Trump visits North Carolina and LA to see impact of recent disasters: Live updates

The president’s lofty agenda to tackle immigration, cut taxes across the board and reduce federal spending means Congress will need to find creative ways to fund his agenda while scaling back costs and some of those ideas could cost American taxpayers.

Here’s Justin Baragona.

Departing the White House, President Trump criticizes the disaster response in both North Carolina and Los Angeles.

“North Carolina, it’s been a horrible thing the way it’s been allowed to fester. And we’re going to get it fixed up,” the president said.

He yet again claims the Los Angeles wildfires “could have been put out if they let the water flow. But they didn’t let the water flow.”

Trump also said that he is unsure whether Pete Hegseth would be confirmed as his defense secretary.

“Whatever it is, it is. He’s a good man. I don’t know what’s going to happen. You never know with those things. Pete’s a very good man. I hope he makes it. I hope he makes it.”

Donald Trump climbed aboard Air Force One for the first trip of his second administration, using full-sized stairs from the tarmac to the plane.

His predecessor, Joe Biden, often used a small set of stairs that took him into the belly of the plane.

Trump used the full set of stairs to reach the front of the aircraft’s cabin as he prepared to fly Friday to North Carolina, then Los Angeles, then Las Vegas.

Gushing over Trump’s “shock and awe” flood of executive orders upon returning to the White House, Newsmax host Rob Finnerty excitedly declared this week that the president was indeed a “dictator on day one” and one “that the American people voted for.”

Justin Baragaona has this one.

Donald Trump began his first trip as president on Friday, heading to hurricane-battered Asheville in western North Carolina and wildfire-ravaged Los Angeles. He is using this first trip of his second administration to tour areas where politics has clouded the response to deadly disasters.

The Republican president has criticized former President Joe Biden’s administration’s response in North Carolina and shown disdain for California leaders’ water policies, which he falsely claimed worsened the recent blazes.

Trump is also considering overhauling the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Some of his conservative allies have proposed reducing the amount the agency reimburses states for handling floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other calamities.

As he departed the White House just after 9 a.m., the president answered questions from a large media contingent. He said he was “very surprised” that Senators Collins and Murkowski voted against Pete Hegseth, his pick for defense secretary.

With reporting by the Associated Press

John F Kennedy’s grandson has hit out at Donald Trump’s decision to release highly-classified JFK assassination files that have kept from the public for over half a century.

Jack Schlossberg took to X on Thursday in response to Trump’s executive order to declassify records on his grandfather’s murder in 1963, plus those of Senator Robert F Kennedy in 1968 and Dr Martin Luther King Jr the same year – three deaths that have sparked countless conspiracy theories.

“The truth is a lot sadder than the myth – a tragedy that didn’t need to happen. Not part of an inevitable grand scheme,” he wrote.

“Declassification is using JFK as a political prop, when he’s not here to punch back.

“There’s nothing heroic about it.”

Madeline Sherratt reports.

Those binders full of executive orders that Trump has been signing with a flourish and a wide-tipped Sharpie all week don’t just magically appear before him.

White House staff secretary Will Scharf has been a prominent part of the tableau, standing at Trump’s side and teeing up the leather-bound folders, one by one, for the president to scrawl his John Hancock across.

With the cameras rolling, Scharf provides running narration on what Trump is signing, at times leaning into a nearby microphone at the president’s direction for effect.

Georgia’s MAGA Represenative has lashed out at a reporter who asked about Trump’s sweeping pardons for January 6 criminals, telling Punchbowl News’s Melanie Zanon: “I’m not doing this.”

Infuriated by the line of questioning, Greene continued: “All of y’all’s obsession with January 6 is absurd. Everybody outside of here is sick and f***ing tired of it.”

The exchange took place in the halls of the Capitol building, the site of the riot four years ago.

Kelly Rissman has the story.

The progressive Democrat has been sharing her thoughts with The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart on the new Trump administration in its earliest days, notably characterizing the president’s inauguration earlier this week “a billionaire feeding frenzy”.