By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he’s “not happy” with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, saying Moscow’s ongoing war in Ukraine is “killing a lot of people” on both sides.

“I’m not happy with him, I can tell you that much right now. This is killing a lot of people,” Trump said of Putin during a meeting with his Cabinet.

The president also acknowledged that his previous suggestions that he might be able to cajole Russia’s president into bringing the fighting to a close and quickly ending the war in Ukraine has “turned out to be tougher.”

It was notable for a president who has all but aligned himself with Putin at moments in the past and has praised the Russian leader effusively at times — though less so in recent months.

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The Cabinet meeting comments came a day after Trump said the United States will now send more weapons to Ukraine — dramatically reversing a previous announcement of a pause in critical, previously approved firepower deliveries to Kyiv in the midst of concerns that America’s own military stockpiles have declined too much.

“We wanted (to) put defensive weapons (in). Putin is not, he’s not treating human beings right,” Trump said during the Cabinet meeting, explaining the pause’s reversal. “It’s killing too many people. So we’re sending some defensive weapons to Ukraine and I’ve approved that.”

Trump’s decision to remove the pause follows his privately having expressed frustration with Pentagon officials for announcing a halt in some deliveries last week — an action he felt wasn’t properly coordinated with the White House, according to three people familiar with the matter.

But the president refused to provide more details on that matter Tuesday.

“I don’t know,” he said sarcastically to a reporter who pressed him on the weapons pause’s original approval. “Why don’t you tell me?”

Still, his expressing open displeasure with Putin — especially after approving a resumption of U.S. weapons to Ukraine — underscores how much Trump’s thinking on Russia and Ukraine policy has shifted since he returned to the White House in January. It also lays bare how tricky navigating the ongoing conflict has proved to be.

Trump suggested during last year’s campaign that he could quickly end the Russia-Ukraine war. But by April, he was using his Truth Social account to exhort Putin to end military strikes on the Ukrainian capital.

“Vladimir, STOP!” he wrote. But large-scale Russian attacks on Ukraine have continued since then and Trump’s public pronouncements on Putin have continued to sour.

Trump said after a call last week with Putin that he was unhappy with Russia’s president and “I don’t think he’s looking to stop” the war. Then, speaking at the start of a dinner he hosted for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Monday night, Trump said, “I’m not happy with President Putin at all.”

Asked during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting what his growing displeasure with Putin might mean for U.S. foreign policy, Trump declined to discuss specifics.

“I will say, the Ukrainians were brave. But we gave them the best equipment ever made,” Trump said. He also said that without U.S. weapons and military support, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 might have otherwise sparked what “probably would have been a very quick war.”

“It would have been a war that lasted three or four days,” he said, “but they had the benefit of unbelievable equipment.”

By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Sean “Diddy” Combs will be sentenced in his federal criminal case on Oct. 3, a judge said Tuesday after probation officials rejected the defense and prosecution’s plan to move the date up by about two weeks.

Combs, who remains jailed after a split verdict last week, spoke briefly to his lawyer Marc Agnifilo during a virtual hearing on the scheduling issue that lasted all of two minutes. At one point he asked the lawyer to turn on his camera so they could see each other’s faces.

The hip-hop mogul’s lawyers had been urging Judge Arun Subramanian to sentence him as soon as possible after jurors acquitted him last week on racketeering and sex trafficking but convicted him on two prostitution-related charges.

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Combs, 55, faces up to a decade in prison for each of two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution for flying people around the country, including his girlfriends and male sex workers, for sexual encounters. A conviction on racketeering conspiracy or sex trafficking could have put him in prison for life.

Prior to Tuesday’s hearing, Combs’ lawyers and prosecutors filed a joint letter proposing a Sept. 22 sentencing date, subject to the consent of the U.S. Probation Office. A short time later, they filed a second letter stating that all parties — including the probation office — were on board with the Oct. 3 date Subramanian originally proposed.

Combs got a standing ovation from fellow inmates when he returned to jail after the verdict last week, Agnifilo said. The Bad Boy Records founder will remain at the federal lockup in Brooklyn where he’s been held since his arrest last September after Subramanian last week rejected his request for bail.

The judge, citing a now-infamous video of Combs beating a former girlfriend and photographs showing injuries to another ex-girlfriend, made clear that he plans to hold Combs accountable for the years of violence and bullying behavior that were exposed at his eight-week trial.

Combs’ lawyers want less than the 21 to 27 months in prison that they believe the sentencing guidelines recommend. Prosecutors contend that the guidelines, when properly calculated to include Combs’ crimes and violent history, call for at least four to five years in prison.

Combs’ punishment is Subramanian’s decision alone, and the judge will have wide latitude in determining a sentence. While judges often adhere to the federal judiciary’s formulaic guidelines meant to prevent disparity in sentences for the same crimes, they are not mandatory.

As part of the sentencing process, Combs must give an interview to probation officers for a pre-sentence investigation report that will aid the judge in determining the proper punishment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s plans to downsize the federal workforce despite warnings that critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will be out of their jobs.

The justices overrode lower court orders that temporarily froze the cuts, which have been led by the Department of Government Efficiency.

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The court said in an unsigned order that no specific cuts were in front of the justices, only an executive order issued by Trump and an administration directive for agencies to undertake job reductions.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only dissenting vote, accusing her colleagues of a “demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this President’s legally dubious actions in an emergency posture.”

Trump has repeatedly said voters gave him a mandate to remake the federal government, and he tapped billionaire ally Elon Musk to lead the charge through DOGE. Musk recently left his role.

Tens of thousands of federal workers have been fired, have left their jobs via deferred resignation programs or have been placed on leave. There is no official figure for the job cuts, but at least 75,000 federal employees took deferred resignation and thousands of probationary workers have already been let go.

In May, U.S. District Judge Susan Illston found that Trump’s administration needs congressional approval to make sizable reductions to the federal workforce. By a 2-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to block Illston’s order, finding that the downsizing could have broader effects, including on the nation’s food-safety system and health care for veterans.

Illston directed numerous federal agencies to halt acting on the president’s workforce executive order signed in February and a subsequent memo issued by DOGE and the Office of Personnel Management. Illston was nominated by former Democratic President Bill Clinton.

The labor unions and nonprofit groups that sued over the downsizing offered the justices several examples of what would happen if it were allowed to take effect, including cuts of 40% to 50% at several agencies.

Among the agencies affected by the order are the departments of Agriculture, Energy, Labor, the Interior, State, the Treasury and Veterans Affairs. It also applies to the National Science Foundation, Small Business Association, Social Security Administration and Environmental Protection Agency.

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By AAMER MADHANI, SEUNG MIN KIM and TARA COPP, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump’s decision to send more defensive weapons to Ukraine came after he privately expressed frustration with Pentagon officials for announcing a pause in some deliveries last week — a move that he felt wasn’t properly coordinated with the White House, according to three people familiar with the matter.

The Pentagon, which announced last week that it would hold back some air defense missiles, precision-guided artillery and other weapons pledged to Ukraine because of what U.S. officials said were concerns that American stockpiles were in short supply. Trump said Monday that the U.S. will have to send more weapons to Ukraine, effectively reversing the move.

Two of the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about the sensitive internal discussions, said there was some internal opposition among Pentagon brass to the pause — coordinated by Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby — before it was announced.

One of the people described Trump as being caught “flat footed” by the announcement.

The pause in critical weapons deliveries had come at a difficult moment for Ukraine, which has faced increasing — and more complex — air barrages from Russia during the more than three-year-old war. Trump acknowledged that in announcing the reversal on Monday night, saying, “They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now.”

Asked by a reporter Tuesday who approved the pause, Trump bristled at the question while he was gathered with his Cabinet. “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell me?”

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Trump’s change in tone on Putin

The president also laid into Russian President Vladimir Putin, suggesting he was unnecessarily prolonging the war that Trump has said he’s determined to quickly conclude. Trump has struggled to find a resolution, with talks between the sides stalled.

The Republican leader has sounded increasingly exasperated with Putin in recent days. The two spoke by phone last week.

“We get a lot of bull—- thrown at us by Putin, if you want to know the truth,” Trump said during Tuesday’s Cabinet meeting. “He’s very nice all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless.”

He has threatened, but held off on, imposing new sanctions against Russia’s oil industry to try to prod Putin into peace talks.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said last week that Trump has given him the go-ahead to push forward with a bill he’s co-sponsoring that calls, in part, for a 500% tariff on goods imported from countries that continue to buy Russian oil. The move would have huge ramifications for China and India, two economic behemoths that buy Russian oil.

Trump said Tuesday that he’s “looking at it very strongly.”

Pentagon says it’s going to resume shipments to Ukraine

The weapons pause announced last week impacted shipments of Patriot missiles, precision-guided GMLRS, Hellfire missiles and Howitzer rounds and more, taking not only Ukrainian officials and other allies by surprise but also U.S. lawmakers and other parts of the Trump administration, including the State Department.

The Pentagon said late Monday that at Trump’s direction, it would resume weapons shipments to Ukraine “to ensure the Ukrainians can defend themselves while we work to secure a lasting peace and ensure the killing stops.” Still, spokesman Sean Parnell added that its review for Trump to evaluate military shipments worldwide continues as part of “America First” defense priorities.

The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment on whether Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth consulted with the White House prior to pausing weapons shipments and whether or not those shipments have now resumed.

It’s also unclear which weaponry would now be sent, though Trump said that the U.S. will primarily be assisting Ukraine with defensive weapons.

Counting the weapons

On Tuesday, each of the services and the combatant commands — the multiservice organizations that spearhead U.S. military operations around the world — were still sending up information on their stockpiles of specific munitions to Pentagon leadership, a U.S. official said.

“They are literally still doing the math,” the official said.

The information was being presented on a stoplight chart — where munitions were either in a red, yellow or green status, similar to slides that had been created the week before, the official said. That earlier study had concluded that some munitions were OK to keep sending to Ukraine — but others were reaching concerning levels.

Getting a full visibility on the numbers of actual munitions on hand takes time, the official said, because while Patriot missiles, for example, initially belong to the Army, once they are requested and sent to a combatant command, such as U.S. Central Command, the service loses visibility on those numbers in inventory.

The vast majority of the munitions and weapons the U.S. has shipped to Ukraine have been pulled from the Army, which has monitored levels closely in recent years, particularly for high-demand items like 155mm artillery shells and Patriot missiles for air defenses.

It’s been harder for the Army to ramp up production on those items than had been planned: It was trying to hit a goal of producing 100,000 155mm shells a month by the end of 2025 but won’t meet that goal now until 2026, Army spokesman Steve Warren said.

Ramping up Patriot missile production also has been challenging, Warren said.

Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement Tuesday that he was glad Trump was resuming deliveries to Ukraine.

“This time, the President will need to reject calls from the isolationists and restrainers within his Administration to limit these deliveries to defensive weapons,” McConnell said. “And he should disregard those at DoD who invoke munitions shortages to block aid while refusing to invest seriously in expanding munitions production.”

Associated Press writers Lisa Mascaro and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.