Rep. Byron Donalds announces he will run for Florida governor, and President Donald Trump announces a plan for a different kind of visa for $5 million.
Rep. Byron Donalds announces candidacy for Florida governor
Republican Congressman Byron Donalds announced Tuesday that he is running to be the governor of Florida.
He made the announcement on Fox News and is the first Republican candidate to officially enter the 2026 race.
"Now is the time to keep the best state in the country as the best state in the country," Donalds said in a post on X, accompanied by a portion of his Fox News interview.
President Donald Trump has already expressed support for Donalds to be Florida's next governor.
“Byron Donalds would be a truly Great and Powerful Governor for Florida and, should he decide to run, will have my Complete and Total Endorsement,” the president posted earlier this month on his social media site. “RUN, BYRON, RUN!”
Meantime, current Gov. Ron DeSantis took a shot at Donalds earlier this week.
“A guy like Byron, he just hasn’t been a part of any of the victories that we’ve had here over the left over these last years,” DeSantis said Monday.
Other names rumored to run have included Florida First Lady Casey DeSantis and former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz.
Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried responded with a statement, saying in part:
"Byron Donalds is a dangerous political opportunist who should be nowhere near the governor's mansion. He only has a shot at the nomination because Trump endorsed him, and Trump is only endorsing him because he wants a puppet in the governor's mansion."
The 46-year-old Donalds, who lives in Naples in southwest Florida, was born and raised in Brooklyn. He graduated from Florida State University.
He was working as a financial adviser when then-Gov. Rick Scott appointed him to the board of trustees at a state college, cementing his rise in the state GOP.
He entered the Florida House in 2016, won a seat in the U.S. House in 2020 and has been on the short list for multiple opportunities ever since, including being nominated in January 2023 by the far-right wing of as a candidate for House speaker.
One of the state’s most high-profile Black Republicans, Donalds would become the first African American to serve as governor if he wins.
Donalds and his wife, Erika Donalds, built a reputation for working to transform public education and direct more taxpayer dollars into private and charter schools. A former county school board member, she runs a company that oversees charter schools and a virtual academy.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ukraine and U.S. have agreed on a framework economic deal, Ukrainian officials say
Ukraine and the U.S. have reached an agreement on a framework for a broad economic deal that would include access to Ukraine's rare earth minerals, three senior Ukrainian officials said Tuesday.
The officials, who were familiar with the matter, spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly. One of them said that Kyiv hopes that signing the agreement will ensure the continued flow of U.S. military support that Ukraine urgently needs.
The agreement could be signed as early as Friday and plans are being drawn up for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to travel to Washington to meet President Donald Trump, according to one of the Ukrainian officials.
Another official said the agreement would provide an opportunity for Zelenskyy and Trump to discuss continued military aid to Ukraine, which is why Kyiv is eager to finalize the deal.
Trump, speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, said he’d heard that Zelenskyy was coming and added that “it’s OK with me, if he’d like to, and he would like to sign it together with me.”
Trump called it “a very big deal,” adding that it could be worth a trillion dollars.
According to one Ukrainian official, some technical details are still being worked out. However, the draft does not include a contentious Trump administration proposal to give the U.S. $500 billion worth of profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals as compensation for its wartime assistance to Kyiv.
Instead, the U.S. and Ukraine would have joint ownership of a fund, and Ukraine would, in the future, contribute 50% of future proceeds from state-owned resources, including minerals, oil, and gas. One official said the deal had better terms of investments, and another one said that Kyiv secured favorable amendments and viewed the outcome as “positive.”
Trump says he will offer ‘gold cards’ for $5 million path to citizenship, replacing investor visas
President Donald Trump said that he plans to offer a “gold card” visa with a path to citizenship for $5 million, replacing a 35-year-old visa for investors.
“They’ll be wealthy and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people, and we think it’s going to be extremely successful,” Trump said Tuesday in the Oval Office.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said the Trump Gold Card would replace EB-5 visas in two weeks. EB-5s were created by Congress in 1990 to generate foreign investment and are available to people who spend about $1 million on a company that employs at least 10 people.
Lutnick said the gold card — actually a green card, or permanent legal residency — would raise the price of admission for investors and do away with fraud and “nonsense” that he said characterize the EB-5 program. Like other green cards, it would include a path to citizenship.
About 8,000 people obtained investor visas in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022, according to the Homeland Security Department’s most recent Yearbook of Immigration Statistics. The Congressional Research Service reported in 2021 that EB-5 visas pose risks of fraud, including verification that funds were obtained legally.
Investors’ visas are common around the world. Henley & Partners, an advisory firm, says more than 100 countries around the world offer “golden visas” to wealthy individuals, including United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Malta, Australia, Canada and Italy.
Trump made no mention of the requirements for job creation. And, while the number of EB-5 visas is capped, the Republican president mused that the federal government could sell 10 million “gold cards” to reduce the deficit. He said it “could be great, maybe it will be fantastic.”
“It’s somewhat like a green card, but at a higher level of sophistication, it’s a road to citizenship for people, and essentially people of wealth or people of great talent, where people of wealth pay for those people of talent to get in, meaning companies will pay for people to get in and to have long, long-term status in the country,” he said.
Congress determines qualifications for citizenship, but Trump said “gold cards” would not require congressional approval.
