A finalized TikTok deal was pulled Thursday after President Trump announced massive new tariffs against China, a source familiar with the negotiations told The Hill.
Trump was poised to sign an executive order approving a deal that would have seen TikTok’s U.S. operations spun off into a new company, allowing the popular social media app to continue operating in the U.S. in the face of a law requiring its China-based parent company ByteDance to divest from the app or face a ban.
However, ByteDance representatives told the White House after Trump’s tariff announcement Wednesday that China would no longer approve the deal without negotiations on tariffs, according to the source.
It had been expected that China would approve a proposed deal that had been in the works for months until the tariffs were announced by Trump on Thursday.
The White House has not publicly commented on the apparent backing out.
While speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Thursday, Trump used China and TikTok as an example of using tariffs to negotiate.
“We have a situation with TikTok where China will probably say we’ll approve a deal but will you do something on the tariffs. The tariffs give us great power to negotiate. They always have. I’ve used them very well in the first administration. Now we’re taking it to a whole new level,” Trump said.
When asked if these were talks he was having with China he said, “No I’m just using that as an example.”
On Friday, Trump signed an executive order giving TikTok another 75-day extension, saying they had made “tremendous progress” but the deal required “more work to ensure all necessary approvals are signed.”
Democratic strategist James Carville on Friday compared law firms that signed a deal
with President Trump to Nazi regime “collaborators” in Europe.
Several firms tied to past investigations of the president have agreed to forgo diversity, equity and inclusion hiring practices in line with Trump’s executive order
and donate millions to causes of his choice through legal aid.
“Maybe you need to go in history and see what happened in August of 1944, after Paris was liberated. They didn’t take very kindly to the collaborators,” Carville said in a Friday recording of Politicon
.
“No, it was not a very pretty sight in the streets of Paris. I’m not saying that these people should be placed in pajamas and have their heads shaved, marched down Pennsylvania Avenue, and spit on. I’m not saying that. But I’m saying that, that did happen,” he added.
Carville said law firms found to willingly enter a signed agreement with Trump have betrayed the United States.
“These people are a disgrace to the law firms they represent, to the companies that they represent and are supposed to be in self-interest, and they’re a disgrace to the United States and etch their names in the tablet of history for being some of the greatest traitors, appeasers that we’ve seen in the history of our great country,” the longtime Democrat said.
On Wednesday, Milbank law firm said
it entered an agreement similar to the Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom deal with the Trump administration to resolve concerns.
“As a large law firm that does a majority of its work on transactional matters, we are dependent on our ability to navigate client issues in all parts of the Executive Branch. We believed that it was in the best interests of the Firm and its clients to resolve the Trump Administration’s concerns in a way that would foster our working relationship and avoid what could have been an unnecessary confrontation,” Chair Scott Edelman wrote to employees in a letter obtained by The Hill.
Milbank was among 20 firms contacted
by the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission asking about diversity in its hiring practices.
Carville said Trump’s actions are creating moral issues that the country will have to reckon with after he leaves office.
“When this is over, there has to be, at a minimum, an intellectual reckoning with this class of appeasers that are here,” he said.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) criticized President Trump’s ouster of the director of the National Security Agency
, arguing that Gen. Timothy Haugh’s firing will hinder the country’s Cyber and Signals Intelligence (SIGINT) operations.
“General Tim Haugh is an outstanding leader and was doing a superb job at Cyber Command and National Security Agency,” Bacon said in a Friday morning post
on social media platform X. “He was fired with no public explanation. This action sets back our Cyber and Signals Intelligence operations.”
NSA chief Haugh, along with his civilian deputy Wendy Noble, were ousted
late Thursday, not too long after the administration fired several top
White House National Security Council (NSA) staffers earlier in the day.
Haugh, who has over three decades of experience in the Air Force, also led the U.S. Cyber Command. His termination drew rebukes from Democrats in Congress.
Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.), the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, wrote that he was “deeply disturbed” by Haugh’s firing.
“I have known General Haugh to be an honest and forthright leader who followed the law and put national security first—I fear those are precisely the qualities that could lead to his firing in this Administration,” Himes said, adding that the House Intelligence panel and the public “need an immediate explanation for this decision, which makes all of us less safe.”
The firing of a group of NSC staffers came after Trump met with
far-right activist Laura Loomer at the White House on Wednesday. Loomer said the NSC workers were not aligned with Trump’s agenda.
She also criticized Haugh, writing
Friday on X that the general “had no place serving in the Trump admin given the fact that he was HAND PICKED by General Milley, who was accused of committing treason by President Trump.”
In his criticism of Haugh’s firing, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, referenced the Signal chat leak incident, arguing the president has not held anyone accountable for it.
“It is astonishing that President Trump would fire the nonpartisan, experienced leader of the NSA while still failing to hold any member of his team accountable for leaking classified information on a commercial messaging app – even as he apparently takes staffing direction on national security from a discredited conspiracy theorist in the Oval Office,” Warned said in post on X, referring to Loomer.
A federal judge blocked
President Trump’s takeover of a federal agency that invests in Latin America and the Caribbean, finding Friday that he likely went beyond his authority.
U.S. District Judge Loren AliKhan ordered the administration indefinitely reinstate Sara Aviel, the ousted president of the Inter-American Foundation (IAF), and stop various other efforts to gut the foundation as her lawsuit proceeds.
“Because accepting Defendants’ arguments would leave parts of the Constitution in tatters, Ms. Aviel has shown a substantial likelihood of success on the merits,”said AliKhan, an appointee of former President Biden.
Established by Congress in 1969 as a nonprofit corporation, the IAF funds efforts to combat poverty, migration and instability in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The administration began efforts to gut the agency on Feb. 19, when Trump signed an order
directing the IAF and several other groups be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
Within days of Trump’s directive, the administration removed Aviel and the IAF board as the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) injected itself into the foundation. At a court hearing Wednesday, the government said IAF now only has one employee and one active grant remaining.
Trump appointed Peter Marocco, a State Department official who has played a central role in the administration’s efforts to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, as IAF’s sole acting board member.
The judge’s order Friday effectively reverses Marocco’s takeover of the agency, blocking him from serving on the board and unwinding all actions he has taken, including any grants that were frozen.
The Justice Department had insisted both Aviel’s termination and Marocco’s appointment were legal, part of a broader theory advanced by the administration that the president has expansive authority to hire and fire officials across the federal bureaucracy.
In her ruling, AliKhan called the logical extension of the argument “frightening.”
“Then the President could appoint an ‘acting’ board member indefinitely without ever needing to seek the advice and consent of the Senate,” AliKhan wrote. “That reading eviscerates the Appointments Clause. When the court pressed Defendants’ counsel for a limiting principle at oral argument, Defendants had no response — convincing or otherwise.”
The government also asserted Aviel wasn’t entitled to an injunction at the early stage of the case because she hadn’t made the necessary showing of irreparable harm, pointing to two recentappeals rulings
that cleared the way for Trump to fire other federal agency leaders. The judge rejected that argument, too.
In the view of the Russian government, the world economy is “in turmoil” following President Trump’s rollout of sweeping tariffs
, and the fresh package of duties he slapped on countries all over the world might not be advantageous for the Kremlin either.
“It’s unlikely that these U.S. tariffs will be beneficial. The global economy is responding very emotionally to these decisions,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said during a briefing on Friday, according to multipleoutlets
. “We are witnessing a high level of turbulence in international markets, and of course, the world economy is currently in turmoil.”
“I wouldn’t say it’s in our interest,” Peskov said on Friday. “Russia, for obvious reasons, is not included in this list – because we do not have any tangible trade with the United States.”
Trump this week presented a 10 percent flat rate tariff that will apply to all imports entering the U.S.. He also introduced
reciprocal tariffs on dozens of nations worldwide, ones that range from 10 percent to 50 percent.
“The tariffs will be not a full reciprocal. I could have done that, I guess. But it would have been tough for a lot of countries,” Trump said on Wednesday.
The president and his administration argued that tariffs are needed to bring back manufacturing to the country since, from their perspective, the U.S. has been treated unfairly in current trade deals with both economic partners and geopolitical allies.
As the tariffs went into effect, the global markets went downhill
. Additionally, some nations are already retaliating.
On Friday, China, one of the U.S.’s biggest trading partners, shared that it will impose
a 34 percent reciprocal tariff on U.S. goods starting next Thursday.
The president encouraged
investors Friday morning that now is a “GREAT” time to get rich.
For some in the U.S., the new tariffs will yield benefits in the long term, including for workers.
“I think it’s a step in the right direction,” the president of Massachusetts-based Capone Iron Corporation, Stephen Capone, said in a Thursday interview
with NewsNation. “I think once all the dust settles, that people will realize that they’re going to be buying steel from American mills.”
The 60,000 contested ballots in the North Carolina state Supreme Court race should be recounted and verified, according to a ruling Friday from a panel of the state appeals court.
The 2-1 ruling is a win for Republican state Court of Appeals Judge Jefferson Griffin, who is trailing incumbent Democratic Justice Allison Riggs by fewer than 1,000 votes.
Riggs and the Democratic Party declared victory months ago after all the votes counted had her ahead, but Griffin has challenged the validity of certain ballots for various reasons, pursuing a lawsuit that’s prevented the state elections board from certifying Riggs as the winner five months after Election Day.
Multiple recounts confirmed Riggs’ lead, but Griffin has argued that the 60,000 ballots are invalid because these voters didn’t include certain information like driver’s license or Social Security numbers on their registration forms. He’s also challenged an additional 5,500 ballots from military and overseas voters on the grounds that they didn’t present a photo ID upon voting.
The ruling
granted these voters whose ballots have been challenged 15 business days to provide verifying information proving their eligibility to vote. Any voters who verify their identity within that period will have their votes counted, and those who do not will have their ballots thrown out, the ruling states.
Riggs’s campaign vowed to appeal the ruling, calling it “deeply misinformed” and arguing that it would set a dangerous precedent of allowing politicians to “thwart the will of the people.”
“North Carolinians elected me to keep my seat and I swore an oath to the constitution and the rule of law – so I will continue to stand up for the rights of voters in this state and stand in the way of those who would take power from the people,” Riggs said.
The state GOP celebrated the ruling, saying it “vindicated” Griffin’s protests and confirms that every legal vote will be counted.
“Our position has not wavered and today’s decision confirms the facts were on Judge Griffin’s side,” said state GOP Chairman Jason Simmons. “This a victory for the rule of law and election integrity.”
Democratic Judge Toby Hampson dissented, arguing that Griffin hasn’t identified a single voter who is ineligible to vote under the rules of the election.
“Changing the rules by which these lawful voters took part in our electoral process after the election to discard their otherwise valid votes in an attempt to alter the outcome of only one race among many on the ballot is directly counter to law, equity, and the Constitution,” Hampson wrote.
A 2002 state law requires voters to include their driver’s license or Social Security number on the registration application, but the form didn’t specify
that this information was needed until last year. The state elections board has also previously ruled that military and overseas voters were exempt from the state’s voter ID law.
A county superior court judge previously rejected
Griffin’s arguments in February before the appeals court ruled in his favor.
Presuming the case is appealed, it would go to the state Supreme Court, which has a 5-2 Republican majority. But with Riggs recusing herself from the case, it would be a 5-1 court hearing it.
If the court hears the case and is split 3-3, the next highest court’s ruling would stand, meaning the appeals court ruling would go into effect.
President Obama says he’s trying to up the fun time with his wife, after two terms in the White House left him in a “deep deficit” with the former first lady.
“I was in a deep deficit with my wife,” Obama told Hamilton College President Steven Tepper, when asked
about his post-White House life at a Thursday event.
“So I have been trying to dig myself out of that hole by doing occasionally fun things,” Obama, 63, quipped.
The Obamas tied the knot in 1992.
The former commander in chief has said before that exiting the executive mansion in 2017 helped strengthen his relationship with his spouse.
“Let me just say this: It sure helps to be out of the White House and to have a little more time with her,” Obama said
in 2023.
Beyond getting back in his wife’s good graces, the ex-president said he spends his time focused on the Obama Foundation and finishing up the second half of his memoirs. The first volume, “A Promised Land,” was published
in 2020.
“This is like 50 term papers. I mean, it just goes on forever,” Obama said of his literary effort.
“People ask me, ‘Do you enjoy writing?’ I say, ‘Absolutely not,’ but I do enjoy having written when it’s finished,” Obama said.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) faces a number of divisions among Senate Republicans that could derail the Senate budget resolution, a measure that will be critical to passing President Trump’s legislative agenda later this year.
Key points of contention include how to calculate the cost of extending Trump’s tax cuts, Medicaid cuts, defense spending and increasing the debt ceiling.
Republican Senate leaders intend to adopt a controversial current-policy baseline
that would enable them to claim that extending the 2017 tax cuts won’t add to the deficit and open the door to making a signature Trump first-term accomplishment permanent.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) says he’ll go along with the current-policy baseline, but he wants the cost of extending the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which expires at the end of this year, “paid for” with either spending cuts or other revenue-generating measures.
“If we use it, I want to paid for it,” he said of the current-policy baseline. “You can use it, I just want it paid for it. We’ve got an incredible problem with our national debt.”
But paying for an extension of the tax cuts with big spending cuts or other deficit-reducing strategies would appear to defeat the purpose of using the current-policy baseline in the first place, which is to make it easier for Republicans to permanently extend the expiring tax cuts without needing to include offsets within the bill.
Asked whether his call to pay for the tax cuts was flying in the face of the Senate GOP strategy, Cassidy replied: “No, we’re actually talking about different ways to pay for it. Much more aggressive.”
A second Republican senator who requested anonymity voiced strong concerns about the plan to use the current-policy baseline to score the cost of a future budget reconciliation bill.
Doing so would treat an extension of the 2017 tax cuts as an extension of the status quo that would not add to the deficit — at least according to the official cost projections of the Congressional Budget Committee and Joint Committee on Taxation.
“At the moment, there’s a lot of concern about the issue of the parliamentarian and the score,” said the GOP lawmaker. “I think it would be terrible mistake to overrule [the parliamentarian] and do the nuclear option.”
The budget resolution, which Senate Republicans unveiled Wednesday
, includes language giving Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) the authority to set the budgetary baseline for a future reconciliation bill. Graham has said he plans to use a current-policy baseline.
But Democrats are accusing Republicans of planning to break Senate rules and precedents. They argue that a “current-law” baseline has always been used to score the cost of legislation passed under budget reconciliation.
Under current law, much of the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is due to expire at the end of this year. Extending those tax cuts for nearly another decade would add an estimated $4.6 trillion to the federal deficit, according to a score based on a current-law baseline.
Thune met with several Republican senators who had concerns about proceeding with the budget resolution on Thursday. Those with qualms about elements of the budget resolution still voted to proceed to the bill, which will be subject to dozen of amendment votes before it’s expected to receive a final vote this weekend.
The size of potential cuts to Medicaid is another major point of friction within the Senate GOP conference.
Several Republican senators have stated clearly that they won’t support big cuts to Medicaid, which provide health care and nursing to hundreds of thousands of their constituents.
While they are open to rooting out fraud in the system and adding new work requirements to the program, they are ruling out any cuts that would affect benefits.
“I’m concerned about the instruction to the House Committee for $880 billion, it’s the Energy and Commerce Committee in the House, which has jurisdiction over Medicaid, because I don’t see how you can get to that amount without cutting Medicaid benefits,” Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) told reporters.
The Senate budget resolution includes language drafted by House Republicans instructing the House Energy and Commerce Committee to reduce the deficit by $880 billion, a target that policy experts say can’t be met without cutting deeply into Medicaid.
“In my state, there are more than 400,000 Mainers that rely on that health care program. Our rural hospitals depend upon it as well, and they are really struggling because of actions and inactions by the state legislature. So the last thing I want to do is cut Medicaid for vulnerable people who are disabled or seniors who cannot work,” she said.
Sen. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) warned that cuts to Medicaid would threaten the financial viability of rural hospitals in Kansas.
“I want to make certain that my colleagues know my view the value of making certain we do no harm to those in desperate need of health care in Kansas and across the country,” Moran said on the Senate floor.
While he acknowledged that Congress should reform flaws in the system, he argued that the benefits from the program are critical to the survival of rural hospitals.
“Our ability to maintain those hospitals and keep their doors open is a major priority for me,” he said, noting that rural hospitals in Kansas receive 9 percent of their revenue from Medicaid.
Republican senators also have different ideas over how much the budget should call for increasing defense spending.
The Senate Republican budget resolution instructs the Senate Armed Services Committee to increase defense spending by $150 billion.
That spending target isn’t as high as what Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) called for last month. He wanted a defense spending increase “north of 175” billion dollars in the reconciliation package.
Wicker told The Hill that he’s willing to go along with the $150 billion target for the sake of compromise
“It’s not enough but it’s a big step. We have to make compromises,” he said.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a leading fiscal hawk, has pressed his Senate Republican colleagues to trim spending across the board, including defense spending.
House Republican leaders called for a defense spending increase of only $100 billion in the House-passed budget resolution.
The Senate measure retains the House-passed instruction to the House Armed Services Committee to increase defense spending by the lower amount, setting up a negotiation between the two chambers later this year.
And Republicans senators disagree about how to handle the Senate budget resolution’s proposal to raise the debt limit
by $5 trillion.
Paul has said he will not vote to raise the debt limit by such a large amount. He has instead proposed raising the debt limit by only $500 billion, which would put pressure on Congress to immediately enact big spending cuts to avoid a default later this year.
“We need Congress to uphold its promises to rein in spending. Call your congresspeople to say NO to $5T in new debt!” he posted on X, the social media site.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has warned that he will not vote to raise the debt limit later this year unless he receives assurances from Republican leaders to help the victims of radiation exposure in Missouri. He wants Congress to reauthorize and expand the Radiation Exposure Compensation Act, which expired last year.
The Senate budget resolution is written broadly enough to secure 51 Republican votes.
GOP senators voted 52-48 on Thursday to proceed to the measure
. Paul was the only Republican to vote “no.”
But the challenge for Thune over the next 24 hours will be to keep his conference unified enough to defeat amendments that would create new divisions with the House.
If Republican senators vote with Democrats to pass an amendment walling off Medicaid or other mandatory spending programs from significant cuts, it could set up a serious conflict with House Republicans.
Thune told reporters at the start of the week that his top goal is to find 51 votes to pass a budget resolution and indicated that he’s not taking it for granted as a slam dunk.
He said he wanted to make sure his Republican colleagues were in a “comfortable place” before moving forward with the budget.
“The Senate is going to do what we can get 51 votes for here in the Senate,” he told reporters last week. He said that “hopefully” it would also get 218 votes in the House.
He advised that the Senate was going to work its own will on the budget resolution, which means giving Republican senators a chance to shape the legislation, despite pressure from House GOP leaders for the Senate to simply adopted its version.
“At some point the House is going to need us. If we’re going to win, we got to play on both sides of the ball,” he said.
Nationwide protests are set to take place Saturday in opposition to the Trump administration and its allies, with leaders vowing to stand up to push back against the “most brazen power grab in modern history.”
The “Hands Off!” rallies are taking place in more than 1,000 cities across all 50 states and nearly 400,000 people have signed up to attend
them, according to the progressive organization Indivisible, which is one of the almost 200 groups partnering to organize the movement.
Other partner organizations include the American Civil Liberties Union, the League of Women Voters, the Planned Parenthood Action Fund and various advocacy groups focusing on issues like climate change and voting rights.
“Donald Trump and Elon Musk think this country belongs to them,” the movement’s website
states. “They’re taking everything they can get their hands on, and daring the world to stop them. On Saturday, April 5th, we’re taking to the streets nationwide to fight back with a clear message: Hands off!”
The protesters have three main demands: an end to the “billionaire takeover and rampant corruption” of the Trump administration; an end to cuts in federal funding for Social Security, Medicare and other programs that working people rely on; and an end to attacks on immigrants, trans people and other communities.
The website states that the country is facing a “national crisis” with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid under threat, protections for workers being stripped and community members like immigrants, transgender individuals and political opponents being targeted.
Trump has said Social Security and Medicare benefits would not be cut under his push for reducing federal spending but would instead cut out “waste” and “fraud” in the programs. Critics have alleged that the administration will cut into these programs and that the only way to reach the amount of reductions planned is to cut into them.
Protesters will go to state capitals, federal buildings, congressional offices and city centers, anywhere “we can make sure they hear us.”
The planned protests have already caused the White House to reschedule
one of its tour dates for the annual spring garden tours from Saturday to Sunday “out of an abundance of caution” and to ensure safety near the demonstrations.
Washingtonian reported
that more than 12,000 protesters are expected for the rally on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Speakers at that event will include Democratic Reps. Jamie Raskin (Md.) and Maxwell Frost (Fla.).
MoveOn, another advocacy group involved in the movement, told the outlet that the protests will mark the “largest single day of action” since Trump’s second term began.
The scheduled protests come as backlash among critics of the administration has bubbled up, with Republican members of Congress facing questions and pressure at town halls
over Trump’s actions and steps that Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have taken to cut down the size of the federal government, laying off workers and cutting back on some government services.
“This is the moment where we say NO,” the movement’s website states. “No more looting, no more stealing, no more billionaires raiding our government while working people struggle to survive.”
The website also notes in multiple locations that a commitment to nonviolence is a “core principle” of the movement. It states that all participants are expected to try to deescalate “any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values.”
The Education Department and Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Friday a collaboration to create “Title IX Special Investigations Team (SIT).”
The departments said the teams will “streamline” Title IX investigations as the number of cases is increasing.
The announcement said the goal of the teams is “timely, consistent resolutions to protect students, and especially female athletes, from the pernicious effects of gender ideology in school programs and activities.”
The collaboration comes after the president signed an executive order banning transgender athletes from competing on the sports teams they choose.
“Protecting women and women’s sports is a key priority for this Department of Justice,” said Attorney General Pamela Bondi. “This collaborative effort with the Department of Education will enable our attorneys to take comprehensive action when women’s sports or spaces are threatened and use the full power of the law to remedy any violation of women’s civil rights.”
The teams will be made up of investigators and attorneys from the Office of Civil Rights at the Education Department, case workers from the Student Privacy and Protection Office, a Federal Student Aid enforcement investigator and attorneys from the civil rights division at the DOJ.
The University of Pennsylvania and the University of Maine have both had funding pauses allegedly due to policies around transgender athletes. Both schools say they follow NCAA rules that no longer allow transgender athletes to compete.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) froze federal funds
for some Maine education programs over the state’s refusal to change its policies around transgender athletes.
The targeting of Maine came after the governor of the state and President Trump got into a spat
over his executive order.
