Closing summary
We are wrapping up our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but will return on Monday. Here are the latest developments:
The attorney general, Pam Bondi, said that she is “deploying DOJ agents to ICE facilities—and wherever ICE comes under siege—to safeguard federal agents, protect federal property, and immediately arrest all individuals engaged in any federal crime.”
Donald Trump posted a lengthy screed on social media in which he demanded that Microsoft fire its head of global affairs, Lisa Monaco. As deputy attorney general, Monaco had overseen criminal investigations of Trump’s effort to stay in office after losing the 2020 election and the Capitol riot on January 6 2021.
Oregon lawmakers rejected Trump’s characterization of Portland as a scene of non-stop anarchy in dire need of federal troops as “a fable”.
The FBI has fired about 20 agents who were photographed kneeling during a racial justice protest in Washington in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd, AP reports.
Asked by CNN to reflect on Trump’s second term so far, Kamala Harris replied: “It’s painful to see. I mean, what’s happening with Comey: Are you fucking kidding me? The United States Department of Justice?”
The US supreme court on Friday extended an order that permits the Trump administration to not spend more than $4bn in congressionally appropriated foreign aid money that it is seeking to cancel.
After the indictment of James Comey, the president told reporters that he hopes “more” political adversaries will be prosecuted.
Oregon lawmakers reject Trump's claims about Portland as 'a fable' intended to justify deploying troops
Both of Oregon’s senators and three of its representatives in Congress rejected Donald Trump’s latest false claims about mass anarchy in the city of Portland as a fiction intended to justify the unnecessary deployment of federal troops as part of an “authoritarian” crackdown.
Speaking at a federal building in downtown Portland after oversight visits to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) facilities in the state, Ron Wyden, a Democratic senator, told reporters: “It’s important to recognize that the president’s argument is a fable, it does not resemble the truth.”
“If he watches a TV show in the morning and he see Portland mentioned, he says it’s a terrible place,” Wyden added.
During an Oval Office event to announce that the administration intends to investigate and disrupt what it claims is “organized political violence” funded by left-wing groups, Trump made several wild claims about Portland, which was a center of protests in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, but life has long since returned to normal and barriers around the federal courthouse and police headquarters downtown have been removed.
The president, however, apparently deceived by conservative outlets hyping video of a handful of protesters gathered outside an Ice facility in an outlying, residential neighborhood, insisted that the city has been in non-stop “anarchy” since 2020, and is barely livable.
“Portland is, I don’t know how anybody lives there, it’s amazing. But it’s anarchy out there,” the president said.
“You go out to Portland and you see what’s happening in Portland, this is like, nobody’s ever seen anything like it, every night, and this has gone on for years, they just burn the place down and you know the shop owners, most of them have left, but the few shops that are open, they just use plywood, just like 3/4 inch plywood, they don’t put store fronts in because they know it’s going to be burned down,” Trump insisted, falsely.
Describing the small number of protesters who have gathered outside an Ice facility that has been illegally used for detentions in a residential southwest neighborhood, Trump claimed, without evidence: “These are professional agitators, these are bad people and they’re paid a lot of money by rich people.”
“But we’re going to get out there and we’re gonna do a pretty big number on those people in Portland that are doing that,” the president said.
“These aren’t your protesters that make the sign in their basement late in the evening because they really believe it,” the president added. “These are professional anarchists and agitators, and they get hired by wealthy people.”
At Friday’s news conference, congresswoman Suzanne Bonamici, an Oregon Democrat, said: “This proclaimed ‘war on Antifa’ is completely a fallacy. Antifa is an ideology, it is not a group, and so we’re extremely concerned with what he’s going to try to do with that pronouncement.”
“Donald Trump does not care about safety. If he cared about safety he would not have released 1,600 convicted insurrectionists into the streets. He cares about control and authoritarianism,” she added. “Portland does not need the military. We do not want them, we do not need them, we do not welcome them to come here under his orders.”
At the same news conference, Jeff Merkley, Oregon’s other Democratic senator, pointed out that when they visited the Ice facility this week, there were no protesters present at all. He also disputed the notion “that Trump is trying to make a rational point based on evidence.”
“That is not correct. He is trying to project an image to justify forces that he can roll in to create chaos and then justify further authoritarian actions,” the senator added.
He also drew attention to video evidence from the local newspaper, the Oregonian, which showed that a recent clash between federal agents and a small number of protesters outside the facility had been entirely due to violence by the agents against the protesters, who remained peaceful.
