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Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelensky will visit Washington to sign a deal on rare earth minerals on Friday, Donald Trump has said.

The US president said Washington would get “a lot of money” back from Ukraine under the deal, but warned that he would be providing minimal guarantees to Ukraine for security from future Russian aggression under any peace deal.

“I’m not going to make security guarantees beyond very much - we’re going to have Europe do that because we’re talking about Europe is their next door neighbour,” Mr Trump told reporters.

Mr Zelensky has said that a framework economic deal with the US is ready – but security guarantees that Kyiv views as vital remain to be decided.

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Fired USAid employees and advocates for people with HIV staged a protest in a Capitol office building on Wednesday, warning that Donald Trump’s drive to dismantle the agency tasked with implementing Washington’s foreign aid agenda imperils the fight against the virus.

Wearing white T-shirts that read “Aids funding cuts kill” and chanting “Congress has blood on its hands, unfreeze aid now”, around three dozen protesters lay down in the rotunda of the Cannon House office building, home to the offices of representatives from both parties. Capitol police said about 20 arrests were made of demonstrators who defied their orders to disperse.

“What we are demanding of Congress is that they stop behaving like doormats in the face of this attack on humanitarian assistance that truly is highly effective and life-saving,” Asia Russell, executive director of Health Gap, a global advocacy group fighting against HIV, said prior to the protest.

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The New York governor, Kathy Hochul ordered the City University of New York (Cuny) to immediately remove a job posting advertising a Palestinian studies professor role at the state university system’s Hunter College.

In the job listing, Hunter College wrote that the institution is seeking “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality”.

It added that Hunter College is open to a “diverse theoretical and methodical approaches” to teaching the class.

A spokesperson for Hochul told the New York Post: “Governor Hochul has directed Cuny to immediately remove this job posting and conduct a thorough review of the position to ensure that antisemitic theories are not promoted in the classroom/”

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Award-winning singer-musician Rhiannon Giddens announced on Tuesday she is canceling her May performance at the Kennedy Center, the latest artist to seek distance from the institution in the wake of President Trump’s takeover.

Earlier this month, Trump announced he was naming himself chairman of the Kennedy Center board, replacing several board members with allies.

“I cannot in good conscience play at The Kennedy Center with the change in programming direction forced on the institution by this new board,” Giddens said in a post on Instagram.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) on Wednesday paused an effort to terminate hundreds of contracts after pressure from Democrat lawmakers, according to Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee ranking member Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

The major reversal, which came a day after VA Secretary Doug Collins publicly touted the cancellation of up to 875 contracts in a video posted to social media, was relayed in an email to agency staff.

“VA Leadership is reconsidering previous guidance,” the email states, as reported by The Washington Post. The missive ordered the effort halted and that “further contract reviews will be conducted to arrive at a new final decision.”

The Trump administration said Wednesday it is eliminating more than 90% of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world, putting numbers on its plans to eliminate the majority of U.S. development and humanitarian help abroad.

The cuts detailed by the administration would leave few surviving USAID projects for advocates to try to save in what are ongoing court battles with the administration.

The Trump administration outlined its plans in both an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press and filings in one of those federal lawsuits Wednesday.

The Supreme Court intervened in that case late Wednesday and temporarily blocked a court order requiring the administration to release billions of dollars in foreign aid by midnigh

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• "This is a significant shift, it won't be easy, and it will require 100% commitment — I respect his decision," Bezos wrote in a note to staff Wednesday. "We'll be searching for a new Opinion Editor to own this new direction."

The big picture: The new announcement, following a controversial move by Bezos to kill presidential endorsements last year, shows how much Bezos is willing to assert his power to shape public opinion as the owner of one of the country's largest newspapers.

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