JD Vance says US must control Greenland

Under increasingly strained relations between the White House and Greenland and Denmark, Vance said: “Our message to Denmark is very simple: you have not done a good job by the people of Greenland.”

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Trump targets Smithsonian Institution for ‘improper ideology’

Donald Trump has ordered a highly controversial reshaping of the US Smithsonian Institution, claiming he will eliminate what his administration regards as “improper, divisive, or anti-American ideology” from the world’s largest set of museums, educational and research entities grouped under one institutional umbrella.

The announcement has sparked outrage from critics, accusing Trump of taking action to “remove diversity” from American history.

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Trump and Carney talk to avert trade war

Donald Trump described a long-awaited call with the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney, as “extremely productive” amid a trade war between the two nations launched by the US president.

The Friday morning call, requested by the White House, marks the first time the two leaders have spoken since Carney became prime minister on 14 March. In the call, Carney also said his government would implement retaliatory tariffs “to protect Canadian workers and our economy” ahead of expected levies from the US due to come into effect on 2 April.

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US to vet student visa applicants for ‘terrorist activity’

The United States has ordered consular offices to significantly expand their screening processes for student visa applicants, including through comprehensive social media investigations, to exclude people they deem to support terrorism.

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Clinton says Trump ‘stupidity’ a threat for US

Hillary Clinton on Friday called the Trump administration’s approach to governing both dumb and dangerous in an essay excoriating the Signal chat scandal and the Elon Musk-led mission to slash the federal workforce, and concluding that Trump would make the US “feeble and friendless”.

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Fury as Trump axes collective bargaining for federal workers

Union leaders have accused Donald Trump of union-busting in a “blatant” attempt to silence them after the president stepped up his attacks on government unions on Thursday, signing an executive order that attempts to eliminate collective bargaining for hundreds of thousands of federal workers.

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Two law firms sue Trump as third makes $100m deal

Two prominent law firms sued the Trump administration on Friday, seeking to block executive orders that would halt the firms’ business with the government and revoke the security clearances of its attorneys.

The suits come amid deep concern the legal community is not doing enough to push back against efforts to target them. A third top US law firm – Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom – reached an agreement to avoid an executive order, agreeing to do $100m in pro-bono work “in the Trump administration and beyond”.

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Fired watchdog warns of rule by billionaires

The US is in the midst of an extraordinary battle between “the rule of law versus the rule of billionaires”, a top Democratic government official and attorney has warned, after his unprecedented firing by Donald Trump.

Alvaro Bedoya, abruptly terminated as a commissioner at the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week, sounded a “blinking red alarm” over backroom “quid pro quo” dealmaking he said appears to be taking place in the Trump administration.

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Elon Musk's xAI company buys X in $33bn deal

Elon Musk’s xAI artificial intelligence firm has acquired Musk’s X – the social media platform formerly known as Twitter – for $33bn, marking the latest twist in the billionaire’s rapid consolidation of power.

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What else happened today:

• The Democratic attorney general of Wisconsin has asked a court to block Elon Musk from giving $1m checks to voters as he seeks to influence a state supreme court race whose outcome could shape the future of the entire US.

• A US district judge blocked the Trump administration from dismantling a key consumer financial watchdog. Judge Amy Berman Jackson’s ruling puts in place a preliminary injunction that maintains the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s existence while she considers the arguments of a lawsuit seeking to prevent the president’s decimation of the bureau.

• Detained Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyers have called for his release, arguing he is facing inhumane treatment in detention. Baher Azmy, who argued Khalil’s case should be returned to a New York court, said: “They keep passing around the body in an almost Kafkaesque way.”

• Donald Trump has pardoned the three co-founders of cryptocurrency exchange BitMEX, who had pleaded guilty in 2022 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to maintain anti-money laundering and know-your-customer programs.

• The FCC will investigate diversity efforts at the Walt Disney Company and its subsidiary ABC, the head of the US agency said on Friday.