Closing summary
As Day 101 of the second Trump administration draws to a close, we are wrapping our live coverage here. But we will be back at it on Thursday morning. In the meantime, here’s an overview of the day’s developments:
Donald Trump dismissed concerns about the need for trade with China during a cabinet meeting on Wednesday. “You know, somebody said, ‘Oh, the shelves are going to be open’”, the president said, confusing empty shelves with open ones. “Well, maybe the children will have two dolls instead of 30 dolls” he continued. “And maybe the two dolls will cost a couple of bucks more than they would normally”.
During his confirmation hearing in the Senate on Wednesday, Trump’s nominee to lead the Drug Enforcement Administration, Terrance Cole, claimed that tattoos on the hand of Kilmar Ábrego García, who was deported to El Salvador from Maryland by mistake, proved that he was associated with the gang MS-13. However, the photo Cole was shown clearly did not have the figures M,S,1 or 3, which Donald Trump insisted to ABC News were tattooed on Ábrego García’s knuckles. A Salvadoran journalist who has written a book on the gang says that the tattoos have no such meaning.
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem has defended Rodney Scott, Trump’s nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP), after a Democratic senator and former CBP official accused him of mishandling the investigation into the 2010 death of an unauthorized border crosser.
The US Treasury department announced that the United States and Ukraine signed a deal on Wednesday to establish a reconstruction investment fund for the country. A Ukrainian official said that her nation would retain sole control of the country’s natural resources.
A Senate resolution to overturn Donald Trump’s tariffs, by declaring that there is no national emergency as the president says there is, narrowly failed to pass on Wednesday, with the vote count deadlocked at 49-49 as two senators who supported the move failing to vote.
A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to ensure immigrants held at Guantánamo Bay are given a chance to raise any concerns about their safety before deporting them to El Salvador or countries other than their places of origin.
Mohsen Mahdawi walked out of immigration detention after a federal judge in Vermont ordered his release. The Palestinian green card holder and student at Columbia University had been detained by the Trump administration on 14 April despite not being charged with a crime.
While the US economy shrank in the first three months of the year, according to official data, triggering fears of an American recession and a global economic slowdown, Trump continued to blame Joe Biden for the figures. “This is Biden’s Stock Market, not Trump’s,” the Trump wrote on Truth Social, adding that the contraction “has NOTHING TO DO WITH TARIFFS”.
Kamala Harris expected to condemn Trump's stunning power grab in new remarks
Kamala Harris will step back into the political spotlight on Wednesday night to deliver a sharp critique of Donald Trump, warning that his presidency has put the US at risk of a constitutional crisis.
The former vice-president has mostly kept a low profile since leaving the White House in January following her bitter defeat to Trump. Now, a day after Trump celebrated 100 days in office with a rally in Michigan, she is expected to deliver a forceful renunciation of the president’s stunning power grabs that have prompted warnings of creeping authoritarianism.
In her remarks, Harris, 60, will warn of a looming constitutional crisis and urge Americans to collectively join the fight to protect rights and freedoms under threat by a president seeking unchecked powers, according to a person familiar with the content of her speech. She is expected to commend leaders whose dissent has galvanized the public, including Democratic senators Cory Booker, who delivered a record-breaking 25-hour speech to show resistance to Trump, and Chris Van Hollen, who secured a visit with a man wrongly deported to El Salvador by the administration.
She is also expected to emphasize that the chaos of Trump’s return to power is by design, laid out in the conservative policy blueprint Project 2025. During the campaign, Trump sought to distance himself from the unpopular initiative but his actions as president follow the plan closely – from his chain-saw approach to downsizing the federal government, to his war on diversity, equity and inclusion policies and “gender ideology”.
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