Closing summary
We are wrapping up our live coverage for the day, but we will be back on Thursday to keep tracking the second Trump administration. Here are some of the day’s developments:
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sayid Donald Trump had agreed to a request from the three Detroit automakers for tariff exemptions for vehicles crossing the US borders with Mexico and Canada. “We spoke with the big three auto dealers. We are going to give a one-month exemption on any autos coming through USMCA,” Leavitt said, referring to the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement governing trade between the nations.
The supreme court has upheld a federal judge’s order that USAid disburse $1.5b in payments to its partners, a setback in the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the agency. The lower court will now determine when the aid agency must pay its bills, while four of the court’s conservatives signed a dissent complaining that the decision is overly broad.
The White House confirmed that the US is in direct negotiations with Hamas for the first time since the group was formed, despite it being a designated foreign terrorist organization since 1997. The talks are being lead by Adam Boehler, Trump’s nominee to be special envoy for hostage affairs, who is not a career diplomat but is a former college roommate of Jared Kushner.
Veterans affairs secretary Doug Collins confirmed plans to reduce staff by about 15%, or about 80,000 people, and argued the cuts were necessary to make the department more efficient. Collins posted a video statement on YouTube, with the comments turned off.
After Trump met with eight freed Israeli hostages in the Oval Office on Wednesday, he delivered an ultimatum to Hamas on multiple social media platforms, threatening the Palestinian militant group with annihilation if it does not immediately release all of the remaining captives held in Gaza.
Senate Democrats introduced a series of resolutions condemning Russia for the invasion of Ukraine, and daring Republicans to object. Republicans did object.
Twice in the past 24 hours, the White House has produced videos for social media platforms in which people effusively thank Donald Trump. The first video, “Thank you, President Trump”, featured 15 of Trump’s invited guests to his address to the joint session of Congress thanking him. The second video showed Trump’s Oval Office meeting with freed Israeli hostages, who also thanked him.
White House releases videos of Trump's guests and freed Israeli hostages thanking him
Twice in the past 24 hours, the White House has produced videos for social media platforms in which people effusively thank Donald Trump.
The first video, posted on YouTube on Tuesday evening under the headline, “Thank you, President Trump”, features 15 of the guests Trump invited to his address to the joint session of Congress thanking him for his leadership, one after the other.
The second video, posted on social networks on Wednesday, shows Trump’s Oval Office meeting with eight freed Israeli hostages, during which the former hostages stood and Trump remained seated behind his desk, beside a large illustration of the southeastern United States emblazoned with the words “Gulf of America”.
The White House video edit includes several of the former captives describing what they endured and expressing their thanks to Trump.
At one point, which was also captured in video posted on X by the Israeli journalist Yuna Leibzon, the former hostage Omer Shem Tov told Trump, of the hostages still in Gaza: “my family and I myself, we believe you’ve been sent by God to release them”.
Another former captive, Naama Levy, added: “You were our hope when we were there, and now you’re their hope”.
Trump replied: “So you didn’t think, until I came along, you didn’t think you were going to get out?”
“No” three of the freed hostages answered.
Two of the former hostages also thanked Trump again in messages recorded either before or after the meeting and included in the White House edit.
Near the end of the meeting, as the former hostages thanked him, the president said: “Wow… I’ve never had anything like this. I mean, I’ve saved a lot of people but I’ve never seen anything like this, where you lived under those conditions”.
Updated
