Trump speech on affordability ramps up bigotry and false statements – as it happened

Closing summary

Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:

• Donald Trump delivered a more than 90-minute, rambling, campaign-style address broadly focused on “affordability” to a rally of supporters in Pennsylvania today. The speech marked the first of several the president is expected to deliver in a slate of domestic appearances he said his chief of staff Susie Wiles encouraged him to give ahead of the 2026 midterms.

• Two American fighter jets flew over the Gulf of Venezuela the same day that Trump administration officials briefed the “gang of eight” on ongoing military strikes on boats in the Caribbean. Democratic leaders Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries called the briefing “very unsatisfying” and called for the “full video” of the “double tap” strike on a suspected drug-trafficking boat be released.

• Miami elected its first Democratic mayor in nearly 30 years. County commissioner Eileen Higgins defeated investment manager Emilio Gonzales, who was endorsed by Donald Trump. Higgins’ victory in the Latino majority city comes as Latino and Hispanic voters increasingly disapprove of Trump.

• More than 200 former employees in the justice department’s civil rights division signed a letter released on Tuesday decrying the “near destruction” of the agency that is supposed to enforce America’s civil rights laws. They accused political leadership of waging a campaign to purge career experts from its ranks.

• A federal judge in New York has granted the justice department’s request to unseal grand jury documents in the sex-trafficking case against Ghislaine Maxwell – the companion and accomplice of the late sex-offender Jeffrey Epstein. It comes after the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which Trump signed last month.

• Bill Cassidy, the Republican who chairs the Senate health committee, pushed back against the recent decision from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to limit the hepatitis B vaccine. “We should be informed by medical science and empiricism, not by personal prejudice. And right now with ACIP, I see far more being informed by a personal prejudice,” he said.

• In an interview with Politico published on Tuesday morning, Trump said defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, should testify under oath before Congress about a “double tap” strike on an alleged drug-ferrying boat “if he wants”. He added: “I don’t care. I would say do it if you want, Pete.”

California governor Gavin Newsom will publish a memoir in February 2026.

Newsom announced the release of his book, “Young Man in a Hurry”, in a video on social media today.

“Nobody’s story is tidy, and I’m no different,” Newsom said. “A lot of people look at me in the stark white shirt, the blue suit and yeah, the gelled hair, and they think, ‘Oh I know this guy. I know him better than I’d ever want to know him.’ I get it.”

“It’s definitely not the book that you’d expect me to write,” he said.

Miami has elected its first Democratic mayor in nearly 30 years.

County commissioner Eileen Higgins defeated investment manager Emilio Gonzales, who was endorsed by Donald Trump.

Higgins’ victory in the Latino majority city comes as Latino and Hispanic voters increasingly disapprove of Trump.

Read the Guardian’s full story:

Trump has concluded a more than 90-minute speech in Pennsylvania, saying “we’re bringing prosperity and pride surging back to this magnificent commonwealth”.

Trump says the same missile system pointed at boats in the Caribbean is pointed at Somalia.

“Remember every boat that gets hit, we don’t want to do that, but every boat that gets hit we save 25,000 American lives,” he said. “But we have that same system aimed at Somalia. And if they want to go and raid our ships,” he said, the US would use it.

Speaking about immigration, Trump has referenced “remigration”, a term coined by European white nationalists who’ve called for “reverse migration” of immigrants.

“For the first time in 50 years, we now have reverse migration,” Trump said.

He’s also returned to a talking point about “shithole countries” that he repeated during his first term.

As he was wont to do throughout his presidential campaigns, Donald Trump has strayed from the topic of affordability as he wanders through a series of tangents on immigration in Europe, the conflict between Congo and Rwanda, climate change and the number of pencils students need.

“I haven’t read practically anything off the stupid teleprompter,” he said. “And then my speechwriters, they’re getting awards for some of the finest speeches and I haven’t even read them.”

Trump has falsely claimed that before he took office, “100% of new jobs” in the US went to “migrants” and “people that came into the country illegally”.

This was an untrue claim he repeated often on the campaign trail last year. The number of foreign-born workers increased at a faster rate than US-born workers under the previous administration, according to a CNN fact check, but the claim that all new jobs went to immigrants, whether documented or not, is baseless.

Trump appears to be throwing his support behind senator Bill Cassidy’s proposal on healthcare affordability as the enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies are set to expire.

Cassidy has co-authored a bill with Senate finance chair Mike Crapo that will deposit payments into health savings accounts, rather than extending the subsidies, as Democrats have proposed.

“Under Obamacare, trillions of dollars were given directly to insurance companies,” Trump said. “Obamacare’s primary purpose was to pay off insurance companies.”

“I want to give billions of dollars directly to the people,” he added. “I want to give all of the money we give to the big, fat, rich insurance companies” that are “sucking our country dry … directly to the people”.

Neither the Democratic nor the Cassidy-Crapo bill, which the Senate will vote on Thursday, are expected to meet the 60-vote threshold to advance.

Donald Trump has brought a chart to this rally, not unlike previous charts he has displayed at campaign rallies, showing alleged price increases and decreases under his and his predecessor’s presidencies.

The first chart showed prices, while a second displayed mortgage rates, and a third showed real wages.

“What the hell is that all about?” Trump said, while reading one of the charts.

Trump has once again made false claims about Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota representative, prompting his crowd to chant: “Send her back!”

The president falsely claimed that Omar is in the US “illegally”, launching a racist attack against Somalis. Omar fled civil war as a young child, came to the US as a refugee and became a US citizen in 2000. Trump also repeated the claim that Omar “married her brother” to get into the US. There is no evidence to support the claim, which critics of the Democrat have long cited. She has long called the claim “absolutely false and ridiculous”.

Trump said that national guard member Andrew Wolfe, who was shot in Washington DC in late November, is recovering.

“Today I got a call that he got up from bed,” Trump said, adding that “he didn’t speak” yet.

Donald Trump appeared to be about to start denouncing the Democratic Texas representative Jasmine Crockett, who has announced she will run for Senate, when he began a tangent on crime being “way down”.

On his Air Force One flight to Pennsylvania, Trump called Crockett “low IQ” and told White House pool reporters she would be a “gift to Republicans”.

Trump has wandered through a series of tangents – on Joe Biden’s autopen, immigration, his strategy of polling his audience on nicknames for his political rivals, transgender Americans and Somalia.

Trump says the Democrats have a “new word” – affordability.

“They have a new word, you know, they always have a hoax, the new word is ‘affordability,’” he said.

He’s wandered onto another tangent, but is likely to return to the theme of his address.

The president has, once again, claimed that “prices are way down”.

Prices have increased during Trump’s second term. The consumer price index shows that average prices were 1.7% higher in September than they were in January, as CNN outlined in a recent fact check. There was a 0.3% increase in consumer prices in September, largely due to a 4.1% surge in gasoline prices. Overall prices were 3% higher in September of this year compared to September 2024.