Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day. Here are some of the day’s major developments:
Donald and Melania Trump visited Kerrville, Texas, one week after flooding killed at least 120 people, as more than 170 remain missing. They received a briefing on the recovery effort, and held a campaign-style roundtable event in which the president lavished praise on local, state and federal officials, who in turn praised him. The president reacted with hostility to a question from a reporter who said that grieving families wanted to know why their loved ones had not been alerted to the danger in time. He was more pleased with correspondents from partisan conservative outlets and podcasts who praised him and attacked Democrats.
Florida’s most senior Catholic leader, Archbishop Thomas Wenski, condemned the new immigration detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz”, and called the gleeful rhetoric around it “intentionally provocative” as well as “unbecoming of public officials and corrosive of the common good”.
A farm worker “has died of injuries they sustained as a result of yesterday’s immigration enforcement action” in Ventura county, California, the United Farm Workers union said.
Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary who oversees Fema, the federal emergency management agency, let call center contracts expire the day after the catastrophic floods and failed to renew the contracts for another five days, the New York Times reported. As a result, two-thirds of calls from survivors were left unanswered.
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Donald Trump landed in New Jersey a short time ago and is on his way to his golf club in Bedminister. Social media evidence suggests that he appears to have spent the flight from Texas engaged in his favorite pastime: watching Fox News, and using social media to share with the world his thoughts on what he sees on the screen.
That, at least, is the well-informed guess of Acyn Torabi, who posts clips of rightwing news broadcasts on Fox and other channels on social media.
As Torabi noted a short time ago, Trump’s latest social media post, expressing outrage that rocks were thrown at the vehicles of immigration officers in California on Thursday, appeared just after footage of that was broadcast during Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox Friday evening.
“I am on my way back from Texas, and watched in disbelief as THUGS were violently throwing rocks and bricks at ICE Officers while they were moving down a roadway in their car and/or official vehicle,” Trump wrote.
“Therefore, I am directing Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem, and Border Czar, Tom Homan, to instruct all ICE, Homeland Security, or any other Law Enforcement Officer who is on the receiving end of thrown rocks, bricks, or any other form of assault, to stop their car, and arrest these SLIMEBALLS, using whatever means is necessary to do so,” the president added.
Without knowing that the president often fails to distinguish between what he sees in real life and on TV, readers might have guessed that Trump had just witnessed this during his visit to Texas. However, Torabi, who monitors Fox closely, was able to deduce that Trump was almost certainly referring to a segment on Ingraham’s show that had been broadcast minutes before Trump’s post.
What’s more, Trump’s demand for arrests came after Ingraham made exactly that demand on her show after she played the video.
“They got to pull these cars over and throw these guys down on the ground and arrest that, that’s what they got to do next time,” Ingraham said, as if speaking to an audience of one.
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