By CHRIS MEGERIAN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The fist bump seems so long ago.

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Three years after Joe Biden’s cursory greeting with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Donald Trump luxuriated in an extravagant royal welcome as he arrived in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday.

Concerns about human rights and fossil fuels in the oil-rich autocracy were nowhere on the agenda. Instead the day was all about cutting deals and celebrating a personal relationship that has endured through scandal and political turmoil.

“I really believe we like each other a lot,” Trump said as they sat on golden chairs under elaborate chandeliers in the royal palace. During a speech later in the day, the president described Prince Mohammed as an “incredible man” and “my friend.”

The feeling was clearly mutual. The crown prince addressed his guest as “my dear President Trump,” and the Saudis played his campaign anthems — “God Bless the U.S.A.” and “ YMCA ” — during his appearance at an investment forum.

For the U.S. Republican president, the visit was a return to the international stage after his comeback election victory (Exactly one year ago, he was on trial in a hush money case and listening to his former lawyer testify against him in a New York City courtroom.)

Although Trump recently attended the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome, Saudi Arabia was originally intended to be his initial overseas destination, just like in his first term. It served as a gilded debut for a foreign policy focused on securing cash infusions for American businesses.

Trump pumped his fist as he stepped out of Air Force One, then descended the stairs to shake hands with Prince Mohammed, who greeted his guest on the tarmac in a rare display of respect.

President Donald Trump walks with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during an arrival ceremony at the Royal Terminal of King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, May 13, 2025.(AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The crown prince, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, has been eager to rehabilitate his global image after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which U.S. intelligence officials accused him of ordering. He’s also seeking an economic revival for the kingdom to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels, and the occasion was an opportunity to demonstrate that the floodgates for investment were open again.

The guest list for an elaborate luncheon was stuffed with corporate executives, including Ruth Porat of Google, Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group, Jane Fraser of Citicorp, Alex Karp of Palantir and Jensen Huang of NVIDIA. Also attending was Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and a top adviser to Trump.

Saudi Air Force F-15 warplanes escort Air Force One carrying President Donald Trump as it arrives in Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

As Air Force One approached Riyadh, Saudi pilots in six American-made F-15 fighter jets escorted the plane. After a traditional coffee ceremony inside the royal terminal at the airport, Trump’s limousine was flanked by riders on white Arabian horses carrying American and Saudi flags. A honor guard was lined up with golden swords.

Members of a traditional Saudi honor guard with their golden swords wait for the arrival of President Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman during an arrival ceremony at the Royal Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

(Missing from the visit was the orb, a glowing sphere a little bigger than a bowling ball that Trump memorably posed for photos with during his trip to Riyadh in his first term.)

Trump has downplayed traditional American alliances in Europe, and often expressed exasperation with the country’s trading and defense partners. But there was no such hesitation in Riyadh, and he said the relationship between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia “has been a bedrock of security and prosperity,”

Biden received little of the same pomp when he visited three years ago. He had previously criticized Saudi Arabia as a “pariah” but decided to travel to the kingdom anyway in an implicit acknowledgement that it was too influential of a global player to ignore.

The crown prince greeted the Democratic president at the palace, which is where the two leaders exchanged their fist bump. Their only other joint public appearance was all business, as they sat across from each other at a large conference table, flanked by top advisers.

Later that year, OPEC+ announced it would reduce oil production in a blow to Biden, whose political fortunes were being battered by inflation. The Democratic president acknowledged that it was “a disappointment, and it says that there are problems” in the U.S.-Saudi relationship.

But there was no such friction during Trump’s visit. In his speech, the president flattered Saudi Arabia for its economic development and suggested that foreign leaders shouldn’t be “giving you lectures on how to live and how to govern your own affairs.”

President Donald Trump, left, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, center, and White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles speak at the Royal Palace in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Tuesday, May 13, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

“You achieved a modern miracle the Arabian way,” Trump said.

Prince Mohammed, sitting in the audience, placed his right hand on his heart and beamed.

By MEGAN JANETSKY

MEXICO CITY (AP) — Lawyers for a 2-year-old U.S. citizen who was deported with her mother to Honduras said on Tuesday that the family was lifting its lawsuit against the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

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The girl -– one of three U.S.-born children who were deported alongside their Honduran-born mothers -– had been at the heart of one of the mounting legal battles playing out in the United States weighing if the Trump administration broke the law in implementing its new deportation policies.

“Given the traumatizing experiences the families have been through, they are taking a step back to have full discussions about all their options, the safety and well-being of their children, and the best ways to proceed so the harms they have suffered can be fully addressed,” said Gracie Willis, one of the family’s lawyers.

The lawsuit was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, National Immigration Project and several other allied groups, which said the deportations were a “shocking — although increasingly common — abuse of power.”

Willis and the group of lawyers had argued that the families did not have a fair opportunity to decide whether they wanted the children to stay in the United States. Willis said the family of the 2-year old girl and their lawyers jointly decided to dismiss the case to give the family “space and time to consider all the options that are available to them.”

A federal judge in Louisiana had raised questions about the girl’s deportation, saying the government did not prove it had done so properly.

The Honduran-born mother — who is pregnant — was arrested in April on an outstanding deportation order along with the girl and her 11-year-old Honduran-born sister during a check-in appointment at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in New Orleans, lawyers said. The family lived in Baton Rouge.

Lawyers for the girl’s father insisted he wanted the girl to remain with him in the U.S., while ICE said the mother had wanted the girl to be deported with her to Honduras.

In a court filing, lawyers for the father said ICE indicated that it was holding the girl in a bid to induce the father to turn himself in.

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty in Louisiana had scheduled a hearing for the case later this week, saying it was “in the interest of dispelling our strong suspicion that the Government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

President Donald Trump’s 2026 “skinny budget” is out, and at first glance it gives small-government advocates reason to cheer. It proposes deep cuts to domestic agencies, calls for eliminating redundant programs and gestures toward reviving federalism by shifting power and responsibility back to the states. It promises to slash overreaching “woke” initiatives, end international handouts and abolish bureaucracies that have outlived their usefulness.

But this budget is more rhetorical than revolutionary.

As impressive as Trump’s envisioned cuts are — $163 billion worth — they lose luster because the version of the budget being considered in Congress also calls for increases to defense and border security spending, as well as the extension of the 2017 tax cuts. And for all its fiery declarations, the budget fails to truly confront the drivers of our fiscal crisis.

The budget does, thankfully, enshrine the Department of Government Efficiency’s acknowledgment that federal sprawl has become unmanageable. It proposes defunding environmental-justice programs, trimming National Institute of Health and National Science Foundation budgets, slashing the Department of Education and eliminating corporate welfare masquerading as climate policy.

It also rightly calls for cutting the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities — two anachronisms with no constitutional justification. Art and education don’t need federal management; they need freedom.

The budget retreats from Washington’s micromanagement of local affairs. Education grants, housing subsidies and green-energy projects are best cut and handled by state governments or the private sector. One-size-fits-all federal fixes for everything from school lunches to water systems have failed. Devolving authority isn’t just constitutional; it’s practical.

But these trims are wrapped in a document that nevertheless sustains a bloated government. Even with the reductions, 2026 discretionary spending would remain essentially unchanged at $1.6 trillion. In some respects, the budget enshrines Biden-era spending.

Then there’s defense. For all the “America First” rhetoric about maintaining a domestic focus, Trump’s budget does nothing to rein in the Pentagon’s fiscal free-for-all aimed at projecting power around the world. Quite the opposite: It proposes a 13% increase, pushing base defense spending past $1 trillion, including $892.6 billion in discretionary spending supplemented by $119.3 billion in mandatory spending and an additional $150 billion to be passed through Congress’ reconciliation process.

The Pentagon remains the largest federal bureaucracy and among the least accountable. It hasn’t passed a full audit since 2018, yet it gets a raise. If “peace through strength” means blank checks for defense contractors and redundant weapons systems, we need to rethink our definition of strength.

Consider the new F-47 fighter jet included in this budget. As Jack Nicastro notes in Reason magazine, this aircraft — billed as the most advanced ever built — is being developed to replace the F-35, which has been a taxpayer-funded boondoggle. So far, the F-35 has cost taxpayers more than $400 billion, far beyond the initial projected cost, and is expected to total $2 trillion over its lifespan. It’s suffered from technical failures (including at some point having problems flying in the rain) and some doubt it will ever be fully functional.

Considering the government incentives that gave us the F-35 mess still exist and given that aerial combat is shifting toward automated or remotely piloted systems, why would we believe our money will be better spent on the F-47?

Trump’s budget also boosts Homeland Security spending, propping up another sprawling bureaucracy. The president’s high-profile and problematic approach to deportation, while politically popular with his constituency, costs a lot of money. As the Cato Institute’s David Bier notes, indiscriminate deportations risk shrinking the workforce, reducing tax revenue and undercutting economic growth — all while ignoring the merit-based immigration reforms Trump claims to support.

Finally, there’s the ever-present elephant in the room: entitlements. Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid make up nearly 60% of spending and are the main drivers of our debt. Yet they are mostly untouched in the current fiscal sketch. The administration promises a more complete plan later to show where the savings would be found, but we’ve heard that before — and House Speaker Mike Johnson said last week that Republicans would block some of the most effective approaches to cutting Medicaid. But the math is straightforward. Without serious entitlement reform, no discretionary spending cuts can avert a debt crisis.

The bipartisan failure to govern responsibly isn’t just a policy lapse; it’s a moral one. Deficit spending and the burden of debt repayment crowds out private investment, fuels inflation and burdens future generations with obligations they have no say over. The U.S. is on track to exceed its World War II-era debt record by 2029. If this budget is truly the plan to reverse course, we’re in trouble.

Yes, the new Trump budget has bright spots, but those gains are neutralized by massive defense spending, costly immigration priorities and persistent gimmicks.

At best, it maintains a flawed status quo. We don’t need more of the same; we need evidence of a serious turnaround. Until that happens, we have little choice but to assume that Trump’s budget is another big-government blueprint in small-government clothing.

Veronique de Rugy is a senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. This article was produced in collaboration with Creators Syndicate.

“My plan would use a $500 million investment from our city’s pension funds—a smart, long-term real estate investment—to finance the expansion of child care facilities across the five boroughs.”

(Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)

New York City has a serious question that needs answering. Do we want to be a global hub for hungry, ambitious and resilient people determined to make a better life for themselves and their families? 

Do we believe that working parents have a place here—that they are, in fact, critical to the lifeblood of the city?

Most people would say yes—of course. But as any parent in this city can tell you, we are falling maddeningly short of our aspirations. You know a system is broken when so many people cannot afford to work, or are just hanging on to their jobs, because they can’t afford to pay for child care.

This isn’t just a personal issue, it’s a policy failure—and it’s gone on too long. That’s why I’m proud to introduce my universal child care plan. It’s called the CARES Plan (Comptroller’s Audit & Resource Enhancements for Universal Child Care) and uses the capital and resources we already have to change the way we live.

What I’m proposing isn’t some radical, pie-in-the-sky plan that will inevitably get watered down by special interests and city leaders doing their bidding. Instead, my plan would use a $500 million investment from our city’s pension funds—a smart, long-term real estate investment—to finance the expansion of child care facilities across the five boroughs. 

Pension funds invest in real estate all the time. My spin on this is simple: let’s make those investments work double-duty by solving one of our biggest crises. By financing child care centers, we get long-term returns for our retirees and immediate help for working parents.

I’m also calling for a Child Care Property Fund to support the acquisition and development of high-quality, affordable child care centers. Thousands of families live in “child care deserts” where options are scarce or unaffordable—or both. Targeting these underserved areas means promising New Yorkers that your zip code isn’t the thing that determines whether you can find safe, nurturing care for your kids.

We should also use social impact bonds to attract private investment into the public sphere. These bonds would fund child care programs that have measurable success, with investors repaid only if a series of strategic benchmarks are achieved. It’s a smart way to keep everyone’s eyes on the ball. 

As comptroller, I’ll audit every city agency involved in child care. Providers face slow payments and bureaucratic hurdles that limit the number of seats available. By streamlining the system, we’ll ensure providers get paid on time and parents get better options.

The economic case is clear. New York City loses $23 billion a year because parents, especially women, are forced to leave the workforce or reduce their hours due to lack of affordable child care. Nationally, the U.S. economy loses $122 billion a year for the same reason. Investing in child care is one of the smartest economic decisions we can make.

It’s also a moral obligation. If you really want to know a city’s priorities, don’t listen to political rhetoric. Just look at its budget—how it spends, where it invests and who benefits. 

When families have access to affordable child care, our workforce grows stronger. Businesses have a larger, more stable labor pool. Child care workers gain better, more secure jobs. That’s why my plan fights for pay parity for child care workers because they deserve wages and benefits that reflect the critical importance of their work. Investing in the workforce that takes care of our children is just as important as investing in the buildings where that care happens.

Smart real estate investments tied to child care centers strengthen our pension funds and build a stronger city. Stronger families mean a stronger tax base. This is how we retain top talent, keep our economy dynamic, and ensure New York City remains a place where working families can thrive.

In short: investing in child care is a win-win-win. It keeps working families in New York City. It strengthens our economy. It builds long-term value for our pensioners. And it’s the right thing to do for the next generation.

My CARES Plan gives us a blueprint. It’s bold, practical, and possible. And here’s the thing: if we get this done, New York City will be the first city in the nation to offer universal child care. We will lead the way, and the nation will follow. That’s what New York has always done: we dream big, we set the standard, and we show the world what’s possible.

Universal child care should be no exception. Let’s get to work.

Justin Brannan is a member of the City Council representing Brooklyn’s 47th District, and a candidate running for NYC Comptroller.

The post Opinion: A Bold New Blueprint for Universal Child Care in NYC appeared first on City Limits.