Trump live updates: President says Texas is ‘entitled to five more seats’ as Dems ready for ‘knife fight’

Phoning in to Squawk Box, Trump spoke at length about his economic record nearly seven months into his second term – maintaining that several members of his administration, whom Trump has expressed dissatisfaction with, were “highly political.”

National Democrats are closing ranks behind Texas state lawmakers who left the state to prevent Republicans from enacting a gerrymandered congressional map, fulfilling President Donald Trump’s wishes for the 2026 midterms.

From Illinois, Democratic National Committee Chairman Ken Martin promised the party is “bringing a knife to a knife fight.” He warned the GOP plan is “a test case for the rest of the country” and a “model for other red states to lie, cheat, and steal away to victory.”

California officials are considering their own efforts to further tilt their U.S. House delegation toward Democrats, in response to Texas.

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker said Donald Trump’s push in Texas is “not democracy — that’s not America.” He mocked Texas leaders for doing Trump’s bidding. “When Donald Trump calls, they say, ‘Yes, sir, right away,’” Pritzker said of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton, who’s running for the Senate in 2026.

With reporting from the AP

Right smack dab in the middle of Washington, Donald Trump has found a place that’s trouble-proof.

The 47th president on Tuesday climbed way up to the top of the stairs for an unannounced visit to the roof of the White House briefing room so he could survey the site of the massive ballroom addition, which he announced last week.

Andrew Feinberg was at the White House.

Ariana Baio has the story.

Democrats have spent years issuing warnings over Republican threats to redraw the political maps that could determine the balance of power for years to come. Now, they’re prepared for “war.”

After protracted legal battles to unwind Donald Trump’s executive actions and unsuccessful attempts to derail the president’s agenda in Congress, Democrats appear to have reached a breaking point and are ready to do some map-making of their own, reluctantly preparing to fight fire with fire.

Conservative media baron Rupert Murdoch will give President Donald Trump regular updates on his health as part of an agreement to postpone Murdoch’s deposition in Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against him over a Wall Street Journal article about late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

“Murdoch is 94 years old, has suffered from multiple health issues throughout his life, is believed to have suffered recent significant health scares, and is presumed to live in New York, New York,” Trump’s lawyers said in their filing last week.

The Justice Department has admitted that grand jury transcripts in the criminal cases of Jeffrey Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell contain mostly publicly available information.

The Trump administration has been firefighting the fallout from the so-called “Epstein Files” since the DOJ released a memo last month that contained little new information and concluded no further investigation was warranted into the late sex offender’s alleged trafficking scheme.