Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the day in US politics for Wednesday. We will return, refreshed and ready to tackle Thursday’s developments in a matter of hours. Until then, here are some of the day’s most significant moments:
Speaking from the podium of the White House briefing room, Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused federal judges of ruling against the president for partisan reasons.
The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration is working on a plan to create a buffer zone along the southern border in New Mexico that would be occupied by active-duty US troops, empowered to detain migrants who cross into the United States unlawfully.
The White House told reporters that Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Thursday directing the secretary of education, Linda McMahon, to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure [of] the Department of Education”.
A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request for a restraining order to block Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” from taking over of the US Institute for Peace, after the institute accused Musk’s team of occupying the building by force.
Republican senator Lisa Murkowski said she was “disturbed” by the way federal workers have been treated but would not be “cowed” by the threat of a well-funded primary challenger backed by Musk’s fortune.
A North Dakota jury found Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to an energy company over protests against a pipeline being constructed in the state. Greenpeace said they will appeal the order for them to pay more than $660m in damages.
Officials at the US Federal Reserve cut their US economic growth forecasts and raised their projections for price growth as they kept interest rates on hold.
Updated
The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration is working on a plan to create a buffer zone along the southern border in New Mexico that would be occupied by active-duty US troops, empowered to detain migrants who cross into the United States unlawfully.
According to the Post’s report:
Those discussions have been underway for weeks, and they center, in part, on a section of border in New Mexico, officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to disclose details of the plan. In effect, the move would turn the buffer zone into an expansive satellite military installation, potentially allowing a greater portion of the Defense Department’s mammoth budget to pay for President Donald Trump’s border crackdown while creating new legal jeopardy for those caught trying to slip into the country from Mexico, these people said.
The effort would enable the most significant use yet of active-duty forces at the border under Trump, though any move to militarize the southern border’s buffer zone is certain to raise questions about whether employing the military in this way runs afoul of the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that prohibits active-duty troops from most law enforcement missions. …
By militarizing the buffer zone, the theory goes, any migrant apprehensions made by service members would be tantamount to catching trespassers on a military base: The troops involved would simply hold them until law enforcement arrives.
Calls to militarize the southern border are not new, but so far they have existed more in the realm of political rhetoric than reality.
In 2022, Blake Masters, a Senate candidate enthusiastically backed by Peter Thiel, the same tech billionaire who bankrolled JD Vance’s campaign that year, ran a campaign ad promising to do just that.
In 2018, Trump announced during a White House meeting with then defense secretary Jim Mattis, “we are going to be guarding our border with our military. That’s a big step”.
Although Trump’s announcement sparked a flurry of reports, in the Washington Post and elsewhere, that he was serious about the proposal, it was never enacted at scale.
One big difference between 2018 and 2025, however, is that Trump will not have to convince a sober, former general like Mattis to carry out his plan to divert military resources to domestic law enforcement, since his current defense secretary is a former weekend TV host who is far less likely to object.
