Your guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the world
Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are set to hold a call about the Russia-Ukraine war in the coming week, a US official said, as Washington seeks to broker a ceasefire deal.
Trump envoy Steve Witkoff on Sunday told CNN he had a “positive” meeting with Putin and that the Russian and Ukrainian parties “are today a lot closer” in negotiations.
“I expect that there’ll be a call with both presidents this week and we’re also continuing to engage and have conversation with the Ukrainians,” he said.
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The comments come after the US and its G7 partners on Friday warned Moscow that they could expand sanctions and use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, as Trump seeks to win over Putin to his ceasefire proposal. The joint statement followed a week in which Kyiv signed up to the 30-day truce but Moscow signalled reluctance to do so immediately.
Witkoff told CNN he had witnessed improvements in ceasefire negotiations. The sides were previously “miles apart,” he said.
Following talks in Saudi Arabia led by US national security adviser Mike Waltz and US secretary of state Marco Rubio as well as Witkoff’s “equally positive” meeting with Putin, “we’ve narrowed the differences between them and now we’re sitting at the table,” he added.
The White House and Russia’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The envoy told CBS that negotiations were complex, involving multiple angles and a large swath of territory, including a “main area of confrontation” in the Kursk region, a nuclear reactor supplying electricity to Ukraine and access to ports.
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“There’s so many elements to the implementation of a ceasefire here,” Witkoff said, adding that it “involves how to get people to not be fighting with each other over a 2,000 kilometre border”.
He also seemed to dismiss a statement made by French President Emmanuel Macron, who argued that Russia “does not seem to be sincerely seeking peace”.
Witkoff declined to comment on Macron’s remarks, but added: “I think it’s unfortunate when people make those sort of assessments, and they don’t have, necessarily, first-hand knowledge . . . I saw a constructive effort over a long period of time to discuss the specifics of what’s going on in the field”.
Asked when he thinks there will be a deal, Witkoff cited Trump, who has said it would take weeks.
Young Americans’ confidence in the apparatus of government has dropped dramatically to one of the lowest levels in any prosperous country, a Financial Times analysis of Gallup data shows.
The Gallup polls, conducted by surveying 70,000 people globally over the course of 2023 and 2024, found that less than a third of under-30s in the US trust the government. The proportion of US young people who said they lack freedom to choose what to do with their lives also hit a record high at 31 per cent in 2024 — a level worse than all other rich economies, bar Greece and Italy.
“[For younger people in the US] the future seems kind of bleak,” said Julie Ray, managing editor at Gallup.
While the Gallup poll does not cover the direct repercussions of US President Donald Trump’s second term, experts believe that rising political polarisation is likely to lead to a sharp drop in trust in future surveys.
Connor Brennan, a 25-year-old financial economics PhD student at the University of Chicago, and disillusioned Republican, said he trusted the “big figures” in politics “a little less” now than in the past.
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“Friends, families these days are more and more torn apart by politics and seeing that (politics) taken as almost entertainment,” Brennan said. “It should be boring . . . it really has become more and more like, you watch the latest episode of the sitcom.”
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The proportion of young people in the US reporting no confidence in the judicial system also hit a record high in 2024, while more than a third of under-30s also do not trust the police.
“I would not say I trust the government — a lot of things that have changed quite recently that call the government’s ability to be honest with the American people into question,” said Daniel Quezada, a 22-year-old substitute teacher in Arkansas, adding that he also had a “profound, profound sense of scepticism” regarding the police after being peacefully involved in protests in 2020.
Elsewhere in the world, young people in Greece and Italy are among the most dissatisfied with public services and confidence in institutions. Nordic economies, such as Finland, Denmark and Norway, tend to be the best performers.
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Some 61 per cent of young people in the US also reported having recently experienced stress, the third-highest proportion among advanced economies after Greece and Canada.
US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data show US emergency department visits for self-harm reached 384 people per 100,000 population among those aged 10 to 29 in 2022, up from 260 a decade earlier and four times the rate for those aged 30 and over.
The collapse in young people’s happiness in the US and elsewhere has been pinned on factors ranging from political polarisation, stagnating quality of life to difficulties in getting on the property ladder.
Haifang Huang, an economics professor at the University of Alberta, referred to “a laundry list” of factors, including labour-market challenges after the 2008-09 global financial crisis, the high cost of housing and rising inequality among the young exacerbated by inheritance and parental supports. “It is hard to evaluate their relative contributions.”
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Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt in his book, The Anxious Generation, blames the mental health crisis in all main Anglosphere countries on the mass adoption of smartphones, along with the advent of social media and addictive online gaming.
John Helliwell, a founding editor of Gallup’s World Happiness Report, said that the trends in the data supported the view that the decline in trust and wellbeing among young people “has something to do with the kind of stories being told on social media”.
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Political polarisation, meanwhile, had also resulted in a “situation where there’s no agreed set of common information”.
“If there’s nobody who you believe, then of course, your trust is going to be low in everybody,” Helliwell said. “That’s been increasingly happening in the US, because people are denying each other’s facts and living in their own media isolation.”
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While young Americans are relatively upbeat about their economic prospects — a reflection of their higher-than-average earnings and low unemployment rate — some are becoming gloomy about growth too.
“The economy isn’t doing great — there were a lot of issues with relatively high inflation and high cost of living, massive wealth inequality, concerns with employment that were iterated by both sides in the election leading up to this year,” said Misha Newbold, a 20-year-old student at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore who grew up in Kansas.
Newbold added that he disagreed with cuts to federal agencies undertaken by technology billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge). “I think cutting employment opportunities, shrinking a lot of the government agencies that make this country run . . . is actually counter-productive to the employment concerns.”
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Brennan, meanwhile, said he was increasingly concerned about the US’s fiscal position, with the national debt set to balloon over the coming decade.
He also thinks an economic crisis borne of Trump’s policies would not be viewed by the president’s supporters as being down to mistakes made by the White House.
“That’s what worries me the most — that, even if we are confronted with issues that should cause us to have some sort of come to Jesus moment, I don’t think we’ll come to Jesus.”
Data visualisation by Valentina Romei and Alan Smith in London
Destruction from a severe storm is seen on Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Wayne County, Mo.
Jeff Roberson/AP
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Jeff Roberson/AP
Residents in large swaths of the southern U.S. on Sunday took stock of the devastation left in the wake of tornadoes, strong winds and dust storms over the weekend.
The severe weather left at least 37 people dead, and destroyed scores of homes.
This bout of storms was forecast to clear the East Coast by Sunday night, according to the National Weather Service.
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In Missouri, where 12 people died, first responders and road crews worked to clear debris, restore power to homes, and distribute recovery supplies.
Gov. Mike Kehoe’s office said Sunday that hundreds of homes, schools and businesses were destroyed of severely damaged, with some burned from wildfires aggravated by high winds.
“The scale of devastation across our state is staggering,” Gov. Kehoe said. “While we grieve the lives of those lost, we are also focused on action.”
In Butler County, a man was killed after a tornado ripped through his home. Coroner Jim Akers told the AP that the twister left his home “unrecognizable” with “just a debris field.”
Hurricane force winds in Oklahoma, fueled deadly wildfires and dust storms. Residents there spent Saturday surveying fire damage, after more than 170,000 acres burned.
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By Sunday afternoon, an early assessment from local officials identified more than 400 homes damaged statewide. Four people died and 142 others were injured due to the fires and winds, officials said.
Cheryl Rabet of Stillwater lost her home in the blazes, as well as two RVs she rented out, reported KOSU’s Lionel Ramos.
“We didn’t have a chance to grab anything,” she said, including their 16-year-old cat Momo. “We grabbed one of our cats and that was about it.”
The Red Cross and other relief efforts have been providing food and other resources for shelters across parts of Oklahoma and other affected regions.
Brady Moore, Stillwater city manager, warned that it may still be unsafe for residents to return to neighborhoods in the path of destruction, while crews work to repair downed powerlines and shut off water and gas lines.
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Damage assessments in the majority of Alabama counties continued on Sunday, said Gov. Kay Ivey. Three people died in the state, she said.
In Troy, Ala., where a tornado flipped an 18-wheeler truck, about 200 people took shelter at a recreation center, reported local CBS station WAKA News.
“Right as the last people got in, the storm passed over, blowing out windows in cars in the parking lot, and tearing off part of the gymnasium roof,” said Dan Smith, the director of the city’s parks and recreation department. “Our sports complex, including the baseball and softball park, also suffered major damage. But we’re very fortunate—it could’ve been a lot worse.”
There were no injuries.
In Texas on Sunday, fire crews were battling a 9,500-acres blaze in Fredericksburg, in central Texas. The grass fire was more than half contained as of Sunday evening, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
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Across the state, more than 42,000 acres were burning from 36 fires on Sunday night, the service said.
The threat of fires was expected to continue into the week, with a red flag warning – signaling a high risk of wildfire conditions — was expected to be reinstated for South Central Texas on Monday, as Texas Public Radio reported.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said Sunday that the state was granted federal assistance to help fight the fires.
“Texas is working around the clock to provide all necessary resources to local officials fighting wildfires in Gray and Gillespie counties,” he said.
Many Democratic lawmakers continued to express deep frustration at Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday for having broken with most of his party to allow a Republican spending bill to pass, as the Democratic base increasingly demands stauncher resistance to President Trump’s far-reaching agenda.
Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat and the Senate minority leader, joined nine other Democrats in allowing the bill to come to a vote, which averted a government shutdown. It was an abrupt reversal from Wednesday, when he said he would oppose the bill.
Explaining his sudden shift in position, Mr. Schumer argued that a shutdown would empower Mr. Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. “A shutdown would shut down all government agencies, and it would solely be up to Trump and DOGE and Musk what to open again, because they could determine what was essential,” he told The New York Times in an interview. “So their goal of decimating the whole federal government, of cutting agency after agency after agency, would occur under a shutdown.”
But to critics within his own party, he had squandered the leverage provided by the standoff to negotiate a bipartisan spending bill that would reclaim some of Congress’s power.
“He is absolutely wrong,” Representative Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, told CNN on Sunday. “The idea that Chuck Schumer is the only one that’s got a brain in the room and the only one that can think through all of the pros and cons is absolutely ridiculous.”
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The stream of criticism that Mr. Schumer has faced since his vote comes as the Democratic Party is divided on how best to oppose Mr. Trump’s agenda while facing dismal polling numbers. An NBC poll released on Sunday showed that just 27 percent of voters had positive views of the party, while a majority of its base expressed disappointment at the Democrats’ fractured response.
Ms. Crockett has called on her Senate colleagues to consider ousting Mr. Schumer as minority leader, suggesting that “a younger, fresher leadership” is what “many Americans may be looking for.”
Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, told MSNBC that the House minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, “got blindsided” by Mr. Schumer. House Democrats — all but one opposed the bill — had voted against giving Mr. Trump “a blank check,” Mr. Clyburn said. On Friday, Mr. Jeffries dodged repeated questions on whether he still supported Mr. Schumer as the leader of Senate Democrats.
Another House Democrat, Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, was a little more understanding, saying that Mr. Schumer had “sent out mixed signals.” But she stressed that even the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest labor union representing federal workers, whose members would be furloughed during a government shutdown, opposed the stopgap bill.
“People are scared, and they want us to do something,” Ms. Dingell said on CBS. “They want to see Democrats fighting back.”
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Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, did not denounce Mr. Schumer but pleaded for a change in tactics and for a more steadfast resistance against the Trump administration.
“The way the president is acting using law enforcement to target dissidents, harassing TV stations and radio stations that criticize him, endorsing political violence, puts our democracy at immediate risk,” Mr. Murphy said on NBC. Over the past few weeks, Mr. Trump has revoked security clearances of lawyers who argued against him, dismantled congressionally funded news agencies and pardoned those convicted of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Mr. Murphy added, “If you are a Democrat in the Senate or in the House you have to start acting with urgency.”
Prominent House Democrats, including Representative Nancy Pelosi, had pressed their Senate colleagues to block the bill. But more than a handful of Democratic senators joined Mr. Schumer in helping Republicans bring the bill to a vote: Dick Durbin of Illinois, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, as well as two who have announced plans to retire, Gary Peters of Michigan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. Senator Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, also voted yes.
Some Democrats, including Representatives Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and Haley Stevens of Michigan, refrained from openly criticizing Mr. Schumer’s shift. They said Democratic infighting after the bill’s passage would only emphasize the divisions within the party. They warned that it would also draw voters’ attention away from Trump trade policies that have dampened the stock market and imbued uncertainty into the broader economy — developments that Democrats said could play to their advantage.
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Ashley Etienne, a former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, told CNN that Democrats should not save Mr. Trump and Republicans from themselves. “Get out of the way,” she said. “Donald Trump said he was better for the economy. Let him prove it.”
