Trump to impose 25% tariff on countries that buy oil or gas from Venezuela
Donald Trump said on Monday that any country that buys oil or gas from Venezuela will pay a 25% tariff on trades made with the US.
This “secondary tariff” will take effect on 2 April, the president announced in a Truth Social post. He cited “numerous reasons” for the move, including his baseless repeated claim that “Venezuela has purposefully and deceitfully sent to the United States, undercover, tens of thousands of high level, and other, criminals, many of whom are murderers and people of a very violent nature”.
He adds: “Among the gangs they sent to the United States, is Tren de Aragua, which has been given the designation of ‘Foreign Terrorist Organization’.” Tren de Aragua has been the organisation cited by Trump when he controversially invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law meant only to be used in wartime, to deport more than 250 mainly Venezuelan alleged gang members to El Salvador last week. It was formally designated a “foreign terrorist organization” by the US last month.
In his post, Trump goes on: “In addition, Venezuela has been very hostile to the United States and the freedoms which we espouse.”
Finally, he referred to 2 April as “LIBERATION DAY IN AMERICA”.
In February, Trump announced the US would scrap a license granted to Chevron since 2022 to operate in Venezuela and export its oil and gave the company until April to wind down its operations there, after he accused President Nicolás Maduro of not making progress on electoral reforms and migrant returns.
Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump was considering a plan to extend Chevron’s license by 60 days and impose financial penalties on other countries that do business with the South American nation. It followed a meeting with Chevron’s CEO Mike Wirth and other top oil executives.
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Updated at 11.23 EDT
Key events
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Donald Trump talked about the Ukraine war at the cabinet meeting. The president said he expected a revenue-sharing agreement with Ukrainian on its critical minerals will be signed soon.
Trump also told reporters as he met his Cabinet that the United States is talking to Ukraine about the potential for American firms owning Ukrainian power plants.
Our dedicated Ukraine blog has all the latest details:
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Elon Musk is attending the cabinet meeting chaired by Donald Trump – wearing a red Maga-style hat declaring “Trump was right about everything”.
We will bring you any key moments from the meeting.
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Trump picks personal attorney Alina Habba for interim US attorney in New Jersey
Donald Trump is appointing his former lawyer Alina Habba, who was previously sanctioned for filing a frivolous lawsuit, to serve as interim US attorney for the district of New Jersey.
Habba represented Trump in a variety of civil litigation, including a trial in which a jury found Trump liable for defaming writer E. Jean Carroll after she accused him of raping her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room.
She also represented Trump in a New York civil fraud case brought by the state’s attorney general Letitia James over his real estate company’s business practices. A judge in the case found him liable and ordered him to pay $454 million. Trump has appealed the ruling.
“There is corruption. There is injustice. There is a heavy amount of crime right in Cory Booker’s backyard and right under Governor Murphy,” Habba told reporters on Monday, referring to New Jersey Democratic senator Cory Booker and New Jersey’s Democratic governor Phil Murphy, after her appointment was made.
Habba added that she looks forward to “going after the people we should be going after – not the people that are falsely accused”, but declined to elaborate further.
In 2023, a federal judge in Florida sanctioned Trump and Habba and ordered them to pay $1m for filing a frivolous lawsuit which alleged that Hillary Clinton and others conspired to damage Trump’s reputation in the investigation into Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Trump and Habba are appealing that ruling.
Habba is the latest in a string of Trump’s former attorneys to be appointed to key roles in the justice department. Todd Blanche, Emil Bove and Kendra Wharton, three of his defense attorneys, are currently serving as deputy attorney general, principal associate deputy attorney general and associate deputy attorney general, respectively.
Trump’s pick to serve as solicitor general, John Sauer, represented Trump before the Supreme Court in the presidential immunity case, while attorney general Pam Bondi previously represented him during his 2019 impeachment trial.
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Donald Trump keeps doubling down on his talk of taking over Greenland despite growing criticism.
The US president on Monday said his administration was dealing with people in Greenland who wanted something to happen, referencing his repeated calls for the US to annex the semi-autonomous Danish territory.
“I think Greenland is going to be something that maybe is in our future,” Trump told reporters after a meeting with his Cabinet.
His comments came as Greenlandic leaders criticized a planned trip this week by a high-profile US delegation to Greenland led by Usha Vance, wife of vice-president JD Vance.
Greenland’s prime minister, Múte B Egede, has called for the international community to step in and accusing Washington of “foreign interference”.
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The US has declared three members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as “alien enemies” and that it plans to extradite them to Chile, the Department of Justice said.
The justice department said in a statement on Monday that the three individuals are wanted in Chile for violent crimes.
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Trump says he will soon announce tariffs on autos, aluminum and pharmaceuticals
Donald Trump has said he will in the very near future announce tariffs on automobiles, aluminum and pharmaceuticals.
Speaking to reporters at the White House on Monday, the president said the US would need all those products if there were problems including wars.
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Trump asks supreme court to halt ruling ordering the rehiring of federal workers
The Trump administration asked the supreme court on Monday to halt a ruling ordering the rehiring of thousands of federal workers dismissed in mass firings aimed at dramatically downsizing the federal government.
The emergency appeal argues that the judge cannot force the executive branch to rehire some 16,000 probationary employees.
It also calls on the conservative-majority court to rein in the growing number of federal judges who have slowed Donald Trump’s sweeping agenda, at least for now, by finding that his administration has not followed federal law.
The order came from US district judge William Alsup in San Francisco, who found the firings did not follow federal law and required immediate offers of reinstatement be sent.
The agencies include the Departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture, Defense, Energy, the Interior and the Treasury.
The temporary restraining order came in a lawsuit filed by a coalition of labor unions and organizations as the Republican administration moves to reduce the federal workforce.
Alsup expressed frustration with what he called the government’s attempt to sidestep laws and regulations governing a reduction in its workforce – which it is allowed to do – by firing probationary workers who lack protections and cannot appeal.
He told the hearing:
It is a sad day when our government would fire some good employee and say it was based on performance when they know good and well that’s a lie.
The case is among multiple lawsuits challenging the mass firings, and a second judge also ordered the rehiring of thousands of probationary workers the same day.
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Judge blocks Trump bid to deport Venezuelans under centuries-old war law
Joseph Gedeon
A federal court has thwarted the Trump administration’s bid to deport Venezuelan immigrants under a roughly 225-year-old war powers law, ruling that individuals must receive hearings before their removal.
US district judge James Boasberg on Monday rejected the government’s attempt to vacate restraining orders protecting Venezuelans accused of gang ties from deportation, instead insisting on due process for those contesting the allegations.
“The named Plaintiffs dispute they are members of Tren de Aragua; they may not be deported until a court decides the merits of their challenge,” Boasberg wrote.
The clash is rooted in Donald Trump’s 15 March proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which permits deportation of foreign nationals during wars or “invasions”. The administration claims activities of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua constitute such an invasion.
One of the deported alleged gang members is a 23-year-old gay makeup artist with no apparent gang affiliations, who was shipped to El Salvador’s notorious Cecot prison without a hearing alongside hundreds of Venezuelan men. His attorney, Lindsay Toczylowski, went on MSNBC last week and claimed he was “disappeared” despite having a scheduled immigration court appearance, after officials misinterpreted his tattoos as gang symbols.
Related: ‘Deported because of his tattoos’: has the US targeted Venezuelans for their body art?
According to Boasberg’s order, five Venezuelan immigrants had secured emergency relief – hours before the Trump administration said it would use the Alien Enemies Act – fearing immediate deportation without a chance to contest their alleged gang membership. Several of the migrants who filed the lawsuit argue they actually fled Venezuela to escape the gang.
Trump has called Boasberg, an Obama-appointed judge, a “radical left lunatic” and called for his impeachment, prompting supreme court chief justice John Roberts to issue a rare rebuke.
Boasberg explained Monday that his orders don’t block normal immigration enforcement, noting the administration had already designated Tren de Aragua a Foreign Terrorist Organization, allowing deportations through standard channels.
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Sam Levine
After a little over an hour, oral arguments just ended in the supreme court challenging Louisiana’s congressional map. The justices seemed closely divided and it’s hard to know exactly how they’re going to rule.
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Mark Carney says he is available for call with Trump, but on Canada’s terms
Canada’s new prime minister Mark Carney said on Monday he was available for a call with Donald Trump but would do so “on our terms as a sovereign country”.
Calls with the US president traditionally take place soon after the election of a new leader, but the two men have yet to speak since Carney was elected leader of the ruling Liberal Party on 9 March, automatically becoming prime minister.
Speaking to reporters in Newfoundland, Carney said he assumed Trump was waiting to see who won the general election before calling the winner. He added:
I’m available for a call, but you know, we’re going to talk on our terms as a sovereign country, not as what he pretends we are.
Carney on Sunday triggered an election for 28 April, a contest that is widely expected to focus on the strained relationship with the US amid threats to Canada’s economic and political future.
Trump has figured prominently into Canada’s political narrative, repeatedly threatening to wage economic war on the US’s closest ally and one of its largest trading partners, with the end goal of annexing the country’s northern neighbor.
Those threats, and the prospect of painful tariffs on Canadian goods, have electrified the country, with a groundswell of patriotism, calls to boycott American goods and an “elbows up” rallying cry.
You can read more on that from my colleague Leyland Cecco here:
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Updated at 11.44 EDT
Sam Levine
Back at Louisiana v. Callais, Edward Greim, a lawyer representing those challenging the map, is now making his arguments to the justices. A good portion of his argument has focused on whether or not the state had a good reason to redraw the state’s congressional map. There has been a lot of tussling over whether the court order the state was under was good enough of a reason.
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