Trump presidency as it happened: US president gives first speech to world leaders, signs executive order to declassify documents related to JFK, MLK assassinations

Thanks for joining us today as we followed Donald Trump’s fourth day as the 47th president of the United States. Starting in Davos, Switzerland where Trump spoke by video and fielded questions from business elites, we saw the president then sign another flurry of executive orders.

In case you missed it, here’s a more detailed rundown of Trump’s movements today:

• Trump told the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he wants to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin as soon as possible to secure an end to the Ukraine war.
• He warned global business leaders they would face steep tariffs if they don’t make their products in the US, affirming his intention to raise hundreds of billions, even trillions, of dollars through taxes on imports.
• The president also signed an executive order declassify documents related to the assassinations of US president John F. Kennedy, senator Robert Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.
• Trump pardoned anti-abortion activists and said he would be open to meeting the more than 1500 rioters who participated in the attack on the Capitol.
• The US Senate voted 51 to 49 to advance Pete Hegseth’s nomination as Trump’s secretary of defence, as two Republicans crossed the party line by casting their votes against the former Fox News presenter.
• Bill McGinley, the top lawyer at Elon Musk’s brainchild – the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) – announced his plans to exit the group, just days after the exit of Vivek Ramaswamy.
• Trump demanded the Federal Reserve lower interest rates, later cooling down his remarks by telling reporters he would issue a “strong statement”.
• A federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s executive order redefining birthright citizenship, calling it “blatantly unconstitutional” during the first hearing in a multi-state effort challenging the order.
• The president said he was unsure the US should be funnelling money into NATO, saying they were “not protecting us.”
• Trump said he was unbothered by close ally Elon Musk’s criticism of a $US500 billion ($800 billion) artificial intelligence project announced earlier this week.
• And something to look out for in coming days: continuing his rampage against wind power, Trump said he would issue an order on windmills, claiming they are the most expensive form of energy generation.

We’ll have more coverage in coming weeks, but for now, have a great weekend. I’m Millie Muroi and thanks for your company today.

US President Donald Trump has said in an interview broadcast on Thursday that he plans to seek to engage North Korean leader Kim Jong-un anew after the two men developed a working relationship in Trump’s first term.

“I’ll reach out to him again,” Trump told Fox News′ Sean Hannity in a taped interview, adding that Kim was “not a religious zealot” and “happens to be smart guy”.

Trump is also looking to engage further with Chinese President Xi Jinping, saying his recent conversation with Xi was friendly.

“It went fine. It was a good, friendly conversation,” Trump said in the interview with Fox News, while also adding he thought he could reach a trade deal with China.

“I can do that,” he responded when asked if he could make a deal over fair trade practices.

With Reuters

US President Donald Trump has told Fox News in an interview on Thursday that he will issue an order on windmills, claiming they are the most expensive form of energy and that he does not want them.

It comes after the president, who has previously launched several baseless attacks on wind turbines – including that they cause large numbers of whales to go crazy and die, and that noise generated by wind turbines can cause cancer– on Monday temporarily suspended new federal offshore wind leasing, saying windmills were ugly, expensive and harmed wildlife.

The 60-day halt in the approval of leases, rights of way and other authorisations was ordered on Monday by the acting head of the Interior Department.

Trump and his nominees have championed oil, gas and coal production while disparaging renewable power as unreliable.

Wind energy is the cheapest source of new electricity in the US, according to annual energy reports from financial services company Lazard.

With Bloomberg, Reuters

Donald Trump says the US should be helping NATO, but is unsure about funnelling money into the military alliance.

Speaking after signing an executive order in the Oval Office, Trump told reporters the US was protecting members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, but that they were “not protecting us.”

Trump repeated his demand that other members of the transatlantic alliance spend 5 per cent of their gross domestic product on defence – more than double the current 2 per cent goal, and a level that no NATO country, including the US, currently reaches.

“I’m not sure we should be spending anything, but we should certainly be helping them,” he said.

The US currently finances nearly 16 per cent of NATO’s annual spending of about $3.5 billion – the joint largest share alongside Germany in 2024.

Trump’s new Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte on Wednesday and reinforced the US commitment to the alliance.

Almost immediately after he was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States, Donald Trump signed an executive order that rolled back protections for millions of transgender and non-binary people while also rescinding several Biden-era orders concerning the broader LGBTQ community.

One of Trump’s most contentious first-day orders, “defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”, mandates several changes to how sex and gender are interpreted and applied within federal policies and emphasises a strictly biological interpretation of the terms.

“As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders – male and female,” the president said during his inaugural address this week.

Trump said his orders aimed at ending efforts to “socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life”.

What do these changes mean? Read more about it here.

With AP