By CHRIS MEGERIAN and FARNOUSH AMIRI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is resurrecting the travel ban policy from his first term, signing a proclamation Wednesday night preventing people from a dozen countries from entering the United States.

The countries include Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.

In addition to the ban, which takes effect at 12:01 a.m. Monday, there will be heightened restrictions on visitors from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela.

“I must act to protect the national security and national interest of the United States and its people,” Trump said in his proclamation.

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The list results from a Jan. 20 executive order Trump issued requiring the departments of State and Homeland Security and the Director of National Intelligence to compile a report on “hostile attitudes” toward the U.S. and whether entry from certain countries represented a national security risk.

During his first term, Trump issued an executive order in January 2017 banning travel to the U.S. by citizens of seven predominantly Muslim countries — Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen.

It was one of the most chaotic and confusing moments of his young presidency. Travelers from those nations were either barred from getting on their flights to the U.S. or detained at U.S. airports after they landed. They included students and faculty as well as businesspeople, tourists and people visiting friends and family.

The order, often referred to as the “Muslim ban” or the “travel ban,” was retooled amid legal challenges, until a version was upheld by the Supreme Court in 2018.

The ban affected various categories of travelers and immigrants from Iran, Somalia, Yemen, Syria and Libya, plus North Koreans and some Venezuelan government officials and their families.

Trump and others have defended the initial ban on national security grounds, arguing it was aimed at protecting the country and not founded on anti-Muslim bias. However, the president had called for an explicit ban on Muslims during his first campaign for the White House.

Amiri reported from the United Nations.

The average time a child in the U.S. spends outside every day is just minutes compared to the hours behind a screen. It’s something that officials at the Trust for Public Land, a national nonprofit focused on connecting people with the outdoors, want to change, starting with places like St. Paul’s Maxfield Elementary, said Sophie Harris Vorhoff, Minnesota director with the Trust for Public Land.

“Every kid should be able to touch the earth, connect with nature, spend time under trees, have a great playground. So that starts in our schools,” she said.

A rendering of the community schoolyard at Maxfield Elementary in St. Paul, where ground was broken on Wednesday, June 4, 2025. (Courtesy of SWA Group)

Vorhoff, along with city and district officials and students at Maxfield Elementary, broke ground Wednesday on a project at the school, located at 380 N. Victoria St., that will become a 2.4-acre community space and schoolyard that includes walking paths, seating, a “micro forest” and pollinator garden alongside the school playground, which was updated last year. The site also will include shaded areas to be used as an outdoor classroom.

Providing community access to all public schoolyards during non-school hours would put a park or green space within a 10-minute walk of nearly 20 million people across the country, according to officials with the Trust for Public Land.

Once the project at Maxfield is completed, approximately 8,000 residents in the area will live within a 10-minute walk of the future green space, which will be open to the public during non-school hours. The school is located in the former Rondo neighborhood.

Gaps in park access

Those at the Trust for Public Land look at a variety of metrics in Minnesota schools to identify partners on projects like the one at Maxfield, examining equity metrics such as health data, where there are gaps in park access and opportunities for climate benefit and stormwater management, Vorhoff said.

As an urban district, many schools within the St. Paul Public Schools are located in areas that border freeways or lack green space, negatively impacting overall health, said SPPS Superintendent Stacie Stanley at Wednesday’s groundbreaking. Those impacts, along with climate change, disproportionately affect the most vulnerable communities, Stanley said.

“SPPS can help remedy these challenges by providing a network of outdoor spaces with playing fields and playgrounds and informal meeting spaces to support our communities,” she said.

The project follows a community-design process, working with students to design the schoolyard, as well as getting community input, said Anna Callahan, a senior program manager with the Trust for Public Land. For Maxfield’s future schoolyard, that means increased shade and seating, as well as addressing stormwater issues.

“And so some of the nature-based improvements, as well as the stormwater improvements, will help with mitigating some of the water movement on site and help with capturing that to prevent both large puddles in the spring and then also icy patches when we get those in the winter,” Callahan said.

Maxfield one of five schools chosen for model

Maxfield — which has been serving students for more than 130 years — is one of five schools in the state that are part of a first cohort where a community schoolyard model is being completed, Callahan said, making it one of the first in the state. The Trust for Public Land has created 350 community schoolyards in the country.

Total cost for the project is estimated to be $1.5 million, with fundraising for its second phase still underway.

Funding support comes from SPPS, Minnesota’s Environment and Natural Resources Trust Fund – as recommended by the Legislative-Citizen Commission on Minnesota Resources – the Hardenbergh Foundation, the Donna Herzog Foundation and Xcel Energy.

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By DAVID BAUDER and AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration appointee overseeing the Voice of America has outlined job cuts that would reduce employment at the state-run news organization from over 1,000 people to 81.

The Voice of America, which has delivered news to countries all over the world for the better part of a century, has been largely silent for two months following an executive order by President Donald Trump. He believes Voice of America, and similar organizations like Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, have reported with a liberal bias.

Most of VOA’s employees have been on administrative leave since mid-March amid reports that layoff notices were forthcoming.

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Kari Lake, who has been overseeing the U.S. Agency for Global Media for Trump, outlined planned employment changes in a letter Tuesday to U.S. Sen. James Risch that was obtained by The Associated Press. Lake said Trump had directed the agency “to reduce the performance of its statutory functions and associated personnel to the minimum presence and function required by law.”

Some VOA employees are fighting for the organization’s survival in court, and one of them — White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara — said Wednesday that it was absurd to think the staff could be cut to the levels Lake is suggesting.

“You can’t make staff this size produce content for a global audience of 360 million weekly,” Widakuswara said. “It’s comical if it weren’t so tragic. We’re not just losing our jobs and journalism, we are abdicating our voice and influence in the world.”

In April, a federal judge ruled that the administration illegally shut down VOA. But an appellate panel later said that a lower court did not have the authority to order that employees be brought back to work, keeping the agency in limbo.

In court papers filed last week, lawyers for Widakuswara and fellow plaintiffs said the administration made a cursory attempt to indicate that VOA was operational by broadcasting five minutes of content to three provinces in Afghanistan on May 27.

The Washington-area building where Voice of America has been operating has been put up for sale, while a lease has been canceled for a new building that the news operation was to move into, the court papers said.

Lake’s letter says the administration wants to keep 33 jobs overseen by her agency that broadcasts news to Cuba, along with two positions each to provide services to China and Afghanistan and in Farsi, the official language of Iran.

Lake announced last month that the pro-Trump news outlet One America News Network had agreed to provide a feed of its newscasts to VOA and other state-run services that broadcast in other countries. It’s not clear whether any OAN feeds have been used yet.

Bauder reported from New York.

By LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Army leaders on Wednesday defended spending as much as $45 million to add a parade to the service’s 250th birthday celebration on June 14 in Washington, saying it will help boost recruitment, as Congress members argued that the money could be better spent on troops’ barracks or other priorities.

Members of the House Armed Services Committee also said they are concerned that the Defense Department is shifting about $1 billion from a variety of accounts — including base housing — to cover the costs of shoring up the defense of the southern border.

Spending for the parade has become a flashpoint since it comes at a time when the Trump administration is slashing funding for personnel and programs across the federal government, including the Defense Department.

Military tanks and other military vehicles are transported via railroad to Washington, D.C. for an upcoming parade for the Army’s 250th anniversary, Monday, June 2, 2025, at Fort Cavazos near Killeen, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

While the Army has long planned for a festival on the National Mall to celebrate its 250th birthday, the parade was just recently added. President Donald Trump has long wanted a military parade in the city, after seeing an elaborate one in France on Bastille Day during his first presidential term, and June 14 is also his birthday.

U.S. Rep. Salud Carbajal, D-Calif., questioned whether the additional cost of the parade was appropriate since all the military services are facing 8% budget cuts, and said perhaps it could be used to improve troops’ quality of life or warfighting capabilities. He prodded Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll on what he would prioritize if Congress wrote him a blank check for $45 million.

Driscoll replied that he thinks the parade offers a chance to tell the public about the Army. “I believe very specifically that telling that story will directly lead to a recruiting boom and will fill up our pipeline for the coming years,” he said.

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At the same time, he and Gen. Randy George, chief of staff of the Army, told lawmakers that the service has now met its recruiting goal for the year — with 61,000 recruits. Army officials have predicted for months that they would hit the target early after making a series of changes to recruiting programs, recruiters and policies over the past several years.

That prompted Rep. Wesley Bell, D-Mo., to ask why the parade was needed for recruiting if it’s already surging.

Driscoll said the Army believes the parade “will empower an entire new generation of America’s youth to catch the spirit to serve their nation.”

Rep. Derrick Van Orden, R-Wisc., defended the parade spending, saying “you cannot put a price tag on patriotism.”

House members on both sides of the aisle pressed the Army about a recent request to shift money from across the budget to support the southern border. The biggest concern, they said, is that it takes money away from base housing, which has been plagued with persistent problems, including mold, rodents and raw sewage in barracks.

Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., agreed the nation needs a strong border, but said lawmakers worked for the past year on a broad effort to address the housing problems. “I feel like a decision was made that undermined this whole effort that we spent the last year doing.,” he said.

Pressed on the issue by Carbajal, George acknowledged that redirecting the money has an impact on the barracks.

“If we took $1 billion out of barracks, we would be able to fix less barracks,” he agreed, but also said, ”“You have to make choices, congressman.”