Trump will meet with NATO leader Rutte as he muses about pulling out of the military alliance

WASHINGTON (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte will meet with President Donald Trump on Wednesday to try to smooth over the president's anger with the military alliance over the Iran war.

Trump had suggested the U.S. may consider leaving the trans-Atlantic alliance after NATO member countries ignored his call to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping waterway, as Iran effectively shut it and sent gas prices soaring.

The Republican president's meeting with Rutte, with whom he had a warm relationship, comes as the U.S. and Iran late Tuesday agreed to a two-week ceasefire that includes the reopening of the strait. The nascent ceasefire was struck after Trump said he would strike Iran's power plants and bridges, threatening that “a whole civilization will die tonight."

The plan to reopen the strait is still cloudy and is expected to be a central focus of the Wednesday afternoon meeting with Rutte. The White House said the meeting was expected to be behind closed doors. In the Trump administration, though, that can change at the last minute, and meetings can be opened to the press.

When asked earlier Wednesday if Trump is still considering leaving NATO, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, “It’s something the president has discussed, and I think it’s something the president will be discussing in a couple of hours with Secretary-General Rutte."

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met separately with Rutte on Wednesday morning at the State Department ahead of the White House talks. In a statement, the State Department said Rubio and Rutte had discussed the war with Iran, along with U.S. efforts to negotiate an end to the Russia-Ukraine war and “increasing coordination and burden shifting with NATO allies.”

Congress in 2023 passed a law that prevents any U.S. president from pulling out of NATO without its approval. Trump has been a longtime critic of NATO and in his first term had suggested he had the authority on his own to leave the alliance, which was founded in 1949 to counter the Cold War threat posed to European security by the Soviet Union.

The crux of the commitment its 32 member countries make is a mutual defense agreement in which an attack on one is considered an attack on them all. The only time it has been activated was in 2001, to support the United States in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington.

Despite that, Trump has complained during his war of choice with Iran that NATO has shown it will not be there for the U.S.

Ahead of the meeting, Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, issued a statement Tuesday night in support of the alliance, noting that, “Following the September 11th attacks, NATO allies sent their young servicemembers to fight and die alongside America’s own in Afghanistan and Iraq.” McConnell, who sits on a committee overseeing defense spending, urged Trump to be “clear and consistent” and said it's not in America's interest to “spend more time nursing grudges with allies who share our interests than deterring adversaries who threaten us.”

If Rutte's meeting does not alleviate Trump's frustrations, it's unclear if the Trump administration would challenge the law barring a president from pulling out of NATO. When the law passed, it was championed by Trump's current secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who at the time was a senator from Florida.

The alliance was already rattled over the past year as Trump returned to power and reduced U.S. military support for Ukraine in the war against Russia and threatened to seize Greenland from ally Denmark.

But Trump's badgering of NATO intensified after the Iran war began at the end of February, with the president insisting that securing the Strait of Hormuz was not America's job but the responsibility of countries that depend on the flow of oil through it.

“Go to the strait and just take it,” Trump said last week.

Trump was also angered as NATO allies Spain and France forbade or restricted use of their airspace or joint military facilities for the U.S. in the Iran war. They and other nations, however, agreed to help with an international coalition to open the Strait of Hormuz when the conflict ends.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has been a particular source of Trump's frustration, was set to travel on Wednesday to the Gulf to support the ceasefire. The U.K. has been working on developing a post-conflict security plan for the strait, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil passes.

Trump has previously threatened to leave NATO and often said that he would abandon allies who don’t spend enough on their military budgets. Former NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, in his recent memoir, said he feared that Trump might walk away from the alliance in 2018, during his first term as president.

Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Matthew Lee in Washington and Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, is joined by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, left, for a photo opportunity at the State Department, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, right, is joined by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, left, for a photo opportunity at the State Department, Wednesday, April 8, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.)

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte speaks during the launch of the NATO Secretary General's Annual Report for 2025 at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, March 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte takes questions from journalists during the launch of the NATO Secretary General's Annual Report for 2025 at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Thursday, March 26, 2026. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters during the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

President Donald Trump speaks with reporters during the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House, Monday, April 6, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

FILE - President Donald Trump meets with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House, Oct. 22, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

LOS ANGELES (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison to a woman who pleaded guilty to selling “Friends” star Matthew Perry the ketamine that killed him in 2023.

“You’re going to have to show some epic resilience,” Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett said to Jasveen Sangha, echoing the defendant's words earlier in the hearing about her self-improvement.

The 42-year-old became the third defendant sentenced of the five people who have pleaded guilty in connection with the overdose of the 54-year-old actor. His role as Chandler Bing on NBC’s “Friends” in the 1990s and 2000s made him one of the biggest television stars of the era.

Sangha is the only one whose plea deal included an acknowledgment of causing Perry’s death, and her prison term will almost certainly be far longer than all other defendants combined.

Prosecutors had recommend a 15-year sentence. They cast her in court filings as a “Ketamine Queen” who had an elaborate drug operation catering to high-end clients to give herself a jet-setting lifestyle despite a life of privilege.

Sangha’s attorneys said in their sentencing filing that the time she has spent in jail since her August 2024 indictment should be sufficient. They pointed to her lack of a previous criminal record and exemplary behavior as an inmate, as well as the unlikelihood she would return to a life of drug dealing.

Keith Morrison, Perry’s stepfather and correspondent for NBC’s “Dateline,” told the judge that he and Perry’s mother, Suzanne, feel a “daily, grinding sadness and sorrow.”

Perry was found dead in the hot tub at his Los Angeles home. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death.

Perry had been using the drug through his regular doctor as a legal off-label treatment for depression. But he sought more than the doctor would give him. That at first led him to Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who admitted to illegally selling Perry ketamine and was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison after prosecutors asked for three years. And it later led Perry to Sangha, who sold him 25 vials of ketamine, including the fatal dose, for $6,000 in cash four days before his death, prosecutors said.

Another doctor, who admitted to providing Plasencia the ketamine he sold to Perry, was sentenced to eight months of home detention. Perry’s assistant and his friend, who admitted acting as the actor’s middlemen, are awaiting sentencing.

The judge said she is calibrating how to sentence each of the five defendants to make sense as a whole.

Sangha pleaded guilty in September to one count of using her home for drug distribution, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death. She also admitted to selling drugs to another man, 33-year-old Cody McLaury, who had no connection to Perry, before his overdose death in 2019.

The prosecution said that despite Sangha’s plea, she continued drug dealing, showing her lack of remorse.

Their sentencing filing says that in 2020, when she learned that the ketamine she sold McLaury contributed to his death, “She didn’t care and kept selling.” In 2023, the filing says that when she learned she sold Perry the drugs that caused his death, “Her reaction was the same: she didn’t care and kept selling.”

Suzanne Morrison, mother of Matthew Perry, walks into court with her husband Keith Morrison before Jasveen Sangha, who plead guilty to selling Perry a lethal dose of the drug ketamine in the days before his death, appears in court for sentencing on Wednesday, April 8, 2026 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Suzanne Morrison, mother of Matthew Perry, walks into court with her husband Keith Morrison before Jasveen Sangha, who plead guilty to selling Perry a lethal dose of the drug ketamine in the days before his death, appears in court for sentencing on Wednesday, April 8, 2026 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Suzanne Morrison, mother of Matthew Perry, walks into court with her husband Keith Morrison before Jasveen Sangha, who plead guilty to selling Perry a lethal dose of the drug ketamine in the days before his death, appears in court for sentencing on Wednesday, April 8, 2026 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Suzanne Morrison, mother of Matthew Perry, walks into court with her husband Keith Morrison before Jasveen Sangha, who plead guilty to selling Perry a lethal dose of the drug ketamine in the days before his death, appears in court for sentencing on Wednesday, April 8, 2026 in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

FILE - Matthew Perry poses for a portrait in New York on Feb. 17, 2015. (Photo by Brian Ach/Invision/AP, File)