Closing summary
We have reached the end of another day of live coverage of the Donald Trump’s second term in office and will wrap up now. But before we leave, here are some of the day’s main developments:
Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student arrested by federal agents in March for her political speech in favor of Palestinians was released from a federal immigration detention facility in Louisiana, hours after a judge ordered it.
Stephen Miller, the anti-immigrant hardliner said the Trump administration is “actively looking at” suspending the writ of habeas corpus to evade ruling from judges appointed by six presidents that the government has no legal authority to deport people without due process.
Donald Trump confirmed that he will keep in place tariffs of at least 10% on imports even from countries that strike trade agreements with the US.
The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ras Baraka, was arrested and detained by Ice on Friday outside a detention center he was protesting. He was released five hours later and gave a rousing address to supporters. “I heard someone at the council meeting get up and say that I love immigrants more than residents. Let me tell you this: everybody in this city is a resident, everybody that catches the bus, that goes to work, that tries to find a job here”.
Exasperated by the turmoil that has dogged Pete Hegseth’s office in recent weeks, the White House will block the US defense secretary’s choice of chief of staff and select a candidate of its own.
Pope Leo, who voted by absentee ballot in the 2024 election in November, is “not happy with what’s going on with immigration” in Donald Trump’s America, his brother says. “How far he’ll go with it is only one’s guess, but he won’t just sit back. I don’t think he’ll be the silent one.”
Treasury secretary urges Congress to raise debt ceiling
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wrote to the House speaker, Mike Johnson, on Friday to warn him and other congressional leaders, that “there is a reasonable probability that the federal government’s cash and extraordinary measures will be exhausted in August”.
“Therefore, I respectfully urge Congress to increase or suspend the debt limit by mid-July, before its scheduled break, to protect the full faith and credit of the United States,” Bessent added in his letter, since lawmakers are scheduled to be in recess in August.
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Marjorie Taylor Greene won't enter Georgia Senate race
Days after telling a reporter that she could win the 2026 Georgia Republican nomination to run for either governor or senator, Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on social media that she has decided not to challenge incumbent Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff.
At the end of a lengthy post on X deriding Senate Republicans, the far-right member of Congress wrote: “Jon Ossoff isn’t the real problem. He’s just a vote. A pawn. No different than the Uniparty Republicans who skip key votes to attend fundraisers and let our agenda fail. Someone once said, ‘The Senate is where good ideas go to die’. They were right. That’s why I’m not running.”
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'No chance' tariffs on China will be completely paused, US commerce secretary says
Donald Trump’s commerce secretary Howard Lutnick said in an interview on Friday there is “no chance” that tariffs on China will be completely paused after this weekend’s trade talks in Switzerland between American and Chinese negotiators.
Speaking to Laura Ingraham on Fox, Lutnick said that, if the talks go well, the tariff on imports from China will not stay at 145%, but “come down to a human level … to a level where we do business, there are significant tariffs”.
“The president is going to keep significant tariffs on trade with China, that is his objective, that’s his expectation, that should be everybody’s expectation,” Lutnick continued. “But 145% is decoupling, ‘Let’s not do business with each other.’”
“Let’s bring it down to a level that he’s studied and he knows, right? Where did we come out on ‘liberation day’?” he asked, in reference to Trump’s term for 2 April, when he imposed massive tariffs on nearly every nation, and shook the global economy. “34% is where he came out on liberation day. That’s the studied number that Donald Trump did then. He may put it up higher, but that’s kind of the idea.”
“That’s the number you should look at, somewhere around there – maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower – Donald Trump will make the deal with the Chinese to deescalate.”
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Rümeysa Öztürk, detained Tufts student, released from federal custody
Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University student arrested by federal agents in March for her political speech in favor of Palestinians has been released from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detention facility in Basile, Louisiana.
Öztürk, 30, a Turkish national and PhD student studying child development, walked out of the detention center and said “thank you” with her hands over her heart to supporters including members of her union, the SEIU, who shouted “free Rümeysa!”
She declined to make a formal statement, saying: “Thank you so much for being here, especially the union folks. I appreciate you being here and thank you so much for all the support and love. I am a little bit tired, so I will take some rest.”
“Rümeysa we love you!” a supporter shouted. “I love you back, thank you!” she replied.
Öztürk has been in federal custody since 25 March, when she was bundled into an unmarked car by agents and the administration moved to deport her without due process over an opinion article in a student newspaper that was critical of Israel.
A federal judge in Vermont ordered the release on bail on Friday morning, saying that the process by which she was placed in immigration detention “raises very significant due process concerns”.
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US pulls funding from UN agency for women’s health and reproductive rights
The United Nations Population Fund, which promotes gender equality and empowers women and girls “to take control of their bodies” through sexual and reproductive health projects, said in a statement on Friday that the Trump administration has decided to stop providing $180m in funding for its work.
The US had already sent the agency termination notices for more than 40 humanitarian grants, worth $335m, that had already been awarded to fund maternal healthcare, protection from violence, treatment for rape survivors and to pay midwives who prevent mothers from dying in childbirth.
The agency’s work was briefly in the social-media spotlight in January, when a Trump supporter, eager to find some support for the fictional claim that Elon Musk had stopped $50m in taxpayer dollars from being spent on condoms for Gaza, identified a $45m grant to the agency, still known by its old acronym, UNFPA, made in September to support its work in the occupied Palestinian territories.
But a spokesperson for the agency confirmed to the Guardian at the time that none of that funding had been used to buy condoms for anyone in Gaza.
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Trump says 10% baseline minimum tariffs will remain in place, even after trade talks
Donald Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Friday that the United States will keep in place tariffs of at least 10% on imports even from countries that strike trade agreements like the one with the United Kingdom he announced on Thursday.
“You are going to always have a baseline,” Trump said after his near daily signing ceremony. “I mean, there could be an exception, at some point, we’ll see, if somebody does something exceptional for us, it’s always possible. But basically, you have a baseline of a minimum of 10%, and some of them will be much higher — 40% 50% 60% – as they’ve been doing to us over the years”.
“We had a wonderful deal yesterday”, he said, in reference to the agreement with the UK, which did keep the 10% tariff rate in place that he had announced last month. “We have four or five other deals coming immediately. We have many deals coming down the line, and ultimately we’re just signing the rest of them in”.
“But we always have a baseline of 10%,” Trump reiterated.
The president’s comments make some sense of the otherwise baffling boast from his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, on Thursday that the deal with the UK had left a 10% tariff in place. “We started at 10% and we ended at 10%,” Lutnick said triumphantly.
The US tariff on UK goods did indeed remain unchanged from the 10% announced by Trump five weeks ago, when he showed off a confusing and hard-to-read chart of the new rates he imposed on nearly every nation, except Russia.
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NIH tells scientists grants come with new strings attached: following Trump's anti-trans, anti-diversity and anti-BDS orders
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that scientists who get federal grants from the National Institutes of Health are being notified that funding for their work could be pulled if they boycott Israel or fail to follow Donald Trump’s executive orders decreeing that diversity is a form of anti-white racism and there are only two sexes, male and female.
In one case, a researcher at a teaching hospital in the Boston area, who studies how genes are regulated in lung disease, discovered in the fine print of her grant renewal that she was expected to comply with Trump’s anti-trans order “Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth”.
The Chronicle has confirmed that at least two institutions have received grant notices ordering them to comply with Trump’s anti-transgender executive order.
The fine print of grant awards even bans scientists from promoting “accessibility” for people with disabilities, making DEIA a prohibited term.
According to new conditions for NIH grants released last month:
By accepting the grant award, recipients are certifying that:
(i) They do not, and will not during the term of this financial assistance award, operate any programs that advance or promote DEI, DEIA, or discriminatory equity ideology in violation of Federal anti-discrimination laws; and
(ii) They do not engage in and will not during the term of this award engage in, a discriminatory prohibited boycott.
Newark mayor Ras Baraka 'arrested and detained by Ice' at detention center protest
The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ras Baraka, “was arrested and detained by Ice” on Friday at an federal immigration detention center where he was protesting, a spokesperson for his campaign to be the state’s governor confirmed.
NJ Spotlight News, a New Jersey public media outlet, caught the mayor’s arrest on video.
Witnesses told The Associated Press the arrest came after Baraka attempted to join a scheduled tour of the facility with three members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation, Representatives Robert Menendez, LaMonica McIver, and Bonnie Watson Coleman.
When federal officials blocked his entry, a heated argument broke out, according to Viri Martinez, an activist with the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice. It continued even after Baraka returned to the public side of the gates.
“The agents started intimidating and putting their hands on the congresswomen. There was yelling and pushing,” Martinez said. “Then the officers swarmed Baraka. They threw one of the organizers to the ground. They put Baraka handcuffs and put him in an unmarked car”.
The mayor has been protesting the opening of Delaney Hall, an detention facility run by private prison operator GEO Group, all week, saying its operators did not get proper permits.
Alina Habba, a former personal lawyer for Donald Trump who is now interim US attorney for New Jersey, wrote on social media that Baraka “has been taken into custody” after, she alleged, he “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the Ice detention center in Newark”.
Video of the mayor being led away in handcuffs was posted on social networks by a local news station.
“We’re at Delaney Hall, an ICE prison in Newark that opened without permission from the city & in violation of local ordinances” Coleman wrote on social media before the mayor’s arrest. “We’ve heard stories of what it’s like in other ICE prisons. We’re exercising our oversight authority to see for ourselves”.
Our colleague Richard Luscombe has more on this developing story:
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Trump administration ‘actively looking at’ suspending habeas corpus, Stephen Miller says
In response to a question from a blogger for the far-right Gateway Pundit about when the Trump administration could start “suspending the writ of habeas corpus to take care of the illegal immigration problem”, White House’s deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, said the Trump administration is “actively looking at” doing so.
Federal habeas corpus is a procedure under which a federal court may review the legality of an individual’s incarceration.
Miller told the blogger, Jordan Conradson, he had made a point of calling on first: “The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in time of invasion. So it’s an option we’re actively looking at. Look, a lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not”.
Miller’s use of the word “invasion” reflects the Trump administration’s argument that the US is under invasion from undocumented migrants and so the president is justified in claiming the power to deport anyone the administration brands a suspected gang member, with little to no due process under the rarely-used, wartime Alien Enemies Act.
A recently declassified intelligence assessment, however, shows that US agencies do not believe that the gang Tren de Aragua is operating on behalf of the government of Venezuela, as the administration has claimed as justification to use the Alien Enemies Act.
Just last week a federal judge in Texas ruled that the law does not authorize the administration to deport such individuals. You can read more on that here:
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White House to take choice of Pentagon chief of staff out of embattled Pete Hegseth’s hands
Exasperated by the turmoil that has dogged Pete Hegseth’s office in recent weeks, the White House will block the US defense secretary’s choice of chief of staff and select a candidate of its own, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Hegseth had suggested giving the chief of staff position to Marine Col Ricky Buria after the first person in the role, Joe Kasper, left last month in the wake of a contentious leak investigation that brought the ouster of three other senior aides.
But the White House has made clear to Hegseth that Buria will not be elevated to become his most senior aide at the Pentagon, the people said, casting Buria as a liability on account of his limited experience as a junior military assistant and his recurring role in internal office drama.
“Ricky will not be getting the chief position,” one of the people directly familiar with deliberations said. “He doesn’t have adequate experience, lacks the political chops and is widely disliked by almost everyone in the White House who has been exposed to him.”
The White House has always selected political appointees at agencies through the presidential personnel office, but the move to block Hegseth’s choice at this juncture is unusual and reflects Donald Trump’s intent to keep Hegseth by trying to insulate him from any more missteps.
The intervention comes at a time when Hegseth’s ability to run the Pentagon has come under scrutiny. It also runs into the belief inside Trump’s orbit that even the president might struggle to justify Hegseth’s survival if the secretary does not have a scandal-free next few months.
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Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order later today discouraging criminal enforcement of regulatory offenses, in a bid to combat the overcriminalization of federal regulations, a White House official has told Reuters.
Trump also plans to sign a proclamation to encourage migrants who are in the US illegally to voluntarily depart the country, according to a White House official.
The “Project Homecoming” initiative will encourage migrants to leave voluntarily with the assistance of the federal government and financial support, or face enforcement and penalties, according to the official.
The day so far
A federal judge ordered the immediate release of Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student from Turkey, whose detention in March for writing an op-ed critical of Israel’s war in Gaza in her school newspaper judge William Sessions ruled “raised significant due process concerns”. Ordering her release, Sessions said her continued detention “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens”.
People in Texas who were told they would be deported to Libya sat waiting on a military airfield tarmac for hours on Wednesday, unsure of what would happen next, Reuters reported. After several hours, they were bused back to the detention center around noon, an attorney for one of the men said. A US official told Reuters the flight never departed. As of Friday, it was unclear if the administration was still planning to proceed with the deportations.
Pope Leo is “not happy with what’s going on with immigration”, his brother told the NYT, adding: “How far he’ll go with it is only one’s guess, but he won’t just sit back. I don’t think he’ll be the silent one.” Here’s our write-up.
The major “earth-shattering” announcement Donald Trump teased earlier this week in the Oval Office is a “most favored nation” plan to cut Medicare drug prices, sources told CBS News, a policy he pursued unsuccessfully in his first term. The move would require Medicare to pay drug companies the lowest price paid in similar countries for some expensive, physician-administered drugs.
Donald Trump said he would be “OK” if Republicans in Congress raised the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, but warned of political consequences. He wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!” It comes after the president privately urged House speaker Mike Johnson to raise the tax rate, Reuters reported.
But, in a sign of just how tricky it may be to get Republicans to vote for raising anyone’s taxes, the tax portion of the GOP mega-bill is at risk of unraveling, three people told Politico, after leaders failed to win enough support for deeper spending cuts. That means Republicans will have to leave out some of Trump’s tax priorities, according to the people.
A majority of US adults disapprove of Trump’s handling of issues related to colleges and universities, as his Republican administration escalate threats to cut federal funding unless institutions align with his political agenda. According to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 56% of Americans said they disapproved of the US president’s approach to higher education, while about four in 10 expressed approval, which is broadly consistent with his overall job approval ratings.
Large institutional investors massively increased their holdings of Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) in recent months according to SEC filings, with many enlarging their positions by hundreds of millions of dollars. The revelations raise further questions about big business’s desire to curry favor with Donald Trump and his administration via the enterprises he has maintained or commenced.
Trump remains firm that the US is not going to unilaterally reduce tariffs on Chinese goods without concessions from China, the White House said, only hours after Trump floated the idea of reducing the current rate of 145% down to 80% as the two sides prepare for talks in Switzerland. “That was a number the president threw out there, and we’ll see what happens this weekend,” Karoline Leavitt told reporters.
The US Postal Service named David Steiner as the next postmaster general after the Trump administration pressured the prior leader to resign in March. Steiner is a former Waste Management CEO and has served on the board of FedEx.
Trump signs executive order to establish national center for homeless veterans – Fox News Digital
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to establish a national center for homeless veterans with redirected funds previously spent on services for illegal aliens, according to Fox News Digital.
The order directs the secretary of veterans affairs to establish the “National Center for Warrior Independence” on the veterans affairs campus in West Los Angeles, Fox reports.
Fox quotes the White House: “The new National Center for Warrior Independence will help [LA’s unhoused veterans'] and other veterans like them rebuild their lives.”
The center will allow veterans from around the nation to seek and receive care, benefits and services “to which they are entitled”, the White House said.
The White House told Fox the goal is to house up to 6,000 homeless veterans at the center by 2028.
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Deported family of US citizen girl recovering from rare brain tumor is determined to return – NBC News
A girl recovering from a rare brain tumor celebrated her 11th birthday on Sunday, hundreds of miles away from everything she’s known – her friends at school, her community at church, her home, NBC News reports.
She is one of four US citizen children who were sent to Mexico from Texas three months ago when immigration authorities deported their undocumented parents.
Hoping to find a way for her to resume medical treatment in the US, this morning her family traveled to Monterrey to meet with members of the congressional Hispanic caucus to urge “legislators to advocate for their return under humanitarian parole”.
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One such colleague is Senator Ed Markey, who called the order for Öztürk’s release “a victory for Rümeysa, for justice, and for our democracy”. He posted on X:
Rümeysa Öztürk has finally been ordered released. She has been unlawfully detained for more than six weeks in an ICE facility in Louisiana, more than 1,500 miles away from Somerville. This is a victory for Rümeysa, for justice, and for our democracy.
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Senator Elizabeth Warren posted on X: “The Trump administration must release Rümeysa Öztürk right now.”
Warren is one of the members of Congress who has been pushing for Öztürk’s release and the restoration of her visa. In March she called Öztürk’s arrest and detention without due process “deeply disturbing” and with colleagues has been demanding answers about the case from the Trump administration since.
Tufts student faced higher risk of worsening asthma while in Ice custody, court filings show
US district judge William Sessions also found that in addition to the violation of her constitutional rights, Öztürk faced significant risk in Ice custody for an exacerbation of her diagnosed chronic asthma.
According to court filings, she suffered multiple asthma attacks in detention that she has struggled to get treated for, and has had her hijab forcibly removed.
Öztürk appeared on video at the hearing earlier and told the judge she had suffered 12 asthma attacks since her detention, saying:
Now they are between five to 45 minutes and they are more intense … longer and harder to stop.
“We are not allowed to take fresh air when we need to take it ... Also there is no divider between the showers,” Öztürk said.
“Also the maximum capacity for the room is indicated … for 14 people but there are 24 people living in a small area, spanning … more than 22 hours inside of the same locked cell,” she added.
Following Öztürk’s initial testimony, her doctor, Jessica McCannon, testified about her diagnosis of Öztürk’s asthma. At one point, Öztürk had an asthma attack during McCannon’s testimony, which her lawyers had to interrupt. The judge then excused Öztürk and allowed her to temporarily step out of the room to use the bathroom.
Addressing the court, McCannon said:
She is at significantly increased risk of developing an asthma exacerbation if not released, that would potentially require emergency evaluation.
If not treated appropriately and quickly, patients can suffer morbidity and mortality related to asthma exacerbations.
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Judge says student's Ice detention 'potentially chills the speech of the millions'
The Trump administration is attempting to deport Rümeysa Öztürk under a rarely used immigration statute giving the secretary of state the authority to remove immigrants deemed harmful to US foreign policy. Her lawyers say it is a flagrant violation of her constitutional right to free speech.
US district judge William Sessions, in ordering her release, said her continued detention “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens. Any one of them may now avoid exercising their first amendment rights for fear of being whisked away to a detention center from their home. For all of those reasons, the court finds that her continued detention cannot stand, that bail is necessary to make the habeas [petition] … effective.”
He added:
This is a woman who’s just totally committed to her academic career … there is absolutely no evidence that that she has engaged in violence or advocated violence. She has no criminal record … therefore, the court finds that she does not pose a danger to the community.
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ACLU on Tuft student's ordered release: 'Her release is a victory for everyone committed to justice'
Monica Allard, staff attorney with the ACLU of Vermont, said of the order for the release of Rümeysa Öztürk.
After today’s ruling, Rümeysa can return to her community at Tufts and sleep safely in her own bed. Tomorrow, she can wake up and begin the process of healing from this experience while she finishes her PhD in child development.
Spending over six weeks in detention for writing an op-ed is a constitutional horror story. Her release is a victory for everyone committed to justice, free speech, and basic human rights.
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Mahsa Khanbabai of Khanbabai Immigration Law, who is representing Rümeysa Öztürk, said of the order for her release:
I am relieved and ecstatic that Rümeysa has been ordered released. Unfortunately, it is 45 days too late. She has been imprisoned all these days for simply writing an op-ed that called for human rights and dignity for the people in Palestine. When did speaking up against oppression become a crime? When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?
I am thankful that the courts have been ruling in favor of detained political prisoners like Rümeysa. The public plays an important role in upholding our constitutional rights. Please continue to speak up for democracy and civil rights in every space including our elected offices, our universities, and our halls of justice.
Trump won't unilaterally lower China tariffs, White House says
Donald Trump remains firm that the United States is not going to unilaterally reduce tariffs on Chinese goods without concessions from China, Leavitt said, hours after Trump floated the idea of reducing the current rate of 145% down to 80% as the two sides prepare for talks in Switzerland.
“That was a number the president threw out there, and we’ll see what happens this weekend,” she told reporters.
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At the White House press briefing, Karoline Leavitt says secretary of State Marco Rubio is in constant contact with the leaders of both India and Pakistan.
With tensions continuing to escalate between the two neighboring countries, Leavitt reiterated that Donald Trump wants to see the conflict de-escalate.
Tufts student Rümeysa Öztürk detained by US immigration authorities must be released, judge rules
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Friday to release Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University student from Turkey who has been held for over six weeks in a Louisiana immigration detention facility after she co-wrote an opinion piece criticizing her school’s response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
US district judge William Sessions during a hearing in Burlington, Vermont, granted bail to Öztürk, who is at the center of one of the highest-profile cases to emerge from Donald Trump’s campaign to deport pro-Palestinian activists on American campuses.
The judge ruled shortly after a federal appeals court rejected the Trump administration’s bid to re-detain Columbia University student Mohsen Mahdawi, a Palestinian campus activist who a different judge in Vermont ordered released last week after immigration authorities arrested him as well.
Ozturk’s arrest on 25 March by masked, plainclothes law enforcement officers on a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, near her home was captured in a viral video and occurred after the state department revoked her student visa.
The sole basis authorities have provided for revoking her visa was an opinion piece she co-authored in Tufts’ student newspaper criticizing the school’s response to calls by students to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide”.
Her lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union had argued that her arrest and detention were unlawfully designed to punish her for speech protected by the constitution’s first amendment and to chill the speech of others.
Öztürk was moved to a detention center in Basile, Louisiana, even though her lawyer filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts the day she was arrested and a judge there barred her from being moved out of the state without 48 hours’ notice.
By the time that order came down, Immigration and Customs Enforcement had already taken her to Vermont, where she was held briefly before being flown to Louisiana.
Rather than dismiss her case as the administration wanted, a Massachusetts judge transferred the case to Vermont, saying it could be properly heard there.
Sessions then ordered Öztürk transferred to Vermont so she could be available as he weighed ordering her release and considered the “significant constitutional concerns” she had raised.
A federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered her transferred to Vermont by 14 May, but Sessions opted to proceed with a previously-scheduled bail hearing to go forward on Friday and allow Ozturk to appear remotely after her lawyers said she was suffering from worsening asthma attacks while in custody.
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Earlier we brought you CBS News’s report on Trump’s proposal to push drugmakers to charge the US government the same as other countries, a policy he pursued unsuccessfully in his first term.
It’s unclear, reports NBC News, whether Trump’s new plan will once again target only Medicare Part B drugs or include other medications covered under the program.
One official told NBC said the proposal had not been finalized and could still change. The White House did not respond to a request for comment, but Karoline Leavitt will no doubt be asked about it during the White House press briefing shortly.
“I don’t see an excuse for why prices should be all over the place, and we wind up getting charged the most,” Arthur Caplan, the head of the medical ethics division at NYU Langone medical center in New York City, told NBC in support of the proposal. “If this can do something about what is clearly an emergency, which is the ever-increasing cost of drugs as one major source of inflation, I’m for it.”
However, experts also doubted the new policy would withstand pushback from the drug industry. “I am unsure the new executive order will fare any better,” Stacie Dusetzina, a health policy professor at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, told NBC.
Tricia Neuman, executive director for the program on Medicare policy at KFF, a health policy research group, told NBC it would likely have public support if implemented. But added: “The idea of making sure the US pays no more than similar countries polls well, but it’s controversial, and will likely face fierce opposition from the pharmaceutical industry.”
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White House press briefing
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is due to speak to reporters shortly on Trump’s agenda and trade negotiations. I’ll bring you all the key points from that.
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Pope Leo unhappy with US immigration policy and won’t stay silent, brother says
Despite the pronouncements of veteran Vatican-watchers, the rash of profiles and the raking over of old statements, very few people seem to know exactly where Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost – now known as Pope Leo XIV – stands on the big issues of the day.
But one person who has a better idea than most is the new pontiff’s elder brother John Prevost.
In a recent interview with the New York Times (paywall), Prevost noted his brother’s emotional and ideological proximity to his friend Pope Francis and said he shared Leo predecessor’s concerns about the US’s immigration policy.
Prevost described his brother as middle-of-the-road, adding: “I don’t think we’ll see extremes either way.” He also said the new pope would not hesitate to speak out against injustices. “I don’t think he’ll stay quiet for too long if he has something to say.
I know he’s not happy with what’s going on with immigration. I know that for a fact. How far he’ll go with it is only one’s guess, but he won’t just sit back. I don’t think he’ll be the silent one.
Francis made no secret of his opposition to Donald Trump’s border and mass deportations plans, and also took issue with Vice-President JD Vance’s interpretation of the church’s teaching on our responsibilities to others.
Hours after Prevost was elected pope, many seized on posts from an X account apparently belonging to the cardinal that criticised Trump and Vance’s positions. One post shared an article from the National Catholic Reporter, headlined “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn’t ask us to rank our love for others”. Another reposted a report on California Catholic bishops complaining that Trump’s use of the phrase “bad hombres” to describe some Mexicans fuelled “racism and nativism”.
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Trump envoy Witkoff to travel to Oman for Iran talks on Sunday - Reuters
Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff will travel to Oman on Sunday for a fourth round of talks on Iran’s nuclear program, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters on Friday.
I’ll bring you more detail when I get it.
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People told they were being deported to Libya waited hours on airfield tarmac – Reuters
People in Texas who were told they would be deported to Libya sat on a military airfield tarmac for hours on Wednesday, unsure of what would happen next, an attorney for one of the men told Reuters.
The attorney, Tin Thanh Nguyen, said his client, a Vietnamese construction worker from Los Angeles, was among the people woken in the early morning hours and bused from an immigration detention center in Pearsall, Texas, to an airfield where a military aircraft awaited them.
After several hours, they were bused back to the detention center around noon, the attorney said on Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon and the state department did not respond to Reuters requests for comment.
Reuters reported earlier this week that Donald Trump’s administration was poised to deport migrants to Libya, a move that would escalate his immigration crackdown which has already drawn legal backlash.
Officials had told Reuters the US military could carry out the flights as soon as Wednesday, but stressed that plans could change.
A US official told Reuters the flight never departed. As of Friday, it was unclear if the administration was still planning to proceed with the deportations.
A federal judge in Boston ruled on Wednesday that any effort by the Trump administration to deport non-Libyan migrants to Libya without adequate screenings for possible persecution or torture would clearly violate a prior court order.
Lawyers for a group of migrants pursuing a class action lawsuit had made an emergency request to the court hours after the news broke of the potential flight to Libya.
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The House Democratic caucus chair, Pete Aguilar, said the party would make a renewed push to ban stock trading by members, accusing Republicans of misusing their positions and undermining public trust.
Lawmakers have for years discussed limiting trading by members, but legislation to do so has failed to be enacted. In a recent interview with Time, Donald Trump endorsed a ban, though it’s unclear if Congress’s GOP leaders will take up the issue.
Aguilar, a California congressman who is the third-highest ranking House Democrat, said the party would make a renewed push for such legislation.
“I think that’s something that we will get behind and embrace,” Aguilar told broadcaster KQED. He pointed to recent revelations that Bruce Westerman, the Republican chair of the House natural resources committee, had bought stocks in mining and energy firms that could benefit from legislation working its way through the chamber. In an interview with Politico, Westerman said his financial adviser made the purchases, and he had asked him to divest from them.
“This is the chair of the natural resources committee that is guiding reconciliation efforts that are opening up our public lands to more drilling that those companies will benefit from,” Aguilar said. “I know the country is cynical of politicians, but those types of things just are absolutely detrimental to having trust in government.”
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A member of the board that oversees the US Holocaust Memorial Museum criticized other board members for the institution’s silence after president Trump’s recent firings in a letter on Friday, reports the New York Times.
Kevin Abel, who was appointed to the museum’s board by President Biden in 2023, warned about the dangers of “not speaking up” and wrote that Trump’s “campaign of retribution” had been met with troubling “public silence” by the museum in his letter.
Trump fired a number of board members at the museum appointed by former president Biden, including Doug Emhoff, the husband of former vice-president Kamala Harris. The firings sparked backlash by those concerned that Trump’s moves were an effort to politicize a museum dedicated to educating and memorializing.
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US Postal Service names David Steiner as the next postmaster general
The US Postal Service has named David Steiner as the next postmaster general after the Trump administration pressured the prior leader to resign in March. Steiner is a former Waste Management CEO and has served on the board of FedEx.
Amber McReynolds, chair of the USPS board of governors, announced the new head on Friday at an open session of a board meeting. She added that Steiner was set to begin in his position in July.
The board’s appointment comes amid concerns surrounding the future of the Postal Service, with the Trump administration remaining determined to tighten control over an agency that Congress established to be independent decades ago. The agency reported a net loss of $3.3bn for the three months ending 31 March as it continues to increase stamp prices and look for ways to cut costs.
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David Richardson, the new head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), told staff on Friday he will “run right over” anyone that resists changes in the agency, reports Reuters.
“I, and I alone in Fema, speak for Fema. I’m here to carry out the president’s intent for Fema,” Richardson, a former marine artillery officer and combat veteran, told the staff.
Richardson spoke just a day after he was appointed to replace the acting Fema chief Cameron Hamilton, who was ousted by the Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, after telling a congressional hearing he did not support eliminating the agency.
President Trump and Noem have called for the agency to be shrunk or potentially even eliminated, arguing that many of its functions can be carried out by the states, a stance that is already leading to decreased federal aid for disasters.
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New York City Mayor Eric Adams says he’ll meet with Trump on Friday to discuss “priorities” for the city, reports the Associated Press.
Adams did not offer other details about the planned meeting in Washington, which comes a month after a federal judge approved a US justice department request to dismiss the criminal corruption case against the NYC mayor.
Adams was accused last year by the Biden administration of accepting illegal campaign contributions and travel discounts from a Turkish official and others, in exchange for helping Turkey open a diplomatic building without passing fire inspections, among other things. He had pleaded not guilty and a trial was set for April.
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Large investors increased stake in Trump Media by hundreds of millions
Large institutional investors have massively increased their holdings of Trump Media and Technology Group (TMTG) in recent months according to SEC filings, with many enlarging their positions by hundreds of millions of dollars.
The revelations raise further questions about big business’s desire to curry favor with Donald Trump and his administration via the enterprises he has maintained or commenced. TMTG runs the Truth Social social media platform – on which the US president himself posts almost daily – as well as financial services and a film and TV streaming service.
Some of the investing funds have prior connections with Trump and Republican political causes. Among those buying in was Charles Schwab Investment Management (Schwab), founded by the Trump associate Charles Schwab.
Critics say that the investments do not reflect any obvious improvement in the business prospects of the company, which lost more than $400m in its 2024 financial results.
Tony Carrk, executive director of Accountable.us, a non-profit that monitors the influence of special influence on US politics, said:
Donald Trump’s refusal to divest from his publicly traded company has predictably prompted huge investments from wealthy special interests that could use a favor from the president.
Institutional Wall Street investors and even a foreign company with business before the administration have effectively offered a form of tribute by bulk purchasing shares in DJT on the open market, which helps juice the value of Trump’s own shares.
At an Oval Office meeting on 11 April, Trump told a group of Nascar drivers of Schwab “he made two and half billion today”, the same day that markets rallied after Trump partly suspended his so-called “liberation day” tariffs announced on 2 April.
Earlier that day, on his Truth Social account, Trump infamously posted ““THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!! DJT”, with the post and Schwab’s presence both igniting accusations of market manipulation and “insider trading”.
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Trump to unveil Medicare drug pricing plan after teasing 'earth-shattering' announcement – CBS News
The major “earth-shattering” announcement Donald Trump teased earlier this week in the Oval Office is a “most favored nation” plan to cut Medicare drug prices, sources have told CBS News.
In his first administration, Trump signed an executive order to implement a “most favored nation” clause that would have required Medicare to pay drug companies the lowest price paid in similar countries for some expensive, physician-administered drugs. The Biden administration rescinded the proposal under pressure from hospitals and drug companies.
Trump teased in the Oval Office on Tuesday that in the coming days, he would reveal “a truly earth-shattering and positive development for this country and for the people of this country”. He said:
We’re going to have a very, very big announcement to make – like as big as it gets. It will be one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject.
“The president will make a big and historic announcement on Monday. Until then, everyone can keep guessing!” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said coyly.
CBS reports: “Court orders sought by the drug industry and others blocked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services from implementing the proposal in Trump’s first term, saying that the government failed to go through the proper rulemaking steps to create and implement the policy, which was finalized in late 2020.
“The Biden administration abandoned the proposal in 2022, blaming court orders blocking the model and concerns raised by stakeholders, including fears that it could cut off some Medicare beneficiaries from drugs and strain providers.”
Politico reported earlier this week that Trump would direct aides to pursue the initiative to reintroduce the drug pricing plan he wanted in his first term.
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Trump names Fox News host Jeanine Pirro as top DC federal prosecutor
Hugo Lowell and Chris Stein in Washington
Donald Trump said on Thursday he would name Jeanine Pirro, a Fox News host and former state-level prosecutor, to be the interim US attorney for the District of Columbia after a key Republican senator said he would not support the candidate initially selected for the job.
Pirro, a former district attorney of Westchester county, New York, is a diehard Trump supporter whose false claim that the 2020 election was rigged by Dominion Voting Systems was used against Fox in court.
The move to select Pirro to lead the office that prosecutes felonies and national security-related cases in the capital pulled Trump out of a fraught situation after he was forced to withdraw the nomination of Ed Martin, who has been serving as the interim US attorney since the start of Trump’s second term in January.
Interim US attorneys can serve for 120 days until they need to be confirmed permanently by the Senate. If they do not win confirmation, or if the president has not named a successor, the vacancy is filled by the judges who sit on the bench in federal district court in Washington.
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Republicans to leave out some of Trump's tax priorities after failing to build GOP support for deep spending cuts – Politico
In a sign of just how tricky it may be to get Republicans to vote for raising anyone’s taxes, the tax portion of the GOP mega-bill is at risk of unraveling, three people have told Politico.
House ways and means chair Jason Smith is set to meet on Friday with Trump to inform him that the tax portion of the megabill has been limited by the GOP’s inability to build support for deep spending cuts. That means Republicans will have to leave out some of Trump’s tax priorities, according to the people.
It comes a day after House speaker Mike Johnson privately announced to House Republicans that he was scaling down ambitions for the package. He’ll now be seeking $1.5tn in spending cuts and $4tn in tax cuts, down from the $2tn and $4.5tn respectively.
At this new size, writes Politico, it will “present a huge challenge to House Republicans and their ability to include all of their priorities – not to mention the priorities of President Donald Trump”.
Per Politico this morning:
On the chopping block could be a litany of Trump demands, including a permanent extension of the tax cuts passed during his first term, as well as second-term campaign promises to provide tax relief to seniors while also exempting taxes on tips and overtime earnings. Those provisions could end up getting enacted only temporarily, according to four Republican lawmakers, some of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity.
That cake is not yet totally baked: Republican leaders are still exploring a request from Trump to increase income taxes on the highest-earning Americans — from 37 percent to 39.6 percent, the level that prevailed before the 2017 law — in order to make room for more tax cuts elsewhere.
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Why is Trump considering raising taxes on millionaires?
“I actually love the concept,” Donald Trump recently told Time magazine of a proposal circulating within his cabinet to raise taxes upon those earning over $1m. “I don’t want it to be used against me politically, because I’ve seen people lose elections for less, especially with the fake news.”
Few presidential administrations have killed sacred cows at a faster rate than that of Donald Trump. But this really is shocking: a sitting Republican president praising a proposal to raise taxes upon the wealthy, adding only the slight caveat that it would be adversely spun by those in “the fake news”. A tax increase, Trump apparently believes, would be tenable as policy but not as politics.
Perhaps more interesting than Trump’s judgment on the issue, then, is that leading members of his cabinet have endorsed a similar tax hike. Longtime anti-tax activists are panicked. As the Lever recently noted, there’s every reason to believe that serious cracks are appearing in the Republican anti-tax coalition.
First: why? The proposal itself is a brainchild of the conservative American Compass thinktank, which, in a June 2024 white paper, proposed raising taxes upon the wealthy to pay down the American national debt. “The constituency and base of the Republican party is shifting,” Oren Cass, American Compass’s founder, told the Atlantic in April. To extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts by simply adding $5tn to the American national debt would be, in Cass’s words, “pathetic, embarrassing, and outright cheating”.
Their voices confound the expectation that the party’s “realignment” wing is driving the breakdown of the Republican consensus on tax-cutting. Instead, it’s something much more prosaic: the Trump administration’s economic team has realized that an abnormally large slice of the American debt needs to be refinanced this year.
The Trump administration’s one weird trick to refinance at lower costs than necessary – his “liberation day” tariff announcements – failed. Now, the Republicans have two remaining options: cut spending, or cut the tax-cutters loose.
What does that portend for the future of American conservatism? Whether or not the Trump administration follows through on raising taxes on the wealthy – it probably won’t – the fiscal compact that’s underpinned American conservatism has, at least in the near term, become unsustainable.
What is certain, however, is that the tax-cutting coalition as we know it has become deeply unsustainable. Tax-cutting once unified the Republicans. But, in forcing Trump to choose between taxing the top or deeper austerity for the bottom, it now threatens to blow it apart.
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Putin and Trump exchanged second world war anniversary greetings via aides, Kremlin says
Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump congratulated each other with “warm words” on the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany via their aides, the Kremlin said on Friday.
“Through their aides, the Russian president and President Trump exchanged congratulations on the occasion of our common celebration,” Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy adviser to Putin, told state TV’s Channel One.
“These were warm words, mutual congratulations on our common great celebration,” Ushakov said.
Russia marked the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory in the second world war on Friday with a military parade on Moscow’s Red Square attended by dozens of world leaders, including China’s Xi Jinping.
The Tass state news agency reported that Lynne Tracy, the US ambassador to Russia, had not been a spectator at the Moscow parade.
My colleague Jakub Krupa is covering Moscow’s Victory Day parade over on Europe live:
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The quote Trump is referring to from George HW Bush comes from the former president’s acceptance speech at the Republican national convention on 18 August 1988.
And my opponent won’t rule out raising taxes. But I will. And the Congress will push me to raise taxes, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push, and I’ll say no, and they’ll push again. And I’ll say to them: Read my lips. No new taxes.
As Jeffrey Frankel writes in our Bush obituary, his tax pledge helped him win the election, and some believe that his reversal on taxes is what cost him re-election in 1992. These extracts will no doubt contain interesting food for thought as GOP leaders fiercely debate Trump’s budget plan:
But Bush’s mistake was that he made that anti-tax pledge in the first place and stuck to it in the first part of his presidency. His courageous 1990 reversal on fiscal policy set the stage for a decade of economic growth that eventually achieved budget surpluses.
The budget deal that Bush reached with congressional Democrats in 1990 may indeed have contributed to his failure to win re-election in 1992. There is no question that the timing was terrible. The move to fiscal discipline coincided with the onset of a recession, probably made the downturn worse than it otherwise would have been, and slowed the subsequent recovery.
Bush actually had known better than to support the claim that tax cuts would reduce the budget deficit by boosting revenues. When he ran against Reagan for the Republican nomination in 1980, he famously called such claims “voodoo economics”. But he put aside his doubts when he agreed to serve as Reagan’s vice-president, and eventually he issued his fateful vow at the Republican National Convention in August 1988, when he accepted the party’s nomination to succeed Reagan. He predicted that Democrats would repeatedly push him to raise taxes, and he swore that he would forever refuse: “Read my lips: no new taxes.”
But the economy at the end of the 1980s was at the peak of the business cycle. This was a proper time to begin addressing the longstanding budget deficit. As Keynes famously said, “The boom, not the slump, is the right time for austerity at the Treasury.” Instead, Bush agreed to double down on the Reagan-era policies that had produced record peacetime deficits. And the bet paid off, in the sense that the tax pledge helped him win the election.
After a year and a half in office, Bush decided to address the long-postponed deficit problem that he had inherited. He entered into difficult negotiations with the congressional leadership. The Democrats controlled both houses of Congress and refused to agree to restrain domestic spending unless taxes also contributed to fiscal consolidation. Thus, in June 1990, Bush admitted that any agreement to cut the deficit would require tax increases.
This was universally viewed as a retraction of his “no new taxes” pledge. The taxes that were raised were, in fact, old taxes. But that was considered a technicality. On 9 October, the House and Senate announced a budget plan, narrowly avoiding a full government shutdown.
Republicans since Bush have followed his lead in one respect: a pattern of pro-cyclical fiscal policy. They engaged in fiscal expansion during the recovery of 2001-07 and then fought Barack Obama’s attempts to respond to the 2007-09 recession with fiscal stimulus. As a result, the recovery from the Great Recession was slower than it had to be, just as had been the case with the 1990-91 recession.
Over the last year Donald Trump has pursued an even more flagrantly pro-cyclical fiscal expansion, with ill-timed tax cuts and spending increases. The result could be an even worse mess than Bush 43 left behind in 2008.
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Trump says he is 'OK' with Republicans raising taxes on the rich
Donald Trump said he would be “OK” if Republicans in Congress raised the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans, but warned of political consequences.
He wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!”
The problem with even a “TINY” tax increase for the RICH, which I and all others would graciously accept in order to help the lower and middle income workers, is that the Radical Left Democrat Lunatics would go around screaming,“Read my lips,” the fabled Quote by George Bush the Elder that is said to have cost him the Election. NO, Ross Perot cost him the Election! In any event, Republicans should probably not do it, but I’m OK if they do!!!
He had privately urged House speaker Mike Johnson to raise the tax rate, sources told Reuters on Thursday.
The president suggested an increase to 39.6% from 37% for those earning $2.5m and higher or joint filers earning $5m, with carve-outs for small businesses, one source said.
Trump said in his post that Democrats would seize on “even a ‘TINY’ tax increase for the ‘RICH,’” citing former Republican president George HW Bush, who lost his re-election bid after saying “Read my lips: no new taxes” during his 1988 election campaign. But Trump seems to be confusing raising taxes for regular Americans with raising tax rates for super-rich individuals and corporations, the latter of which is supported by the Democrats.
Republicans in the House and Senate are seeking to extend the 2017 tax cuts enacted during Trump’s first term in the White House that are set to expire this year.
Trump and Republican lawmakers have cited the potential extension as relief for Americans and an economic boost amid Trump’s tariffs on imported goods, and vowed to pass it as part of a larger budget bill this summer.
So far, Johnson and other top Republicans have resisted higher taxes on the wealthy despite pressure from Trump’s populist Maga base.
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Trump: China tariffs should be 80%
In other Trump news, the president has begun his Friday morning by posting on Truth Social about his tariffs on Chinese goods.
He wrote:
80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B.
Scott B is presumably Treasury secretary Bessent, who is due to meet with officials from China in Switzerland this weekend to discuss the trade war.
An 80% tariff would be a notable reduction on the 145% which Trump has imposed last month, but would still make it significantly more expensive for US companies to import goods from China.
Trump has also urged Beijing to open up its markets, posting:
CHINA SHOULD OPEN UP ITS MARKET TO USA — WOULD BE SO GOOD FOR THEM!!! CLOSED MARKETS DON’T WORK ANYMORE!!!
You can follow the latest on our business blog:
Majority of Americans disapprove of Trump’s approach to higher education, poll finds
Good morning and welcome to the US politics blog.
A majority of US adults disapprove of Donald Trump’s handling of issues related to colleges and universities, as his Republican administration escalate threats to cut federal funding unless institutions align with his political agenda.
According to a poll by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, 56% of Americans said they disapproved of the US president’s approach to higher education, while about four in 10 expressed approval, which is broadly consistent with his overall job approval ratings.
Trump has tried to impose changes on universities he claims have become hotbeds of liberal ideology and antisemitism, the Associated Press notes. But the poll suggests a disconnect between Trump’s rhetoric and a public that views universities as vital to scientific research and innovation.
In other recent news:
Donald Trump named Jeanine Pirro, a Fox host, to his administration as interim US attorney for DC after he was forced to admit that his first pick, Ed Martin, did not have the votes to be confirmed.
The Pentagon has begun removing the 1,000 members of the military who openly identify as trans, and giving those who have yet to openly identify as transgender 30 days to remove themselves.
The US state department said a solution to be able to deliver food aid to Gaza was “steps away” and an announcement was coming shortly, although it fell short of detailing what the plan would entail.
Trump congratulated the first American pontiff, Pope Leo XIV, on becoming the head the Catholic Church.
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