Trump Administration Live Updates: Smartphones and Computers Get Reprieve From New U.S. Tariffs on China
"Where Things Stand
Smartphone reprieve: The Trump administration published a rule late Friday night that appeared to exempt smartphones, computers and other electronics from most of the president’s punishing tariffs on China, giving tech companies like Apple and Dell a break from levies that threatened to upend their businesses and increase prices for consumers.
Border policy: President Trump announced a plan on Friday to turn a narrow strip along the Mexican border in California, Arizona and New Mexico into a military installation as part of his effort to curtail illegal crossings. The plan, set out in a White House memorandum, calls for transferring authority over the 60-foot-wide strip of federal border land known as the Roosevelt Reservation from other cabinet agencies to the Defense Department. Read more ›
Federal firings: A federal appeals panel on Friday halted parts of a district court judge’s injunction blocking the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allowing officials to move ahead with firing some agency employees. Read more ›
After more than a week of ratcheting up tariffs on products imported from China, the Trump administration issued a rule late Friday that appeared to spare smartphones, computers and other electronics from some of the fees, giving tech companies like Apple and Dell a break from levies that threatened to upend their businesses and increase prices for consumers.
A message posted late Friday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection included a long list of products that would not face the reciprocal tariffs President Trump imposed in recent days on Chinese goods as part of a worsening trade war. Apart from smartphones and laptop computers, the exclusions would also apply to transistors and semiconductors, which are largely not made in the United States.
A federal appeals panel on Friday halted parts of a district court judge’s injunction blocking the Trump administration’s effort to dismantle the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, allowing officials to move ahead with firing some agency employees.
Russell T. Vought, the White House budget office director, was named the consumer bureau’s acting director in February and immediately began gutting the agency. He closed its headquarters and sought to terminate its lease, canceled contracts essential to the bureau’s operations, terminated hundreds of employees and sought to lay off nearly all of the rest.
The Trump administration said on Friday that it had moved a portrait of former President Barack Obama in a White House hallway and replaced it with a pop-art painting of President Trump pumping his fist after the assassination attempt last year on the campaign trail in Butler, Pa.
The shuffling of décor is not uncommon at the White House, where portraits are rotated often. But the new, striking artwork depicting Mr. Trump drew criticism from some presidential historians, who could not recall another president hanging a painting of himself during his term in the White House.
President Trump announced a plan on Friday to turn a narrow strip along the Mexican border in California, Arizona and New Mexico into a military installation as part of his effort to curtail illegal crossings.
The plan, set out in a White House memorandum, calls for transferring authority over the 60-foot-wide strip of federal border land known as the Roosevelt Reservation from other cabinet agencies to the Defense Department. Military forces patrolling that area could then temporarily detain migrants passing through for trespassing on a military reservation, said a U.S. military official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operational matters.
The Department of Education said on Friday that it was moving to cut off all federal funding for Maine’s public schools because the state had ignored President Trump’s executive order banning transgender athletes from girls’ sports teams.
The agency also said it had asked the Justice Department to pursue “enforcement action” against Maine, which the Trump administration has been targeting since the president picked a fight with the state’s Democratic governor, Janet Mills, over transgender athletes in February.
The F.B.I. has suspended an analyst on Kash Patel’s so-called enemies list after Mr. Patel told lawmakers that the bureau under his leadership would stay out of the political fray and not punish employees for partisan reasons.
Last week, the bureau placed the analyst, Brian Auten, on administrative leave, according to people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation. The reasons for the suspension remain unclear.
Five more prominent law firms facing potential punitive action by President Trump reached deals on Friday with the White House to provide a total of $600 million in free legal services to causes supported by the president.
Four of the firms — Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, A&O Shearman and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett — each agreed to provide $125 million in pro bono or free legal work, according to Mr. Trump. A fifth firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, agreed to provide at least $100 million in pro bono work."
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