Live updates: Trump, Modi talk trade and tariffs; Senate confirms Kennedy to lead HHS

The joint press conference between Trump and Modi has concluded from the East Room around 6:45 p.m. ET

Trump was non-committal on whether Russia should have to make any concessions as part of a ceasefire negotiation with Ukraine.

“As far as the negotiation it’s too early to say what’s going to happen. Maybe Russia will give up a lot, maybe they won’t,” Trump said at a press conference with the Indian prime minister.

Trump reiterated his feeling that European nations should have to contribute more to support Ukraine given their proximity to the conflict. He also repeated his suggestion that Ukraine’s desire to join NATO may have spurred Russia’s aggression.

Trump outlined his reciprocal tariffs that could target India while at a press conference with Modi, hours after he signed a presidential memorandum proposing reciprocal tariffs on both adversaries and allies.

“They’ve been very strong on tariffs, and I don’t blame them, necessarily, but it’s a different way of doing business. Its very hard to sell to India because they have trade barriers, very strong tariffs,” Trump said.

He added, “we are going to— if its India or if it’s somebody else— we’re going to have the same. Whatever India charges, we’re charging them. Whatever another country charges, we’re charging them. It’s call reciprocal, which I think is a very fair way.”

Modi did not comment on the reciprocal tariffs during the press conference. The tariffs could be imposed as early as April 2.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said she will file a resolution to censure Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) over his comment to “bring actual weapons to this bar fight” while talking about a House Delivering on Government Efficiency Subcommittee hearing.

Garcia’s comment came in a CNN interview Wednesday after host Brianna Keilar asked Garcia about his decision to call Elon Musk a “d‑‑‑” during the subcommittee hearing.

Garcia was making reference to subcommittee Chair Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) showing censored intimate photos of Hunter Biden in a hearing in 2023. Garcia showed a photo of Musk and said it was also a “d‑‑‑ pic.”

“Well, he is a d‑‑‑, and I think he’s also harming the American public in an enormous way,” Garcia said of Musk on CNN, going on to reference demands from the Democratic base to be more aggressive.

“What I think is really important and what the American public want is for us to bring actual weapons to this bar fight. This is an actual fight for democracy, for the future of this country. And it’s important to push back on the chairperson of this committee,” Garcia said.

Mace said she will respond with a censure resolution, a mechanism to formally reprimand members of Congress. Use of the measure has increased in recent years, with House Republicans censuring three Democrats in 2023.

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Office of Personnel Management (OPM) officials met with agency leaders across government Thursday and directed them to begin firing employees still in their probationary period a year or more after being hired.

Federal employees remain on probation anywhere from one to two years after being hired, depending on their agency, a status that still comes with workplace protections but makes them easier to remove.

A source familiar with OPM said agency leaders have directed agencies to fire all probationary employees “with some exceptions.” It was not immediately clear what those exceptions were or the extent of discretion given to agencies.

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Narendra Modi, India’s Prime Minister, arrived shortly after 4 p.m. EST for his scheduled meeting with President Trump.

On Modi’s agenda is bilateral talks as well as a press conference with Trump.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump said India was a “very hard place to do business in because of the tariffs.”

“They have the highest tariffs just about in the world,” he added.

This meeting comes shortly after Trump announced reciprocal tariffs on all countries.

President Trump on Thursday blasted Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for his vote opposing Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., disregarding his childhood bout with polio and questioning his mental abilities.

“I was the one that got him to drop out of the leadership position, so he can’t love me. But he’s not voting against Bobby, he’s voting against me. But that’s all right. He endorsed me. You know that Mitch endorsed me, right,” Trump told reporters, crediting himself for McConnell dropping his Senate GOP leadership position.

CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pointed out that McConnell had polio, which the Kentucky Republican said influenced his decision to vote against Kennedy.

“I don’t know anything about, he had polio, he had polio,” Trump said.

Collins asked Trump if he was doubting that McConnell had polio, which Trump dismissed.

“I have no idea if he had polio. All I can tell you about him is he shouldn’t have been leader, he knows that. He voted against Bobby. He votes against almost everything. He’s a very bitter guy,” the president said.

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Rep. Mike Carey (R-Ohio), a member of the House Budget Committee, predicted that today’s markup of the conference’s budget resolution will run for several more hours, as the panel considers a number of amendments to the measure.

Carey made his prediction shortly after 3 p.m. during the markup — which began at 10 a.m. — as the panel debated an amendment put forward by Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.) to strike the instructions for the Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees in the budget resolution.

“Striking the instructions of these three committees will remove the opportunity to make common sense reforms to critical programs to reduce our out-of-control mandatory spending. It is our duty to our children, and for somebody like me who’s missing their children tonight because we’re gonna be here till nine o’clock, that’s a very important thing,” Carey said.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been meeting with prominent Trump administration officials including National Security Advisor Michael Waltz and Vivek Ramaswamy, who is expected to launch his bid for the Governor of Ohio soon.

Modi met with Waltz Thursday morning ahead of his expected meeting with President Trump.

Waltz, the former co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans, discussed civil nuclear cooperation with focus on small modular reactors, according to an Indian government read out.

Also present at the meeting were India’s External Affairs Minister Dr. S Jaishankar and National Security Advisor Ajit Doval.

Modi also met with newly sworn in Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Most Americans say the president is required to follow the Supreme Court’s rulings, a new survey found. 

The survey, released Thursday by Marquette University, found that 83 percent of respondents believe the Commander in Chief should follow the laws decided by the Supreme Court justices. However, 17 percent say the president has the power to disregard and overrule those decisions.

More Republican respondents than independents and Democrats say the president can ignore the court’s ruling, the survey found. 

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President Trump on Thursday signed a presidential memorandum proposing reciprocal tariffs that he maintains will crack down on unfair and discriminatory tariffs from both adversaries and allies.

The reciprocal tariffs will be customized for each foreign trading partner, based on five different areas: tariffs the nation imposes on U.S. products, unfair taxes imposed, cost to U.S. businesses and consumers from another country’s policies, exchange rates, and any other practices the trade representative’s office determines is unfair.

Read more here.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) and other top Republican senators vowed to only vote for a permanent, rather than temporary, extension of the 2017 Trump tax cuts, throwing a wrench into House Republicans’ efforts to advance their version of a bill containing Trump’s legislative agenda.

Nine Republican senators, including Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), signed the letter to President Trump, which was copied to Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.).

“We will not support a tax package that only provides temporary relief from tax hikes,” the Senators wrote, adding that “a temporary extension of these pro-growth and pro-family policies is a missed opportunity.”

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Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met with Tesla CEO Elon Musk at Blair House Thursday ahead of his scheduled meeting with President Trump.

In a tweet, Modi said they had a “good meeting” where they discussed a range of subjects including space, mobility, technology and innovation.

Also present at the meeting with the Indian Prime Minister were three of Musk’s children.

An Indian government hand out of the meeting also said that the two discussed collaboration and “opportunities to deepen cooperation in emerging technologies, entrepreneurship and good governance” between the U.S. and Indian entities.

Modi is scheduled to meet with Trump at the White House at 4p.m. ET.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that the bipartisan talks aimed at preventing a government shutdown have ended — at least temporarily — and accused GOP leaders in the lower chamber of abandoning the discussions. 

“House Republicans have made a decision to walk away from the four-corners discussions that involved House Democrats, Senate Democrats and Senate Republicans related to funding the government in a manner that meets the needs of the American people,” Jeffries said during a press briefing in the Capitol.

The assertion was a sharp contradiction from the comments coming from the top appropriators in both parties just hours before. On Wednesday afternoon, both Appropriations Chair Tom Cole (R-Okla.) and Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), the senior Democrat on the panel, said they were still at the table in search of a bipartisan deal to prevent a shutdown after March 14, when funding expires. 

Asked what had changed, Jeffries said Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) had directed the GOP negotiators to quit the talks. 

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A protest of people supporting transgender rights has formed outside the federal courthouse in Baltimore, where a judge will hold a hearing Thursday afternoon on a request to block Trump’s executive order that seeks to restrict access to gender-affirming care.

More than 50 people are gathered, holding signs that read slogans like “Protect Health Care and Democracy” and “Gender-affirming Care Saved My Life.”

“The science clearly tells us that these kids know who they are, and that affirming care is critical to their mental health,” said Rebecca Wald, a psychologist and mother of a transgender teen.

Current and former employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) sued Elon Musk and his cost-cutting operation, levying the novel argument that the world’s richest man should have been confirmed by the Senate before wielding such enormous power.

The Trump administration, Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have moved in recent weeks to stanch the flow of foreign aid, dismantle the agency responsible for administering it and dismiss thousands of people working for the agency at home and abroad.

The administration has also been aggressively cutting contracts, disclosing in court documents Wednesday evening that it had canceled more than 200 since Tuesday morning.

This constitutes “the performance of [] significant governmental dut[ies]” that may be “exercised only by persons who are ‘Officers of the United States,’” which requires an appointment under the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, the USAID employees argue.

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Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith (D) will not run for reelection in 2026, opening up a seat in the Democratic-leaning state, she announced Thursday. 

Smith said in a video posted to the social platform X that she has “loved” her job as a U.S. senator but wants to spend more time with her family, as she has four grandchildren. 

“This job has been the honor of a lifetime. For the rest of my term, I’ll work as hard as I can for Minnesotans and our country,” she said in the post. “Thank you so much, Minnesota.”

Smith has served in her Senate seat since 2018 when she was appointed to succeed former Sen. Al Franken (D) following his resignation amid allegations of sexual misconduct. She then won the special election that year to serve for the remainder of the term and was reelected to a full six-year term in her own right in 2020.

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The Senate on Thursday overwhelmingly confirmed Brooke Rollins to lead the Department of Agriculture as the chamber kept up its intense pace to confirm President Trump’s choices to head his administration. 

Senators voted 72-28 on her bid to lead the USDA. 

Democrats agreed to condense floor time for the nomination after she was voted unanimously out of the Senate Committee on Agriculture. 

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Hard-line conservatives and House GOP leadership struck an agreement on the conference’s budget resolution shortly before a key vote Thursday, putting the measure on a path to advance out of committee if it holds.

According to House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.), the agreement — which still has to be approved by the House Budget Committee — would allow Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), the chair of the Budget Committee, to “adjust the dials” and increase the cap on the deficit impact of the tax portion of the package of Trump’s priorities if additional spending cuts are made in other areas. It would also give teeth to a $2 trillion deficit reduction target outlined in the bill that was key for fiscal hawks.

Harris said that if the agreement, which would be brought up as a manager’s amendment, passes, the House Freedom Caucus will support the budget resolution — a serious boost to the House’s chances of approving the framework for “one big beautiful bill” of Trump’s priorities on the floor after weeks of hardline conservatives jockeying over spending cut demands.

“This is it. We declare victory,” Harris said. “I mean, we have a bill that we believe that it had to be done rapidly to get the president the border funding as soon as possible. We believe it had that meaningful deficit reduction, and we believe it had to be able to advance the president’s tax policy. It all happens here.”

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The White House said Thursday that it was happy with the fact that 75,000 federal workers have accepted the buyout offer the Trump administration gave them, suggesting it isn’t low compared to the program’s aims.

“I’m not so sure that we didn’t hit the numbers we wanted: 75,000 people accepted the buyout program. That’s going to save millions of dollars for the American taxpayers, and that’s exactly what we wanted,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters.

A senior administration official told The Hill on Wednesday that roughly 75,000 federal workers across the government had accepted the offer.

The figure — 3.75 percent of the nation’s 2 million federal employees — falls short of the projected 5 percent to 10 percent of federal employees the White House expected to take the deal.

Longtime vaccine critic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is now the nation’s top health official, after the Senate voted Thursday almost entirely on party lines to confirm him atop a department of nearly 100,000 employees that run 13 agencies.

The 52-48 confirmation vote of RFK Jr. for Health and Human Services secretary brings to a close a contentious three-month confirmation fight that served as a significant test of the Republican Party’s loyalty to President Trump.  

Only Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) cast a GOP vote against Kennedy’s confirmation, after previously bucking his party on Trump’s Defense secretary and national intelligence director.

Full story here

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said there’s “no betrayal” in the U.S. position on ending the war in Ukraine, as the Trump administration pushes for negotiations between Russia and the neighboring country it invaded nearly three years ago.

In remarks to reporters Thursday at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, Hegseth defended his comments from a day earlier, when he said it was “unrealistic” for Ukraine to return to its pre-2014 borders as part of a ceasefire agreement with Russia or to gain NATO membership.

“There is no betrayal there,” Hegseth said Thursday. “There is a recognition that the whole world and the United States is invested and interested in peace, a negotiated peace, as President Trump has said, stopping the killing, and so that will require both sides recognizing things they don’t want to.”

The House GOP budget resolution appears to be on a glide path to passage in committee today after an agreement between the Freedom Caucus and leadership on last minute changes.

House Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris (R-Md.) says GOP leadership has agreed to a manager’s amendment that will allow Budget Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) to increase the deficit cap for Ways and Means, allowing more flexibility on Trump tax cut extensions and other tax priorities, if deficit is reduced in other areas above floors currently outlined.

For example, with current floor for reductions $1.5 trillion and a target for $2 trillion in reductions, if they go to $2.5 trillion in reductions, Ways and Means can go from $4.5 trillion increase to $5 trillion.

This is important because, as Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason Smith (R-Mo.), has been saying, tax items could be more than $4.5 trillion.

Harris expects the manager’s amendment to pass and says the House Freedom Caucus will support the budget resolution if it does.

“This is it. We declare victory. I mean, we have a bill that we believe that it had to be done rapidly to get the president the border funding as soon as possible. We believe it had that meaningful deficit reduction, and we believe it had to be able to advance the president’s tax policy. It all happens here.”

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced the nomination of Kash Patel in a strict party-line vote, clearing the way for President Trump’s pick to lead the FBI to get a vote on the full Senate floor.

The 12-10 vote will allow Patel to be considered by the Senate as early as next week.

Patel advanced amid a swirl of controversy, both about his truthfulness during his confirmation hearing and a series of firings of top FBI leadership shortly thereafter.

READ MORE HERE.

Vice President Vance and second lady Usha Vance visited the site of the Dachau concentration camp during a visit to Germany on Thursday.

The Vances took part in a wreath-laying ceremony, met with a Holocaust survivor and got a tour of Dachau. At one point, they viewed a display of possessions belonging to a prisoner at the camp from Czechoslovakia.

“You look better than I do, and I’m 40,” Vance joked to 96-year-old Abba Naor, who was liberated from Dachau near the end of World War II.

“I’m still here,” Naor said later during the visit.

“Well, we’re very lucky you’re here,” Vance replied.

House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas) is talking to conservative Reps. Andy Harris (R-Md.) and Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) on the House floor.

Norman, a member of the Budget Committee, has signaled his opposition to the budget resolution. Harris is not a member of the panel but leads the House Freedom Caucus, which has called for additional cuts.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is predicting the House Budget Committee will unanimously advance a budget resolution to move President Trump’s legislative agenda.

Johnson delivered the forecast when he arrived at the Capitol shortly before the panel is set to consider a budget resolution.

“I expect it to pass unanimously,” Johnson said. “And we’ll start the process. There’s a lot of discussion and debate, deliberation ahead of us in the weeks, couple months to come. But this is the necessary first start to get it going, so we’re excited we’re at this point.”

Senior Trump administration officials said Thursday morning that the president and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will focus on discussing the trade and defense partnerships between the two countries during their meeting at the White House.

A senior administration official told reporters that the two sides are moving toward signing a new defense framework that would see India procure more equipment from the U.S., which could level out the trade deficit between the two nations.

Trump and Modi are also expected to discuss strengthening the Quad alliance, which consists of the U.S., India, Australia and Japan. India is slated to host the next Quad summit later this year.

Some Republicans are looking to the next fiscal year to try to codify President Trump’s orders to cut federal spending as a divided Congress barrels toward a shutdown deadline. 

Trump voiced optimism this week that cuts pursued by his “Department of Government Efficiency,” headed up by tech billionaire Elon Musk, would “get a very easy vote” in the GOP-led Congress, if it comes to it, as his sweeping orders get tangled up in the courts.

But while conservatives are pushing for the cuts to be included, there is skepticism among Republicans that they’ll be able to get it done as part of a broader funding deal they plan to strike by March 14 — when they’ll need Democratic support to prevent the government from shutting down. 

Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who heads the committee that oversees annual funding for the departments of Education and Health and Human Services, said last week that she thinks the orders would more likely have an impact on fiscal 2026 funding bills than spending legislation for the current year.

“I would see it more forward looking,” Capito said when asked how Trump’s recent orders are impacting current funding talks. “I just think that means we need to keep the spending and the expenditures in line with what this administration wants to do, much like they kept the spending in line with what Biden wants to do, which was a lot of green, a lot of DEI, a lot of all that.”

The House GOP’s budget resolution is hanging in the balance as a handful of hardliners withhold support for the measure, setting the stage for a high-stakes committee vote on Thursday.

At least six Republicans on the House Budget Committee remained undecided Wednesday afternoon on whether they will support the budget resolution when the panel considers it on Thursday, a number far larger than the two GOP lawmakers the conference can afford to lose and still clear the measure, assuming all Democrats vote “no.”

Hardline conservatives and some other Republicans are pushing for changes to the measure and commitments on spending cuts, a dynamic that is threatening the path forward for the resolution.

“Tomorrow will be a big day,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), one of the Budget Committee holdouts, told reporters Wednesday. “If it doesn’t go, that puts us back at ground zero.”

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