Trump nominates Mike Waltz to become UN ambassador after leaving national security adviser role – live | Trump administration

Chad Pergram of Fox News reports on X that the top Democrat on the Senate intelligence committee, Mark Warner, says a Senate confirmation hearing for Waltz as UN ambassador “would be pretty brutal considering what happened with Signalgate”.

At the time, Warner described the leaking of the Yemen war plans in a Signal group chat as part of a pattern of “sloppy, carless, incompetent” actions taken by the second Trump administration that weakens US national security.

“I can just say this. If this was the case of a military officer or an intelligence officer and they had this kind of behavior, they would be fired, as I think this is one more example of the kind of sloppy, careless, incompetent behavior, particularly towards classified information, that this is not a one-off or a first-time error,” he said.

This will be the fourth role Trump has given secretary of state Marco Rubio, after he was also made acting national archivist and acting USAID administrator.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform:

I am pleased to announce that I will be nominating Mike Waltz to be the next United States Ambassador to the United Nations. From his time in uniform on the battlefield, in Congress and, as my National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz has worked hard to put our Nation’s Interests first. I know he will do the same in his new role. In the interim, Secretary of State Marco Rubio will serve as National Security Advisor, while continuing his strong leadership at the State Department. Together, we will continue to fight tirelessly to Make America, and the World, SAFE AGAIN. Thank you for your attention to this matter!

We’re getting lines from Reuters that Trump has said Mike Waltz will become the next ambassador to the UN, while secretary of state Marco Rubio will take over as interim national security adviser.

We’ll bring you more on this as we get it.

Shaun Walker in Kyiv and Andrew Roth in Washington

The Trump administration will approve its first sale of military equipment to Ukraine since Donald Trump took office, in an indication that the minerals deal signed by the two countries this week may open a path to renewed weapons shipments.

The state department has certified a proposed licence to export “$50m or more” of defence hardware and services to Ukraine, according to a communication sent to the US committee on foreign relations. It would mark the first permission of its kind since Trump paused all Ukraine-related military aid shortly after taking office.

Among the speakers scheduled to address the May Day rally in Washington DC on Thursday is María del Carmen Castellón, whose husband Miguel Luna died in the Key Bridge collapse in Baltimore last year.

The story of Luna and the five other construction workers who died during the tragedy is “symbolic”, Cathryn Jackson, public policy director at Casa, said. The six men were all construction workers originally from Latin American countries.

“This is the story of men working in the middle of the night while all of us were sleeping, getting the roads together, doing the work that many people don’t want to do,” Jackson continued.

“It’s symbolic of what people here today are experiencing and feeling. We are literally physically building this country, and then being treated the way we are in return.”

Congresswoman Delia Ramirez, a Democrat representing Illinois, addressed the crowd in Franklin Park as the “proud daughter of Guatemalan immigrants”.

“Today on International Workers’ Day, we are united,” Ramirez said. “We’re united because we understand that this president wants to silence us. He wants to divide us, pit us against each other. But we are not going to be silenced.”

The Trump administration knows that “the only thing that will stop fascism is mobilization”, she continued, acknowledging that there will be “really hard days” ahead. “But as long as you keep organizing, I can amplify that voice and continue to stand up to fascism.”

Léonie Chao-Fong

Organizers behind the May Day protest in Washington DC said they expect to see up to 3,000 people join the rally in the nation’s capital to demand safety on the job, legal protections and an end to unjust deportations.

This year’s rally focuses on the essential role that immigrant workers play in powering the economy and the devastating impact of immigration enforcement that rips families apart.

“Our message today is focused on ensuring that our voices are heard, at a time when the Trump administration is attempting to silence our voices,” Cathryn Jackson, public policy director at Casa, a group that provides critical services to immigrant and working-class families, told the Guardian.

“We’re seeing people abducted off the streets every day in some of the most violent and cruel ways. We’re seeing people like Kilmar Ábrego García – and he’s only one story. His story is not unusual.”

Ábrego García’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, is expected to speak at today’s rally as she continues to fight for her husband’s release from the notorious Cecot maximum-security prison in El Salvador and to be returned to the US.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump said he “could” bring Ábrego García back if he wanted to, but insisted that the 29-year-old Salvadoran, who had been living in Maryland and is married to an American citizen, is a member of the violent MS-13 gang. Ábrego García has not been charged with any crimes.

“Hundreds and hundreds of people are being deported to some of the worst prisons across the country with no due process,” Jackson said. “This rally today is about solidarity. It’s about saying no matter what the Trump administration tries to do, we are determined to fight back.”

Chris Stein

In a protest outside the supreme court, Democratic lawmakers condemned Donald Trump’s attacks on the judiciary, and mulled impeaching him once they returned to the majority in Congress.

Attendees at the rally organized by the group Lawyer for Good Government brandished signs reading, “Democracy, not dictatorship” and supporting arrested judge Hannah Dugan and wrongly removed Salvadoran Kilmar Ábrego García.

Democratic congressman Jamie Raskin attacked Trump for undermining the rule of law, and quoted founding father Thomas Paine. “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered. But we have this saving consolation: the more difficult the struggle, the more glorious, in the end will be, our victory. Let’s make that victory ours!” he said.

Calling the past 100 days “an awful nightmare”, California congressman Sam Liccardo said of Trump:

Democrats are going to impeach him in 2026, if we get the chance.

At least two Democratic lawmakers have filed articles of impeachment against Trump, which are almost certain be ignored by Congress’s Republican leaders. They may get another chance not in 2026 but the year after when the new, hypothetically Democratic led Congress would only take its seats.

Marina Dunbar

The Guardian’s Marina Dunbar was at New York City’s Union Square earlier where demonstrators rallied as part of the nationwide May Day marches against Donald Trump and his administration’s policies.

Betsy Waters, 67, retired and full-time volunteer, held up a sign that says “Due process for all”.

“I come to several marches, and I feel that we have to be out here. We have to be out here making a stand as much as we can. So I am out here making a stand, saying that what is happening in our country is just not right,” Waters said.

Lydia Howrilka, a 25-year old librarian from Queens, held up a sign that says: “Only you can stop fascism.”

“I am standing in solidarity with my immigrant brothers and sisters in New York. I am standing in defense of democracy,” Howrilka said.

Chris Stein

An international human rights body has criticized the conduct of a Border Patrol investigative unit overseen by Rodney Scott, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead Customs and Border Protection (CBP), in the aftermath of the death of a migrant in San Diego.

Anastasio Hernández Rojas died after being beaten and tased by CBP officers who were preparing him for deportation after he entered the United States from Mexico in 2010. At the time, Scott was a high-ranking Border Patrol officer in the San Diego sector, and signed an administrative subpoena to obtain Hernández Rojas medical records, which CBP then refused to share with San Diego police investigators who were looking into the homicide.

On Wednesday, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights released its investigation into Hernández Rojas’s death, which found that the US “is responsible for the violation of the rights to life, personal integrity, health, justice, and humane treatment during the arrest” of Hernández Rojas. The report also said the US “violated the right of access to justice” under the 1948 American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man with its “failure to collect, and the destruction of evidence in the early stages” and “biases with which the investigation was initiated”.

The Senate finance committee considered Scott’s nomination on Wednesday, after a former top CBP official accused him of “a cover-up” in the Hernández Rojas case. Scott told the committee his use of the subpoena was “standard procedure”, and homeland security secretary Kristi Noem hit back at the allegations made against him. In a letter to the committee’s top Democrat Ron Wyden, she said the San Diego police department obtained the medical records through their own subpoena and that Scott “did not impede any investigation, nor did he take steps to conceal facts from investigators”.

Currently, a leading pick to replace Mike Waltz is Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff who is shepherding negotiations with Russia, Iran and Hamas in Gaza, according to three people who have spoken to Politico. Other names being floated are Stephen Miller, Sebastian Gorka, Richard Grenell, Christopher Landau and even Marco Rubio.

‘They’re firing the wrong guy’: Democrats welcome Waltz firing but say it is Pete Hegseth who should go

Chris Stein

Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer welcomed the departure of national security adviser Michael Waltz but said that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is most deserving of losing his job.

“They should fire him, but they’re firing the wrong guy. They should be firing Hegseth,” the minority leader told reporters at the Capitol.

He accused Republicans of confirming a defense secretary who was unfit for the job, and predicted scandals similar to Signalgate – where Hegseth, Waltz and other national security officials shared details of airstrikes in Yemen in a group chat – would happen in the future.

Everyone knew that Hegseth was the wrong guy for DOD, given his background, given his attitude towards women, but given the fact that he had no experience and had never shown an ability to run an organization.

They fired the [National Security Council] guy, but there are going to be many more problems, just like Signalgate that come out of the Defense Department, as long as Hegseth is in charge. This is not a one off. This is going to happen over and over and over again.

Politico reports that while Mike Waltz lost the confidence of other administration officials and could leave imminently, the move to oust him is not final and Trump could yet change his mind, according to five people familiar with the decision.

Indeed Trump is known to pivot away from plans he tells staff and even announces publicly, Politico notes. Names for a replacement have been discussed around the West Wing for weeks, but the plans to remove Waltz potentially as soon as this week gained steam in recent days, two of the people and another person close to the White House told the outlet.

Many in the West Wing were furious at Waltz’s role in the Signal group chat leak, which involved likely highly classified information, and lost confidence in him. But Politico notes he was also further weakened after far-right activist Laura Loomer met with Trump and persuaded him to fire several members of the National Security Council and top officials, including the director of the National Security Agency, General Tim Haugh, over “loyalty concerns”. Loomer also targeted Waltz’s deputy, Alex Wong, who is also expected to depart his post, accusing the son of Chinese immigrants of advancing Chinese interests.

In response to reports of Waltz’s ouster, Loomer sent a one-word text to Politico:

Loomered.

Waltz had lost sway in the administration and found himself without allies, my colleague Hugo Lowell writes.

The president briefly considered firing Waltz over the episode, but decided he was unwilling to give the news media the satisfaction of forcing the ouster of a top cabinet official weeks into his second term. Trump was also mollified by an internal review that found Waltz’s error was a mistake.

The furore over the Signal group chat, if anything, was widely seen to have bought Waltz and Wong additional time after they had both been on shaky ground for weeks. That was in large part because of a strained working relationship with Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, and other senior officials.

He was also under fire from other corners. Even though he was cleared in the internal review into Signalgate, as it came to be known, Waltz faced pressure for being seen as a war hawk and at odds with Trump’s “America first” agenda. That included scrutiny at a dinner that Waltz attended with Trump and some of Trump’s allies including Tucker Carlson, who has been skeptical of the adviser. The outside pressure campaign to remove Waltz additionally included an effort led by Steve Bannon, Hugo reports.

Here’s Tim Walz’s take on Mike Waltz leaving his post (I know you were thinking it too).

The Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport a Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador without due process is “unlawful”, a federal judge ruled on Thursday, in a significant setback to the president’s aggressive anti-immigration agenda.

Reuters reports that in a 36-page opinion, US district judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr ruled that the Trump administration could not rely on the Act to detain and deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua because the gang’s presence in the United States was not an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” as contemplated by the law.

The ruling, the first to reach such a conclusion, is the latest sharp rebuke to one of Trump’s most high-profile efforts to quickly carry out deportations with little or no due process.

Rodriguez’s order permanently blocks the administration from using the Act and Trump’s proclamation to detain, transfer or remove Venezuelan migrants who either live or are detained in the Texas southern district.

The Alien Enemies Act applies only when the country is facing an armed, organized attack, Rodriguez, a Trump appointee ruled. Trump’s invocation “exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” he wrote. “[Administration officials] do not possess the lawful authority under the AEA, and based on the Proclamation, to detain Venezuelan aliens, transfer them within the United States, or remove them from the country.”

The US supreme court on 7 April ruled that the Trump administration must give migrants the chance to contest any future Alien Enemies Act deportations in court. Judges across the country have since issued temporary orders blocking such deportations in their districts.

Thursday’s preliminary injunction is longer-lasting than the two-week temporary restraining orders that he and other judges in Colorado, Manhattan, and Pennsylvania had previously imposed.

Trump also shouted out his defense secretary Pete Hegseth, which is perhaps notable following the news that just broke that national security adviser Mike Waltz has been forced out of his job, according to Reuters citing four people briefed on the matter.

One source familiar with the situation at the National Security Council told CBC News the president thinks sufficient time has passed since the Signal debacle that Waltz and Wong’s departures can be framed as part of a reorganization. Trump has been hesitant to oust Waltz – which he considered doing at the time – over the perception that doing so could be seen as bending to outside pressure.

Meanwhile Trump has continued to back Hegseth, whom Democrats and a number of Republicans have called on to be fired for his repeated use of Signal to discuss sensitive military operations in Yemen, including with family and friends.