The Latest: Trump signs $8.5 billion rare earths deal with Australian prime minister

President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical minerals deal Monday at the White House, making good on U.S. interest in Australia’s rich rare-earth resources as a potential counterpoint to China’s new minerals export restrictions.

The two leaders described the agreement as an $8.5 billion deal between the allies. Trump said it had been negotiated over several months.

It follows Beijing’s new requirement for foreign companies to get approval from the Chinese government to export magnets containing even trace amounts of rare earth materials that originated from China, or were produced with Chinese technology.

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The university is the latest to decline the White House’s offer for priority access to funding in return for ideological commitments.

The public school invited further discussion with the Trump administration, saying they have “much common ground.”

Federal aid should be awarded “strictly on merit,” University President Suresh Garimella wrote in a letter to Trump officials. He included a statement of principles to guide further discussion.

Arizona is the seventh university to decline the compact out of nine initially invited.

Of the remaining two, Vanderbilt University hasn’t decided on the deal but is offering feedback as part of “ongoing dialogue,” its chancellor said Monday.

The University of Texas said it was honored its Austin campus was included in the offer for “potential funding advantages,” but has been quiet since then.

After a flurry of rejections, the White House met with colleges Friday and attempted to strike a more collaborative tone. Responses since then have emphasized the need for dialogue.

NCAA baseball champs LSU and NAIA champs LSU-Shreveport were honored with a joint White House celebration to mark their stellar seasons.

The LSU Tigers swept Coastal Carolina in the College World Series, while LSU-Shreveport Pilots went a perfect 59-0 en route to their title.

“I think we should bring them into government,” Trump jokingly said of LSU head coach Jay Johnson and LSU-Shreveport’s Brad Neffendorf. “We can definitely use them.”

The Pilots standout left-handed pitcher Isaac Rohde was named the 2025 ABCA/Rawlings NAIA Pitcher of the Year. The Tigers championship team included nine players selected in the 2025 MLB draft.

It was LSU’s eighth national championship. Only USC, with 12, has won more College World Series titles.

Two more suspects have been charged with the attempted carjacking and beating of a 19-year-old man who was working for the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency — a crime that was a catalyst for the White House’s law-enforcement surge in the nation’s capital.

Laurence Cotton-Powell, 19, and Anthony Taylor, 18, were arrested last week on charges stemming from the Aug. 3 attack on Edward Coristine, a prominent DOGE employee nicknamed “Big Balls.” Two 15-year-old suspects from Maryland previously were charged in Coristine’s beating.

“This case underscores the escalating challenges that we face in confronting crime in Washington, D.C.,” U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said at a news conference on Monday.

Coristine was walking a woman to her car in the city’s Logan Circle neighborhood when he was attacked by a group of teenagers who repeatedly punched and kicked him, authorities said. The suspects fled when they spotted a police officer nearby.

The tear-down started Monday.

The Washington Post was first to report on the demolition work, posting dramatic photos to its website of a backhoe ripping through the East Wing façade and windows and other parts of the building in tatters on the ground.

Trump is adding a 90,000-square-foot ballroom to the White House because he says the East Room is too small and he doesn’t like holding events in tents on the South Lawn.

The new ballroom, which is supposed to be completed before Trump’s term ends, will accommodate 999 people, he said last week.

An appeals court has put a hold on a lower-court ruling that kept Trump from taking command of 200 Oregon National Guard troops. However, he is still barred from actually deploying those troops, at least for now.

U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued two temporary restraining orders early this month — one that prohibited Trump from calling up the troops so he could send them to Portland, and another that prohibited him from sending any National Guard members to Oregon at all, after the president tried to evade the first order by sending California troops instead.

The Justice Department appealed the first order, and in a 2-1 ruling, a panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the administration. The majority said the president was likely to succeed on his claim that he had the authority to federalize the troops because he had shown he was unable to enforce the laws in Portland without them. However, Immergut’s second order remains in effect, so no troops may immediately be deployed.

Asked about maintaining the Israel-Hamas ceasefire, Trump said the U.S. will give the situation a “little chance” in hopes that there will be less violence.

Israeli forces on Sunday killed dozens in strikes in Gaza after it accused Hamas militants of killing two soldiers.

Trump said Hamas must behave or face consequences.

“They have to be good, and if they’re not good they’ll be eradicated,” he said.

The president warned, “If they keep doing it, then we’re going to go in and straighten it out, and it’ll happen very quickly and pretty violently.”

Trump said he wasn’t talking about U.S. boots on the ground, but some of the other countries that backed the ceasefire agreement.

Federal officials are in court in Chicago to take questions about the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the region, which has produced more than 1,000 arrests as well as complaints that agents are increasingly using combative tactics.

The hearing comes a few days after a judge ordered uniformed immigration agents to wear body cameras, if available, and turn them on when engaged in arrests, frisks and building searches or when being deployed to protests.

Each Border Patrol agent who is part of Operation Midway Blitz “now has a body-worn camera,” said Kyle Harvick, deputy incident commander with U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis last week said she was a “little startled” after seeing TV images of street confrontations that involved tear gas and other tactics during the immigration sweep.

“The longer we loiter on a scene and subjects come, the situation gets more and more dangerous,” Harvick testified.

The president said he’s “doing a little bit of a tour” of the continent.

“I’ll be in Malaysia, I’ll be in Japan,” he said.

Trump previously committed to visiting South Korea, and he said he’ll visit China “fairly early next year.”

“They could still win it,” Trump said of Ukraine. “I don’t think they will. They could still win it. I never said they would win it. Anything can happen, you know war is a very strange thing.”

Trump on Friday called on Kyiv and Moscow to “stop where they are” and end their brutal war following a lengthy White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, another shift in his position on the war.

After meeting with Zelenskyy in New York on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly last month, Trump even said he believed the Ukrainians could win back all the territory they had lost to Russia since Putin launched the February 2022 invasion. That was a dramatic shift for Trump, who during his 2024 and much of the early going of his presidency insisted that Kyiv would have to concede land lost to Russia to end the war.

“We want to enact a bipartisan spending agreement, but it actually has to make life better for the American people, not continue policies that are hurting everyday Americans,” Hakeem Jeffries said of Democrats’ stance in shutdown negotiations during an interview at the New York Economic Club.

Jeffries added that Republican claims that Democrats want to provide health care services to people in the U.S. illegally was “divorced from reality” and that Republicans “go-to refrain is waste, fraud and abuse, then you actually ask them to point out where’s the waste, fraud and abuse, and it’s crickets.”

He reiterated that Democrats’ message on affordability, health care and alleged corruption would be the party’s main messages heading into the 2026 midterm elections. Discussing the national debt, Jeffries said that “at minimum, divided government” was needed to reach a sustainable spending plan for the country.

The president says he’ll soon meet with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and that he expects “we’ll probably work out a very fair deal” with China.

“I think we’re going to work out something that’s good for both countries,” Trump said. Beijing has not announced any plan for Xi to travel to South Korea, where Trump says he plans to meet the Chinese president, though it’s not unusual for Beijing to make announcements closer to the date.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent last week spoke with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng, and he’s said the two sides would meet in Malaysia later this week to help prepare for a leaders summit.

The U.S. secretary of state and Russian foreign minister spoke by phone on Monday to discuss next steps toward ending the Russia-Ukraine war, following conversations last week between Trump, Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Both of their ministries issued similar vague statements that the conversation built on understandings reached by Trump and Putin in their Oct. 16 call.

After that, Trump said he expected to meet with Putin in the coming weeks and that Rubio would meet a high-level Russian delegation, presumably led by Lavrov, this week. Neither the U.S. or Russian statements mentioned when either of those meetings might happen or where.

The Russian statement described Rubio-Lavrov call as “constructive” while the U.S. statement said that Rubio had “emphasized the importance of upcoming engagements as an opportunity for Moscow and Washington to collaborate on advancing a durable resolution of the Russia-Ukraine war.”

The former vice president says the Democrats are right to take a stand for saving the health care of the American people, particularly as they see how Trump’s budget law will increase their premiums next year.

“Nov. 1, people are going to really start feeling it in a very painful way,” Harris told The Associated Press in an interview during her book tour.

“When you talk about who’s responsible for this predicament, understand that the Republicans control the House, they control the Senate, they control the White House. They are in charge. And they are responsible for the shutdown.”

Energy Secretary Chris Wright says furloughs have begun at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency tasked with overseeing the U.S. nuclear stockpile.

In a social media post Monday, Wright said the agency is furloughing federal employees “due to the Schumer shutdown,″ a reference to the government shutdown that began Oct. 1.

Wright said he is visiting the Nevada National Security Site Monday and will “ask Nevada’s leaders to help us end this shutdown.”

The NNSA has said it could furlough up to 1,400 workers as a result of a funding lapse from the shutdown. Nearly 400 federal workers would remain on the job, along with NNSA contractors. The agency, a semiautonomous branch of the Department of Energy, also works secure nuclear materials around the world.

Trump and Albanese both said they hoped to get “a lot” done during their meeting.

Asked for his message to the people of Australia, Trump said, “We love them.”

Both leaders are now inside the White House preparing to appear before members of the U.S. and Australian press corps.

The Republican House speaker says it’s time to make progress on government funding talks now that demonstrators have had their march against Trump.

Johnson said the shutdown now on its 20th day has been about Chuck Schumer’s survival, accusing the Senate minority leader of trying to appease the left and show he is fighting the Trump agenda.

“Now that Democrats have had their protests and publicity stunts, I just pray that they come to their senses and end this shutdown and reopen the government this week,” Johnson said.

The House has not held votes since it passed a short-term funding bill on September 19th. Johnson says the House has done its job and now it’s up to the Senate to act.

Colombia has recalled its ambassador to the United States amid an increasingly angry back-and-forth between Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro.

Colombia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said Monday that Amb. Daniel García-Peña Jaramillo was already in Bogota.

Tensions increased Sunday when Trump called Petro “an illegal drug leader” and “a lunatic” after Petro had accused the U.S. government of killing a Colombian citizen in a Sept. 16 strike on a boat the U.S. said was allegedly carrying drugs. Petro said one of those aboard was a fisherman named Alejandro Carranza and that his boat was malfunctioning when hit.

American naval ships, fighter jets and drones are deployed in the region for what the administration has described as an “armed conflict” with drug cartels.

“The United States has invaded our national territory, fired a missile to kill a humble fisherman, and destroyed his family, his children,” Petro wrote on his social media.

The Supreme Court said on Monday that it will consider whether people who regularly smoke marijuana can legally own guns, the latest firearm case to come before the court since its 2022 decision expanding gun rights.

Trump’s administration asked the justices to revive a case against a Texas man charged with a felony because he allegedly had a gun in his home and acknowledged being a regular pot user. The Republican administration favors Second Amendment rights, but government attorneys argued that this ban is a justifiable restriction.

The man’s attorneys argue that the broadly written law puts millions of people at risk of technical violations since at least 20% of Americans have tried pot, according to government health data. About half of states legalized recreational marijuana, but it’s still illegal under federal law.

▶ Read more about the Trump administration’s case against marijuana users

The “No Kings” demonstrations that drew crowds to large cities and hundreds of smaller public spaces across the United States is giving protesters hope that resistance is growing to Trump’s authoritarian rule.

Trump’s Republican Party disparaged the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies, but the crowds were joyful and full of red-white-and-blue costumes, featuring marching bands, demonstrators in inflatable costumes and huge banners with the U.S. Constitution’s “We The People” preamble that people could sign.

People carrying signs with slogans such as “Nothing is more patriotic than protesting” and “Resist Fascism.” It was the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House.

“Big rallies like this give confidence to people who have been sitting on the sidelines but are ready to speak up,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy said in an interview with The Associated Press.

▶ See images of this latest round of “No Kings” rallies

The president will have Senate Republicans over for lunch at the newly-renovated Rose Garden patio on Tuesday.

Trump has been fond of hosting aides, lawmakers and other allies at the Rose Garden, which has been paved over, for events.

When the Senate is in session, GOP senators meet every Tuesday (as well as Wednesdays and Thursdays) for lunch to strategize about the week ahead.

The gathering was first reported by Punchbowl News. The lunch was confirmed by a person granted anonymity to speak about plans not yet made public.

— By Seung Min Kim

Americans are growing increasingly concerned about their ability to find a good job under Trump, an Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll finds. It’s a potential warning sign for Republicans as a promised economic boom has given way to hiring freezes and elevated inflation.

High prices for groceries, housing and health care persist as a fear for many households, while rising electricity bills and the cost of gas at the pump are also sources of anxiety, according to the survey. Some 47% of U.S. adults are “not very” or “not at all confident” they could find a good job if they wanted to, an increase from 37% when the question was last asked in October 2023. And more than half say the cost of groceries is a “major” source of financial stress.

Read more from the AP-NORC poll

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says his reportedly tense meeting with Trump on Friday was “positive” — even though he did not secure the Tomahawk missiles for Ukraine — and emphasized what he said is continued American interest in economic deals with Kyiv.

In comments embargoed until Monday morning, Zelenskyy said Trump reneged on the possibility of sending the long-range missiles to Ukraine, which would have been a major boost for Kyiv, following his phone call with Russian President Vladimir Putin hours before the White House meeting.

“In my opinion, he does not want an escalation with the Russians until he meets with them,” Zelenskyy told reporters on Sunday.

According to Zelenskyy, Trump said during their meeting that Putin’s maximalist demand — that Ukraine cede the entirety of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk and Luhansk regions — was unchanged. Zelenskyy said Trump ultimately supported a freeze along the current front line, so his overall message “is positive” for Ukraine.

Read more about Trump, Russia and Ukraine

China likes to condemn the United States for extending its arm too far beyond its borders to make demands on non-American companies. But when it sought to hit back at the U.S. interests this month, Beijing did exactly the same.

In expanding export rules on rare earths, Beijing for the first time announced it will require foreign firms to obtain approval from the Chinese government to export magnets containing even tiny amounts of China-originated rare earth materials or produced with Chinese technology.

That means a South Korean smartphone maker must ask for Beijing’s permission to sell the devices to Australia if the phones contain China-originated rare earth materials, said Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative. “This rule gives China control over basically the entire global economy in the technology supply chain,” he said.

Read more about China now using US trade war tactics