US judges block aspects of Trump agenda as president targets Democratic fundraising platform – as it happened (2025)

We have reached the end of another long day chronicling the second Trump administration here on US politics live. We will of course return on Friday to keep you informed of all the top developments. In the meantime, here is an overview of the day today:

• Donald Trump directed his attorney general to investigate the Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue based on unsubstantiated rightwing claim.

• US defense secretary Pete Hegseth had an unsecured internet connection set up in his Pentagon office so that he could bypass government security protocols and use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer.

• Federal judges blocked several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he’s tried to enact through executive orders, which do not carry the force of law.

• One judge blocked his efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters.

• Another judge ruled the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes.

• On immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement.

• Another judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown.

• The Trump store is now selling “Trump 2028” hats to fans of the president, who is barred by the US constitution from serving a third term, despite the fact that a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that three-quarters of respondents said Trump should not even try to run.

• Trump issued a rare rebuke against Vladimir Putin, and said he has his own deadline for the Russia-Ukraine war and that he still thinks the Russian leader will listen to him.

• Trump insisted that Chinese officials were not telling the truth when they said that the two countries have not engaged in talks on trade.

In preparation for the the 250th anniversary of American independence, the National Endowment for the Humanities announced on Thursday that it would provide grants up of up to $200,000 each to artists willing to help fill a new National Garden of American Heroes with statues of great Americans.

There is, however, a catch, or a series of catches. To start with, the 250 life-sized statues of “great individuals from America’s past who have contributed to our cultural, scientific and political heritage” must be drawn from a bizarre list of people included in an executive order signed by Trump in 2021, two days before he reluctantly departed the White House. Also, the artists must be American citizens, must work in marble, granite, bronze, copper or brass, and can create no more than three of the statues.

The list of heroes includes former presidents, like George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, and figures with wide appeal, like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., but also more controversial choices, like Henry Ford, whose antisemitic tracts inspired Hitler, and John James Audubon, a white supremacist.

Somehow the list also includes figures who would no doubt have been appalled to find their likenesses placed in such a setting, including the anti-fascist writer Hannah Arendt and Woody Guthrie, a former tenant of Donald Trump’s father, Fred Trump, who wrote a song, “Old Man Trump”, decrying the landlord for refusing to rent to Black families. Guthrie’s lyrics included the lines: “I suppose/ Old Man Trump knows/ Just how much/ Racial Hate/ he stirred up/ In the bloodpot of human hearts/ When he drawed/ That color line/ Here at his/ Eighteen hundred family project”.

Early this morning, Donald Trump’s favorite morning show, Fox & Friends, introduced a segment on new polling conducted for the conservative network that “reveals what America thinks of president Trump’s first 100 days”.

As on-screen graphic showed that Trump’s overall approval rating had fallen to just 44% — which is one point lower than his 45% rating at this stage of his first term, 10 points lower than Joe Biden’s rating at this point in 2021, and 18 points lower than the rating for Barack Obama in 2009 — the host Lauren Simonetti said, “this is the report card for how the president has done thus far”.

Simonetti tried to put a positive spin on the results by starting with his “really strong numbers on the border: he’s at 55% approval”.

As the camera pulled back to show a series of terrible results for Trump, including that his foreign policy is approved of by just 40% of registered voters, and disapproved of by 54% as he has failed to deliver on is promise to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Simonetti breezily claimed the president “does well on foreign policy too”.

“But when it comes to the economy, this is where it’s a little trickier”, the Fox host said with understatement as the camera zoomed in on results showing widespread disapproval of Trump handling of the economy (38% approve, 56% disapprove), tariffs (33% approve, 58% disapprove) and inflation (33% Approve, 59% disapprove).

Simonetti then mentioned that Trump’s falling popularity on the economy could be explained by a Wall Street Journal headline from the morning: “Trump Meets His Match: the Markets”, and pointed out that many Americans are invested in the stock market through their 401(k) retirement funds that have been severely damaged by Trump’s extreme tariff policy.

An hour after the segment aired, Trump responded to it on his social media platform, posting: “Rupert Murdoch has told me for years that he is going to get rid of his FoxNews, Trump Hating, Fake Pollster, but he has never done so. This ‘pollster’ has gotten me, and MAGA, wrong for years. Also, and while he’s at it, he should start making changes at the China Loving Wall Street Journal. It sucks!!!”

Nathaniel Rakich, a former elections analyst for the polling site 538, commented on Trump’s demand for more favorable polling from the network, writing: “Fox News polling is some of the highest-quality, most unbiased data out there. It would be a real scandal if the network accedes to this.”

The Trump administration has threatened states with the loss of federal transportation funding if they do not comply with US immigration enforcement efforts or fail to end to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“Federal grants come with a clear obligation to adhere to federal laws,” Sean Duffy, the US transportation secretary, said in a letter to states and other grant recipients. “It shouldn’t be controversial – enforce our immigration rules, end anti-American DEI policies, and protect free speech.”

Legal obligations generally require that states cooperate with federal authorities to enforce federal law, Duffy wrote, including immigration enforcement efforts. Some state recipients of transportation funds have not cooperated with such investigations, or issued licenses to undocumented immigrants, Duffy noted.

The transportation department awards more than $50bn in grants each year as well as funding for highways to states.

The missive comes as the Trump administration seeks to crack down on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives across American life, through universities and agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission and the labor department.

US defense secretary Pete Hegseth had an unsecured internet connection set up in his Pentagon office so that he could bypass government security protocols and use the Signal messaging app on a personal computer, two people familiar with the line told the Associated Press.

The fact that Hegseth was evading Pentagon security filters to connect to the internet this way raises the possibility that sensitive defense information could have been put at risk of potential hacking or surveillance.

Earlier this week, the Guardian confirmed a New York Times report that Hegseth had shared sensitive operational information about strikes on Houthi rebels in Yemen on a private Signal group chat he set up himself to communicate with his wife, brother, personal lawyer and nine associates.

In 2016, when it was reported that Hillary Clinton used a private email server to conduct official business when she was secretary of state, Hegseth told Fox News that “any security professional – military, government or otherwise – would be fired on the spot for this type of conduct, and criminally prosecuted. The fact that she wouldn’t be held accountable for this, I think blows the mind of anyone who’s held our secrets dear, who’s had a top secret clearance, like I have.”

Donald Trump signed two executive orders on Thursday, one aimed at boosting the deep-sea mining industry, as the US searches for an alternative source of critical minerals imported from China, and a second that sought to change probationary rules for federal workers to make it easier to fire them.

As Reuters reports, parts of the Pacific Ocean are estimated to contain large amounts of potato-shaped rocks known as polymetallic nodules filled with the building blocks for electric vehicles and electronics. More than 1 billion metric tons of those nodules are estimated to be in US waters and filled with manganese, nickel, copper and other critical minerals, according to an administration official.

“We want the US to get ahead of China in this resource space under the ocean, on the ocean bottom,” the unnamed official told the news agency.

Environmental groups have called for deep-sea mining to be banned, warning that industrial operations on the ocean floor could cause irreversible biodiversity loss.

The order on “strengthening probationary periods” for federal workers casts the changes as a way “to remove appointees whose continued employment is not in the public interest”. But the White House press secretary, Karoline Lavitt, suggested on Tuesday that it was important to find ways to remove federal workers who are insufficiently loyal to the president, arguing that because he was elected, he represents the will of the American people. Trump, Leavitt said, “believes that bureaucrats should be acting in accordance to the will of the American public, who duly elected this president”.

“If you work for the government, you should be adhering to the will of the American public, and advancing the administration’s goals and interests” Leavitt added. “And if you are not doing that, you should go find another job”.

The Republican president is taking aim at a Democratic fundraising platform, issuing a presidential memorandum to crack down on supposed foreign contributions to elections, an unsubstantiated claim from the right..

Donald Trump announced the memo on Thursday, directing the attorney general to investigate, and report to the president, “concerning allegations regarding the use of online fundraising platforms to make ‘straw’ or ‘dummy’ contributions and to make foreign contributions to US political candidates and committees, all of which break the law”.

ActBlue, the largest online donation platform on the left, has anticipated the presidential action. Its CEO and president, Regina Wallace-Jones, sent an email this week saying the organization expected an executive order targeting it, and that the threat of these investigations had “caused many in the ecosystem anxiety and distress”.

Donald Trump has pardoned Michele Fiore, a former Las Vegas councilwoman and Nevada state lawmaker who was convicted of fraud in federal court last year, for using more than $70,000 in donations intended to pay for a statue of a police officer who was killed in the line of duty for her own personal expenses.

As the Nevada Independent reports, the pardon was first announced by the Republican politician on Facebook and then filed in court on Thursday, days before Fiore was set to be sentenced on six counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

As US district judge Jennifer Dorsey wrote last week, when she denied Fiore’s request for a new trial, the politician “was found guilty of fleecing donors out of tens of thousands of dollars that she told them would be used for a memorial statue of a fallen police officer”. The evidence presented to the jury, the judge noted, “showed that a development company paid for the statue, and not a dime of the money that Fiore raised was used for that purpose. Instead, each check was quickly converted to cash and spent on Fiore’s personal expenses like rent, cosmetic procedures, and her daughter’s wedding.”

In a 2021 campaign ad, at the start of her run for governor, Fiore boasted that she had been called the “Lady Trump” by Politico, and took aim with a pistol at three beer bottles, labeled: “Vaccine Mandates”, “CRT” and “Voter Fraud”.

Nevada’s attorney general, Aaron Ford, condemned the pardon in a social media post, writing:

Donald Trump’s blatant disregard for law enforcement is sickening, and pardoning someone who stole from a police memorial fund is a disgrace. As Nevada’s top cop, I believe there’s no room for reprieve when it comes to betraying the families of fallen officers. I will continue to stand with our men and women in uniform.

The Trump store is now selling “Trump 2028” hats to fans of the president, who is barred by the US constitution from serving a third term, despite the fact that a new poll from Reuters/Ipsos found that three-quarters of respondents said Trump should not even try to run. Just a narrow majority of Republicans, 53%, endorsed the idea.

On the Trump store site, the sales pitch for the hat, which is modeled by the president’s son Eric, reads: “The future looks bright! Rewrite the rules with the Trump 2028 high crown hat.”

The store also offers a “Trump 2028” T-shirt, which includes the parenthetical slogan: “(Rewrite the Rules)“.

Federal judges blocked aspects of Trump’s agenda on voting, immigration and DEI in education. One blocked Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters. Another partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts. And on immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement. Another blocked the administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown.

• Trump issued a rare rebuke against Vladimir Putin, and said he has his own deadline for the Russia-Ukraine war and that he still thinks the Russian leader will listen to him. In a sign of his growing frustration, Trump turned his criticism to the Putin today, urging him to stop his attacks on Ukraine. He wrote in a Truth Social post: “I am not happy with the Russian strikes on KYIV. Not necessary, and very bad timing. Vladimir, STOP! 5000 soldiers a week are dying. Lets get the Peace Deal DONE!” Full story here. Trump told reporters he remains optimistic about striking a peace deal: “We are thinking that, very strongly, that they both want peace,” Trump said, “but they have to get to the table.” Meanwhile Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he believed that a document with proposals for ending the war that emerged from Wednesday’s talks in London was now on Donald Trump’s desk. The Ukrainian president, who was the subject of Trump’s ire yesterday, reiterated that anything unconstitutional (i.e. recognising Russia’s annexation of Crimea) would be unacceptable.

• Trump refuted China’s insistence that the two countries have not engaged in talks on trade. The president told reporters at the White House, declining to say to whom he was referring. “It doesn’t matter who ‘they’ is. We may reveal it later, but they had meetings this morning, and we’ve been meeting with China.” Earlier on Thursday China had denied multiple assertions from the White House that the two countries were engaged in active negotiations over tariffs.

• The Trump administration asked the US supreme court to allow implementation of his order banning transgender people from serving in the military. The justice department in a filing requested that the court lift US district judge Benjamin Settle’s nationwide order blocking the military from carrying out Trump’s prohibition on transgender service members while a legal challenge to the policy proceeds. Settle found that Trump’s executive order likely violates the US constitution’s fifth amendment right to equal protection under the law.

• Legislators are pleading with Trump to reconsider his decision to deny federal disaster relief funds to the people of Arkansas, which saw dozens of people die from a series of deadly tornados last month. Full story here.

• Pete Hegseth reportedly had Signal installed on a desktop computer in his Pentagon office, adding yet another layer to the mushrooming scandal that is Signalgate. Hegseth and his aides apparently discussed “how they could circumvent the lack of cellphone service in much of the Pentagon and more quickly coordinate with the White House and other top Trump officials using the encrypted app”. But it was also “a work-around that enabled him to use Signal in a classified space, where his cellphone and other personal electronics are not permitted”. The defense secretary also denied reports that he has ordered the installation of a makeup studio in the Pentagon for his television appearances, with a defense official insisting the secretary of state does his own makeup.

As a number of rulings have come in this afternoon with federal judges blocking several aspects of Trump’s agenda that he’s tried to enact via vehicles such as executive orders, here’s a brief roundup of those developments.

A judge blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters. The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections. US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly agreed with that argument. She also blocked a portion of the executive order that required federal agencies to assess the citizenship of individuals applying to vote at a public assistance agency before they offered them a chance to vote. The order would have made it significantly harder to register to vote, even for eligible voters.

Meanwhile, a federal judge said the Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes. US district judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.

And on immigration, a judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison there back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement. US district judge Stephanie Gallagher also ordered the administration not to deport other migrants covered by the settlement. She said the settlement agreement that she approved in November on behalf of thousands of migrants required immigration authorities to process the asylum application by the 20-year-old Venezuelan man, identified only as Cristian, before deporting him. The settlement applies to thousands of migrants who came to the US unaccompanied as children and have applied for asylum. While the administration argued that deporting Cristian didn’t violate the settlement agreement because he had been deemed an “alien enemy” under the Alien Enemies Act, making him ineligible for asylum. But Gallagher said the settlement applies to anyone with a pending asylum application, and not only those who are eligible for asylum. Gallagher considered only whether Cristian’s deportation violated the settlement and not whether the law was properly invoked, which is at issue in cases such as that of Kilmar Ábrego García’s.

And another judge blocked the Trump administration from withholding federal funding from several so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that have declined to cooperate with the president’s hardline immigration crackdown. US district judge William Orrick said a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of Trump’s executive order was warranted as the local jurisdictions had established that it likely unconstitutionally imposed conditions on federal funding without congressional authorization and ran afoul of the localities’ due process rights.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked Donald Trump’s efforts to add a proof of citizenship requirement to the federal voter registration form, a change that voting rights advocates warned would have disenfranchised millions of voters.

The president sought to unilaterally add the requirement in a 25 March executive orders. The Democratic party, as well as a slew of civil rights groups, challenged that order, arguing the president does not have the power to set the rules for federal elections.

US district judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the federal district court in Washington, agreed with that argument on Thursday.

“Our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States – not the President – with the authority to regulate federal elections,” she wrote in a 120-page opinion. “No statutory delegation of authority to the Executive Branch permits the President to short-circuit Congress’s deliberative process by executive order.”

Kollar-Kotelly also blocked a portion of the executive order that required federal agencies to assess the citizenship of individuals applying to vote at a public assistance agency before they offered them a chance to vote.

The order would have made it significantly harder to register to vote, even for eligible voters. Nearly 10% of eligible voters lack easy access to documents, such as a US passport or birth certificate, that would be required to prove their citizenship, a 2024 survey found.

Reuters notes that Trump has long questioned the US electoral system and continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic president Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud. Trump and his Republican allies also have made baseless claims about widespread voting by non-citizens, which is illegal and rare.

The Trump administration’s attempt to make federal funding to schools conditional on them eliminating any DEI policies erodes the “foundational principles” that separates the United States from totalitarian regimes, a federal judge said on Thursday.

ABC News reports that in an 82-page order, US district judge Landya McCafferty partially blocked the Department of Education from enforcing a memo issued earlier this year that directed any institution that receives federal funding to end discrimination on the basis of race or face funding cuts.

“Ours is a nation deeply committed to safeguarding academic freedom, which is of transcendent value to all of us and not merely to the teachers concerned,” Judge McCafferty wrote, adding that the “right to speak freely and to promote diversity of ideas and programs is … one of the chief distinctions that sets us apart from totalitarian regimes”.

“In this case, the court reviews action by the executive branch that threatens to erode these foundational principles,” she wrote.

The judge stopped short of issuing the nationwide injunction, instead limiting the relief to any entity that employs or contacts with the groups that filed the lawsuit, including the National Education Association and the Center for Black Educator Development.

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to facilitate the return of a second man sent to a prison in El Salvador back to the US, saying his deportation violated a court settlement.

Late on Wednesday, US district judge Stephanie Gallagher in Baltimore said the settlement agreement that she approved in November on behalf of thousands of migrants required immigration authorities to process the asylum application by the 20-year-old Venezuelan man, identified only as Cristian, before deporting him.

The ruling could set up another showdown between the Trump administration and federal courts over immigration enforcement. The administration has also been ordered to facilitate the return of a Salvadorian man, Kilmar Ábrego García, who it acknowledged was deported in error, but a judge has said that the government is doing little to comply.

Related: Federal judge accuses White House of ‘bad faith’ in Kilmar Ábrego García case

The administration claims that Ábrego García, Cristian and more than 250 other people who were sent to a Salvadorian prison beginning last month are gang members and that it has the power to remove them under the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act.

Gallagher considered only whether Cristian’s deportation violated the settlement and not whether the law was properly invoked, which is at issue in Ábrego García’s and other migrants’ cases. The settlement applies to thousands of migrants who came to the US unaccompanied as children and have applied for asylum.

“A core purpose of the Settlement Agreement would be nullified if Class Members with pending asylum applications could be summarily removed from the United States and thus rendered ineligible for asylum,” wrote Gallagher, a Trump appointee.

Cristian is a class member in the 2019 lawsuit, which claimed that immigration authorities were deporting migrants before they received a final determination on their applications for asylum.

The Trump administration argued that deporting Cristian did not violate the settlement agreement because he had been deemed an “alien enemy” under the wartime law, making him ineligible for asylum. But Gallagher said the settlement applies to anyone with a pending asylum application, and not only those who are eligible for asylum.

The judge ordered the Trump administration to make “a good faith request” to the government of El Salvador, seeking Cristian’s release to US custody so he could return to the US. She also ordered the administration not to deport other migrants covered by the settlement.

Trump expected to sign deep-sea mining executive order on Thursday – report

Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Thursday to advance the deep sea mining industry, the latest attempt to tap international deposits of nickel, copper and other critical minerals used widely across the economy, Reuters reports.

The order will likely fast track permitting for deep-sea mining in international waters and let mining companies bypass a United Nations-backed review process, Reuters previously reported.

Trump has taken several steps already to boost domestic production of critical minerals and combat China’s dominance of the industry that supplies the raw materials needed for a wide range of modern technologies and industries, especially those related to clean energy and defense.

Among other things, he has fast-tracked permitting on 10 mining projects across the United States and implemented an abbreviated approval process for mining projects on federal lands.

The International Seabed Authority - created by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the US has not ratified - has for years been considering standards for deep-sea mining in international waters, although it has yet to formalize them due to unresolved differences over acceptable levels of dust, noise and other factors from the practice.

Trump’s deep-sea mining order is likely to stipulate that the US aims to exercise its rights to extract critical minerals on the ocean’s floor, and to let miners bypass the ISA and seek permitting through the US Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s mining code, Reuters previously reported.