Karoline Leavitt cheers ‘epic’ troll of Democrats by Trump Cabinet secretary: Live updates

Karoline Leavitt hailed Education Secretary Linda McMahon for turning up at a Democratic press conference outside her department.

Donald Trump’s press secreary said the move was ‘Epic!’

The Senate voted to confirm Dr. Mehmet Oz as the next administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The vote came down along party lines 53 to 45.

Senator John Fetterman who beat Oz in the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race voted against his confirmation despite signaling he was open to considering his former rival for the job.

A Republican senator has a dire warning about what Donald Trump’s new tariffs may do to the U.S. economy.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., a noted libertarian, has been one of the few Republicans who have outspokenly opposed the president’s new batch of tariffs.

Paul has been decrying the impacts the new policy may have on the U.S. economy for months now. He first warned of the president’s protectionist policies in the fall.

Now he is warning that the tariffs may also lead to political annihilation for Republicans.

Paul told reporters on Wednesday that, in addition to changes in markets, tariffs have also ‘led to political decimation.’

‘When [former President William] McKinley most famously put tariffs on in 1890, they lost 50 percent of their seats in the national election,’ The Kentucky Republican noted, bringing up the last time a president invoked such a sweeping tariff overhaul.

Guess who just moved to Washington, DC and is spending more time with President Donald Trump at the White House.

As Elon transitions out, this tech mogul wants in.

JD Vance previews what to expect next with Elon Musk, and his future in the Trump adminstration.

Jon Michael Raasch, Political Reporter for DailyMail.com

A former Democratic congressional candidate from California has been hit with a six-figure fine for improperly reporting payments to Alec Baldwin.

Former California Assemblymember Evan Low has been issued a fine of $106,000 for failing to properly document campaign payment records, according to a new report from California’s Fair Political Practices Commission.

Low has reportedly agreed to pay the fine, though the state still needs to issue final approval next week.

The Democrat was charged with 18 violations, including infractions for failing to report payments.

The commission had been investigating the Democrat since 2020, and it recently unveiled in a filing that Low paid Baldwin $227,000 to appear at two events in 2019, one being a campaign fundraiser for his reelection to the state assembly.

Low paid Baldwin for the events using cash from a technology nonprofit he ran, not his campaign funds, the report states.

By Nikki Schwab, Chief Campaign Correspondent at the White House

The East Wing announced Thursday afternoon that the White House was rescheduling the spring garden tours – by a day – due to planned protests on the National Mall.

‘This decision has been made out of an abundance of caution and to ensure the safety of all within proximity to public demonstrations planned near the White House,’ a release said.

The tours were originally scheduled for Saturday and will now be held on Sunday, April 6.

A series of Hands Off! rallies are being planned Saturday to push back on the policies of President Donald Trump and DOGE’s Elon Musk.

A spokesperson for the liberal organization MoveOn told Washingtonian that 12,500 protesters are expected in Washington, D.C.

By Nikki Schwab, Chief Campaign Correspondent at the White House

President Donald Trump has fired several members of his National Security Council team.

The dismissals come after National Security Advisor Michael Waltz accidentally added The Atlantic’s editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat where top administration officials were discussing an attack on the Houthis in Yemen.

Trump has publicly supported Waltz, a former Florida congressman, in the aftermath of Signalgate, despite some White House insiders labeling him a ‘f***ing idiot.’

Loomer came to the White House armed with research that purportedly showed that some NSC staffers were not loyal enough to the president.

‘Out of respect for President Trump and the privacy of the Oval Office, I’m going to decline on divulging any details about my Oval Office meeting with President Trump,’ Loomer told DailyMail.com Thursday.

‘It was an honor to meet with President Trump and present him with my research findings, I will continue working hard to support his agenda, and I will continue reiterating the importance of strong vetting, for the sake of protecting the President and our national security,’ she added.

Sarah Ewall-Wice, Senior U.S. Political Reporter on Capitol Hill:

Republican senators were hesitant to criticize President Trump’s tariff plan on Thursday as the markets plummeted, but they remain in wait and see mode on how countries respond.

‘I would have expected more targeted tariffs to meet the needs of where countries are taking advantage of us, and perhaps a more modest approach in the amounts,’ said Senator Jerry Moran.

He said the big unknown in the Trump administration is how long the tariffs will last and he does not know that ‘at all.’

Senator Mike Rounds said he believes some of the volatility in the markets is because there are still questions about whether the tariffs are ‘stackable’ and when the administration answers those questions, it will help.

‘As the different trading partners start to come back through and actually try to make some deals and clarify where they’re going to be in the future, that’s going to help as well,’ Rounds said.

He suggested there will be some volatility in the markets for a while until they get some answers.

Senator Thom Tillis suggested Congress including members of both parties had given a lot of power to the executive branch and said ‘shame’ on Congress for doing it.

He suggested there is something to be said of putting tariffs under congressional review.

It comes as Republican Senator Chuck Grassley and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell introduced legislation on Thursday that would require an administration to give 48-hour notice to Congress when it is going to impose tariffs and provide reasoning and analysis.

It would also give Congress 60 days to approve the imposed tariffs or those levied would expire.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Donald Trump ‘s team is upping its efforts to stop China from buying America’s farmland as the communist nation stages an organized effort to infiltrate the U.S. food supply.

Insiders from Health and Human Services and the FBI confirm there is an increase in incidents reported of Beijing trying to access and manipulate U.S. supply chains, especially when it comes to the food industry, DailyMail.com can reveal.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) investment in farmland has surged by 1,900 percent over the last decade – going from $81 million in 2010 to a whopping $1.8 billion in 2021, a congressional investigation found.

‘The FBI is actively monitoring and investigating the growing threat of CCP acquisition of U.S. farmland and interference in our food supply chains,’ FBI Director Kash Patel’s advisor Erica Knight told DailyMail.com.

HHS is also looking into establishing an outside advisory board to look at potential national security threats in food, pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

President Donald Trump’s son has a word of advice for countries reeling from his father’s newly announced tariffs.

Ranging from 10 percent to upward of 50 percent, the tariff regime revealed at a White House Rose Garden event on Tuesday, dubbed ‘Liberation Day,’ shook global markets.

Foreign allies and business leaders have loudly pushed back on the sweeping policy change by publishing statements and social media posts with threats of retaliatory action after the Republican’s announcement.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the tariffs are ‘not the act of a friend’ and have ‘no basis in logic.’

China, the E.U., Japan, Mexico and Canada have all announced planned countermeasures underway to combat Trump’s policy.

The U.K. and Italy, meanwhile, have decided for now to hold off on hitting back at the new U.S. policy.

Aides to Joe Biden are revealing their concerns about how he was ‘out of it’ and the lengths they had to go to in order to keep him looking presidential during his final years in the White House.

Biden needed florescent tape fixed to the carpet to show him where to walk at events. That way the octogenarian would know where to go without having to have an aide guide him.

And one top aide said the then-president was so out of it during preparation for his now infamous debate with Donald Trump that he thought he was ‘President of NATO’ rather than the United States.

The revelations are found in several books coming out about Biden’s presidency. At least four tomes are coming out over the next few months examining his decline and legacy.

President Donald Trump slapped at least 10 percent sweeping tariffs on all countries sending the markets plummeting and plunging the global economy into uncertainty.

But the president’s dramatic announcement on Wednesday does not just come at a steep cost for investors.

It’s expected to have a whopping price tag for American consumers.

Here’s what the president’s plan could mean for Americans’ wallets:

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

Rep. Chip Roy responded to President Donald Trump calling him ‘weak’ and ‘ineffective’ after the Republican led efforts against raising the debt ceiling.

The Texas lawmaker said he has thick skin and isn’t worried about Trump’s criticism.

‘You shouldn’t be in this business if you’re thin skinned,’ Roy told the Wall Street Journal. ‘At the end of the day it ain’t cancer. I had cancer, a tweet is hardly cancer.’

Roy stood by his decision to oppose Trump’s efforts to get Congress to raise the debt ceiling before he took office earlier this year.

‘I was right about that policy. I stand behind it and I’ve told the President that I think I’m right about that policy,’ he insisted.

Citing four anonymous ‘Trump insiders,’ the Politico website wrote that President Donald Trump and Musk had ‘decided’ that the 53-year-old billionaire entrepreneur will soon ‘be stepping back’ to take on a ‘supporting role’ and returning to the private sector to lead his businesses.

Jon Michael Raasch, Political Reporter for DailyMail.com

Florida Republican Anna Paulina Luna is getting ripped by her ‘disgusted’ MAGA female colleague after she forced a measure to allow lawmakers to vote remotely when having kids.

Luna, 35, had a son in 2023 and has been pushing the bill alongside Colorado Democrat Brittany Pettersen, who had a baby in late January.

The Florida Republican has railed against GOP leadership for not allowing lawmakers enough time to recover after giving birth.

‘Leadership said they will not consider at all allowing female members to vote when recovering from child birth. Period. Not now. Not ever. This is wrong,’ she wrote on X Tuesday.

Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has been adamantly against Luna’s effort, noting how the measure is unconstitutional and distorts the intended functions of Congress.

His fighting the measure helping new parents is a bad look, though, and the speaker has sought to clear the record by posting on X that he is ‘actively working on every possible accommodation to make Congressional service simpler for young mothers.’

Bucking the speaker, Luna took the extraordinary method of using a discharge petition to force a vote on her bill. She circumvented Johnson by garnering bipartisan support on a petition that can get voted on, regardless of what the speaker says, if a majority of members sign on.

By Katelyn Caralle, Senior U.S. Political Reporter

President Donald Trump’s best buddy Elon Musk was noticeably absent from his long-promised Liberation Day event on Wednesday.

The first Rose Garden event of Trump’s second term was missing the man who has been glued to the president’s side since his election win on November 5.

It comes amid new reports that Musk is on his way out the door.

Musk has been an ever-present figure at the White House once Trump took office on January 20. He has an office space in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, which also houses the offices of the vice president and his staff and thousands of other executive branch employees.

President Donald Trump compared his new tariffs to a surgical operation.

He said in a post to Truth Social that the ‘patient’ – in this case, the U.S. – has ‘lived, and is headling.’

Trump claims that his tariffs, which were announced at his Liberation Day event on Wednesday, will make the U.S. ‘stronger’ and ‘more resilient.’

On the betting site Polymarket chances of a recession in 2025 passed 50 percent for the first time.

As Donald Trump was announcing his tariff on Wednesday the odds stood at 39 percent.

By the early hours of Thursday morning that had reached a high of 53 percent.

Later on Thursday the chances slipped back below 50 percent.

The forecasting site was closely watched during the 2024 election campaign as odds there began to favor Trump winning.