Summary
Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. And you can also follow along with our continuing coverage of the US’s tariffs announcement here. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
Donald Trump signed four executive orders boosting coal production this afternoon. The orders direct government agencies to “end all discriminatory policies against the coal industry,” including by ending the leasing moratorium on coal on federal land, accelerating all permitted funding for coal projects, protecting coal power plants scheduled to be shuttered, and investigating state or local governments that “discriminate against coal”.
The US will impose a staggering 104% tariff on China at 12.01am ET on Wednesday. The decision comes after Beijing did not lift its retaliatory tariffs on US goods by Trump’s Tuesday noon deadline. Meanwhile, Canada’s retaliatory 25% tariffs on some American cars will go into effect at 12.01 ET tonight. Trump says a “major” tariff on pharmaceutical imports is coming “very shortly”.
During his executive order ceremony this afternoon, Trump tried to assuage fears of a recession, saying that tariffs are bringing in $2bn a day. The White House has also said that nearly 70 countries have reached out looking to begin negotiations to lower or postpone their tariffs.
A federal judge ruled that the White House’s decision to block the Associated Press from its press pool is unconstitutional. The ruling comes nearly two months after the White House first barred an AP reporter from the Oval Office over the outlet’s decision to continue using the term “Gulf of Mexico” after Donald Trump issued an executive order renaming the body of water the “Gulf of America.”
The US will take back the Panama Canal from Chinese influence, US defense secretary Pete Hegseth said during a rare visit to to the nation still unsettled by Trump’s threats to take back the canal. Just hours after his visit, the Chinese Embassy in Panama issued a statement calling Hegseth’s comments part of “a sensationalistic campaign” to “sabotage Chinese-Panamanian cooperation”.
An immigration judge has ruled that if the Trump administration cannot provide evidence supporting Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation by 5pm tomorrow, she may order his release on Friday. Earlier today, Khalil’s wife, Noor Abdalla published an exclusive letter to her husband with the Guardian.
A New York judge will hear arguments tomorrow about the legality of Donald Trump’s deportations of Venezuelan immigrants, one day after the supreme court issued a ruling saying immigrant rights advocates had filed their case in the wrong state. After the supreme court issued its ruling yesterday, the American Civil Liberties Union re-filed its case in Manhattan.
Hours after the Internal Revenue Service formalized an agreement to share tax information of undocumented immigrants with Homeland Security, the acting head of the Irs has decided to step down. The acting Irs commissioner, Melanie Krause, is the third person to lead the tax agency since Donald Trump took office in January.
Updated
With Donald Trump’s 104% tariff on Chinese goods scheduled to go into effect overnight, Chinese businesses based in Yiwu – home to the world’s largest wholesale market – are prepared to focus their business on trade with countries outside the US.
My colleague Amy Hawkins reports:
Wang Guiying has been selling wholesale picture frames in Yiwu for 30 years. She says that fewer than 10% of her customers are in the US, a much smaller share than when she first set up shop. These days, most of her buyers are from the Middle East.
