Trump announces 25 percent steel tariff increase to 50 percent as he celebrates US Steel deal

Good morning and welcome to our rolling coverage of the Trump administration.

Today, President Donald Trump hosts Elon Musk in the Oval Office at 1:30 p.m. to mark the tech billionaire’s official departure from the administration. He will continue to advise the president in an unofficial capacity.

After a flurry of pardons by the president this week, reality TV stars Todd Chrisley and Julie Chrisley will hold a press conference at 11 a.m., having been released from federal prison. The couple had been sentenced to 19 years in total after they were convicted in 2022 of conspiring to defraud banks out of more than $30 million in loans.

We will also keep you up to date with the latest developments in Trump’s trade war, following his plan for tariffs on U.S. trade partners, which was initially halted by a federal court but subsequently reinstated on appeal.

This morning, Trump said China “totally violated” his deal to pause tariffs on imports from that nation. He wrote on Truth Social: “So much for Mr. Nice Guy.”

President Donald Trump on Friday lashed out at China once more by claiming that Beijing was somehow not abiding by an interim deal under which both American and Chinese tariff rates on each other’s exports would be dialed back after Trump’s trade war caused them to spike precipitously.

Among the colorful characters freed by the president were a conspicuous number of his own supporters and donors, prompting accusations of corruption and favoritism.

There was also a focus in the pardon list on financial crimes and fraud, both of which Trump has had experience defending himself against.

Norm Eisen, the White House ethics czar under Barack Obama and executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund, told The Independent that Trump’s choices had a lot to do with recasting his own past legal troubles.

The Trump administration can strip temporary legal status granted to more than 500,000 immigrants under the Biden administration.

Emergency humanitarian protections for roughly 532,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to legally live and work in the country can be revoked.

The brief order noted that Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor dissented.

The decision comes after the court agreed to strip another 350,000 Venezuelans of those same protections:

President Donald Trump is hosting Elon Musk in one last Oval Office press conference, for now, as the Tesla billionaire wraps up his time working at the White House.

The president announced on his TruthSocial platform that the pair would hold a press conference together on Friday afternoon.

Rachel Clun has the details.

A brief order from the nation’s highest court on Friday allows the administration to revoke temporary legal status granted to roughly 532,000 immigrants during Joe Biden’s administration.

Alex Woodward has the details.

The FBI and the Trump administration have launched a joint investigation into how an impersonator hacked White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles’ phone.

An unknown person pretending to be Wiles has called or texted Republican senators and governors, and “prominent” business executives over the last few weeks, sources told The Wall Street Journal. It’s not clear what the impersonator’s goal is.

Mary Papenfuss has the story.