Newsom calls for a special election to introduce new US House maps
Lauren Gambino
“Today is liberation day in the state of California,” Gavin Newsom said, announcing his plans to ask voters to approve new congressional maps in response to a redistricting plan by Texas.
To critics who fear a redistricting arms race, Newsom said:
It’s not good enough to just hold hands, have a candlelight vigil and talk about the way the world should be. We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire.
Other blue states need to stand up.
Key events
Closing summary
This ends our live coverage of the second Trump administration for the day, but we will be back on Friday morning. Here are the latest developments:
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As the federal takeover of the DC police continues, the Pentagon said that 800 national guard troops had been mobilized, with around 200 soldiers at a time taking turns to assist federal agents and the Metropolitan police department.
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Donald Trump echoed the baseless claim that crime in the nation’s capital is the “worst it’s ever been”, despite data from the justice department showing that DC experienced a 30-year low in violent crime in 2024. Trump also said, again without evidence, that DC officials have created fake statistics to portray the rate of violent crime declining in the city. He added that they are “under investigation”, but didn’t name anyone specifically.
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As part of its advertising blitz to attract new recruits, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) released a social media video on Thursday that uses a song by the rapper DaBaby and shows agency vehicles that appear to be painted in the same red, blue and gold style as Donald Trump’s private plane, which was featured in the opening sequence for The Apprentice.
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New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, confirmed on social media that a federal building where protesters held a silent vigil on Thursday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) was evacuated after “envelopes containing white powder were discovered”.
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In another sign that the Trump presidency is largely made-for-TV, the White House and Fox News revealed that Trump will appear on Fox News both before and immediately after his summit meeting with Vladimir Putin on Friday.
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Four days after Trump ordered the unhoused residents of Washington DC, whom he sped past in his motorcade for a golf outing, to leave the city, local officials helped clear encampments before announced sweeps by federal agents.
Officials in Washington DC act on Trump’s order to clear city of unhoused residents before expected sweeps
Four days after Donald Trump ordered the unhoused residents of Washington DC, whom he sped past in his motorcade for a golf outing, to leave the city, local officials helped clear encampments before announced sweeps by federal agents.
The Washington Post reports that members of DC’s health and human services unit were clearing an encampment on a grassy area near the Kennedy Center after residents there were given one day’s notice to remove their belongings.
The Associated Press reports that about a dozen unhoused residents were seen packing their belongings near the Institute of Peace on Thursday. Items weren’t being forcibly thrown out by law enforcement, but an earth mover dug out and scooped away the remains of encampments, depositing them into the bed of an idling truck.
Volunteers from some of the agencies around the city that help unhoused people were on hand, and advocates said they expected law enforcement officers to fan out across DC later in the day to take down any remaining homeless encampments,
Amber Harding, director of the Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless, told the AP she believed that “federal law enforcement will begin systematically rounding up and arresting unhoused people.” She believed officers would ask people to move on or would “offer shelter,” arresting people if they refused either directive.
“We do not have enough shelter beds for everyone on the street,” Harding said. “This is a chaotic and scary time for all of us in D.C., but particularly for people without homes.”
Lucho Vásquez, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, said his group was “focusing all energies on opening and operating temporary facilities” for anyone in need of emergency shelter, food or other resources after the removals.
From a former encampment near the Institute of Peace, DC’s deputy mayor, Wayne Turnage, told reporters that after the National Park Service notified the city it planned to close all such sites on federal and district land, Washington officials decided to tackle some of the work themselves.
“Closing encampments is a very, very complex process”, Turnage said. “We’re dealing with human beings who, in many cases, have been marginalized. Their lives are being disrupted. And so we have put a process in place that we think respects that”.
He said federal authorities have laid out an “aggressive timeline” that aims to finish closing encampments within about week, but it may not be possible to clear all 62 sites that quickly.
National Guard troops deployed to DC by the president could be used to evict homeless residents who fail to leave on their own. On Thursday, Trump said the troops, who are not trained for law enforcement or social work, are trained in “common sense”. He added: “they’re trained in not allowing people to burn down buildings and bomb buildings and shoot people and all the things.”
White House grants Fox News exclusive interviews with Trump before and after Putin summit
In another sign that the Trump presidency is largely made-for-TV, White House planning for the summit meeting on Friday in Alaska between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin appears to have been influenced by the nightly Fox News television schedule.
According to a Fox ad shared by the White House on social media on Thursday, with the tag line: “One historic summit — two exclusive interviews”, Trump will give a preview of the summit to Brett Baier, in an interview recorded on Air Force One en route to Alaska, and then make a live appearance immediately after meeting Putin on Sean Hannity’s primetime Fox show at 9pm EDT.
In a social media promotion for his show from the military base in Alaska where Trump and Putin will be meeting, Hannity told viewers that “right after that meeting, we will go in that very room, we’ll set up and we’ll have our exclusive interview with president Trump”.
Pentagon spokesperson says Hegseth supports right for women to vote, despite social media post
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, “thinks that women should have the right to vote,” Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson told reporters on Thursday.
The question was the first to be asked at an unusual off-camera, on-the-record press briefing, because Hegseth had shared a video report on social media last week in which several pastors said that women should no longer be allowed to vote.
“All of Christ for All of Life,” Hegseth wrote on his personal X account above the video report that focused on pastor Doug Wilson, a Christian nationalist who co-founded the Idaho-based Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC).
In the segment, Wilson raised the idea of women not voting. “I would like to see this nation being a Christian nation, and I would like this world to be a Christian world,” Wilson said.
The video report also included comments from pastor Jared Longshore, who said that he would support repealing the 19th amendment to the US constitution which granted women the right to vote.
“Of course the secretary thinks that women should have the right to vote,” the Pentagon spokeswoman said on Thursday. “That’s a stupid question.”
Pressed to explain why the defense secretary had shared the video report, the spokeswoman confirmed that Hegseth is a member of a congregation that was founded by pastor Doug Wilson and “appreciates many of his writings and teachings”.
Federal building in New York evacuated after white powder found, New York mayor says
New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, confirmed on social media that a federal building where protesters held a silent vigil on Thursday against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) was evacuated after “envelopes containing white powder were discovered”.
According to a report from NBC News, the powder was found on the ninth floor of 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, where Ice has an office.
“I want to also reassure you that there are no known injuries at this time,” Adams added.
Trump’s baseless claim that DC crime stats are fake was prompted by question from celebrity fitness trainer
In a now familiar scene, when Donald Trump took questions in the Oval Office on Thursday, the first two reporters he called on were correspondents for partisan, far-right outlets that support him.
After calling first on a correspondent for One America News, who praised Trump’s handling of social security, the president turned to Cara Castronuova of Lindell TV. That outlet was founded by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow salesman who relentlessly boosted Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen.
Castronuova, a former celebrity fitness trainer who openly supports Trump, invited the president to comment on what she said was the way that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders “continue to peddle the lie and the claim that you’re trying to cut social security” and are “literally terrorizing the elderly in America that sadly keep watching the very misleading mainstream media”.
“I love your question,” Trump said, before launching into a diatribe against Warren and Sanders.
A few minutes later, Castronuova asked Trump for his response to what she called “very concerning reports” that “police are manipulating crime data to downplay crime in DC”.
Despite Trump’s hyperbolic claims about a spike in crime in Washington DC, justifying his federal takeover, data collected by police, and released by the justice department, showed that violent crime was at a 30-year low when Trump took office in January. Official statistics show that violent crime in DC is down a further 26% so far this year.
“Will the administration release its own crime statistics to counter their misinformation?” Castronuova asked.
“Yeah,” Trump replied.
“Will those individuals who are intentionally misrepresenting crime data and fudging the books like you said be penalized for endangering the public?”
“They are under investigation right now,” Trump said. “They are giving us phony crime stats, just like they gave us phony stats in the financial world,” the president then claimed, in reference to his prior unsubstantiated claim that employment data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that showed slowing job growth was also fake.
Later on Thursday, Fox News reported that America First Legal Foundation, a group founded by Stephen Miller, filed a freedom of information request to obtain raw crime data from the DC Metropolitan police department, in an effort to find support for the theory that local crime statistics were, as Lindell TV’s correspondent claimed, manipulated.
New Immigration and Customs Enforcement ad features music by DaBaby and vehicles painted like Trump’s jet
As part of its advertising blitz to attract new recruits, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) released a social media video on Thursday that uses a song by the rapper DaBaby and shows agency vehicles that appear to be painted in the same red, blue and gold style as Donald Trump’s private plane, which was featured in the opening sequence for The Apprentice.
DaBaby, a North Carolina artist who was born Jonathan Lyndale Kirk, was widely criticized for homophobic remarks in 2021.
The song used in the ad, TOES, begins with the lyrics: “My heart so cold I think I’m done with ice (Uh, brr)/ Said if I leave her, she gon’ die/ Well, bitch, you done with life (Okay)/ Better not pull up with no knife/‘Cause I bring guns to fights (Boom)”.
Earlier this week, a prior Ice recruitment that used Jay-Z’s music without permission was removed from X in response to a copyright complaint, but not until it had been viewed nearly three million times.
The video featured images of Ice agents during raids set to Jay-Z’s Public Service Announcement, with the caption: “Hunt Cartels. Save America. JOIN.ICE.GOV.”
Border patrol chief who led raid outside Newsom’s redistricting event claims he had no idea governor was there
While the timing of a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) raid on Thursday outside the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, where California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, was announcing a redistricting plan, struck many as an intentional act of intimidation by federal forces, the CBP chief who led the raid claimed during the show of force that he had no ides the governor was there.
Video of the raid posted on X by a popular pro-Trump influencer included an interview with Gregory Bovino, a CBP chief in Southern California who has become the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, through his frequent appearances on Fox News and in social media clips produced by influencers and his own agents.
“We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we won’t have politicians who will do that, we do that ourselves”, Bovino said in the clip.
“You know the governor’s inside right there” the person recording the interview noted.
“Oh I didn’t- I don’t know where he’s at”, Bovino replied.
“He’s about a hundred feet behind us; do you have any comment for him, any message?” the videographer asked.
“We’re making Los Angeles and California a safer place”, the CBP chief said, as an armed agent with a digital camera behind him filmed the raid. “We’re going to continue to do that and they can take that one to the bank, and cash it”.
Eric Holder, who served as attorney general in the Obama administration and now leads an organization aimed at eliminating politics from the process of drawing congressional districts, endorsed California governor Gavin Newsom’s plan to redraw his state’s map if Texas goes ahead with its plan to draw a new map this year.
Here’s how the statement from Holder, the chair of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee begins:
Nobody wins a redistricting arms race, least of all the American people. But Trump’s demand for extreme and unjustified mid-decade gerrymanders in Texas and beyond—with too many Republicans ready and willing to be complicit in his orders to predetermine the outcome of the next federal election—has brought a new, dangerous threat to free and fair elections in America. That’s why I support responsible and responsive actions—on a temporary basis—to ensure that the foundations of our democracy are not permanently eroded and to leave a basis for needed reform.
Governor Newsom’s proposal for a redraw process adheres to that vision. It stands in stark contrast to the power grab unfolding in Texas, by allowing voters a chance to weigh in and, in 2030, returning California to its long-standing commission process.
“Our democracy is under attack. We have no choice but to defend it,” Holder said, adding that congress should pass “a federal ban against partisan gerrymandering, to ensure that our nation never has to go through this again”.
Here’s a recap of the day so far
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As the federal takeover of the DC police continues, the Pentagon said today that all 800 national guard troops have been mobilised – with around 200 soldiers at a time taking turns to assist federal agents and the Metropolitan police department (MPD). Last night protesters heckled federal law enforcement officials as they reportedly stopped dozens of cars at a checkpoint along a busy street in Washington DC – chanting “get off our streets” and “go home, fascists”. The White House said that federal officers made 45 arrests on Wednesday evening.
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Meanwhile, Donald Trump repeated the baseless claim that crime in the nation’s capital is the “worst it’s ever been”, despite data from the justice department showing that DC experienced a 30-year low in violent crime in 2024. Trump also said, again without evidence, that DC officials have created fake statistics to portray the rate of violent crime declining in the city. He added that they are “under investigation”, but didn’t name anyone specifically.
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Also today, DC police chief Pamela Smith issued an executive order that allows the MPD to notify Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents about undocumented immigrants they find during traffic stops. For his part, the president called this “a great step” while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office.
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And looking beyond Washington, the president prefaced his summit with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on a couple of occasions today. He said that his chief aim was to set up a second meeting with Putin, himself and Volodymyr Zelenskyy all present. “I’d like to see it happen very quickly,” he said.
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Notably, Trump was less forthright when asked if “anything less than an unconditional and immediate ceasefire” would be considered a success at tomorrow’s summit. “We’re going to find out where everybody stands … if it’s a bad meeting, it’ll end very quickly, and if it’s a good meeting, we’re going to end up getting peace in the pretty near future,” he said.
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The president also made an international cold-call last month to Norway’s finance minister – to ask about a nomination for the Nobel peace prize, according to reports today by Norwegian press.
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Finally, and closer to home, California governor Gavin Newsom announced plans to hold a special election to approve new congressional maps in response to a redistricting plan by Texas. “We have got to recognize the cards that have been dealt. And we have got to meet fire with fire,” he said today at a press conference.
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This comes as Texas Democrats said on Thursday they are prepared to return to the state under certain conditions, ending a nearly two-week-long effort to block Republicans from passing a new congressional map that would add five GOP seats.
All 800 national guard troops deployed have been activated, Pentagon says
In a statement, the Department of Defense said that all 800 national guard troops deployed this week are now mobilised.
Pentagon press secretary Kingsley Wilson underscored that troops will not be arresting people, “but they may temporarily limit the movement of an individual who has entered a restricted or secured area without permission”.
About 200 soldiers at a time will support federal law enforcement and the Metropolitan police department (MPD) in the nation’s capital. “They will remain there until law and order has been restored in the district, as determined by the president – standing as the gatekeepers of our great nation’s capital,” Wilson said.
