retreats

Reporting from Washington — For weeks this fall, an ebullient President Trump traveled relentlessly to hold raise-the-rafters campaign rallies — sometimes three a day — in states where his presence was likely to help Republicans on the ballot.

But his mood apparently has changed as he has taken measure of the electoral backlash that voters delivered Nov. 6. With the certainty that the incoming Democratic House majority will go after his tax returns and investigate his actions, and the likelihood of additional indictments by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Trump has retreated into a cocoon of bitterness and resentment, according to multiple administration sources.

Behind the scenes, they say, the president has lashed out at several aides, from junior press assistants to senior officials. “He’s furious,” said one administration official. “Most staffers are trying to avoid him.”

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, painted a picture of a brooding president “trying to decide who to blame” for Republicans’ election losses, even as he publicly and implausibly continues to claim victory.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly and Kirstjen Nielsen, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, who are close allies, “seem to be on their way out,” the official said, noting recent leaks on the subject. The official cautioned, however, that personnel decisions are never final until Trump himself tweets out the news — often just after the former reality TV star who’s famous for saying “You’re fired!” has directed Kelly to so inform the individual.

And, according to a source outside the White House who has spoken recently with the president, last week’s Wall Street Journal report confirming Trump’s central role during the 2016 campaign in quietly arranging payoffs for two women alleging affairs with him seemed to put him in an even worse mood.

Publicly, Trump has been increasingly absent in recent days — except on Twitter. He has canceled travel plans and dispatched Cabinet officials and aides to events in his place — including sending Vice President Mike Pence to Asia for the annual summits there in November that past presidents nearly always attended.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II was in Washington on Tuesday and met with Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo, but not the president.

Also Tuesday, Defense Secretary James N. Mattis announced plans to travel on Wednesday near the U.S.-Mexico border to visit with troops Trump ordered there last month in what is ostensibly a mission to defend against a caravan of Central American migrants moving through Mexico and still hundreds of miles from the United States.

Trump had reportedly considered making that trip himself, but has decided against it. Nor has he spoken of the caravan since the midterm elections, after making it a central issue in his last weeks of campaigning.

Unusually early on Monday, the White House called a “lid” at 10:03 a.m. EST, informing reporters that the president would not have any scheduled activities or public appearances for the rest of the day. Although it was Veterans Day, Trump bucked tradition and opted not to make the two-mile trip to Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia to lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, as presidents since at least John F. Kennedy have done to mark the solemn holiday.

FULL COVERAGE: The latest on the Trump administration and the rest of Washington »

Trump’s only public appearance Tuesday was at a short White House ceremony marking the start of the Hindu holiday Diwali at which he made brief comments and left without responding to shouted questions.

He had just returned Sunday night from a two-day trip to France to attend ceremonies marking the centennial of the armistice that ended World War I. That trip was overshadowed, in part, by Trump’s decision not to attend a wreath-laying at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery, the burial place for 2,289 soldiers 60 miles northeast of Paris, due to rain.

Kelly, a former Marine Corps general, and Marine Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, did attend to honor the American service members interred there. Trump stayed in the U.S. ambassador’s residence in Paris, making no public appearances.

Other heads of state also managed to make it to World War I cemeteries in the area for tributes to their nations’ war dead on Saturday.

Trump and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin were the only world leaders to skip a procession of world leaders to another commemoration, on Sunday, at the Arc de Triomphe. About 80 heads of state walked in unison — under umbrellas in the pouring rain — down Paris’ grand Champs-Elysees boulevard. Trump arrived later by motorcade, a decision aides claimed was made for security reasons.

Nicholas Burns, the former U.S. ambassador to NATO under George W. Bush, said the weekend events, commemorating the 100th anniversary of the end of a war in which 120,000 Americans were killed, were ripe for soaring words and symbolic gestures, which Trump failed to provide.

“Not only did he barely show up, he didn’t say anything that would help Americans understand the scale of the loss, or the importance of avoiding another great war,” Burns said. “He seemed physically and emotionally apart. It’s such a striking difference between the enthusiasm he showed during the campaign and then going to Paris and sulking in his hotel room.”

He added, “The country deserves more energy from the president.”

Trump took heavy flak on social media, especially for his no-show at the military cemetery.

“President @realDonaldTrump a no-show because of raindrops?” tweeted former Secretary of State John F. Kerry, a Navy veteran. “Those veterans the president didn’t bother to honor fought in the rain, in the mud, in the snow – & many died in trenches for the cause of freedom. Rain didn’t stop them & it shouldn’t have stopped an American president.”

Nicholas Soames, a member of Britain’s Parliament and grandson of Winston Churchill, tweeted, “They died with their face to the foe and that pathetic inadequate @realDonaldTrump couldn’t even defy the weather to pay his respects to The Fallen.”

Trump, clearly feeling on the defensive days later, tried to explain himself on Tuesday, in a tweet.

“By the way, when the helicopter couldn’t fly to the first cemetery in France because of almost zero visibility, I suggested driving,” he wrote. “Secret Service said NO, too far from airport & big Paris shutdown. Speech next day at American Cemetary [sic] in pouring rain! Little reported-Fake News!”

In that tweet, Trump falsely described the weather at the Sunday visit to another U.S. cemetery. Rather than “pouring rain,” photos showed him standing without a hat or an umbrella under overcast skies when he delivered remarks, though he did grasp an umbrella at one point while paying tribute at one soldier’s grave.

Just as Trump was returning to Washington on Sunday evening, Pence was heading to Asia in the president’s place, and at his first stop greeted Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

Trump’s absence, experts said, is notable, and a glaring affront to many Asian leaders.

“It matters more in Asia than other regions because ‘face’ is so important,” said Matthew P. Goodman, a senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former White House coordinator for Asia-Pacific strategy during the Obama and George W. Bush administrations. “Your willingness to go out there is a sign you’re committed and not going is a sign you’re not.”

Putin is attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, looking to expand his country’s influence in Asia. Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea are also attending regional summits. And China’s President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang are simultaneously attending meetings across the region looking to broaden their country’s influence in the South China Sea and expand multilateral trade agreements.

Although Trump is set to meet with Xi at the Group of 20 summit of wealthy countries this month in Buenos Aires, his absence from the major Indo-Pacific meetings for a second straight year will “have some consequences for our position and our interests in the region,” Goodman continued. “Other countries are going to move ahead without us.”

What makes Trump’s perceived snub to the Asian powers more significant is that it comes on the heels of his brief European trip, which showcased his growing isolation from transatlantic allies. French President Emmanuel Macron rebuked Trump in a speech, stating that “nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism” as the U.S. president looked on sullenly.

Trump’s relations with Latin America, already strained, are little better after the White House last week announced that he was reneging for a second time on a commitment to visit Colombia. He had planned to go there later this month on his way back from the G-20 meetings.

In April, he’d sent Pence in his place to the Summit of the Americas in Peru, citing a need to remain in Washington to monitor the U.S. response to a chemical weapons attack in Syria. He’d planned to visit Bogota on the same trip.

This time around, there appeared to be no extenuating circumstances preventing a visit.

In a statement, the White House simply said, “President Trump’s schedule will not allow him to travel to Colombia later this month.”

[email protected]

@EliStokols

On a blue-sky afternoon, kayakers paddle past dozens of sea lions lolling in the sun and make a beeline toward the sea otters lounging on beds of eel grass at Elkhorn Slough on California’s central coast. The playful predators not only generate millions of dollars in tourism revenue, but their voracious appetite for destructive species has revived this sprawling estuary while making the region’s carbon-sequestering kelp forests more resistant to climate change.

The U.S. government determined in 2022 that reintroducing sea otters to their historic range on the West Coast would be a boon to biodiversity and climate resilience, laying out a road map to restoration that would cost up to $43 million.

But as the Trump administration moves to slash funding for wildlife programs, a nonprofit co-founded by a Silicon Valley entrepreneur is stepping in to raise nearly that amount to finance and coordinate what would be a complicated, years-long effort to connect isolated populations of sea otters. So far it’s raised more than $1.4 million of its $40-million target.

“We are coming in at a time when we’ve seen these dramatic cuts from the federal government and conservationists are facing major funding gaps,” says Paul Thomson, chief programs officer at the Wildlife Conservation Network, the San Francisco nonprofit that launched the Sea Otter Fund earlier this year. In August, a veteran U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service official, Jen Miller, left the government to run the fund.

Sea otters prey on invasive green crabs, which fostered the return of eel grass at Elkhorn Slough.

(Rachel Bujalski/Bloomberg)

The initiative could be a harbinger of a future where private donors assume a more prominent role in financing and advancing wildlife restoration as climate impacts multiply.

While philanthropies have helped fund sea otter work, the Fish and Wildlife Service, which listed the Southern sea otter in California as threatened in 1977, assumes the cost of the species’ recovery as well as funding state and private research. “Sea otter recovery and supporting healthy coastlines go hand in hand, including finding ways to support the needs of our local fisheries,” a Wildlife Service spokesperson said in a statement, noting the agency has funded ongoing research.

Future support is uncertain, though, as the Trump administration proposes eliminating programs that underwrite sea otter science, including grants for state endangered species programs.

Understanding otter networks

Sea otters once inhabited the Pacific Rim from Japan to Mexico. By the turn of the 20th century, hunters had wiped out 99% of the population to satisfy demand for the animal’s pelt, known as “soft gold” for its luxurious warmth.

Since then, scientists successfully reintroduced otters to Alaska, British Columbia and Washington State, but that leaves a nearly thousand-mile stretch of coast from central California through Oregon without the animals.

“Adding sea otters completely changes the configuration of the food web and that has profound consequences for the structure of the nearshore ecosystem,” says Tim Tinker, an independent sea otter scientist who does research for the University of California at Santa Cruz.

He’s developing computer models to simulate the myriad factors that will determine where and which animals should be reintroduced, as well as risks and survival rates. Future versions of the model could also project the potential impact on fisheries.

The Sea Otter Fund is financing Tinker’s work, recruiting him to model restoration scenarios, the kind of research he previously has conducted with government funding. It’s the latest animal fund from the Wildlife Conservation Network, co-founded in 2002 by former software entrepreneur Charles Knowles. Ongoing campaigns fund the recovery of African elephants, lions, pangolins and other animals.

Michelle Staedler studies sea otters at Elkhorn Slough.

(Rachel Bujalski/Bloomberg)

The fund also underwrites marine biologist Michelle Staedler’s position on an Elkhorn Slough research team run out of UC Santa Cruz. “We’re really trying to understand the sea otters’ social networks,” she says.

Charting otters’ social graph is key to future restoration efforts. Past reintroductions have involved capturing random sea otters in the wild and relocating up to hundreds at a time, which resulted in high mortality of resettled animals. Of the 140 otters relocated off Southern California’s San Nicolas Island between 1987 and 1990 in a federally funded project, only about 15 animals initially survived. More than a quarter of the transported otters swam more than 150 miles back home.

Scientists say any future reintroductions will be highly targeted, selecting sea otters that are part of social groups whose bonds make them more likely to stay put and thrive. To lay that groundwork, Staedler spends a day on Elkhorn Slough twice a week, motoring through the estuary on an electric skiff to record the genders, locations, relationships, interactions, diets and caloric intake of tagged otters.

“Elkhorn Slough serves as a petri dish and the research work there will be critical for doing restoration,” says Knowles. State funding for that project has expired, however, and the Sea Otter Fund is considering replacing the loss.

Staedler keeps records of the sea otters on Elkhorn Slough.

(Rachel Bujalski/Bloomberg)

“This wave has been building”

Elkhorn Slough is California’s second-largest estuary, and the 7-mile-long outlet to Monterey Bay also serves as a real-time laboratory for how sea otters can rehabilitate degraded coastal ecosystems and benefit local economies.

In the early 1990s, invasive green crabs that made their way there destroyed eel grass meadows that serve as habitats for fish, shellfish, sea turtles and birds. Then a few sea otters began to venture in just as the Monterey Bay Aquarium began to release rehabilitated orphaned otters there. They feasted on the green crabs, consuming an estimated 120,000 of them a year, according to a 2024 paper.

As crab numbers plummeted, the eel grass returned and spawned an aquatic Serengeti. Today, there’s more than 120 sea otters at the estuary, which has fostered local ecotourism businesses that rent kayaks to visitors and take them on otter-spotting excursions, generating $5 million in revenues annually and creating more than 300 jobs, according to a 2023 study.

Kayakers approach a sea otter in Elkhorn Slough.

(Rachel Bujalski/Bloomberg)

Sea otters also have kept kelp-eating purple urchins in check on the central California coast when one of its other predators, the sunflower sea star, died off during a marine heat wave a decade ago. On California’s otter-less North Coast, the loss of sunflower sea stars wiped out more than 90% of the region’s kelp forests, triggering the collapse of fisheries.

But the competition that relocated otters’ prodigious appetites could pose to Northern California and Oregon commercial shellfish fishers worries Lori Steele, executive director of the West Coast Seafood Processors Assn. “It’s very difficult to really fully understand and account for the potential damage to a shellfish population that a very small number of sea otters could do,” she says.

The Wildlife Service found that impacts on fishing communities pose the biggest risk of sea otter introduction. If relocation moves forward, the agency will conduct an extensive review and consultations with state and federal agencies and tribal groups.

Until then, Jen Miller, the senior manager of the Sea Otter Fund, aims to keep the money for the work flowing. “It feels like this wave has been building and building and with just the right resources could crest to surf sea otter restoration to success,” she says.

Woody writes for Bloomberg.

WASHINGTON — Frustrated by the loss of his Twitter account and forced to accept that he soon must leave office, President Trump has effectively stopped doing his job, delegating daily responsibilities to Vice President Mike Pence while hunkering down with a shrinking group of acquiescent aides and contemplating additional presidential pardons.

Trump had considered leaving the White House before his final day in office Wednesday, even as early as this weekend, but he has opted to depart on the morning of President-elect Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day, according to two people familiar with discussions who cautioned that, with Trump, plans are always subject to change.

Intrigued by the idea of upstaging Biden, the president has requested a major send-off. It would begin with a throng of cheering, flag-waving staffers and supporters to see him off on the White House’s South Lawn, according to a person familiar with the planning, and continue to a more formal ceremony at Joint Base Andrews, featuring a red carpet, military band, color guard and 21-gun salute. He would make his final Air Force One flight to Florida, to take up residence at Mar-a-Lago, his West Palm Beach, Fla., estate.

While Trump is still unwilling to formally concede to Biden directly, or to participate in the traditional show of the peaceful transfer of power by attending his successor’s swearing-in, Pence on Thursday called Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and “congratulated her and offered assistance ahead of inauguration,” according to a person familiar with the call.

His relationship with Trump all but severed because he refused to abet the president’s efforts to defy the Constitution and overturn the election result, Pence confirmed earlier in the week that he plans to attend Biden’s inauguration. Trump, in one of his final tweets last week before his account was banned, made it clear he would not go.

Previously, Trump had floated the idea of leaving town early to avoid having to host Biden at the White House before the inauguration ceremonies at the Capitol, as has long been tradition — to provide the photo of the outgoing and incoming presidents that gives visual definition to the United States’ peaceful transfer of power. Though he now might stay until Inauguration Day, Trump still has no plans to meet with the president-elect.

His administration this week did extend one traditional courtesy, inviting Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, to stay at Blair House, just across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House, on the eve of the inauguration.

Finally forced by the bipartisan furor after last week’s insurrection at the Capitol to acknowledge the “new administration” — if not his defeat — Trump has withdrawn almost completely from the duties of the job he fought so hard to keep. Aides and friends who have spoken with him this week describe him as “irate” about Twitter deleting his account but also say he’s been sobered somewhat by warnings from his lawyers about his potential legal liability for inciting last week’s deadly riot.

Since the moment the pro-Trump mob smashed through the Capitol doors and into the House and Senate chambers to stop Congress’ count of the electoral votes, Pence has effectively taken over the responsibilities of the presidency. With Trump mesmerized by live television coverage of his supporters fighting for him, it fell to Pence — who’d been presiding over the count and had to be rushed into hiding — to authorize the deployment of the National Guard in the District of Columbia to quell the mob.

Just a week later, the president was watching TV again — with country music star Toby Keith, to whom he gave a medal — as the House voted to impeach him on a charge of inciting insurrection, making him the only president to be impeached twice. He was confident the Senate again would not convict him, according to one person who speaks with him regularly, and focused on his ire at the 10 House Republicans who voted in favor of impeachment, peppering aides with questions about who some of the lawmakers were and what he could do to exact revenge.

Trump spent time Thursday instructing aides to knock down reports of his frustration with Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the few outside attorneys still willing to defend him. That afternoon, while Trump took farewell photos with staffers as others loaded boxes into moving vans and cars just outside the West Wing, Pence visited the headquarters of the Federal Emergency Management Agency for a briefing about security preparations for the inauguration ceremony.

After the meeting, Pence told reporters that the government would “ensure that we have a safe inauguration, that President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are sworn in … in a manner consistent with our history and traditions.”

On his way home, Pence stopped to greet some of the 20,000 National Guard troops posted outside the Capitol, thanking them for their service to ensure the ceremonies are safe.

By Friday, Trump still had not addressed the nation about reports from the FBI and other law enforcement agencies that domestic terrorists, emboldened by the breach of the Capitol that left at least five dead, threatened not only the inauguration but also all 50 state capitols.

My Pillow Chief Executive Mike Lindell, one of Trump’s staunchest defenders in arguing that fraud cost the president reelection, was spotted around an otherwise quiet White House. As Lindell left the West Wing, a photographer captured an image showing that the notes he was holding referred to “martial law” and the “Insurrection Act.”

Pence is also scheduled to deliver an address Saturday on the administration’s “foreign policy accomplishments” at California’s Naval Air Station Lemoore, and then to the 10th Mountain Division in Fort Drum, N.Y., his office announced Wednesday.

Typically, outgoing presidents take part in an official farewell ceremony with members of the armed forces. Trump, however, isn’t bothering. On Thursday, the White House emailed a brief statement to reporters from Trump that could mark a final, 67-word valedictory. It was, above all, a salute to himself.

“United States military troops in Afghanistan are at a 19-year low. Likewise, Iraq and Syria are also at the lowest point in many years,” the president said. “I will always be committed to stopping the endless wars. It has been a great honor to rebuild our military and support our brave men and women in uniform. $2.5 trillion invested, including in beautiful new equipment — all made in the U.S.A.”

Spending his final days almost entirely out of view, Trump is said to be readying a number of pardons and weighing whether to give one to himself. A self-pardon would be an act of untested and dubious constitutionality and one — at a time when he and his family business are under investigation — suggesting indifference to the law in an effort to inoculate himself from any federal prosecutions.

Those who have been in contact with the president are loath to predict whether he will go through with the brazen move. His calculations now must be weighed against the unsettled matter of his impeachment trial in the Senate; a conviction could bar him from ever seeking office again.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) made it clear in a statement Wednesday that he is open to voting in favor of Trump’s conviction, a move some administration officials say was intended to dissuade the president from a self-pardon or any other damaging moves in his final days.

“He knows self-pardon is fraught, will invite scrutiny and does not protect him from state actions,” one former senior administration official said of Trump. But the calculation, the official said, was more about “whether it’s ultimately worth the scrutiny and hassle” than any impeachment endgame.

By Tina Teng

Published on
30/05/2025 – 8:03 GMT+2

ADVERTISEMENT

A Federal appeals court temporarily blocked a ruling from the Court of International Trade that barred most of the Trump administration’s sweeping tariffs on global trading partners. The legal development reignited uncertainty, sparking renewed selloffs in US stock markets and dragged the US dollar sharply lower from its intraday high.

The decision provides the White House with additional time to defend the legality of the president’s efforts to reshape global trade relations. Federal officials signalled that the same level of import levies could be reintroduced under alternative legal authorities, although enacting tariffs via other sections of the Trade Act could take several months.

“I can assure the American people that the Trump tariff agenda is alive, well, healthy and will be implemented to protect you, to save your jobs and your factories, and to stop shipping foreign wealth — our wealth — into foreign hands,” Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade adviser, said on Thursday.

Trump had invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose the so-called reciprocal tariffs announced in early April. However, on Wednesday, the trade court ruled that the president does not have the authority to impose such broad levies under the IEEPA.

“America cannot function if President Trump — or any other president, for that matter — has their sensitive diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges,” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt. “Ultimately, the Supreme Court must put an end to this for the sake of our Constitution and our country.”

Wall Street pares early gains

The US stock markets initially jumped on the original court ruling, alongside positive quarterly earnings results from Nvidia. However, major indices gave up early gains despite a higher close on Thursday. During Friday’s Asian session, US stock futures continued to fall as risk-off sentiment prevailed.

As of 4 am CEST, Dow Jones Industrial Average futures were down 0.08%, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 futures both declined 0.26%.

European markets are also expected to open lower, according to futures pricing. The Euro Stoxx 50 was down 0.19%, and Germany’s DAX slipped 0.15%. German equities extended losses for a second consecutive day on Thursday, following a record high on Tuesday. Investors will be closely watching the progress of US-EU trade talks, though the legal battle surrounding the Trump administration’s tariffs is adding complexity to the outlook.

Asian equity markets also traded mostly lower on Friday. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index fell 1.4%, Japan’s Nikkei 225 lost 1.39%, and South Korea’s Kospi dropped 0.61%. Australia’s ASX 200 was flat as of 3:10 am CEST.

The US dollar tumbles as haven assets rise

The latest court developments have once again dented investor confidence in US assets, particularly the dollar. Yields on US government bonds initially jumped to 4.5% but later pulled back to 4.42% as Treasury prices came under renewed pressure.

Meanwhile, haven assets have rallied. Gold jumped, and the euro, the Swiss franc, and the Japanese yen all strengthened significantly. The euro rebounded sharply from an intraday low against the dollar on Thursday after the tariff ruling was paused. The EUR/USD pair fell as low as 1.1210 before surging to 1.1353 as of 3:11 am CEST on Friday. Gold futures also swung higher, climbing to $3,321 per ounce from an intraday low of $3,269 on Thursday.