Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back at it on Wednesday. Here are the latest developments:
Donald Trump presented the Presidential Medal of Freedom to Charlie Kirk’s distraught, tearful widow, Erika Kirk.
Kirk’s widow praised her late husband and said that he would likely have run for president one day had he not been killed before his 32nd birthday.
Trump’s state department announced that it had revoked the visas of six foreign nationals who posted critical comments on social media about Kirk, in the wake of the conservative activist’s murder.
Trump said that a list of ‘Democrat programs’ that the White House plans to cut will be released on Friday.
Trump warned that Hamas must disarm ‘or we will disarm them’.
Trump announced on Tuesday that the United States has struck another small boat that he accuses of carrying drugs in waters off the coast of Venezuela, killing six people aboard.
The US government shutdown entered its 14th day, with no end in sight.
Katie Porter, the former congresswoman running for California governor, said in an interview that she regrets losing her temper in two video clips that went viral last week, but suggested that the state needs a “tough” leader.
Bondi repeats Trump's bizarre false claim that antifascists display identical signs
Speaking to Fox News on Tuesday night, the attorney general, Pam Bondi, repeated Donald Trump’s bizarre false claim that antifascists show up at protests with pre-purchased placards that all match.
“One of the things about antifa you’ve heard president Trump say multiple times,” Bondi told Sean Hannity, “they are very organized. You’re seeing people with thousands of signs that all match, pre-bought, pre-put together… someone is funding it.”
Trump has indeed argued, on numerous occasions in recent weeks, that he can tell that antifascists are being paid to protest because, he claims, they carry identical, pre-printed signs at rallies.
It is not clear what the president has been referring to, however, since news photographs and video of leftwing protests show no such thing.
Here are some recent images of protests in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles in recent months that Bondi said were organized by antifa. All feature the sort of handmade signs that Trump and Bondi claim are a sign of authentic protesters.
