Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are some of the day’s leading developments:
Donald Trump made a surprise announcement doubling tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% during a speech in Pittsburgh celebrating a deal between US Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel Corporation.
The exact nature of the US Steel deal Trump blessed remained unclear. Although the president insists that it is “a partnership”, Nippon Steel has never withdrawn its bid to buy and control US Steel as a wholly owned subsidiary. The US Steel website still describes the deal as “US Steel’s agreement to be acquired by NSC”.
If the deal is a purchase of US Steel by its Japanese rival, Trump would be breaking a campaign promise to block any such sale.
Trump held a bizarre press conference in the Oval Office with Elon Musk, during which the billionaire said farewell to his role as a special government employee and the president repeated false claims about government spending his donor-turned-aide had stopped.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can, for now, revoke the temporary protected status of more than 500,000 refugees fleeing violence or persecution in Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Those legal immigrants are now subject to deportation if they choose not to leave their new homes in communities like Springfield, Ohio, where they were falsely accused by the president of eating pets.
Trump announced on social media that he had fired Kim Sajet, the first female director of the National Portrait Gallery. Legal experts suggested that Trump does not have the power to fire Sajet, an employee of the Smithsonian, which is not run by the executive branch.
Fox News points out US Steel describes deal blessed by Trump as an acquisition
Even pro-Trump commentators on Fox are baffled at the ongoing uncertainty over the exact nature of the deal between US Steel and its Japanese rival Nippon Steel Corporation celebrated by the president at his rally on Friday.
“This is being described as ‘a partnership’, this deal between Nippon and US Steel; but then its described as an acquisition on the US Steel website,” the Fox host Laura Ingraham pointed out on her show Friday night.
She then asked a guest from another pro-Trump outlet, Breitbart, “Who owns the majority stake in this company?”
When the guest said that he did not know, Ingraham suggested that Trump himself might not be aware of the details. “I don’t know if he was fully informed about the terms of the deal. We just don’t know.”
It is indeed the case that US Steel’s website links to a standalone site with the combined branding of the two companies that features a statement describing the transaction as “U. S. Steel’s agreement to be acquired by NSC.”
The same site also features a statement praising “President Trump’s leadership” that says: “U. S. Steel will remain American, and we will grow bigger and stronger through a partnership with Nippon Steel”.
Updated
Candace Laing, the president and chief executive of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce is not happy with the new 50% tariffs on imported steel and aluminum Trump announced on Friday. Here is her statement:
Unwinding the efficient, competitive and reliable cross border supply chains like we have in steel and aluminum comes at a great cost to both countries. In 2018, under the last round of steel and aluminum tariffs, we saw significant net negative job loss in America. Doubling the steel aluminum tariffs to 50% is antithetical to North American economic security. The fact remains that Canada is a reliable and secure trading partner that supplies materials that sustain American jobs.”
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In a post to his social media platform from Air Force One, as he flies back to Washington from Pittsburgh, Donald Trump just announced that his new 50% tariffs on steel also apply to imported aluminum and will take effect on Wednesday, 4 June.
Trump does have authority to raise steel tariffs
Donald Trump just wrapped up his speech to steelworkers in Pittsburgh, which closely resembled a campaign event, despite the fact that he is no longer eligible to run for the presidency again.
The main news of the speech, at a US Steel plant near Pittsburgh, celebrating the sale of the company to Japan’s Nippon Steel, was Trump’s announcement that he was doubling tariffs on imported steel, from 25% to 50%.
Despite a court ruling this week that Trump does not have the authority to impose tariffs at will, he does have the authority, as president, to unilaterally raise tariffs on steel imports, under a national security provision called Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act.
Trump presented with jersey of Pittsburgh Steelers great who endorsed Kamala Harris
Near the start of his rally at a US Steel factory outside of Pittsburgh, Donald Trump was presented with a Pittsburgh Steelers jersey by the former Steeler Rocky Bleier.
The jersey had Trump’s name and the No 47, in honor of his role as the 47th president. Bleier noted that a Steelers jersey with that number “hangs in the National Football League Hall of Fame”.
What Bleier did not say is that the hall-of-famer who wore that number for the Steelers was his teammate Mel Blount, a great defensive back.
Blount, however, is not a Trump supporter. In 2024, he endorsed Kamala Harris in her campaign against Trump.
In 2016, Blount appeared alongside Joe Biden at a campaign rally for Trump’s opponent Hillary Clinton.
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Trump says he is doubling tariffs on imported steel to 50%
Donald Trump just announced at his rally in Pittsburgh that he is increasing the tariff on imported steel from 25% to 50%.
The US president told steel workers: “We are going to be imposing a 25% increase. We’re going to bring it from 25% to 50% the tariffs on steel into the United States of America, which will even further secure the steel industry in the United States.”
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Trump claims US Steel will remain 'an American company' after deal with Japanese rival
Speaking to steelworkers in Pittsburgh, Donald Trump just insisted that US Steel will “stay an American company” after what he is now calling “a partnership” with Nippon Steel, the Japanese firm that offered $14.9bn for its US rival.
It remains unclear how the deal Trump initially opposed is different from a takeover by the Japanese firm.
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California legislature opens bribery investigation into Paramount over possible Trump settlement – report
Two powerful California state senators have invited the former leaders of CBS News and 60 Minutes to testify as part of an investigation into whether the network’s parent company, Paramount, might have violated state laws against bribery and unfair competition.
As Semafor reports, a letter asking for testimony from the former 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens and the former CBS News president Wendy McMahon, who both recently resigned, comes as Paramount has reportedly offered Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign $15m to settle a lawsuit filed against CBS over the fairly standard editing of an interview with Kamala Harris, the former vice-president, in October.
Trump has so far refused to settle and threatened to file an additional suit against the company, which needs federal approval for a merger with the entertainment company Skydance. The chief executive of Skydance, David Ellison, is the son of the pro-Trump billionaire Oracle Corporation co-founder and chairman, Larry Ellison.
A copy of the letter, obtained by Semafor, shows that it was sent by the chair of the California state senate energy, utilities & communications committee, Josh Becker, and the judiciary committee chair, Thomas Umberg.
“Your recent resignations from CBS’s leadership, amid public reports of internal concern about the editorial and ethical implications of the proposed settlement, suggest that you may possess important, first-hand knowledge relevant to our legislative oversight responsibilities,” the lawmakers wrote to the former CBS News leaders.
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Before he was for the Japanese bid for US Steel, Trump was actually against it
Donald Trump is about to speak at a rally in Pittsburgh to celebrate what he is calling a “partnership” between US Steel and Nippon Steel, after insisting for months last year that he was “totally against” the $14.9bn bid by the Japanese firm for its US rival.
Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden had blocked Nippon’s acquisition of US Steel, citing national security concerns, during his final weeks in office. The Trump administration undertook a review of the proposal this year.
While the White House has been vague about the exact terms of the deal, and what changed Trump’s mind about it, he was extremely clear about his opposition to the takeover on the campaign trail last year.
“They want to strip us of our wealth and seeing our – you’ve seen our companies being sold off to foreign countries all the time,” Trump told voters in Saginaw, Michigan at a rally last October. “And how about US Steel? I’m not going to let them sell US Steel. I don’t care, even if it’s maybe good.”
“This was the most important, 65, 70 years ago, US Steel was the most important company in the world. Now, Japan wants to buy it. I would not let that happen,” the candidate said. “I hope it doesn’t go through before I get there because if I get there and it’s not done, we’re not letting that – we’ll help it. We’ll help it get along. But we’re not letting them buy US Steel.”
After he won the November election, Trump reiterated his opposition to the deal in a social media post. “I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan,” he wrote in December. “As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”
After meeting Japan’s prime minister at the White House in February, Trump announced that Nippon, a company he repeatedly called “Nissan” by mistake, would be investing in US Steel rather than buying it.
Then last week, Trump announced on social media that he would approve what he called “a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel”.
Asked by reporters about the deal on Sunday, Trump, again calling Nippon “Nissan” by mistake, insisted that it was an investment rather than a purchase or merger.
Among those unclear about how this was different from the sale Trump had promised to block were the leaders of the United Steel workers union.
The USW said in a statement on Wednesday that the terms of the “partnership” remained unknown to them.
At this time, we cannot say whether the “planned partnership” described in Friday’s message on Truth Social or news reports since then represents any meaningful change from the merger proposed in 2023, under which Nippon Steel would acquire U.S. Steel and make it a wholly owned subsidiary.
Throughout recent months, as the public conversation has turned to Nippon “investing” in U.S. Steel or “partnering with” U.S. Steel, Nippon has maintained consistently that it would only invest in U.S. Steel’s facilities if it owned the company outright. We’ve seen nothing in the reporting over the past few days suggesting that Nippon has walked back from this position.
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Trump says he fired the first female director of the National Portrait Gallery
With a post on his social media platform, Donald Trump announced on Friday that he was firing Kim Sajet, the first female director of the National Portrait Gallery.
Trump accused Sajet, who was born in Nigeria, raised in Australia and is a citizen of the Netherlands, of being “a strong supporter of DEI” and “highly partisan”. He cited no evidence for either claim.
Legal experts, including Eric Columbus, a former litigator for the January 6 select committee, suggested Trump does not have the power to fire Sajet, since the gallery is part of the Smithsonian, which is not run by the executive branch.
As our colleague David Smith wrote in a profile of Sajet, after she arrived in the US with her family in 1997, she held positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania before she was appointed director of the National Portrait Gallery in 2013.
Sajet said the gallery tries “very hard to be even-handed when we talk about people and that’s the key. Everyone has an opinion about American presidents, good, bad and indifferent. We hear it all but generally I think we’ve done pretty well.”
A description of Donald Trump in the gallery of American presidents includes this text: “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials. After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election. He is the only president aside from Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) to have won a nonconsecutive second term.”
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‘My stomach just dropped’: foreign students in panicked limbo as Trump cancels visa interviews
Students around the world who were gearing up to study in the United States this fall face growing uncertainty after the Trump administration temporarily halted student visa appointments this week.
On Tuesday, a state department directive ordered US embassies globally to immediately stop scheduling visa interviews for foreign students while it prepares to implement expanded social media screening for all international visa applicants.
While interview appointments that were already scheduled can proceed, the announcement sparked panic among students who have yet to secure interviews. Students who spoke with the Guardian expressed anxiety over delays in visa processing that could jeopardize scholarships, on-campus housing, their ability to start classes on time – and their very academic futures.
“My stomach just dropped,” said Oliver Cropley, 27, a student at the University of East Anglia in the UK, who is meant to attend the University of Kansas beginning this August for a year abroad.
The directive came amid a series of recent policy shifts targeting international students at US universities. This week, the Trump administration issued new measures targeting Chinese students, announcing it would focus on the visas of those studying in “critical fields” and of students with ties to the Chinese Communist party, and implement heightened scrutiny for all future applicants from China and Hong Kong.
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security said it would immediately ban Harvard University from enrolling international students, forcing the university’s international student body to either transfer or leave the country. A federal judge blocked that effort on Thursday, but its long-term outcome remains uncertain.
The changes have left many international students who are planning to come to the US for the 2025-2026 academic year scrambling and in limbo.
Cropley said that he paid all of the application fees for the US visa including the last administrative fee last week to schedule his visa interview, but he has been unable to schedule it or reach anyone at the US embassy.
“It has demoralized me,” Cropley said. “It’s a stressful enough process, and then to get this sort of knockback at this stage … I’m supposed to be there on August 4.”
Key takeaways from Trump-Musk press conference
Despite brief tangents about black eyes, gold ceilings and autopens, that meeting basically consisted of Trump showering Musk with praise as his turbulent tenure at Doge comes to an end, at least officially. “Elon’s service to America is without comparison in modern history,” said Trump from behind the Resolute Desk, in a show of unity with the world’s richest person, who stood to his right in a black Doge hat and “Dogefather” T-shirt. “Elon has worked tirelessly helping lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations,” Trump said, adding that Musk had delivered a “colossal change” in how Washington does things.
But despite the fanfare, both men said that Musk isn’t really going anywhere. He will continue to be “a friend and adviser” to the president and will still be “back and forth” to the White House, Musk said, with “most” Doge workers “staying on” to continue its work to cut “wasteful” federal spending. As if anyone needed reminding, in the last 130 days Doge under Musk has caused chaos as it haphazardly eliminated thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in contracts – all without actually saving the country very much at all. Acknowledging that Doge had failed to deliver the $1tn savings promised, Musk defended his efforts and insisted he was confident it would get to that number “in time”.
The two glossed over questions pertaining to Musk’s criticisms of Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill, which will add massively to the national deficit and undermine Doge’s mission to cut spending (though Trump did say he wants to see bigger tax cuts in the bill), and to Musk’s alleged intense drug use over the course of his chaotic tenure in the White House. They focused instead on previously debunked claims about Doge’s “achievements”, with the president saying his government plans to make many of Doge’s cuts permanent, while the billionaire declared: “This isn’t the end of Doge, it’s more the beginning … It’s a way of life.”
Updated
Trump says he had a “good meeting” with Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, in a hurried response as reporters are ushered out of the room.
And that’s it, the briefing is over. I’ll post a short summary soon.
Elon Musk dodged a question about a New York Times report published this morning about his alleged drug use while serving as one of Trump’s closest advisers.
According to the report, Musk was using drugs far more intensely than previously known, regularly consuming ketamine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms during his rise to political prominence.
His use of ketamine was so heavy that he told people it caused bladder problems, the report says. Sources told the paper that he had a serious ketamine habit, consuming the powerful anesthetic sometimes daily rather than the “small amount” taken “about once every two weeks” he claimed in interviews.
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Trump says both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskiy are stubborn as he tries to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
Asked if he believes Putin is stubborn, Trump says he was surprised and disappointed by Russian bombing in Ukraine while he was trying to arrange a ceasefire.
Updated
Trump says he still wants foreign students to attend US colleges despite his fight with Harvard over how many students it enrolls from outside the country.
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Musk says his bruised eye was caused by 'horsing around' with his son
Asked about his black eye, Musk claims he was punched in the face by his five-year-old son while they were “horsing around”.
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Trump wants to see bigger tax cuts in the budget bill
Trump says he wants to see bigger tax cuts in the budget bill (which passed the House by the skin of its teeth).
“I’d like to see a bigger cut in taxes,” Trump says. “ The bill is a great bill. It’s going to be jiggered around a little bit, it’s going to be negotiated with the Senate.”
Musk was also asked to chime in by the reporter about what changes he wants to see (following his criticisms this week) but Trump moves on.
Updated
Fact check: Trump claims Musk’s Doge uncovered the Biden administration “spent $8m on making mice transgender”.
Trump made this claim during his address to Congress in March, and it’s unclear where he got this figure from.
Multiple outlets have suggested that he was referring to health studies that involve “transgenic” mice, which are lab research mice that have been genetically modified to better model human disease response.
The White House released a statement after Trump’s initial comments in March that referenced studies on the effects of hormone therapy. None of the studies listed were specifically focused on “making mice transgender”.
Trump on Macron being shoved in face by his wife: 'make sure the door remains closed'
Trump says his advice for French president Emmanuel Macron, who has been shown on a video through an open plane door being pushed in the face by his wife, was “make sure the door remains closed”.
Trump says he had spoken to Macron in the wake of the video that showed his wife, Brigitte, giving him a shove on their plane.
Macron has shrugged off the incident as a moment of playfulness. “He’s fine,” Trump says.
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Asked if he would consider pardoning Diddy, Trump says nobody has asked him to, but: “I know people are thinking about it … I think people have been very close to asking.”
“I would look at the facts,” he adds.
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Trump cites previously debunked claim in list of Musk's achievements
In support of his claim that Elon Musk helped identify and cut wasteful government spending, Trump just cited the cutting of what he called “$45m for diversity, equity and inclusion scholarships in Burma”.
“In Burma”, the president added. “Does anyone know about Burma?”
As we first reported in February, there is no evidence that any such scholarships were ever planned. As the former representative Tom Malinowski pointed out, when this claim was first made by Musk’s “department of government efficiency”, this appears to be a reference to a very kind of different program, the USAid Lincoln Scholarships, which helped educate young people struggling for freedom against Burma’s military dictatorship.
It is not clear why Trump or Musk wrongly thought that these were scholarships aimed at promoting “diversity, equity and inclusion”, but, as Malinowski noted, the USAid project description did specify that the scholars were Burmese students “from diverse backgrounds”. In the context of that country, where a military dictatorship has exploited ethnic and religious divisions to stay in power, helping to educate young leaders from all of the country’s ethnic groups seems like sound policy.
Fact check: Trump's claim about hotels housing migrants in New York
Fact check: Trump claims that Elon Musk’s Doge “cancelled $59m for illegal alien hotel rooms in New York City”.
Musk claimed in February that his team had discovered the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) had sent $59m to “luxury hotels” in New York City to house illegal migrants. He claimed the money had been “meant for American disaster relief”.
Musk gave no evidence to support this claim. Multiple outlets have reported that the money was appropriated by Congress and allocated to the city – not directly to the hotels – last year by Fema.
Musk’s claim likely referred to payments made by the Shelter and Services Program, which gives money to reimburse cities, towns or organizations for immigration-related expenses, according to Associated Press.
A New York City office spokesperson told the news agency that only some of the $59m was for hotel costs, and that the city has never paid luxury rates.
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Musk again says he expects to continue to provide Trump with advice, to which Trump says: “I hope so.”
Trump says he feels they’re “very close” to an agreement on Gaza, and feels he’s “fairly close” to a deal with Iran also.
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Trump says he's sure he will speak to China's Xi Jinping to hopefully work out trade dispute
Trump repeats his claim that China “violated a big part of” the agreement they made, but he doesn’t expand on what he’s alleging China did.
He says he’s sure he’ll speak to the Chinese president to work it out.
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Musk dodges question about reported drug-taking
Musk was about to be asked about the NYT report that he allegedly took large amounts of drugs including ketamine while advising Trump, but he cuts the reporter off and dodges the incoming question entirely.
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Musk says he’ll continue visiting the White House as a “friend and adviser to the president”, before veering off to compliment the “stunning” Oval Office, in particular “the gold on the ceiling”.
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Musk says his time as special government employee had to end, but this isn’t the end of Doge, it’s more the beginning, he says, adding: “It’s a way of life.”
He says he’s confident that “over time” that Doge will reach $1tn of savings he promised (in the last 130 days it hasn’t come close).
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“Elon’s service to America is without comparison in modern history”, says Trump, continuing to pile on the praise.
Trump says Musk will 'be back and forth' with most Doge staffers 'staying on'
Most of the Doge people are staying on, says Trump.
“Elon’s not really leaving,” says Trump, adding: “He’s going to be back and forth, I think, I have a feeling. [Doge is] his baby.”
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Some of these cuts will be in the “big, beautiful bill”, Trump says (the same bill Musk that has criticised for undermining Doge’s work).
Trump says he’s committed to making Doge’s cuts permanent.
“We’ll remember you,” Trump tells Musk when, he claims, his administration announces in the future that “billions of dollars” in waste, fraud and abuse in federal contracts has been eliminated.
Updated
Musk has delivered a “colossal change” in how Washington does things, Trump says.
Musk has “worked tirelessly”, says Trump, to help lead “the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations”.
If you’d like to follow along this press conference, there is a feed at the top of the blog.
And here comes Trump and Musk from the Oval Office, with Musk sporting his “Dogefather” t-shirt and black “DOGE” hat.
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State department ramps up Trump anti-immigration agenda with new ‘remigration’ office
The state department is seeking to create an “Office of Remigration” as part of a restructuring of the US diplomatic service to facilitate Donald Trump’s rightwing anti-immigration policies.
The plan would in effect repurpose the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration (PRM), which sought to manage and facilitate the flow of people into the US under previous administrations, into a bureau meant to help deport immigrants from the country.
A congressional notification from the state department obtained by the Guardian said the office would be involved in “repatriation tracking”, would “actively facilitate” the “voluntary return of migrants” to other countries, and would work with the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement to “advance the president’s immigration agenda”.
“Reflecting core administration priorities, these offices will be substantially reorganized to shift focus towards supporting the administration’s efforts to return illegal aliens to their country of origin or legal status,” the document read.
The overhaul is part of a broader restructuring of the state department under its secretary, Marco Rubio, to create a “more agile department, better equipped to promote America’s interests and keep Americans safe across the world”.
Under the plan, which was submitted to Congress this week, the state department would eliminate or consolidate more than 300 offices and bureaus, leading to the firing, or “reduction in force”, of more than 3,400 employees.
The firings would not target members of consular affairs or law enforcement and other key roles of state.
In California, the conservative enclaves of Shasta County in the north and Huntington Beach in the south have frequently sought to distance themselves from the liberal policies of the deeply Democratic state. Both jurisdictions have passed resolutions expressing their opposition to sanctuary policies – rejecting California law, which limits cooperation with federal immigration officials (although Shasta has previously voted to declare itself a “second amendment sanctuary”).
Yet this week Shasta county and Huntington Beach found themselves on a list produced by the Trump administration identifying them as sanctuary jurisdictions that “undermine the rule of law and endanger the lives of Americans and law enforcement”. Nearly every county in California was included, even those such as Shasta, which passed an anti-sanctuary resolution last year, and Amador where the sheriff has said he would cooperate with immigration authorities. Huntington Beach found itself on the list even though the city council voted to identify the community as a non-sanctuary city.
“We went out of our way to declare non-sanctuary status,” Pat Burns, the city’s mayor, told the Voice of OC. He described Huntington Beach’s inclusion as a “misprint” or “grave error”.
The Department for Homeland Security said in a statement that it would notify each jurisdiction of its “non-compliance with federal statutes” and demand they immediately change their policies. It also noted the list can be “reviewed and changed at any time”.
Biden "optimistic" on cancer diagnoses, proud of record
Joe Biden spoke with reporters after giving his first speech since being diagnosed with prostate cancer earlier this month.
“All the folks are very optimistic…the expectation is we are going to be able to beat this,” he said.
Biden has been diagnosed with an “aggressive form” of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.
Moments ago, speaking at a memorial event in Delaware, the former US president said he was already undergoing treatment, which he said currently consisted of “one particular pill” a day.
“It’s not in any organs, my bones are strong,” he said. He also said he was under the care of a world class surgeon who had himself beat prostate cancer three decades ago.
He didn’t mention Donald Trump but said that the US is at “a really difficult moment, not just Americans, the world” and that America is at “an inflection point where the decisions we make in the next little bit are going to determine what things look like for the next 20 years.”
Biden also said: “I’m very proud. I’ll put my record as president against any president at all.”
Elon Musk and Donald Trump to give joint press conference
In about five minutes, Elon Musk and Donald Trump are to give a joint press conference from the Oval Office to mark the last of Musk’s turbulent 130 days leading Doge as a special government employee.
He leaves without saving the federal government much money but he has succeeded in upending the lives of millions around the world from the resulting chaos of his haphazardly detrimental cuts to federal funding, as well as taking a chainsaw to his own international reputation.
“This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way,” Trump posted on Truth Social yesterday in what is no doubt an attempt at unity amid rumours of a rift between the two men, in particular over Musk’s criticisms of Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill and his private opposition to the president’s tariffs regime.
It’s sure to be interesting, we’ll bring you any key news lines here.
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Golden Dome missile defense program won’t be done by end of Trump’s term
Donald Trump’s so-called Golden Dome missile defense program – which will feature space-based weapons to intercept strikes against the US – is not expected to be ready before the end of his term, despite his prediction that it would be completed within the next three years.
In the Oval Office last week, when he announced that the US space force would oversee the project under Gen Michael Guetlein, the president said he was confident that it would be “fully operational” before he left office.
But the implementation plan for the Golden Dome produced by the Pentagon, as described by two people familiar with the matter, envisions having the defense weapons being ready only for a demonstration and under perfect conditions by the end of 2028.
The Golden Dome program is effectively becoming operational in phases as opposed to it coming online all at once. Initially, the Pentagon is set to focus on integrating data systems before developing space-based weapons later, the people said.
What might be possible in 18 months is for the US to have the foundations of a fully operational Golden Dome, where a military network of satellites and space-based communication systems could track hundreds of inbound missiles towards the US.
There would be no capability to take out the missiles using space-based weapons at that stage. The US has roughly 40 Patriot defense batteries in Alaska and California that could be used to kill potential intercontinental ballistic missiles.
By the end of Trump’s term, instead, the Pentagon could have the network of space-based sensors and communications, and attempt to integrate it with untested space-based weapons to shoot them down.
The space-based network is likely to rely heavily on Elon Musk’s SpaceX, which has been developing a next-generation tracking system known as the “aerial moving target identifier”. The defense department acquired the first prototypes last year during the Biden administration.
But the flagship concept for Golden Dome, to identify and kill ballistic missiles in the first 30 seconds to two minutes of launch when their heat signature is greatest – known as “boost phase” – is not expected to be ready.
That technology remains in development and it may not be feasible for years for a counter-missile launched from space to cut through Earth’s atmosphere with enough force to eliminate a ballistic missile, the people said.
Elon Musk allegedly took large amounts of drugs including ketamine while advising Trump – NYT
Elon Musk engaged in extensive drug consumption while serving as one of Donald Trump’s closest advisers, taking ketamine so frequently it caused bladder problems and traveling with a daily supply of approximately 20 pills, an investigation from the New York Times (paywall) has revealed.
The world’s richest man regularly consumed ketamine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms during his rise to political prominence, anonymous sources familiar with his activities told the Times. His drug use reportedly intensified as he donated $275m to Trump’s presidential campaign and later wielded significant power through his role spearheading the “department of government efficiency”, or Doge.
Musk announced his departure from government service on Wednesday evening, months after exhibiting erratic behavior including insulting cabinet members and making a Nazi-like salute at a political rally.
The Doge leader developed what sources described to the Times as a serious ketamine habit, consuming the powerful anesthetic sometimes daily rather than the “small amount” taken “about once every two weeks” he claimed in interviews. “If you’ve used too much ketamine, you can’t really get work done, and I have a lot of work,” Musk previously told journalist Don Lemon in March 2024, downplaying his consumption.
However, by spring last year, the Times reports that Musk was telling associates his ketamine use was affecting his bladder – a known consequence of chronic abuse of the drug, which has psychedelic properties and can cause dissociation from reality, according to the DEA.
His regular medication box contained pills bearing Adderall markings alongside other substances, according to sources with the Times who have seen photographs of the container.
It remains unclear whether Musk was under the influence during his time at the White House, where he attended sensitive meetings with foreign leaders and held power over federal spending cuts.
The White House did not return a request for comment on whether Musk underwent drug testing despite his access to classified information.
White House says US considering other actions on China amid trade spat
The Trump administration is preparing to take other actions targeting China, the White House deputy chief of staff for policy has said following Donald Trump’s accusation that Beijing had “totally violated” its preliminary trade agreement with the US.
“That opens up all manner of action for the United States to ensure future compliance,” Stephen Miller told reporters.
“There are measures that have already been taken, there are measures that are being taken, there are measures that are being considered,” he said separately on CNN. “It would be incredibly unwise for China to continue down this path and not seek instead the path of cooperation.”
It’s been a few hours since Trump’s post on Truth Social but he’s yet to explain the action taken by China that has allegedly violated the agreement, but a US official told Reuters that it appears China was moving slowly on promises to issue export licenses for rare earths minerals.
The Geneva agreement called for China to lift trade countermeasures that restrict its exports of the critical metals needed for US semiconductor, electronics and defense production.
Trump’s trade representative Jamieson Greer also said this morning that critical minerals was one area of particular concern. He told CNBC earlier:
We haven’t seen the flow of some of those critical minerals as they were supposed to be doing … China continues to, you know, slow down and choke off things like critical minerals and rare earth magnets.
It follows comments from treasury secretary Scott Bessent yesterday stating that trade talks between the US and China were “a bit stalled” and getting a deal over the finish line will likely need the direct involvement of Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping.
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Max Planck Society, one of Europe’s leading research bodies, has seen a threefold surge in applications from US researchers following the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education in the US, Reuters reported.
The German state-backed network of research centers received over triple the amount of applications from the US this spring compared to last year in its latest call for early-career scientists looking to set up their own research labs.
“What’s interesting is the number of applications from other parts of the world remained constant,” Patrick Cramer, president of the Max Planck Society, told Reuters. “If you look at which institutions these applications are coming from, you see almost half are concentrated at five institutions: Harvard, Stanford, MIT, the National Institutes of Health and the University of California.”
The flood of applicants comes at a time of concern over a potential American “brain drain” where scientists and researchers in the US are considering leaving the country to pursue foreign research opportunities.
Biden urges defense of democracy, in first speech since cancer reveal
Joe Biden just gave a speech in Delaware, his first since he was diagnosed earlier this month with an aggressive form of prostate cancer that has spread to his bones.
The former president was commemorating fallen members of the military, in a week that began with the Memorial Day holiday that is traditionally dedicated to remembering those killed in service. He drew a direct line between their sacrifice and what Americans need to do now.
“They are not asking us to risk our lives, they are asking us to stay true to what America stands for. They are not asking us to do their jobs, they are asking us do our jobs - to protect our nation, in our time, now, to defend democracy.”
Biden, a Democrat, did not mention his successor, Donald Trump, and the Republican president’s self-referential Memorial Day address or his thrust to expand his presidential power in what critics say is a threat to the rule of law and US democracy, but he did not need to.
Biden also did not refer to his cancer or any treatment. He sounded vigorous and impassioned. He delivered the speech in New Castle as his family also marked the 10-year anniversary of the death of his son Beau, from brain cancer at the age of 46.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has removed language that says healthy children should get COVID vaccines. The public health agency has posted new recommendations that healthy children may, but no longer should, get COVID-19 shots, the Associated Press reported.
The change comes days after US health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced that COVID-19 vaccines will no longer be recommended for healthy children and pregnant women, though the CDC website did not appear to substantially change recommendations for pregnant women.
The US has cut awards to 24 green energy projects, including to an Exxon refinery complex in Texas issued during former President Joe Biden’s administration that totaled more than $3.7 billion, the Energy Department confirmed on Friday to Reuters.
The Trump administration has said it is “reevaluating” publicly-funded awards and loans issued to emerging technology projects during Biden’s administration. The administration has so far dismantled several of Biden’s policies on climate and clean energy while pursuing a very pro-oil agenda.
The Office of Clean Energy Demonstration awards the department axed include nearly $332 million to a project at Exxon Mobil’s Baytown, Texas refinery complex, $500 million to Heidelberg Materials, US in Louisiana, and $375 million to Eastman Chemical Company in Longview, Texas.
In another case, the supreme court on 19 May also allowed the Trump administration to end a deportation protection called temporary protected status that had been granted by Joe Biden to about 350,000 Venezuelans living in the United States, while that legal dispute plays out.
In a bid to reduce illegal border crossings, Biden starting in 2022 allowed Venezuelans who entered the United States by air to request a two-year parole if they passed security checks and had a US financial sponsor. Biden expanded that process to Cubans, Haitians and Nicaraguans in 2023 as his administration grappled with high levels of illegal immigration from those nations.
Supreme court lets Trump administration strip 'parole' status from half a million migrants from four countries
The supreme court has allowed Donald Trump’s administration to revoke the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the United States, Reuters reports, bolstering the president’s drive to step up deportations.
The court put on hold Boston-based US district judge Indira Talwani order halting the administration’s move to end the immigration “parole” granted to 532,000 of these migrants under Joe Biden, potentially exposing many of them to rapid removal, while the case plays out in lower courts.
As with many of the court’s orders issued in an emergency fashion, the decision was unsigned and gave no reasoning. Two of the court’s three liberal justices, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor, publicly dissented.
The court botched its assessment of whether the administration was entitled to freeze Talwani’s decision pending the litigation, Jackson wrote in an accompanying opinion. The outcome, Jackson wrote, “undervalues the devastating consequences of allowing the government to precipitously upend the lives and livelihoods of nearly half a million noncitizens while their legal claims are pending”.
Immigration parole is a form of temporary permission under US law to be in the country for “urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit”, allowing recipients to live and work in the United States. Biden used parole as part of his administration’s approach by to deter illegal immigration at the US-Mexican border.
Trump called for ending humanitarian parole programs in an executive order signed on 20 January, his first day back in office. The Department of Homeland Security subsequently moved to terminate them in March, cutting short the two-year parole grants. The administration said revoking the parole status would make it easier to place migrants in a fast-track deportation process called “expedited removal”.
The plaintiffs, a group of migrants granted parole and Americans who serve as their sponsors, sued administration officials claiming the administration violated federal law governing the actions of government agencies.
Talwani in April found that the law governing such parole did not allow for the program’s blanket termination, instead requiring a case-by-case review. The Boston-based 1st US circuit court of appeals declined to put the judge’s decision on hold.
In its filing, the justice department told the supreme court that Talwani’s order had upended “critical immigration policies that are carefully calibrated to deter illegal entry”, effectively “undoing democratically approved policies that featured heavily in the November election” that returned Trump to the presidency.
The plaintiffs told the supreme court they would face grave harm if their parole is cut short given that the administration has indefinitely suspended processing their pending applications for asylum and other immigration relief. They said they would be separated from their families and immediately subject to expedited deportation “to the same despotic and unstable countries from which they fled, where many will face serious risks of danger, persecution and even death”.
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China moving slow to approve exports of rare earth minerals - Reuters
While Trump did not provide an explanation to his allegation that China had “totally violated” the terms of the agreement reached with the US in Geneva, Reuters has been told by a US official that it appears China was moving slow on promises to issue export licenses for rare earth minerals.
Earlier US trade representative Jamieson Greer’s told CNBC:
The Chinese are slow-rolling their compliance, which is completely unacceptable and it has to be addressed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Greer said the flow of critical minerals from China, which had been cut off by Chinese trade countermeasures, has not resumed as called for by the Geneva agreement.
A spokesperson for China’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. Spokespersons for the White House, the US Treasury and the US Trade Representative’s Office also did not respond to requests for comment.
Trump administration orders extra vetting of 'online presence' of all visa applicants linked to Harvard University
The state department has ordered all its consular missions overseas to begin additional vetting of visa applicants looking to travel to Harvard for any purpose, according to an internal cable seen by Reuters on Friday, in a significant expansion of Donald Trump’s crackdown against the embattled elite university.
In a cable dated 30 May and sent to all US diplomatic and consular posts, secretary of state Marco Rubio instructed the immediate start of “additional vetting of any non-immigrant visa applicant seeking to travel to Harvard University for any purpose”.
Such applicants include but are not limited to prospective students, students, faculty, employees, contractors, guest speakers, and tourists, the cable said. Harvard University “failed to maintain a campus environment free from violence and anti-Semitism”, the cable said, citing the Department of Homeland Security and therefore the enhanced vetting measures aim to help consular officers identify visa applicants “with histories of anti-Semitic harassment and violence”.
The order also directs consular officers to consider questioning the credibility of the applicant if the individual’s social media accounts are private and instruct them to ask the applicant to set their accounts to public.
The additional measures on Harvard were first reported by Fox News, but the cable itself has not been previously reported.
The state department did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
The move is part of the Trump administration’s intensifying immigration crackdown and follows Rubio’s order to stop scheduling new appointments for student and exchange visitor visa applicants. The secretary of state also said earlier this week that Washington will start revoking the visas of Chinese students with links to the Chinese Communist Party and those who are working on critical areas.
The Trump administration has launched a multifront attack on the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding, proposing to end its tax-exempt status and opening an investigation into whether it discriminated against white, Asian, male or straight employees or job applicants.
Trump alleges top US universities are cradles of “anti-American” movements. In a dramatic escalation, his administration last week revoked Harvard’s ability to enrol foreign students, a move later blocked by a federal judge.
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Here’s the full Truth post from Trump earlier this morning, in which he claims he moved to make a trade deal with China not out of any US self-interest whatsoever – but “to save them” from a “devastating” situation, factory closings and civil unrest caused by his tariffs of up to 145% on Chinese imports.
Two weeks ago China was in grave economic danger! The very high Tariffs I set made it virtually impossible for China to TRADE into the United States marketplace which is, by far, number one in the World. We went, in effect, COLD TURKEY with China, and it was devastating for them. Many factories closed and there was, to put it mildly, “civil unrest.” I saw what was happening and didn’t like it, for them, not for us. I made a FAST DEAL with China in order to save them from what I thought was going to be a very bad situation, and I didn’t want to see that happen. Because of this deal, everything quickly stabilized and China got back to business as usual. Everybody was happy! That is the good news!!! The bad news is that China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!
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Greer says Trump administration 'very concerned' with and must address Chinese 'non-compliance'
Echoing Trump’s accusation this morning that China has “totally violated” the terms of its preliminary trade agreement with the US, US trade representative Jamieson Greer told CNBC “we’re very concerned with” China’s purported non-compliance with the temporary trade deal.
Per his CNBC interview, Greer said the “United States did exactly what it was supposed to do, and the Chinese are slow rolling their compliance”. He called that “completely unacceptable and has to be addressed”.
Trump did not explain what China had done to violate the terms of the Geneva agreement or what action Washington would take against Beijing.
It comes a day after US treasury secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News that trade talks between the US and China were “a bit stalled” and getting a deal over the finish line will likely need the direct involvement of Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping.
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From infamous salutes and multiple Maga hats (sometimes worn at the same time) to the globally detrimental mass layoffs, my colleagues have put together this timeline of Elon Musk’s highly contentious tenure at Doge.
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As we reported earlier, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are due to hold a joint press conference at 1.30pm ET on what is supposed to be officially the tech billionaire’s final day working as part of the Trump administration.
Trump used his own Truth Social website to describe the X owner as “terrific” in what is clearly an attempt to quell rumours of a rift between the two men. “This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way,” Trump wrote.
But after arriving the White House 130 days ago vowing to slash federal spending by $2tn (spoiler: he didn’t), “the thing that Musk has been most stunningly effective at slashing is his own reputation,” writes Guardian columnist Marina Hyde.
He arrived in Trump’s orbit as a somewhat mysterious man, widely regarded as a tech genius, and a titan of the age. He leaves it with vast numbers of people woken up to the fact he’s a weird and creepy breeding fetishist, who desperately pretends to be good at video games, and wasn’t remotely as key to Space X or Tesla’s engineering prowess as they’d vaguely thought. Also, with a number of them apparently convinced he had a botched penile implant. Rightly or wrongly convinced – sure. I’m just asking questions.
But look, it’s good news for Tesla investors, who have managed to end Musk’s practice of WFWH (working from White House), and are now demanding he puts in a 40-hour week to save the company whose stock he has spent the past few months tanking. As the world order dramatically seeks to rearrange itself in the new era of US unreliability, no one should ever be able to unsee the president of the United States’s decision to turn the White House lawn into a car sales lot for his sad friend. Did it work? It seems not. Musk spent a lot of this week airing his hurt feelings about his brrm-brrm cars. “People were burning Teslas,” he whined to Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post this week. “Why would you do that? That’s really uncool.”
Well, one thing we will no longer have to endure is this guy’s decrees on what is or isn’t cool. The timeworn thing about money and power is that they allow nerds to reinvent themselves as cool … What you rarely see is the alchemy of that process in reverse, live and in real time. But we got that with Elon, and we have to take our laughs where we can. In some other businesses, Musk could have convinced himself it wasn’t happening, but politics is a place where pollsters literally ask real people what they think of public figures every single week. Elon’s approval ratings are underwater.
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Division between US and China is the biggest risk confronting world now, France's Macron says
France’s president Emmanuel Macron has said that division between the United States and China, is the main risk currently confronting the world, as he emphasized the need for building new coalitions between Paris and partners in the Indo-Pacific.
Macron is visiting the region as France and the European Union aim to strengthen their commercial ties in Asia to offset uncertainty over Donald Trump’s tariff measures.
Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier defence forum, alongside a two-day state visit to Singapore, Macron said:
I will be clear, France is a friend and an ally of the United States, and is a friend, and we do cooperate - even if sometimes we disagree and compete - with China.
The French president said Asia and Europe have a common interest in preventing the disintegration of the global order.
You have to choose a side. If we do so, we will kill the global order, and we will destroy methodically, all the institutions we created after the Second World War in order to preserve peace.
The time for non-alignment has undoubtedly passed, but the time for coalitions of action has come, and requires that countries capable of acting together give themselves every means to do so.
Macron is following leaders of China, Japan and other European countries in visiting the region in recent weeks, in a sign of south east Asia’s strategic importance amid uncertainties on global supply chains and trade.
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Trump says China has 'totally violated' agreement with US on tariffs
Donald Trump has said China had “violated” an agreement on tariffs with the United States reached in Geneva and threatened to take action in response.
“China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform.
Trump didn’t explain how China had violated the agreement or what action he would take.
Trade talks between the US and China were “a bit stalled” and getting a deal over the finish line will likely need the direct involvement of Trump and Chinese president Xi Jinping, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News yesterday.
I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require [the leaders of both countries] to weigh in with each other.
Two weeks after breakthrough negotiations in Geneva that resulted in a temporary truce in the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies, Bessent said progress since then has been slow, but said he expects more talks in the next few weeks.
I believe that we will be having more talks with [China] in the next few weeks and I believe we may at some point have a call between the president and [Xi Jinping].
He added that the pair had “a very good relationship” and he was “confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President Trump makes his preferences known”.
The US-China agreement to dial back triple-digit tit-for-tat tariffs for 90 days prompted a massive relief rally in global stocks. But it did nothing to address the underlying reasons for Trump’s tariffs on Chinese goods, mainly longstanding US complaints about China’s state-dominated, export-driven economic model, leaving those issues for future talks.
US stock index futures dropped following Trump’s post this morning. Reuters reports that at 8:16am ET, Dow E-minis were down 153 points, or 0.36%, S&P 500 E-minis were down 26.5 points, or 0.45%, and Nasdaq 100 E-minis were down 102.75 points, or 0.48%.
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The Republican nominee for governor of Virginia has recently tried to distance herself from her longstanding, hardline anti-abortion record, declining recently to state whether she would support any restrictions on abortion access if she is elected to lead the state this fall. But her record reveals a candidate staunchly opposed to the procedure.
Winsome Earle-Sears, now the state’s lieutenant governor, supported a 15-week abortion ban and has previously said she wants to make abortion illegal in almost all cases. In audio obtained by the Guardian, Earle-Sears also suggested an equivalence between consenting to sex and consenting to pregnancy.
Virginia is the only state in the US south without a strict abortion ban, and abortion is legal in the state through the end of the second trimester of pregnancy. The state’s current Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin, previously failed to build support for a 15-week abortion ban, a framework Earle-Sears endorsed. While campaigning for lieutenant governor in January 2021, before Roe v Wade was overturned and support for abortion rights rose among the US public, Earle-Sears told a reporter that she considered abortion to be “genocide” and that she wanted to make abortion illegal in all cases unless the mother’s life was at risk.
But she has recently struck a different tone. In a local news interview last week, a reporter with WRIC 8News asked Earle-Sears about her past support for limiting abortion access. She replied: “I never said limiting access.” Sears, who is Black, then referenced abortion rates among Black women and asked: “Who doesn’t want us to have babies?”
When asked if she would sign a law banning abortion at 15 weeks or less, Earle-Sears said: “We’re not limiting access at all. That’s not what we’re saying. As a matter of fact, what we really need to do is get together and try to figure out, where is the limit?”
Twenty-two young Americans have filed a new lawsuit against the Trump administration over its anti-environment executive orders. By intentionally boosting oil and gas production and stymying carbon-free energy, federal officials are violating their constitutional rights to life and liberty, alleges the lawsuit, filed on Thursday.
The federal government is engaging in unlawful executive overreach by breaching congressional mandates to protect ecosystems and public health, argue the plaintiffs, who are between the ages of seven and 25 and hail from the heavily climate-impacted states of Montana, Hawaii, Oregon, California and Florida. They also say officials’ emissions-increasing and science-suppressing orders have violated the state-created danger doctrine, a legal principle meant to prevent government actors from inflicting injury upon their citizens.
“At its core, this suit is about the health of children, it’s about the right to life, it’s about the right to form families,” said Julia Olson, attorney and founder of Our Children’s Trust, the non-profit law firm that brought the suit. “We all have constitutional rights, and if we don’t use our constitution – if we walk away from it and we walk away from our youth – we will not have a democracy.”
The lawsuit specifically targets three of the slew of pro-fossil fuel executive orders Trump has signed during his second term. Among them are two day-one Trump moves to declare a “national energy emergency” and “unleash American energy”, and another April order aimed at “reinvigorating” the domestic production of coal – the dirtiest and most expensive fossil fuel.
The Trump administration has set aggressive new goals in its anti-immigration agenda, demanding that federal agents arrest 3,000 people a day – or more than a million in a year.
The new target, tripling arrest figures from earlier this year, was delivered to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) leaders by Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff, and Kristi Noem, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, in a strained meeting last week.
The intense meeting, first reported by Axios and confirmed by the Guardian, involved Ice officials from enforcement and removal operations (ERO) and homeland security investigations (HSI) – both separate offices within DHS. ERO is in charge of immigration enforcement, including arrests, detention and deportation, while HSI typically focuses on investigating transnational crime, such as drug trafficking, human smuggling and the spread of online child abuse.
The 21 May meeting in Washington DC is the latest example of the increasing pressure being placed on officials nationwide to increase the number of arrests of immigrants, as the administration doubles down on its anti-immigration agenda.
The latest phase of the crackdown includes new tactics, such as mandating federal law enforcement agents outside Ice to assist in arrests and transports, more deputizing of compliant state and local law enforcement agencies, and arresting people at locations that were once protected, like courthouses.
The Federal Reserve issued a rare, strongly worded statement on Thursday after chair Jerome Powell spoke with Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday morning, holding firm on the central bank’s independence amid pressure from Trump to lower interest rates.
The three-paragraph statement emphasized the Fed’s independent, non-partisan role in setting monetary policy based on economic data.
“Chair Powell did not discuss his expectations for monetary policy, except to stress that the path of policy will depend entirely on incoming economic information and what that means for the outlook,” the statement read.
Powell told Trump that he and other Fed officials “will set monetary policy, as required by law, to support maximum employment and stable prices and will make those decisions based solely on careful, objective, and non-political analysis”, according to the statement.
The United States plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taipei to a level exceeding president Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the democratic island, according to two US officials.
If US arms sales to Taiwan do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to the island, Reuters reported. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship.
The US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taipei over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of the officials saying arms sales notifications to Taiwan could “easily exceed” that earlier period.
They also said the United States is pressing members of Taiwan’s opposition parties not to oppose the government’s efforts to increase defense spending to 3% of the island’s economic output.
Trump administration considers allowing tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days, WSJ reports
President Donald Trump’s administration is considering a stopgap effort to impose tariffs on large parts of the global economy under an existing law that includes language allowing for tariffs of up to 15% for 150 days, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The administration has not made a final decision and it could wait to impose any plans after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily reinstated the most sweeping of Trump’s tariffs after a trade court ruling to immediately block them, the report added.
Donald Trump’s tariff policy was derailed by a libertarian public interest law firm that has received money from some of his richest backers.
The Liberty Justice Center filed a lawsuit against the US president’s “reciprocal” tariffs on behalf of five small businesses, which it said were harmed by the policy.
The center, based in Austin, Texas, describes itself as a libertarian non-profit litigation firm “that seeks to protect economic liberty, private property rights, free speech, and other fundamental rights”.
Previous backers of the firm include billionaires Robert Mercer and Richard Uihlein, who were also financial backers of Trump’s presidential campaigns.
Mercer, a hedge fund manager, was a key backer of Breitbart News and Cambridge Analytica, pouring millions into both companies. He personally directed Cambridge Analytica to focus on the Leave campaign during the UK’s Brexit referendum in 2016 that led to the UK leaving the European Union.
For its lawsuit against Trump’s tariffs, the Liberty Justice Center gathered five small businesses, including a wine company and a fish gear and apparel retailer, and argued that Trump overreached his executive authority and needed Congress’s approval to pass such broad tariffs.
Trump celebrates Nippon Steel 'deal' with rally at Pennsylvania plant
President Donald Trump heads to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on Friday to headline a rally to celebrate Nippon Steel’s “planned partnership” with US Steel, signaling final approval for the deal could be on the horizon.
Proponents of the transaction are hoping his visit to the state where U.S. Steel is headquartered will cap a tumultuous 18-month effort by Nippon Steel to buy the iconic American company, beset by union opposition and two national security reviews, Reuters reported.
But the deal is possibly not entirely done. Following Trump’s post on Truth Social last Friday announcing the rally and appearing to endorse the merger, he sowed doubt on Sunday, describing the deal to reporters as an investment with “partial ownership,” with control residing with the US.
Trump will deliver remarks at a US Steel plant at 5pm ET on Friday in the political swing state, which he won in the 2024 election. The White House described his remarks as being about the “US Steel Deal.”
Trump attacks judges and accuses them of hating him
After a relatively long – for him – period of silence on his Truth Social platform, Trump resumed posting on Thursday, with a 500-word screed attacking the three judges who ruled against him over his tariffs policy.
Trump’s post began by noting that the order to unwind the tariffs had been paused temporarily by an appeals court, but then turned to baseless speculation that the three judges on the federal trade court must have been motivated by hatred for him.
“Where do these initial three Judges come from? How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America? Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP?’ What other reason could it be?” the president asked, without noting that he had appointed one of the judges himself in 2018.
He added:
It is only because of my successful use of Tariffs that many Trillions of Dollars have already begun pouring into the U.S.A. from other Countries, money that, without these Tariffs, we would not be able to get.
It is the difference between having a rich, prosperous, and successful United States of America, and quite the opposite. The ruling by the U.S. Court of International Trade is so wrong, and so political!
Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY. Backroom “hustlers” must not be allowed to destroy our Nation!
Trump’s curiosity as to what could possibly explain the decision did not, apparently, extend to reading any of the 49-page explanation written by the court, because his post did not deal with any of the legal issues raised in the opinion.
Trump gets tariff reprieve ahead of Musk Oval Office press conference later today
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news lines over the next couple of hours or so.
Let’s start with the news that the Trump administration is racing to halt a major blow to the president’s sweeping tariffs after a US court ruled they “exceed any authority granted to the president”.
A US trade court ruled the president’s tariffs regime was illegal on Wednesday in a dramatic twist that could block Trump’s controversial global trade policy.
On Thursday, an appeals court agreed to a temporary pause in the decision pending an appeal hearing. The Trump administration is expected to take the case to the supreme court if it loses.
The ruling by a three-judge panel at the New York-based court of international trade came after several lawsuits argued Trump had exceeded his authority, leaving US trade policy dependent on his whims and unleashing economic chaos around the world.
Here’s the full report:
Meanwhile, the president is expected to hold a press conference with Elon Musk on what is supposed to be the tech billionaire’s final day working as part of the Trump administration.
Trump used his own Truth Social website to describe the X owner as “terrific” in what is clearly an attempt to quell rumours of a rift between the two men.
He wrote:
I am having a Press Conference tomorrow at 1:30 P.M. EST, with Elon Musk, at the Oval Office. This will be his last day, but not really, because he will, always, be with us, helping all the way. Elon is terrific! See you tomorrow at the White House.
We will have all the key news lines, should any actually emerge, from that Oval Office presser later on.
In other developments:
One day after the nonprofit news site NOTUS discovered that at least seven of the studies cited in a new report from health secretary Robert F Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” commission do not exist, the report was quietly edited to remove at least some of the fiction.
China has lodged a formal protest over the US declaration that it will “aggressively” revoke the visas of Chinese students, with the foreign ministry saying it had objected to the announcement made a day earlier by Marco Rubio.
The Federal Reserve issued a rare, strongly worded statement on Thursday after chair Jerome Powell spoke with Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday morning, holding firm on the central bank’s independence amid pressure from Trump to lower interest rates.
Twenty two young Americans have filed a new lawsuit against the Trump administration over its anti-environment executive orders. By intentionally boosting oil and gas production and stymying carbon-free energy, federal officials are violating their constitutional rights to life and liberty, alleges the lawsuit, filed on Thursday.
The Trump administration has set aggressive new goals in its anti-immigration agenda, demanding that federal agents arrest 3,000 people a day – or more than a million in a year.
