Trump names Fox News host and former judge Jeanine Pirro as top federal prosecutor in DC – as it happened
Trump names Fox host Jeanine Pirro as interim US attorney in DC
Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he was naming yet another Fox host to his administration, picking Jeanine Pirro to serve as the interim US attorney for Washington DC, after it became clear that his first choice, Ed Martin, would not be confirmed by the Senate.
Pirro, a former district attorney of Westchester county, New York, is a diehard Trump supporter whose false claim that the 2020 election was rigged by Dominion Voting Systems was used against Fox in court.
Trump, who noted Pirro’s legal qualifications, also wrote that she is “currently Co-Host of The Five, one of the Highest Rated Shows on Television”.
Pirro’s appointment comes one day after Trump withdrew his nomination of another Fox personality, Dr Janette Nesheiwat, as surgeon general.
Key events
Closing summary
We are wrapping up our live coverage of the Trump administration for the day, but will return on Friday. Please join us then. In the meantime, here are a few of the day’s developments:
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The United States announced a trade agreement with the United Kingdom in an Oval Office ceremony, although the two sides seemed to disagree about whether a UK tax of digital services is on the table or not.
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Donald Trump named another Fox host to his administration, appointing Jeanine Pirro interim US attorney for DC, after he was forced to admit that his first pick, Ed Martin, did not have the votes to be confirmed.
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The acting head of Fema was fired, one day after he said that he thought the emergency response agency should not be eliminated.
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Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro said that he was certain that British consumers would love the taste of American chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef.
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The state department said a solution to be able to deliver food aid to Gaza was “steps away” and an announcement was coming shortly, although it fell short of detailing what the plan would entail.
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Trump congratulated Pope Leo XIV on his election to head the Catholic Church.
A test for UK ambassador Peter Mandelson: what to do with his face when Trump called Schumer ‘a Palestinian’
During the Oval Office event to announce a new trade agreement between the US and the UK on Thursday morning, there was a visibly awkward moment for the British ambassador, Peter Mandelson.
Lord Mandelson, who had to apologize for having called Trump a “bully” in the past before taking up his diplomatic post, seemed generally eager to laugh at all of the president’s jokes as he stood behind him at the extended press event.
At one point, having stood next to the seated president for over 50 minutes, the diplomat began to chuckle as he heard Trump complain that Democrats would only oppose the deal because “they have Trump derangement syndrome”.
Things took a more uncomfortable turn seconds later, when Trump went into his insult comic mode and said, of the Democratic minority leader in the Senate, who is Jewish, “Senator Schumer’s become a Palestinian”.
After a brief grin, Lord Mandelson, whose father was Jewish, looked away as Trump added, to guffaws from his commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, “I don’t know when they’re going to give him the ceremony, whatever the ceremony may be”.
Melania Trump celebrates the life of Barbara Bush, who hated Donald Trump
In a curious event at the White House on Thursday, Melania Trump unveiled a new stamp honoring one of her predecessors, Barbara Bush, who made no secret of her passionate hatred for Donald Trump.
“The unveiling of this commemorative stamp honors Barbara Bush’s contributions as first lady and her enduring impact on our nation” the current, if largely absentee first lady read, haltingly, at the ceremony. “May this tribute inspire us to lead with compassion, act with strength, and uphold the values that direct us toward a meaningful existence.”
In a diary entry written in 1990 that Bush gave to the journalist Susan Page for a biography published after her death, the then first lady wrote that Trump’s behavior, 25 years before he entered politics, had transformed the meaning of his name into a new word. “Trump now means Greed, selfishness and ugly,” Bush wrote.
In 2016, just before her son Jeb dropped out of the Republican presidential primary against Trump, the former first lady told CBS News: “I don’t know how women can vote for someone who said what he sad about Megyn Kelly. It was terrible, and we knew what he meant too.”
After Kelly had asked Trump to account for his past misogynistic and sexist comments during a primary debate hosted by Fox in that campaign, Trump was enraged, and later told CNN: “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her … wherever.”
According to Page’s biography, until the day she died in 2018, Bush kept a red, white and blue digital clock on her bedside table that counted down to the end of Trump’s term.
Trump gives three jobs to Ed Martin, after withdrawing his nomination for US attorney
In a social media post, Donald Trump announced that Ed Martin, the Republican operative whose nomination as US attorney for Washington DC was withdrawn on Thursday, has been rewarded with not just one or two but three new jobs at the justice department.
Martin, whose brief tenure as interim US attorney will be remembered for his threatening letters to scientific journals he accused of bias in their publication decisions, will now be the director of a weaponization working group, an associate deputy attorney general, and the pardon attorney. Given the unprecedented rate at which Trump has doled out pardons to political supporters, including to the hundreds of January 6 rioters Martin raised money for and defended, that last assignment will no doubt keep him busy.
In his new roles, Trump promised: “Ed will make sure we finally investigate the Weaponization of our Government under the Biden Regime, and provide much needed Justice for its victims.”
Trump names Fox host Jeanine Pirro as interim US attorney in DC
Donald Trump announced on Thursday that he was naming yet another Fox host to his administration, picking Jeanine Pirro to serve as the interim US attorney for Washington DC, after it became clear that his first choice, Ed Martin, would not be confirmed by the Senate.
Pirro, a former district attorney of Westchester county, New York, is a diehard Trump supporter whose false claim that the 2020 election was rigged by Dominion Voting Systems was used against Fox in court.
Trump, who noted Pirro’s legal qualifications, also wrote that she is “currently Co-Host of The Five, one of the Highest Rated Shows on Television”.
Pirro’s appointment comes one day after Trump withdrew his nomination of another Fox personality, Dr Janette Nesheiwat, as surgeon general.
The president spent some of his afternoon posting messages on his social media platform, including one assuring his readers that he “will stay committed to securing Peace between Russia and Ukraine, together with the Europeans, and a Lasting Peace it will be!”
No details of any progress were included in the message, and the president offered no concrete suggestions, but he did downplay the difficulty of bringing an end to a bloody conflict that has lasted more than a decade already. “It can all be done very quickly, and I will be available on a moment’s notice if my services are needed,” he wrote.
Acting head of Fema fired one day after saying agency should not be eliminated
During a House oversight hearing on Wednesday, Cameron Hamilton, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was asked by the representative Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, whether he agreed with plans floated by the president and his homeland secretary, Kristi Noem, to eliminate Fema.
Hamilton asked the appropriations committee’s chair, the Republican Tom Cole, if he had to answer the question.
“I’m not going to let you off that easy,” Cole replied.
“As the senior adviser to the president on disasters and emergency management,” Hamilton answered, measuring his words carefully, “I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency.”
Twenty-four hours later, Hamilton is no longer leading the agency and has been replaced as the government’s senior emergency management official.
Hamilton was replaced by David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who was until Thursday the homeland security department’s assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. He has no apparent experience in managing responses to natural disasters and has just three weeks to prepare for the start of Atlantic hurricane season.
In a statement, DeLauro praised Hamilton and said:
I asked him a basic question about FEMA’s importance and the Trump Administration’s stated goal to eliminate this critical agency. Acting Administrator Hamilton answered with clarity and honesty – and now he has been fired.
President Trump fires anyone who is not blindly loyal to him. Acting Administrator Hamilton has proven his dedication to serving the American people. The Trump administration must explain why he has been removed from this position. Integrity and morality should not cost you your job, and if it does, it says more about your employer than it does you.
US and UK are ‘still in negotiations’ over digital services tax, Trump’s trade adviser says
One point of apparent disagreement between American and British officials seems to be whether the UK will have to drop its digital services tax, imposed on US tech companies like Amazon, Google and Meta.
The tax, which is imposed by several European countries and set at 2% by the UK on the revenues of search engines, social media services and online marketplaces, was described recently by the US treasury secretary Scott Bessent as an “unfair tax on one of America’s great industries”.
The 10 Downing Street statement on the new trade deal agreed on Thursday says: “The Digital Services Tax remains unchanged as part of today’s deal.” But Donald Trump’s trade adviser Peter Navarro told reporters a short time ago: “We’re still in negotiations with that.”
“That’s a very big deal to President Trump,” Navarro added. “The digital tax has spread like a bad virus around the world, but it started in Europe, and it basically targets American companies.”
According to the UK prime minister’s office, instead of dropping that tax, “the two nations have agreed to work on a digital trade deal that will strip back paperwork for British firms trying to export to the US – opening the UK up to a huge market that will put rocket boosters on the UK economy”.
In the House of Commons on Wednesday, the UK’s trade minister, Douglas Alexander, was asked whether the digital services tax, and legal regulations to prevent “online harms”, are on the negotiating table.
The tax, and those measures on online harms, he said, “remain undisturbed and unchanged by this agreement”.
Trump’s chief trade adviser says UK consumers will like US chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef
Peter Navarro, Trump’s chief trade adviser, just told reporters outside the White House that British consumers will like chicken and beef imported from the US despite the use of chlorine and hormones.
“Let’s see what the market decides,” Navarro said when asked about longstanding concerns in the UK about the safety of chlorinated chicken and hormone-fed beef produced in the US.
“Our position is and always has been”, he added, that sanitary standards are “simply a phony tool used to suppress what is very fine American agricultural product”.
“So if more of that comes into the market and the British people don’t want to buy it, that’s one set of facts,” Navarro said. “We don’t believe that once they taste American beef and chicken that they would prefer not to have it.”
Trump and Merz agree on need to resolve trade disputes, Germany says
Germany’s new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, and Donald Trump agreed on the need to quickly resolve trade disputes in a phone call on Thursday evening, Reuters reports that a German government spokesperson said.
The two leaders also agreed on the need to closely cooperate with the aim of ending the war in Ukraine, the spokesperson said.
“President Trump congratulated the Chancellor on taking office” earlier this week, the spokesperson said. “Chancellor Merz assured the American President that, 80 years after the end of the second world war, the United States remains an indispensable friend and partner of Germany.”
On the day of his election earlier this week, Merz warned the US to “stay out” of his country’s politics after the far-right AfD received strong backing from allies of the US president, including Vice-President JD Vance and controversial tech billionaire Elon Musk.
Merz condemned recent “absurd observations” from the US, without specifying particular statements, and said he “would like to encourage the American government … to largely stay out of” German domestic politics.
The day so far
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The state department said a solution to be able to deliver food aid to Gaza was “steps away” and an announcement was coming shortly, although it fell short of detailing what the plan would entail, per Reuters. Gaza is on the brink of catastrophe after two months of a total blockade by Israel.
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Trump and British PM Keir Starmer announced some details of the framework for a future US-UK trade deal, most of which pertained to cars, steel and aluminum, and agriculture. The details have not been finalized, but what was announced today was that tariffs for UK cars imported into the US would be cut from 27.5% to 10% up to a maximum of 100,000 cars a year, while US tariffs of 25% on steel and aluminum would be dropped to zero. On agriculture, Starmer said there had been no compromise on food standards, while the deal would open exclusive access for UK beef farmers to the US. But it also includes £5bn worth of agricultural exports from the US to the UK, with ethanol and beef – of great concern to British farmers – the only products mentioned specifically. US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said the deal would “exponentially increase our beef exports” to the UK. While the White House fact sheet and later press release from the US commerce department alluded to “unprecedented access” to the UK market for other American agricultural products being on the table in the talks – which neither side talked about in their press conferences today – they appeared to actually be referring to areas where the US already exports to the UK, albeit in small amounts.
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Trump congratulated Pope Leo XIV on his election to head the Catholic Church on Thursday, writing on Truth Social that it “is such an honor to realize that he is the first American Pope”. Trump said he was looking forward to meeting Robert Francis Prevost, who is originally from Chicago. A quick glance at Prevost’s X account gives some indication to his possible views on the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. Whether this might put him on a similar path to the late Pope Francis, who had a difficult relationship with the US president as a vocal critic of his most aggressive policies, remains to be seen.
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Bill Gates announced plans to shutter the Gates Foundation in 2045 and also strongly criticized Elon Musk for slashing funding to the US Agency for International Development (USAID), accusing the Tesla CEO of “killing the world’s poorest children” in new interviews.
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Trump said he will nominate a new candidate to serve as Washington DC’s top federal prosecutor, after his first pick Ed Martin, who holds the job on an interim basis, failed to garner enough support to advance in the Senate. Republican senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, who sits on the Senate judiciary committee, appeared to deal Martin’s nomination a fatal blow when he told reporters he could not support him because of Martin’s past comments which downplayed the January 6, 2021 US Capitol attack.
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The Trump administration asked the supreme court to intervene in its bid to revoke the temporary legal status granted by Joe Biden to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan, Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants living in the US.
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An Irish woman who was detained by US immigration authorities because of a criminal record dating back almost 20 years was released after 17 days in custody.
