Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the day in US politics. We will return on Friday to resume our real-time chronicle of the second Trump administration.
Here are some of the day’s developments:
Donald Trump once again put a central part of his trade war on pause, temporarily exempting from tariffs Mexican and Canadian goods covered by the continental free trade agreement he negotiated in his first term. However, the president said he was still ready to impose “reciprocal” tariffs on both Canada and Mexico next month.
Trump told his cabinet secretaries that they are in charge of hiring and firings at their agencies, not Elon Musk.
The House has voted to censure Democratic congressman Al Green for disrupting Trump’s address to this week’s joint session of Congress. The motion was approved with 224 votes in favor and 198 opposed, with 10 Democrats in support.
In an escalation of his pressure campaign, Trump said the US will not fight for Nato allies who don’t spend enough on their own defense.
US district judge Beryl Howell ruled on Thursday that Donald Trump’s firing of a Democratic member of the National Labor Relations Board was illegal and ordered that she be reinstated to her post.
Axios reports that the state department is hunting for evidence that foreign students who express support for Palestinians under Israeli occupation while studying in the US are “pro-Hamas”, and can have their visas revoked, based on an AI review of their social media accounts.
Trump thanked a reporter for the partisan outlet Breitbart for asking him a friendly question in the Oval Office, which teed him up to attack Democrats. The White House excluded non-partisan reporters from Reuters and the Associated Press to make room for Breitbart and One America News, two pro-Trump outlets.
Trump signed an executive order on Thursday evening to establish a “strategic bitcoin reserve”, a day before meeting with executives from the cryptocurrency industry at the White House.
The Canadian prime minister, Justin Trudeau, who reportedly endured a profanity-laced tirade from Trump, was asked about his foreign minister’s comment that dealing with the US was now “a psychodrama”. “How would you characterize it?” a reporter asked. “Thursday”, Trudeau replied.
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Trump signs executive order to create 'strategic reserve' of bitcoin
Donald Trump signed an executive order on Thursday evening to establish a strategic bitcoin reserve, a day before meeting with executives from the cryptocurrency industry at the White House.
According to the White House crypto czar, billionaire David Sacks, who announced the order in a post on Elon Musk’s social media platform Twitter/X, the reserve “will be capitalized with bitcoin owned by the federal government that was forfeited as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings”.
Reuters reports that attendees at Friday’s White House crypto summit expect the event to serve as a stage for Trump to formally announce his plans to build a strategic reserve containing bitcoin and four other cryptocurrencies.
Earlier this week, Trump announced the names of five digital assets he expects to include in this reserve, spiking the market value of each.
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