Trump news at a glance: judge orders now-infamous Signal chat be retained as tariff fallout deepens

Judge orders retention of all Signal group texts

James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, ordered all messages in the group chat be preserved, adding that his decision was aimed at ensuring no messages were lost and not because he decided the Trump administration had done anything wrong.

Boasberg is set to decide at a later stage whether the disappearing message function of the Signal chat violated federal records retention laws.

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End of an era for Canada-US ties, says Carney, as allies decry Trump’s car tariffs

Canada’s prime minister has said the era of deep ties with the US “is over”, as governments from Tokyo to Berlin to Paris sharply criticized Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on car imports, with some threatening retaliatory action.

Mark Carney warned Canadians that Trump had permanently altered relations and that, regardless of any future trade deals, there would be “no turning back”.

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Hegseth’s Arabic tattoo stirs controversy

The US secretary of defense Pete Hegseth has a tattoo that appears to read “infidel” or “non-believer” in Arabic, according to photos on his social media account.

In photos posted on Tuesday on X, the former Fox News host had what appears to be a tattoo that says “kafir”, an Arabic term used within Islam to describe an unbeliever. Hegseth appears to have also had the tattoo in another Instagram photo posted in July 2024. A pro-Palestinian activist said Hegseth having the tattoo was a “clear symbol of Islamophobia”.

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Stefanik’s UN bid axed to protect House majority

US House representative Elise Stefanik’s nomination to be the US ambassador to the United Nations was pulled by Donald Trump on Thursday, a stunning turnaround for his cabinet pick after her confirmation had been stalled over concerns about Republicans’ tight margins in the House.

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Rubio boasts of 300 cancelled visas

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, boasted on Thursday that he has cancelled more than 300 visas for people he labelled “lunatics” in connection with pro-Palestinian university campus protests.

The US state department is undertaking a widespread visa-review process, revoking hundreds of visas and placing hundreds more under scrutiny, targeting mostly foreign nationals engaged in pro-Palestine activism, according to official statements.

During a visit to Guyana, Rubio said: “We do it every day, every time I find one of these lunatics.”

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Trump lawyers defend sending student to detention centre

Lawyers for the US government defended their transferring of doctoral student Rumeysa Ozturk from Massachusetts to immigration detention in Louisiana because they did so before a court ordered she not be removed from without prior notice.

Ozturk, a 30-year-old student from Tufts University, was sent to detention in the south on Wednesday after being snatched off the street by masked Ice agents outside her home on Tuesday.

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Fossil fuel firms can email Trump to skip pollution rules

Donald Trump’s administration has offered fossil fuel companies an extraordinary opportunity to evade air pollution rules by simply emailing the US president to ask him to exempt them.

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The Vances head to Greenland

The vice-president, JD Vance, and his wife, Usha Vance, are due to touch down in Greenland on Friday in a drastically scaled down trip to the Arctic island after the original plans for the unsolicited visit prompted an international diplomatic row.

The visit to Pituffik, a remote ice-locked US military base in northwestern Greenland, will be closely watched by leaders in Nuuk and Copenhagen, both of whom have aired their opposition to the contentious trip amid ongoing threats by Donald Trump to acquire Greenland, a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

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