Sunrise Movement takes credit for disrupting Trump’s rally in New York state
The Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate justice organization that popularized calls for a Green New Deal, took credit for disrupting Donald Trump’s rally in New York state on Friday.
“The activists arrested were activists with Sunrise Movement,” a spokesperson for the group confirmed to the Guardian in an email.
Video posted on social media by the movement, recorded at two points during Trump’s speech to supporters at Rockland Community College, showed two activists protesting the president’s mass deportation campaign and his war on Iran.
The first activist stood on a chair and shouted: “Donald Trump you’re separating families! Immigrants are under attack, how do you sleep at night?”
After the activist asked, “how many people are in ICE camps?” and shouted “ICE killed-” at the president, a police officer appeared and yanked him off the seat.
“Go home to mom,” Trump said with derision. “Go home.”
Minutes later, on the opposite side of the hall, a second activist held up a sign that read: “Trump is a war criminal” and shouted “You should be ashamed of yourself!”
“You’re a war criminal,” she continued over loud boos from the Trump supporters around her. “How dare you take our money and send it to Iran to kill children! How dare you send it to Gaza to engage in a genocide!”
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Updated at 02.43 CEST
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As the world waits to see if he will order military strike on Iran, or Cuba, Donald Trump is spending his Friday night at the White House posting AI generated images of himself, tossing Stephen Colbert into a dumpster in one, and menacing Greenland in another.
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José Olivares
A US judge dismissed a criminal indictment against Kilmar Ábrego García on Friday, finding that the Trump administration would not have prosecuted him had he not challenged his high-profile deportation.
Ábrego, who had entered the United States without authorization in the past, became a symbol of the Trump administration’s drive for mass deportations when he was sent to the notorious anti-terrorism mega-prison in El Salvador known as Cecot in March 2025.
“Thank you to God, my attorneys, We Are Casa, and everyone who has continued to support the fight for justice,” said Ábrego in a statement provided by We Are Casa, an immigrant rights organization in Maryland, where he lives, that assisted in his legal representation. He added: “Justice is a big word and an even bigger promise to fulfill; and I am grateful that today, justice has taken a step forward.”
Along with 260 other people, chiefly Venezuelans, the administration sent Ábrego to the Salvadorian prison on 15 March last year, despite a US federal judge’s order to stop the flights and grave accusations of human rights abuses there. The Trump administration sent him to El Salvador despite a prior US court order barring him from being returned there because of a risk of persecution.
After sending Ábrego to the anti-terrorism prison, the Trump administration admitted they had mistakenly done so, blaming an “administrative error”.
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In change of plan, Trump returns to White House instead of spending weekend at his New Jersey golf club
Amid speculation about possible US military strikes on Iran, or Cuba, over the weekend, Donald Trump just flew back to the White House after his rally in Rockland county, New York.
That marked a change of plan from the schedule released by the White House on Thursday, which said that Trump would spend the weekend at his New Jersey golf club in Bedminster, which is just an hour’s drive from the site of his rally.
Trump’s return to the White House led some observers to suggest that military operations might be the real reason he is not going to his son Don Jr’s wedding celebration on a private island in the Bahamas on Saturday.
“While I very much wanted to be with my son, Don Jr., and the newest member of the Trump Family, his soon to be wife, Bettina, circumstances pertaining to Government, and my love for the United States of America, do not allow me to do so,” Trump wrote on social media earlier on Friday. “I feel it is important for me to remain in Washington, D.C., at the White House during this important period of time.”
“Trump invading Cuba this weekend to get out of going to his son’s wedding would be very on brand”, the Pod Save America host Dan Pfeiffer joked in response to senator Lindsey Graham’s post that “the liberation” of Cuba “is close at hand”.
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Updated at 02.43 CEST
Lindsey Graham suggests US attack on Cuba may be imminent
Senator Lindsey Graham, once a fierce opponent of Donald Trump turned enthusiastic supporter, suggested on social media on Friday that a US military attack on Cuba to topple its government might be imminent.
“I believe the liberation of the wonderful people of Cuba from the clutches of communism is close at hand,” Graham wrote. “Cuba Libre.”
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Trump invites family of college student allegedly killed by immigrant to share their grief, then uses their pain for a political attack
Donald Trump just completed what was effectively a campaign rally for Republicans in New York state, leaving the stage to the strains of the song he called “the gay national anthem,” the Village People’s 1978 hit, YMCA.
During the 90 minute event, Trump repeated many of his familiar talking points, false claims and boasts, before inviting Republican congressman Mike Lawler and the Republican candidate for governor, Bruce Blakeman, to make their pitches ahead of the elections in November.
Later, Trump also invited the family of Sheridan Gorman, a Loyola University freshman from the area who was killed in Chicago in March by a suspected gunman who is an undocumented immigrant from Venezuela.
In a series of wrenching moments, the murdered teenager’s sister, mother and father addressed the crowd, describing their grief that, as her mother said, “her life was stolen by a man who should have never been in this country”.
Donald Trump listened as Jessica Gorman, the mother of Sheridan Gorman who was shot and killed in March, spoke during a rally at Rockland Community College in Suffern, New York on Friday. Photograph: Alex Brandon/AP
The tragic killing of the 18-year-old has been extensively covered on Fox News, and Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, used a Fox graphic, showing that other networks devoted less time to the crime, to attack other networks during a news conference in March.
Trump sought to blame the murder on his predecessor. “This savage animal who stole Sheridan’s life, entered illegally from Venezuela and was released into our country by crooked Joe Biden,” the president said of Jose Medina, who, according to court documents, came to the US to seek asylum in 2023, after suffering brain damage from a shooting.
Medina reportedly turned himself in at the border in Texas, was detained, and asked to be deported to Colombia but was instead put on a bus and sent to Chicago on one of many buses filled with migrants that were sent from Texas to states run by Democrats that year.
Medina’s public defender in Chicago released a photograph showing that a portion of his frontal lobe had been blown off by a gunshot in 2018, when he was the victim of an armed robbery in Colombia.
“Jose has the mentality of a child; he is missing a portion of his brain. He cannot read, cannot write,” his public defender, Julie Koehler, said.
After the family spoke, Trump tried to turn the family’s grief into a political argument in support of the Republican candidate for New York governor, attacking the Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, for a new state budget passed on Thursday that limits cooperation with federal immigration enforcement.
“He came through open borders. Nobody checked him. Totally unvetted,” Trump said, falsely, of Medina, who surrendered and was detained in Texas. “Terrible person, an animal.
“Just yesterday, New York state passed a budget packed with provisions to obstruct federal immigration enforcement and keep this a deadly sanctuary state”, the president said. Turning to Bruce Blakeman, he added: “Bruce, hopefully he’ll get that un-passed very quickly.”
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Updated at 00.28 CEST
US president again boasts about passing dementia screening test
In his ongoing remarks to supporters at Rockland Community College in Suffern, New York, Donald Trump once again boasted about passing the Montreal Cognitive Assessment, a standard test to detect early signs of dementia, which he wrongly cast as an intelligence test.
As he has before, on multiple occasions, Trump claimed that he “aced” the test and described a complex mathematical problem as an example of how hard the test is, and claimed he got the right answer, but did not say what it was.
“Toward the end, like they had a question like: ‘Pick a number, sir, any number’. ‘Okay, 203 multiply times nine, divide by two. Add on 1,324. Subtract 1292. Sir. Multiply it out one more time. By 19. What is the answer, sir?’ And I got it right.”
“One doctor said, ‘I’ve been doing this test for 20 years. I’ve never seen anybody ace it’.”
The president also repeated many of his familiar yarns, lies and skits, including, but not limited to: his crude impression of a fictional female weightlifter losing to a transgender rival; his false claim that “the King of Saudi Arabia” told him that the US under his leadership is “the hottest country in the world”; his claim that he had no idea that the price of eggs, which he railed about during the 2024 campaign, was a concern after he took office; his lie that foreign nations have pledged to invest $18 trillion in the US; his story about a conversation with an overweight friend who complained about the cost of GLP-1 shots.
“A friend of mine who’s very fat called me,” Trump said. “He’s begging me not to tell his name because he’s actually become quite famous. I tell the story often, so he calls me up … He said, ‘President, I’m in London. I just paid $87 for the fat drug. He said, it’s the fat shot …I said, ‘It’s not working on you, Charles. Not working at all’… But he knows the price. He goes, ‘I paid $87, and in New York two weeks ago, I bought the same damn thing for $1,300’, and it really made an impression.”
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Updated at 22.49 CEST
Protester with ‚Trump is a war criminal‘ banner removed from New York rally
Donald Trump’s speech to supporters in Rockland county, New York, was just disrupted twice by protesters, the first time by a woman waving a banner that read: “Trump is a war criminal”.
Video of the disruption from an ABC News producer showed that the woman’s banner was pulled away by a Trump supporter in a red hat before the woman was led away by police officers.
The president then digressed from his prepared remarks to fondly reminisce about how, after his 2016 campaign rallies were frequently disrupted by protesters, his supporters started beating the demonstrators.
On 19 March 2016, an anti-Trump protester draped in an American flag was punched by a Trump supporter after he disrupted Donald Trump’s rally in Tucson, Arizona. Photograph: Mike Christy/AP
“It’s dangerous to do it, and to do it in this crowd is not a good thing. You don’t want to do it in Trump crowds,” Trump said. “Do you remember originally I used to have a lot of that? You know, the first couple of months I’d have people screaming and they learned it’s just not a good thing to do. It’s not good. It’s just sort of dangerous.”
Minutes later, a second protester disrupted the speech. The president then narrated the ejection of the protester, and stressed that he was telling the people removing the person to not be violent “for legal reasons”.
“So we have another little disturbance back there,” Trump said. “It’s already cleared up. What are you doing back there to these people? Boy does that get cleared up. That the guy raises his hand, starts screaming something and within about two seconds, it’s over. I don’t know what happened … Don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt him. Don’t hurt him. I do that for legal reasons. This way I can say that’s a great thing to say. Do not hurt him under any circumstances. And now I can say I’m innocent.”
A third person who loudly booed Trump was also removed.
A protester was removed for disrupting Donald Trump’s rally by officers from the Ramapo Police Department in Suffern, New York on Friday. Photograph: Ryan Murphy/APShare
Updated at 02.55 CEST
Here’s a recap of the day so far:
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Trump announces Aaron Lukas as acting director of national intelligence after Tulsi Gabbard steps down as national intelligence director. Gabbard shared a statement on X, confirming that she is resigning from her post as national intelligence director, citing her husband’s illness. Gabbard told the president she is “deeply grateful for the trust you placed in me and for the opportunity to lead the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the last year and a half”.
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Trump swears in Kevin Warsh as the new chair of the Federal Reserve as his administration struggles to shrug off mounting concerns over affordability. Warsh will confront a darkening economic outlook, with inflation hitting a three-year high of 3.8% in April.
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Trump claims he selflessly gave up IRS settlement in return for $1.8bn fund ‘helping others’. Amid almost a week of reactions from Democrats and Republicans to Trump’s Anti-Weaponization Fund, Trump said: “I am helping others, who were so badly abused by an evil, corrupt, and weaponized Biden Administration, receive, at long last, JUSTICE!”
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Marco Rubio said Trump ‘disappointment’ with Nato will be discussed at summit. While meeting with foreign ministers of the military alliance, Rubio emphasized that he expected the rift would be discussed at the July meeting in Ankara, making the summit “one of the more important” in Nato’s 77-year history.
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Updated at 22.14 CEST
Bruce Blackman, currently a county executive of Nassau county, New York, is vying to be the governor of the state this November, challenging the incumbent Kathy Hochul. Seven of the 10 people to hold that county executive office since 1938 have been Republicans.
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Updated at 22.15 CEST
On the DNC’s autopsy report released Thursday, Trump said that it was riddled with typos.
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Ref: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2026/may/22/donald-trump-ai-china-iran-war-powers-hormuz-latest-news-updates
