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The Kremlin said Trump had raised “the issue of an immediate ceasefire” in the call, their sixth known call since Trump returned to the White House in January, but the Russian leader said he “will not back down.”

“Vladimir Putin stated that Russia continues to seek a political resolution to the conflict through negotiations,” Kremlin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov said in a briefing Thursday.

But the Kremlin has so far not offered concessions on its central demands that Ukraine should cede territory and give up on joining NATO.

While Kyiv or the White House did not say what the call would involve, Zelenskyy is widely expected to renew his calls for more military aid and U.S. sanctions against Russia. Ukraine is still reeling from Trump’s decision this week to halt some U.S. military equipment deliveries, which include the vital air defense systems.

“Without truly large-scale pressure, Russia will not change its dumb, destructive behavior,” Zelenskyy said, stressing that it “primarily” depends on the U.S. to “change the situation for the better.”

Michael Bociurkiw, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, said Trump’s inaction, and his outright blaming of Ukraine at times, is likely seen by Putin as an invitation to press forward on the battlefield.

“Putin sees this as almost an invitation to bomb, bomb the heck out of Ukrainian cities and to grab more territory,” said Bociurkiw said in a telephone interview from the southwestern Ukrainian city of Odessa.

SEOUL, South Korea — An unidentified North Korean man crossed the heavily fortified land border separating the two Koreas and is in South Korean custody, the South’s military said Friday.

The South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the military identified and tracked the individual near the central-west section of the military demarcation line and conducted a “guiding operation” before taking the person into custody Thursday night.

It said authorities plan to investigate the border crossing and did not immediately say whether they view the incident as a defection attempt.

The Joint Chiefs said it notified the U.S.-led United Nations Command about the incident and had not detected any immediate signs of unusual military activity by the North.

According to the Joint Chiefs, a South Korean military team approached the unarmed North Korean man after detecting him and, after identifying themselves as South Korean troops, guided him safely out of the mine-strewn Demilitarized Zone that divides the two Koreas.

Border tensions have flared in recent months as the two Koreas traded Cold War-style psychological warfare, with North Korea sending thousands of trash-filled balloons toward the South and South Korea blasting anti-Pyongyang propaganda through loudspeakers.

Since taking office last month, South Korea’s new liberal President Lee Jae Myung has made efforts to rebuild trust with North Korea, halting the frontline loudspeaker broadcasts and moving to ban activists from flying balloons carrying propaganda leaflets across the border.

In April, South Korean troops fired warning shots to repel about 10 North Korean soldiers who briefly crossed the military demarcation line. The South’s military said the soldiers returned to North Korean territory without incident and that the North didn’t return fire.

In June last year, North Korean troops crossed the border three times, prompting South Korea to fire warning shots. Experts suggested these crossings may have been accidental, occurring as North Korean troops added anti-tank barriers, planted mines and carried out other work to bolster border defenses amid escalating tensions between the Koreas.

Diplomacy between the war-divided Koreas has derailed since the collapse of denuclearization talks between Washington and Pyongyang in 2019, which prompted North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to accelerate the expansion of his military nuclear program and threaten nuclear conflict toward Washington and Seoul. South Korea’s previous conservative government responded by strengthening its combined military exercises with the United States and Japan, which the North condemned as invasion rehearsals.

WASHINGTON — Donald Trump wanted his domestic priorities bundled into “one big, beautiful bill.”

Republican lawmakers were skeptical about that approach, but complied.

He insisted they pass it by the fourth of July. Republicans doubted they could meet the deadline, but they did.

And so late Friday afternoon, a triumphant president will sign the mega-bill he muscled through a divided Congress, displaying a mastery over his party that many of his predecessors would have envied.

Trump told reporters after the House narrowly passed the bill Thursday that he believes he has “more power” now than in his first term. That was evident all week as the bill ping-ponged between the House and Senate. One by one, the holdouts in the GOP caucus swallowed their misgivings to give Trump a victory he is now savoring in his own fashion.

“There could be no better birthday present for America than the phenomenal victory we achieved just hours ago when Congress passed the ‘one big, beautiful bill’ to make America great again,” Trump said at a “Salute to America” event Thursday night in Iowa.

The nearly-900 page bill includes a tax-cut and spending package that is projected to increase the national debt by $3.3 trillion over a decade. Not so long ago, fiscal conservatism was a core Republican tenet. Since Trump’s takeover of the party, that bit of GOP orthodoxy has been set aside.

Speaking of conservative lawmakers who changed their minds and voted for the bill, Rep. Dusty Johnson, R-S.D., said simply: “They heard from President Trump over and over again how much good was in this bill.”

One member of Congress said he asked a White House official what the holdouts got in return for supporting the bill, and said the response was, “f—ing nothing.”

Another obstacle to passage was the world’s richest man: Elon Musk. Once head of Trump’s effort to shrink the government workforce, Musk left the White House and swiftly denounced the bill. On Monday, he said he would work to oust lawmakers who campaigned on reducing the debt and yet voted for the bill.

He wrote on his social media site, X, that “they will lose their primary next year if it is the last thing I do on this Earth.”

The final vote suggested that GOP lawmakers may be more fearful of Trump’s ire than Musk’s money — or the new party Musk vowed to start one day after the “insane” bill passed.

Whether Trump and his party capitalize on the legislative achievement may hinge on what the “One Big Beautiful Bill Act” does in the real world. It wouldn’t have passed but for Trump. The bill’s title is an ode to Trump’s marketing instincts; he now owns it.

Will it unleash the economic growth that Trump predicts? Or will the steep cuts in the social safety net alienate some of the same blue-collar voters that Trump wrested from the Democratic coalition? The midterm elections next year will test whether Trump’s gambit paid off.

Trump’s demands throughout the saga did not always match reality. In a meeting Wednesday with moderate Republican lawmakers in the White House, Trump told them, “Don’t touch Medicaid.” Someone in the room responded that the bill does in fact touch Medicaid, a GOP lawmaker told NBC News. To pay for the tax breaks, the bill makes steep cuts to Medicaid, food aid programs and clean energy funding.

Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster, said that Republicans “are going to have to build a powerful case for it.”

“They are going to have to figure out a way to explain, if indeed the Medicaid cuts throw people off of Medicaid, why this bill did that when Donald Trump said he wasn’t going to touch Medicaid,” he continued.

A Republican senator, speaking on condition of anonymity before the bill passed, said: “The Democrats are beating us on the messaging. It’s just that simple. We don’t have anyone out messaging [on the bill] because we’re too busy fighting among ourselves. At some point, you’ve got to go sell this.”

Trump pulled off his most consequential legislative victory of either term through a mix of intimidation and wheedling. He has proven again and again that he can gin up a successful primary challenge to Republican lawmakers who defy his wishes. The latest example is Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C.

One day after Tillis angered Trump for opposing the bill, the senator announced he won’t run for reelection.

But Trump, in tandem with Vice President JD Vance, also presided over a more traditional strategy for coaxing members to vote yes. Trump threw himself into the effort, aides and lawmakers said.

Aides cleared Trump’s schedule of public events Wednesday so he could spend more time wooing lawmakers. At 1 a.m. on Thursday, he was on a phone call with a group of congressional holdouts, trying to persuade them to come around.

One person familiar with the phone call said that Trump and other White House officials pledged to aggressively implement key provisions in the bill including the phase-out of clean energy tax credits. The discussion also involved future actions to fulfill conservative priorities. Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., remarked that it would be nice if Trump stopped attacking him. (Massie and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., were the only two Republicans to vote against the bill on Thursday).

Vance was pressed into service last weekend, as worries grew about the bill’s prospects in the Senate.

The vice president, who had spent most of the week at his Cincinnati home with family, flew back from Ohio on Saturday to huddle with Republican senators.

After arriving at the Capitol, Vance focused on potential GOP holdouts, including Sens. Mike Crapo of Idaho, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Mike Lee of Utah, Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming and Rick Scott of Florida, according to two people familiar with his involvement,

Vance returned to the Capitol early Tuesday morning ahead of the final vote, with Republican senators creating something of a revolving door between the Senate floor and the vice president’s ceremonial office nearby.

Vance also remained in talks with House members through Thursday’s vote.

“GOP Congressman just texted me,” the vice president posted Thursday morning on X as House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York was speaking against the bill. “‘I was undecided on the bill but then I watched Hakeem Jeffries performance and now I’m a firm yes.’”

In passing a bill that encapsulates much of his domestic agenda, Trump succeeded where some other Republican presidents failed. George W. Bush won reelection in 2004 and, armed with what he called newfound “political capital,” tried mightily to get Congress to overhaul the Social Security system. The effort collapsed.

Trump will have at least a brief period to relish the achievement before the bill takes effect and voters see for themselves if there’s a gap between what he promised and what he delivers. He’ll do it in style from the White House, watching a fireworks display in the evening and a flyover of the military’s most sophisticated aircraft.

“The golden age is here!!!” senior White House adviser Stephen Miller posted on X, referring back to Trump’s inaugural speech.

HONG KONG — China’s first domestically-built aircraft carrier led a naval fleet into Hong Kong waters this week in a show of national pride that underlined Beijing’s growing military force and ambitions.

Shandong, escorted by three other homemade warships, kicked off a five-day stop in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory on Thursday. Shandong is named after the eastern coastal province where the country’s first aircraft carrier is based, according to the state-run newspaper People’s Daily.

Commissioned in 2019, the carrier is China’s first warship fully built and designed in the country. Its flight deck is about the size of two standard soccer pitches, and it is as tall as a 20-story building.

With a displacement of over 60,000 tons, Shandong can carry dozens of carrier-based fighter jets and various types of helicopters.

China has the one of the world’s largest navies with an active-duty force of 300,000 personnel, according to a 2023 report affiliated with the country’s Ministry of Veteran Affairs.

Hong Kong leader John Lee hailed the “historic” and “inspiring” visit of the aircraft carrier as the city marked the fifth anniversary of a Beijing-imposed national security law, which came amid a deep crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.

Speaking at a welcoming ceremony, Lee said the visit demonstrated that national security is “rock-solid.”

The warships “fully demonstrate to the outside world” the achievement of the Chinese military, said Col. Zhang Junshe, a senior colonel for the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

The display showcased China’s combat readiness and will “naturally deter some forces with ulterior motives,” Zhang told state-backed nationalist tabloid Global Times.

The U.S. and its allies have grown increasingly worried about China’s territorial disputes with neighbors, including sovereignty claims over the self-governing island of Taiwan and conflicts with the Philippines in the South China Sea.

Last week, Army Gen. Ronald P. Clark, commander of U.S. Army Pacific, warned that China was developing military technologies and capabilities at a pace and scale never before seen.

The visit, which runs through Monday, is the first time China opens up the Shandong to the public.

An indie psych rock band has amassed more than 850,000 listeners on Spotify in a matter of weeks and generated buzz throughout the music industry — but nobody is exactly sure if it’s real or not.

The Velvet Sundown, a band bent on “Saving Modern Rock,” according to its Instagram account, has even some music industry veterans confused. The images put forward by the band all look like they were created by artificial intelligence. The music? That’s harder to say.

Rick Beato, a music producer with more than 5 million subscribers on YouTube, identified what he called “artifacts,” particularly in one of the tracks’ guitar and keyboard parts. He said that can indicate a song was created by AI.

“This is having a lot of problems, and I suspect that it may be because this is an AI track,” Beato said in a YouTube video, after running one of The Velvet Sundown’s songs through Apple’s Logic Pro track splitter. “Every time you have an AI song, they are full of artifacts.”

Whether the band is real, fake or something in between, its emergence and the broader debate about it add to a growing concern about the future of art, culture and authenticity in the era of advanced generative artificial intelligence. Many major tech platforms have already seen floods of AI-generated content, while AI influencers are becoming increasingly common on social media platforms.

Velvet Sundown appears to have first emerged in June, according to its social media profiles. On Spotify, the band has a “Verified Artist” badge, offering some sense of authority. On X, The Velvet Sundown teased an upcoming album, “Paper Sun Rebellion,” and nodded to questions about doubts about the band’s origins.

Aside from the quick rollout of songs, its uncannily plasticine promotional images of band members have prompted accusations of AI use as well.

In a video announcing the release of its upcoming album later this month, the band pushed back against accusations that it isn’t “real,” stating in one video that “you believed the lie, and danced to it anyway.”

“They said we’re not real,” the account posted. “Maybe you aren’t either.”

The band’s bio on Spotify claims that the group is composed of four people: singer Gabe Farrow, guitarist Lennie West, Milo Rains, “who crafts the band’s textured synth sounds,” and percussionist Orion “Rio” Del Mar. Farrow purportedly also plays the mellotron, which is an electro-mechanical instrument that plays recorded sounds when its keys are pressed.

“There’s something quietly spellbinding about The Velvet Sundown,” their Spotify bio states. “You don’t just listen to them, you drift into them. Their music doesn’t shout for your attention; it seeps in slowly, like a scent that suddenly takes you back somewhere you didn’t expect.”

Questions about the band’s origins were further complicated after other social accounts purporting to represent the band began rejecting claims that it was using AI-generated images or music, as well as a person who spoke to Rolling Stone claiming to be connected to the band who called it an “art hoax.” That person later admitted in a Substack post that his claim to represent the band was itself a hoax.

The Velvet Sundown said that the person quoted in the article is not affiliated with it in “any way.”

“He does not represent us, speak for us, or have any connection to this project,” The Velvet Sundown said in a statement to NBC News via Instagram.

On Thursday, the social media accounts tied to the band’s Spotify account posted that “someone is trying to hijack the identity of The Velvet Sundown by releasing unauthorized interviews, publishing unrelated photos, and creating fake profiles claiming to represent us.”

The Velvet Sundown’s YouTube publisher, Distrokid, did not respond to requests for comment. Spotify also did not respond to a request for comment.

The band’s meteoric rise highlights modern issues around AI and how difficult it can be to verify what is and is not real on the internet. Last year, Google researchers found that AI image misinformation has surged on the internet since 2023. A Consumer Reports investigation found that leading AI voice-cloning programs have no meaningful barriers to stop people from nonconsensually impersonating others.

According to the music streaming app Deezer, which uses its own tool to identify AI-generated content, 100% of The Velvet Sundown’s tracks were created using AI. Deezer labels that content on its site, ensuring that AI-generated music does not appear on its recommended playlists and that royalties are maximized for human artists.

“AI-generated music and AI bands may generate some value to the user, so we still want to display that,” Alexis Lanternier, the CEO of Deezer, said. “We just want to make sure that the remuneration is taken in a different way.”

Every week, about 18% of the tracks being uploaded to Deezer — roughly 180,000 songs — are flagged by the platform’s tool as being AI-generated. That number has grown threefold in the past two years, Lanternier said.

Suno and Udio, both generative AI music creation programs, declined to say whether The Velvet Sundown’s music was created using their software.

“I think people are getting too far down the rabbit hole of dissecting is it AI, is it not AI? And forgetting the important question, which is like, how did it make you feel? How many people liked it?” said Mikey Shulman, CEO and co-founder of Suno.

According to Suno’s rights and ownership policy, songs made by its users who are subscribed to its higher-tier plans are covered by a commercial use license. That allows them to monetize and distribute songs on platforms like Spotify without attributing them to Suno.

“There are Grammy winners who use Suno, you know, every day in their production,” said Shulman.

Recently, Grammy Award-winning record producer Timbaland launched an AI artist named TaTa with his new entertainment company, Stage Zero. He told Billboard that TaTa, who created a catalog of AI-generated music through Suno, was neither an “avatar” nor a “character.”

Suno was one of two AI companies sued last year by major record labels — including Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group — which allege that the companies infringed on the labels’ recording copyrights in order to train their music-generating models.

About a year into the legal battle, however, the music labels have begun talks to work out a licensing deal so that Suno and Udio could use copyrighted recordings by compensating the artists for their work, according to a Bloomberg report published last month.

It’s a trend that’s become worrisome to artists like Kristian Heironimus, who is a member of the band Velvet Meadow (not to be confused with the now-viral The Velvet Sundown).

“I’ve been working for, like, six years just constantly releasing music, working my day job,” Heironimus said. “It is kind of disheartening just seeing an AI band, and then — in, like, what, two weeks? — [have] like, 500,000 monthly listeners.”

The creep of generative AI into music and other creative industries has incited backlash from those who worry about the devaluation of their human work, as many AI developers have been known to scrape data from the internet without human creators’ knowledge or consent.

Beyond ethical debates about the consequences of the AI impact on human labor, some online worry about the rise of low-quality AI slop as these tools grow increasingly capable of replicating voices, generating full-length songs and creating visuals from text prompts.

Heironimus said there are similarities between his band, Velvet Meadow, and The Velvet Sundown, beyond the names. One of the members pictured in The Velvet Sundown’s Spotify band photo, for example, looks similar to a photo of Heironimus when he used to have long hair, he said. The bands also fall within the same genre, though Heironimus described The Velvet Sundown’s tracks as “soulless.”

Shulman, of Suno, said most streaming music is already “algorithmically driven.”

“People don’t realize just how depersonalized music has become and how little connection the average person has with the artist behind the music,” he said. “It’s a failure of imagination to think that in the future, it can’t be a lot better.”

But Lanternier, of Deezer, argues that as AI continues to evolve, streaming platforms should also be trying to ensure artists can make enough royalties to survive.

“People are not only interested in the sound. They are interested in the whole story of an artist — in the whole brand of an artist,” Lanternier said. “We believe that what is right to do is to support the real artist, so that they continue to create music that people love.”

President Donald Trump is expected Friday to sign into law his sprawling domestic policy bill, which includes nearly $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans.

Dubbed the “big, beautiful bill,” the new legislation will extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and make up for them in part by slashing federal Medicaid funding, introducing copays for some services and — for the first time — implementing nationwide Medicaid work requirements. The final version of the bill didn’t include an estimate of coverage losses; an earlier Congressional Budget Office report projected that about 11 million people could lose their health coverage and become uninsured by 2034 because of the program cuts.

Medicaid is jointly funded by the federal government and the states, which usually mandate that applicants meet certain criteria, such as low income, disability or caregiving status.

Only two states have implemented Medicaid work requirements: Arkansas in 2018 and Georgia in 2023. Georgia’s program, called Pathways to Coverage, remains in effect.

Over the 10 months Arkansas’ work requirement was in place, more than 18,000 people in the state lost Medicaid coverage. Georgia hasn’t done a good job keeping track of how many have lost coverage, but enrollment remains low, said Leighton Ku, director of the Center for Health Policy Research at the Milken Institute School of Public Health at George Washington University.

When people lose Medicaid coverage, they view it as “sort of a slap in the face,” Ku said.

“When your income is down, when you’re unemployed, that’s when you lose everything,” he said. “When you’re most in need. That’s when you lose your food assistance, that’s when you lose your health insurance coverage.”

Kendall Rogers, 40, of Stone Mountain, Georgia, is looking for a job after he lost his Medicaid coverage this year because of the state’s work requirements, according to his mom, Trudy Rogers, 59.

The change means Trudy now has to take care of herself for long parts of the day. She has fibromyalgia and nerve problems in her back that make it difficult for her to get around.

Kendall was caring for her nearly full time, Trudy said, but Georgia’s work requirements don’t offer exemptions for caregivers for older adults.

She called the new requirements “an insult not only to him, but to me.”

“Because now he’s forced to go out and look for work, and I need him to stay around the house,” she said.

Covered in red tape

To justify the cuts, Republicans have argued that they’re not taking Medicaid from those who are rightfully entitled to it — such as, they say, single mothers or the disabled — but from “young, able-bodied men” who they say are abusing the system.

“If you clean that up and shore it up, you save a lot of money, and you return the dignity of work to young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said in April.

But as seen in Georgia and Arkansas, that’s not who is largely affected.

Cynthia Gibson, director of the Georgia Legal Services Program’s Health Law Unit, which helps appeal Medicaid denials, said many people in the state lose coverage not because they aren’t working, but because they aren’t aware of the new rules or face administrative issues like missed paperwork or not having received notices. Others, like Kendall Rogers, are caring for family members but don’t qualify for exemptions.

Likewise, in Arkansas, only 3% or 4% of the people on Medicaid in 2018 weren’t working and didn’t qualify for the exemptions under the state program, said Dr. Benjamin Sommers, a physician and health economist at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Sommers published a study in the New England Journal of Medicine in 2019 looking at the impact of Arkansas’ work requirements.

His research found that about 40% of the other roughly 96% of people on Medicaid in the state were working the required 80 hours a month under the state program. The rest either had medical conditions that prevented them from working or had other responsibilities, such as school or caring for family members.

Implementing work requirements also didn’t result in a higher employment rate — one of the arguments Arkansas officials used in favor of the new work rules.

“Most people, almost everybody, was already doing what [the state] wanted them to do,” he said. Very few were “the proverbial on the couch, video game story that we’re hearing from some of the supporters.”

Most commonly, Gibson said, people aren’t actually aware that they’ve lost coverage until they go see their doctors.

“And that creates kind of a panic,” she said. “Sometimes they may have something really important scheduled that the doctors won’t do when they run their insurance and find out they no longer have coverage.”

Gibson said the people most often affected by the work requirement are those in noncorporate jobs, including independent workers — like Uber drivers or delivery workers — who don’t receive regular pay stubs and can’t meet Georgia’s work verification requirements.

Others include people with certain disabilities that don’t qualify for exemptions, as well as caregivers for children or elderly relatives.

The costs of not having coverage

People who lose coverage often avoid going to the doctor or getting medical care unless it’s an emergency, because they don’t want to accumulate debt, she said.

“They just don’t get treatment; they don’t go to the doctor,” she said.

Heather Payne, 53, of Dalton, Georgia, couldn’t avoid medical care after she had a series of debilitating strokes in 2022.

Unable to work, she was told she didn’t qualify for an Affordable Care Act plan and didn’t qualify for Georgia’s Medicaid program because she was a childless adult.

She later enrolled in classes to become a nurse practitioner — a career she could pursue despite her disability. By that point, the state’s work requirement had gone into effect. However, Payne was told she still didn’t qualify for Medicaid because she wasn’t taking enough credit hours. She couldn’t afford to take more.

To pay for her medical bills, she burned through her $40,000 in savings and is now in collections for tens of thousands of dollars.

“When you have a problem, there’s no help for you,” she said. “It makes you feel as though society doesn’t care what happens to you.”

Dimitris Terrell, 49, of Clarkston, also worries her 24-year-old son, Justin Anderson, could start to accumulate debt following changes to Georgia’s Medicaid program.

Anderson doesn’t work, but he has Medicaid coverage because he has Crohn’s disease, a bowel disease that can cause chronic inflammation of the gastrointestinal tract.

Terrell said her son started having to pay large copays last year, after the state began charging copays for prescription drugs and certain services.

Anderson has paid over $400 out of pocket on doctor’s visits and hundreds of dollars for the dentist, neither of which he could afford, his mother said.

She also worries about his losing coverage — either because he would no longer qualify or because of missed paperwork.

“He’s pretty sad and shocked,” Terrell said. “He said, ‘Like, Mama, I don’t understand why I have to pay.’”

President Donald Trump said he “didn’t make any progress” toward a potential ceasefire in the Russia-Ukraine war when he spoke by phone Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“No, I didn’t make any progress with him today at all,” Trump told reporters when asked about his call with Putin earlier in the day.

“We had a call. It was a pretty long call. We talked about a lot of things, including Iran, and we also talked about, as you know, the war with Ukraine. And I’m not happy about that, I’m not happy,” Trump said.

Putin aide Yury Ushakov said in a readout of the call that the two leaders held a “frank and substantive” conversation and that Trump raised the possibility of an immediate ceasefire in Russia’s war with Ukraine but that Putin did not agree. Putin said Russia “will pursue its stated objectives” in the conflict, and continues to look for a political resolution to the conflict through negotiations, Ushakov added.

The last publicly known call between Putin and Trump took place last month in a discussion that involved the Israel-Iran conflict, according to a Truth Social post by Trump. They also spoke in May about the Ukraine-Russia war.

Representatives from Russia and Ukraine held direct talks in Istanbul in May, but there weren’t any breakthroughs.

Trump and some of his allies on Capitol Hill are seeking to secure a permanent ceasefire.

Trump repeatedly said on the campaign trail that he would bring an end to the conflict within the first 24 hours of his second term. During a presidential debate in September, he said he could resolve the conflict “before I even become president.”

Speaking to reporters Thursday, Trump was also asked about a U.S. pause in shipping missiles and ammunition to Ukraine. Trump denied there was a pause.

“We haven’t, we’re giving weapons because we’ve given so many weapons, but we are giving weapons, and we’re working with them and trying to help them,” Trump said. “But we haven’t, you know, Biden emptied our whole country giving ‘em weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves.”

NBC News reported this week that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had ordered a shipment pause over concerns about the U.S. military’s stockpiles, according to two congressional officials and two sources with knowledge of the decision.