APPLENEWS - STORY ADD

Trump admin live updates: Trump strikes deals with law firms totaling $600M

The agreements were with five law firms for pro bono work.

President Donald Trump held a Cabinet meeting with his top officials, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, as well as Elon Musk, on Thursday.

It follows Trump on Wednesday changing course on his tariff policy, instituting a 90-day pause in higher taxes for most countries while ramping up the rate against China to 145%.

On Capitol Hill, Republican leaders pushed through a budget blueprint to fund Trump's domestic agenda despite some GOP hard-liner opposition.


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Democrats plan ‘days of action’ against Trump policies

Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries declared on Tuesday their members were “unified” against the agenda of the Trump administration, announcing “days of action” to target White House policies next week during their recesses.

Flanked by a number of their Democratic colleagues, the leaders said a day of action would occur next Tuesday, which will be focused on Social Security. They'll then host one on Thursday centered around Medicaid. Finally, they’re planning a subsequent “week of action” on the cost of living in America.

“We believe that Medicaid should not be cut. We believe they're going after Social Security. We're fighting to defend it tooth and nail,” Schumer said. “We also believe that the costs that Republicans are imposing on the American people is hurting them badly, and it's going to get worse and worse and worse. These tariffs are just lunacy.”

Jeffries said, “Bottom line is, Donald Trump is betraying the American people, breaking his promises, and Republican Congress members and senators are going along with that betrayal.”

Schumer lauded Democrats’ unity, saying that congressional Republicans and even GOP members of the White House are stuck fighting amongst themselves.

“I've never quite seen anything like this -- the Republican leader of the House and the Republican leader of the Senate are at loggerheads. And why is that? Because they're defending such unpopular programs. One wing of their caucus doesn't like the Medicaid cuts. Another wing of their caucus doesn't like the tax cuts on the billionaires … and the right wing wants to cut Medicaid even further dividing all of them,” Schumer said.

-ABC News’ Isabella Murray


Jeffries challenges Johnson to floor debate on budget plan

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries challenged Speaker Mike Johnson to a debate on the Republican budget blueprint on the House floor Wednesday.

In a letter sent to Johnson, Jeffries said "I write to request a one-on-one debate, formally known as a colloquy, on the House floor tomorrow."

"The American people deserve to know the truth. I look forward to the one-on-one debate on the House floor," Jeffries said.

Speaker Johnson told reporters Tuesday that he is "happy to debate him anytime."

-ABC News’ Lauren Peller


House kills proxy voting measure for new-parent lawmakers

The House’s feud over proxy voting for new parents that paralyzed the chamber is on the back burner after Republicans voted to effectively kill GOP Rep. Anna Paulina Luna’s measure and formalize “vote-pairing.”

Republicans passed a rule -- a procedure to advance legislation -- Tuesday afternoon by a vote of 213-211 that included language to formalize vote-pairing and make Luna’s original measure moot.

Speaker Mike Johnson and Luna cut a deal over the weekend to formalize vote pairing, which is a procedure that allows a member who is absent during a vote to coordinate with a present member on the other side of the matter to offset the absence. It’s certainly not an equivalent to remote voting but allows for an absence to be offset.

Luna's bipartisan discharge petition would have allowed proxy voting for new parent lawmakers -- both mothers and fathers -- up to 12 weeks after giving birth.

But House Democratic Caucus Chairman Pete Aguilar said Democrats “won’t participate” in vote-pairing.

“This is a fake and phony effort … we won’t be engaging in this pairing effort,” he said at a news conference Tuesday at the Capitol.

-ABC News’ Lauren Peller


Trump-appointed judge orders White House to restore AP access

Trump-appointed Judge Trevor McFadden granted a preliminary injunction ordering the White House to restore access to The Associated Press in the Oval Office, on Air Force One and other spaces open only to the press pool.

"[W]hile the AP does not have a constitutional right to enter the Oval Office, it does have a right to not be excluded because of its viewpoint," McFadden wrote.

"Indeed, the Government has been brazen about this," McFadden added, pointing to the president's objection to the AP's continued use of the "Gulf of Mexico" rather than Trump's preferred "Gulf of America."

"The Government offers no other plausible explanation for its treatment of the AP. The Constitution forbids viewpoint discrimination, even in a nonpublic forum like the Oval Office."

Throughout his 41-page ruling, the judge relied heavily on the testimony of AP photographer Evan Vucci and correspondent Zeke Miller, both of whom told the court last month that their inability to serve alongside their pool colleagues set the AP's journalism back, causing "damaging ripples across its reporting capabilities."

"These disadvantages have poisoned the AP's business model," McFadden said.

The judge noted that since the AP filed its suit, the White House has set aside the traditional role of the White House Correspondents' Association and taken it upon itself to determine how the pool is constituted.

Nevertheless, McFadden wrote, it is unconstitutional for the president to single out and ban a disfavored outlet because of its viewpoint.

McFadden stayed his own order until Sunday "to provide the Government time to seek an emergency stay from a higher court and to prepare to implement the Court's injunction."

-ABC News' Steven Portnoy