Trump news updates: Biden delivers first address since leaving White House

Thanks for joining us for day 86 of Donald Trump’s second term as US president.

For more coverage on the Trump administration, read our story here on the contradictory statements US officials have offered about negotiations with Iran over its nuclear programme.

Or read more about how Harvard University is defying Trump’s demands, and what that could mean, here.

This live page will soon be closing. Here were today’s top events:

• The US has clarified that it is seeking the complete end of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme in talks set to resume on Saturday.
• The US Department of the Interior has transferred land to the US Army along the US-Mexico border, as part of US President Donald Trump’s migration crackdown.
• The White House said it is up to China to come forward and make a deal in a trade war sparked by Trump’s tariffs.
• Trump said Harvard’s tax-exempt status could be revoked and its federal funds cut as the university refuses to comply with the administration’s demands.
• Former President Joe Biden, Trump’s erstwhile electoral rival, slammed cuts to social safety-net programmes as “deliberate cruelty”.
• The former Democratic leader also called for greater empathy and fairness among Americans: “ What makes us distinct from the rest of the world? It comes down to basic — in my view — fundamental American values. Nobody’s a king. Nobody’s a boss. Everybody has a shot.”

In his first address since leaving office, Biden slammed the current administration for leading without empathy.

He also had harsh words for the business ethos that some of the entrepreneurs in the Trump administration brought to the White House.

That mentality, he said, was partly to blame for anticipated cuts to social safety-net programmes like Social Security.

“You’ve got to ask yourself: Why is this happening? Why are these guys taking aim at Social Security now?” Biden said.

“Well, they’re following that old line from tech startups. The quote is: Move fast, break things. And they’re certainly breaking things. They’re shooting first and aiming later. The result is a lot of needless pain and sleepless nights.”

He quoted former Governor Martin O’Malley of Maryland as saying: “They want to wreck it so they can rob it.” He accused the Republicans of using government cuts to fund tax rebates for billionaires and big business.

He pointed out that there was still broad support for Social Security.

“The vast majority of Americans, including many wealthy Americans, still support – thank God – Social Security, and very wealthy billionaires still support social security. They may not rely on themselves, but they know – they know – Social Security deserves to be protected for the good of the nation as a whole.”

The Trump administration has included several high-profile business leaders, including the world’s wealthiest man, Elon Musk, who founded both Tesla and SpaceX.

Former President Joe Biden has also condemned Republican efforts to extend the 2017 tax cuts passed during Trump’s first term.

The Democrat warned that Republicans can only afford to extend those cuts by “running up the deficit” and “then by taking the money from someplace else”.

“What are the two big pots of money out there? In raw numbers? Social Security and Medicaid,” Biden said.

Biden finished the speech calling for unity, the defining message of his successful 2020 presidential run.

“It can’t go on like this,” he said. “It’s never been this divided.”

Supporters for deported Salvadoran immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia gathered outside the US District Court in Greenbelt, Maryland, where a judge is weighing whether the Trump administration complied with orders to facilitate his return to the US.

His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, was among the protesters, marking the 34th day of Abrego Garcia’s imprisonment in a Salvadoran prison.

She described her husband as having “dedicated himself to make our family’s American dream reality”. She also said immigration officials “abducted” her husband in front of their five-year-old child.

“I will not stop fighting until I see my husband alive,” she said. “Kilmar, if you can hear me, stay strong.”

The former US president has been warning about the “psychological pressure” the debate over cuts to Social Security have on millions of older Americans.

“You’re 78 years old, you’re not in good shape, you have a disability, and you hear the cheque may not come. How do you sleep at night?” Biden said.

While the Trump administration has said it will not cut Social Security, Biden highlighted the fact that it has announced layoffs of nearly 7,000 jobs at the agency that administers the programme.

“Fewer than 100 days, this new administration has … done so much damage, so much destruction. It’s kind of breathtaking,” he said.

US officials have been revoking student visas at an unprecedented rate, targeting individuals for an array of reasons, including involvement in protests or contact with law enforcement.

A tally by The Associated Press has found at least 600 students at more than 90 colleges and universities around the US have had their visas revoked or their legal status terminated in recent weeks.

At least one student has successfully challenged the revocation: A judge granted a reprieve today to University of Wisconsin-Madison student Krish Lal Isserdasani.

The judge ruled that Isserdasani, who is from India, was not given any warning or opportunity to challenge the revocation, which appeared to stem from an incident in which Isserdasani was arrested by local police but not charged.

The former president, who has been been criticised for not stepping down ahead of the 2024 Democratic primary, has begun speaking.

He is addressing the Advocates, Counselors, and Representatives for the Disabled (ACRD) in Chicago, where he is expected to defend Social Security in the face of anticipated cuts.

US District Judge Paula Xinis has decided not to hold the Trump administration in contempt of court — for now.

But she has warned she will not tolerate “gamesmanship or grandstanding” from Department of Justice lawyers in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia.

Abrego Garcia had been mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration, which has maintained he is no longer in their jurisdiction, despite a Supreme Court order saying the government should “facilitate” his return.

The administration has also not complied with Xinis’s order to provide daily updates on efforts taken to bring Abrego Garcia back to the US.

Abrego Garcia had been living in the US state of Maryland with his wife and child. In 2019, a court granted him protection from deportation, on the basis that he could face persecution in his native El Salvador. His family has said he fled gang recruitment.

But in court filings earlier today, Justice Department lawyers once again claimed — without evidence — that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang.

An anonymous informant had accused Abrego Garcia of being a gang member in New York during the 2019 proceedings, but his lawyers pointed out he has never lived in that state, and the accusation was never proven.

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele said yesterday that he would not “smuggle” Abrego Garcia back to the US, in a show of support with Trump.

Bukele also described Abrego Garcia as a “terrorist”, echoing Trump’s designation of Latin American gangs like MS-13 as “terrorist organisations”.

The US Department of the Interior has transferred nearly 44,515 hectares (110,000 acres) of federal land along the US-Mexico border to the US Army to prevent illegal immigration.

The department said the transfer was meant to help the army support US Border Patrol.

“Securing our border and protecting our nation’s resources go hand in hand,” Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said in a statement. The plan was announced by Trump last week.

While the US Army is prohibited from taking part in domestic law and immigration enforcement, it can detain those trespassing on Pentagon-controlled land, including people crossing into the US from Mexico.

In a White House ceremony, the US president welcomed the Navy’s Midshipmen team after their victory in December’s annual Army-Navy football game.

But before he presented the players with the Commander-in-Chief’s Trophy, he offered some remarks, briefly veering into his ongoing beef with former President Joe Biden.

Trump called the Democrat a “catastrophe known as Biden” and accused the former president of giving away equipment and leaving the military under-supplied.

“ We gave a lot of it away. You know that,” he told the room, which included members of the military. “But we have to keep a lot of it. We have to keep it for ourselves also.”

Trump also took credit for the rise in military recruitment.

“ Since I took the oath of office, the spirit of our military is, ‘Soar to new heights’,” he said. “Today, I’m proud to announce that in February, the US Navy had its best recruiting numbers since 2002.”

However, recruitment had been rebounding before Trump’s re-election last November. In October, for instance, the Defense Department reported an increase of 12.5 percent in recruitment.

After his term as president came to an end on January 20, Democrat Joe Biden, 82, largely stepped out of the public eye.

His final year in office had been overshadowed by concerns about his age and deteriorating health, particularly after he appeared to struggle to complete his thoughts during a June presidential debate.

He ultimately dropped out of the presidential race, replaced by his vice president and fellow Democrat, Kamala Harris, who lost to Trump in the 2024 election.

Trump has long denied he lost to Biden in the 2020 race, falsely claiming his defeat was the result of widespread voter fraud. Months into his second term, the Republican leader has continued to criticise Biden for the state of the country.

Tonight’s speech will be Biden’s first major address since leaving office — and potentially an opportunity to prove his critics wrong.

Rumours have continued to swirl about Biden’s age. Author Chris Whipple’s new book Uncharted: How Trump Beat Biden, Harris, and the Odds in the Wildest Campaign in History, for example, has reignited questions about whether the Democrat, now 82, was fit to lead during his final year in office.

Biden will speak before the national conference for Advocates, Counselors and Representatives for the Disabled in Chicago, Illinois. His remarks come as Democrats lead a “day of action” against proposed cuts to the Social Security Administration.

Trump’s ongoing efforts to punish law firms he disapproves of have hit another snag.

A federal judge has placed a partial hold on an executive order that would have forbidden the federal government from doing business with anyone who hires law firm Susman Godfrey.

“The framers of our constitution would see this as a shocking abuse of power,” District Court Judge Loren AliKhan said as she entered the temporary restraining order.

Last week, Trump signed the order calling Susman Godfrey’s work “detrimental to critical American interests”.

His order had cited the firm’s election work as a reason it was targeted. The firm had represented a voting machine company that won a $787bn settlement from Fox News after the network aired Trump’s lies about the 2020 election being marred by widespread fraud.

AliKhan ruled that Trump’s rationale amounted to a “personal vendetta”.

Tuesday’s ruling is the fourth time a judge has ruled against Trump’s actions targeting law firms. However, several other firms have entered into controversial settlements with Trump, promising to provide hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free legal work for the president’s favoured causes.

The State Department has issued new sanctions and offered a hefty award for any information leading to the arrest of leaders of the La Nueva Familia Michoacana (LNFM).

The Mexican-based cartel is one of several Latin American criminal organisations designated by the Trump administration as a “Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO)”.

The department is offering up to $5m for information leading to the arrest of the cartel’s leader, Johnny Hurtado Olascoaga, and up to $3m for the second-in-command, his brother, Jose Alfredo Hurtado Olascoaga.

It said that the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) estimates the cartel is “responsible for the transportation, importation, and distribution of over 36 metric tons of methamphetamine, 12 metric tons of Mexican heroin, and 12 metric tons of cocaine per year from Mexico into the United States”.

Here are the latest updates from the Trump administration:

• The White House has called on China to cut a deal with the US to end the ongoing trade war, with Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt saying the “ball is in China’s court”.
• The State Department has reiterated that the US wants the complete elimination of Iran’s nuclear enrichment programme, clarifying contradicting statements from special envoy Steve Witkoff, who is leading US talks with Tehran.
• Democrats are holding a “day of action” to warn against possible Republican cuts to Social Security.
• Former President Joe Biden, who defeated Trump in 2020 and later dropped out of the 2024 election, is set to give a speech on Social Security, in his first major appearance since leaving office.
• The White House has doubled down on Trump’s statement yesterday that his administration is looking into whether it can legally send US citizens to prisons in El Salvador.

Hungarian politician Antal Rogan has been removed from the US Treasury’s list of sanctioned individuals after being added in January by the outgoing administration of Democrat Joe Biden.

Rogan, a close aide to far-right Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, had been accused of facilitating corruption in Hungary’s government. The sanctions came as relations between the Biden administration and Orban’s government soured over Budapest’s ties with Russia during Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.

“Throughout his tenure as a government official, Rogan has orchestrated Hungary’s system for distributing public contracts and resources to cronies loyal to himself and the Fidesz political party,” Biden’s Treasury Department said in January.

Orban has been one of Trump’s most vocal supporters in Europe. A spokesperson for the US State Department said Secretary of State Marco Rubio told his Hungarian counterpart, Peter Szijjarto, about the removal during a call today.

One through line between the administrations of Trump and his predecessor Joe Biden has been criticism of UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese.

Officials in both administrations have accused Albanese of anti-Semitism for labelling Israel’s actions in Gaza “genocide” and part of a wider campaign of “colonial erasure”.

Albanese has held the role monitoring human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory since 2022. She has called on the UN to consider suspending Israel for its actions in Gaza.

Her term was extended for another three years this month by the UN Human Rights Council.

The US mission to the UN today said the extension “makes clear the United Nations tolerates anti-Semitic hatred, bias against Israel and the legitimization of terrorism”.

Follow our live coverage of the war in Gaza here.

Spokesperson Tammy Bruce has responded to reports in the US media that the Trump administration is seeking to cut the State Department budget by half.

The $27bn in cuts would include lopping off a large portion of funds allocated to humanitarian assistance, global health and support to international organisations, The Washington Post reported on Monday, citing an internal memo.

“I can tell you that whatever you’ve seen in public was not released from this entity, was not released from this department,” Bruce said.

“It was not released by the secretary,” she added. “There is no final plan, final budget.”