Closing summary
This concludes our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but joins us for live updates on the New York City mayoral debate starting at the top of the hour. Here are the latest developments:
The US treasury announced it is “imposing further sanctions as a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine”.
Donald Trump said that the “tremendous sanctions” on Russian oil firms were necessary because to pressure Vladimir Putin into stopping his war on Ukraine since, “every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations and then they don’t go anywhere.”
Trump argued that the East Wing of the White House, which is currently being demolished to make way for his new $300m ballroom, was not, in fact, part of what he considers the White House.
A federal district court judge in Portland, Oregon, rejected the Trump administration’s request to immediately lift a temporary restraining order that blocks the deployment of national guard troops in the city.
A federal judge in Chicago on Wednesday agreed to extend her order blocking Donald Trump’s deployment of national guard troops to the Chicago area, possibly by 30 days.
The revelation that a top federal prosecutor used an encrypted messaging application and had messages set to auto-delete after eight hours is “deeply troubling” and may be illegal, a watchdog group said.
As the government shutdown continued, Jeff Merkley, a Democratic senator from Oregon, yielded the Senate floor after speaking for 22 hour and 37 minutes to protest Trump’s authoritarian move to deploy troops to Democrat-run cities.
Trump argues White House East Wing was not part of the White House
Donald Trump argued on Wednesday that the East Wing of the White House, which is currently being demolished to make way for a new $300m ballroom, was not, in fact, part of what he considers the White House.
Asked by Jeff Mason of Reuters to respond to the fact that people have been surprised that the entire East Wing is being torn down, Trump said that the wing he described as a separate building “was never thought of as being much; it was a very small building.”
“Rather than allowing that to hurt a very expensive, beautiful building,” he continued, referring to the new ballroom, a decision was made to demolish the entire East Wing.
“In order to do it properly, we had to take down the existing structure,” Trump said.
Then, pointing at a model of the new ballroom on a table in front of him, and a new structure leading to the ballroom in the location where the East Wing used to be, Trump added: “The way it was shown, it looked like we were touching the White House. We don’t touch the White House.”
“That’s a bridge, a glass bridge going from the White House to the ballroom,” Trump said, of the new structure that will replace the East Wing.
When the veteran Reuters reporter asked Trump in a follow-up question what he would say to critics who say he has not been transparent enough about this plan to demolish part of the White House, Trump attacked the messenger.
“I haven’t been transparent? Really? I’ve shown this to everybody that would listen,” Trump said. “Third-rate reporters didn’t see it because they didn’t look. You’re a third-rate reporter. Always have been,” the president said.
Updated
