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6 Takeaways From Trump’s Address to Congress

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6 Takeaways From Trump’s Address to Congress

President Trump took a defiant victory lap in the House chamber on Tuesday night, using his address to a joint session of Congress to promote the flurry of drastic changes to domestic and foreign policy that his administration has made in just the first six weeks.

Delivering the longest address to Congress in modern presidential history, Mr. Trump reprised many of the themes that animated his campaign for president and spent little time unveiling new policies, as presidents traditionally have done on these occasions. He spoke for roughly one hour 40 minutes.

“We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in four years or eight years — and we are just getting started,” he said.

Democrats lodged protests throughout the evening, with one representative getting kicked out and others holding signs in silent opposition. But Mr. Trump argued that it was the Democrats who left him a country besieged by crises and that his administration was working to clean them up.

Here are six takeaways from Mr. Trump’s first address to a joint session of Congress in his second term.

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One day after Mr. Trump temporarily suspended the delivery of U.S. military aid to Ukraine, he signaled a willingness to reset the relationship. The president said he appreciated a message from President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, in which he said his country was “ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer.”

The new posture comes days after Mr. Trump’s explosive Oval Office meeting with Mr. Zelensky, which resulted in the Ukrainian leader hastily departing the White House without signing a deal for the United States to have access to Ukraine’s revenue for rare earth minerals. In his message, which was posted on social media on Tuesday, Mr. Zelensky said he was ready to sign the deal, a top priority for Mr. Trump.

On Tuesday night, Mr. Trump also said he had had “serious” discussions with Russia and they have signaled they also are “ready for peace.”

“It’s time to stop this madness,” he said. “It’s time to halt the killing. It’s time to end the senseless war. If you want to end wars, you have to talk to both sides.”

Mr. Trump widened his trade wars on Tuesday when he instituted sweeping tariffs on imports from Canada, Mexico and China. Despite the markets’ plunging in response to his actions, Mr. Trump said he would not budge, dismissing the reaction as “a little disturbance.” He said more tariffs would go into effect on April 2.

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“Other countries have used tariffs against us for decades, and now it’s our turn to start using them against those other countries,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary, said Mr. Trump could announce a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada as soon as Wednesday. But the president made no mention of that in his speech on Tuesday night.

“Whatever they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them,” he said. “That’s reciprocal, back and forth.”

Within the first few minutes of Mr. Trump’s speech, Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, stood up and started heckling the president. After Mr. Green ignored multiple warnings from Speaker Mike Johnson, Mr. Johnson ordered the sergeant-at-arms to remove Mr. Green from the chamber.

Mr. Green’s eviction marked the most contentious moment of a combative night, as Democrats organized various protests against the president. Many Democratic lawmakers held up small black signs with phrases that included “Save Medicaid,” “Musk Steals” and “False.” Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan held up a whiteboard that said “Start by paying your own taxes” as Mr. Trump talked about tax cuts. A number of Democrats, including Representatives Maxwell Frost of Florida and Jasmine Crockett of Texas, walked out during Mr. Trump’s speech.

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But even as they expressed their dissent, Democrats showed they were still struggling to coalesce around a unified message of opposition to Mr. Trump.

Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, has overseen the Trump administration’s aggressive effort to overhaul the federal government with sweeping cuts to the work force and contracts. The speed and the scope of Mr. Musk’s work has caught many in Washington off guard, with Democrats accusing him of violating congressional spending authority and civil service protections.

But Mr. Trump made clear on Tuesday that he wholeheartedly supported Mr. Musk’s radical approach.

“He’s working very hard,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Musk, who nodded and beamed in response. “He didn’t need this. He didn’t need this. Thank you very much. We appreciate it.”

Pointing to Democrats, he said: “Everybody here — even this side appreciates it, I believe. They just don’t want to admit that. Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified.”

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The president spent several minutes listing off a wide range of programs Mr. Musk’s team has cut, bragging that the effort had identified “hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.” But even Mr. Musk’s initiative has claimed to have generated only $105 billion in savings, assertions that have not been verified. The New York Times has found that DOGE has erroneously reported savings based on contracts that had already ended and miscalculated numbers.

Mr. Trump also re-upped his attacks on federal workers, vowing to “reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy.”

“Any federal bureaucrat who resists this change will be removed from office immediately,” he said.

Presidents often use addresses to a joint session of Congress to lay out their agenda for the year ahead. But not Mr. Trump. He did not unveil new policies, and devoted little time to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, both of which Mr. Trump has vowed to end.

Mr. Trump also did not address another time-sensitive issue: how to prevent the government from shutting down next week. Even with Republicans controlling the House and the Senate, there are still disagreements about the best ways to proceed on the funding battle.

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The president reiterated that he wanted Congress to allocate more money for immigration enforcement while cutting taxes, but how lawmakers will achieve that remains unclear.

Mr. Trump is always in need of an opponent, and for now, it appears former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. is still in his cross hairs. Even after winning the election in November, defeating Kamala Harris, Mr. Trump mentioned his predecessor’s administration more than a dozen times and called Mr. Biden “the worst president in American history.”

He blamed Mr. Biden for a litany of problems, including the high costs of eggs, crime and drugs flooding across the border, and accused him of being weak on China.

At times, Mr. Trump appeared to be giving one of his stump speeches from the campaign trail, as he railed against Mr. Biden’s immigration policies, support of transgender rights and “wokeness.”

“Wokeness is trouble. Wokeness is bad,” Mr. Trump said, without specifying what exactly he was referring to. “It’s gone. It’s gone.”

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Minho Kim and Chris Cameron contributed to this report.

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

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Trump fires last members of election commission, inciting fears of midterm ‘chaos’

Donald Trump has terminated the remaining members of the independent, federal commission that assists election administration officials nationwide just a few months before the midterm elections, multiple outlets reported Thursday.

The remaining three commissioners of the four-member bipartisan commission ⁠were forced out on Thursday in different ways. The one Republican appointee resigned and the other ⁠two, Democratic appointees were notified of their terminations via email from ​the White House presidential personnel office.

“On ‌behalf of President ‌Donald J Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position ‌as Commissioner of the Election Assistance Commission is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service,” the email, seen by Reuters, said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Election Assistance Commission serves as a “national clearinghouse of information on election ‌administration”, accredits testing laboratories and certifies voting systems, and maintains the national mail-voter registration form developed by the National ​Voter Registration Act of 1993, according to the commission’s website. The terminations follow Trump and top administration officials’ advocacy to change vote-by-mail requirements and investigations into the 2020 election outcome, which Trump lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

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“It is ⁠irresponsible and dangerous that this Administration remains dead set on ​causing chaos for ​our election officials across this ​country,” Arizona secretary of state Adrian Fontes said in a ​Thursday statement. “This ‌move undermines the integrity ​of nonpartisan ​election administration.”

The 2002 law that established the commission, the Help America Vote Act, states the president can appoint replacements to the commission.

It is unclear how Trump will move ahead with the commission.

Reuters contributed reporting

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

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Former Olympian pleads not guilty in reflecting pool vandalism charges

Former U.S. Olympian David Hearn (left) walks with his attorney Norman Eisen to speak to reporters and protesters gathered after his arraignment at the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in Washington, D.C. on Thursday.

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Former U.S. Olympic canoeist David Hearn pleaded not guilty to damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in D.C. Superior Court Thursday morning.

Federal prosecutors charged Hearn with a single count of destruction of property causing more than $1,000 in damage to the pool.

Hearn has previously claimed, which his attorneys repeated during a short press conference outside the court, that he simply touched the water in the pool out of curiosity.

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The Trump administration had just completed a $14 million renovation of the pool.

But shortly after the work finished, peeling paint and algae gathered in the water. The remodel has been largely criticized as a massive failure and waste of taxpayer dollars.

Superior Court Judge Carmen McLean released Hearn on his own recognizance. His next hearing is scheduled for Aug. 5.

Norm Eisen, one of Hearn’s attorneys, spoke to reporters outside of court following the hearing. He said the administration is using Hearn as a “scapegoat … for their own failures.”

“It is not a crime to touch the reflecting pool, to touch water in the United States of America,” he said.

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Prosecutors say there is a host of evidence against Hearn.

This is a developing story.

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

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Three more people charged with damaging Reflecting Pool after Trump’s multimillion-dollar restoration | CNN Politics

Three more people have been criminally charged with destruction of property at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.

Officers say they detained Cameron Thiers, Sophie Dennison-Gibby and Justin Carreno one Saturday afternoon in June and described in court documents witnessing them peeling and removing pieces of blue paint from the Reflecting Pool.

One officer “witnessed Carreno reach down into the reflecting pool and pull up a piece of the blue paint,” according to the court documents.

The officer who detained Dennison-Gibby “found 1 additional piece of the reflecting pool liner” in her purse, the documents said.

All three incidents were recorded on the officers’ body worn cameras, they said in the court documents.

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Several “partnering law enforcement agencies assigned to the Reflecting Pool” working with US Park Police were involved in detaining the two men and one woman — including officers from Texas, Oklahoma, Montana and California.

One of the officers said in court documents that Thiers “admitted to removing a piece of blue sealant from the Reflecting Pool and still had it in his hand when I made contact with him.”

The three defendants were arraigned in court Wednesday and pleaded not guilty to the misdemeanor charges of destruction of property with a value less than $1,000. The judge ordered them to stay away from the Reflecting Pool.

Lawyers for Thiers and Dennison-Gibby declined to comment. CNN has reached out to Carreno’s attorney.

If found guilty of destruction of property, the defendants could be fined up to $1,000 and face a maximum of 180 days behind bars.

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The New York Times first reported that three additional people had been charged with damaging the Reflecting Pool.

President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that vandals caused major damage to the pool by gashing the lining after his administration spent more than $14 million on renovations, though he has not provided evidence to support that claim. The officers who charged Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby did not accuse them of gashing the lining.

Former Olympic canoeist David Hearn was indicted by a grand jury in Washington, DC, last week for allegedly damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn — unlike Carreno, Thiers and Dennison-Gibby – was charged with destruction of property with a value of more than $1,000 which carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in court Thursday.

Crews began draining the Reflecting Pool over the weekend to make repairs, according to Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, for the second time in three months.

The move comes after weeks of problems – algae blooms, green-hued water, a chipping bottom and the administration’s allegations of vandalism – that have plagued the iconic landmark, making its woes the subject of national interest.

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