Musk arrives at Pentagon amid reports he will be briefed on China war plans – US politics live | US politics

Key events

Donald Trump is so excited about the reciprocal tariffs he plans to impose on 2 April that he has taken to calling it “Liberation Day”.

As he did in a Truth Social post this morning:

April 2nd is Liberation Day in America!!! For DECADES we have been ripped off and abused by every nation in the World, both friend and foe. Now it is finally time for the Good Ol’ USA to get some of that MONEY, and RESPECT, BACK. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!

But a recent poll conducted for the Guardian shows that Americans are generally freaked out by the prospect of the United States imposing tariffs on countries worldwide, including a hefty share of Republicans:

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Trump signals openness to reported UK offer of Commonwealth spot to ease tensions with Canada

Donald Trump is partaking in some royal intrigue with a social media post declaring his love for Britain’s King Charles and saying he would welcome a reported “secret offer” billed as easing tensions with Canada.

On Truth Social, the president linked to a story in UK tabloid the Sun, which says:

KING Charles will reportedly make a “secret offer” to Donald Trump during his State visit.

The Royal proposal is said to potentially reduce tensions between the White House and Canada.

Plans are allegedly in the works to make the USA the next “associate member” of the Commonwealth.

The international association, which currently boasts 56 states, could welcome the US as a new member.

In February, a Tariff war began between the two countries with Trump signing orders to impose near-universal tariffs on goods from Canada entering the United States.

The US President revealed Canada could avoid higher taxes if it joined the United States of America as its 51 state.

Canada, of which the King is head of state, is part of the Commonwealth of Nations and including America may dampen the current conflict.

To which Trump responded:

I Love King Charles. Sounds good to me!

But trade tensions with Canada are likely to grow worse on 2 April, when an exemption from 25% tariffs he imposed on the country expires.

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Updated at 10.30 EDT

Musk arrives at Pentagon amid reports he’ll be briefed on China war plan

Journalists at the Pentagon have spotted Elon Musk arriving for a visit where he will reportedly be briefed on the military’s plan for a potential war with China.

Donald Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth have both denied the reports that details of the military’s strategy against China will be shared with Musk.

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Updated at 09.51 EDT

The US government appears to have complied with a federal judge’s request for a high-level official to confirm that it is considering invoking a nation security exemption to avoid sharing details of migrant deportation flights that may have violated a court order.

Justice department attorneys have been in a legal standoff with James Boasberg, a federal judge who over the weekend told the Trump administration not to allow three planes carrying suspected Venezuelan gang members to fly to El Salvador. The planes arrived anyway, and Boasberg has since been demanding details of the aircrafts’ itineraries to determine if his order was violated.

The justice department has said the Trump administration may determine the information is a “state secret” that it cannot reveal to the judge. Yesterday, Boasberg demanded that the administration have “a person with direct involvement in the Cabinet-level discussions” submit a declaration. That declaration has now arrived, from Todd Blanche, a deputy attorney general, who confirmed his “direct involvement in ongoing Cabinet-level discussions regarding invocation of the state-secrets privilege.”

The government now has until next Tuesday to decide whether to invoke the privilege. Here’s more on the back-and-forth between the judge and the Trump administration:

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In Tempe on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez praised Arizona voters for electing two Democratic senators. She then swiped at the state’s former one-term senator, Kyrsten Sinema, who left the Democratic party to become an independent while in office and declined to seek re-election.

“One thing I love about Arizonans is that you all have shown that if a US Senator isn’t fighting hard enough for you, you’re not afraid to replace her with one who will,” Ocasio-Cortez said.

Sinema recently resurfaced old comments by Ocasio-Cortez attacking the then-senator over her refusal to abolish the filibuster, a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation. Last week, House Democrats implored their Senate counterparts to use the filibuster to block a Republican-drafted funding bill.

“Change of heart on the filibuster I see!” Sinema posted.

“Still no. In fact, the same Dems who argue to keep the filibuster ‘for when we need it’ do not, in fact, use it when we need it,” Ocasio-Cortez shot back.

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At their rally in Arizona, senator Bernie Sanders and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered a sharp critique of the Democrats.

“This isn’t just about Republicans, either. We need a Democratic party that fights harder for us, too,” Ocasio-Cortez said, drawing some of the loudest, most sustained applause of the event.

Several rallygoers said they would like to see Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat of New York, challenge the Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer in a primary race after he relented and helped Republicans pass a funding bill last week to avert a shutdown.

Ocasio-Cortez made no explicit mention of Schumer or her future political ambitions, despite intermittent shouts of “Primary Chuck”.

She called on attendees to help elect candidates “with the courage to brawl for the working class”.

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Donald Trump and defense secretary Pete Hegseth are scheduled to make a joint speech from the Oval Office at 11am ET.

The White House did not say what it would concern, but Hegseth tweeted last night that the president is “leading the way on the future of American power.”

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Hegseth denies Musk to see China war plan during Pentagon visit

Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has joined his boss Donald Trump in denying that Elon Musk will be allowed to see the US military’s secret plan for a potential war with China when he visits the Pentagon today.

On X, Hegseth acknowledged Musk’s visit but said the war plans would not be discussed:

We look forward to welcoming @elonmusk to the Pentagon tomorrow. But the fake news delivers again — this is NOT a meeting about “top secret China war plans.” It’s an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production. Gonna be great!

Trump posted about the matter not once, but twice on Truth Social. Last night, he wrote:

How ridiculous?” China will not even be mentioned or discussed. How disgraceful it is that the discredited media can make up such lies. Anyway, the story is completely untrue!!!

The president issued a denial again this morning in which he attacked a reporter and two outlets that reported the story, while saying: “Elon is NOT BEING BRIEFED ON ANYTHING CHINA BY THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR!!!” The department of war has not existed since 1947.

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Updated at 09.53 EDT

Senator Bernie Sanders, independent of Vermont, and congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, delivered a scathing rebuke of Donald Trump and his billionaire ally, Elon Musk, accusing them of “screwing over” working and middle class Americans as they turn the country into an oligarchy.

Speaking to an overflow crowd of thousands as part of his Stop Oligarchy tour, Sanders warned the president: “We will not allow you to move this country into an oligarchy. We’re not going to allow you and your friend Mr Musk and the other billionaires to wreak havoc on this country.”

Ocasio-Cortez put it differently: “We’re going to throw these bums out and fight for the nation we deserve.”

Sanders trained some of his sharpest attacks on industry titans.

“You know who the biggest criminals are in this country? They are the CEOs of major corporations who are robbing us every single day,” he said. “They are the fossil fuel industry that has lied to us for years about what they’re doing to the planet. It is the drug companies who charge us the highest prices in the world and people die because they can’t afford those drugs. It’s the insurance companies who deny claim after claim. Those are major criminals.”

Earlier on Thursday, Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez held another rally in Las Vegas. The tour continues on Friday, with events in Colorado, including a town hall in Denver featuring Alvaro Bedoya, an Federal Trade Commission member who was abruptly fired by Trump this week. On Saturday, the pair will return to Arizona for a rally in Tucson.

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Trump denies report on Musk briefing on China

Donald Trump has denied a New York Times report that his close ally, billionaire Elon Musk, was due to be briefed by the Pentagon on Friday about the US military’s plan for any war that might break out with China.

“China will not even be mentioned or discussed,” Trump said in a post about the Pentagon meeting on Truth Social on Thursday.

The Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, said in a post on X that the meeting would be “about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production”.

A US official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the briefing for Musk would be attended by senior US military officials in the Pentagon and would be an overview on a number of different topics, including China.

According to the New York Times report, the briefing would include 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight in a conflict with China. The newspaper cited two US officials it did not identify.

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Updated at 08.04 EDT

The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said late Thursday that he would be meeting with billionaire Elon Musk at the Pentagon Friday to discuss “innovation, efficiencies & smarter production”.

Musk, a top adviser to Donald Trump, and his “department of government efficiency” have played an integral role in the administration’s push to dramatically reduce the size of the government.

Musk has faced intense blowback from some lawmakers and voters for his chainsaw-wielding approach to laying off workers and slashing programs, although Trump’s supporters have hailed it.

A senior defense official told reporters Tuesday that roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian jobs will be cut in the defense department.

In a post on Musk’s X platform, Hegseth emphasized that “this is NOT a meeting about ‘top secret China war plans’”, denying a story published by the New York Times late Thursday.

Hegseth is also scheduled to deliver remarks with Trump at the White House Friday morning.

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Updated at 08.05 EDT

A federal judge instructed the Trump administration on Thursday to explain why its failure to turn around flights carrying deportees to El Salvador did not violate his court order in a growing showdown between the judicial and executive branches.

James Boasberg, the US district judge, demanded answers after flights carrying Venezuelan immigrants alleged by the Trump administration to be gang members landed in El Salvador after the judge temporarily blocked deportations conducted under an 18th-century wartime law. Boasberg had directed the administration to return planes that were already in the air to the US when he ordered the halt.

Boasberg had given the administration until noon Thursday to either provide more details about the flights or make a claim that they must be withheld because they would harm “state secrets”. The administration resisted the judge’s request, calling it an “unnecessary judicial fishing” expedition.

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Donald Trump rescinded an executive order targeting a prominent Democratic-leaning law firm after it agreed to provide $40m in free legal services to support his administration’s goals.

The White House has targeted law firms whose lawyers have provided legal work that Trump disagrees with. Last week, he issued an order threatening to suspend active security clearances of attorneys at Paul, Weiss and to terminate any federal contracts the firm has.

But the president suddenly reversed course following a meeting between Trump and Brad Karp, the chair of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, over the White House order.

Trump’s order singled out the work of Mark Pomerantz, who previously worked at the firm and who oversaw an investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office into Trump’s finances before Trump became president. Pomerantz once likened the president to a mob boss.

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Opening summary

Good morning and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you all the latest news on this Friday morning.

We begin with the news that Donald Trump signed an executive order Thursday calling for the dismantling of the education department, an agency Republicans have talked about closing for decades.

The order says the education secretary, Linda McMahon, will “to the maximum extent appropriate and permitted by law, take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return authority over education to the States and local communities”.

Eliminating the department altogether would be a cumbersome task, which probably would require an act of Congress, AP reported.

In the weeks since he took office, the Trump administration already has cut the department’s staff in half and overhauled much of the department’s work.

Trump adviser Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” has cut dozens of contracts it dismissed as “woke” and wasteful. It gutted the Institute of Education Sciences, which gathers data on the nation’s academic progress.

The agency’s main role is financial. Annually, it distributes billions in federal money to colleges and schools and manages the federal student loan portfolio. Closing the department would mean redistributing each of those duties to another agency.

The Department of Education also plays an important regulatory role in services for students, ranging from those with disabilities to low-income and homeless children.

In other news:

Elon Musk is reportedly visiting the Pentagon on Friday to get a briefing on the US military’s plans for fighting a war with China.

Trump said that he is rescinding an executive order targeting a Democratic-leaning law firm after the firm agreed to provide $40m in free legal services in support of his administration’s aims.

A federal judge blocked Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” from accessing social security records and ordered them to delete any previously obtained information.

Judge James Boasberg, a former law school housemate of Brett Kavanaugh, said the Trump administration “evaded” his order in the case of Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador.

Trump administration lawyers have embraced the view that the Alien Enemies Act, which Trump invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang, permits immigration agents to enter homes without a warrant.

The justice department has brought charges against three unnamed individuals for using or planning to use molotov cocktails to attack Tesla automobiles and dealerships.

Immigration agents arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national with a valid visa doing research at Georgetown University, and are trying to deport him for alleged support of Hamas. A judge later temporarily barred DHS from deporting him.

Tim Walz, who Kamala Harris picked as her running mate, sees an ominous future for the country under Trump, but also opportunities for Democrats to regain their popular support.

Trump pushed the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, something presidents typically do not do. Yesterday, the central bank held rates steady while forecasting weaker economic growth.

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Updated at 08.07 EDT