Trump pauses tariffs on both Mexico and Canada; White House limits Musk’s power: Live updates

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

A Pentagon press secretary with a “long history” of bigoted and antisemitic social media posts faces calls to resign.

Jewish organizations have blasted the appointment of Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, who compared the murders of Israeli infants during the October 7 Hamas attacks to abortion. She has also peddled the antisemitic conspiracy theory about Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman who was wrongly convicted and hanged for the murder of a 13-year-old Georgia girl in 1951.

President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s relationship continued to sour, with the pair having a heated phone call after the Canadian leader announced retaliatory tariffs against the U.S., according to a new report.

Trump and Trudeau spoke Wednesday, a day after the prime minister said he was implementing 25 percent tariffs on some American exports after the president’s sweeping levies came into effect. The call — which Trump told reporters was “somewhat’ friendly — was in fact heated and profanity-laden, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The White House referred The Independent to the president’s initial characterization of the call when contacted for comment.

The Trump administration has officially moved to create what it’s calling the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, a store of cryptocurrency seized in court proceedings that the government will maintain as a resource for the American people, White House AI and crypto adviser David Sacks announced on X.

“The U.S. will not sell any bitcoin deposited into the Reserve,” he wrote. “It will be kept as a store of value. The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called ‘digital gold.’”

The move is likely to further drive up the price of the cryptocurrency held by private investors.

The crypto industry was a key backer of the 2024 Trump campaign.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pledged Thursday to help Puerto Rico in her first visit to the U.S. territory as it struggles to rebuild from catastrophic hurricanes amid chronic power outages.

A second person may have died as result of the measles outbreak that’s been spreading from Texas to the rest of the U.S., according to New Mexico public health officials.

A deceased resident of Lea County, which borders Gaines County, Texas, the center of the outbreak, tested positive for measles, the New Mexico Department of Health announced on Thursday.

The individual was unvaccinated, and their official cause of death is still being investigated. They did not seek medical care before they died, officials said.

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, a prominent anti-vaccine activist before joining the administration, has faced scrutiny for his handling of the outbreak.

More details in our full story.

Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota and former vice presidential candidate, couldn’t name someone when asked who the leader of the Democratic party is.

Walz appeared on CNN’s The Arena with Kasie Hunt Wednesday to discuss President Donald Trump’s joint congressional address. Hunt asked the governor who he thinks is the Democratic leader right now.

The 60-year-old Democrat paused for a few beats before answering.

Katie Hawkinson reports from Washington, D.C.

House Democrats have been widely mocked for releasing their own “choose your fighter” parody video branded “cringe” across the political spectrum.

Rhian Lubin tries to explain what on earth they are doing…

Trump signed an executive order in January pushing to early April the deadline for TikTok to cut ties with its China-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a ban in the U.S.

Asked Thursday about a possible extension, Trump said one isn’t needed at this time because there’s still a month to go before the deadline.

“But if I needed the extension, I’d probably get an extension,” he said, adding, “We have a lot of interest in TikTok.”