Trump insists White House ballroom security costs would be a ‘very good expenditure’ despite GOP backlash
Asked about Republican backlash over plans to provide $1bn in security funds for his White House ballroom project, Donald Trump drew distinctions between the ballroom and proposed security improvements.
He said the ballroom was being built “in conjunction” with the military and the Secret Service and claimed that “a tremendous amount” of the project “is for national security”.
The president also said that the changes were “not for me because I’ll be gone” – even though he’s repeatedly mused about remaining in office after his term, including yesterday.
Pressured by the White House, Republicans tried to add the funds to a roughly $70bn bill to restore funding to ICE and the Border Patrol. But the security proposal is expected to be scrapped after being met with opposition from some GOP lawmakers who feared diverting taxpayer dollars to the project amid mounting cost of living concerns across the US would risk alienating voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Asked if he was losing control of the Senate, Trump said:
I really don’t know. I don’t need money for the ballroom, I’m making a gift of the ballroom.
We’re on time, on budget, it’s going beautifully. I have all the money I need, I’m making a gift to the United States. The ballroom is paid for, it’s a gift.
He then claimed the funds needed for the ballroom are for “national security”, including the drone port and bulletproof glass.
If they want to spend money securing the White House, I think it would be very much a good expenditure.
Asked what if Congress doesn’t sign off on the security money, Trump replied:
Well, the White House won’t be a very secure place.
Key events
Trump says ‘it looks like I’ll be the one’ to intervene in Cuba after Castro indictment
Asked about the US aircraft carrier that arrived in the Caribbean yesterday and whether it was meant to intimidate the Cuban government, Trump said: “No, not at all.”
“We’re going to help them along … because I want to help them,” he said, adding: “Other presidents have looked at this for 50, 60 years. It looks like I’ll be the one that does it. We want to open it up to Cuban Americans where they can go back and help.”
Fears of potential US military strikes on Cuba are growing, following the issuing of a federal criminal indictment against former president Raúl Castro and five others yesterday, marking a significant escalation of the Trump administration’s campaign to oust the country’s six-decades-old communist regime.
David Smith
I’ve just been in the Oval Office, wishing I’d worn dark glasses to dim the glare of all that gold. Donald Trump was ostensibly promoting of the reversal of Joe Biden’s regulations on fridges but sounded more enthusiastic about his White House ballroom, Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool and triumphal arch, which just received approval from a fine arts commission.
I asked the US president why today’s AI executive order signing ceremony – which tech titans were expected to attend – has abruptly been called off. “Because I didn’t like certain aspects of it, I postponed it,” said Trump, sitting at the Resolute desk. “We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s gonna get in the way of that lead.”
He said AI is “causing tremendous good and it’s also bringing in a lot of jobs, tremendous numbers of jobs. Again, we have more people working right now than we’ve ever had. I really thought that could have been a blocker and I want to make sure that it’s not.”
Trump travelled to China last week with Elon Musk of Tesla, Tim Cook of Apple and other tech leaders. Did he discuss AI safeguards with Chinese leader Xi Jinping? “I did, I did, I discussed it and he acknowledges how well we’re doing,” the presidenty said. “It’s the two of us, the two countries are fighting for it. Other countries are way behind. Way, way behind.
“They’re fighting for it, they want it, everybody wants it but they’re way behind. But I didn’t want to do it – I postponed that meeting – it was a signing actually – because I didn’t like what I was seeing.”
Trump insists White House ballroom security costs would be a ‘very good expenditure’ despite GOP backlash
Asked about Republican backlash over plans to provide $1bn in security funds for his White House ballroom project, Donald Trump drew distinctions between the ballroom and proposed security improvements.
He said the ballroom was being built “in conjunction” with the military and the Secret Service and claimed that “a tremendous amount” of the project “is for national security”.
The president also said that the changes were “not for me because I’ll be gone” – even though he’s repeatedly mused about remaining in office after his term, including yesterday.
Pressured by the White House, Republicans tried to add the funds to a roughly $70bn bill to restore funding to ICE and the Border Patrol. But the security proposal is expected to be scrapped after being met with opposition from some GOP lawmakers who feared diverting taxpayer dollars to the project amid mounting cost of living concerns across the US would risk alienating voters ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Asked if he was losing control of the Senate, Trump said:
I really don’t know. I don’t need money for the ballroom, I’m making a gift of the ballroom.
We’re on time, on budget, it’s going beautifully. I have all the money I need, I’m making a gift to the United States. The ballroom is paid for, it’s a gift.
He then claimed the funds needed for the ballroom are for “national security”, including the drone port and bulletproof glass.
If they want to spend money securing the White House, I think it would be very much a good expenditure.
Asked what if Congress doesn’t sign off on the security money, Trump replied:
Well, the White House won’t be a very secure place.
Trump postpones signing AI executive order because he ‘didn’t like some aspects’
Donald Trump also called off a signing ceremony for an executive order on artificial intelligence because he didn’t like some aspects of the text.
“Because I didn’t like certain aspects of it I postponed it,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office a short while ago, just a few hours before the ceremony with top CEOs at the White House was due to take place. “I didn’t like what I was seeing.”
He added: “We’re leading China, we’re leading everybody, and I don’t want to do anything that’s going to get in the way of that lead.”
In response to a comments about the DNC autopsy report and the 2024 presidential election, Trump said “US election are so rigged and we have to do something about it.”
He again brought up that voters should have proof of citizenship and that the practice of mail-in ballots should be eliminated.
“We have elections that are more corrupt than third world countries,” said Trump, then changing the conversation to talk about Democratic support towards the participation of transgender people in sports.
Trump’s environmental protection agency has rolled back refrigerant rule for grocery stores, claiming it will lower prices.
The EPA is relaxing a Biden-era federal rule that mandated US businesses to reduce greenhouse gases used in cooling equipment. Officials say the relaxation is a push to lower grocery costs.
“Substantial and big savings are expected for a lot of families,” said Trump from the White House. “Numbers will come soon.”
Trump said the relaxation of in the rule did not raise any environment concerns.
“There will not be any impact on the environment,” he said.
Annotations throughout the Democrat autopsy report suggest that the report makes claims that are contradicted elsewhere in the same report and evidence and data is not provided for numerous claims. At times the report’s methodology appears inconsistent, and public reporting and data oppose the claims the report is making.
In the “What happened” section of the DNC autopsy report, one of key takeaways from the Democrats failure in the 2024 presidential election is “despite winning the popular vote, Trump won the election by a little more than 2 million votes in the popular vote, meaning the election was swayed by 0.15 percent of the votes cast across the country in the election.”
The annotations on the report, however, suggest that this analysis is not supported by data.
Another takeaway is that “the margin of defeat for Kamala Harris was among the smallest in American history. Under the structure of the Electoral College, a handful of swing states are generally determinative in the outcome, meaning the margins of victories in those states are the key to the overall outcome.”
The report suggests that in the future, Democrats should identify early on, in what states and battlegrounds they will fight the hardest.
California governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to prepare workers, small businesses, and communities from the economic disruption that AI could bring to the workforce, the governor’s office said in a statement Thursday.
“The order mobilizes state agencies, labor experts, economists, universities, and industry leaders to develop new policies, gather data, and identify early warning signs of workforce disruption — while ensuring workers share in the gains created by AI-driven productivity,” said the statement.
“California has never sat back and watched as the future happened to us – and we won’t start now,” said Newsom. “This moment demands that we reimagine the entire system — how we work, how we govern, how we prepare people for the future — and that work is starting right here in the Golden State.”
Edward Helmore
Trump health officials issue advisory on children and teens’ excessive screen time
Health officials in the Trump administration have issued an advisory about children and adolescents’ excessive screen time, warning that negative impacts on sleep and mental functioning have “become a public health concern”.
The advisory from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) notes that the amount of screen time reaches an average of four or more hours per day by the time a child becomes a teenager and can be linked to poor sleep, decreased functioning in school, less physical activity and weakened in-person relationships.
“A concern at all stages of life, and a particularly important one around children’s screen exposure, is its potential to disrupt healthy sleep, which is fundamental to learning, mood, behavior, physical health, and overall development,” the report says.
The department provided guidance about how to identify harmful behaviors around screens and how to set limits, including no screen time for children under 18 months old, less than one hour per day for children under six and two hours per day for ages six to 18.
“Exposure often begins before a child’s first birthday and increases as children age. By adolescence, children may spend more time on screens than sleeping or attending school,” the report says.
DNC releases autopsy of party’s 2024 presidential campaign
The Democratic National Party released a copy of a report about why Democrats lost the 2024 presidential election, written by Democratic strategist Paul Rivera Thursday.
News about the report and the full report was first published by CNN.
The report was commissioned at the request of Ken Martin, the DNC’s committee chair, and the version CNN published includes annotations that the DNC added to Rivera’s report.
The report was handed to Martin late last year, he told CNN in a statement, but he didn’t share it then because no source material was provided. He apologized for the delay, but said he was releasing it now even though it still does not meet his standards, because “people need to be able to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word.”
Senator Angela Alsobrooks, like other Democratic leaders, spoke about how families are being forced to think about how to cut back in the face of rising prices of gas and groceries, and the budget allocating more money to ICE.
“We are here with this bill as further proof of what Republicans are thinking about, and its not about the American people,” she said. “They wanna give billions of your dollars to the wasteful ballroom.”
Nothing in this bill talks about relief in gas or grocery prices, she said.
Democrats did not open the news conference for questions from the press.
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