Trump has restarted construction of his border wall, with 85 miles of new barrier in various stages of construction and planning, Leavitt says.
Between Trump’s inauguration and the 100-day mark, “only 9 illegal aliens were released into the US”, Leavitt says, with the number of unaccompanied children arriving at the border also hitting a record low.
Total attempted crossings at the southwest bordering fell to a record low in March, she adds, with border patrol encountering just 7,000 people that month.
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Trump to sign executive orders stepping up crackdown on sanctuary states and cities
Trump will sign executive orders law and order, and another on sanctuary cities, Leavitt announces.
The first will “strengthen and unleash America’s law enforcement to pursue criminals and protect citizens”, she says.
The second is “centered around protecting American communities from criminal aliens, and it will direct the attorney general and secretary of homeland security to publish a list of state and local jurisdictions that have shucked the enforcement of federal immigration laws”.
These executive orders will bring the number signed by Trump so far this presidency to more than 140 in 100 days, approaching the number signed by Joe Biden’s entire term, Leavitt notes.
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White House press briefing with Trump's border czar
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is to hold a press conference shortly with Trump’s border czar Tom Homan, expected to focus on a key administration talking point – the dramatic fall in illegal border crossings in the last three months. I’ll bring you all the key lines here.
Ahead of the briefing, the White House has lined the driveway with posters of illegal aliens that have been arrested for violent crimes.
At the White House where an early morning press briefing was called for 830am
— Elad Eliahu (@elaadeliahu) April 28, 2025
The WH driveway is lined with posters of arrested illegal aliens arrested for rape, murder, sexual assault of minors, and other crimes pic.twitter.com/RmOhwfu84c
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Here is an extract from The Atlantic’s piece on Trump’s first 100 days – in an interview secured after initially being canceled by the president over previous reporting from the journalists, who then reached the president on his cellphone – detailing some of the key development’s of his second term so far.
The president seemed exhilarated by everything he had managed to do in the first two months of his second term: He had begun a purge of diversity efforts from the federal government; granted clemency to nearly 1,600 supporters who had participated in the invasion of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, including those caught beating police officers on camera; and signed 98 executive orders and counting (26 of them on his first day in office). He had fired independent regulators; gutted entire agencies; laid off great swaths of the federal workforce; and invoked 18th-century wartime powers to use against a criminal gang from Venezuela. He had adjusted tariffs like a DJ spinning knobs in the booth, upsetting the rhythms of global trade and inducing vertigo in the financial markets. He had raged at the leader of Ukraine, a democratic ally repelling an imperialist invasion, for not being “thankful”— and praised the leader of the invading country, Russia, as “very smart,” reversing in an instant 80 years of US foreign-policy doctrine, and prompting the countries of Nato to prepare for their own defense, without the protective umbrella of American power, for the first time since 1945.
He had empowered one of his top political donors, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, to slice away at the federal government and take control of its operating systems. He had disemboweled ethics and anti-corruption architecture installed after Watergate, and had declared that he, not the attorney general, was the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer. He had revoked Secret Service protection and security clearances from political opponents, including some facing Iranian death threats for carrying out actions Trump himself had ordered in his first term. He had announced plans to pave over part of the Rose Garden, and he had redecorated the Oval Office — gold trim and gold trophies and gold frames to go with an array of past presidential portraits, making the room look like a Palm Beach approximation of an 18th-century royal court.
Old foes were pleading for his grace. Meta – whose founder, Mark Zuckerberg, had become an enthusiastic supplicant – had paid $25 million to settle a civil lawsuit with Trump that many experts believed was meritless. Amazon’s founder, Jeff Bezos, the owner of The Washington Post, announced that he was banning his opinion writers from holding certain opinions — and then joined Trump for dinner the same night at the White House.
I’ll bring you some more key lines from the piece shortly.
Trump to sign order requiring list of sanctuary cities and states, official says
Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday directing the attorney general and the secretary of homeland security to identify within a month the cities and states that are not complying with federal immigration laws, a White House official said Monday.
Last week, a federal judge blocked Trump’s administration from withholding federal funding from more than a dozen so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown.
“President Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday escalating his battle against Democratic-led states and cities that don’t fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities,” a White House official said.
The order was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Trump’s schedule calls for him to sign executive orders at 5pm ET.
Downing Street has said that it was “undoubtedly good” to see the meeting between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy at the weekend.
Asked whether the UK prime minister had been reassured by the meeting and the language from the White House in recent days, the prime minister’s official spokesperson said: “It was undoubtedly good to see that meeting between president Trump and president Zelenskyy.”
He also said that Keir Starmer had a “very good” meeting with Zelenskyy, as well as conversations with other leaders “in the margins” including Trump and French president Emmanuel Macron while he was in Rome for the funeral of Pope Francis over the weekend.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and New Jersey senator Cory Booker were holding a sit-in protest and discussion on Sunday on the steps of the US Capitol in opposition to Republicans’ proposed budget plan.
Billed as an “Urgent Conversation with the American People”, the livestreamed discussion comes before Congress’s return to session on Monday, where Democrats hope to stall Republicans’ economic legislative agenda. Throughout the day, they were joined by other Democratic lawmakers, including the senator Raphael Warnock, who spoke as the sit-in passed the 10-hour mark.
The proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year, the New York Times reported on Friday, includes cuts to programs that support childcare, health research, education, housing assistance, community development and the elderly.
The Trump administration has removed a two-year-old US citizen from the country “with no meaningful process”, according to a federal judge, while in a different case the authorities deported the mother of a one-year-old girl, separating them indefinitely.
Lawyers in the two cases, the first in Louisiana and the second in Florida, say their clients were arrested at routine check-ins at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) offices and were given virtually no opportunity to speak with them or family members.
They are the latest examples of the White House cracking down on documented immigrants, including green card holders and even citizens who have the status by birth or naturalization. The unorthodox policy and the frequent avoidance of due process has brought about a clash with the judicial branch of the US government in a battle over the constitution.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the National Immigration Project and several other allied groups said in a statement that such actions are a “shocking – although increasingly common – abuse of power”.
Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the theft last week of the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse as she ate at a Washington DC restaurant, officials said Sunday.
Noem’s purse was nabbed on Easter Sunday and reportedly contained about $3,000 in cash and her keys, driver’s license, passport and homeland security badge. The homeland security department said Noem had cash in her purse to pay for gifts, dinner and other activities for her family on Easter.
A suspect was taken into custody without incident in Washington after an investigation by the US Secret Service and the Metropolitan police department, according to a statement from Matt McCool, a Secret Service agent in Washington.
That suspect was arrested on Saturday, the police department said.
President Donald Trump has said he thinks Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ready to give up Crimea, despite his Ukrainian counterpart’s previous assertions on the Black Sea peninsula that was annexed by Russia in 2014.
Speaking to reporters at an airport in New Jersey on Sunday a day after meeting with Zelenskyy at the Vatican, Trump said “Oh, I think so,” in response to a question on whether he thought Zelenskyy was ready to “give up” the territory.
Zelenskyy said last week that Ukraine could not accept US recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, after Trump accused him of intransigence on the issue. Zelenskyy on Friday insisted the territory was the “property of the Ukrainian people”. He did not immediately respond to Trump’s latest comments.
Two sets of peace plans published by Reuters on Friday showed that the US is proposing Moscow retain the territory it has captured, including the strategic Crimean peninsula.
Canadians head to the polls in a federal election overshadowed by fury at Donald Trump’s threats to the country’s sovereignty and fears over his escalating trade war.
In the final days of a month-long campaign – described by all party leaders as the most consequential general election in a lifetime – the US president yet again re-inserted himself into the national discussion, with fresh threats to annex the country.
“We don’t need anything from Canada. And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state,” he told Time magazine on Friday.
Also overshadowing the final day of electioneering was a deadly attack at a bustling street festival in Vancouver that left the country reeling and forced the prime minister, Mark Carney, to briefly suspend his campaign in order to make sombre remarks to the nation.
Trump to step up crackdown on 'sanctuary cities' – report
President Donald Trump plans to sign an executive order on Monday directing the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security to identify within a month the cities and states that are not complying with federal immigration laws, the Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
Last week, a federal judge blocked Trump’s administration from withholding federal funding from more than a dozen so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with Trump’s hardline immigration crackdown.
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China's foreign ministry says Xi and Trump did not have a call recently
Good morning and welcome to our US politics coverage as China insisted that “no phone call” took place recently between President Xi Jinping and his US counterpart, after Donald Trump said he had spoken with the Chinese leader.
The world’s two biggest economies are locked in an escalating tit-for-tat trade battle triggered by Trump’s levies on Chinese goods, which have reached 145 percent on many products.
In an interview conducted on 22 April with Time magazine and published Friday, Trump insisted Chinese leader Xi called him despite Beijing denying there had been any contact between the two countries over their bitter trade dispute.
The US president did not say when the call took place or specify what was discussed.
Asked about the comments Monday, foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun said: “As far as I know, there has been no phone call between the two heads of state recently.”
“China and the United States are not conducting consultations or negotiations on tariff issues,” he added.
The trade dispute continues to rumble as the US prepares to mark Trump’s 100 first days in power with tumultuous changes at home and abroad. In other news:
Canadians prepared to go the polls in an election overshadowed by fury at Trump’s threats to the country’s sovereignty and fears over his escalating trade war.
Donald Trump appears to have warmed to Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the two presidents met at the Vatican, with the US leader emerging from talks with a plea for Vladimir Putin: “stop shooting”. Trump on Sunday said Zelenskyy “wants to do something good” for Ukraine and is “working hard”, adding he was also “surprised and disappointed” that Russia continued to strike Ukraine after discussions between his peace envoy, Steve Witkoff, and Putin.
While speaking to reporters, Trump hinted at a two-week deadline to strike or at least make progress on a peace deal. Trump has previously threatened to walk away from negotiations if a swift agreement is not reached.
More than 300 law enforcement officers from at least 10 federal agencies raided an illegal after-hours nightclub in Colorado Springs early on Sunday, arresting more than 100 people authorities said were undocumented immigrants and seizing guns, cocaine, meth and pink cocaine. More than a dozen active-duty military members were detained as well, authorities said.
The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said “there is a path” to an agreement with China over tariffs after he had interactions with his Chinese counterparts last week in Washington, but he continued to defend Trump’s trade plan as “strategic uncertainty” amid accusations the White House was sending mixed signals over its policy.
Trump’s private golf resort in South Florida will next week host one of the world’s leading purveyors of chlorine dioxide, a potentially life-threatening form of industrial bleach that is claimed without evidence to be a cure for cancer, Covid and autism.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries and New Jersey senator Cory Booker were holding a sit-in protest and discussion on Sunday on the steps of the US Capitol in opposition to the Republicans’ proposed budget plan. Billed as an “Urgent Conversation with the American People”, the livestreamed discussion comes before Congress’s return to session on Monday, where Democrats hope to stall Republicans’ economic legislative agenda.
Two suspects have been arrested in connection with the theft last week of the US homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse as she ate at a Washington DC restaurant, officials said on Sunday. Noem’s purse was nabbed on Easter Sunday and reportedly contained about $3,000 in cash and her keys, driver’s license, passport and homeland security badge. The homeland security department said Noem had cash in her purse to pay for gifts, dinner and other activities for her family on Easter.
Trump said he would restore Columbus Day in full and shirk Joe Biden’s practice of celebrating an Indigenous People’s Day in parallel to the public holiday. “I’m bringing Columbus Day back from the ashes,” he wrote on social media, accusing Democrats of trying to “destroy Christopher Columbus, his reputation, and all of the Italians that love him so much.”
