Closing summary
Thank you for following our live coverage. This blog is closing, but we will be back on Friday to chronicle the second Trump administration.
A federal judge in Seattle blocked Donald Trump’s executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US. US district judge John Coughenour, a Reagan appointee, issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing the order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.
The Senate voted to advance the nomination of Pete Hegseth to become the next US secretary of defense, despite some Republican opposition. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska announced they would oppose Hegseth’s nomination, making them the first two Republican lawmakers to publicly reject one of Trump’s cabinet picks.
The Associated Press reports that Hegseth told Senator Elizabeth Warren in writing that he paid $50,000 to the woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017.
Donald Trump signed an executive order to support the cryptocurrency industry, as his daughter Ivanka warned investors not to buy “a fake crypto coin called ‘Ivanka Trump’ or ‘$IVANKA’”.
Newark’s mayor denounced a warrantless federal immigration raid on a business in his city. Mayor Ras J Baraka said his city “will not stand idly by” after citizens, including a veteran, were detained.
The Senate voted to confirm John Ratcliffe as CIA director, giving Trump the second member of his new cabinet. The Senate voted to confirm Ratcliffe, a former Texas representative and director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, by 74-25, with 20 Democrats and one independent joining Republicans in backing the nomination.
Trump made a combative return to the world stage in an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, accusing oil producers of prolonging the Ukraine war by failing to cut prices and threatening tariffs on all US imports. He repeated his call for Nato countries to dramatically increase defence spending and complained about what he called an “unfair” trading relationship with China.
The state department has frozen all applications for passports with “X” sex markers and changes to gender identity on existing passports, following a new executive order signed by Trump on his first day of office. “The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable,” according to an internal email from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, that was shared with the Guardian.
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Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship through an executive order may have outraged a federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan, who called it “blatantly unconstitutional” on Thursday, but the effort thrilled one longtime advocate of the move, John Eastman.
Eastman, the conservative legal scholar who devised the plot to deny Joe Biden’s 2020 victory by submitting slates of fake electors to Congress, and who was indicted on conspiracy, fraud and forgery charges in Arizona, has argued for decades that the 14th amendment to the constitution does not guarantee citizenship to children born to non-citizens.
“The left is going bonkers over President Trump’s Exec. Order on birthright citizenship,” Eastman wrote gleefully on Wednesday. The lawsuits filed to block Trump’s order, he added, made what he called “the false claim that the issue was settled 150 years ago”.
Eastman, a fellow at the far-right Claremont Institute, came to Trump’s attention thanks to an appearance on Fox News in 2019 that led to an invitation to the Oval Office.
In 2020, Eastman’s fringe reading of the 14 amendment was briefly a campaign issue when he argued in a Newsweek op-ed, the publication later apologized for, that Kamala Harris was not entitled to citizenship when she was born in Oakland, California, in 1964 to immigrant parents – and so, was not eligible to ever be vice-president or president.
According to Eastman, the amendment granting citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof”, should be read to exclude the children of people who are not US citizens when their child is born.
Harris, he wrote, had no claim to citizenship at birth, since her parents were still, at the time, “subject” not to the jurisdiction of the United States but to their native lands of India and Jamaica.
An editor’s note added to Eastman’s Newsweek piece after it was published said:
“This op-ed is being used by some as a tool to perpetuate racism and xenophobia. We apologize. The essay, by John Eastman, was intended to explore a minority legal argument about the definition of who is a ‘natural-born citizen’ in the United States. But to many readers, the essay inevitably conveyed the ugly message that Senator Kamala Harris, a woman of color and the child of immigrants, was somehow not truly American. The op-ed was never intended to spark or to take part in the racist lie of Birtherism”.
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Newark’s mayor denounces warrantless federal immigration raid on business
In a blistering statement, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ras J Baraka, denounced a federal immigration raid on a business in his city, in which, he says, citizens, including a veteran, were detained.
“Today, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided a local establishment in the City of Newark, detaining undocumented residents as well as citizens, without producing a warrant. One of the detainees is a U.S. military veteran who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned. This egregious act is in plain violation of the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees ‘the right of the people be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures … ’
Newark, the Democratic mayor added, “will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized”.
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Republican lawmakers reportedly sent sexually explicit texts to Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump aide who testified to the January 6 committee.
The Washington Post reports that it has seen correspondence from last June in which an aide to House speaker Mike Johnson warned Republican colleagues not to subpoena former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson due to fears that doing so could reveal “sexually explicit texts that lawmakers sent her”.
The warning came after Representative Barry Loudermilk, a George Republican, had publicly floated the idea of forcing Hutchinson to testify before a panel working to undermine the January 6 select committee’s findings.
According to the Post reporter Jacqueline Alemany, who spoke to an unnamed “person familiar with the effort” to block the subpoena and who reviewed correspondence related to that effort: “[A] Johnson aide told Loudermilk’s staff that multiple colleagues had raised concerns with the speaker’s office about the potential for public disclosure of ‘sexual texts from members who were trying to engage in sexual favors’ with Hutchinson.”
It was Hutchinson who made public the allegation that Trump had attacked his own Secret Service agents after his speech on 6 January 2021, when they refused his order to drive him to the Capitol before the riot.
Trump, and the agents, subsequently denied that allegation, but it has apparently haunted the president, who brought it up, entirely unprompted, during remarks to supporters in the Capitol this week following his inauguration.
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The US House on Thursday passed an anti-abortion bill that claims to protect babies “born alive” after attempted abortions – a bill, abortion rights advocates say, that misrepresents and stigmatizes excruciating medical situations.
The bill, the Born Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, requires medical providers to “preserve the life and health” of any children born after attempted abortions or face criminal penalties. Republicans, who have pursued this kind of federal legislation for years, have framed the law as a common-sense defense against infanticide.
However, abortion rights supporters fear the bill would also apply in situations where, due to pregnancy or fetal complications, women give birth to infants with no chance of survival. In those scenarios, women may prefer that their children are offered palliative care.
The vast majority of US abortions take place before fetal viability, which tends to occur at around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Infanticide is also already illegal.
The passage of the bill marks the first anti-abortion legislative victory of the second Trump administration, but the bill is unlikely to become law anytime soon. Earlier this week, the US Senate blocked a similar bill from advancing.
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Hegseth reportedly told senator he paid $50,000 to woman who accused him of sexual assault
The Associated Press reports that Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s nominee for defense secretary, told Senator Elizabeth Warren in writing that he paid $50,000 to the woman who accused him of sexual assault in 2017.
The answers, which were seen by the AP, were provided to Warren in response to additional questions she had for Hegseth as part of the vetting process.
Hegseth’s attorney, Timothy Parlatore, declined to comment to the news agency on the dollar figure Thursday. Hegseth has insisted that the encounter was consensual and denied any wrongdoing. During his confirmation hearing last week Hegseth said that he was “falsely accused” and was completely cleared.
At his conformation hearing last week, Warren grilled Hegseth over his “degrading statements about women in combat roles” in a contentious exchange.
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As Donald Trump signed an executive order to support cryptocurrency industry on Thursday, his daughter Ivanka warned investors that “a fake crypto coin called ‘Ivanka Trump’ or ‘$IVANKA’ is being promoted without my consent or approval”.
The president was flanked by David Sacks, a venture capitalist who is the new “White House AI & Crypto Czar”, as he signed the order to create a working group on digital assets, “tasked with developing a Federal regulatory framework governing digital assets, including stablecoins, and evaluating the creation of a strategic national digital assets stockpile”.
As our colleague Callum Jones reported, in the past week, “the president and his wife, Melania, each announced their own respective crypto coins ahead of his inauguration. Both were valued at billions of dollars as Trump took the oath of office on Monday.”
Trump also signed a second order on artificial intelligence, “to sustain and enhance America’s global AI dominance in order to promote human flourishing, economic competitiveness, and national security”.
On Wednesday, two of Trump’s supporters in the field of AI, Elon Musk and Sam Altman, bickered in public over the seriousness of an AI infrastructure initiative the president had unveiled on Tuesday.
As the Financial Times columnist Simon Kuper wrote in September, Sacks, like Musk, was born in apartheid-era South Africa, before moving to the US aged five, to grow up in a South African diaspora family in Tennessee.
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Trumps claims 800,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in Ukraine
In remarks to reporters at the White House after signing a new batch of executive orders, Donald Trump claimed that Russia has lost a far higher number of soldiers fighting in Ukraine than experts and researchers estimate.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine is “ready to negotiate a deal; he’s ready to stop” the war, Trump said, because he has “lost a lot of soldiers”.
“Russia lost more soldiers,” Trump said, “They lost 800,000.” Trump has cited that death toll, without giving any idea of his source, at least three times since taking office this week.
The independent Russian news site Mediazona, working with the BBC’s Russian news service and a team of volunteers, reported in November that they had had identified the names of 80,973 Russian military personnel killed in the Russia-Ukraine war since February 2022.
Earlier this week, Trump told reporters that “almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed; about 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers were killed”.
As the New York Times reports, Russian researchers and journalists have estimated that Russia had suffered more than 150,000 battlefield deaths, and the independent Ukrainian war correspondent Yurii Butusov reported on YouTube last month that his sources inside Ukraine’s armed forces told him that 105,000 soldiers have been “irreversibly lost”, with 70,000 killed and 35,000 missing. That’s a far higher death toll the 43,000 soldiers that President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed have been killed as of 8 December 2024, but far lower than Trump’s estimate.
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The day so far
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
A federal judge in Seattle blocked Donald Trump’s executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US. US district judge John Coughenour issued a temporary restraining order preventing the administration from enforcing the order, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.
The Senate voted to advance the nomination of Pete Hegseth to become the next US secretary of defense, despite some Republican opposition. Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska announced they would oppose Hegseth’s nomination, making them the first two Republican lawmakers to publicly reject one of Trump’s cabinet picks.
The Senate voted to confirm John Ratcliffe as CIA director, giving Trump the second member of his new cabinet. The Senate voted to confirm Ratcliffe, a former Texas representative and director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, by 74-25, with 20 Democrats and one independent joining Republicans in backing the nomination.
Trump made a combative return to the world stage in an address to the World Economic Forum in Davos, accusing oil producers of prolonging the Ukraine war by failing to cut prices and threatening tariffs on all US imports. He repeated his call for Nato countries to dramatically increase defence spending and complained about what he called an “unfair” trading relationship with China.
The state department has frozen all applications for passports with “X” sex markers and changes to gender identity on existing passports, following a new executive order signed by Trump on his first day of office. “The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable,” according to an internal email from the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, that was shared with the Guardian.
Trump has ended security detail for three of his former administration officials so far since returning to the White House: his former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, former top aide Brian Hook and former national security adviser John Bolton.
Trump held his first official call with a foreign leader since returning to the White House, speaking with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, on Wednesday. In its readout of the call, the Saudi state-run Saudi Press Agency said the crown prince told Trump that he wanted to invest $600bn in the US over the next four years.
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Donald Trump signed a flurry of new executive orders on Thursday, including an order aiming to declassify federal records relating to the assassinations of John F Kennedy, Robert F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.
The order directs the director of national intelligence and the attorney general to develop a plan within 15 days to declassify the remaining John F Kennedy records and within 45 days for the other two cases, Associated Press reports.
Speaking to reporters, Trump said: “Everything will be revealed.”
Reuters reports that Trump also signed an order to create a cryptocurrency working group, and that additionally he signed pardons for 23 anti-abortion protesters.
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Donald Trump “overreached by a mile” with his attempt to dismantle the longstanding constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, the California attorney general, Rob Bonta, said.
California along with a coalition of states and the city of San Francisco are suing the administration over an executive order issued just hours after Trump was sworn into office on Monday that would deny automatic citizenship to some children born in the United States – a move they argue is in “flagrant violation” of the US constitution.
“Just because he’s the president doesn’t mean he can change the US constitution,” Bonta, a Democrat, said in an interview this week. “In fact, it is absolutely clear – it is civics 101 – that he cannot.”
The lawsuit, led by California, New Jersey and Massachusetts and filed in the US district court for Massachusetts, argues the order would cause “irreparable harm” to the states and their residents by denying citizenship rights to the US-born children whose parents are not lawful residents.
A second multi-state lawsuit challenging the order was filed in the western district of Washington, where a federal judge on Thursday temporarily blocked the order from taking effect. The American Civil Liberties Union and other groups representing pregnant women whose children would be affected by the order have also sued.
Senate votes to advance Hegseth as Trump's defense secretary
The Senate has voted 51 to 49 to advance Pete Hegseth’s nomination to become secretary of defense, despite grave objections from Democrats over his behavior and qualifications to lead the US military.
All but two Republicans, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, voted to advance his nomination, clearing his way for a vote on his confirmation later this week.
The former combat veteran and Fox News host faces allegations of sexual assault, excessive alcohol use and financial mismanagement.
Although he has denied the allegation of sexual assault, Hegseth paid a settlement to a woman who accused him of rape in 2017. A new claim emerged this week in an affidavit from Hegseth’s former sister-in-law who claimed he was abusive to his second wife to the pont that she feared for her safety. Hegseth has denied the allegation.
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Susan Collins votes against Hegseth nomination
The Senate is currently voting on a key procedural motion to end debate on Pete Hegseth’s nomination for secretary of defense.
Susan Collins, the Republican senator of Maine, has voted against Hegseth’s nomination, joining the Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski.
In a statement, Collins said she was “concerned” that Hegseth “does not have the experience and perspective necessary to succeed in the job”.
She also expressed concern about “multiple statements” that Hegseth has made about women serving in the military, adding:
He and I had a candid conversation in December about his past statements and apparently evolving views. I am not convinced that his position on women serving in combat roles has changed.
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Senate votes to confirm John Ratcliffe as CIA director
The Senate voted on Thursday to confirm John Ratcliffe as CIA director, giving Donald Trump the second member of his new cabinet.
The Senate voted to confirm Ratcliffe by 74-25, with 20 Democrats and one independent joining Republicans in backing the nomination.
Ratcliffe, a former Texas representative, previously served as director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term.
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The Senate health committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Robert F Kennedy Jr, Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, on 30 January at 10am ET.
Kennedy will also testify before the Senate finance committee on 29 January.
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Republican senator Lisa Murkowski, in a statement announcing she would vote against confirming Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon, pointed to his past behaviors with women.
“I remain concerned about the message that confirming Mr Hegseth sends to women currently serving and those aspiring to join,” Murkowski said.
Allegations of excessive drinking and aggressive actions toward women, which Hegseth has denied, show that his behaviors “starkly contrast” with what is expected of the US military, she said.
She noted that behavior that Hegseth has acknowledged, “including infidelity on multiple occasions”, shows a lack of judgment.
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Here’s more on the decision by a federal judge in Seattle to temporarily block Donald Trump’s executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US.
US district judge John Coughenour heard 25 minutes of arguments before siding with four Democratic-led states that sought the temporary restraining order.
“I am having trouble understanding how a member of the bar could state unequivocally that this order is constitutional,” the judge told Trump administration lawyers.
“It just boggles my mind.”
Before justice department attorney Brett Shumate had even finished talking, Coughenour said he had signed a temporary restraining order.
“I’ve been on the bench for over four decades,” Coughenour, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said.
“I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as this one. This is a blatantly unconstitutional order.”
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Lisa Murkowski becomes first GOP senator to oppose Hegseth's defense secretary nomination
Lisa Murkowski, the Republican senator from Alaska, announced she would oppose Pete Hegseth’s nomination to be secretary of defense.
In a statement posted to X, Murkowski said she had met with Hegseth and “carefully” reviewed his writings, various reports, and other “pertinent” materials.
After thorough evaluation, I must conclude that I cannot in good conscience support his nomination for Secretary of Defense.
She said she had not taken this decision “lightly”, adding that she believed that Hegseth’s prior roles “do not demonstrate to me that he is prepared for such immense responsibility”.
Hegseth faces a key procedural vote on Thursday afternoon.
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Donald Trump spoke with the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, on Wednesday marking his first official call with a foreign leader since returning to the White House.
The two leaders discussed “efforts to bring stability to the Middle East, bolster regional security, and combat terrorism”, according to the White House. It added:
Additionally, they discussed the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s international economic ambitions over the next four years as well as trade and other opportunities to increase the mutual prosperity of the United States and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
In its readout of the call, the Saudi state-run Saudi Press Agency said the crown prince told Trump that he wanted to invest $600bn in the US over the next four years.
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Judge blocks Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship
A federal judge has temporarily blocked Donald Trump’s executive order ending the constitutional guarantee of birthright citizenship, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional”.
US district judge John Coughenour ruled in the case brought by the states of Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon, which argue the 14th amendment and supreme court case law have cemented birthright citizenship.
That executive order, which Trump signed on Monday after taking office, directs US agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the US if neither their mother nor father is a US citizen or legal permanent resident.
The executive order has already become the subject of multiple lawsuits, with civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states calling it flagrantly unconstitutional.
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The Department of Justice has ordered its civil rights division to halt new cases, further signalling the new administration’s hostility to racial and gender equality since Donald Trump’s return to power.
The decision came amid a blur of frenzied activity across a range of sectors that sent out simultaneous signals of incipient purges and revenge against political opponents, along with a determination to act on radical campaign pledges.
The call to halt civil rights cases – set out in an instruction to Kathleen Wolfe, the new acting head of the justice department’s civil rights division – followed an earlier order putting staff on federal diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs on immediate leave as a prelude to shutting such programs down.
Activists called the move “unprecedented” and warned that it indicated a government intention to abandon civil rights and protections against discrimination that have been enshrined in legislation since the 1950s and 1960s.
Rubio instructs staff to freeze passport applications with ‘X’ sex markers
The US state department has frozen all applications for passports with “X” sex markers and changes to gender identity on existing passports, following a new executive order signed by Donald Trump on his first day of office.
In an internal email shared with the Guardian, the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, instructed department staff on Thursday to implement the strict new guidelines for official documentation.
“The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable,” the email read.
Rubio’s directive states that “sex, and not gender, shall be used” in official documents including passports and consular report of birth abroad documents.
State department staff on Thursday were ordered to “suspend any application requesting an X sex marker” and to “suspend any application where the applicant is seeking to change their sex marker” from the definition provided in the executive order. The policy affects both current and future passport applications.
Donald Trump has ended security detail for three of his former administration officials so far since returning to the White House.
Mike Pompeo, Trump’s former secretary of state, Brian Hook, a former top aide, and John Bolton, his former national security adviser, have had their security protections revoked within 72 hours of Trump’s second term.
Trump’s decision to remove their security details, which were believed to be provided by the state department, comes despite warnings from the Biden administration that both men faced ongoing threats from Iran due to actions they took following Trump’s orders during his first term as president.
Trump’s first administration had been particularly aggressive towards Iran. Most notably, Trump ordered an airstrike that killed Iran’s most powerful general, Qassem Suleimani, in early 2020.
Under US protocol, senior officials other than former presidents and their spouses are not automatically guaranteed ongoing protection. But US intelligence agencies deemed Hook, Pompeo and Bolton to be under significant risk, which prompted the Biden administration to grant them protection.
Key takeaways from Trump's Davos speech
Donald Trump set out more details of his economic policy in a typically blustering speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday.
Companies must make their products in the United States or face tariffs, the US president told his audience.
Here’s a recap of what else he said:
He repeated his call for Nato countries to increase defense spending to 5% of gross domestic product (GDP). Noting that many nations did not meet the 2% GDP target until he challenged them, during his first term, Trump said: “It was only at 2% and most nations didn’t pay until I came along. I insisted that they pay, and they did, because the United States was really paying the difference at that time.”
He declared the US will begin “demanding respect from other nations”, singling out Canada and the European Union. He said Canada could “become a state” of the US, as a way of eradicating the US trade deficit with Canada. “We don’t need their cars and we don’t need their lumber.” On the EU, he said he believes the US has been treated “very, very unfairly” by the bloc. “They don’t take our farm products and they don’t take our cars. yet they send cars to us by the millions,” he said.
He urged Saudi Arabia and the oil-producing cartel Opec to cut oil prices, claiming this would end the war in Ukraine. “They should have done it long ago. They’re very responsible, actually, to a certain extent, for what’s taking place,” he said. The oil price took a tumble after Trump’s speech.
He said the US needs to double its energy production, partly to fuel artificial intelligence. Trump said he will fast-track the approvals for new power plants, which companies can site next to their plants – something not currently possible under regulations. Worryingly, he declared that companies will be able to fuel it with anything they want, and have coal as a backup, “good, clean coal”.
He said he wants a “fair relationship” with China over the next four years, adding that he wants a “level playing field”. Trump said he looked forward to “doing very well with China and getting along with China” during his presidency. He added that he hoped Beijing would help the US in ending the Ukraine war. “They have a great deal of power over that situation,” he said.
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Tulsi Gabbard confirmation hearing set for 30 January
The Senate Intelligence Committee will hold a confirmation hearing for Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, on 30 January at 10am ET.
Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman for Hawaii, has faced scrutiny for her stances on international affairs, including accusations that she was being “groomed” by Russia and for a 2017 meeting with the Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad.
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The day so far
Donald Trump outlined his economic policies to the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, saying he believed lower oil prices would end the war in Ukraine and bring down interest rates globally. He also restated his vow to impose tariffs on companies who do not manufacture products in the United States, and said he’d like to meet with Vladimir Putin to end his invasion of his neighbor. We’ll see more from the president later today, when he signs another executive order, though the White House has not said what that might concern. Meanwhile, the Senate is gearing up to take an important first vote on Pete Hegseth’s controversial nomination to lead the Pentagon.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Sean Curran, a Secret Service agent who hustled Trump away after an assassin tried to kill him at a rally in July, has been named director of the agency tasked with protecting the president.
Immigration and customs enforcement made hundreds of arrests in the first few hours of Trump’s presidency, Fox News reports.
A federal judge in Seattle will today hear a challenge by four Democratic-led states challenging Trump’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship.
Before he wrapped up his speech at the World Economic Forum, Trump was asked if he thought Russia and Ukraine will have reached a peace agreement by the time he addresses the summit again next year.
“Well, you’re going to have to ask Russia, Ukraine is ready to make a deal,” he said, before pivoting to his familiar insistence that the war would never have started if he had been re-elected in 2020.
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Trump says he'd like to meet with Putin to end war in Ukraine
Donald Trump told the World Economic Forum he’d like to sit down with Russian president Vladimir Putin to end the war in Ukraine.
“I really would like to be able to meet with president Putin soon to get that war ended. And that’s not from the standpoint of economy or anything else. It’s from the standpoint of millions of lives are being wasted,” Trump said.
Yesterday, he threatened tariffs and intensified sanctions on Russia if it did not withdraw troops from its neighbor:
Trump threatens tariffs on companies who do not manufacture in US
Companies must make their products in the United States or face tariffs, Donald Trump has told the World Economic Forum.
“Come make your product in America, and we will give you among the lowest taxes of any nation on Earth. We’re bringing them down very substantially, even from the original Trump tax cuts,” the president said.
“But if you don’t make your product in America, which is your prerogative, then very simply, you will have to pay a tariff, differing amounts, but a tariff, which will direct hundreds of billions of dollars, and even trillions of dollars, into our Treasury to strengthen our economy and pay down debt.”
He went on to promise:
Under the Trump administration, there will be no better place on earth to create jobs, build factories or grow a company than right here in the good old USA.
Trump said he would impose a tariffs on a variety of countries on his first day in office, but ultimately decided to hold off, at least for now.
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Donald Trump’s speech at the World Economic Forum thus far has mostly been a recitation of the actions he has taken since being sworn in on Monday.
But he did tip his hand about his economic priorities – and what he said wasn’t too promising.
The president said that he would lean on Saudi Arabia and the Opec petroleum cartel “to bring down the cost of oil”, which would probably require an agreement among member countries to increase their production.
“I’m surprised they didn’t do before the election. That didn’t show a lot of love by them not doing it,” he added.
Trump then went on to say that if oil prices dropped, “The Russia-Ukraine war would end immediately,” which seems to clash with Russia’s stated goals.
Taking it even further, the president argued that “with oil prices going down, I’ll demand that interest rates drop immediately. And likewise, they should be dropping all over the world. Interest rates should follow us all over.”
In the United States, the Federal Reserve sets interest rates independently of the White House. The price of oil is among the many factors it takes into account when making its rate decisions, and the central bankers typically do not heed Trump or any other president’s demands when it comes to interest rates. It remains to be seen if foreign central banks will heed his words.
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Trump to address World Economic Forum in Davos
We expect to hear from Donald Trump in a few minutes, when he is scheduled to virtually address the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
One imagines the newly inaugurated US president will discuss his economic policies, but we’ll let you know what he has to say.
Trump to sign another executive order this afternoon
Donald Trump plans to sign another executive order at 2.30pm ET, the White House announced, without giving details.
The president has inked a flurry of orders since taking office, some of which have been challenged in court by group’s opposed to his administration. Here’s a rundown of some of the most impactful:
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Senate to take key vote on Hegseth nomination to lead Pentagon
The Senate is today expected to take an initial vote on advancing the former Fox News host Pete Hegseth’s nomination for the role of defense secretary.
Democrats are up in arms about Hegseth’s nomination because of a sexual assault allegation made against him, as well as reports that he drinks to excess in public, committed marital infidelity and mismanaged finances at two charities. This week, the sister-in-law of his second wife reportedly recounted threatening behavior during their marriage.
The Senate armed services committee nonetheless advanced his nomination earlier this week to the full Senate floor.
The chamber will at some point today vote to invoke cloture, setting up a likely final vote on Friday. It’s unclear if there are enough GOP objectors to prevent that vote from succeeding.
• This post was amended on 23 January 2025 to say that the Senate will vote on cloture to end the debate, rather than to begin it.
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Upon taking office, Donald Trump’s administration immediately shut down CBP One, an app asylum seekers used to schedule appointments to attempt to enter the United States. Now, hundreds of thousands are stranded in Mexico, the Guardian’s Thomas Graham reports:
The train rumbled through the makeshift immigrant camp in Mexico City, blaring its horn and sending people scattering to hug the wall.
It passes through at 10am like clockwork, said the residents – almost all of whom have been planted there for months, waiting for the chance to request asylum in the US.
Now, they and hundreds of thousands of other people across Mexico have been left in limbo after Donald Trump shut down the CBP One app they’d been using for asylum appointments.
As Trump was being sworn in on Monday, the app suddenly stopped working, and clips began appearing of people at the border weeping as their appointments – in some cases just hours away – were rescinded.
Since then, Trump has signed a barrage of anti-immigration executive orders, declaring an emergency on the southern border, sending troops to reinforce it and reinstating the Remain in Mexico policy, which forces non-Mexican immigrants to wait south of the border while their asylum applications are processed.
Ice made hundreds of arrests in first hours of Trump administration – report
Immigrations and customs enforcement (Ice) officers arrested hundreds of undocumented immigrants in the first day and half of Donald Trump’s administration, Fox News reports.
The arrests took place in a variety of states nationwide, but it remains unclear if any of the massive raids reported to have been planned before Trump’s inauguration actually took place.
Here’s more, from Fox News:
Information obtained by Fox News Digital, shows that between midnight Jan. 21 and 9 a.m. Jan 22, a 33-hour period, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested more than 460 illegal immigrants that include criminal histories of sexual assault, robbery, burglary, aggravated assault, drugs and weapons offenses, resisting arrest and domestic violence.
Agents arrested nationals from a slew of countries, including Afghanistan, Angola, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Senegal and Venezuela.
Arrests took place across the U.S. including Illinois, Utah, California, Minnesota, New York, Florida and Maryland.
Meanwhile, ICE issued more than 420 detainers – requests ICE be notified when a national is released from custody. The nationals were arrested for crimes including homicide, sexual assault, kidnapping, battery and robbery.
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The United States has been hit by waves of deadly and expensive natural disasters in recent months, but the New York Times reports that Donald Trump has appointed as the interim head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency a navy veteran who does not have the qualifications for the job.
The appointment has not been made public. Here’s what the Times reported:
Cameron Hamilton was named the “senior official performing the duties of the administrator,” according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. He was named associate administrator for the Office of Response and Recovery on Monday and has since been appointed temporary administrator.
Mr. Hamilton is an unusual choice to lead the agency, even in a temporary capacity. Since Hurricane Katrina, when the federal response was severely criticized, FEMA has been led by disaster management professionals who have run state or local emergency management agencies, or were regional administrators at FEMA.
Mr. Hamilton does not appear to have experience coordinating responses to large scale disasters like the wildfires that are raging in Los Angeles or the hurricanes, floods and earthquakes that FEMA typically manages. FEMA did not respond to requests for comment.
Before joining the Trump administration on Monday, Mr. Hamilton worked as the director of business strategy for a defense contractor in Virginia, a job he took after an unsuccessful run for Congress last June.
In his interview with Sean Hannity last night, Trump said he wants to reform the agency tasked with responding to natural disasters, such as the wildfires currently afflicting California, and the hurricanes the devastated swaths of the south-east last fall:
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Trump appoints agent who responded to assassination attempt as Secret Service director
Donald Trump yesterday named Sean Curran, a Secret Service agent who responded after an assassin opened fire at his campaign rally in July, as director of the agency tasked with protecting the president.
Curran and other agents jumped on Trump and then whisked him into a vehicle after shots rang out at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. You can see him in the below photo:
On Truth Social, Trump wrote:
Sean has distinguished himself as a brilliant leader, who is capable of directing and leading operational security plans for some of the most complex Special Security Events in the History of our Country, and the World. He proved his fearless courage when he risked his own life to help save mine from an assassin’s bullet in Butler, Pennsylvania. I have complete and total confidence in Sean to make the United States Secret Service stronger than ever before.
Trump made a big splash by signing a flurry of executive orders targeting Joe Biden’s policies as soon as he took office, but making the most of his legislative agenda will require the help of Congress.
The GOP controls both the Senate and House of Representatives, but there’s a debate among lawmakers about whether to address Trump’s pledges for tighter border security, mass deportations and an extension of tax cuts enacted during his first term in one bill or two.
In his interview with Sean Hannity, Trump signaled no preference. “At this point, I don’t care, as long as we get to the final answer,” the president said.
“I like the concept of the one bill,” he added. “It could be something else. It could be a smaller bill and a big bill.”
In Donald Trump’s wide-ranging interview with conservative commentator Sean Hannity aired yesterday, the president downplayed security concerns over TikTok.
“You’re dealing with a lot of young people, so they love it. Is it that important for China to be spying on young people, on young kids watching crazy videos?” Trump asked. “You have telephones, and they make your computers, and they make a lot of other things. Isn’t that a bigger threat?”
The comments were Trump’s latest expression of support for the popular social media app, which has been the target of a law passed with bipartisan support to ban it unless its Chinese owner divests his US business. Upon taking office, Trump paused the ban for 75 days:
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Summary of the day so far
Here is a summary of the latest updates on today’s US politics blog:
US president Donald Trump suggested that it was a mistake for the former president, Joe Biden, to not pardon himself before leaving office. In an interview with Fox News host, Sean Hannity, Trump said: “This guy went around giving everybody pardons. And you know, the funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon. And if you look at it, it all had to do with him.” In his first one-on-one interview since returning to the White House for his second term, Trump said that Biden had been given “very bad advice”.
In the same interview, Trump said he may withhold aid to California until the state adjusts how it manages its scarce water resources. He falsely claimed that California’s fish conservation efforts in the northern part of the state are responsible for fire hydrants running dry in urban areas. “I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water run down,” Trump said.
Trump described attacks on police officers at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 as “very minor incidents” as he sought to defend his decision to pardon the insurrectionists. Those pardoned include more than 250 people who were convicted of assault charges, some having attacked police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch.
Trump also used the prime-time Fox News interview to discuss his barrage of executive orders, dismiss security concerns over Chinese-owned app TikTok (“Is it that important for China to be spying on young people, on young kids watching crazy videos?”) and discuss the possibility of cutting off federal funds to so-called “sanctuary cities” that shield undocumented immigrants from federal detention requests.
On Thursday, Trump will speak remotely at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, delivering his first major speech to global business and political leaders. He is due to give a speech and engage in a dialogue at 11am ET (4pm GMT), according to the meeting schedule. It is not clear what he will discuss.
Four Democratic-led states will urge a federal judge in Seattle on Thursday to block Trump’s administration from enforcing the Republican’s executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US. Senior US district judge John Coughenour is scheduled to hear arguments on a request by Democratic state attorneys general from Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon for a temporary restraining order that would prevent Trump’s administration from carrying out a key component of his immigration crackdown.
US president Donald Trump’s administration has shut down the White House’s Spanish language page. As of this week, visitors to whitehouse.gov/es now see an error message and the words “page not found” beneath an image of the White House. Below that, visitors can click on “go to homepage” which directs to whitehouse.gov, where a video montage plays featuring Trump, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
The new US presidential envoy for special missions has pushed back against Nato chief Mark Rutte’s talk at the World Economic Forum about Ukraine joining Nato, pointing out many members of the alliance aren’t paying their “fair share” already. Richard Grenell, appointed by Trump in December, said it is “pretty shocking” that so many foreign ministers in Europe, and so many US politicians, did not try to stop the Russia-Ukraine war, and criticised Biden’s handling of the situation.
Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, defended on Thursday what he described as an “innocent” hand salute made by US billionaire Elon Musk this week, as he criticised “woke ideology” in a fiery speech to the World Economic Forum. Musk ignited controversy with two fascist-style salutes during Trump’s presidential inauguration, with critics accusing him of giving the Nazi salute.
Social networking company Meta has denied complaints from some users that they are being forced to follow accounts belonging to the new administration of the US president. Accounts belonging to Trump, First Lady Melania Trump and Vice-President JD Vance, “are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those pages changes”, a Meta spokesperson, Andy Stone, posted on X on Wednesday.
The Kremlin said on Thursday it saw nothing new in Trump’s latest remarks on the Ukraine conflict, but that Moscow was ready for “mutually respectful” dialogue with him. Trump on Wednesday threatened fresh sanctions on Moscow if it did not strike a deal to end its nearly three-year offensive on Ukraine.
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A TV weather forecaster has reportedly been by dropped by her employer, WDJT-TV (Channel 58), a day after criticising Elon Musk’s arm salute during Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration.
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, staff at the station were notified via email that meteorologist Sam Kuffel had left the station.
A spokesperson for Weigel Broadcasting Co confirmed with the publication on Wednesday that Kuffel was no longer with Channel 58, but said they could not comment further due to it being a personnel issue.
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Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s philanthropy arm said on Thursday it would provide funding to help cover the US contribution to the UN climate body’s budget, filling a gap left by president Donald Trump, reports Reuters.
The new Republican president announced after taking office on Monday that he would withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement and end the country’s international climate funding. Trump also withdrew the US from the Paris deal in his first 2017-2021 White House term.
Bloomberg is a media billionaire who also serves as a UN special envoy on climate change. “Bloomberg Philanthropies and other US climate funders will ensure the United States meets its global climate obligations,” the organisation said in a statement, adding this included covering the amount the US owes each year to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Bloomberg Philanthropies did not give details of the amounts of funding or who the other climate funders are.
The UNFCCC is the UN’s leading climate body. It runs annual climate negotiations among nearly 200 countries and helps implement the agreements that are made in these talks – the biggest of which is the 2015 Paris agreement.
Bloomberg also pledged to work with states, cities and companies to ensure that the US stayed on track with its global climate obligations. “From 2017 to 2020, during a period of federal inaction, cities, states, businesses, and the public rose to the challenge to uphold our nation’s commitments – and now, we are ready to do it again,” he said in the statement.
The US is responsible for funding about 21% of the UNFCCC’s core budget. Last year, it paid the UNFCCC a €7.2m ($7.4m) required contribution for 2024, and also paid off a €3.4m euro arrears for missed contributions over 2010-2023.
A Reuters analysis of UNFCCC documents last year found the UN body is experiencing a severe budget shortfall, which diplomats said had begun to disrupt parts of the world’s climate dialogue.
“We deeply appreciate the generous support from Bloomberg Philanthropies and the leadership shown by Mike Bloomberg,” UNFCCC executive secretary, Simon Stiell, said in a statement.
While the UN climate body’s core budget is formed of contributions from governments, other parts of its budget can accept contributions from philanthropies and other organisations. Bloomberg Philanthropies already contributed $4.5m to the UNFCCC last year, according to UN public documents reviewed by Reuters.
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The international criminal court’s governing body said on Thursday it regretted any attempts to undermine the ICC’s independence after the US moved to sanction it in protest at its arrest warrants for Israel’s prime minister and former defence minister over the Gaza war.
The US House of Representatives voted for the sanctions this month after the ICC issued the arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Gallant, over allegations of war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict. Israel rejects the allegations.
On his first day in office this week, US president Donald Trump signed an executive order which reinstated an earlier executive order that could serve as a legal basis for future sanctions against the ICC and its personnel. No specific sanctions have been announced yet.
According to Reuters, in a statement, the ICC’s governing body said that sanctions against the court and its personnel – and anyone assisting them – could severely hamper ongoing investigations. It said it “regrets any attempts to undermine the court’s independence, integrity and impartiality”.
The ICC is a permanent court that can prosecute individuals for war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide and the crime of aggression of the territory of member states or by their nationals.
The court has said its decision to pursue warrants against the Israeli officials was in line with its approach in all cases, based on an assessment by the prosecutor that there was enough evidence to proceed, and the view that seeking arrest warrants immediately could prevent ongoing crimes.
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US president Donald Trump’s administration has shut down the White House’s Spanish language page, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
As of this week, visitors to whitehouse.gov/es now see an error message and the words “page not found” beneath an image of the White House. Below that, visitors can click on “go to homepage” which directs to whitehouse.gov, where a video montage plays featuring Trump.
The move was immediately met with criticism, according to AFP.
“Put this back,” Democratic senator Chuck Schumer posted on X. “Deleting this resource makes it harder for fellow Americans to access essential information, and does nada to lower the costs of groceries for Americans,” he said, referencing the wave of inflation that some voters said was their reason for voting for Trump.
According to the Hispanic Council thinktank, 43 million people in the US speak Spanish fluently.
The shuttering of the page comes as Trump leads a crackdown on immigration that heavily targets Spanish speakers from neighbouring countries.
While his Democratic opponent in the November election, former vice-president Kamala Harris, carried the overall Hispanic vote, a majority of Latino men (54%) voted for Trump, according to NBC exit polls.
As part of a sweeping crackdown on both undocumented and legal immigrants, Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday trying to end the right to citizenship for some children born in the United States.
In a country where birthright citizenship regardless of lineage is a deeply held value, the president’s attempt to cut off that right for future generations could create a permanent underclass, through policy change that would specifically target communities of color.
His executive order faces court challenges from civil rights organizations, which have favorable constitutional language and over a century of legal precedent on their side. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) late on Monday led a group of organizations in filing a lawsuit challenging Trump’s order.
Here’s more on the right to birthright citizenship and its future under the Trump administration:
US judge to hear states' bid to block Trump birthright citizenship order
Four Democratic-led states will urge a federal judge in Seattle on Thursday to block US president Donald Trump’s administration from enforcing the Republican’s executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US.
Reuters reports that senior US district judge, John Coughenour, is scheduled to hear arguments on a request by Democratic state attorneys general from Washington, Arizona, Illinois and Oregon for a temporary restraining order that would prevent Trump’s administration from carrying out a key component of his immigration crackdown.
That executive order, which Trump signed on Monday after taking office, directs US agencies to refuse to recognise the citizenship of children born in the US if neither their mother nor father is a US citizen or legal permanent resident.
The executive order has already become the subject of five lawsuits, with civil rights groups and Democratic attorneys general from 22 states calling it flagrantly unconstitutional.
The White House did not respond to requests by Reuters for comment.
Among the lawsuits was the case filed in Seattle, which has been progressing the fastest of the five cases. It has been assigned to Coughenour, an appointee of Republican former president Ronald Reagan.
Absent judicial intervention, any children born after 19 February whose mothers or fathers are not citizens or lawful permanent residents would be subject to deportation and would be prevented from obtaining social security numbers, various government benefits and the ability as they get older to work lawfully.
More than 150,000 newborn children would be denied citizenship annually if Trump’s order if it is allowed to stand, the Democratic-led states argue.
The lawsuits argue that Trump’s executive order violates the right enshrined in the citizenship clause of the US constitution’s 14th amendment that provides that anyone born in the US is considered a citizen.
Democratic state attorneys general say that understanding of the citizenship clause was cemented 127 years ago when the US supreme court held that children born in the US to non-citizen parents are entitled to US citizenship.
Argentina’s Milei defends Musk’s hand salute during Davos speech
Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, defended on Thursday what he described as an “innocent” hand salute made by US billionaire Elon Musk this week, as he criticised “woke ideology” in a fiery speech to the World Economic Forum.
Musk ignited controversy with two fascist-style salutes during Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration, with critics accusing him of giving the Nazi salute.
Milei told the WEF in Davos, Switzerland, that his “dear friend Musk” has been “unfairly vilified by wokeism in recent hours for an innocent gesture that only means … his gratitude to the people”.
The libertarian leader praised Musk and other likeminded leaders such as Trump, Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and El Salvador’s president Nayib Bukele.
“Slowly an international alliance has been formed of all those nations that want to be free and that believe in the ideas of freedom,” he said. Milei then turned his sights on the WEF itself.
“I must say, forums like this one have been protagonists and promoters of the sinister agenda of ‘wokeism’ that is doing so much harm to the west,” Milei told the audience of global business and political leaders.
He claimed “the mental virus of woke ideology” was “the great epidemic of our time that must be cured. It is the cancer that must be removed”.
Meta denies forcing users to follow Trump administration accounts
Social networking company Meta has denied complaints from some users that they are being forced to follow accounts belonging to the new administration of US president Donald Trump.
Accounts belonging to Trump, first lady Melania Trump and vice-president, JD Vance, “are managed by the White House so with a new administration, the content on those pages changes,” Meta spokesperson, Andy Stone, posted on X on Wednesday.
“People were not made to automatically follow any of the official Facebook or Instagram accounts” around the change in government, Stone added. The same process had happened during the last presidential transition in 2021, he said.
“It may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through as these accounts change hands,” he added in response to some users’ complaints they were unable to stop following the new administration.
The complaints follow sustained efforts by Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg to stay in Trump’s good graces since his November election victory.
Zuckerberg, who attended Trump’s inauguration ceremony Monday, has dined with the new president, named several of his allies to key roles and ended programmes targeted by conservatives, including shutting off Meta’s factchecking efforts in the US.
The United Nations said on Thursday that refugee resettlement is “life-saving”, after a decision by US president Donald Trump to suspend all refugee admissions, including of those already approved for entry, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
In an executive order signed on Monday, just hours after taking office, Trump said he was suspending refugee admissions as of 27 January.
A state department email to groups working with new arrivals later explained that this meant “all previously scheduled travel of refugees to the United States is being cancelled”.
Asked for comment, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, said it was “currently analysing the announced executive order in relation to admissions”.
“Refugee resettlement is a life-saving measure for those most at risk, including survivors of violence or torture, women and children at risk, and individuals with legal or physical protection needs,” it noted in an email to AFP.
The agency added that it stood “ready to continue our work with the new administration to find solutions for refugees in need of safety, including through resettlement”.
Trump in each of his presidential campaigns has run on promises to crack down on undocumented immigration. But the refugee move also targets a legal pathway for people fleeing wars, persecution or disasters.
The state department memo asked the UN International Organization for Migration not to move refugees to transit centres and said that all processing on cases has also been suspended. Refugees already resettled in the United States will continue to receive services as planned, it said.
The order included a call for a report on how to change the programme, in part by giving “greater involvement” to states and local jurisdictions, which he said were being “inundated”. It also revoked his predecessor, Joe Biden’s decision to consider the impact of climate change in refugee admissions.
Biden had embraced the refugee programme as a way to support people in need through legal means. In the 2024 fiscal year, more than 100,000 refugees were resettled in the US, the most in three decades, reports AFP.
Donald Trump has repeatedly complained about the Panama Canal and the fees being charged, calling the vital transport corridor a “foolish gift [to Panama] that should never have been made” and threatening to take it back.
But he has also repeatedly accused China of being in control of it. At his inauguration Trump claimed without providing evidence that “China is operating the Panama Canal and we didn’t give it to China. We gave it to Panama and we’re taking it back.”
So what is the extent of China-linked operations along the Panama Canal? My colleague, Helen Davidson, runs through the facts in this explainer:
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The Kremlin said on Thursday it saw nothing new in US president Donald Trump’s latest remarks on the Ukraine conflict, but that Moscow was ready for “mutually respectful” dialogue with him.
Trump on Wednesday threatened fresh sanctions on Moscow if it did not strike a deal to end its nearly three-year offensive on Ukraine.
“We do not see any particularly new elements,” Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters, when asked about Trump’s comments.
Peskov said it was clear from Trump’s first presidency that he “liked” sanctions and that Moscow was “closely following” his statements. “We remain ready for dialogue, for equal, mutually respectful dialogue,” Peskov said, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Expectations are high that Russian president Vladimir Putin and Trump will soon hold a phone call on the conflict in the coming days.
US envoy tells Nato secretary-general that allies must pay 'fair share' before expansion
Nato allies must pay their “fair share” on defence before considering enlarging the alliance, US envoy Richard Grenell said on Thursday, in a retort to the Nato secretary-general during an event in Davos, Switzerland.
“You’re going to run into a big buzzsaw in America if we have the Nato secretary general talking about adding Ukraine to Nato,” Grenell said by video link at an event on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.
“You cannot ask the American people to expand the umbrella of Nato when the current members aren’t paying their fair share, and that includes the Dutch who need to step up,” Grenell said, according to Agence France-Presse (AFP).
He was speaking after Nato secretary general and former Dutch prime minister, Mark Rutte, said minutes earlier that “full Nato membership is then the easiest outcome” for Ukraine if a “sustainable” peace is secured.
Grenell also echoed US president Donald Trump’s call on Nato members to spend more on defence. “We need to make sure that those leaders are spending the right amount of money. We need to be able to avoid war. And that means a credible threat from Nato,” Grenell said.
The envoy blasted Trump’s predecessor for not speaking to Russian president Vladimir Putin, saying the new US president was pressuring Ukraine and Russia “to the table”.
“There’s a huge frustration from Americans that we’re spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and our leaders aren’t speaking to each other to try to solve problems,” Grenell said.
The transatlantic alliance’s 32 countries in 2023 set a minimum level for defence spending of 2% of gross domestic product, but Trump has suggested raising this to 5%. Rutte acknowledged that the share had to increase.
“We have collectively to move up and we will decide on the exact number later this year, but it will be considerably more than two [percent],” Rutte said.
He also said Europe would have to pay more for continued US defence support.
“We have to be willing to do that, because at this moment, they are paying more than the Europeans. And here Trump is right,” Rutte said.
After Grenell’s remarks, Belgian prime minister Alexander De Croo reminded the audience that Putin was “the enemy”, adding: “I see a lot of finger pointing between partners. And that’s not helpful.”
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Nato secretary-general, Mark Rutte, on Thursday called for the US to continue supplying Ukraine and said Europe would pay the bill, reports Reuters.
Speaking at an event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Rutte said the alliance must invest more in defence, ramp up defence industrial production and take on a bigger share of spending on help for Ukraine.
“On Ukraine, we need US also to stay involved,” Rutte said. “If this new Trump administration is willing to keep on supplying Ukraine from its defence industrial base, the bill will be paid by the Europeans, I’m absolutely convinced of this, we have to be willing to do that,” he added.
The secretary general’s comments came after US president Donald Trump said earlier this week that the European Union should be doing more to support Ukraine.
In Davos, Rutte also said it was vital Russia did not win as it could result in Russian president Vladimir Putin ‘high fiving’ the leaders of North Korea and China.
“We really have to step up and not scale back our support for Ukraine,” Rutte said. “The frontline is moving in the wrong direction.”
Those pardoned by Donald Trump include more than 250 people who were convicted of assault charges, some having attacked police during the US Capitol riots with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch. Many of the attacks were captured on surveillance or body camera footage that showed rioters engaging in hand-to-hand combat with police as officers desperately fought to beat back the angry crowd.
Yet in his interview with Sean Hannity, a longtime friend and Fox News host, Trump claimed:
Some of those people with the police – true – but they were very minor incidents, OK, you know, they get built up by that couple of fake guys that are on CNN all the time. They were very minor incidents and it was time.”
He then pivoted without providing context to assert:
You have murderers in Philadelphia. You have murderers in Los Angeles that don’t even get any time. They don’t even collect them and they know they’re there to be collected. And then they go on television and act holier than thou about this one or that one. You had 1,500 people that suffered. That’s a lot of people.”
Trump’s sweeping pardons have provided an early loyalty test for the Republican party. While a handful of senators including former leader Mitch McConnell have condemned the move, most have backed the president or performed verbal contortions. Two major police unions said they are “deeply discouraged” by the pardons and commutations.
On Wednesday night the president went on:
This was a political hoax. And you know what? Those people – and I’m not saying in every single case – but there was a lot of patriotism with those people.”
Trump then boasted that he provided a voiceover for “Justice for All”, a version of the Star-Spangled Banner sung by a group of January 6 defendants over a prison phone line. “It was the number one selling song, number one on Billboard, number one on everything for so long. People get it. They wanted to see those people.”
‘Very minor incidents’: Trump defends January 6 pardons in first interview since inauguration
Donald Trump has described attacks on police officers at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 as “very minor incidents” as he sought to defend his decision to pardon the insurrectionists.
The US president hinted that those who put him through “four years of hell” via criminal prosecutions should themselves be investigated, adding ominously that his predecessor, Joe Biden, made a mistake by not pardoning himself.
Trump was giving the first televised interview of his second term to Sean Hannity, a longtime friend and Fox News host, in the Oval Office at the White House on Wednesday.
Among the topics was Trump’s move on Monday to pardon, commute the prison sentences or dismiss the cases of all of the 1,500-plus people charged with crimes in the effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat. Hannity asked why people who were violent towards police were included.
Trump claimed that they had suffered unduly harsh prison conditions then falsely claimed that the 2020 election was stolen despite courts, officials and his own attorney general finding otherwise. “They were protesting the vote because they knew the election was rigged and they were protesting the vote and you should be allowed to protest the vote,” he said.
Often criticised as a Trump sycophant and propagandist, Hannity nevertheless objected that protesters should not be able to invade the Capitol building.
The president responded:
Most of the people were absolutely innocent. OK. But forgetting all about that, these people have served, horribly, a long time. It would be very, very cumbersome to go and look – you know how many people we’re talking about? 1,500 people.”
Vice-president JD Vance has previously stated that those who committed violence on January 6 “obviously” should not receive pardons. But media accounts suggest that Trump lost patience with the idea of going through the cases individually and wanted maximum impact on his first day in office. The Axios website reported: “Trump just said: ‘F--k it: Release ’em all,’” an adviser familiar with the discussions said.”
Trump suggests it was a mistake for Biden to not pardon himself before leaving office
US president Donald Trump has suggested that it was a mistake for the former president, Joe Biden, to not pardon himself before leaving office.
In an interview with Fox News host, Sean Hannity, Trump said:
This guy went around giving everybody pardons. And you know, the funny thing, maybe the sad thing, is he didn’t give himself a pardon. And if you look at it, it all had to do with him.”
It came as Trump told Hannity that he was given the option to pardon himself in 2021 when he was departing the White House, but declined because he believed he had done nothing wrong.
In the interview – his first one-on-one interview since returning to the White House for his second term – Trump said that Biden had been given “very bad advice”. He said:
Joe Biden has very bad advisers. Somebody advised Joe Biden to give pardons to everybody but him.”
Additionally, in the same interview, Trump said he may withhold aid to California until the state adjusts how it manages its scarce water resources. He falsely claimed that California’s fish conservation efforts in the northern part of the state are responsible for fire hydrants running dry in urban areas.
“I don’t think we should give California anything until they let the water run down,” Trump told Hannity.
More on that in a moment. Here are some other developments:
Donald Trump has described attacks on police officers at the US Capitol on January 6 2021 as “very minor incidents” as he sought to defend his decision to pardon the insurrectionists. Those pardoned include more than 250 people who were convicted of assault charges, some having attacked police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a hockey stick and a crutch.
Trump also used the prime-time Fox News interview to discuss his barrage of executive orders, dismiss security concerns over Chinese-owned app TikTok (“Is it that important for China to be spying on young people, on young kids watching crazy videos?”) and discuss the possibility of cutting off federal funds to so-called “sanctuary cities” that shield undocumented immigrants from federal detention requests.
On Thursday, Trump will speak remotely at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, delivering his first major speech to global business and political leaders. He is due to give a speech and engage in a dialogue at 11am US Eastern Time (4pm GMT), according to the meeting schedule. It is not clear what he will discuss.
The new US presidential envoy for special missions has pushed back against Nato chief, Mark Rutte’s talk at the World Economic Forum about Ukraine joining Nato, pointing out many members of the alliance aren’t paying their “fair share” already. Richard Grenell, appointed by Trump in December, said it is “pretty shocking” that so many foreign ministers in Europe, and so many US politicians, did not try to stop the Russia-Ukraine war, and criticised Biden’s handling of the situation.
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