Trump said tariffs will be the "greatest thing we've ever done as a country."
President Donald Trump is defending his decision to pause some tariffs to Canada and Mexico for another month -- a notable reversal after imposing historic levies on the key U.S. trading partners earlier this week, causing markets to tumble.
On Friday, Trump signed more executive orders at the White House before he convened a first-ever cryptocurrency summit with industry leaders.
Members of the House Freedom Caucus met with President Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday.
Rep. Andy Harris, R-Md., told reporters after the meeting that they were working to get a budget resolution passed soon.
"To all the people who said you could never pass that reconciliation bill with only Republican votes, wait until next week," he teased.
The Senate confirmed Todd Blanche to serve as deputy attorney general by a party-line vote of 52-46.
Blanche served as President Donald Trump's attorney during his Manhattan criminal trial involving a hush money case, in which he was convicted last year on 34 counts.
-ABC News' Allison Pecorin
Senate Republicans pitched Elon Musk on a plan that would make the funding cuts implemented by DOGE permanent during a closed-door lunch Wednesday afternoon, multiple senators in the room said.
"I think an awful lot of the discussion in there was, OK, you're exposing this, the waste, fraud and abuse -- if we can eliminate it would represent some significant savings to the federal budget. How do we implement those?" Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., said.
Senators told Musk they want President Donald Trump to send them a package of proposed cuts that they could then pass into law with 51 votes. The package, called a rescission package, would be a way of codifying the DOGE cuts, lowering congressionally approved spending levels to be in line with what DOGE is hoping to achieve.
This new proposal comes as some of DOGE's efforts to cut spending have sputtered out in the courts.
"It's time for the White House now to go on offense. We're losing altitude here," Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said.
Trump would have to initiate this process by sending Congress a proposal of what he'd like it to slash from the budget. This proposal, senators say, would be reflective of the wasteful spending that DOGE has identified.
Once Trump's proposal arrived on Capitol Hill, senators would have to act within a 45-day window to move on the bill. With Republicans who are largely supportive of Musk's efforts controlling both chambers of Congress, it's possible such a package could get the necessary traction to pass.
-ABC News' Isabella Murray, Allison Pecorin, John Parkinson and Jay O'Brien
A federal judge issued a nationwide order blocking the National Institutes of Health from making cuts to funding that scientists warned could catastrophically harm medical research and treatments in the United States.
U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley issued a nationwide preliminary injunction this afternoon that prohibits the Trump administration from attempting to drastically lower some of the funding that universities and research institutions receive from medical and scientific grants.
"As made clear by the declarations in support of a preliminary injunction against the implementation of the Rate Change Notice, the risk of harm to research institutions and beyond is immediate, devastating, and irreparable," Kelley, a Biden appointee, wrote about the attempt to cap indirect costs at 15%.
Kelley noted that the attempt to cut funding not only violated federal law and the regulations governing research funding but said the change would also significantly harm patients by halting clinical trials, slowing research, and shuttering medical facilities.
A group of 22 attorneys general and five medical associations filed a lawsuit last month challenging the rate change, and Kelley had already issued a temporary order blocking the rate change from taking effect.
-ABC News' Peter Charalambous
