The Latest: Canadian Prime Minister Carney tells Trump: ‘Stop trying to be tough’

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told the Trump administration Tuesday to “stop doing memes, stop throwing shade and stop trying to be tough,” as he pushed back against a fresh wave of attacks from Washington. Carney said U.S.-Canada trade talks could resume if Washington became serious about negotiations.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is pitching a financial literacy campaign to leaders of the world’s largest economies and suggesting an investment account program begun under President Donald Trump as a model for it. As he hosted leaders from the G20, Bessent announced U.S. sponsorship for a competition called the “Financial Literacy Solutions Sprint.”

And the U.S. Department of Justice is suing the school system in Kansas City, Kansas , over its policies on transgender students . The lawsuit follows an Education Department investigation prompted by complaints from the conservative Defense of Freedom Institute.

Here's the Latest:

Scott Bessent says multiple Trump administration officials are talking with other nations that are still dealing economically with Iran and pressuring them to stop . But he avoided specifically mentioning Russia, even when asked.

“My message to everyone is stay away,” Bessent said Wednesday on “Fox & Friends.”

“We all want this conflict to end, and the fastest way for the conflict to end is for no one to provide any support to this regime. We are going to sever every tie that they have.”

Existing sanctions on Tehran already are working to “asphyxiate the regime,” Besssent said, and the statements from some Iranian leaders prove “all is not well in the economy” there.

The White House on Monday said it’s partnering with North American Blue Energy Partners as part of Trump’s push to tap into Venezuela’s oil industry , setting up a deal that will give the Pentagon a stake in roughly a fifth of the country’s vast oil reserves.

The Trump administration released more details on Monday night, days after Trump announced what he described as the biggest oil deal in history . The sweeping agreement has been met with skepticism from analysts who say it will take years to revive Venezuela’s production , but Trump and his aides are pitching it as a chance to develop a new oil giant in the Western Hemisphere.

As part of the deal, the U.S. is creating a private company as a joint venture with NABEP — a detail the White House had withheld for days. NABEP, owned by Venezuelan businessman Alejandro Betancourt, is already the second-largest operator in Venezuela, behind Chevron.

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The U.S. Department of Justice filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday against the school system in Kansas City, Kansas, over its policies on transgender students .

The lawsuit comes more than a year after the Education Department first said it was investigating four districts in Kansas following a complaint from the Defense of Freedom Institute. The conservative group’s complaint alleged the schools had policies preventing disclosure of a student’s “transgender status” to parents without the student’s consent.

Schools in Kansas City, Kansas, have a policy of using students’ preferred names and pronouns. The district also says requests from students who do not wish to involve their parents will be evaluated on a case-by-case basis, according to the Justice Department lawsuit.

In April, the Education Department said it found the four Kansas districts in violation of the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act. The districts violated the privacy law, the department said, by maintaining a policy of not disclosing a student’s gender transition at the parents’ request, though the department did not cite a specific instance where this happened.

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Driven in part by his own experience with poverty as a child, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is pitching a financial literacy campaign to leaders of the world’s largest economies and suggesting an investment account program begun under President Donald Trump as a model for it.

As he hosted finance ministers from rich and developing nations in the G20, Bessent on Tuesday announced U.S. sponsorship for a competition called the “Financial Literacy Solutions Sprint.”

The competition is intended to discover and showcase “innovative technology- and data-enabled solutions” developed across the Group of 20 countries to strengthen financial literacy.

Four finalists will be pared to one or two winning teams and will be recognized during the annual meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund in October in Bangkok.

Bessent points to the creation of Trump Accounts as a model other nations should follow. Treasury says roughly 7 million children are enrolled and 86% of participants are from families earning less than $200,000 per year.

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney told the Trump administration Tuesday to “stop doing memes, stop throwing shade and stop trying to be tough,” as he pushed back against a fresh wave of attacks from Washington.

Carney said U.S.-Canada trade talks could resume if Washington became serious about negotiations, but he also accused the United States of pursuing terms that he said could leave Canadian industries “gradually wound down in Canada and wiped out.”

“When the Americans stop doing memes, stop throwing shade and stop trying to be tough, and start being serious about having those discussions, we can have those discussions,” Carney said. “It’s not constructive, but that’s their democracy.”

His comments came during a fresh barrage from Washington since trade talks collapsed Aug. 21. Trump has moved to rename Lake Ontario “Lake America” and taunted Canada on social media, while U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Canada could not go “tit for tat” with an economy 13 times larger.

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