, dressed as a globe, symbolically looms near the edge, while another plays the bagpipes on the shores below. | Photo courtesy of Extinction Rebellion and Mark Richards
So BP representing the fossil fuels industry and the filthy rich has given the climate, biodiversity and all humanity an unambiguous big two fingers. They’re saying fekk you, our profits come before anything, we continue to destroy the climate and all else. Despite the UK government saying no new licences in the North Sea we don’t know where they’re at with licence decisions pending for Rosebank and Jackdaw and government support for airport expansions at Gatwick and Heathrow. If they were serious about climate there would be no hesitation in refusing all these projects. Then there’s the big orange slug that Starmer is reporting to today. The planet can’t afford any of this. Capitalist scum have already fekked the climate, it’s going to get destroyed at a far greater rate now and these absolute bstards are pulling out all the stops.
Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
An AI-generated video posted on social media on February 25, 2025 by U.S. President Donald Trump showed the president with Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza following Israel’s U.S.-backed decimation of the enclave. (Photo: screenshot/Truth Social)
“Monsters rejoicing in their genocide” was how one observer described the computer-generated video
Billionaire tech mogul Elon Musk feasting on local cuisine, U.S. President Donald Trump caressing the arm of a belly dancer in a nightclub, and the Israeli prime minister lounging by a pool are all part of the computer-generated vision Trump shared on his social media platform Tuesday evening for the future of Gaza following Israel’s destruction of the enclave.
Accompanied by an upbeat song heralding “Trump Gaza, shining bright, golden future, a brand new life,” the “sinister” artificial intelligence-made video “must be seen to be believed,” said British trade unionist Howard Beckett.
“Monsters rejoicing in their genocide and ethnic cleansing,” he said, summarizing the 34-second video. “It is truly racist fascism.”
This was just posted on President Trump’s Truth Social account.
The video was posted amid the fragile cease-fire that’s been in place since mid-January in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 48,000 Palestinians since it began bombarding the enclave in October 2023 in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack.
As negotiators have worked toward a permanent cease-fire in recent weeks, Trump has floated a proposal to turn Gaza—home to 2 million people—into a playground for the rich called the “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Advocates and experts warned earlier this month that Trump’s proposal to “clean out” Palestinians as part of his latest real estate venture was an explicit call for ethnic cleansing—one that, according to the video Trump posted on Truth Social, includes the construction of a property called “Trump Gaza” and an immense statue depicting the president.
Toward the end of the video Musk, who poured $277 million into Trump’s presidential campaign and has grown richer since Trump took office, is shown again walking through a crowd as money rains down around him.
Palestinian American historian Ussama Makdisi called the video depicting the U.S. colonization of Gaza “sick,” but suggested it showed an extreme outcome of the American political establishment’s view and treatment of Palestinian rights for decades, including its support for Israel’s assault on the enclave.
“What else should we expect from the culmination of a bipartisan U.S. consensus that for a century has waged war on the idea that Palestinians deserve equality and freedom?” said Makdisi.
Ben Goggin, deputy technology editor for NBC News, noted that “nearly all” of the comments posted in response to the video on Trump’s own platform were negative, with self-identified supporters calling it “just plain horrible” and “filth.”
The comments under Trump’s AI generated Gaza video posted to his own platform are nearly all critical…
The origin of the video was not clear on Wednesday; Trump shared it without commenting on who made it.
International human rights experts and a United Nations committee have said there is evidence that Israel has committed genocide in Gaza, and this week Democracy for the Arab World Now called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate former U.S. President Joe Biden and his administration for “aiding and abetting” alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes.
The ICC has also issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as Hamas military leader Mohammed Deif for alleged war crimes. Deif was killed in an Israeli airstrike last year.
Trump’s video, said British-Nigerian activist and author Shola Mos-Shogbamimu, envisions “ethnic cleansing rebranded as a real estate deal.”
“Colonialist white supremacist zionism,” she said, describing the video. “Pure evil.”
Elon Musk urges you to be a Fascist like him, says that you can ignore facts and reality then.Neo-Fascist Climate Science Denier Donald Trump says Burn, Baby, Burn.
