TEL AVIV (AP) — Unlike many families who blame Israel's government for not getting their loved ones released from captivity in Gaza, Adi Alexander is hesitant to point fingers. Pragmatic and measured, the father of the last living American being held hostage by Hamas just wants his son to come home.
“I don't want to get into who came first, the egg or the chicken,” Alexander told The Associated Press on Friday from his New Jersey home. Still, with the once-promising ceasefire giving way to renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas, he wonders whether Israel can secure his son's freedom and is more hopeful about the U.S.'s chances to do it.
Edan Alexander, a 21-year-old Israeli-American soldier who grew up in the U.S., is one of 59 hostages still in Gaza, more than half of whom are believed to be dead. Last week, Hamas said it would release Edan and the bodies of four other hostages if Israel recommitted to the stalled ceasefire agreement.
Days later, though, Israel launched rockets across Gaza, breaking the two-month-old deal and killing hundreds of Palestinians. The hostilities show no signs of abating, with Israel vowing Friday to advance deeper into Gaza until Hamas releases the remaining hostages.
The return to fighting has inflamed the debate in Israel over the fate of those held captive. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has come under mounting domestic pressure, with mass protests over his handling of the hostage crisis. But he also faces demands from his hard-line allies not to accept any deal that falls short of Hamas’ destruction.
Adi Alexander said he thinks Netanyahu wants to bring everybody home, but on his own terms. He questions Netanyahu's plans whereas he believes U.S. President Donald Trump's message is clear: He's focused on bringing the hostages home. Alexander said he's counting on the U.S. to bridge the large gap between Israel and Hamas. His message to Trump about his administration's efforts to free his son and the others: “Just keep this job going."
Many families of the hostages say Trump has done more for them than Netanyahu, crediting the president with the ceasefire. In December, before taking office, Trump demanded the hostages' immediate release, saying if they weren’t freed before he was sworn in for his second term there would be “hell to pay.”
Phase one of the deal began weeks later, and saw the release of 25 Israeli hostages and the bodies of eight others in exchange for nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners. The ceasefire was supposed to remain in place as long as talks on the second phase continued, but Netanyahu balked at entering substantive negotiations.
Instead, he tried to force Hamas to accept a new ceasefire plan put forth by U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff. That plan would have required Hamas to release half its remaining hostages — the militant group’s main bargaining chip — in exchange for a ceasefire extension and a promise to negotiate a lasting truce.
Hamas has said it will only release the remaining hostages in exchange for a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza, as called for in the original ceasefire agreement mediated by the United States, Egypt and Qatar.
As a soldier, Edan would have been released during the deal’s second phase. But Hamas announced this month that it would release Edan after the White House said it had engaged in “ongoing talks and discussions” with the group — separate from the main negotiations. It is the first known direct engagement between Hamas and the U.S. since the State Department designated it a foreign terrorist organization in 1997.
Adi Alexander said Adam Boehler, who's helping spearhead the Trump administration's efforts to free the hostages, led those separate talks because phase two was stalled. But he said he didn’t believe Hamas’ claim that it would release his son because it came out of left field and wasn't being considered as part of the discussions between the group and Boehler.
The anxious father said he speaks with Witkoff and Boehler almost daily and understands the negotiations are ongoing despite the resumption of fighting.
A native of Tenafly, a New Jersey suburb of New York City, Edan moved to Israel in 2022 after high school and enlisted in the military. He was abducted from his base during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack that ignited the war, when Hamas killed about 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 others hostage.
Since Edan's abduction, there's been little news about him.
Hamas released a video of him over Thanksgiving weekend in November. His family said it was difficult to watch as he cried and pleaded for help, but it was a relief to see he was alive.
Freed hostages have given the family more news, according to his father. Some said Edan had lost a lot of weight. Others said he'd been an advocate for fellow hostages, standing up for kidnapped Thai workers and telling their captors that the workers weren’t Israeli and should be freed.
Although he knows the resumption of fighting means it will take more time to get his son back, Adi Alexander said he thinks both sides had became too comfortable with the ceasefire and that this was one reason phase two never began. He wants the war to end, and hopes the fighting will be limited and targeted and push everyone back to the table.
“Somebody, I think had to shake this tree to create chaos, and chaos creates opportunities," he said. “The only objective is to get back to the bargaining table to get those people out.”
FILE - From left, Yael and Adi Alexander, parents of Eden Alexander, who was abducted and brought to Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, listen to Liz Hirsh Naftali, great aunt of Abigail More Edan, as families and victims of the Hamas attacks meet with the House Foreign Affairs Committee, at the Capitol in Washington, Nov. 29. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Monday to halt a ruling ordering the rehiring of thousands of federal workers let go in mass firings aimed at dramatically downsizing the federal government.
The move comes amid concerns that a disgruntled former employee could seek to sell secrets to a foreign power.
President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk have forced out thousands of workers with insider knowledge and connections who now need a job.
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U.S. District Judge Christine O’Hearn after a hearing Monday says the pair have shown their separation would cause lasting damage to their careers and reputations.
The ruling follows a similar one last week that blocked enforcement of Trump’s executive order banning transgender people from the military.
O’Hearn found Master Sgt. Logan Ireland and Staff Sgt. Nicholas Bear Bade are likely to prevail on equal protection grounds by showing they have been singled out due to their sex and the administration cannot justify the differential treatment.
“The loss of military service under the stigma of a policy that targets gender identity is not merely a loss of employment; it is a profound disruption of personal dignity, medical continuity, and public service,” O’Hearn, who was appointed by President Joe Biden, wrote in an order granting a 14-day restraining order.
Both men have been put on administrative leave — Ireland from a training program at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey, and Bade from a deployment in Kuwait, the order said.
During a meeting of his Cabinet on Monday, Trump repeated his assertions the U.S. could come to control Greenland, saying, “I think Greenland’s going to be something that maybe is in our future.”
He called U.S. control of the island that is part of the Kingdom of Denmark important for national security.
Trump also suggested that Secretary of State Marco Rubio could be going soon to Greenland, and that people there were asking U.S. officials to go, including “some officials.”
Trump was asked about The Atlantic story by reporters as he met with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Louisiana’s Gov. Jeff Landry at the White House.
The president said he knew “nothing” about it.
“I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of the Atlantic. To me, it’s a magazine that’s going out of business. It’s not much of a magazine but I know nothing about it,” Trump said.
Trump then asked a reporter for more information about the general details of the story, and after being told the chat involved discussion of the strikes on the Houthis, he said, “Well, it couldn’t have been very effective because the attack was very effective. I can tell you that.”
Top national security officials for President Donald Trump, including his defense secretary, texted war plans for upcoming military strikes in Yemen to a group chat in a secure messaging app that included the editor-in-chief for The Atlantic, the magazine reported in a story posted online Monday.
The National Security Council said the text chain “appears to be authentic.”
The material in the text chain “contained operational details of forthcoming strikes on Iran-backed Houthi-rebels in Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing,” editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg reported.
President Donald Trump is holding a White House event with elected leaders from Louisiana to promote a $5.8 billion steel production facility coming to the state.
Automaker Hyundai is pursuing the project.
The president says his threat of tariffs is leading companies to move production into the country.
“Cars are coming into this country at levels never seen before. Get ready,” he says.
Ukrainian and Russian officials are taking part in the indirect talks in Saudi Arabia, and Trump said he believes both sides ultimately want the conflict settled.
Trump last week floated the idea of the U.S. taking control of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine. The six-reactor plant was seized by Russia early in the war. He spotlighted the idea once again on Monday during an exchange with reporters at the White House.
“Some people are saying the United States should own the power plant — work it that way because we have the expertise” to get the plant operating, Trump said. “Something like that would be fine with me.”
The Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, in a letter to the U.N. Security Council, referred to “baseless accusations” and threats by senior U.S. administration officials and Trump against Iran while trying to justify what he said were unlawful attacks against Yemen.
Ambassador Amir Saeid Iravani warned that “any act of aggression will have severe consequences, for which the United States will bear full responsibility.”
He said Iran will “resolutely defend its sovereignty, territorial integrity and national interests under international law against any hostile action.”
The U.S. has launched a series of airstrikes against strongholds of Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels who have disrupted international maritime trade by targeting ships in the Red Sea.
Iravani said in the letter that Iran “supports maritime safety and freedom of navigation,” and emphasized that the Houthis “operate independently in their decision-making and actions.”
He urged the Security Council to speak out against the U.S. “blatant provocations.”
But since the U.S. has veto power in the council, there is no chance of that happening.
Officials said Monday that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s prison visit is part of a three-day trip. It starts Wednesday with the visit to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, and Noem will also meet with President Nayib Bukele, according to a Homeland Security statement.
The Venezuelans were deported this month after Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The administration says they are gang members but hasn’t identified who was deported or given evidence of gang affiliation.
Some 250 immigrants from the U.S., who the Trump administration alleges are members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, are being held.
Noem will then visit Colombia and Mexico.
Trump and Cabinet officials spent nearly an hour talking about their accomplishments and answering questions from journalists at the White House.
Elon Musk was also there and was wearing a red MAGA-style hat that said, “Trump was right about everything” in all caps.
For the president, these have been opportunities to highlight his administration’s progress on his agenda, such as ramping up deportations and reducing the federal workforce.
They’re also a showcase for Musk’s influence. Near the end of Monday’s meeting, Trump praised the billionaire entrepreneur as “a patriot” who is selflessly serving his country.
“Elon has never asked me for a thing,” he said.
“I’d like to see the Fed lower interest rates. That’s just my opinion,” he said during a Cabinet meeting.
Trump has routinely ignored the tradition of presidents declining to comment on decision-making by the Federal Reserve, which operates independently.
Cars honked as they passed and supporters stood in the rain clapping, cheering and holding signs saying, “Thank you for your service” and “Your work matters.”
Among the supporters was Josie Skinner, a lawyer who worked on programs to support homeless children and ensure equitable services for children in private schools before she was fired from the department herself. She rejected President Donald Trump’s suggestion that the dismissed employees did not work hard.
“All of them could have made a lot of money in the private sector but chose to do this work because we cared about education, we cared about serving our country,” she said.
Trump said at a Cabinet meeting that he expects to finish his overhaul of the federal workforce in two to three months.
His administration has been working to downsize the number of employees through financial incentives and layoffs.
“We’re getting rid of the fat,” Trump said.
The Office of Management and Budget and the Office of Personnel Management are in the process of reviewing agencies’ plans for large-scale reductions in force.
A federal lawsuit filed Monday in Massachusetts says Trump overstepped his authority in directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin closing the department. It also asks a judge to block the Trump administration’s plan to halve the agency’s workforce.
Those actions “are unlawful and harm millions of students, school districts and educators across the nation,” according to the suit. It says only Congress has the power to close the department.
The suit was filed by the American Federation of Teachers, the American Association of University Professors and the Somerville and Easthampton school districts, along with other unions.
Trump’s order said McMahon would “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law” take steps to close the department.
In a Truth Social post, Trump said Venezuela has been “very hostile” to the U.S. and countries purchasing oil from the South American country will be forced to pay the tariff on all their trade to the U.S. starting April 2.
Venezuela will face a “Secondary” tariff because it is the home to the gang Tren de Aragua, he said. The Trump administration is deporting immigrants that it claims are members of the gang who illegally crossed into the United States.
Trump said his social media post would serve as notification of the policy to the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies.
Former defense attorney and White House counselor Alina Habba is a New Jersey native who’ll succeed John Giordano as interim U.S. attorney in the state where the president has several golf clubs.
Giordano is being nominated ambassador to Namibia, the president said.
Habba has been a rising star in Trump’s orbit after representing him in various legal matters over the past few years. A partner at a small New Jersey law firm near Trump’s Bedminster golf course, Habba served as a senior adviser for his political action committee, defended him in court in several lawsuits and acted as a spokesperson last year as he volleyed between courtrooms and the campaign trail.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued his latest ruling only hours before an appeals court is scheduled to hear the case.
Boasberg’s order says the immigrants facing deportation must get an opportunity to challenge their designations as alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang. He said there is “a strong public interest in preventing the mistaken deportation of people based on categories they have no right to challenge.”
“The public also has a significant stake in the Government’s compliance with the law,” the judge wrote.
Boasberg didn’t immediately decide what form a challenge should take.
On Monday afternoon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is scheduled to hear attorneys’ arguments in the case. President Donald Trump’s administration appealed after Boasberg agreed on March 15 to temporarily bar the deportations and ordered planes to return to the U.S.
In an emergency appeal filed Monday, the administration argued the ruling should be put on hold because the judge didn’t have the authority to order some 16,000 probationary employees to be hired back.
The order came from U.S. District Judge William Alsup in San Francisco, who found the firings didn’t follow federal law and required immediate offers of reinstatement be sent.
The agencies include the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Boardman issued a preliminary injunction Monday morning in a case filed in a Maryland federal court last month by a coalition of labor unions.
The lawsuit, led by the American Federation of Teachers, alleges the Trump administration violated federal privacy laws when it gave Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency access to systems with the personal information of tens of millions of Americans without their consent.
Boardman had previously issued a temporary restraining order. The preliminary injunction offers longer-term relief blocking DOGE access at the Education Department, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management as the case plays out.
The judge found the Trump administration likely violated privacy laws. She said the government failed to adequately explain why DOGE needed access to “millions of records” to perform their job duties.
She said the administration can still carry out the president’s agenda without receiving unfettered access to a trove of personal data on federal employees and people with student loans and government benefits.
That includes their income and asset information, Social Security numbers, birth dates, home addresses and marital and citizenship status.
The president is convening a meeting with top administration officials on Monday morning, according to the White House.
Elon Musk, who is leading efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government, will be there.
The last time Musk attended such a meeting, there were reports of clashes between him and Cabinet officials, particularly Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Trump moved swiftly afterward to tamp down questions about disharmony within his administration.
The White House has confirmed White House national security adviser Mike Waltz and Energy Secretary Chris Wright are headed to Greenland in the coming days to visit with U.S. troops at Pituffik Space Base and attend a dogsled race.
The visit comes as Trump has repeatedly raised the idea of the U.S. taking control of the self-governing, mineral-rich territory of NATO ally Denmark.
“The U.S. has a vested security interest in the Arctic region and it should not be a surprise the National Security Advisor and Secretary of Energy are visiting a U.S. Space Base to get first-hand briefings from our service members on the ground,” White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes said in a statement. “We also look forward to experiencing Greenland’s famous hospitality and are confident that this visit presents an opportunity to build on partnerships that respects Greenland’s self determination and advances economic cooperation.”
Waltz and Wright will be joining second lady Usha Vance for the trip. The White House announced Vance’s travel to Greenland on Sunday.
The plant is part of an overall $20 billion investment by Hyundai, the Korean automaker.
“More investments, more jobs, and more money in the pockets of hardworking Americans — all thanks to President Trump’s economic policies,” wrote White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on social media.
Just after midnight, the president posted a social media message calling for Chief Judge James Boasberg to be disbarred. Trump reposted an article about Boasberg’s attendance at a conference that purportedly featured “anti-Trump speakers.”
The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law that hadn’t been invoked since World War II. Flights already were in the air on March 15 when Boasberg agreed to temporarily bar the deportations and ordered planes to return to the U.S.
The administration appealed the order.
On Monday afternoon, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit is scheduled to hear attorneys’ arguments.
The Government Accountability Office confirmed the review in a letter sent to U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
The Massachusetts Democrat, whose office provided the letter to The Associated Press, had requested a review of how many workers were fired, how many were rehired under judicial orders this month and how each agency’s functions were impacted by the workforce cuts.
Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency has fired thousands of workers across the federal government.
Federal judges this month ordered the Trump administration to rehire probationary workers for now. The White House had defended the president’s power to hire and fire employees.
As congressional lawmakers scramble to respond to President Donald Trump’s slashing of the federal government, one group is already taking a front and center role: military veterans.
From layoffs at the Department of Veterans Affairs to a Pentagon purge of archives that documented diversity in the military, veterans have been acutely affected by Trump’s actions. And with the Republican president determined to continue slashing the federal government, the burden will only grow on veterans, who make up roughly 30% of the federal workforce and often tap government benefits they earned with their military service.
“At a moment of crisis for all of our veterans, the VA’s system of health care and benefits has been disastrously and disgracefully put on the chopping block by the Trump administration,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, at a news conference last week.
▶ Read more about how veterans are responding to the government’s plans
The president and the Governor of Louisiana are planning to deliver remarks in the Roosevelt Room this afternoon, according to the White House. Later, Trump will participate in a Greek Independence Day Celebration.
During the first Trump administration, the biggest concern for many journalists was labels. Would they, or their news outlet, be called “fake news” or an “enemy of the people” by a president and his supporters?
They now face a more assertive Trump. In two months, a blitz of action by the nation’s new administration — Trump, chapter two — has journalists on their heels.
Lawsuits. A newly aggressive Federal Communications Commission. An effort to control the press corps that covers the president, prompting legal action by The Associated Press. A gutted Voice of America. Public data stripped from websites. And attacks, amplified anew.
“It’s very clear what’s happening. The Trump administration is on a campaign to do everything it can to diminish and obstruct journalism in the United States,” said Bill Grueskin, a journalism professor at Columbia University.
“It’s really nothing like we saw in 2017,” he said. “Not that there weren’t efforts to discredit the press, and not that there weren’t things that the press did to discredit themselves.”
▶ Read more about how the media is being impacted by the Trump administration
Danish police have sent extra personnel and sniffer dogs to Greenland as the mineral-rich island steps up security measures ahead of a planned visit this week by U.S. second lady Usha Vance, which has stirred new concerns about the Trump administration’s interest in the autonomous Danish territory.
Greenland’s prime minister lamented a “mess” caused by the visit from Vance, who reportedly will be accompanied by Trump’s national security adviser.
The visit — in which Vance plans to learn more about Greenland’s cultural heritage and see a national dogsled race — comes against the backdrop of U.S. President Donald Trump ’s ambition for the United States to seize control of Greenland.
▶ Read more about the second lady’s trip to Greenland
Here are some of the headlines from the weekend
As President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk work to overhaul the federal government, they’re forcing out thousands of workers with insider knowledge and connections who now need a job.
For Russia, China and other adversaries, the upheaval in Washington as Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency guts government agencies presents an unprecedented opportunity to recruit informants, national security and intelligence experts say.
Every former federal worker with knowledge of or access to sensitive information or systems could be a target. When thousands of them leave their jobs at the same time, that creates a lot of targets, as well as a counterespionage challenge for the United States.
“This information is highly valuable, and it shouldn’t be surprising that Russia and China and other organizations — criminal syndicates for instance — would be aggressively recruiting government employees,” said Theresa Payton, a former White House chief information officer under President George W. Bush, who now runs her own cybersecurity firm.
▶ Read more about the growing fears of espionage in the federal government
Protesters hold signs during a "Fight Like Hell" rally, part of a national series of rallies held to protest the Trump administration's plans to privatize or restructure the U.S. Postal Service, Sunday, March 23, 2025, in Las Vegas. (Steve Marcus/Las Vegas Sun via AP)
Elon Musk, left, shakes hands with President Donald Trump at the finals for the NCAA wrestling championship, Saturday, March 22, 2025, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
FILE - Demonstrators rally in support of federal workers outside of the Department of Health and Human Services, Feb. 14, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein, File)
