Before he was for the Japanese bid for US Steel, Trump was actually against it
Donald Trump is about to speak at a rally in Pittsburgh to celebrate what he is calling a “partnership” between US Steel and Nippon Steel, after insisting for months last year that he was “totally against” the $14.9bn bid by the Japanese firm for its US rival.
Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden had blocked Nippon’s acquisition of US Steel, citing national security concerns, during his final weeks in office. The Trump administration undertook a review of the proposal this year.
While the White House has been vague about the exact terms of the deal, and what changed Trump’s mind about it, he was extremely clear about his opposition to the takeover on the campaign trail last year.
“They want to strip us of our wealth and seeing our- you’ve seen our companies being sold off to foreign countries all the time”, Trump told voters in Saginaw, Michigan at a rally last October. “And how about US Steel? I’m not going to let them sell US Steel. I don’t care, even if it’s maybe good.”
“This was the most important, 65, 70 years ago, US Steel was the most important company in the world. Now, Japan wants to buy it. I would not let that happen” the candidate said. “I hope it doesn’t go through before I get there because if I get there and it’s not done, we’re not letting that– we’ll help it. We’ll help it get along. But we’re not letting them buy US Steel.”
After he won the November election, Trump reiterated his opposition to the deal in a social media post. “I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan,” he wrote in December. “As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”
After meeting Japan’s prime minister at the White House in February, Trump announced that Nippon, a company he repeatedly called “Nissan” by mistake, would be investing in US Steel rather than buying it.
Then last week, Trump announced on social media that he would approve what he called “a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel”.
Asked by reporters about the deal on Sunday, Trump, again calling Nippon “Nissan” by mistake, insisted that it was an investment rather than a purchase or merger.
Among those unclear about how this was different from the sale Trump had promised to block were the leaders of the United Steelworkers union.
The USW said in a statement on Wednesday that the terms of the “partnership” remained unknown to them.
At this time, we cannot say whether the “planned partnership” described in Friday’s message on Truth Social or news reports since then represents any meaningful change from the merger proposed in 2023, under which Nippon Steel would acquire U.S. Steel and make it a wholly owned subsidiary.
Throughout recent months, as the public conversation has turned to Nippon “investing” in U.S. Steel or “partnering with” U.S. Steel, Nippon has maintained consistently that it would only invest in U.S. Steel’s facilities if it owned the company outright. We’ve seen nothing in the reporting over the past few days suggesting that Nippon has walked back from this position.
Key events
California legislature opens bribery investigation into Paramount over possible Trump settlement — report
Two powerful California state senators have invited the former leaders of CBS News and 60 Minutes to testify as part of an investigation into whether the network’s parent company, Paramount, might have violated state laws against bribery and unfair competition.
As Semafor reports, a letter asking for testimony from former 60 Minutes producer Bill Owens and former CBS News president Wendy McMahon, who both recently resigned, comes as Paramount has reportedly offered Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign $15 million to settle a lawsuit filed against CBS over the fairly standard editing of an interview with former Vice President Kamala Harris in October.
Trump has so far refused to settle, and threatened to file an additional suit against the company, which needs federal approval for a merger with the entertainment company Skydance. The chief executive of Skydance is David Ellison, the son of the pro-Trump billionaire Oracle Corporation co-founder and chairman Larry Ellison.
A copy of the letter, obtained by Semafor, shows that it was sent by the chair of the California State Senate Energy, Utilities & Communications Committee, Josh Becker, and the Judiciary Committee chair, Thomas Umberg.
“Your recent resignations from CBS’s leadership, amid public reports of internal concern about the editorial and ethical implications of the proposed settlement, suggest that you may possess important, first-hand knowledge relevant to our legislative oversight responsibilities”, the lawmakers wrote to the former CBS News leaders.
Before he was for the Japanese bid for US Steel, Trump was actually against it
Donald Trump is about to speak at a rally in Pittsburgh to celebrate what he is calling a “partnership” between US Steel and Nippon Steel, after insisting for months last year that he was “totally against” the $14.9bn bid by the Japanese firm for its US rival.
Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden had blocked Nippon’s acquisition of US Steel, citing national security concerns, during his final weeks in office. The Trump administration undertook a review of the proposal this year.
While the White House has been vague about the exact terms of the deal, and what changed Trump’s mind about it, he was extremely clear about his opposition to the takeover on the campaign trail last year.
“They want to strip us of our wealth and seeing our- you’ve seen our companies being sold off to foreign countries all the time”, Trump told voters in Saginaw, Michigan at a rally last October. “And how about US Steel? I’m not going to let them sell US Steel. I don’t care, even if it’s maybe good.”
“This was the most important, 65, 70 years ago, US Steel was the most important company in the world. Now, Japan wants to buy it. I would not let that happen” the candidate said. “I hope it doesn’t go through before I get there because if I get there and it’s not done, we’re not letting that– we’ll help it. We’ll help it get along. But we’re not letting them buy US Steel.”
After he won the November election, Trump reiterated his opposition to the deal in a social media post. “I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, in this case Nippon Steel of Japan,” he wrote in December. “As President, I will block this deal from happening. Buyer Beware!!!”
After meeting Japan’s prime minister at the White House in February, Trump announced that Nippon, a company he repeatedly called “Nissan” by mistake, would be investing in US Steel rather than buying it.
Then last week, Trump announced on social media that he would approve what he called “a planned partnership between United States Steel and Nippon Steel”.
Asked by reporters about the deal on Sunday, Trump, again calling Nippon “Nissan” by mistake, insisted that it was an investment rather than a purchase or merger.
Among those unclear about how this was different from the sale Trump had promised to block were the leaders of the United Steelworkers union.
The USW said in a statement on Wednesday that the terms of the “partnership” remained unknown to them.
At this time, we cannot say whether the “planned partnership” described in Friday’s message on Truth Social or news reports since then represents any meaningful change from the merger proposed in 2023, under which Nippon Steel would acquire U.S. Steel and make it a wholly owned subsidiary.
Throughout recent months, as the public conversation has turned to Nippon “investing” in U.S. Steel or “partnering with” U.S. Steel, Nippon has maintained consistently that it would only invest in U.S. Steel’s facilities if it owned the company outright. We’ve seen nothing in the reporting over the past few days suggesting that Nippon has walked back from this position.
Trump fires first female director of the National Portrait Gallery
With a post on his social media platform, Donald Trump announced on Friday that he was firing Kim Sajet, the first female director of the National Portrait Gallery.
Trump accused Sajet, who was born in Nigeria, raised in Australia and is a citizen of the Netherlands, of being “a strong supporter of DEI” and “highly partisan”. He cited no evidence for either claim.
As our colleague David Smith wrote in a profile of Sajet, after she arrived in the US with her family in 1997, she held positions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania before she was appointed director of the National Portrait Gallery in 2013.
Sajet said the gallery tries “very hard to be even-handed when we talk about people and that’s the key. Everyone has an opinion about American presidents, good, bad and indifferent. We hear it all but generally I think we’ve done pretty well.”
A description of Donald Trump in the gallery of American presidents includes this text: “Impeached twice, on charges of abuse of power and incitement of insurrection after supporters attacked the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, he was acquitted by the Senate in both trials. After losing to Joe Biden in 2020, Trump mounted a historic comeback in the 2024 election. He is the only president aside from Grover Cleveland (1837-1908) to have won a nonconsecutive second term.”
‘My stomach just dropped’: foreign students in panicked limbo as Trump cancels visa interviews
Anna Betts
Students around the world who were gearing up to study in the United States this fall face growing uncertainty after the Trump administration temporarily halted student visa appointments this week.
On Tuesday, a state department directive ordered US embassies globally to immediately stop scheduling visa interviews for foreign students while it prepares to implement expanded social media screening for all international visa applicants.
While interview appointments that were already scheduled can proceed, the announcement sparked panic among students who have yet to secure interviews. Students who spoke with the Guardian expressed anxiety over delays in visa processing that could jeopardize scholarships, on-campus housing, their ability to start classes on time – and their very academic futures.
“My stomach just dropped,” said Oliver Cropley, 27, a student at the University of East Anglia in the UK, who is meant to attend the University of Kansas beginning this August for a year abroad.
The directive came amid a series of recent policy shifts targeting international students at US universities. This week, the Trump administration issued new measures targeting Chinese students, announcing it would focus on the visas of those studying in “critical fields” and of students with ties to the Chinese Communist party, and implement heightened scrutiny for all future applicants from China and Hong Kong.
Last week, the Department of Homeland Security said it would immediately ban Harvard University from enrolling international students, forcing the university’s international student body to either transfer or leave the country. A federal judge blocked that effort on Thursday, but its long-term outcome remains uncertain.
The changes have left many international students who are planning to come to the US for the 2025-2026 academic year scrambling and in limbo.
Cropley said that he paid all of the application fees for the US visa including the last administrative fee last week to schedule his visa interview, but he has been unable to schedule it or reach anyone at the US embassy.
“It has demoralized me,” Cropley said. “It’s a stressful enough process, and then to get this sort of knockback at this stage … I’m supposed to be there on August 4.”
Key takeaways from Trump-Musk press conference
Despite brief tangents about black eyes, gold ceilings and autopens, that meeting basically consisted of Trump showering Musk with praise as his turbulent tenure at Doge comes to an end, at least officially. “Elon’s service to America is without comparison in modern history,” said Trump from behind the Resolute Desk, in a show of unity with the world’s richest person, who stood to his right in a black Doge hat and “Dogefather” T-shirt. “Elon has worked tirelessly helping lead the most sweeping and consequential government reform program in generations,” Trump said, adding that Musk had delivered a “colossal change” in how Washington does things.
But despite the fanfare, both men said that Musk isn’t really going anywhere. He will continue to be “a friend and adviser” to the president and will still be “back and forth” to the White House, Musk said, with “most” Doge workers “staying on” to continue its work to cut “wasteful” federal spending. As if anyone needed reminding, in the last 130 days Doge under Musk has caused chaos as it haphazardly eliminated thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in contracts – all without actually saving the country very much at all. Acknowledging that Doge had failed to deliver the $2tn savings promised, Musk defended his efforts and insisted he was confident it would get to that number “in time”.
The two glossed over questions pertaining to Musk’s criticisms of Trump’s “big, beautiful” tax bill, which will add massively to the national deficit and undermine Doge’s mission to cut spending (though Trump did say he wants to see bigger tax cuts in the bill), and to Musk’s alleged intense drug use over the course of his chaotic tenure in the White House. They focused instead on previously debunked claims about Doge’s “achievements”, with the president saying his government plans to make many of Doge’s cuts permanent, while the billionaire declared: “This isn’t the end of Doge, it’s more the beginning … It’s a way of life.”
Trump says he had a “good meeting” with Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, in a hurried response as reporters are ushered out of the room.
And that’s it, the briefing is over. I’ll post a short summary soon.
Léonie Chao-Fong
Elon Musk dodged a question about a New York Times report published this morning about his alleged drug use while serving as one of Trump’s closest advisers.
According to the report, Musk was using drugs far more intensely than previously known, regularly consuming ketamine, ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms during his rise to political prominence.
His use of ketamine was so heavy that he told people it caused bladder problems, the report says. Sources told the paper that he had a serious ketamine habit, consuming the powerful anesthetic sometimes daily rather than the “small amount” taken “about once every two weeks” he claimed in interviews.
Trump says both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskiy are stubborn as he tries to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine.
Asked if he believes Putin is stubborn, Trump says he was surprised and disappointed by Russian bombing in Ukraine while he was trying to arrange a ceasefire.
Trump says he still wants foreign students to attend US colleges despite his fight with Harvard over how many students it enrolls from outside the country.
Musk says his bruised eye was caused by ‘horsing around’ with his son
Asked about his black eye, Musk claims he was punched in the face by his five-year-old son while they were “horsing around”.
Trump wants to see bigger tax cuts in the budget bill
Trump says he wants to see bigger tax cuts in the budget bill (which passed the House by the skin of its teeth).
“I’d like to see a bigger cut in taxes,” Trump says. “ The bill is a great bill. It’s going to be jiggered around a little bit, it’s going to be negotiated with the Senate.”
Musk was also asked to chime in by the reporter about what changes he wants to see (following his criticisms this week) but Trump moves on.
Léonie Chao-Fong
Fact check: Trump claims Musk’s Doge uncovered the Biden administration “spent $8m on making mice transgender”.
Trump made this claim during his address to Congress in March, and it’s unclear where he got this figure from.
Multiple outlets have suggested that he was referring to health studies that involve “transgenic” mice, which are lab research mice that have been genetically modified to better model human disease response.
The White House released a statement after Trump’s initial comments in March that referenced studies on the effects of hormone therapy. None of the studies listed were specifically focused on “making mice transgender”.
