March 14, 2025: Donald Trump presidency news

Our live coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency has ended for the day. Follow the latest updates here.

Elon Musk and his son X Æ A-Xii arrive with President Donald Trump on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, on Friday.

Vice President JD Vance said in an interview today that Elon Musk has made some mistakes while working on Department of Government Efficiency’s effort to slash the federal government.

It’s one of the first times a senior White House official has conceded that Musk’s DOGE team has made some missteps.

Musk, the world’s richest man, joined President Donald Trump aboard Air Force One tonight night on the way to Florida where the president will spend the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Twelve former employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs’ Office of Equity Assurance have filed a lawsuit against VA Secretary Doug Collins, alleging the agency did not extend them their rights to due process when the administration terminated the office.

The Office of Equity Assurance (OEA) was created under former President Joe Biden to help minority veterans deal with disparities in how the government provides benefits.

Asked about the lawsuit, a VA spokesperson said it “doesn’t typically respond to pending litigation.”

Signage is seen outside of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP in Washington, DC, on August 30, 2020.

President Donald Trump expanded his crackdown on Democratic-tied law firms, suspending security clearances held by individuals at Paul Weiss, a white shoe firm with deep links to the Democratic Party.

Paul Weiss joins a string of firms to face action by Trump. So far, the president has targeted employees at Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling, both of which he accused of conspiring against him in elections.

The order stripping Paul Weiss employees of their security clearances wasn’t immediately available online. But one partner at the firm, Karen Dunn, was associated with Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign and helped the Democratic nominee prepare for her debate with Trump.

Earlier this week, US District Judge Beryl Howell sided with Perkins Coie, which represented Hillary Clinton in 2016 and has been involved in election litigation that Trump opposed, in granting the firm’s request for a temporary restraining order for some sections of Trump’s earlier executive order.

Senate Democrats are grappling with how to move forward as a caucus after the government funding bill split their party, exposing deep divisions.

They came under intense pressure to oppose the Trump-backed bill, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and others are now facing a backlash.

Some 90 minutes before Senate Republicans staved off a shutdown on a nearly party-line vote, Schumer and nine other caucus members crossed the aisle to advance it in a key procedural vote. The bill only required a simple majority in the chamber for final passage, and all but two in the group ultimately opposed it.

Here’s what some Democratic senators are saying:

After voting to pass the stopgap bill to avert a shutdown, the Senate voted to pass a separate bill to allow Washington, DC, to maintain control over its funds after Democrats warned the GOP government funding package would cut $1.1 billion of the city’s funding.

The measure would next need to be passed by the House, where its fate is unclear.

Mayor Muriel Bowser called the Senate’s passage of the bill “a major first step.” In a statement, she said the measure passing in the House would ensure city services like police and fire “aren’t haphazardly cut in the middle of the fiscal year.”

Ahead of the vote, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer posted on X, “Today, the Senate will vote on legislation that will make an important DC funding fix. This legislation will make sure that we take care of the residents of the district — it will support law enforcement and firefighters and teachers and basic city services.”

He continued, “This legislation is very good news for the residents of the District of Columbia, and I am happy we are passing this bill today. Once the Senate acts, the House must act quickly.”

Where things stand in the House: Speaker Mike Johnson and his leadership team “will be reviewing” the Senate bill, according to a GOP leadership aide.

Johnson has not yet commented on it, but at least one Freedom Caucus member — Rep. Ralph Norman of South Carolina — told CNN today he is adamantly opposed.

Republican Sen. Susan Collins of Maine said on the Senate floor that both President Donald Trump and the top House GOP appropriator Tom Cole support the measure. But Johnson would need to decide to bring it up on the floor.

This post has been updated with details on where things stand in the House.

President Donald Trump speaks at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC, on Friday.

President Donald Trump took to the podium at the Justice Department this afternoon and railed against Biden-era officials for acting, in his view, in a partisan and corrupt way.

The event was a marked departure from how former presidents treated the department, taking pains to stay away from it and its law enforcement components so that its work would not appear political.

Here are some key lines from the president’s speech:

Pledge to expel “rogue actors and corrupt forces”: “We will expose, and very much expose, their egregious crimes and severe misconduct, of which was levels you’ve never seen anything like it,” Trump said, boasting about revoking the security clearances of some of the former officials who investigated him — and about pardoning the rioters who were convicted for the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol, calling them “political prisoners who had been grossly mistreated.”

Lashing out at political foes: Proclaiming himself as the “chief law enforcement officer in our country,” Trump focused on the failed investigations into him.

Here’s more of what the president said:

Some fact checks:

Most of the Senate Democrats who voted this afternoon to advance the stopgap bill to avert a shutdown ultimately voted against it on final passage.

Despite intensifying pressure from across the Democratic Party to block the Trump-backed funding measure, one Democrat and one independent who caucuses with Democrats joined Republicans to give final passage to the bill in the Senate.

GOP Senator Rand Paul was the only Republican to vote no.

These Democratic caucus members voted “yes” on the bill’s final passage:

These caucus members voted earlier in the day to advance the bill in a procedural vote:

The Senate has voted to pass the stopgap funding bill, averting a government shutdown hours ahead of the deadline. The final vote was 54 to 46.

The bill now heads to the desk of President Donald Trump, who is expected to sign it into law.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer speaks with CNN on Friday.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer defended his decision to vote to advance the GOP’s funding measure and keep the government open, despite criticism from some Democrats who argued the party should push back against President Donald Trump’s agenda.

The New York lawmaker also defended his leadership position, saying, “My caucus and I are in sync.”

Eight other Democrats and one independent joined the minority leader in the vote to break the filibuster, setting up a vote on the bill’s passage this evening. But, Schumer’s announcement that he would vote for the bill on Thursday was met with sharp condemnation from some Democrats, including more than 60 in the House who wrote rging him to oppose the stopgap measure.

Schumer told CNN’s Jake Tapper today that he “always knew there would be disagreements,” but maintained that a “government shutdown would be far worse” than voting for the GOP-led measure.

He maintained that the stopgap measure “was a bad bill,” but “it would be far worse to give Donald Trump the keys to the city and the country.” He said a government shutdown could give the president and the Department of Government Efficiency more room to shrink the federal government and its workforce.

Asked if he was worried about his leadership position, the New York Democrat said he thinks he has the “overwhelming support of my caucus” and that other Democrats respected what he was doing.

The Treasury Department will extend its use of extraordinary measures through June 27 to allow the federal government to pay its bills until Congress addresses the debt ceiling, Secretary Scott Bessent wrote today in a letter to lawmakers.

What to know: The US hit its roughly $36 trillion debt limit on January 21, forcing Treasury to turn to extraordinary measures and the cash it has on hand to avoid a first-ever default, which would likely cause global economic upheaval. Once the nation hits the debt ceiling, which it has done repeatedly, it can no longer borrow to cover its obligations in full and on time.

What are these extraordinary measures? They are mainly behind-the-scenes accounting maneuvers. Bessent noted that Treasury is not able to provide an estimate of how long the extraordinary measures and the cash may last due to “considerable uncertainty,” stemming in part from the unpredictability of tax receipts. The department expects to update Congress in the first half of May, after most of the tax revenue from the spring tax filing season has been received.

Though they control Congress, Republicans are divided over how to handle the debt ceiling. The House has included a $4 trillion increase to the cap in its budget resolution, but the Senate did not include any change to the debt ceiling in its narrower version of the legislation. Both chambers must approve the same budget resolution before Congress can move forward. President Donald Trump has pushed GOP lawmakers to address the limit as soon as possible.

The Senated voted to advance the spending bill.

Nine Senate Democrats and one independent who caucuses with Democrats joined Republicans today on a key procedural vote to advance a bill that would ultimately avert a government shutdown at midnight, despite intensifying pressure from across the Democratic Party to block the GOP’s funding measure.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and others voted 62-38 to advance the House-passed spending bill to a final vote, with President Donald Trump earlier praising Schumer for the move.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky was the only Republican to vote against advancing the measure that would fund the government through September 30.

Now that the Senate has taken this procedural vote, the chamber will vote on four amendments to the government funding bill and then take a final passage vote on the measure.

These are the members of the Democratic caucus who voted to advance the measure:

This post has been updated with additional information about the vote.

There will “almost certainly” be a deal that would keep TikTok operational in the United States by the April 5 sale deadline, Vice President JD Vance said in an interview with NBC News on Friday.

“There will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think satisfies our national security concerns, allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise,” Vance told NBC.

Some background: Then-President Joe Biden passed a law last year requiring TikTok’s US operations to be sold off by its parent company ByteDance or face a ban in the United States. President Donald Trump extended the ban deadline by 75 days when he took office, hoping to help broker a deal for the app to be sold to an American owner.

Last month, Trump tapped Vance and national security adviser Michael Waltz to oversee the potential TikTok deal.

Several prominent bidders have emerged as potential buyers for the platform’s US operations, including a group led by billionaire former Dodgers owner Frank McCourt and “Shark Tank”-famous investor Kevin O’Leary. But ByteDance and the Chinese government have offered little public indication that they would agree to such a deal.

Trump said last week he would “probably” extend the TikTok deadline further if a deal isn’t reached by April 5. But Vance told NBC, “We’d like to get it done without the extension.”

However, he expressed optimism that “we’re going to be in a place where we can say TikTok is operational, and it’s also operational in a way that’s protective of Americans’ data privacy and America’s national security.”

President Donald Trump teased the launch of a new anti-drug campaign during his speech at the Justice Department on Friday.

“We’re doing this campaign, and I think we can get it down 50 — 5-0 percent — with this campaign, because when people see all the horrible things that these drugs do to you, we’re especially focused on fentanyl. When they see all of the horrible things that happen when you take drugs — how you look, you lose your look, everyone’s vain. They don’t want to lose their look,” the president said.

“I think when they see these things, they may say, ‘You know what, I’m going to take a pass.’”

The president’s remarks, which came almost an hour into his speech at the Justice Department, echo what he had said on the campaign trail about waging a “war” on drug cartels during his second term.

President Donald Trump gestures while speaking at the Justice Department on Friday.

President Donald Trump repeated two false claims today about immigration statistics during his presidencies.

First, he said, “In our first full month in office, we achieved the lowest level of illegal border crossings ever recorded.”

He could have accurately said the number of migrant apprehensions by the Border Patrol in February 2025, 8,347, was the lowest in many decades, but it’s not the lowest number on record. Official federal statistics show there were fewer Border Patrol encounters with migrants at the southwest border in some of the months of the early 1960s and in years prior.

Second, he said that “by the time I got out” of office the first time, “we had the lowest numbers ever. My favorite chart of all time was brought down that day and, on that chart, it said we had the lowest numbers ever.”

But the chart doesn’t actually show that illegal immigration was at its lowest level at the time Trump left office, though text beside a red arrow on the chart claims that’s what it shows. In fact, the arrow actually points to April 2020, when Trump still had more than eight months left in his first term and when global migration had slowed to a trickle because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

After hitting a roughly three-year low (not an all-time low) in April 2020, migration numbers at the southern border increased each month through the end of Trump’s first term.

The Senate has begun voting on breaking a Democratic filibuster on the government funding bill.

The Senate has begun voting on breaking a Democratic filibuster on the funding bill to avoid a government shutdown at midnight.

This vote needs 60 votes to advance.

President Donald Trump falsely claimed in his Friday remarks at the Department of Justice that former President Joe Biden was “essentially found guilty, but they said he was incompetent and therefore let’s not find him guilty, I guess.”

“Nobody knows what the ruling was,” he said, continuing, “I think I would have rather been found guilty than what they found with him. They said he didn’t know what the hell he was doing and therefore … let him go.”

Facts first: Biden was not found guilty, “essentially” or not, and there was no judicial “ruling” at all. Biden was not even charged with a crime. The special counsel who was appointed to look into Biden’s handling of classified documents, Robert Hur, wrote in his public report that “the evidence does not establish Mr. Biden’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt,” adding that “several defenses are likely to create reasonable doubt as to such charges.”

Trump appeared to be referring Friday to the fact that Hur wrote in the report, “We have also considered that, at trial, Mr. Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.”

But Hur did not say he would have brought charges against Biden if not for this. Hur wrote at length about various facts of the case and possible Biden defenses that meant that he thought would make it too difficult for the government to win a unanimous guilty verdict.

President Donald Trump heaped praise on the federal judge in Florida who threw out his classified documents criminal case last summer, calling the jurist he appointed during his first term “amazing” and “brilliant.”

“We had an amazing judge in Florida, and her name is Aileen Cannon,” Trump said today during a wide-ranging campaign-style speech at the Justice Department. He went on to claim that he didn’t know her and never spoke to her. (Cannon has said the same.)

“I did appoint her,” Trump said, going on to criticize unnamed “public relations lawyers” who criticized Cannon’s handling of the historic case. “They were saying she was slow, she wasn’t smart, she was totally biased. ‘She loved Trump.’”

“Actually, she was brilliant, she moved quickly. She was the absolute model of what a judge should be,” the president said. “And she was strong and tough.”

Cannon, whom Trump appointed to the Southern District of Florida in 2020, threw out the classified documents case last July after concluding that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith violated the Constitution. She did not rule on whether Trump’s alleged mishandling of classified documents was proper or not.

Smith’s appeal of Cannon’s ruling was pending when Trump was reelected, and the special counsel later moved to drop the appeal as it related to Trump after his November win.

Smith indicted Trump in 2023 for allegedly taking classified national defense documents from the White House after he left office and resisting the government’s attempts to retrieve the materials.

Cannon has previously defended her independence from Trump. “I have no control over what private citizens, members of the media, or public officials or candidates elect to say about me or my judicial rulings,” Cannon said in a ruling last year. “I have never spoken to or met former President Trump except in connection with his required presence at an official judicial proceeding, through counsel.”

President Donald Trump said in a Friday speech that he got “pretty good news” on a potential ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, without expanding on what it was, and that his administration had “very good calls” on Friday with both countries.

“Just before I came here I got some pretty good news,” Trump said while giving a speech at the Justice Department. “So, but we have to see what happens. It’s a long way to go,” the president said.

“I think we have it,” the president added before cautioning the conflict could lead to World War III.

“We’ve had some very good calls today with Russia and with Ukraine. They’ve agreed for a ceasefire, if we can get it with Russia,” the president said.

The president again appeared to blame the Ukrainians for the war when he said that you should not “pick on somebody that’s a lot larger than you.”

The president’s remarks come as he said said in an interview taped Thursday that his administration would know a “little bit more on Monday” about the US-proposed temporary ceasefire in the war.

President Donald Trump speaks during his visit to the Department of Justice to address its workers, in Washington, DC, on Friday.

President Donald Trump took to the podium at the Justice Department Friday afternoon and railed against Biden-era officials for acting, in his view, in a partisan and corrupt way.

While the president welcomed allies — including his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, as well as Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley — his speech quickly turned to outrage over the failed investigations into him.

The president, standing in the Justice Department’s great hall next to 180 kilos of fake fentanyl sitting underneath a box that said in capital letters, “DEA evidence,” proclaimed that he was the “chief law enforcement officer in our country.”

They “persecuted my family, staff and supporters, raided my home, Mar-a-Lago, and did everything within their power to prevent me from becoming the president of the United States,” Trump said.