President Trump says the Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin could “set the table” for trilateral talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He denied the meeting rewarded Putin, as critics warned it could undermine US efforts to isolate Russia.
United States President Donald Trump has marked the 90th anniversary of Social Security with a defence of his administration’s policies toward the programme — and attacks on his Democratic rivals.
On Thursday, Trump signed a presidential proclamation in the Oval Office, wherein he acknowledged the “monumental” importance of the social safety-net programme.
“I recommit to always defending Social Security,” the proclamation reads.
“To this day, Social Security is rooted in a simple promise: those who gave their careers to building our Nation will always have the support, stability, and relief they deserve.”
But Trump’s second term as president has been dogged by accusations that he has undermined programmes like Social Security in the pursuit of other agenda items, including his restructuring of the federal government.
Social Security in the US draws on payroll taxes to fund monthly payments to the elderly, the spouses of deceased workers, and the disabled. For many recipients, the payouts are a primary source of income during retirement.
The programme is considered widely popular: In 2024, the Pew Research Center found that 79 percent of Americans believe Social Security should not be cut in any way.
Additionally, four out of 10 people surveyed sided with the view that Social Security should be expanded to include more people and more benefits.
But the programme faces significant hurdles to its long-term feasibility.
Last year, the Social Security Administration (SSA) published a report that found the costs for old-age, disability and survivors’ insurance outstripped the programmes’ income.
It noted that the trust funds fuelling those programmes “are projected to become depleted during 2033” if measures are not taken to reverse the trend.
At Thursday’s Oval Office appearance, Trump sought to soothe those concerns, while taking a swipe at the Democratic Party.
“ You keep hearing stories that in six years, seven years, Social Security will be gone,” Trump said.
“And it will be if the Democrats ever get involved because they don’t know what they’re doing. But it’s going to be around a long time with us.”
He added that Social Security was “going to be destroyed” under his Democratic predecessor, former President Joe Biden, a frequent target for his attacks.
But Trump himself has faced criticism for weakening Social Security since returning to the White House for a second term in January.
Early on, Trump and his then-adviser Elon Musk laid out plans to slash the federal workforce and reduce spending, including by targeting the Social Security Administration (SSA).
In February, the Social Security Administration said it would “reduce the size of its bloated workforce and organizational structure”, echoing Trump and Musk’s rhetoric.
The projected layoffs and incentives for early retirement were designed to cut Social Security’s staff from 57,000 to 50,000, a 12.3-percent decrease.
Under Trump, the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has also announced plans to pare back Social Security’s phone services, though it has since backtracked in the face of public outcry.
In addition, Musk and Trump have attacked Social Security’s reputation, with the former adviser telling podcast host Joe Rogan, “Social Security is the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
The two men even claimed Social Security is paying benefits to millions of long-dead individuals, though critics point out that those claims do not appear to be true.
The COBOL programming system used by the Social Security Administration marks incomplete entries with birthdates set 150 years back, according to the news magazine Wired. Those entries, however, generally do not receive benefits.
The Office of the Inspector General overseeing the Social Security Administration has repeatedly looked into these older entries. It confirmed that these entries are not active.
“We acknowledge that almost none of the numberholders discussed in the report currently receive SSA payments,” a report from 2023 said.
It also indicated that the Social Security Administration would have to pay between $5.5m and $9.7m to update its programming, though the changes would yield “limited benefits” in the fight against fraud.
Still, Trump doubled down on the claim that dead people were receiving benefits on Thursday.
“We had 12.4 million names where they were over 120 years old,” Trump said. “There were nearly 135,000 people listed who were over 160 years old and, in some cases, getting payments. So somebody’s getting those payments.”
Critics have also questioned whether Trump’s push to cut taxes will have long-term effects that erode Social Security.
In July, Trump’s signature piece of legislation, the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), cemented his 2017 tax cuts. It also increased the tax deductions for earners who rely on tips or Social Security benefits.
But groups like the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a bipartisan think tank, estimate that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will shorten the timeline for Social Security’s insolvency.
“The law dictates that when the trust funds deplete their reserves, payments are limited to incoming revenues,” the committee said in late July.
“For the Social Security retirement program, we estimate that means a 24 percent benefit cut in late 2032, after the enactment of OBBBA.”
Still, Trump has repeatedly promised to defend Social Security from any benefit cuts. He reiterated that pledge in Thursday’s appearance.
“American seniors, every single day, we’re going to fight for them. We’re going to make them richer, better, stronger in so many different ways,” Trump said.
“But Social Security is pretty much the one that we think about, and we love it, and we love what’s happening with it, and it’s going to be good for 90 years and beyond.”
Healthcare providers in the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) treated more than 17,000 victims of sexual violence over just five months last year, according to a United Nations report.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres’s annual report on conflict-related sexual violence, released on Thursday, said the cases were registered in the province of North Kivu between January and May last year, as fighting between Congolese forces and Rwanda-backed M23 rebels intensified.
“Many survivors sought care after violent sexual attacks, including penetration with objects, perpetrated by multiple perpetrators,” said the report, which charted crimes like rape, gang rape and sexual slavery.
The conflict, which has killed thousands this year alone and displaced millions, is still ongoing despite a Qatar-mediated agreement between DRC and M23 last month that was supposed to pave the way to a ceasefire, running parallel to United States efforts to broker peace between Kinshasa and Kigali.
Last year’s figure marked a continued surge in sexual violence as the Rwanda-backed M23 rampaged through the east, with a total of 22,000 cases registered throughout 2023. That figure was more than double the previous year’s tally.
In 2023, the spike in violence occurred as the conflict spilled over from North Kivu into South Kivu, forcing UN peacekeeping mission MONUSCO to withdraw from the latter.
The report said that MONUSCO’s operations narrowed, “owing to military operations and widespread insecurity”. The mission had documented 823 cases of sexual violence in 2024, affecting 416 women, 391 girls, seven boys and nine men.
The UN said that 198 of last year’s cases were perpetrated by DRC “state actors”, including the army. It found that “M23 elements”, which “continued to receive instructions and support from the Rwanda Defence Force”, were implicated in 152 cases.
According to the report, survivors reported that they were exposed to the threat of sexual violence while searching for food in the fields and areas around displacement sites.
Many displaced women had resorted to prostitution to survive, “highlighting the nexus between food insecurity and sexual violence”.
Denis Mukwege, who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018 for his work combating sexual violence in DRC, told The Times newspaper this year: “When you have people raping with complete immunity – and think they can go on and on without any consequence, nothing will change.”
Guterres’s report charted violations in 21 countries, with the highest numbers recorded in DRC, the Central African Republic, Haiti, Somalia and South Sudan.
The United States Supreme Court has declined to put on hold a Mississippi law requiring that users of social media platforms verify their age and that minors have parental consent.
The high court made the decision on Thursday not to accept the challenge by NetChoice, a trade group that included tech giants such as Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, Alphabet which owns YouTube, and Snapchat.
The justices denied a request to block the law while the Washington-based tech industry trade association’s legal challenge to the law, which, it argues, violates the US Constitution’s protections against government abridgement of free speech, plays out in lower courts.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh in a statement about the court’s order said the Mississippi law was likely unconstitutional, but that NetChoice had not met the high bar to block the measure at this early stage of the case.
In a statement, Paul Taske, co-director of the NetChoice Litigation Center, said Kavanaugh’s view “makes clear that NetChoice will ultimately succeed” in its challenge. Taske called the Supreme Court’s order “an unfortunate procedural delay.”
NetChoice had turned to the Supreme Court after the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals let the law take effect even though a judge found it likely runs afoul of the First Amendment.
NetChoice sued in federal court in 2024 in a bid to invalidate the law, which was passed unanimously in the state legislature amid concern by lawmakers about the potential negative effects of social media use on the mental health of children.
Its emergency request to the justices marked the first time the Supreme Court was asked to consider a social media age-verification law.
The law requires that a social media platform obtain “express consent” from a parent or guardian of a minor before a child can open an account. It also states that regulated social media platforms must make “commercially reasonable” efforts to verify the age of users.
Under the law, the state can pursue civil penalties of up to $10,000 per violation as well as criminal penalties under Mississippi’s deceptive trade practices law.
US District Judge Halil Suleyman Ozerden in Gulfport, Mississippi, last year blocked Mississippi from enforcing the restrictions on some NetChoice members.
Ozerden issued a second order in June pausing the rules against those members, including Meta and its Instagram and Facebook platforms, Snapchat and YouTube.
The 5th Circuit on July 17 issued a one-sentence ruling that paused the judge’s order, without explaining its reasoning.
Courts in seven states have preliminarily or permanently blocked similar measures, according to NetChoice.
Some technology companies are separately battling lawsuits brought by US states, school districts and individual users alleging that social platforms have exacerbated mental health problems. The companies have denied wrongdoing.
NetChoice said the social media platforms of its members already have adopted extensive policies to moderate content for minors and provide parental controls.
In its request to the Supreme Court, the state told the justices that age-verification and parental consent requirements “are common ways for states to protect minors”.
Thousands at risk as foreign aid cuts hit humanitarian efforts.
Sudan’s worst cholera outbreak in years is spreading in a country ravaged by conflict.
Health and aid workers are battling desperately to stop it from escalating and crossing into neighbouring countries.
What’s driving the outbreak – and how serious is it?
Presenter: Adrian Finighan
Guests:
Mathilde Vu – Advocacy manager for Sudan at the Norwegian Refugee Council
Simon Mane – Sudan national director at the humanitarian organisation, World Vision International
Lawyers have submitted a final statement on behalf of Brazilian ex-President Jair Bolsonaro in a trial focused on his alleged role in a plot to stay in power despite losing the 2022 election.
In a statement submitted on Wednesday evening, Bolsonaro’s legal representatives denied the charges against him and said that prosecutors had presented no convincing evidence.
“There is no way to convict Jair Bolsonaro based on the evidence presented in the case, which largely demonstrated that he ordered the transition … and assured his voters that the world would not end on December 31st,” the document states.
The right-wing former president faces up to 12 years in prison if convicted of attempting to mount a coup after losing a presidential election to left-wing rival and current President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.
Bolsonaro, who raised alarm in the months leading up to the election by casting doubt on the voting process, has denied involvement in the plot, which allegedly included plans for Lula’s assassination.
The former leader’s legal representatives say the fact that he authorised the transition contradicts the coup allegations.
“This is evidence that eliminates the most essential of the accusatory premises,” they said.
Prosecutor-General Paulo Gonet submitted final arguments in July, citing handwritten notes, digital files, message exchanges, and spreadsheets that he said show details of a conspiracy to suppress democracy.
Following Bolsonaro’s election loss, crowds of his supporters gathered outside of military bases, calling on the armed forces to intervene and prevent Lula from taking office. A group of Bolsonaro’s supporters also stormed federal buildings in the capital of Brasilia on January 8, 2023. Some drew parallels to a military coup in the 1960s that marked the beginning of a decades-long period of dictatorship, for which Bolsonaro himself has long expressed fondness.
Bolsonaro and his allies, including United States President Donald Trump, have depicted the trial as a politically motivated “witch hunt”.
A recent survey conducted by Datafolha, a Brazilian polling institute, found that more than 50 percent of Brazilians agree with the court’s decision to place Bolsonaro under house arrest in August. The survey also found that a majority believe that Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, a frequent target of right-wing ire and central figure in the trial, is following the law.
Respondents also largely disagreed with the claim that Bolsonaro was being persecuted for political reasons, with 39 percent in agreement and 53 percent in disagreement.
Speaking from the White House on Thursday, Trump said Bolsonaro was an “honest man” and the victim of an attempted “political execution”.