A new blog dawns
We are wrapping up here and moving our live coverage of the second Trump administration to a fresh blog, focused on the president’s much anticipated primetime address, widely expected to concern the 2020 election he just can’t admit he lost. Please join us there for updates and analysis before, during and after the speech.
Here are the latest developments as we sign off here:
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Donald Trump’s wildly false claim that the CHIPS Act, a bipartisan law signed by his predecessor Joe Biden, required firms receiving funding to be run by transgender executives, baffled the law’s author, and set off a scramble to figure out where this entirely untrue claim came from.
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Rather than wait to react, Democratic lawmakers are getting their pre-bunks of Donald Trump’s expected claims about the 2020 election in ahead of time on social media. Maryland senator Angela Alsobrooks framed her comments in the style of a young person concerned about an elderly relative unable to let go of a favorite conspiracy theory. Georgia senator Jon Ossoff said: “Here’s what’s going to happen tonight: the world’s most famous sore loser will deliver a prime time presidential sour grapes address to pursue his six-year-old grievances about the 2020 election”.
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Two of the major broadcast television networks, NBC and ABC, reportedly declined to air Trump’s primetime address live, relegating the president’s remarks to their streaming platforms.
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Senator John Fetterman said he would consider leaving the Democratic party it ever became “the anti-Israel party”, as more than 100 House lawmakers backed halting military aid to Israel over its wars in Gaza and Lebanon.
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In her first press briefing since returning from maternity leave, Karoline Leavitt said that Trump’s findings about alleged interference in the 2020 election “will shock you,” during his televised address to the nation this evening.
Key events
Trump’s false claim that Biden’s CHIPS Act required ‘transgender’ executives baffles law’s author, and she’s not the only one
Speaking at an innovation summit in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, Donald Trump made a startling claim: the CHIPS Act, the bipartisan law signed by his predecessor Joe Biden, which provided $52bn in subsidies and tax credits to boost the manufacturing of computer chips in the US, required firms accepting funding to be run by transgender executives.
“We had this ridiculous CHIPS Act where you give billions of dollars to a company,” Trump said, “and of course, the standards were so high – if you weren’t transgender, as an example, you didn’t qualify. So they’d get the money, they’d hire, they’d look all over for transgender people to run the company, large portions. They couldn’t find them. They weren’t into the chip making business, I guess, right? They had other things on their mind.”
The president’s claim was startling in large part because it was entirely untrue, as one of the co-authors of the legislation, California congresswoman Doris Matsui noted on social media.
“As one of the architects of the CHIPS Act, let me be clear: Donald Trump is lying,” Matsui wrote in response to video of Trump’s remarks. “He’s deliberately spewing disinformation to incite hatred and divide Americans while attacking one of the most important investments we’ve made in American manufacturing, economic growth, and national security.”
The president’s wildly false claim set off a scramble to figure out what he was talking about, with several competing theories about how he had misread the law circulating online.
The White House has not yet responded to a request to explain the comment, but a look at the text of the law reveals that it does, at various points, refer to a Department of Energy office that was named at the time, the Office of Technology Transitions. Last year, after Trump returned to the presidency, that office, which funds new companies, jobs and technologies, was formally renamed the Office of Technology Commercialization.
Another section of the law says that funding should “give priority to institutions that demonstrate effective strategies to recruit and provide career and technical education to veterans and members of the Armed Forces transitioning to the private sector workforce.”
While no part of the law refers in any way to transgender individuals, the legislation was praised, when it was signed into law in 2022, for a provision that directed the National Science Foundation and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to address sex-based and sexual harassment in science, technology, engineering and math departments at universities.
Under the law, millions of dollars was to be awarded, “on a competitive basis, to institutions of higher education or nonprofit organizations … to expand research efforts to better understand the factors contributing to, and consequences of, sex-based and sexual harassment affecting individuals in the STEM workforce, including students and trainees; and … to examine approaches to reduce the incidence and negative consequences of such harassment.”
‘The president is going to go before the American people and repeat his false claims about voter fraud’, Maryland senator Angela Alsobrooks says
Rather than wait to react, Democratic lawmakers are getting their pre-bunks of Donald Trump’s expected claims about the 2020 election in ahead of time on social media.
Senator Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat, said in a video statement framed as the concerns of a young person indulging an elderly relative who is unable to let go of their favorite conspiracy theory.
“Well tonight, bless his heart, the president is going to go before the American people and repeat his false claims about voter fraud in the 2020 election,” Alsobrooks began.
“None of us buy it, and we are not fooled by it. But what we know is that this president is not interested in strengthening the democracy in our country. He is instead interested in preventing eligible Americans from exercising their right to vote,” she continued.
“As we remember the life and legacy of John Lewis, we must remember that the right to vote is sacrosanct. And no matter the number of false claims made by this president, it does not erase the fact that eligible Americans deserve not to have their right to vote blocked or impeded through all of these false claims that really just hope to prevent people from voting by mail,” Maryland’s first Black senator added.
“The attacks on election workers; the raids that have been illegal – all of these actions are designed to prevent Americans from voting, not to prevent those who are not eligible to vote. His actions are designed to prevent Americans from voting,” Alsobrooks also said.
“Let’s let that sink in as we listen to the false claims of this president who, bless his heart, just cannot accept what all of the evidence has shown, is that there is absolutely nothing improper that happened in 2020,” she concluded.
Ben Quinn
Hard-right figures from around the world have gathered in London for the inaugural British spin-off from America’s influential CPAC gathering, which powered the rise of Donald Trump.
The first CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) GB has been spearheaded by Liz Truss, the former Conservative leader who was the UK’s prime minister for six weeks, as she seeks to rebuild her legacy and influence on the British right.
Keynote speakers included the US rightwing influencer Jack Posobiec, who previously promoted the fabricated “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory smearing prominent Democrats as paedophiles.
“The British people must rise up and take back their country,” he said to applause from a few hundred attendees who had paid between £100 and £10,000 for access to the three-day event.
Sponsors include the John Birch Society, the hard-right US advocacy group, AI company Alpha Compute and companies involved in Bitcoin, which will be a major theme on Friday.
Those due to speak in the next two days include Nigel Farage, leader of the Reform UK party, and Pauline Hanson, the leader of Australia’s anti-immigration One Nation party whose recent polling has gained her support among the populist right.
Other speakers on Thursday included George Simion, a pro-Trump, Romanian ultranationalist who was narrowly defeated in presidential elections last year. He used a speech to reference far-right slogans such as “remigration” and the “great replacement” conspiracy theory.
“This is not diversity. This is replacement. The answer is remigration. Legal, orderly but firm,” he said.
Georgia senator Jon Ossoff pre-bunks Trump’s address as ‘2020 election denialism’ from ‘the world’s most famous sore loser’
Amid rumors that Donald Trump plans to claim in a primetime address on Thursday night that the 2020 election was illegitimate, senator Jon Ossoff, a Georgia Democrat who won his seat in a runoff tied to that election, gave reporters in Washington a preview of what he expects to hear from the president.
Ossoff first noted that Trump’s nominee to become director of national intelligence, Jay Clayton, had refused to answer his yes or no question about whether Joe Biden won the 2020 election during his “disqualifying and disastrous” confirmation hearing on Wednesday.
That question, Ossoff said, was particularly important “given the continued misuse of America’s intelligence services and intelligence authorities and personnel by this president in the pursuit of 2020 election denialism and conspiracy theories.”
“Which brings me to the president’s anticipated address this evening,” Ossoff continued. “Here’s what’s going to happen tonight: the world’s most famous sore loser will deliver a prime time presidential sour grapes address to pursue his six-year-old grievances about the 2020 election, while his war in the Middle East spirals out of control and the cost of living continues to rise for Americans across the country.”
“I expect the president to reheat debunked conspiracy theories about the repeatedly litigated and audited and confirmed 2020 presidential election in Georgia, an election that Donald Trump lost,” he went on. “And let me be very clear about this: if the President declares Georgia’s election illegitimate, or if the President declares Georgia’s sitting United States senators illegitimate, he is declaring Georgia voters illegitimate.”
Ossoff then urged the correspondents around him to remind their viewers that Trump was caught in an audio recording of his phone call with Georgia’s Republican secretary of state on 2 January 2021 asking for the results to be changed in Georgia to reverse his loss to Biden.
“It’s Donald Trump who tried to defraud Georgia voters in that election; Donald Trump who tried to commit election fraud, when he called Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger – and it was caught on tape, and you should play the tape to your viewers today – and badgered and bullied Georgia’s top election official to, quote, ‘find him’ the votes that he needed to win in a state where he had lost.”
Two days after Trump failed to convince Georgia’s secretary of state in that phone call to “find 11,780 votes” for Biden that could be disqualified as fraudulent – which would have handed the state to Trump by a single vote – the president gave a speech at a rally for two incumbent Republican senators forced into a runoff election on 5 January 2021.
Instead of urging voters to support those candidates, Trump undermined faith in the election process by obsessively repeating lies about the presidential election he lost. “Hello, Georgia,” Trump began that night. “By the way, there’s no way we lost Georgia. There’s no way. Rigged—that was a rigged, that was a rigged election, but we’re still fighting it”.
One day later, both incumbent Republican senators lost their seats in the runoff to their Democratic challengers, Ossoff and Raphael Warnock.
“Donald Trump lost Georgia in 2020,” Warnock said in a statement on Trump’s speech. “That’s not my opinion, it’s a fact. The votes were counted, recounted, audited, and litigated. He lost, he lost, he lost. But this really isn’t about 2020. It’s about 2026. He is trying to sow doubt on the integrity of our elections in Georgia so that he can create the pretext to interfere in 2026. This president is a liar, a cheater, and a fraud. And he has shown us over and over again that staying in power matters more to him than anything else.”
NBC and ABC will not turn over their airwaves to Trump for 2020 election speech – report
Two of the major broadcast television networks, NBC and ABC, have decided not to air Donald Trump’s primetime address live on Thursday, relegating the president’s remarks, likely to present false claims about the 2020 election he lost, to their streaming platforms, CNN chief media analyst Brian Stelter reports.
In statements to Stelter, NBC said it would stream Trump’s remarks on NBC News NOW, and follow the address with a special report unpacking the claims on television; ABC likewise stream the speech on ABC News Live, and could run a special report on television “should significant developments occur”.
Those two networks, and CBS, previously declined to pre-empt their regular broadcast to air what they considered a political speech by then-president Joe Biden, on threats to democracy, in 2022.
Chris Stein
Senator John Fetterman said he would consider leaving the Democratic party it ever became “the anti-Israel party”, as more than 100 House lawmakers backed halting military aid to the Middle Eastern ally over its incursions into Gaza and Lebanon.
The Pennsylvania senator has emerged as one of Israel’s most prominent advocates among Senate Democrats, even as others in the party back away from their traditional support for the country amid accusations that prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government committed genocide in Gaza.
“My long term concern has been with the Democratic party, as I am a member of that, is that our party is going to back away and turn their back to Israel,” Fetterman said on Wednesday at an event organized by the Hill and NewsNation.
Nodding to recent primary victories by candidates who oppose aid to Israel, Fetterman said: “I’ve described that if our party ever becomes … the anti-Israel party, you know, that’s when I would leave.”
“That’s been a moral clarity for me,” he added.
While the senator acknowledged some attempts by Republicans to convince him to switch sides, he said he otherwise had no interest in doing so because he disagreed with the majority of the GOP’s policies.
“I’ve been very clear. I am never changing my party, except for that one condition that we just discussed,” Fetterman said. “If I was going to, I would have already done that.”
Trump approval rating stuck at 37% according to new poll, the same level as his 2021 departure
Donald Trump’s approval rating is sitting at 37%, according to a new Washington Post-Ipsos poll. The level is almost identical to his April approval rating, and when he left the White House in 2021 – after losing the presidential election to Joe Biden.
While 81% Republicans surveyed in the poll say they approve of Trump’s performance, only 52% of those who lean-Republican have the same assessment.
As a peace deal with Iran appears increasingly elusive, with renewed back-to-back strikes this week, only 29% of Americans approve of Trump’s handling of the war.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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In her first press briefing since returning from maternity leave, Karoline Leavitt said that Donald Trump’s findings about alleged interference in the 2020 election “will shock you,” during his televised address to the nation this evening. “Everything he is saying will be backed by facts and by evidence that will be provided this evening,” the press secretary added. Leavitt also defended the president’s fixation on the election he lost, despite relentless unsubstaniated claims of fraud, because the “the media has refused to acknowledge that tens of millions of Americans share his concerns about the sanctity of our elections.”
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Leavitt also confimed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would continue vehicle stops, despite a back and forth between Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the practice. Federal officers across the US had been told to temporarily stop pulling drivers over after ICE agents fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on 7 July, and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine on Monday. She added that Trump and Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, “are on the same page that vehicle stops are a necessary tool that ICE agents need in order to continuing continue their deportation campaign”.
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The press secretary also confirmed that Trump will attend the Fifa World Cup final in New Jersey on Sunday. “This is a fitting conclusion to a tournament that showcased America’s ability to host the world on the grandest stage,” Leavitt said.
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Earlier, former pardon attorney Liz Oyer blasted Todd Blanche’s testimony during his confirmation hearing to be the next attorney general this week. Oyer said she was fired from the justice department after she refused to recommend restoring the firearm rights to actor and Trump-ally Mel Gibson, who was previously convicted of domestic violence. On Wednesday, Blanche said Oyer’s recommendation did not lead to her termination. “His claim that it had nothing to do with the concerns I raised is contradicted by documents and evidence,” she added. Oyer then urged senators to not “degrade our justice system further” by promoting Blanche.
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Also today, the president’s longtime teleprompter operator is believed to have made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on a number of Trump’s speeches on the prediction market, Kalshi, according to a report from ABC News. At the briefing room podium today, Leavitt said the president is aware of the investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC). “[Trump] believes it’s deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace,” Leavitt said, noting the operator has been put on unpaid administrative leave and there will be a different person running the teleprompter for tonight’s address.
Despite consecutive days of US strikes on Iran, Leavitt insisted negotiations are not stalled, saying conversations between Tehran and Washington “continue”.
“They want to make a deal with us because they are suffering devastating blows at the hands of the United States military,” she said, echoing the president’s frequent claim that Iran wants to “settle so badly”.
Leavitt defended the strikes as retaliation for Iran violating its memorandum of understanding with the US and for launching attacks on commercial vessels in the strait of Hormuz.
“President Trump is not going to sit by and allow these active acts of terrorism to take place in the strait without ensuring Iran pays consequences for that – and that’s what we are witnessing right now,” she said.
White House confirms that ICE vehicle stops will continue
In response to a question about three men who have been killed by ICE in the past week, Leavitt confimed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) would continue vehicle stops, despite a back and forth between Donald Trump and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on the practice.
The press secretary said that DHS has issued “verbal guidance has been given to all field offices across the country”.
She added that Trump and Markwayne Mullin, the homeland security secretary, “are on the same page that vehicle stops are a necessary tool that ICE agents need in order to continuing continue their deportation campaign”.
Federal officers across the US had been told to temporarily stop pulling drivers over after ICE agents fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston on 7 July, and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine on Monday. Both men were unarmed, neither was the intended target of the operation that killed him, and in both cases the agents involved wore no body camera to record what had happened.
Leavitt noted that “over half of all ICE field offices” now have body cameras, and the remainder of the field offices are expected within 60 days. However, she blamed the slower rollout on Democratic lawmakers after a DHS shutdown earlier this year over ICE tactics following the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti by federal agents in Minneapolis in January.
In response to a report from ABC News that the president’s longtime teleprompter operator is believed to have made tens of thousands of dollars by placing bets on a number of Trump’s speeches on the prediction market, Kalshi, the press secretary said the president is aware of the investigation by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC).
“[Trump] believes it’s deeply unfortunate and frankly a disgrace,” Leavitt said, noting the operator has been put on unpaid administrative leave and there will be a different person running the teleprompter for tonight’s address.
Leavitt insisted there are “very strict ethical guidelines” at the White House that “explicitly state not to do this”.
“The White House Counsel’s office makes that clear to all of us who sign up to work in government on behalf of the president,” she said. “This individual unfortunately violated the plan, and therefore he’s paying the consequences for it.”
Leavitt says that Trump is fixed on 2020 elections because media has ‘refused to acknowledge’ concerns about ‘sanctity’ of elections
Fielding questions about the substance of the president’s televised address tonight – specifically reports that Trump plans to unveil new claims of interference in the 2020 election, despite the lack of evidence of widespread fraud – Leavitt argued that the president remains focused on the results because “the media has refused to acknowledge that tens of millions of Americans share his concerns about the sanctity of our elections.”
She added that Trump’s forthcoming “findings will shock you,” urging viewers to tune in. “Everything he is saying will be backed by facts and by evidence that will be provided this evening,” she said.
In her opening remarks, Leavitt touted the administration’s arrests of undocumented immigrants convicted of crimes, but notably made no reference to the deaths of the three immigrants killed at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the last week.
