Trump stay updates: Administration defends controversial tariffs imposed on island solely inhabited by penguins

“My fellow Americans, this is Liberation Day,” President Donald Trump said from the White House Rose Garden, using a term of his own making as he unveiled a sweeping tariff plan against all U.S. trading partners.

The day will “forever be remembered as the day American industry was reborn, the day America’s destiny was reclaimed, and the day that we began to make America wealthy again,” the president said.

Wednesday’s fanfare stood in the face of advice from droves of experts, who warned about the “catastrophic” effects these taxes would have on U.S. consumers. One day after “Liberation Day,” global stock markets plummeted and world leaders vowed to retaliate.

In his inaugural address, the president said “like never before” five times, and the tariffs plan is just the latest example of his ability to construct an alternate version of reality.

“We really haven’t seen anything like this,” Chapman Rackaway, a political science professor at Radford University, told The Independent. He called this level of reality-bending “unprecedented” in modern U.S. history.

Read the full story.

Asked on ABC’s “This Week” about Trump’s sweeping tariff plan, Sen. Cory Booker said: “I’ve never seen an administration in my lifetime do something so monumentally wrong and that so staggeringly hurts American people.”

The Democratic senator said he’s been speaking with Americans who have been saving for retirement but “now know they can’t because in one fell swoop, Donald Trump has devastated their retirement accounts, their 401ks.”

The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down more than 2,000 points this week as investors were spooked by the impact of Trump’s new tariffs.

“The chaos that he has unleashed on America, the financial insecurity that he has brought to people’s lives, this is not what he promised people,” Booker said.

CNN’s Jake Tapper asked Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins why the Trump administration imposed a 10 percent tariff on the Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which are only inhabited by penguins.

“They have zero human inhabitants. They have zero exports. They have zero imports. They do have a lot of penguins,” Tapper said. “Why are you putting tariffs on islands that are entirely populated by penguins?”

“Come on, Jake,” Rollins said, before avoiding a direct response to his question. “We live under a tariff regime from other countries.”

Tapper interjected that these islands haven’t imposed tariffs.

Here’s the full clip.

Five international students at UMass Amherst had their visas revoked by the federal government, the school said in a statement.

Chancellor Javier Reyes announced the “troubling news” in a Friday letter addressed to the UMass community.

“In each of the five cases, the students’ legal status to remain in the United States has been revoked,” Reyes said. “The university was not notified by federal authorities of these status revocations and only became aware as a result of proactive checks in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS) database.”

It’s not immediately clear what prompted their visas to be revoked. A spokesperson for the school told NBC News that there is “no reason to believe that these revocations are connected to campus activism.”

The news comes as the Trump administration hopes to carry out the “largest deportation operation” in American history.

Several prominent cases of international students being targeted for removal have made headlines in recent weeks.

The federal government has taken steps to remove Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia graduate student activist and a green card holder, from the U.S. The administration has accused Khalil of supporting Hamas; Khalil says he mediated conversations between Columbia and pro-Palestine student protesters. He was placed in ICE custody in early March.

Ukrainians legally in the U.S. were told in an email mistakenly sent Friday by the Department of Homeland Security that their parole status had been withdrawn and that they had to self-deport, according to Politico.

The email, sent to an unidentified number of people, prompted widespread fear among those who came to the U.S. to flee the full-scale Russian invasion that began in February 2022. The refugees have been increasingly concerned about their legal status in the country, as President Donald Trump said last month that they could revoke their residency status.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told the outlet that the U.S. has not yet revoked the temporary parole status handed to the 240,000 Ukrainians who came to the U.S., fleeing the war under former President Joe Biden.

Read the full story.

The rightwing conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer has expressed interest in joining the Trump administration.

Loomer took to X on Saturday to say, “I really want to work for President Trump. There is honestly nothing I want more than that.”

Loomer’s comments come after Trump fired several members of the National Security Council following a meeting with the conspiracy theorist during which she pressed the president to remove those she deemed disloyal.

The director of the U.S. National Security Agency, Gen. Timothy Haugh, who also heads the US Cyber Command, was dismissed on Thursday with NSA deputy director Wendy Noble.

Following the news, Loomer posted on X: “NSA Director Tim Haugh and his deputy Wendy Noble have been disloyal to President Trump. That is why they have been fired.”

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

A top immigration attorney at the Department of Justice was placed on indefinite leave Saturday after he questioned the deportation of a Maryland man to El Salvador, according to The New York Times.

A letter obtained by the paper which had been sent to Erez Reuveni, the acting deputy director of the immigration litigation division, states that he was suspended by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche for not following “a directive from your superiors.”

This comes after Reuveni was promoted just two weeks ago. He’s one of several career officials who have faced demotion, suspension, a transfer, or been fired for not following directions from Trump appointees.

Attorney General Pam Bondi told the Times, “At my direction, every Department of Justice attorney is required to zealously advocate on behalf of the United States.”

“Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences,” she added.

Arguing that U.S. consumers won’t bear the brunt of Trump’s tariff plan, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett told ABC News that countries are “angry” about the sweeping levies — and dozens are trying to negotiate deals.

“The countries are angry and retaliating and, by the way, coming to the table,” he said, citing a report that said more than 50 countries have reached out to the president to begin a negotiation because they realize “they bear a lot of the tariff.”

“I don’t think that you’re going to see a big effect on the consumer in the U.S.,” he added, before conceding there might be some increase in prices.

Here’s the full clip.