Trump signs executive orders targeting abortion rights – as it happened | US politics

While aboard Air Force One en route to tour the devastation from the wildfires in Los Angeles, Donald Trump signed two executive orders targeting abortions.

The first would reinstate the Mexico City policy, which prevents international non-governmental organizations that perform or promote abortions from receiving federal funding. This policy, which abortion rights supporters call the “global gag rule”, dates back to the 1980s and is typically implemented whenever Republicans take control of the White House.

The second was an order affirming a longstanding federal policy that the US does not use federal funds to pay for abortions.

The actions come just after he addressed a crowd of thousands of abortion opponents in Washington on Friday to mark the 52nd anniversary of the supreme court’s 1973 decision in Roe v Wade. The decision created a national right to abortion but was overturned by the court in 2022.

The Los Angeles county medical examiner has identified 18 of the 28 people who died in the still-burning Eaton and Palisades fire, the medical examiner’s office announced on Friday.

The deceased people whose names have been released range in age from their late 50s to early 90s. Most died in their homes from smoke inhalation and “thermal injuries”.

These names were released as Donald Trump visited the area to tour the fire-ravaged neighborhoods where the deaths occurred.

The names of those who died can be found here.

Trump is taking an aerial tour of the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles to see the devastation from the Palisades fire.

The Palisades fire, which began on 7 January and has killed at least 11 people, has burned more than 23,000 acres and destroyed nearly 7,000 structures so far. That blaze is still not completely contained.

Donald Trump has arrived in Los Angeles and was greeted by Governor Gavin Newsom. Trump was accompanied by the first lady and held an impromptu press conference as soon as he stepped off the plane.

“We’re going to do a lot of work and I think you’re going to see a lot of progress,” Trump said, referring to the damage from the wildfires.

Newsom asked for Trump’s support in the recovery effort and emphasized, “It’s not just the folks in Palisades but the folks in Altadena that were devastated.”

Here’s a recap of the latest developments:

• Donald Trump said he would consider signing an executive order to “fundamentally reform” or potentially eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). Trump, during a visit to Asheville, criticized the agency’s disaster response during a tour of hurricane-damaged areas in western North Carolina. He proposed giving governors more direct responsibility for disaster response, indicating he wants to redirect federal funding straight to states rather than through the federal agency.

• The Senate will vote tonight on the nomination of Pete Hegseth, Donald Trump’s controversial pick for US secretary of defense. Hegseth, a former Fox News host and army veteran, cleared a key procedural hurdle on Thursday but two Senate Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, voted against his nomination amid mounting concerns over his personal history and inexperience.

• The state department ordered a sweeping freeze on almost all US foreign aid programs, making exceptions for only aid to Israel and humanitarian food crises. The exceptions did not include life-saving health programs, such as clinics and immunization programs. Suspending funding “could have life or death consequences” for children and families around the world, Oxfam warned.

• The interior department said it has officially changed the change of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. Alaska’s mountain Denali, the highest peak in North America, has officially been renamed Mount McKinley – the name it was called before Barack Obama changed it in 2015, the department said in a statement.

• The Trump administration issued a new round of heavy-handed measures that could rapidly deport immigrants who entered the US through recently established legal pathways, according to an internal Department of Homeland Security memo obtained the New York Times. In no waste of time, Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, posted on X on Friday that “Deportation flights have begun” with official pictures of people boarding a military-style aircraft.

• A federal judge banned Stewart Rhodes, the former leader of the far-right Oath Keepers group, and some other January 6 defendants from entering Washington DC, as well as the US Capitol, as a condition of their release from prison. The acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, intervened on behalf of Rhodes and other members of the militia group, asking US district court judge Amit Mehta to reverse the ban. Rhodes was among 1,500 controversially given blanket pardons or commutations by Trump soon after he was sworn in on Monday.

• Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, indicated that the justice department would no longer prosecute anti-abortion activists in separate addresses to the March for Life rally. “No longer will our government throw pro-life protesters and activists – elderly, grandparents, or anybody else – in prison,” Vance told the thousands-strong crowd that gathered on the National Mall, which included members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front. Meanwhile, the justice department’s chief of staff issued an order to curtail prosecutions against people accused of blocking reproductive rights facilities.

• The supreme court has agreed to consider whether the country’s first publicly funded religious charter school should be allowed to open in Oklahoma. The case, led by two Catholic dioceses, could open the door to allowing public funds to directly flow to religious schools and transform the line between church and state in education.

• Trump held a call with the Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, last week in which he insisted he was serious in his determination to take over Greenland, according to a Financial Times report. The call was described by senior European officials as “fiery” with Trump being aggressive and confrontational. Denmark’s foreign minister, Lars Løkke Rasmussen, said his country had agreed to discuss the question of Greenland after his first call with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, on Friday.

• Marco Rubio also spoke with China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, on Friday in the first publicly disclosed contact between an official in the second Trump administration and a Chinese counterpart. A US readout of the call said Rubio “emphasized that the Trump Administration will pursue a US-PRC relationship that advances US interests and puts the American people first.” A Chinese readout said the two also discussed Taiwan, with Wang reportedly telling Rubio that Beijing will never allow Taiwan to be separated from mainland China.

• The Trump administration withdrew a Biden administration proposal to ban menthol cigarettes in the US, according to a filing by the office of information and regulatory affairs. Menthol cigarettes have also faced scrutiny for their disproportionate impact on the health of Black communities, and for their role in luring young people to smoking.

• Trump said he had pulled federal security protection for the former top US health official Anthony Fauci, who served as the nation’s top infectious disease official during the Covid-19 pandemic and had served seven US presidents. Trump said he would “certainly not take responsibility” if something was to happen to Fauci or John Bolton, his former national security adviser whose security detail he has also terminated.

The Trump administration’s interior department said it has officially changed the change of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.

Alaska’s mountain Denali, the highest peak in North America, has officially been renamed Mount McKinley – the name it was called before Barack Obama changed it in 2015, the department said in a statement.

Donald Trump, on his first day in office on Monday, signed an order to rename the 617,800 sq mile Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s 20,000ft mountain Denali. The interior department said:

In accordance with President Donald J Trump’s recent executive order, the Department of the Interior is proud to announce the implementation of name restorations that honor the legacy of American greatness, with efforts already under way. As directed by the president, the Gulf of Mexico will now officially be known as the Gulf of America and North America’s highest peak will once again bear the name Mount McKinley.

Donald Trump’s pledge to rename the highest mountain in North America has sparked backlash among some Indigenous Alaskans and Alaskan lawmakers, including Republicans.

Trump reiterated his intentions to rename Denali back to Mount McKinley during his inaugural address. Barack Obama had dubbed the mountain Denali during his presidency, undoing the 1917 designation made in honor of the 25th president, William McKinley.

The declaration of renaming has proved to be highly controversial. The Koyukon, an Alaska Indigenous Athabascan group, referred to the mountain as Denali for centuries before McKinley took office or Alaska became a US state.

Alaska News Source reported research that suggested that Alaskans are against changing the name back to McKinley by about a two-to-one margin, despite Alaska being a state that is overwhelmingly supportive of Republicans.