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Reporting from Hong Kong
Beijing said it welcomed a visit by Sen. Steve Daines, a strong Trump supporter, but did not say whether he would meet with senior Chinese officials as the world’s two biggest economies take turns imposing tariffs on each other.
China welcomes Americans “from all walks of life, including members of the Congress, to visit China,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular briefing in Beijing today, adding that China believes both the U.S. and China benefit from the “steady, sound and sustainable” development of their relationship.
Daines, a Montana Republican, is the first member of Congress to visit Beijing since Trump returned to the White House in January. He arrived in the Chinese capital yesterday after meeting with top leaders in Vietnam and said he would be talking with Chinese officials about curbing the international flow of fentanyl, the U.S. trade deficit with China and fair market access for American farmers and ranchers.
His office said earlier that Daines would be coordinating closely with the White House and would be “carrying President Trump’s America First agenda,” The Associated Press reported.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris’ loss in the presidential race has given rise, again, to whispered worries in the Democratic Party about female candidates and electability — resurrecting a fraught conversation that bubbled for years after Trump’s first victory over Hillary Clinton.
The whisper campaign has started to some extent in New Jersey, where this year’s governor’s race will be one of Democrats’ first big electoral tests since Trump won his second term.
Read the full story.
Former President Joe Biden has told some Democratic leaders he’ll raise funds, campaign and do anything else necessary for Democrats to recover lost ground as the Trump administration rolls back programs the party helped design, according to people close to him.
Biden privately met last month with the new Democratic National Committee chairman, Ken Martin, and offered to help as the party struggles to regain its viability amid polling that shows its popularity has been sinking, the people said.
Read the full story.
NEW DELHI — India’s IT ministry has unlawfully expanded censorship powers to allow the easier removal of online content and empowered “countless” government officials to execute such orders, Elon Musk’s X has alleged in a new lawsuit against New Delhi.
The lawsuit and the allegations mark an escalation in an ongoing legal dispute between X and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over how New Delhi orders content to be taken down. It also comes as Musk is getting closer to launching his other key ventures Starlink and Tesla in India.
Read the full story here.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, is seeking information from the Securities and Exchange Commission over its decision to relax federal regulations around meme coins weeks after Trump and first lady Melania Trump released their own versions.
The SEC defines a meme coin as a type of crypto asset inspired by internet memes, characters, current events, or trends. In a staff statement last month, the agency said because of its view that meme coins are typically purchased for entertainment and social interaction rather than financial value, owners of the asset do not have to abide by federal regulations.
“Persons who participate in the offer and sale of meme coins do not need to register their transactions with the Commission under the Securities Act of 1933,” a February statement from the agency reads. “Accordingly, neither meme coin purchasers nor holders are protected by the federal securities laws.”
In a letter to acting SEC Chairman Mark Uyeda, Warren highlighted the financial benefits the Trumps incurred through the coins and wrote the rule change “conveniently presents a legal interpretation that could shield the President and First Lady’s coins from regulatory scrutiny.”
“By the afternoon of January 20th, the coins were reportedly worth a combined $9.5 billion and attracted large numbers of first-time crypto investors,” the senator added. “Though the $TRUMP coin lost roughly two-thirds of its value within a few weeks of launch, President Trump’s companies earned nearly $100 million in fees; small retail investors, meanwhile, lost money.”
Warren in the letter characterizes meme coins as “direct threats to consumers” that could benefit from more, not less, oversight.
The information the senator is requesting from the SEC includes “all communications” between the agency and the White House,” and more specifically, whether the agency has taken directives from the President’s Working Group on Digital Asset Markets, a board formed by Trump in January that includes Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Attorney General Pam Bondi.
“It is essential that the Commission issue policy proposals designed to benefit the American public—not the President’s bottom line,” her letter reads.
Trump denied a New York Times report that his adviser Elon Musk is set to be briefed by the Pentagon today on the U.S. military’s plan for any potential war with China.
“China will not even be mentioned or discussed,” Trump said in a post on his Truth Social platform late last night.
Musk, who is leading the Trump administration’s effort to slash the size of the federal government, is scheduled to visit the Pentagon today for a meeting and briefing, three defense officials told NBC News. Two of the officials said Musk was expected to be briefed on China but that the briefing would be unclassified. None of the officials could confirm the Times report, which cited two U.S. officials.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also denied the report, saying in a post on X that it would be “an informal meeting about innovation, efficiencies & smarter production.”
Reporting from Tokyo
Japan said there had been “no change” in plans to enhance the deterrence and response capabilities of the U.S.-Japan alliance, despite news reports that the Pentagon is considering canceling a planned expansion of U.S. forces stationed in Japan.
The move to cancel the expansion, as outlined in draft documents seen by NBC and CNN, would save about $1.18 billion, part of larger cuts to defense spending that could include restructuring the U.S. military’s combatant commands and headquarters and giving up U.S. command of NATO military operations for the first time in almost 75 years.
The Japanese government’s top spokesperson, Yoshimasa Hayashi, told reporters in Tokyo today that Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba confirmed the expansion plan during Ishiba’s visit to Washington last month.
The U.S. and its longtime ally Japan, which hosts more than 50,000 U.S. service members, have been intensifying military cooperation in recent years in an effort to address growing security threats from China and North Korea.
Reporting from Hong Kong
China called on the U.S. to protect Chinese nationals studying in the U.S. after a member of Congress requested several universities to disclose detailed information about their Chinese students, citing potential national security risks.
In a letter to six universities, Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., accused China’s ruling Communist Party of establishing a “well-documented, systematic pipeline” to embed researchers in leading U.S. institutions for “sensitive” technologies. The universities are Carnegie Mellon, Purdue University, Stanford University, the University of Illinois, the University of Maryland and the University of Southern California.
“America’s student visa system has become a Trojan horse for Beijing,” Moolenaar said in a statement, in what he called a “direct threat” to American national security.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that educational cooperation is “in the interests of both parties.”
“We urge the U.S. to stop generalizing national security and to genuinely protect the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese students, and not to take discriminatory or restrictive measures against them,” spokesperson Mao Ning said yesterday at a regular briefing in Beijing.
China is the second-biggest source of international students in the U.S. after India, accounting for about a quarter of the total in the 2023-24 academic year, according to the State Department.
LAS VEGAS — At the first stop of their “Fighting Oligarchy” tour out West, two of the Democratic Party’s most unabashed progressive lawmakers had plenty to say about President Donald Trump. But they also had some strong words for their own party.
“This isn’t just about Republicans. We need a Democratic Party that fights harder for us, too,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. told the fired-up crowd gathered at the Craig Ranch Amphitheater to see her and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt. “But what that means is that we as a community must choose and vote for Democrats and elected officials who know how to stand for the working class.”
While Ocasio-Cortez did not mention any Democratic leaders by name, the crowd broke out into multiple “Primary Chuck” chants — a reference to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who backed down from a funding fight with Trump last week.
Read the full story.
Tech billionaire and Trump adviser Elon Musk is scheduled to visit the Pentagon today for a briefing that will include a discussion on China, according to two defense officials.
The briefing will be unclassified, the officials said.
The New York Times reported last night that Musk would be briefed on the U.S. military’s plans for any potential war with China, citing two U.S. officials. One official also confirmed that the briefing would be focused on China, and another only confirmed that Musk would be at the Pentagon today, according to the Times’ report.
Read the full story.
Trump is scheduled to deliver remarks at the Oval Office at 11 a.m. ET with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The White House did not specify the focus of their remarks.
In the evening, Trump is slated to head to his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.
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