Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, on the fifth anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol by his supporters. Here are the latest developments:
Donald Trump made a stunning announcement that the interim authorities in Venezuela, who apparently now serve at his pleasure, will let him sell between $1.8 and $3bn worth of their country’s oil, which made real a fantasy the president has been sharing in public for at least 15 years, about using the US military to “take the oil” of conquered nations.
Trump is actively discussing options for “acquiring Greenland”, including the use of the US military, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said.
Mark Carney, the Canadian prime minister, stressed at a meeting with his Danish counterpart, Mette Frederiksen, that “the future of Greenland and Denmark” must be “decided solely by the people of Denmark and Greenland.”
Senator Ruben Gallego, an Arizona Democrat and former marine who fought in Iraq, called the news that Trump is considering an invasion of Greenland “INSANE” and called for Congress to block it.
Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, hardened her tone against the United States on Tuesday, saying in a televised address that “no external agent governs Venezuela”. Hours later, Trump announced that the interim government was giving him up to 50 million barrels of its oil.
The secretary of state, Marco Rubio, told lawmakers that the president was just using threats of military action in Greenland to convince Denmark to sell the territory to the United States, the Wall Street Journal reports.
Lars Løkke Rasmussen, the foreign minister of Denmark, told reporters that he hopes to meet Rubio soon, with his Greenlandic counterpart, to try to correct what he called the false information Trump has spread about Greenland.
Senators Jeanne Shaheen, a New Hampshire Democrat, and Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, issued a bipartisan statement urging Trump to accept that “Greenland is not for sale”.
Citing what it called concerns about fraud, the Department of Health and Human Services announced on Tuesday that it froze more than $10bn in federal childcare and family assistance funds for state-run programs in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York – five states with Democratic governors that voted against Donald Trump in all three elections since 2016.
The action applies to three programs overseen by the health department’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF): the Child Care and Development Fund, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Social Services Block Grant.
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