President Donald Trump will be on Washington’s National Mall on Wednesday seeking to deliver a campaign-style rally that gets Americans excited about his presidency and America’s 250th anniversary celebrations.
The event comes after a day of tense meetings between Trump and Republicans in Congress over the Iran war, and a decision by a federal judge that sets back Trump’s agenda to overhaul U.S. elections. Trump’s role as the anniversary event’s headliner
emerged after several musicians canceled their appearances, citing concerns the event had become politicized.
Also Wednesday, a federal judge permanently barred the Trump from implementing most of his first executive order on elections, part of which sought to require people to show documentary proof of citizenship when they register to vote. The judge agreed that the states and Congress have constitutional authority over elections, deeming Trump’s requirements a violation of the separation of powers.
And at a luncheon, Trump met with GOP senators who have grown increasingly frustrated by his diversions from the party’s agenda and his unclear Iran war strategy. Republican senators had hoped to use the housing bill Trump abandoned to show voters they care about affordability ahead of the November midterm elections.
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From where Trump will stand on stage, he may be able to see the giant Ferris wheel alit in neon colors in front of the Capitol.
People are standing shoulder to shoulder filling up most of the lawn as the sun starts to set. Most have their phones out to record.
Author and podcaster Jocko Willink walked attendees on the National Mall through the colonies’ underdog fight against the British during the American Revolution.
That victory, he said, “unleashed a force which to this day has been completely unmatched in the world.” He went on to enumerate hard-fought privileges including “the freedom to speak, to protest, to worship, the freedom to protect ourselves, our families and our property.”
Something Willink didn’t mention was the contribution of the French, whose military forces and funds helped make significant strides toward Britain’s defeat.
Hattie Harris was visiting her uncle in northern Virginia when her niece who works on Capitol Hill told her of Wednesday’s event.
Harris, a Montessori teacher from Mesa, Arizona, had no idea what the program included — besides one thing.
“I came for the flyovers,” she said. “I will drop everything for flyovers.” The military aircraft buff didn’t even know Trump was expected to speak.
At that moment, she pointed overhead and cried, “Look!” The stealth B-2 bomber cruised overhead, drowning out the U.S. Marine Corps Band.
Asked her thoughts about the evening’s featured speaker — after she learned it was Trump — Harris shrugged.
The rally shifted from up-tempo pop performances to a more somber moment as Frank Siller, CEO of Tunnel to Towers, asked the crowd to remember firefighters and other first responders who died in the Sept. 11, 2001, attack.
Siller’s nonprofit was founded in honor of his brother, Stephen Siller, a New York firefighter who died on 9/11.
“As I look out at this incredible gathering of families celebrating everything that makes this country so great, we must remember the extraordinary sacrifices of ordinary people,” Frank Siller said.
It was one of the first moments of the rally focused on important events in U.S. history.
U.S. gasoline prices decreased an average of 49 cents a gallon in the last month as expectations rose for an end to the war with Iran. But they’re not falling fast enough for Trump.
Trump, who wants to stave off the economic fallout of the war ahead of midterm elections, is now pointing at oil companies as the culprit. The president said on social media early Wednesday that he had tasked the Justice Department with investigating whether “customers are being ’gouged.’”
“The big Oil Companies are not dropping their price at the pump commensurate with the sharply lower prices they are paying for Oil,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post published just after midnight. “Gasoline prices better start going down a lot faster than what I’m seeing!”
Crude oil is the main ingredient in gasoline, and its cost makes up the bulk of what consumers pay. Even after crude prices come down, it can take weeks or longer for market changes to reach consumers, experts said.
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About an hour before Trump’s speech, the grassy area on the National Mall was about half full.
The crowd cheered as the U.S. Marine Corps Band was drowned out temporarily as two fighter jets roared overhead.
Jacob Wankasky and his family, from Buffalo, New York, peeled off a day early from a trip to Hershey, Pennsylvania, when he and his wife Jennifer realized they could see Trump before a planned visit Thursday to the State Fair with their children, ages 4 and 6.
“The fact that we can be here with our kids. It’s a once in a lifetime chance,” Wankasky said as his wife and children sat in the sun-splashed grass of the National Mall listening to the Marine Corps Band’s rendition of “Stars and Stripes Forever.”
“It’s unpurchasable,” he said.
Wearing a bright red “America Is Back” cap, Wankasky, a 42-year-old antique mall owner, said Trump’s return to the White House was a relief in a time of “insanity.”
“I don’t know if our country could have taken another four years of Biden or whoever,” he said. Trump “stopped a freight train.”
While some on the National Mall traveled many hours to get there, Joe and Natalie Cox took the metro from Arlington, Virginia. They came “out of curiosity and to mark an historic occasion,” Joe said.
The couple said the event was an opportunity to take stock of “the necessary sea change” that Trump’s return to the White House represents.
“We could hardly skip it,” Natalie said. “We live 4 miles away.”
Joe, a retired Army officer and military contractor, and Natalie, who worked for 30 years at the Red Cross, suggested the events were a time for the country to come together.
With Frankie Valli pouring from the stage speakers, Joe, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said he approved of the war against Iran.
“It had to be done,” he said. “I’ll be glad to no longer hear ‘Death to America.’”
The lead-up to the program had very much the feel of an outdoor summer concert.
The rows of chairs nearest to the stage filled up with VIPs, as the grass slowly populated with attendees sitting on blankets.
All sorts of flag-themed outfits, from overalls to skirts and hats, were common, as well as the “Make America Great” hats that have become the unofficial uniform of Trump’s political rallies going back a decade
Karen and Brian Ontrap drove more than 500 miles from northwest Ohio with their children, having planned the trip in January to celebrate the nation’s 250th anniversary and, for some in the group, see Washington for the first time.
The rally on the mall “was a bonus,” said Karen Ontrap, a 51-year-old customer service representative for an aluminum casting company.
Standing in the shade near the stage where Trump was to speak, she said the pair support the president “100 percent.”
They were among the early arrivals to the section of the National Mall that was cordoned off, with a concert-style stage festooned in U.S. flags at one end and a mock White House exterior at the other.
A sprawling legislative package aimed at lowering the cost of housing and spurring more home construction won bipartisan approval from Congress this week. But it hit a major roadblock in becoming law: President Donald Trump.
The White House supported the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, but on Wednesday Trump canceled the signing ceremony for the bill, saying he would not sign the measure until Congress passes legislation that would require proof of citizenship for all voters.
The measure is the culmination of months of negotiations by lawmakers who combined dozens of bills meant to address how housing affordability for both renters and aspiring homeowners in the U.S. has grown increasingly out of reach for many Americans.
The bill would reduce federal regulations, streamline environmental reviews, speed up the construction process and curb the influence of corporate landlords by limiting their ability to purchase single-family homes.
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The Pentagon said Wednesday that boot camps for all the military services are once again requiring the flu vaccination for all recruits after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the shot optional for the military at the end of April.
The development, confirmed to The Associated Press by a Pentagon official, comes amid a growing, weekslong, flu outbreak at the U.S. Air Force’s boot camp at Lackland Air Force Base that has sickened nearly 300 people. However, the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not cleared for public release, maintained that the permission to mandate the vaccinations was unrelated to the outbreak.
When Hegseth first announced the repeal of the flu vaccine mandate in April, citing “medical autonomy” and religious freedom, he allowed the services to ask for exceptions — or permission to keep the vaccine mandatory — within 15 days of the rollout.
— Konstantin Toropin and Mike Stobbe
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The NATO chief said of the contractors: “You have been very harsh with them a couple of weeks ago.”
“I had one of them over in my office. He was still trembling,” Rutte said. “And I said, this is good. This is exactly what I need.”
The president has held a series of meetings with Pentagon officials and leading military contractors at the White House in recent days, discussing ways to increase munitions production after the war in Iran raised concerns about the U.S. eating into its stocks of missiles.
Rutte met with Trump in the Oval Office and, as he usually does, praised Trump in hopes that he won’t make good on threats to pull the U.S. out of NATO.
“There are certain things that we have to certify have happened that have happened in order to comply with American law,” the vice president said.
“We’re running the traps and confirming that it’s happened. This is really a congressional thing and ensuring that Turkey has complied with American law so they can get the F-35s.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that the findings of a Pentagon investigation into a missile strike on an Iranian primary school on Feb. 28, the first day of the war with Iran, would be released “when the appropriate time is right.”
But Trump said he’s “seen nothing to lead me to believe it was us.”
Trump called the incident “horrible” but said: “I don’t know that they’re ever going to solve that problem in terms of whose fault was it, because there were missiles flying all over the place.”
The president fleshed out his plans for a Justice Department investigation into why gasoline prices have not fallen as quickly as oil futures after the signing of an interim deal for talks to end the Iran war.
“The oil companies are possibly gouging,” Trump said. “I hope they’re not. Otherwise they’re going to be in big trouble. They’re going to be in big trouble. We’re not going to play games.”
The president indicated that his targets for any inquiry would be some of the world’s leading energy companies, including firms he has hosted at the White House.
“So it’s ExxonMobil, it’s Chevron, it’s Shell, it’s BP,” he said. “It’s a lot of them.”
“We don’t need their money we don’t need anything,” the president said during his meeting with NATO’s chief. “We have the most powerful military in the world by far. But I just want loyalty.”
He added: “We’re always fighting for them.”
Trump has sharply criticized NATO and renewed his threats to leave the alliance after complaining that its members did not do enough to support the U.S. during the war with Iran.
Calling Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy “courageous,” the president also acknowledged ongoing losses among both Ukrainian and Russian forces in the war, now in its fifth year.
“He’s holding his own at least,” Trump said. “A lot of people dying on both sides, but I think he’s doing pretty well.”
Ukraine’s General Staff said Wednesday that its forces struck a major natural gas processing plant and two key satellite communications centers in the latest nighttime attacks on Russia.
Ukraine’s aerial campaign targeting energy facilities and military industries has intensified as Kyiv builds bigger and better long-range weapons to fight Russia’s invasion.
In response, Zelenskyy has said Moscow has ordered redeployment of some air defense systems from Russian regions to the capital and to Crimea’s Kerch Bridge, a crucial link for supplying Russian troops.
He said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan phoned him and asked him to attend the defense alliance summit in the capital of Ankara in July.
“He said, ‘Please, I have it in Turkey. You got to be there. The United States has to be there,’” Trump told reporters. “And so I’m going out of respect to President Erdogan.”
Trump said of Erdogan: “I like him. He’s a friend of mine.”
He said he was glad Turkey stayed out of the war with Iran.
A reporter asked Trump if he would come to Turkey with a “gift bag” of fighter jets for Erdogan.
“I think so,” Trump responded. “I’m going to probably do something that’s going to make him very happy.”
The White House has formally requested the funding mostly to replenish the Pentagon after the war against Iran.
It submitted the request to Congress at a politically difficult time, as a majority of lawmakers have objected to any further military action.
The Office of Management and Budget sent the supplemental spending request Wednesday.
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Talking up his deployment of National Guard troops in the city, the president pointed to Rutte and said that had the NATO chief come two years ago, “you had a good chance of being mugged, although you’re a very big guy.”
“They would have mugged him up. They would have beaten the hell out of him,” Trump said to laughs.
He further suggested that going to dinner two years ago, Rutte might have been “robbed when he got into the restaurant.”
The president has bragged for months about troops dramatically lowering Washington’s crime. Their presence has had little demonstrable effect on reducing the kinds of violent crime Trump warned Rutte about, however.
Saying “sick people” used razors and box cutters to slice portions of the lining, Trump said Wednesday that part of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool would be drained again for repairs.
He wasn’t sure if that would come before or after the July 4 holiday, during which thousands of people will be in the area.
Trump said six people have been arrested over damage, which he characterized as a “350-foot gash” in the lining.
The troubled $14-million-plus rehabilitation project has become a visceral flashpoint over law enforcement, aesthetics and environmental concerns ahead of the country’s 250th anniversary celebrations.
The century-old Reflecting Pool has been drained, painted and plagued with algae bloom, with pieces of the new coating appearing to peel off the bottom.
Asked on Wednesday if he’d be willing to work out a deal to get the housing bill signed, Trump pushed for the lowering of interest rates and also reiterated his push for a measure to introduce new voter identification requirements.
“Lower the interest rates, you can have all the housing you want,” Trump said.
Earlier Wednesday, Trump said he had called off a planned signing for a bipartisan measure to increase home construction until passage of the SAVE America Act.
The cancellation was awkward for Capitol Hill Republicans, including House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who had just described the measure as a “really important bill to lower housing costs” before Trump called off the signing.
Bernie Sanders recently campaigned in New York alongside Mayor Zohran Mamdani. The Vermont senator said Tuesday’s victories by Mamdani-backed candidates prove Americans are “saying enough is enough.”
“You want a government that represents ordinary people, not just the rich,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill. “That’s what last night was about. That’s what we’ve seen for the last number of months. I think you’re going to continue to see it.”
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat from neighboring Connecticut, said voters are “clearly telling us they want us to be bolder,” but also cautioned against reading too much into the results.
“Obviously, in New York, the mayor and AOC have enormous power inside the Democratic Party today,” he said. “I’m not sure that election would reproduce itself; those results would reproduce themselves in every other state.”
Asked for his thoughts on the British politician Andy Burnham, who could soon lead the United Kingdom’s government, Trump professed his ignorance.
“I don’t know anything,” Trump said. “I see that he was, I guess, the mayor of a town. I hear he’s extremely liberal. Extremely.”
Burnham has been the mayor of Greater Manchester, which has a population in excess of 3 million.
These were Trump’s first statements on the 56-year-old who could soon succeed Keir Starmer as the prime minister.
Asked if he would want to be the first world leader for the new prime minister to visit globally, Trump said, “No, but I think we’re probably of a different persuasion.”
The president said the fiery progressives who swept establishment-backed Democrats in New York’s congressional primaries are so far left, “they’re really into Never, Neverland.”
Candidates backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani notched big wins during primaries Tuesday night. Asked if that might mean the Democrats will nominate a far-left presidential candidate in 2028, Trump responded: “It should make it easier for Republicans because most of the nation is composed of sane people.”
“If you look throughout history,” Trump said, communism and socialism have “never, ever worked. It’s not going to work this time.”
Rutte had many compliments for Trump on Wednesday, but he gently pushed back after Trump listed his grievances with several European countries.
Having tried to work individual, bilateral deals on defense spending, Trump said he had been “disappointed” with some NATO members, including Italy, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and Spain, which he called a “horror show.” Earlier this year, Trump ratcheted up his critique of NATO over the Iran war.
Acknowledging Trump’s assertion that the overall situation represented “a mixed bag,” Rutte also argued that “it would have been very difficult to do Iran without having Europe as a power projection platform for the United States.”
Meeting with Trump in the Oval Office, Rutte pushed back against Trump’s complaints that European allies weren’t there for the U.S. during the Iran war.
“I know there have been isolated cases about which you are really disappointed, but generally speaking, your European allies have been there with you,” the NATO secretary-general said.
Rutte noted that 4,000 to 5,000 U.S. planes took off from bases in Europe before Iran and the U.S. agreed to a ceasefire.
Trump has been critical of NATO and renewed his threats to leave the alliance during the Iran war. While introducing Rutte on Wednesday, Trump said, “They weren’t too nice to us in our recent little military skirmish.”
For his meeting with Trump, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte brought charts on easels and talking points on some big numbers in hopes of impressing a president who has often expressed disappointment with the defense alliance.
Rutte sprang to his feet while meeting with Trump in the Oval Office to discuss a chart he called “the Trump trillion,” which showed increased military spending by Europeans and Canadians.
The NATO secretary-general then pointed to another chart showing European companies’ investments support 195,000 jobs.
