Trump talks trade and security with African leaders; U.S. plans 50% tariff on Brazil

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said in an interview today that in the months since Pete Hegseth's confirmation as defense secretary, it has become clear that he is "out of his depth" leading the Pentagon.

Tillis, who recently said he won't seek re-election, told CNN host Jake Tapper in an interview that he didn't regret his decision to vote to confirm Hegseth given the information he had in January, but he said he wonders whether the Senate Armed Services Committee "was a little bit generous with respect to their assessment of his capabilities."

Just three Republicans, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine, voted with Democrats to oppose Hegseth's confirmation.

Trump today appointed Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as the interim administrator of NASA, making Duffy the latest administration official to serve in multiple roles.

Trump said in a Truth Social post announcing the appointment that Duffy may serve only "for a short period of time."

"Sean is doing a TREMENDOUS job in handling our Country’s Transportation Affairs, including creating a state-of-the-art Air Traffic Control systems, while at the same time rebuilding our roads and bridges, making them efficient, and beautiful, again. He will be a fantastic leader of the ever more important Space Agency, even if only for a short period of time," Trump wrote.

Trump announced tonight that a new 50% tariff on copper will go into effect Aug. 1, adding he made the decision after he received a "robust national security assessment."

"Copper is necessary for Semiconductors, Aircraft, Ships, Ammunition, Data Centers, Lithium-ion Batteries, Radar Systems, Missile Defense Systems, and even, Hypersonic Weapons, of which we are building many. Copper is the second most used material by the Department of Defense," Trump wrote on Truth Social.

Copper is the third-most-consumed metal, according to data from the U.S. Geological Survey. The United States imports nearly half of the copper it uses.

Trump previewed the copper tariffs yesterday during a Cabinet meeting and suggested more sector-specific duties are imminent, including on pharmaceutical imports.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio will meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov tomorrow, a senior State Department official confirmed to NBC News.

The diplomats, who last spoke early last month, are scheduled to meet on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Kuala Lampur, Malaysia. 

It will be their first meeting since February in Saudi Arabia as the Trump administration continued its push for direct talks for a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine.

Top House Democrats defended Rep. Ilhan Omar today after Rep. Randy Fine made an Islamophobic retort toward Omar for her criticism of Netanyahu.

Last night, Omar, D-Minn., condemned Netanyahu's latest trip to Washington, calling the visit "beyond shameful" and implying that Netanyahu is a war criminal who needs to be "held accountable for his crimes, not platformed."

Fine, R-Fla., in response likened Omar to a "Muslim terrorist."

In a joint statement, House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York, Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California said, “The unhinged, racist and Islamophobic comments made by Randy Fine about Rep. Ilhan Omar are bigoted and disgusting.”

The Supreme Court today declined to take up a request from Florida to block a lower court’s decision that bars the state from enforcing parts of its new immigration law.

The one-sentence order did not say why the court denied the emergency request from Florida’s attorney general.

The case stemmed from a challenge by two immigration groups and two undocumented immigrants to legislation that Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law this year making it a crime to enter Florida after having come into the United States illegally and re-entering the state after having been deported.

Read the full story here.

Trump’s push for Republicans to bypass Democrats and claw back $9.4 billion in approved spending has ignited a new fight in Congress that could upend the normally bipartisan government funding process.

Ahead of a Sept. 30 deadline to prevent a shutdown, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., is laying down a marker by warning that Democrats won’t sign off on an agreement if Republicans follow through with Trump’s request.

“If Republicans cave to Donald Trump and gut these investments agreed to by both parties, that would be an affront — a huge affront — to the bipartisan appropriations process,” Schumer said. “It is absurd to expect Democrats to play along with funding the government if Republicans are just going to renege on a bipartisan agreement by concocting rescissions packages behind closed doors that can pass with only their votes, not the customary 60 votes required in the appropriation process.”

Read the full story here.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said today that tackling redrawing the state’s congressional maps would be part of an special legislative session later this summer as Republicans seek to hold on to their narrow U.S. House majority in next year’s midterm elections. 

Abbott said in a news release that the session, scheduled to begin July 21, would address 18 different policy items the Legislature didn’t get to during its regular session, which wrapped up last month. That list included: “Legislation that provides a revised congressional redistricting plan in light of constitutional concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Justice.”

The New York Times reported last month that members of Trump’s political operation had privately urged Texas Republicans to redraw their maps ahead of the 2026 midterms.

Read the full story here.

Trump announced today he planned to hit Brazil with a 50% tariff, in part because of the treatment of its former president Jair Bolsonaro, his political ally.

In a letter on his Truth Social social media network, Trump told current President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva that “the way Brazil has treated former President Bolsonaro ... is an international disgrace.”

Trump has fiercely defended Bolsonaro, who is sometimes referred to as the “Trump of the tropics,” as Bolsonaro faces charges that he plotted to overturn his 2022 election loss.

“This trial should not be taking place,” Trump added.

The Senate today confirmed Bryan Bedford to lead the Federal Aviation Administration. The vote fell mostly along party lines, 53-43, with Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire the lone Democrat to vote for his confirmation.

Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, the top Democrat on the Commerce Committee, decried Bedford's confirmation, arguing he will be unable to ensure the FAA remains "the gold standard for aviation safety."

"Mr. Bedford’s willingness to change safety policies like reducing pilot training hours or considering single pilot cockpits is the opposite of the aggressive oversight the agency needs at this time," Cantwell wrote.

Netanyahu told reporters this afternoon ahead of a meeting with senators in the Capitol that the United States and Israel do not have plans for "pushing" Palestinians out of Gaza.

"We’re not pushing out anyone. And I don’t think that’s President Trump’s suggestion. His suggestion was giving them a choice. You will have a choice," Netanyahu said.

"The Palestinians should have that right. It’s called the freedom of choice and nothing more than that, no coercion, no forcible dislocation. If people want to leave Gaza, they should have the right to do so and not be held at the point of a gun of Hamas to keep them inside if they want to leave," he added.

Four days after Trump signed his “big, beautiful bill” into law, one of the Republicans who voted for it wasn’t interested in touting the measure’s high-profile tax, immigration or health care provisions.

Instead, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., held an event here yesterday centered on a less-noticed part of the nearly 1,000-page bill: an expanded fund for victims of nuclear waste, a bipartisan issue he worked for years to get across the finish line.

And when he was asked about them, Hawley continued to criticize steep Medicaid cuts in the bill. He said his goal is to ensure the provider tax changes, which will limit state reimbursement for Medicaid, don’t go into effect in Missouri in 2030 — even though he helped to pass a piece of legislation that will do just that.

It illustrates the challenges Republicans face as they turn their attention to selling the public on the massive bill they’ve been working on for months ahead of next year’s midterm elections.

Read the full story here.

A 37-year-old Rhode Island man has been arrested and charged with threatening to shoot and kill Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, according to the U.S. attorney's office in Rhode Island.

The man, Carl D. Montague, is accused of posting a "profanity-laced" message on social media on June 27 that included the threat.

The U.S. attorney's office said Montague was arrested this morning and is scheduled to appear in court this afternoon.

According to the criminal complaint, Montague posted his message on Truth Social, and the platform's parent organization notified the Secret Service about it.

Trump: 'I would know' if shipment of weapons to Ukraine was paused

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Trump told reporters at the White House today that, if a shipment of weapons to Ukraine was paused, he would be aware of it.

"If a decision was made, I will know. I'll be the first to know. In fact, most likely I'd give the order. ... I haven't done that yet," Trump said when he was asked whether he has been able to determine who ordered the pause in missile and munitions shipments.

Trump said yesterday during a Cabinet meeting that the United States has resumed sending defensive weapons to Ukraine.

"I've approved that," Trump said at the meeting. Asked who ordered the pause last week, he said: "I don't know. Why don't you tell me?"

NBC News reported last week that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered the weapons shipment to be halted amid an assessment of U.S. munitions stockpiles.

Trump said tariff rates on imports from Brazil would be announced today or tomorrow.

"We're going to have a couple of more coming out today," Trump said. "Brazil, as an example, has been not good to us, not good at all. We're going to be releasing a Brazil number, I think later on this afternoon or tomorrow morning."

The United States and Brazil traded about $92 billion worth of goods last year, according to the U.S. trade representative's office.

The administration has put two repeated targets of Trump under criminal investigation, although details of what exactly they are being investigated for or how far the Justice Department intends to take the probes are unclear.

The two targets are former CIA Director John Brennan and former FBI Director James Comey, whom Trump fired in his first term, according to a statement a Justice Department spokesperson provided to reporters.

Read the full story here.

The Senate will hold a confirmation hearing for Mike Waltz to be Trump's United Nations ambassador next Tuesday.

Waltz was Trump's national security adviser, but he drew criticism for accidentally adding a reporter to a Signal chat on which administration officials discussed an upcoming military strike in Yemen.

Trump kicked off the open part of his lunch with several leaders of African countries.

He highlighted a U.S.-mediated peace agreement between Congo and Rwanda and said he could facilitate peace in other countries like Sudan, which is in the midst of a civil war.

"There's a lot of anger on your continent," Trump said.

Trump posted more letters to other countries, including the Philippines, Iraq and Moldova, outlining what the tariff rates on their goods will be if they don't reach trade agreements with the United States by Aug. 1.

The largest trading partner included in the batch of letters is the Philippines, with which the United States had a trade deficit in goods of $4.9 billion in 2024, according to the U.S. trade representative's office.

The planned tariff rates in the letters are as follows:

• 30% on imports from Libya.
• 25% on imports from Brunei.
• 25% on imports from Moldova.
• 30% on imports from Algeria.
• 30% on imports from Iraq.
• 20% on imports from the Philippines.
• 30% on imports from Sri Lanka.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., criticized Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., after Schumer slammed the Republicans' attempt to rescind funding that had already been approved for international aid, public broadcasting and other programs.

Thune painted Schumer's criticism of the so-called rescissions package as "implicitly" threatening to shut down the government. In a letter to lawmakers, Schumer had said "a number of Senate Republicans know it is absurd for them to expect Democrats to act as business as usual and engage in a bipartisan appropriations process to fund the government," calling the rescissions bill "purely partisan."

Thune said, "I’m hopeful that that is not the position of the Democrat Party, the Democrat conference here in the Senate, and that we can work together in the coming weeks to pass bipartisan appropriations bills."

Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor that Trump was "about 88 trade deals short" from the official's prediction of "90 deals in 90 days."

"He kicks the can down the road again and again,” Schumer said, taking aim at Trump delaying the tariff deadline.

"He talks a big game, but shows little follow-through or strategic understanding of how to secure America’s interest," he said. "He seems to just talk, whatever pops into his head he says."

Dr. Kevin O'Connor, who served as President Joe Biden's physician in the White House, pled the Fifth today during a closed-door deposition before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, the panel's chairman, James Comer, R-Ky., said.

O'Connor, who spent about an hour on Capitol Hill this morning, invoked his Fifth Amendment rights when Comer asked if he was ever told to lie about Biden’s health or if he ever believed the then-president was unfit to execute his duties.

Ahead of the deposition, Comer said that O’Connor’s reports about Biden were “glowing with how healthy” he was, despite questions about Biden's later cancer diagnosis and the release of the book “Original Sin," about the former president's health and his decision to run for re-election.

O'Connor's lawyers, David Schertler and Mark MacDougall, said after the deposition that he had “no choice but to decline to answer questions” from the committee because physician-patient privilege required confidentiality on aspects of treatment.

"On the advice of his legal counsel, Dr. O’Connor refused to answer questions that invaded the well-established legal privilege that protects confidential matters between physicians and their patients," they said in a statement. "His assertion of his right under the Fifth Amendment to decline to answer questions, also on the advice of his lawyers, was made necessary by the unique circumstances of this deposition."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attended a bilateral meeting with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon this morning, where they both briefly spoke about the recent conflict with Iran.

Hegseth said the U.S. "put the finishing touches" on Iran's nuclear enrichment program with its strike on three major facilities.

"I think Iran took note," Netanyahu said. "I think everybody in the Middle East took note of American resolve and of the strength of our alliance. I think it was, frankly, it was like the roar of two lions. It was heard around the world."

An investigation is underway into how artificial intelligence was used to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio and who is responsible for it. The State Department says the alleged imposter contacted at least five high-level government officials, according to an internal memo. NBC’s Stephanie Gosk reports for the "TODAY" show.

Imposter uses AI to impersonate Secretary of State Marco Rubio

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Arizona Democratic Sen. Ruben Gallego says he’s heading to Iowa next month, fueling speculation he may be eyeing a 2028 presidential bid.

In a post on X this morning, Gallego wrote, “Iowa, I’m headed your way. Republicans in Congress slashed your health care and hiked your costs to bankroll billionaires.” He added, “Let’s fight back.”

Gallego will be stopping by the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines and then holding a town hall in Scott County on Aug. 8 and 9. 

Arizona’s first Latino senator beat Republican candidate Kari Lake in the hotly contested Senate race in November, despite Trump winning the state by 5½ points. 

Visits to Iowa ahead of presidential campaigns are a well-worn tradition. Former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz both have held events there in recent months.

Rep. Randy Fine, R-Fla., posted an Islamophobic comment on X in response to a post from Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., who is Muslim.

Omar posted on X condemning Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington, D.C., referring to him as a war criminal who "should be held accountable for his crimes, not platformed."

Fine responded on X, "I’m sure it is difficult to see us welcome the killer of so many of your fellow Muslim terrorists. The only shame is that you serve in Congress."

A spokesperson for Fine did not immediately respond to questions about his post.

Reached for comment, a spokesperson for Omar called Fine "a dangerous hateful man, whose only purpose in Congress thus far has been advocating for nuking Gaza, celebrating the death of children, and calling anyone who disagrees with his genocidal mindset a terrorist."

Rural hospitals across the U.S. say they’re being forced to consider tough choices — like cutting services for children or cancer patients — after Trump signed into law a sprawling domestic policy bill that includes sweeping cuts to not only Medicaid, but also the Affordable Care Act.

Benjamin Anderson, CEO of Hutchinson Regional Healthcare System, oversees a 180-bed hospital that serves as the only hospital for many residents in rural southcentral Kansas.

Read the full story here.

EMILY’s List, an organization that supports Democratic women who are in favor of abortion rights, announced today that it is endorsing Carol Obando-Derstine in the Democratic primary in Pennsylvania’s 7th District.

“My campaign is connecting and building momentum with voters, and EMILY’s List recognized that with this endorsement,” Obando-Derstine told NBC News in an interview, adding, “They acknowledge that I’m the best person to flip this critical seat.”

“She is exactly the kind of authentic leader that voters are looking for right now. She’s somebody who has dedicated her entire life to serving her community. She’s lived the struggles that so many families are facing, and she’s spent her life delivering solutions for them,” Jessica Mackler, the president of EMILY’s List, told NBC News.

Trump told donors during his 2024 campaign that he had previously told Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would bomb Moscow if Russia invaded Ukraine, according an audio recording of his comments that were detailed in the new book “2024: How Trump Retook the White House and the Democrats Lost America.”

“With Putin I said, ‘If you go into Ukraine, I'm going to bomb the s--- out of Moscow. I’m telling you, I had no choice,” Trump said, according to the audio, which NBC News obtained from the book's authors.

“He said, ‘No way,’ and I said, ‘Way,’” Trump added.

The audio of the private fundraising event was previously reported by CNN.

During his remarks at the closed-door roundtable with donors in May 2024, the president also said he had an almost “identical conversation” with Chinese President Xi Jinping, referring to Beijing’s claim to Taiwan.

The Supreme Court yesterday allowed Trump at least temporarily to move ahead with plans to impose reductions in force and reorganize various government agencies.

The court imposed an administrative stay in the case at the request of the Trump administration. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the only justice to provide a written dissent.

Supreme Court Rules Trump Admin Can Slash Federal Workforce

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Read the full story here.

Democrats are putting millions of dollars onto the airwaves in the New Jersey governor’s race, with an outside group making a new major ad reservation.

Greater Garden State, a super PAC backed by the Democratic Governors Association, is spending $20 million on ads on television, digital and streaming platforms, according to an announcement shared first with NBC News. The ad buy is more than Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy and aligned outside groups spent on ads combined in the 2021 general election.

Democratic Rep. Mikie Sherrill is running to succeed Murphy, who cannot run for re-election because of term limits. Sherrill is competing against Republican Jack Ciattarelli, a former state legislator and the party’s 2021 nominee, who easily won the GOP primary with Trump’s endorsement.

Read the full story here.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is scheduled to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Pentagon this morning.

Hegseth and Netanyahu both attended a White House dinner Monday. Netanyahu, who arrived in Washington this week, has met with numerous administration officials, including a trip to Capitol Hill.

Trump yesterday indicated that his administration would announce trade actions affecting “a minimum of 7 countries” this morning.

“We will be releasing a minimum of 7 Countries having to do with trade, tomorrow morning, with an additional number of Countries being released in the afternoon. Thank you for your attention to this matter!” Trump posted on Truth Social.

It was not immediately clear what kind of actions Trump was referring to. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment last night on whether the president was referring to letters similar to the ones he sent out earlier this week.

On Monday, Trump released a series of letters he sent to the leaders of several U.S. trade partners, warning them of new tariffs against them if a deal is not reached by Aug. 1.