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President Trump is returning from a Middle East trip where he was feted by foreign leaders to find his legislative agenda on shaky ground on Capitol Hill.

Republican lawmakers are squabbling over the details of the massive reconciliation package that contains key pieces of Trump’s agenda on taxes, border funding and spending.

On Friday, four conservative lawmakers tanked a key committee vote, stalling the legislation and leaving a slew of the president’s campaign promises in limbo.

White House officials and Republicans signaled Trump is expected to ramp up his engagement with members this week, working the phones and getting more directly involved to try and get the party in line before disagreements sink the president’s “big, beautiful bill.” His involvement, some suggested, will be necessary given the fractious nature of the GOP conference.

“The president weighing in is always helpful here, and we’re trying to work with the administration to ensure that we pass his agenda as well as… to make good on the mandate the American people have given us in the election,” said Rep. Lloyd Smucker (R-Pa.), who voted against advancing the reconciliation package on Friday on procedural grounds but said he supports the bill.

The president is in regular contact with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), and he and senior White House officials are expected to continue their outreach to lawmakers over the weekend and into next week.

The megabill encompassing Trump’s agenda, titled the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, would extend the tax cuts Trump signed in 2017 that are set to expire later this year, as well as deliver on campaign promises to eliminate taxes on tipped wages and overtime pay.

It also includes reforms to Medicaid and food aid programs that Republicans project will save at least $1.5 trillion over the course of a decade. 

While House committees completed marathon markups on major areas of the bill in recent days, there are still simmering disagreements that threaten the bill’s passage in the full chamber.

Moderate Republicans from high-tax blue states want an increase of the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap — currently written as $30,000 in the legislation. But to make up for that, fiscal hawks want changes to the bill to get more savings elsewhere. Some Republicans have also raised concerns about changes to Medicaid that would cause people to lose health coverage.

The tricky balancing act has increased the pressure not just on Republican leadership, but on Trump to pressure and persuade members of his party to back the signature legislation for his second term agenda.

“Given the narrow majority in the House and serious disagreements within the conference, and differences with the Senate, passing anything will take a direct, hands-on approach from the president himself,” said one Republican strategist.

Trump on Friday posted on Truth Social as he flew back from the United Arab Emirates that Republicans “MUST UNITE behind, ‘THE ONE, BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL!’” He admonished “grandstanders” in the GOP.

“STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE!” Trump posted.

Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), one of the four GOP members who sunk the budget vote on the reconciliation bill on Friday, pushed back on the suggestion that he was grandstanding.

“This is: how do you disagree with the agenda he laid out? He’s a smart guy, and he’s got so many good things [in the bill],” Normal told reporters. “All we’re asking is a little compromise somewhere. Let’s not give the farm. It’s not right. It’s not right.”

Trump has previously tried similar tactics, using his social media megaphone to target House GOP rebels like Reps. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), even suggesting they face primary challenges. But those individuals have shown they are largely unmoved by social media threats.

The president has in the past also used private outreach, including over the phone to lawmakers on the fence and hosting members at the White House to discuss how to move forward.

Trump has at times appeared reluctant to firmly weigh in on specific policy details of the reconciliation bill. He recently offered mixed signals over the concept of increasing taxes on the wealthiest Americans to help pay for the legislation and satisfy conservatives worried about adding to the debt.

But as the reconciliation package faces more hurdles before getting to his desk, Trump is expected to balance his public comments with private outreach to lawmakers in the days and weeks ahead. 

“The White House will continue to have conversations over the weekend strongly urging House Members to seize the generational opportunity before them and vote YES on this historic legislation to fix the mess Joe Biden created,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “The White House expects ALL Republicans to vote for this bill and successfully pass it through Committee in the near future.”

Emily Brooks and Mike Lillis contributed reporting

Zelensky called for tougher sanctions on Russia after a drone strike killed nine civilians on a bus in Sumy, saying Moscow deliberately targeted a clearly marked passenger vehicle.

Zelensky called for tougher sanctions on Russia after a drone strike killed nine civilians on a bus in Sumy, saying Moscow deliberately targeted a clearly marked passenger vehicle.

Zelensky called for tougher sanctions on Russia after a drone strike killed nine civilians on a bus in Sumy, saying Moscow deliberately targeted a clearly marked passenger vehicle.

Ukraine’s intel chief Budanov said he hopes the “1,000 for 1,000” prisoner exchange with Russia will happen next week.

Ukraine’s intel chief Budanov said he hopes the “1,000 for 1,000” prisoner exchange with Russia will happen next week.

Ukraine’s intel chief Budanov said he hopes the “1,000 for 1,000” prisoner exchange with Russia will happen next week.

This article is part of The D.C. Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox.

Washington is about to host a global festival for the LGBTQ community and its allies—all while President Donald Trump is in the White House overseeing a government that is wholly hostile to the visitors’ goals.

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WorldPride, which last came to the United States in 2019 and drew 5 million visitors to New York, is expected to bring as many as 3 million people to the capital region starting Saturday and going through June 8, with more general Pride Month events continuing beyond that. But the events are opening under the cloud of Trumpism that is waging a campaign against LGBTQ protections, a Congress where lawmakers are policing their own bathrooms against transgender individuals and misgendering colleagues, and a Supreme Court that recently held that the Pentagon could ban some service members based on their gender identities. 

Recent WorldPrides in cities like Sydney, Copenhagen, and Madrid were awash in corporate logos. Now that it’s D.C.’s turn, multiple corporate sponsors—including Booz Allen Hamilton, Deloitte, and Comcast—pulled out for fear of triggering the White House’s retaliation.

For those outside of the U.S., attending this year’s WorldPride requires unusual considerations. Several countries—Denmark, Germany, and Ireland among them—have issued travel advisories warning trans and non-binary individuals that a U.S. jaunt might be undertaken at their own risk. Egale Canada—think the Human Rights Campaign of our neighbors to the north—are sitting out the entire affair. And the African Human Rights Coalition is boycotting.

Even organizers with DC WorldPride, the umbrella group coordinating dozens of organizations like the long-standing local Capital Pride Alliance, are warning that they cannot guarantee a smooth run of show. In a first, the two-day street fair downtown will be fenced in with security checkpoints, reflecting not just the attention around this marquee event but also the troubling reality that anti-LGBTQ incidents are rising around the country. And never far from mind at these events is the memory of the 2016 Pulse shooting that left 49 dead and 53 wounded at an Orlando hub of LGBTQ nightlife.

Put in the plainest terms possible, Washington, D.C. under Donald Trump is not providing the warmest of welcomes for an event that cities around the world compete to land. Attendance is expected to sag below original expectations, which may, in fact, be viewed as a win for a regime that is constantly stoking its base with culture-war rot that exploits division for political gain. Even so, organizers still expect an influx of $787 million in Pride spending.

Taking part in any Pride is inherently a political act, but that’s especially true in Washington, which has the largest concentration of LGBTQ individuals in the country. Lobbyists march in the parade which ends with the backdrop of the U.S. Capitol, the signage always with a whiff of campaigns. The nation’s capital is always ripe with virtue signaling—even holiday celebrations in December can’t escape that trend.

But since Trump returned to power, things have been a little less surefooted. In his first hours back in office, Trump ended federal recognition of transgender or non-binary identities. The White House says it will not issue a proclamation that June is Pride Month or host any events. Its top spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, used her first on-camera meeting with her press corps to decry “transgenderism and wokeness.” The Kennedy Center, which Trump took over and appointed his loyalists to handle programming, canceled all of its contracts for Pride events. (These were in addition to a joint Gay Men’s Chorus-National Symphony Orchestra program this month that got canned at the Kennedy Center.)

Federal agencies are scrubbing any mention of affinity events, following an initial burst of purges in January of panels or advisory groups pushing anything linked to identities. And the ongoing hollowing-out of the federal workforce only stands to cull the number of LGBTQ folks at the table.

Read more: The Fight for Same-Sex Marriage Isn’t Over. Far From It.

The ripple effects have spread far beyond Washington, as cities see Pride funding dry up as corporate America fears retribution or consumer backlash for supporting anything that might not pass Trump’s DEI smell test. In one national survey, roughly two in five corporate execs said they were at least scaling back their sponsorship of Pride events.

So against this backdrop, millions of people from all corners of the globe are about to arrive in a D.C. with a very different vibe than organizers had been expecting when they awarded the city a coveted WorldPride slot in 2022. Shakira gets things started with a welcome concert at Nationals Park on May 31. A glitzy two-day music festival is planned for RFK Stadium’s grounds with the likes of Jennifer Lopez and Troy Sivan and starts June 6. The parade—usually hours long in the humid Washington sun—is slated to launch on June 7. A free concert is scheduled for Pennsylvania Avenue with guests like Cynthia Erivo that evening. Doechii will headline a closing concert there the evening after.

But talk to D.C.’s political pros who work in this space and there already is a sense of scale back. Delegations are smaller. Sidebar conferences are being reduced. Receptions are being canceled. Heck, even fear of long lines at bars and clubs have been downgraded from panic to the typical annoyance.

What typically is a gathering rooted in collective pride has now taken on a timbre of resistance. A June 8 march to and rally at the Lincoln Memorial is expected to be nakedly political. Organizers have started putting yard signs through the Gayborhood with rainbow “Welcome” greetings, but they do not cancel the clear anxiety laced throughout this build-up. For the millions of visitors—and countless others who have decided otherwise—the mere threat poised by Trumpism is enough to sour WorldPride before it even starts.

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KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Russian drone hit a bus evacuating civilians from a front-line area in Ukraine’s northeastern Sumy region Saturday and killed nine people, Ukrainian officials said, hours after Moscow and Kyiv had held their first direct peace talks in years that failed to yield a ceasefire.

Seven people were also injured in the attack in Bilopillia, a town around 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the border with Russia, three of them seriously, according to local Gov. Oleh Hryhorov and Ukraine’s national police. The Associated Press couldn’t independently verify the report and there was no immediate comment from Moscow.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy described the attack as “deliberate killing of civilians” and added in a post on Telegram messaging app that “Russians could scarcely not realize what kind of vehicle they were hitting.”

He lamented the missed opportunity from the peace talks on Friday, saying that “Ukraine has long proposed this — a full and unconditional ceasefire in order to save lives.”

“Russia only retains the ability to continue killing,” Zelenskyy added.

A town in mourning

In Bilopillia, a period of mourning was declared through Monday. Local community chief Yurii Zarko calling the day “Black Saturday.” The injured were taken to a hospital in Sumy, the regional capital.

The local media outlet Suspilne said the passengers on the bus were being evacuated from the town when the strike happened. Authorities are working to identify some of the victims, most of them elderly women.

Russia’s defense ministry claimed its forces hit a military staging area in the Sumy region on Saturday morning, some 50 kilometers (31 miles) southeast of Bilopillia, without mentioning any other attacks there.

According to a Washington-based think tank, Ukrainian forces have been inching forward into Russian territory in the Kursk region, just north of Bilopillia. According to the report last week by the Institute for the Study of War, Kyiv’s troops had advanced south of the Russian border village of Tyotkino.

Russia said last month that its forces had fully reclaimed the Kursk region, nearly nine months after a lightning incursion by Kyiv captured more than 100 settlements there and promised to hand Ukraine a bargaining chip in possible negotiations with the Kremlin. Ukrainian officials claimed fighting in Kursk is ongoing.

Russian shelling, drones and airstrikes killed at least five other civilians on Friday and overnight across Ukraine’s Donetsk, Kharkiv and Kherson regions, according to local officials there.

Russian forces overnight also launched 62 drones, Ukraine’s air force reported. It said 36 of the drones were shot down and six more veered off course, likely due to electronic jamming.

Impact on peace efforts?

Russian and Ukrainian officials met Friday in Istanbul in an attempt to reach a temporary ceasefire, but the talks ended after less than two hours without a breakthrough. It was the first face-to-face dialogue between the two sides since the early weeks of Moscow’s February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

While both sides agreed on a large prisoner swap, they remained far apart on key conditions for ending the fighting.

One such condition for Ukraine, backed by its Western allies, is a temporary ceasefire as a first step toward a peaceful settlement. The Kremlin has pushed back against such a truce, which remains elusive.

Zelenskyy said he had discussed the outcome of the Istanbul talks with U.S. President Donald Trump and the leaders of France, Germany, Britain and Poland. In a post on X from a European leadership meeting in Albania on Friday, he urged “tough sanctions” against Moscow if it rejects “a full and unconditional ceasefire and an end to killings.”

Kyiv and Moscow agreed to exchange 1,000 prisoners of war each, according to the heads of both delegations, in what would be their biggest such swap. The sides also discussed a ceasefire and a meeting between their heads of state, according to the chief Ukrainian delegate, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov.

Russian delegation head Vladimir Medinsky, an aide to President Vladimir Putin, said both sides also agreed to provide each other with detailed ceasefire proposals, with Ukraine requesting the heads of state meeting, which Russia took under consideration.

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, on Saturday held open the possibility of Putin holding talks with Zelenskyy, providing the agreed prisoner swap goes ahead and if Russian and Ukrainian delegations reached unspecified further “agreements.”

Peskov also told reporters that Moscow will present Ukraine with a list of conditions for a ceasefire but gave no timeframe, or say what needed to happen before Zelenskyy and Putin can meet.

European backing

In Tirana, Albania, Zelenskyy met with leaders of 47 European countries to discuss security, defense and democratic standards against the backdrop of the war., including French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk.

“Pressure on Russia must be maintained until Russia is ready to end the war,” Zelenskyy said on X.

Macron in Tirana on Saturday accused Putin of “cynicism” and said that Russia has failed to “respect” ceasefire proposals backed by the U.S. and other Western nations.

Following a call on Friday between Trump, Zelenskyy, Starmer, Merz, Tusk and Macron, the French president reiterated that a European “coalition of the willing” is ready to give Ukraine security guarantees and “put pressure on Russia,” something he said he expected Trump would support.

“Faced with President Putin’s cynicism, I believe that … in fact, I’m sure that President Trump, concerned about the credibility of the United States of America, will react,” he said.

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Kozlowska reported from London. Associated Press writers Hanna Arhirova in Istanbul and Llazar Semini in Tirana, Albania, contributed to this report.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine