Trump establishes federal cryptocurrency reserve as markets for digital currency slump: Live updates

The president abruptly called a cabinet meeting yesterday to clarify the role of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after they faced significant pushback from the courts over their authority to order the mass firings of federal workers.

Trump told his secretaries that the billionaire and his DOGE staffers cannot fire government employees without their express permission, hoping to draw a definite line under weeks of uncertainty and chaos.

Here’s how he framed that on Truth Social and in the Oval Office in latest question and answer session with reporters:

The president postponed planned 25 percent tariffs on most goods from Mexico and Canada for one month yesterday after speaking to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Sheinbaum described her call with Trump as “excellent and respectful,” whereas the Trudeau exchange was reportedly more “colorful”, with the Canadian saying afterwards he expects his country to remain locked in a trade war with the U.S. for the foreseeable future.

Trump said he was granting the exemption on any goods imported into the U.S. that are compliant with the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement that he negotiated during his first term but expected to reintroduce the levy hike on April 2.

Here’s Andrew Feinberg with the full story.

Donald Trump has signed an executive order establishing a strategic cryptocurrency reserve for the United States comprised of the 198,000 bitcoins the American government already holds through law enforcement confiscations, which are worth an estimated $17bn.

White House crypto and AI czar David Sacks said the move would “not cost taxpayers a dime”.

“The U.S. will not sell any bitcoin deposited into the Reserve. It will be kept as a store of value,” Sacks wrote on X

“The Reserve is like a digital Fort Knox for the cryptocurrency often called ‘digital gold.’”

But the announcement caused the price of bitcoin to slump on Thursday night, with the value of rival coins not included in the scheme also falling.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

One full day of embarrassment over the party’s response to Donald Trump’s speech to Congress was insufficient for Democrats, who delivered a second helping on Thursday.

Green, who was escorted out of Trump’s speech Tuesday evening by the sergeant-at-arms, is not exactly worse off. He’ll likely receive a fundraising boost resulting from the rebuke.

“I would do it again,” he told reporters on Thursday.

Whether the same can be said for his 10 colleagues who flirted with what Jeffries called a “political and partisan game” is less obvious, as is the actual strategy that Democratic leadership is pursuing.

Gustaf Kilander has the story.

A Pentagon press secretary with a “long history” of bigoted and antisemitic social media posts faces calls to resign.

Jewish organizations have blasted the appointment of Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson, who compared the murders of Israeli infants during the October 7 Hamas attacks to abortion. She has also peddled the antisemitic conspiracy theory about Leo Frank, a Jewish businessman who was wrongly convicted and hanged for the murder of a 13-year-old Georgia girl in 1951.

President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s relationship continued to sour, with the pair having a heated phone call after the Canadian leader announced retaliatory tariffs against the U.S., according to a new report.

Trump and Trudeau spoke Wednesday, a day after the prime minister said he was implementing 25 percent tariffs on some American exports after the president’s sweeping levies came into effect. The call — which Trump told reporters was “somewhat’ friendly — was in fact heated and profanity-laden, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The White House referred The Independent to the president’s initial characterization of the call when contacted for comment.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem pledged Thursday to help Puerto Rico in her first visit to the U.S. territory as it struggles to rebuild from catastrophic hurricanes amid chronic power outages.