Closing summary
This bring our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a close for the day, but we will return on Thursday morning. Here are the latest developments:
Donald Trump said that he plans to extend the federal takeover of the DC Metropolitan Police for more than the legally mandated 30 days. “I don’t want to call national emergency. If I have to I will. But I think the Republicans in Congress will approve this pretty much unanimously,” Trump said.
Trump promised ‘very severe consequences’ if Vladimir Putin doesn’t agree to ceasefire at their Friday meeting in Alaska. He didn’t, however, elaborate on what those penalties will be.
Trump took part in a virtual meeting with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders ahead of his summit in Alaska with Putin which the German chancellor described as “constructive”. Zelenskyy confirmed that Trump said he would call him right after the meeting with Putin.
At the Kennedy Center, Trump announced that he would host this year’s honors himself.
California governor Gavin Newsom, who revels in trolling Trump on social media, used the president’s bizarre writing style to promote a news conference on his state’s plan to counter Texas gerrymandering, scheduled for Thursday at 11:30am Pacific Time.
The White House announced that Trump revoked an executive order issued by his predecessor, Joe Biden, which made it government policy to promote competition throughout the US economy. Unlike many of Trump’s orders, this one, which ended 72 federal initiatives to fight corporate monopolies and aid workers and consumers, was released without any publicity at all.
Trump’s pick to lead the Bureau of Labor Statistics, EJ Antoni, was in the crowd outside the Capitol on January 6 2021 when Trump supporters rioted in a failed effort to keep him in office.
Kari Lake plans to replace non-partisan Voice of America news with far-right Newsmax and One America News
Kari Lake, the former Arizona news anchor Donald Trump put in charge of dismantling Voice of America, the congressionally funded broadcaster mandated to deliver news to countries without free speech, told a federal judge on Wednesday that the broadcaster does not need hundreds of journalists because it is in talks to fill its airwaves with reporting from two far-right broadcasters: Newsmax and One America News.
In a sworn declaration filed in court on Wednesday, Lake told the judge, Royce Lamberth, that under her leadership, the US Agency for Global Media is “contracting with domestic news networks to obtain lawful permission to use, translate, and disseminate their content on USAGM-controlled means of transmission.”
“The goal is to share content of these other networks, which reflect different perspectives and tones, with the populations to which we are statutorily required to broadcast”, Lake added. “USAGM has already reached such an agreement with One America News Network and is engaged in ongoing discussions with Newsmax in pursuit of a similar agreement. The plan is to reach out to other networks to achieve similar agreements.”
Both One America News and Newsmax are openly partisan channels that work to elect Republican candidates and support Trump.
Voice of America was known for its rigorously non-partisan journalism and provided news and information to countries where independent reporting is rare or impossible.
