Trump imposes 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, says he doesn’t see JD Vance as his successor: Live

Perhaps the most truly consequential – and revealing – line from the president’s interview with Baier were these comments on Ukraine, once more betraying the transactional manner in which he views all global events.

“I told them that I want the equivalent like $500bn worth of rare earth,” Trump told the Fox News man of his latest interactions with Kyiv.

“And they’ve essentially agreed to do that so at least we don’t feel stupid.

“Otherwise, we’re stupid. I said to them we have to… we have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money.”

Here’s Olena Harmash on why Trump is demanding the minerals from his embattled counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky.

The president indicated in an interview with Bret Baier of Fox News last night that he does not view Vice President JD Vance as his likely successor in 2028.

“So far, I think he’s doing a fantastic job. It’s too early, we’re just starting,” said Trump, damning his deputy with faint praise.

He also said, ominously, that Ukraine “may be part of Russia someday”, claimed Canada “stole” America’s auto industry, insisted Elon Musk does not need “guardrails” because he reports to him and pronounced himself as “the Great Weaver.”

Here’s Katie Hawkinson on Trump’s Vance comments.

Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Monday imposing a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum imports, regardless of country of origin, with no product exemptions.

The president’s move is the latest escalation in his growing trade war as he attempts to reset America’s trading relations with its international allies and partners.

The countries most directly impacted – Canada, Mexico and Brazil – are believed to be weighing up their responses.

Here’s Katie Hawkinson with a reminder of how this same play worked out for Trump in 2018.

A plea deal with New York prosecutors, reached roughly three weeks before a trial was set to begin in Manhattan, will allow him to avoid jail time, a defense attorney told Law360.

A hearing in Manhattan criminal court is scheduled Tuesday.

Alex Woodward has the story.

Officials and federal officers turned away scores of U.S. Agency for International staffers who showed up for work Monday at its Washington headquarters, after a court temporarily blocked a Trump administration order that would have pulled all but a fraction of workers off the job worldwide.

A front desk officer turned away a steady stream of agency staffers— dressed in business clothes or USAID sweatshirts or T-shirts—saying he had a list of no more than 10 names of people allowed to enter the building. Tarps hung over USAID’s interior signs.

A man who earlier identified himself as a USAID official took a harsher tone, telling arriving staffers “just go” and “why are you here?”

A federal judge blocked Donald Trump’s administration from sending three Venezuelan immigrants to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, which the president has turned into a detention facility for deported immigrants.

The president’s decision to keep up to 30,000 immigrants inside tents and camps at the military prison — which opened in 2002 to hold terrorism suspects during the War on Terror — has drawn international scrutiny from civil rights and humanitarian groups.

Host Dana Bash pressed the secretary about whether Americans could be comfortable with Musk, whose DOGE group was not authorized by Congress and exists as a White House initiative, potentially accessing private data Americans authorized the federal government to collect.

John Bowden reports on what happened next…

On Monday, Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove directed that the US District Court in the Southern District of New York drop the federal case against Adams and dismiss it without prejudice.

“You are directed, as authorized by the Attorney General, to dismiss the pending charges in United States v. Adams… as soon as is practicable, subject to the following conditions,” Bove wrote in a memo, obtained by The Independent.

“The Justice Department has reached this conclusion without assessing the strength of the evidence or the legal theories on which the case is based, which are issues on which we defer to the U.S. Attorney’s Office at this time.”

Ariana Baio and Mike Bedigan have the story.