Live updates: Trump announces big tech, energy investments at Pittsburgh summit

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) expressed interest in scrutinizing pharmaceutical advertisements and legal immunity for vaccine manufacturers at a Tuesday hearing on vaccine injuries.

”I hope that we can work together on measures that will prevent misrepresentation in any sort of ads,” Blumenthal said. “The ads that appear for a lot of pharmaceutical drugs, I think, encouraging people to take drugs that may not be appropriate for them, certainly ought to be scrutinized.”

”How about we ban pharmaceutical ads on TV?” Johnson joked at one point during the hearing.

The comments were made at a hearing titled “Voices of the Vaccine Injured” led by Johnson and featuring five people claiming to have witnessed significant adverse impacts from an array of vaccines, including the COVID-19 vaccine. Two witnesses were also present to testify about family members who had died from the flu.

Blumenthal also suggested that vaccine manufacturers should not have broad legal immunity from lawsuits.

“I am extremely suspicious, as a lawyer, of immunity that is granted in any blanket way across the board to any manufacturer,” he said. “I would be interested in looking at whether reforms are appropriate.”

Johnson began the hearing by entering into the record a Substack article claiming to identify a link between vaccines and childhood autism. Several prominent studies claiming a link between vaccines and autism have been widely discredited.

Two studies have been cited by those claiming that the MMR vaccine causes autism. Both studies are critically flawed.

Trump on Tuesday in Pittsburgh touted $92 billion in new private data center and energy investments as his administration seeks to boost the nation’s power supply amid a push to rapidly develop energy-hungry artificial intelligence (AI).

Trump unveiled investments from 20 major energy and technology companies, including Google, CoreWeave and Blackstone, at Sen. Dave McCormick’s (R-Pa.) inaugural Pennsylvania Energy and Innovation Summit.

Cloud computing firm CoreWeave announced plans to invest $6 billion in building a 100 megawatt data center in Lancaster, Pa., with the ability to eventually expand to 300 megawatts.

Google also unveiled a $25 billion investment in data center and AI infrastructure in states covered by a regional grid operator across the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. The tech giant plans to invest another $3 billion in modernizing two hydropower facilities in Pennsylvania as well.

Investment firm Blackstone also announced that it will invest more than $25 billion in building out data center and power infrastructure in the Keystone State.

Read full story here.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Tuesday said Attorney General Pam Bondi needs to explain her statements regarding Jeffrey Epstein after the Department of Justice announced it would not make any more disclosures in the case of the late sex offender.

The statement marks a notable break from President Trump, who has stood by his attorney general and urged his supporters to drop the matter, even as Johnson stressed that he trusts the president.

In an interview Tuesday with conservative influencer and commentator Benny Johnson, the Speaker was asked about the prospect of Ghislaine Maxwell — Epstein’s one-time girlfriend who was convicted for trafficking young girls — testifying before Congress, or the prospect of subpoenaing documents from the Department of Justice about the matter.

“I’m for transparency,” Speaker Johnson responded. “We’re intellectually consistent in this. Look, [President] Reagan used tell us, we should trust the American people, and I believe in that principle, and I know President Trump does as well. I trust him. I mean, he put together a team of his choosing, and they’re doing a great job. It’s a very delicate subject, but we should put everything out there and let the people decide it.”

“The White House and the White House team are privy to facts that I don’t know. I mean, this isn’t my lane, I haven’t been involved in that. But I agree with the sentiment that we need to put it out there,” Johnson said.

Read more here.

House Democrats are hammering President Trump and his GOP allies for pushing to alter Texas’s congressional lines ahead of the midterms, accusing the Republicans of rigging the system to stay in power. 

“It’s painfully clear why Republicans are doing this: They know they are going to lose the majority next year,” Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), the head of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, told reporters Tuesday on Capitol Hill. “Republicans know they can’t win on their failed agenda, so they’ve hatched a scheme to rig the Texas map to try to save their microscopic majority.”

In a rare mid-decade redistricting effort, Texas state lawmakers are expected to consider new congressional lines during a special session of the Texas legislature, which was called by GOP Gov. Greg Abbott. The effort to redraw the Texas map has come at the request of President Trump, who wants to pad the GOP’s thin House majority to ensure that Republicans keep control of the lower chamber during his final two years of his second term. 

Read more here.

A Justice Department memo seeking to douse conspiracy theories around Jeffrey Epstein has split the MAGA influencer ecosystem into competing factions, with some of President Trump’s loudest backers refusing his demand to drop the issue.   

The memo said there was no evidence Epstein kept a “client list” or blackmailed powerful global figures. The report also concluded that Epstein had died by suicide in prison; some right-wing figures suspect he was murdered by powerful forces protecting secrets.

The report’s findings were a serious blow to legions of right-wing keyboard warriors who had hoped the Trump administration would finally bring to light a vast conspiracy surrounding the financier and convicted sex trafficker. 

Democratic lawmakers have fanned the flames of the MAGA infighting, even seeking to force votes in Congress to disclose more information about the convicted sex offender.

Read about the 11 figures that have emerged as key fronts in the debate here.

Twelve hardline House Republicans tanked a procedural vote on Tuesday over concerns with cryptocurrency legislation the chamber is preparing to consider, bringing the floor to a standstill and dealing a blow to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and GOP leadership.

The vote on the rule — which governs debate for legislation — fell short of the majority support needed for adoption, preventing the chamber from debating and eventually voting on legislation to fund the Pentagon for fiscal year 2026 and three cryptocurrency bills.

Republican “no” votes included Reps. Ann Paulina Luna (Fla.), Scott Perry (Pa.), Chip Roy (Texas), Victoria Spartz (Ind.), Michael Cloud (Texas), Andrew Clyde (Ga.), Eli Crane (Ariz.), Andy Harris (Md.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Tim Burchett (Tenn.) and Andy Biggs (Ariz.).

Read more here.

Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought told reporters after meeting with Senate Republicans Tuesday that the White House is on board with a substitute amendment to the rescissions package that would exempt PEPFAR, the global anti-AIDS initiative from cuts.

Vought said that the president could accept the substitute amendment to exempt the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative George W. Bush launched in 2003, from rescissions.

Read the full story here.

The latest attempt by House Democrats to force a vote on releasing files related to the disgraced, late financier Jeffrey Epstein failed on Tuesday.

Democrats unsuccessfully urged the chamber to oppose a routine procedural vote — known as the motion on ordering the previous question — since failure would have triggered a vote on Rep. Ro Khanna’s (D-Calif.) amendment requiring Attorney General Pam Bondi to preserve, compile and publish the Epstein files.

The Epstein files have been a source of controversy in Washington — especially the Republican Party — in recent days, with the MAGA base demanding its disclosure while President Trump directs those in his party to drop the matter.

The vote on the motion ordering the previous question is almost always a routine, party-line vote, with members of the majority party voting in favor and those in the minority party voting in opposition. It represents a last-chance effort for members in the minority to try and force consideration of certain legislation.

In the end, Republicans united and supported the procedural vote, bringing the final tally to 211-210 along party lines — clearing the majority threshold that Democrats were hoping to avoid.

Read more here.

Trump on Tuesday expressed his support for Attorney General Pam Bondi’s handling of documents related to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein amid uproar from his supporters over a lack of transparency.

Trump told reporters as he departed the White House for a trip to Pennsylvania that he would defer to Bondi to release whatever evidence she deems credible. The administration’s handling of documents related to Epstein has fueled backlash from prominent figures in the MAGA movement.

“The attorney general has handled that very well. She has really done a very good job,” Trump said of Bondi. 

Read more here.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said he was not convinced appeals court nominee Emil Bove had lent enough support to Jan. 6 rioters to jeopardize his vote.

In a recent CNN interview after announcing his retirement, Tillis had said those who “excused” Jan. 6 would not get his backing.

Bove, the principal deputy attorney general who has been nominated for a lifetime appeals court judgeship, has said both that he believes the Justice Department overstepped in its prosecution of rioters but also condemned the attacks on law enforcement.

“Anybody who excuses that behavior is a problem with me,” Tillis said in response to a question from The Hill.

“But I haven’t seen that yet, and Dick Durbin didn’t add any to the conversation last week,” he added, referencing the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Tillis had previously said he would follow the staff recommendation on the vote.

President Trump told reporters Ukraine should not target Moscow with its military attacks and that the U.S. was not looking to give long-range missiles to Kyiv in its war against Russia.

“No, he shouldn’t target Moscow,” Trump said of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as he departed the White House for a trip to Pennsylvania.

The Financial Times reported earlier Tuesday that Trump had asked Zelensky during a recent phone call if Ukraine could hit Moscow.

Commentators Megyn Kelly and Ben Shapiro sparred Monday over Jeffrey Epstein’s files and theories regarding his death. 

Kelly said sources have confirmed to her that Epstein did not die by suicide but was targeted while working as an “agent” for the Israeli government. Shapiro countered that unnamed whistleblowers were unreliable.

“I can claim that he was working for a cadre of space aliens who are blackmailing high-profile Americans in order to protect from a future invasion. And there’s just about as much evidence for that as many of the claims that were being made on the other side,” Shapiro said during a Monday appearance on the “Megyn Kelly Show.”

Instead, Shapiro said he trusts the findings outlined by Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel in a memo released July 7 declaring there was no evidence to suggest Epstein was killed and ultimately no record of a “client list.”

Kelly pushed back on Shapiro’s comments, alleging administration officials didn’t directly respond to evidence published by the Department of Justice and FBI.

Read more here.

House Republicans are urging their Senate GOP colleagues not to make any changes to the bill to claw back billions of dollars in federal funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, as the party races a Friday deadline to send the package to President Trump’s desk.

The warnings come as the Senate is preparing to consider the $9.4 billion measure, known as a rescissions package, which would revoke dollars for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting — which funds NPR and PBS, two organizations Republicans have deemed biased — and cut funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) went after early on.

But moderate GOP senators have taken issue with some of the cuts, not only to public broadcasters who serve rural communities, but to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) — leading to calls to strike some of the White House’s requested cuts.

If the Senate changes the bill, which it is signaling it will do, the measure would have to return to the House for a final stamp of approval before receiving Trump’s signature — a ping-pong process that must take place in the next three days, or else the Trump administration will be forced to release the funds as originally appropriated.

“The Friday deadline looms. We’re encouraging our Senate partners over there to get the job done and to pass it as-is,” Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a Tuesday press conference, calling defunding public broadcasters and USAID “low-hanging fruit.”

Read more here.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) says the Senate is on track to vote Tuesday evening on a package clawing back approximately $9.4 billion in congressionally approved spending, making the announcement shortly locking down Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.), a key vote.

Thune told The Hill that the Senate is on track to vote Tuesday on both the motion to discharge the rescissions package out of the Appropriations Committee, and on the motion to proceed to the legislation on the floor.

The schedule reflects Senate GOP leaders’ confidence that they have the votes to pass the package.

Thune said the bill has the green light to move, shortly after Rounds said he would vote for the measure.

“I will now vote to support President Trump’s rescissions package to clawback $9.4 billion in federal spending. We want to make sure tribal broadcast services in South Dakota continued to operate which provide potentially lifesaving emergency alerts,” Rounds announced in a post on X.

Rounds said he worked with the Trump administration “to find Green New Deal money that could be reallocated to continue grants to tribal radio stations without interruption.”

He thanked Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought and Senate GOP leaders “for working with us to favorably resolve this issue.”  

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) admonished Waltz over his 2020 vote for a line of legislation in the House’s annual defense authorization bill that put road blocks on President Trump’s ability to withdraw troops from Afghanistan.

The amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), put forward by Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) and then-Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), blocked funding to dip below 8,000 troops and then again to below 4,000 troops in Afghanistan unless the administration hit several certifications. 

The amendment was approved 45-11 by the House Armed Services Committee, with then-Rep. Waltz, casting his vote in favor of it. The amendment was ultimately included in the passed NDAA against the background of Trump attempting to push for a speedy withdrawal in a deal with the Taliban.

“With that amendment, they attempted to circumscribe [Trump’s] power to assign troops,” Paul said. “Which is it? Does President Trump have the power under the Constitution to determine troops, or do you think Congress should — as you attempted to do when you voted for Liz Cheney’s amendment — do you think Congress has the right to limit his power to remove troops from a war situation?”

Waltz said he had supported Trump’s effort to draw down U.S. forces, but that he would have to go back and look at the specific details of the amendment.

“I guess it just worries me that you come more from the Liz Cheney wing of the party than the Donald Trump party,” Rand said, prompting Waltz to say emphatically: “I am squarely with the president.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said he’ll support a package of more than $9 billion in cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting after making a deal with the Trump administration.

Rounds said Tuesday that he worked with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on a deal that would redirect some funding approved under the Biden administration as part of the Inflation Reduction Act.

“We have an agreement with OMB to resource the funds from other already allocated funding through what had been Biden’s Green New Deal program, and we’ll take that money and we’ll reallocate it back into the tribes to take care of these radio stations that have been granted this money for the next two years,” Rounds told reporters Tuesday.

Rounds had previously held off from backing the package, citing concerns about how tribal stations would fare under Trump’s proposed public media cuts. 

Read more here.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee gaveled out its confirmation hearing after two and a half hours,

The hearing focused on the nomination of Ambassador to the United Nations Mike Waltz and the president’s nominees for Ambassador to Sweden and Portugual.

The full nominee panel and the shortened time-frame spared Waltz from questions by the full panel of Democrats. Waltz was dismissed from his post as Trump’s national security adviser in May in the wake of fallout from the Signal scandal.

In March, Waltz mistakenly added a journalist to a Signal group chat discussing sensitive military attack plans against the Houthis in Yemen.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) reprimanded Mike Waltz, President Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations as showing “profound cowardice” in his actions related to the fallout from exposure of the Signal group chat discussing attack plans on the Houthis in Yemen this spring.

Waltz was serving as Trump’s national security adviser and mistakenly added a journalist to the group chat with senior officials, including the secretaries of Defense and State, the vice president, the head of the CIA, director of national intelligence and others.

“At a moment where our national security was clearly compromised, you denied, you deflected, and then you demeaned and degraded those people who objectively told the truth and criticized your actions, smearing people, attacking folks, singling them out just furthers compounds what I think is disqualifying about you for this position,” Booker said.

“It also, to me, just shows a profound cowardice.”

Waltz, a former Army colonel and Green Beret, pushed back during questioning with another senator.

“I appreciate the men and women that I’ve had to lead in combat, and I think the last thing they would call me is a coward.”

Waltz seemed to suggest Tuesday that further U.S. strikes may be necessary against Houthi rebels in Yemen as the militant group perhaps “hasn’t fully gotten the message” to stop attacking ships in the Red Sea.

Waltz insisted that the airstrikes, which began in March and lasted until early May, have degraded the Houthis’ capabilities to the point that shipping through the Red Sea is up “20 to 30 percent,” there’s been an increase in revenues through the Suez Canal and U.S. warships are no longer “being used as target practice.”  

But ​​Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) pointed out that Houthis have restarted attacks on shipping lanes, sinking two ships last week in the Red Sea and reportedly killed several members of one crew.

“It doesn’t look like we did much to fundamentally change the battlespace there,” Murphy said. “We spent — looks like around $1 billion, depleted lots of our ammunition stocks — how do you look at that operation in retrospect?”

Waltz replied, “Do we need to work to make sure that’s enduring? Perhaps the Houthi leadership hasn’t fully gotten the message,” adding that he would defer to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and President Trump “on the way forward there.”

The White House was briefly under a security lockdown, with reporters and staff told by Secret Service to remain in the building for unspecified reasons.

The lockdown lasted about 25 minutes before Secret Service gave the all clear and allowed reporters back onto the North Lawn. It’s still unclear what caused the brief episode.

Waltz said he was not aware of reports that an American citizen was killed in the West Bank by violent Israeli settlers, under questioning during his confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

“To be honest with you, I did not see that report,” the former natoinal security adviser said.

Sen. Chis Van Hollen (D-Md.) brought up the death of 20-year-old American-Palestinian Sayfollah Musallet. He was reportedly beaten to death by Israeli settlers while visiting family in the West Bank. Van Hollen brought up that Musallet is one of five Americans that has been killed in the West Bank over the past year and a half and urged accountability. Trump revoked a Biden-era executive order that imposed sanctions on violent Israeli settlers.

“I think when you withdrew that executive order, you sent a very bad signal. I hope we can work together to make sure that we protect all American citizens overseas.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) pressed President Trump’s ambassador nominees over the administration’s reported plans to incinerate emergency food rations for starving children because they are on the verge of spoiling.

Kaine raised the issue to demonstrate how the Trump administration is throwing out already purchased food with U.S. taxpayer funds, and another example of the chaos inflicted on American aid work and distribution as a result of the administration’s humanitarian assistance cuts and staffing layoffs.

“It’s such a simple question, if the U.S. has purchased food and it’s to be used for the eradication of starvation among children, we should give it to children and not incinerate it,” Kaine said. “I mean, it is such a simple question. I just asked you to test your values.”

Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Sweden, Christine Toretti, was the only one to answer unequivocally on a panel that included nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, and nominee for ambassador to Portugal, John Arrigo.

Waltz said that there were no consequences on the participants of a Signal group chat that discussed sensitive military attack plans against the Houthis in Yemen and was mistakenly expanded to include a journalist.

He made his remarks during his confirmation hearing for ambassador to the United Nations. Trump dismissed Waltz as NSA for his role in the Signal scandal, for adding the journalist, and was nominated for ambassador as a concession.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) asked if there was any investigation or disciplinary action over the Signal scandal and when Waltz answered no, said he was hoping to “hear from you some sense of regret, over sharing what was very sensitive timely information about a military strike on a commercially available app that’s not, as we both know the appropriate way to share such critical information.”

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Tuesday said that the process to pick a new chairman of the Federal Reserve has started, ahead of chair Jerome Powell’s term ending in 2026 and amid growing pressure from the White House for him to step aside early.

“There’s a formal process that’s already starting,” Bessent told Bloomberg Television, referring to the steps to identify a nominee for Fed chair.

He added, “There are a lot of good candidates inside and outside the Federal Reserve.”

The secretary said that he is part of the decision-making process when asked if President Trump has asked him to serve as Fed chair.

“It’s President Trump’s decision, and it will move at his speed,” Bessent said.

Read the full story here.

President Trump said he is “disappointed” in Russian President Vladimir Putin after threatening Moscow with sanctions over its war with Ukraine, but added that he is not “done with him.” 

“I’m disappointed in him, but I’m not done with him. But I’m disappointed in him,” Trump said in an interview with the BBC that was published Tuesday morning. 

Read more here.

Mike Waltz, President Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the United Nations, committed to pushing for reform at the international body and countering China in early remarks during a confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Waltz received a warm welcome from Republicans who described him as the most qualified nominee “ever” and a man of “integrity, grit and principle.”

Some Democrats promised a “brutal” hearing to scrutinize Waltz’s role in starting a Signal group chat discussing U.S. attack plans on Yemen and mistakenly adding a journalist. But the first few questions among Democrats focused on substantive questions of the importance of the U.N. as a convening body and concerns over Trump’s proposed budget cuts.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is encouraging the Senate to pass a package of DOGE cuts without any changes.

The Senate is poised to vote this week on a measure containing more than $9 billion in cuts to foreign aid and public broadcasting. The House passed the measure without changes earlier this year.

“We’re encouraging our Senate partners over there to get the job done and to pass it as is,” he said Tuesday morning.

“This is this, in our view, low-hanging fruit in this rescission package,” he said.

Former national security adviser John Bolton said Monday that President Trump could soon retreat from efforts to resolve Russia’s war with Ukraine. 

The Trump administration has been engaged with both Kyiv and Moscow in search of peace, while GOP lawmakers have pushed for secondary sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“He didn’t get what he wanted, which was a quick ceasefire from his friend Vladimir. He tried for six months, it’s not going anywhere,” Bolton said of Trump during a Monday appearance on NewsNation’s “On Balance.”

“So now he’s justifying taking steps against Putin, but I think it also lays the groundwork for him to say, ‘I’m done with it, it’s Europe’s war, that’s what I said in the beginning, I’m done with it,’” he added. 

A man once held in the same jail cell as Jeffrey Epstein argued that there is “just no way” the disgraced financier and convicted sex offender died by suicide in 2019. 

“I spent seven months on that tier and in those cells. And the first thing I have to say, there’s just you – there’s no way you are able to commit suicide. There’s just no way, there’s no way to hang yourself. There’s nothing from the ceiling, there’s nothing from the bed. You’d have to be a midget and work really hard to try to hang yourself, and I don’t think you can accomplish it at that point,” former mob boss Michael Franzese told guest host Brian Entin during his Monday night appearance on NewsNation’s “Banfield.”

Read more here.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is urging President Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Waltz to “push back” on the administration’s foreign policy, warning that the president’s actions are emboldening China.

Shaheen is making the plea in opening remarks to the committee for Waltz’s nomination as ambassador to the United Nations. Waltz was nominated for the role after Trump fired him from the position of national security adviser, amid scandal for his mistaken inclusion of a journalist in a signal group messaging chat discussing attack plans on Yemen.

“Mr. Waltz, with your past support for Ukraine and clear-eyed view of threats like China, I hope you will push back on the Administration’s early missteps and some of your more misguided colleagues like Secretary [of Defense Pete] Hegseth,” Shaheen’s remarks read, a copy provided by the committee.

“Mr. Waltz — if confirmed — I hope you will work with this committee to preserve America’s ability to lead, to compete and to shape the future on our own terms.”