Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back at it on Thursday. Here are the latest developments:
Donald Trump was presented with yet another award apparently invented just for him, when he received a trophy for being the “undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal” from an industry executive. There is no such thing as clean coal.
In what just seems like a plot from Veep, the Pentagon gave the people guarding the border an anti-drone laser and border protection officers used it to shoot down a party balloon, causing the cancellation of all commercial flights in El Paso, Texas.
A document held by the US attorney general, Pam Bondi, during her combative appearance before the House judiciary committee suggests that the justice department is keeping a record of what lawmakers look at when they view unredacted copies of the Epstein files.
The narrowly divided US House passed the Republican-sponsored Save America Act, which would required proof of citizenship to register to vote and photo ID at the polls, imposing a barrier to voting that, research shows, more than 9% of US citizens of voting age, or 21.3 million people, do not have readily available.
The US House passed a resolution terminating the supposed national emergency declared by Trump to justify imposing tariffs on Canada. The president was not amused, but the fate of his tariffs is likely to be decided by the supreme court.
Evidence made public on Wednesday showed that Gregory Bovino, a border patrol chief who was the face of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts until last month, praised a federal agent who shot a Chicago woman last year.
Trump wins another award no one knew existed, this time as the 'undisputed champion' of claiming that coal is not destroying the planet
At a White House event to promote coal on Wednesday, Donald Trump was presented with yet another award that was apparently invented just for him, when he received a trophy for being the “undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal” from an industry executive.
There is, of course, no such thing as clean coal, but Trump has devoted himself to rebranding the climate destroying fossil fuel as not just clean but beautiful as well – in the way that an Oval Office dripping in gold fittings is beautiful.
As our colleague Dharna Noor reported earlier, the coal industry poured $3.5 million into efforts to elect Trump in 2024. Reports show the president’s efforts to keep aging coal plants open could push up already-soaring energy bills nationwide.
Trump grinned as he accepted the trophy and then sat down to sign an executive order directing the Pentagon to give preference to coal in long-term energy contracts.
Trump stated affection for the coal industry goes back to his first campaign in 2016, when he was presented with a miner’s helmet by the West Virginia Coal Association, an industry group that endorsed him, and briefly put it on to mime digging with a shovel.
After removing the helmet at that 2016 rally, Trump then launched into an extended riff on how it might have impacted his hair, and bemoaned the fact that he could no longer use aerosol hairspray over what he considered to be phony climate concerns.
“You know, you’re not allowed to use hairspray anymore because if affects the ozone. You know that, right?” Trump said to laughter at the time. “I said, ‘You mean to tell me’ — ’cause you know hairspray’s not like it used to be, it used to be real good,” he added, to more laughs. “Give me a mirror. But no, in the old days, you put the hairspray on, it was good. Today, you put the hairspray on, it’s good for 12 minutes, right?”
“I said, ‘Wait a minute — so if I take hairspray and if I spray it in my apartment, which is all sealed, you’re telling me that affects the ozone layer?’” “‘Yes.’” I say, no way, folks. No way!”
“No way!” he added to cheers. “That’s like a lot of the rules and regulations you people have in the mines, right? It’s the same kind of stuff.”
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