By FATIMA HUSSEIN and CHRIS MEGERIAN

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Two days after sending the global economy reeling by announcing tariffs on foreign imports, President Donald Trump insisted his trade policies will never change as he remained ensconced in a bubble of wealth and power in Florida.

Related Articles

Top Democrats protest after reported firing of National Security Agency director

Republicans moving ahead with Trump’s ‘big’ bill of tax breaks and spending cuts amid tariff uproar

No more cheap skirts: Trump ends tax exemption for low-value Chinese imports

Trump says he supports proxy voting for new parents in Congress

Lawyers for a detained Tufts student from Turkey demand she be returned to Massachusetts

He woke up on Friday morning at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, and headed to his nearby golf course a few miles away after writing on social media that “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH.”

Several supporters stood across the street as Trump, wearing his signature red campaign hat and white polo shirt, glided down a street lined with palm trees. They waved to him and he waved back, part of a ritual that plays out every weekend that he’s in town.

The Republican president was not expected to appear publicly, although he’s scheduled to attend a candlelit dinner for MAGA Inc., an allied political organization, on Friday evening. He also spent Thursday in Miami at a different one of his golf courses, where he attended a Saudi-funded tournament. He landed in Marine One and was picked up in a golf cart driven by his son, Eric.

Trump has often proved impervious to the kind of scandals or gaffes that would damage another politician, but his decision to spend the weekend at his gilded properties could test Americans’ patience at a time when their retirement savings are evaporating along with the stock market. The tariffs are expected to increase prices by thousands of dollars per year and slow economic growth, and there are fears about a potential recession.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Friday that the tariffs were “significantly larger than expected” and are “highly likely” to cause more inflation — at least in the short term but possibly in the long term as well.

However, Trump has described his policies as a painful yet necessary step to encourage companies to relocate their operations to the United States, and he spent the morning defending himself on Truth Social, his social media platform, vowing he is sticking with his policies.

Although experts have harshly criticized Trump’s tariffs, he’s found support on TikTok. He shared a video that said “Trump is crashing the stock market” and “he’s doing it on purpose” as part of “secret game he’s playing, and it could make you rich.”

The goal, the video said, is to push the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates, something that Trump explicitly called for later in the morning.

“This would be a PERFECT time” for Powell to cut interest rates, he wrote. “CUT INTEREST RATES, JEROME, AND STOP PLAYING POLITICS!”

With foreign leaders scrambling in response to Trump’s announcement this week, the president lashed out and looked to cut deals.

He said he spoke with Vietnamese leader To Lam and claimed Vietnam wants to eliminate its tariffs on U.S. goods if it can make a deal with the U.S.

He also criticized China for announcing its own tariffs on U.S. imports.

“CHINA PLAYED IT WRONG, THEY PANICKED – THE ONE THING THEY CANNOT AFFORD TO DO!” he wrote.

Trump also celebrated a new report showing the U.S. added 228,000 jobs in March, beating expectations. Although the numbers were a snapshot of the economy before the tariff announcement, Trump claimed vindication, saying they already show his moves are working. “HANG TOUGH,” he wrote. “WE CAN’T LOSE!!!”

Megerian reported from Washington.

A man recently living in St. Paul is among three people federally indicted in connection to the homicide of a man in Florida, which prosecutors announced Friday was related to the MS-13 gang.

The FBI arrested Hugo Adiel Bermudez-Martinez, 30, on March 12 at a residence in St. Paul’s Dayton’s Bluff where he was living with his family. He is charged with murder in aid of racketeering activity.

U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi spoke at a press conference in Florida on Friday, saying: “Let this be a lesson: no matter how long it takes, we will never give up in our pursuit of justice.”

Hugo Adiel Bermudez-Martinez (Courtesy of the Sherburne County Sheriff’s Office)

A stepdaughter of Bermudez-Martinez said Friday that he is innocent. She described him as a hard-working man.

On May 3, 2015, the body of a 22-year-old man was found in a vacant lot in Palm Beach, Fla. He’d been stabbed repeatedly in the face, neck, torso and groin, and also shot in the head, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Southern District of Florida.

Law enforcement linked that man’s killing to January and October 2015 murders in Oakland Park, Fla., along with a body found in a makeshift grave in May 2021, also in Oakland Park. Investigators “pieced together evidence showing that MS-13 was responsible for the four homicides,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a statement.

Six people were federally charged in July 2022 and have been convicted of murder in aid of racketeering activity. One of the men, Andy Tovar aka “Fearless,” was described by federal prosecutors as an MS-13 gang leader who approved of the murder of one victim and participated in the Palm Beach murder by shooting the victim in the eye. He’s been sentenced to life in prison.

Another man, Wilson Tirado-Silva aka “Sombra,” “was a local MS-13 leader responsible for growing the gang in South Florida,” the statement from federal prosecutors said. “He took MS-13 recruits on kills as part of gang initiation.” Two other men “committed the murders to gain gang membership credit.”

Last month, three more people — including Bermudez-Martinez, aka “Blue” — were charged in connection to the 2015 Palm Beach killing. They are all in federal custody. The mandatory minimum sentence for the three men, if convicted, is life in prison.

An attorney for Bermudez-Martinez wasn’t listed in the Florida federal court file as of Friday morning. Bermudez-Martinez has been in custody since his arrest and has appeared in federal court in Minnesota about being transferred to Florida; the attorney who represented him in court couldn’t immediately be reached for comment Friday morning.

Related Articles

British police charge comedian Russell Brand with rape and sexual assault

Mexican national with ties to cartel sentenced to federal prison after South St. Paul drug bust

Inver Grove Heights man cited for damaging Easter display outside Capitol

Woodbury attorney disbarred after being convicted of swindling client

Charges: Woodbury HS student had replica gun in backpack, ran from school

By LOU KESTEN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Top congressional Democrats on Thursday protested the reported firing of Gen. Tim Haugh as director of the National Security Agency, with one lawmaker saying the decision “makes all of us less safe.”

The Washington Post reported late Thursday that Haugh and his civilian deputy at the NSA, Wendy Noble, had been dismissed from those roles. Haugh also headed U.S. Cyber Command, which coordinates the Pentagon’s cybersecurity operations. The Post report cited two current U.S. officials and one former U.S. official who requested anonymity.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., vice chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement: “General Haugh has served our country in uniform, with honor and distinction, for more than 30 years. At a time when the United States is facing unprecedented cyber threats … how does firing him make Americans any safer?”

Related Articles

China punches back as world weighs how to deal with higher US tariffs

David Brooks: Stagnation Day might be more like it

Republicans moving ahead with Trump’s ‘big’ bill of tax breaks and spending cuts amid tariff uproar

No more cheap skirts: Trump ends tax exemption for low-value Chinese imports

Trump says he supports proxy voting for new parents in Congress

Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., the ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee, said he was “deeply disturbed by the decision.”

“I have known General Haugh to be an honest and forthright leader who followed the law and put national security first — I fear those are precisely the qualities that could lead to his firing in this Administration,” Himes added. “The Intelligence Committee and the American people need an immediate explanation for this decision, which makes all of us less safe.”

Earlier Thursday, President Donald Trump said he had fired “some” White House National Security Council officials, a move that came a day after far-right activist Laura Loomer raised concerns directly to him about staff loyalty.

Loomer during her Oval Office conversation with Trump urged the president to purge staffers she deemed insufficiently loyal to his “Make America Great Again” agenda, according to several people familiar with the matter. They all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive personnel manner.

“Always we’re letting go of people,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he made his way to Miami on Thursday afternoon. “People that we don’t like or people that we don’t think can do the job or people that may have loyalties to somebody else.”

The firings come as Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz continues to fight calls for his ouster after using the publicly available encrypted Signal app to discuss planning for the sensitive March 15 military operation targeting Houthi militants in Yemen.

Warner said Thursday night, “It is astonishing, too, that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan, experienced leader of the National Security Agency while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on a commercial messaging app — even as he apparently takes staffing direction on national security from a discredited conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office.”

Haugh met last month with Elon Musk, whose Department of Government Efficiency has roiled the federal government by slashing personnel and budgets at dozens of agencies. In a statement, the NSA said the meeting was intended to ensure both organizations are “aligned” with the new administration’s priorities.

Haugh had led both the NSA and Cyber Command since 2023. Both departments play leading roles in the nation’s cybersecurity. The NSA also supports the military and other national security agencies by collecting and analyzing a vast amount of data and information globally.

Cyber Command is known as America’s first line of defense in cyberspace and also plans offensive cyberoperations for potential use against adversaries. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth recently ordered the office to pause some offensive cyberoperations against Russia, in another sign of how Trump’s administration is transforming the work of the nation’s intelligence community.

Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Aamer Madhani, Zeke Miller and David Klepper contributed to this report.

NUUK, Greenland (AP) — Denmark’s prime minister has told the U.S. during a visit to Greenland that “you cannot annex another country,” even with the argument that international security is at stake.

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, meanwhile, said on Friday that Washington will respect Greenland’s self-determination and Copenhagen “should focus on the fact that the Greenlanders don’t want to be a part of Denmark.”

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, Greenland’s acting head of government Múte Bourup Egede, right, and newly elected head of government Jens-Frederik Nielsen, center, hold a press conference aboard the Danish Navy inspection ship Vaedderen, in Nuuk, Greenland, Thursday, April 3, 2025. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen was wrapping up a three-day visit to the strategically critical Arctic island on Friday as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks control of Greenland. He argues that Greenland, a semiautonomous territory belonging to the Kingdom of Denmark, is critical to U.S. security.

A week ago, Vice President JD Vance visited a remote U.S. military base in Greenland and accused Denmark of underinvesting in the territory.

Frederiksen pushed back against the U.S. criticism as she spoke on Thursday alongside Greenland’s incoming and outgoing leaders on board a Danish naval ship. She argued that Denmark, a NATO ally, has been a reliable friend.

Speaking in English, she said that “if we let ourselves be divided as allies, then we do our foes a favor. And I will do everything that I can to prevent that from happening.”

Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s new Prime Minister, Jens-Frederik Nielsen, not pictured, on a bus tour during her three-day visit around Nuuk, Greenland, Wednesday, April 2, 2025. (Mads Claus Rasmussen/Ritzau Scanpix via AP)

“When you ask our businesses to invest in the U.S., they do. When you ask us to spend more on our defense, we do; and when you ask of us to strengthen security in the Arctic, we are on the same page,” she said.

“But when you demand to take over a part of the Kingdom of Denmark’s territory, when we are met by pressure and by threats from our closest ally, what are we to believe in about the country that we have admired for so many years?”

“This is about the world order that we have built together across the Atlantic over generations: you cannot annex another country, not even with an argument about international security,” Frederiksen said.

The Danish leader said that, if the U.S. wants to strengthen security in the Arctic, “let us do so together.”

Political parties in Greenland, which has been leaning toward eventual independence from Denmark for years, last week agreed to form a broad-based new coalition government in the face of Trump’s designs on the territory. Those have angered many in Greenland and Denmark.

In an interview with Newsmax on Thursday, Vance repeated the accusation that Denmark has “really underinvested in the infrastructure and security of Greenland.”

He said Trump’s point is that “this matters to our security, this matters to our missile defense, and we’re going to protect America’s interests come hell or high water.”

Danish Foreign Minister Lars Løkke Rasmussen, who was attending a meeting in Brussels with his NATO counterparts, wrote on social network X that he had an “honest and direct” meeting Thursday with Rubio.

“I made it crystal clear that claims and statements about annexing Greenland are not only unacceptable and disrespectful,” Løkke Rasmussen wrote. “They amount to a violation of international law.”

Rubio told reporters in Brussels Friday that “no one’s annexed anything.” He added that Vance has made clear that “he’s going to respect the self-determination of Greenlanders.”

“Denmark should focus on the fact that the Greenlanders don’t want to be a part of Denmark,” Rubio said.

“We didn’t give them that idea. They’ve been talking about that for a long time,” he said. “Whenever they make that decision, they’ll make that decision.”

“If they make that decision, then the United States would stand ready, potentially, to step in and say, okay, we can create a partnership with you,” Rubio said, adding that “we’re not at that stage.”