By ROB GILLIES, Associated Press

OTTAWA, Ontario (AP) — King Charles III will outline new Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government priorities in a speech in the Canadian Parliament on Tuesday. It’s widely viewed as a show of support in the face of annexation threats by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump’s repeated suggestion that the U.S. annex Canada prompted Prime Minister Carney to invite Charles to give the speech from the throne. The king is the head of state in Canada, which is a member of the British Commonwealth of former colonies.

Carney said in a statement the visit speaks to the “vitality of our constitutional monarchy and our distinct identity.”

It is rare for the monarch to deliver what’s called the speech from the throne in Canada. Charles’ mother, Queen Elizabeth II, did it twice in her 70-year reign, the last time in 1977.

The speech is not written by the king or his U.K. advisers as Charles serves as a nonpartisan head of state. He will read what is put before him by Canada’s government.

Carney , the new prime minister and a former head of the Bank of England, and Canada’s first Indigenous governor general, Mary Simon, the king’s representative in Canada, met with the king on Monday.

Canadians are largely indifferent to the monarchy, but Carney has been eager to show the differences between Canada and the United States. The king’s visit clearly underscores Canada’s sovereignty, he said.

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Carney won the job of prime minister by promising to confront the increased aggression shown by Trump.

The new U.S. ambassador to Canada, Pete Hoekstra, said sending messages to the U.S. isn’t necessary and Canadians should move on from the 51st state talk, telling the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that if there’s a message to be sent there are easier ways to do that, such as calling him or calling the president.

“There are different ways to ‘send a message’ and a phone call is only of them,” said Daniel Beland, a political science professor at McGill University.

“The King would normally add his own short introductory remarks and observers will be listening to them very carefully with the issue of Canada’s sovereignty in mind.”

A horse-drawn carriage will take the king and queen to the Senate of Canada Building for the speech. It will accompanied by 28 horses — 14 before and 14 after. He will receive the Royal Salute from the 100-person guard of honor from the 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment before entering the chamber for his speech.

The king will return to the U.K. after the speech and a visit to Canada’s National War Memorial.

By HANNA ARHIROVA and KATIE MARIE DAVIES, Associated Press

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces have taken four border villages in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region, a local official said Tuesday, days after Russian President Vladimir Putin said he had issued an order to establish a buffer zone along the border.

Sumy borders Russia’s Kursk region, where a surprise Ukrainian incursion last year captured a pocket of land in the first occupation of Russian territory since World War II. Creating a buffer zone could help Russia prevent further Ukrainian cross-border attacks there.

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Meanwhile, a Russian bombing campaign that had escalated in recent days slowed overnight as far fewer Russian drones targeted Ukrainian towns and cities.

Moscow’s invasion has shown no signs of stopping despite months of intense U.S.-led efforts to secure a ceasefire and get traction for peace talks. Since Russian and Ukrainian delegations met in Turkey earlier this month for their first direct talks in three years, a large prisoner exchange has been the only tangible outcome, but negotiations have brought no significant breakthrough.

Between Friday and Sunday, Russia launched around 900 drones at Ukraine, officials said, amid a spate of large-scale bombardments. On Sunday night, Russia launched its biggest drone attack of the 3-year war against Ukraine, firing 355 drones.

From Monday to Tuesday, Russia fired 60 drones at Ukraine, the Ukrainian air force said Tuesday. Russia’s Ministry of Defense claimed its air defenses downed 99 Ukrainian drones overnight over seven Russian regions.

The weekend surge in Russia’s bombardments of Ukraine drew a rebuke from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said Putin had gone “crazy.” That comment prompted a sharp Kremlin reaction Monday, with spokesman Dmitry Peskov criticizing ”emotional reactions” to events.

Peskov adopted a milder tone Tuesday, hailing U.S. peace efforts and saying that “the Americans and President Trump have taken a quite balanced approach.”

In Sumy, Russian forces are trying to advance deeper after capturing villages, Oleh Hryhorov, head of the Sumy regional military administration, said in a statement.

Ukrainian forces are endeavoring to hold the line, he said. Residents of the captured villages were evacuated earlier, and there is no immediate threat to civilians, Hryhorov said.

Putin visited the Kursk region last week for the first time since Moscow claimed last month that it drove Ukrainian forces out of the area where they captured land last August. Kyiv officials have denied the claim.

The long border remains vulnerable to Ukrainian incursions, Putin said. He said he told the Russian military to create a “security buffer zone” along the border but provided no public details of where the proposed zone would be or how far it would stretch.

Putin said a year ago that a Russian offensive at the time aimed to create a buffer zone in Ukraine’s northeastern Kharkiv region. That could have helped protect Russia’s Belgorod border region, where frequent Ukrainian attacks have embarrassed the Kremlin.

West St. Paul city officials and residents agree: The pool here needs a life preserver. But can the city afford to make a big splash in renovating the aging infrastructure, or will a few patches keep things afloat?

The city of West St. Paul’s community pool at 92 W. Orme St. (Molly Guthrey / Pioneer Press)

The West St. Paul pool opens for the season on May 31, but the waterslide has been closed indefinitely due to safety concerns. The move comes after city officials began reviewing the future of the aging community pool, which was originally constructed in 1956 and last underwent a major renovation in 1999.

The deeper swimming pool was built seven decades ago, while the splash pool came later at the turn of the century. The pool house itself is structurally sound, city staff found, but the original pool and newer splash pool have aging infrastructure and mechanical items that need repair.

Last summer, the city asked residents and pool-goers their thoughts about keeping the pool open, closing it, and also potential amenities they would like to see at an aquatic area. Results came back heavily in favor of both keeping and renovating the pool, with 95 percent of the 400 respondents favoring either renovating or replacing the pool, compared to closing it down or moving to a new site.

“We really enjoy it. It has an old-fashioned feel to it,” said Stephanie Schempp of West St. Paul.

She goes to the pool nearly every day with her two sons. When Schempp first heard that the pool’s future might be in jeopardy, she emailed her city council members to advocate for the pool, calling it a “third place” for community members, a place other than home or work where residents can come together.

“It reminds me of my own childhood in the ’80s and ’90s; I love that my kids have a place like this that we can go to,” Schempp said. “We don’t want to lose what we have.”

Two paths

The West St. Paul’s community pool at 92 W. Orme St. (Molly Guthrey / Pioneer Press)

Diagnosing the slide’s safety came within the framework of a larger discussion – should the city continue to make smaller, piecemeal repairs, while the overall site still needs larger renovations?

“We could do another Band Aid fix, but is that the best way to go about this? Probably not,” said Eric Weiss, West St. Paul parks, recreation, environment and sustainability director. “We said, ‘Let’s take a pause on smaller projects for now.’ We want to balance our investments in the pool, and we want to make sure they are smart moves, and ensure that we are good stewards of our pretty limited resources. It’s a small but mighty place, and people cherish it.”

In terms of renovating the slide as an example, Weiss said, the city didn’t want to spend upward of $150,000 only to realize that the concrete under the structure would also need to be replaced.

In February, the city council reviewed the state of the pool at a work session, finding two potential paths in renovating the site.

The first, a 25-year renovation solution that would cost roughly $1.3 million, would replace smaller items and keep the footprint of the site largely intact.

The second option was a large-scale, 50-year renovation solution that would cost just above an estimated $4 million. That could include pool decking, equipment, the vessels for the deeper pool and the splash pool, as well as flexibility to potentially change the site layout and design.

What’s next

The city of West St. Paul’s community pool at 92 W. Orme St. (Molly Guthrey / Pioneer Press)

What happens next regarding those planning discussions?

City staff are currently in the budgeting season, reviewing how these options could fit into the larger context of the West St. Paul city budget and capital improvement plan.

“Everyone agrees that we want to keep it, and we want to make it happen, but how do we do it?” Weiss said. “We’re in a situation where we want to look at all of those options, and there is some thought — pun intended — if we’re going to do it we want to make a splash, we don’t want to just work around the edges.”

While February’s council work session brought all options to the table – things like relocating the pool, closing the pool and redistributing smaller aquatic facilities throughout the community, or closing the pool and not adding other swimming options — the council chose to direct staff to first study the two renovation plans.

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West St. Paul Mayor Dave Napier, who recalls swimming in the pool himself as a young child, said the desire to keep the pool exists, but city officials will need to be creative in finding ways to provide funding for what would be a costly renovation project.

Could an eventual tax referendum go to the voters? Napier said it could be an option, reasoning that the community would have a chance to decide the pool’s eventual fate.

“There are a lot of challenges to our budget. It’s not like we have a bunch of money sitting around to fix the pool,” Napier said. “The good news is, we are opening the pool this year. The bad news is, the slide is closed. We really believe in it and want to keep it. I believe we will get there, but we need to be creative on how to fund it, and how we make it happen.

“Because once it’s gone, it’s gone,” Napier said.

For reasons I will not pretend to understand, we live in an age when the only truly bipartisan idea is that landmark legislation demands triple-B alliteration. President Joe Biden’s signature proposal was Build Back Better. Now, President Donald Trump has yoked his presidency — and all of us — to his “big, beautiful bill.”

Let me suggest another name for it. I’ll even stay on trend: Big Budget Bomb.

It’s always possible things will change. But as of now, the damage this bill will do to the budget if it detonates is hard to properly convey — in part because the size of this thing is hard to properly convey.

And the budget, to be honest, is where the problems this bill would cause only begin. But we have to start somewhere.

When you’re thinking about the size and cost of legislation, you have to keep in mind two different sides: how much the bill costs, either through new spending or tax cuts, and how much of that cost is paid for — versus added to the debt.

The Inflation Reduction Act was expected to cost about $500 billion over 10 years, and it paid for all of that spending — and more — through tax increases. The Affordable Care Act was expected to cost about $1 trillion over 10 years — all of it, again, paid for. Trump’s 2017 tax reform bill, when you added everything up, left an estimated $1.5 trillion of tax cuts unpaid.

But the Big Budget Bomb exists in a class by itself. Even a naive analysis, one that buys into some very obvious Republican budget tricks, finds that this bill cuts taxes and raises spending by $4 trillion over 10 years — but only pays for about $1.7 trillion of that.

Once you add interest on all that new debt — and we’re paying really high interest rates on that nowadays — the Big Budget Bomb puts more than $3 trillion on the national credit card over the next decade.

But let’s not fall for dumb budget tricks. The bill is full of tax cuts the Republicans have slapped expiration dates on. The way it’s written right now, it wipes out taxes on overtime, tips and car loans, but only for four years. That will all expire in 2028. But we know they have no intention of allowing those tax cuts to expire. They want to run in 2028 on the fear that Democrats will let them expire.

Republicans use this trick a lot. If you look back at those 2017 tax cuts from Trump’s first term, they used the same gimmick. And in this very bill, Republicans are canceling all those expiration dates.

I’d used the old “Fool me once” line, but I wasn’t fooled on this last time, and I’m not going to pretend to be fooled on it this time. But I do think it’s at least a little bit funny that the Republicans want budgetary credit for using that expiring tax-cut trick in the very same bill in which they’re also deleting their last set of expiration dates. One thing you’ll never hear me say about Trump’s Republican Party is that it lacks chutzpah.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — Washington’s saddest advocacy group — if you take seriously the permanence that the Republicans are actually seeking, the Big Budget Bomb will add about $5 trillion to the debt over the next decade. That is an insane number.

Do you remember when Trump promised to balance the budget?

That happened in March. So, here I’ve been talking about what the bill does to the budget. But there’s this other question, too — maybe the more important one: What is it trying to accomplish?

Five trillion dollars is a lot of debt, but if it would lead us to invent commercialized nuclear fusion or perfect a drug that would double our healthy life span, then fine. It’s worth it.

But here’s what this bill does in the real world: It cuts taxes mostly for richer people. It cuts Medicaid and food stamps. Republicans are also allowing some Obamacare subsidies to expire. And so the estimate is that between all this, 13 million people will lose health insurance.

It’s also grimly exact. The bill has $1.1 trillion in tax cuts for people who make more than $500,000 a year. And it has $1.1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and food stamps. It is a straight transfer from people who cannot afford food and medical care to people who can afford to fly first class.

The bill also guts the tax credits that support the wind, solar, electric vehicle and nuclear power industries. China will be thrilled by that.

So when you think about this bill, you should think about risk. This is a bill that increases our risk of a fiscal crisis. What if all these other countries we’re alienating and all these investors we’re scaring stop buying our debt — even as we are creating trillions more in debt we need them to buy?

This bill increases the risk any of us face if we can’t afford health care or food for our families. It guts the safety net that millions of us would have relied on for help if Trump’s tariffs were to cause a recession. It pumps tens of billions of dollars into Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities and deportation capacity, so it raises risks faced by immigrants — or anyone else — caught up in the administration’s mass deportation and detention operations.

I’ve been a policy journalist for more than 20 years. I’ve covered more bills than I can count. I cannot remember a more cruel or irresponsible piece of domestic legislation that has been seriously proposed.

And its sins are compounded by its size. If the Republicans’ Big Budget Bomb goes off, we are all in the blast radius.

Ezra Klein writes a column for the New York Times.

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