Trump administration live updates: Trump, NATO leader to meet at White House

President Donald Trump is scheduled Thursday to welcome NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte to the White House.

The pair are expected to hold an Oval Office meeting, after which they'll have a working lunch.

The meeting comes amid heightened international discussions about European and U.S. defense spending. The president and his allies have often criticized the military alliance, saying that the United States pays more than its fair share.

NATO members agreed in 2006 to commit to defense spending equal to at least 2% of their GDP. Twenty-three of the 32 members hit that target in 2024, according to the Atlantic Council.

Rutte, who took over leadership of the military alliance in October 2024, spoke with Trump in late February, with the pair then agreeing "on the importance of Europe and Canada significantly increasing defense spending and defense industrial capacity," according to a readout from Rutte's office.

Questions about defense spending have since then been ricocheting throughout Europe, in part because the Trump administration has questioned whether it should continue funding Ukraine's fight against Russia's invading army.

European leaders last week held an emergency summit in Brussels, Belgium, to discuss both the bloc's defense spending and security guarantees for Ukraine.

-ABC News' Hannah Demissie and Kevin Shalvey

President Donald Trump is expected to visit the Justice Department on Friday, a move that comes as he has sought to assert control over the nation’s top law-enforcement agency that brought two historic, thwarted prosecutions against him.

The rare visit will mark Trump’s first time inside the walls of the Robert F. Kennedy building as president and follows nearly a decade’s worth of conflict that has proven to be the ultimate stress test for the Justice Department’s post-Watergate norms intended to preserve independence from the White House.

Dozens of prosecutors who worked on investigations stemming from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol were fired, as well as DOJ and FBI officials who worked on former special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations of Trump.

Trump's visit to DOJ is his first to any government agency since taking office, though it's not without precedent. The last visit by a sitting American president to the building was by former President Barack Obama, who attended a retirement ceremony in 2015 for Eric Holder.

-ABC News' Alexander Mallin and Katherine Faulders

Prior to becoming defense secretary, Pete Hegseth was very critical of military standards that he felt had enabled women to serve in combat units.

He announced in a memo on Wednesday a “rapid force-wide review” of “existing standard set by U.S. military branches pertaining to physical fitness, body composition, and grooming, which includes but is not limited to beards."

The comments reflect the military standards that he was critical of prior to helming the Department of Defense.

-ABC News' Luis Martinez

A federal judge on Wednesday ordered the Department of Government Efficiency to hand over key documents that may shed light on the group’s attempt to reduce the size of the federal government.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan – who previously oversaw President Donald Trump’s election interference case – ordered the government to turn over materials related to DOGE and Elon Musk’s efforts to reduce the size of federal agencies, freeze federal contracts, access sensitive databases and terminate federal employees.

“The court concludes that granting expedited discovery is in the best interest of all parties,” Chutkan wrote.

The order comes after a group of 14 Democratic attorneys general filed a lawsuit challenging Musk's role as head of DOGE, alleging his “sweeping authority" is in violation of the Constitution.

Chutkan denied their request for an emergency order last month in part because the plaintiffs lacked the evidence to show the irreparable harm of Musk’s agency; now, the attorneys general are hoping to use the discovery process to find the evidence they need.

However, the judge placed some limitations on the demand for evidence, finding that Trump himself is exempt from the order and excluding electronic communications like emails or texts.

Chutkan is also considering whether to issue an injunction blocking Musk from running DOGE.

-ABC News' Peter Charalambous