Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the week, but we will be back on Monday. Here are the latest developments:
Donald Trump told reporters that he did direct aides to post a racist video depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as apes on his social media platform, but claimed to have not seen that part of the 62-second clip.
While video posted on social media captured the booing of JD Vance, the US vice-president, at the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan, the crowd reaction to his presence was not heard or remarked upon in the US TV coverage streamed live on Peacock, the NBC Sports platform.
After the president claimed that the suggestion to rename New York’s Penn Station Trump Station had not come from him but Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, Schumer called that an “absolute lie.”
A federal judge ruled that the Trump administration cannot continue withholding funds for a vital infrastructure project from New York and New Jersey. Trump has reportedly frozen the funds as leverage in his attempt to get Schumer’s support for naming both Penn Station and Washington’s Duller Airport after himself.
Pete Hegseth, the former Fox weekend host now serving as US defense secretary, announced that the Pentagon would no longer send active-duty service members to Harvard, denouncing his alma mater as “woke”.
Updated
Judge stops effort to end asylum claim by family of 5-year-old Minneapolis boy, Liam Conejo Ramos
At an asylum hearing in Minneapolis on Friday, the family of Liam Conejo Ramos, the 5-year-old whose detention by immigration agents focused outrage over the administration’s effort to deport even non-violent asylum seekers, was given more time to make their case, Kristen Stenvik, superintendent of Columbia Heights Public Schools, where Liam goes to school told MS NOW.
A lawyer for the family, Paschal Nwokocha, told Minnesota Public Radio: “the government was bent on removing this family from the United States. We were able to get additional time to do what we need to do in court.”
The federal government had filed a motion Wednesday seeking to end asylum claims for the family. The 5-year-old had just returned home this week after he was detained with his father on 20 January and sent to a detention center in Texas.
