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:
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.
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”.
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.
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.
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.