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Trump takes aim at ticket scalping in executive order

Trump took aim at ticket scalping in a new executive order signed today, which directs the Department of Justice and the FTC to crack down on ticket resellers who price-gouge.

“I didn’t know too much about it but I checked it out and it is a big problem,” Trump said before he signed the order, adding that his friend, Kid Rock – or Bob, as the president referred to him – had been trying to do something about it for 20 years.

Robert Ritchie, better known by his moniker “Kid Rock”, was clad in a head-to-toe bright red ensemble, complete with an American flag decal emblazoned across his middle, and stood to Trump’s right with his hands folded until he was asked to speak.

“It doesn’t matter your politics,” Kid Rock said, outlining how the issue has impacted his ability to offer lower-priced entry to his concerts for fans. “The artists don’t see any of that money and ultimately I think this is a great first step.”

The order directs officials at the FTC and the justice department to ensure scalpers comply with tax rules and pushes for more price transparency through the ticket-selling process. But Kid Rock is hoping for more.

“I would love down the road if there would be legislation and we can put a cap on the resale of tickets,” he said. “I am a capitalist and a deregulation guy,” he added with a laugh. “But they have tried this in some places in Europe and it seems to be the only thing for us as artists to be able to get the tickets into the hands of the fans at the prices we set.”

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Updated at 18.38 EDT

House majority leader Steve Scalise has dismissed the idea of Donald Trump seeking a third term, suggesting that the president’s remarks yesterday were designed to “get people talking”.

“I don’t know what he was referring to. I never saw it,” Scalise told NBC News, adding:

You know, you see it like with Greenland, like with Panama canal. There’s a lot of things the president talks about. Ultimately, it gets people talking and addresses some other issues too.

Asked if he would support changing the US Constitution to allow Trump to run for a third term, he said:

There’s no proposal to change the constitution right now.

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Updated at 18.05 EDT

Donald Trump is set to sign an executive order today aimed at protecting fans from “exploitative ticket scalping”, a White House official said.

The order directs the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, and attorney general, Pam Bondi, to ensure that ticket scalpers are in full compliance with the tax-collecting Internal Revenue Service and others applicable law, according to a fact sheet seen by Reuters.

The order directs the Federal Trade Commission to ensure that competition laws are appropriately enforced in the concert and entertainment industry, it said.

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Updated at 17.45 EDT

Florida congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna, a Republican, has left the hard-right House Freedom caucus, according to multiple reports.

“With a heavy heart, I am resigning from the Freedom Caucus,” Luna wrote in a letter obtained by Axios. Luna, a strong Trump ally, is the fourth member that the Freedom caucus has lost or ejected in the last two years, it says.

According to reports, her withdrawal comes amid a break with her colleagues on whether the House should allow proxy voting for new parents.

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Updated at 17.44 EDT

A coalition of civil rights groups filed a lawsuit on Monday seeking to block portions of Donald Trump’s executive order that would require voters to prove their citizenship in order to vote.

The 25 March executive order seeks to require all 50 states to require voters to prove their citizenship and then outlines only select documents that are included (a birth certificate is not among them). Nearly one in 10 eligible US voters lack easy access to documents to prove their citizenship, according to a study last year from the Brennan Center for Justice.

Experts have said the order is unlawful because the US constitution gives the states and Congress, not the president, the authority to set rules for federal elections.

Lawyers wrote in their complaint, filed in the federal district court in Washington DC:

The Order is an attack on the constitutionally mandated checks and balances that keep American elections free and fair. Through this unconstitutional action, the President intrudes on the states’ and Congress’s authority to set election rules in an attempt to make it far more difficult for eligible U.S. citizens to exercise their fundamental right to vote.

The suit also challenges a different portion of the executive order that seeks to require states only to accept ballots that arrive by election day, regardless of when they are mailed. The constitution, the lawyers write, gives states the power to set their own ballot receipt deadlines.

The order also directs the US Election Assistance Commission, an under the radar agency, to make the changes to the federal voter registration form and to withhold funding from states that refuse to comply. The suit also says that the commission is an independent agency and the president cannot order it to take such action.

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Senate GOP leader says Trump ‘probably messing with you’ with third term remarks

Senate majority leader John Thune said he believes Donald Trump is “probably messing with you” with his remarks on Sunday that there are “methods” by which he could run for a third term.

“You guys keep asking the question,” Thune told reporters on Monday, adding:

I think he’s probably having some fun with it, probably messing with you.

Asked if he thought Trump could serve a third term, Thune replied:

Not without a change in the constitution.

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Updated at 17.08 EDT

The Trump administration’s announcement of an inquiry into Harvard for allegations of antisemitism comes two months after the university agreed to embrace a controversial definition of “antisemitism.”

As part of two settlements reached in a US court, Harvard agreed to define antisemitism in a way that, critics say, might punish criticism of Israel.

Harvard agreed in January to observe the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of “antisemitism” in a settlement reached in federal court in Boston.

Two separate groups of students had sued Harvard, saying they faced harassment from fellow students and faculty members, partly stemming from campus protests after Hamas’s October 2023 attack on Israel and the overwhelming Israeli military retaliation that followed. In its settlement, the university agreed to use a definition that defines antisemitism as “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews”.

Harvard – in addition to agreeing to implement the IHRA guidelines – also agreed to publish an annual public report covering violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act for the next five years.

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Updated at 16.42 EDT

The Trump administration’s announcement of a review of Harvard over allegations of antisemitism comes 10 days after another major university caved to Trump’s demands.

In a January executive order, Donald Trump announced his administration would be investigating various universities and colleges for allegations of antisemitism.

Columbia University was the first institution targeted by the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, made up of various government agencies. To preserve federal funding, Columbia caved to many of the Trump administration’s demands, as a pre-condition for restoring $400m in federal funding.

Columbia acquiesced in a memo that laid out measures including banning face masks on campus, empowering security officers to remove or arrest individuals and taking control of the department that offers courses on the Middle East from its faculty, Reuters reported.

Harvard is the latest institution targeted by the Trump administration.

The federal government will collaborate with relevant contracting agencies to assess whether Stop Work Orders should be issued for any identified contracts. Any institution found to be in violation of federal compliance standards may face administrative actions, including contract termination,” the Departments of Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), and the US General Services Administration (GSA) said in a joint statement.

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Updated at 16.33 EDT

Trump administration announces review of Harvard

The Trump administration has announced a review of federal contracts and grants at Harvard University over allegations of antisemitism.

The Task Force will review the more than $255.6 million in contracts between Harvard University, its affiliates and the Federal Government. The review also includes the more than $8.7bn in multi-year grant commitments to Harvard University and its affiliates,” the Education Department, Department of Health and the General Services Administration said in a joint statement, Reuters reports.

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Summary of the day so far

Donald Trump refused to say whether he was planning to leave office in 2029, after an interview with NBC where he said he was not joking about the possibility of seeking a third term.

Trump said Wednesday will be “Liberation Day” when he announces reciprocal tariffs on nearly all US trading partners. Global stock markets were a sea of red on Monday and investors fled to gold amid recession fears.

The White House said “this case has been closed” when asked about the status of the investigation into the now-infamous Signal chat in which officials conducted a high-level military operation on the unclassified commercial app and inadvertently included a journalist.

Attorney general Pam Bondi directed the justice department to dismiss a Biden-era lawsuit challenging a Republican-backed Georgia election law that was passed after Trump’s 2020 election loss in the state.

The US sent 17 more people accused of being gang members to El Salvador without providing their names or any other identifying information, the latest move in the Trump administration’s controversial method of deporting people to be imprisoned abroad without due process in the US.

The US announced sanctions against six Chinese and Hong Kong officials over their role in extraterritorial enforcement of the territory’s national security law, one of the first moves by the Trump administration to punish China over its crackdown on democracy advocates in Hong Kong.

Trump issued a full pardon to another person involved with the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and commuted the sentence of a former business associate of Hunter Biden.

An official allied with Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has been put in charge of the US Institute of Peace, a congressionally created and funded thinktank targeted by Donald Trump for closure.

The headquarters of the Republican party of New Mexico was set on fire on Sunday and “ICE=KKK” spray painted on the building in what the party called “a deliberate act of arson”.

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Donald Trump has issued a full pardon to another person involved with the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and commuted the sentence of a former business associate of Hunter Biden, Joe Biden’s scandal-plagued son.

Thomas Caldwell, 69, of Berryville, Virginia, has been granted a pardon for his alleged role in the Capitol attack following a series of pardons Trump has given out to those involved with or present during the events on 6 January 2021.

Caldwell, a navy veteran, stood trial earlier this year alongside leaders of the Oath Keepers militia. He was acquitted by a jury in Washington’s federal court of seditious conspiracy and two other conspiracy offenses, but was sentenced in January to time served with no probation. The US Department of Justice previously described the actions of the Oath Keepers militia as “terrorism”.

Trump has also issued a commuted sentence for Jason Galanis, who had been serving a 14-year federal prison sentence after pleading guilty to a multimillion-dollar scheme involving fraudulent tribal bonds. He is the second former business partner of Hunter Biden to be granted clemency.

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Updated at 15.15 EDT

The US has announced sanctions against six Chinese and Hong Kong officials over their role in extraterritorial enforcement of the territory’s national security law.

A statement by the state department said the six officials, which include Hong Kong’s secretary of justice and its police commissioner, “have engaged in actions or policies that threaten to further erode the autonomy of Hong Kong in contravention of China’s commitments, and in connection with acts of transnational repression”. It added:

Beijing and Hong Kong officials have used Hong Kong national security laws extraterritorially to intimidate, silence, and harass 19 pro-democracy activists who were forced to flee overseas, including a US citizen and four other US residents.

The sanctions mark one of the first moves by the Trump administration to punish China over its crackdown on democracy advocates in Hong Kong.

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Updated at 15.00 EDT

White House says Signal chat case ‘closed’

The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt was asked about the status of the investigation into how a journalist was added into a high-level group chat about US military plans in Yemen.

“This case has been closed here at the White House as far as we are concerned,” Leavitt told reporters.

She said that Mike Waltz, the national security adviser, “continues to be an important part of his national security team”.

“There have been steps made to ensure that something like that can, obviously, not happen again,” she added.

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Updated at 14.45 EDT

Donald Trump will announce plans to place reciprocal tariffs on nearly all US trading partners at a Wednesday event in the Rose Garden, the White House said.

Trump will be joined in the Rose Garden by his cabinet, the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said.

Leavitt said Trump believes “it’s time for reciprocity” but said the details of the announcement are up to the president to announce.

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Updated at 14.07 EDT