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President Donald Trump's demand that NATO countries increase their defense spending to 5% of their GDP appears to be a rule for other countries and not the United States.

The comments come at a time when Trump is scheduled to meet with NATO allies next week in The Hague. Spain's prime minister recently said his country won't abide by the spending increase and asked for an exemption.

Republicans on Capitol Hill expressed disappointment on Friday that President Donald Trump one again punted on enforcing a ban on TikTok.

This week marked the third deadline extension Trump has granted for TikTok's sale or ban since returning to office. The most recent action pushed the deadline to Sept. 17.

One of President Donald Trump's judicial nominees for a federal seat in Florida was lobbying the Senate for a nomination at the same time he ruled in favor of Trump in a defamation case in state court, Politico reported on Friday.

"Ed Artau ... met with staff in the office of Florida Republican Sen. Rick Scott to angle for the nomination less than two weeks after Trump’s election last fall, according to a new Senate disclosure obtained by POLITICO. In the midst of his interviews, Artau was part of a panel of judges that ruled in Trump’s favor in the president’s case against members of the Pulitzer Prize Board," said the report.

The internet erupted Friday evening after Vice President JD Vance misidentified Sen. Alex Padilla (D-CA) during a news conference in Los Angeles.

Vance's comments were in response to a question from a reporter asking for comment about the numerous instances where Democratic lawmakers have been detained or arrested by ICE agents at protests and in immigration courts. The reporter asked whether those instances are evidence of whether President Donald Trump's administration is "cracking down on Democrats."

Sen. Jim Justice (R-WV) defended the GOP's planned deep cuts to Medicaid that could kick over 10 million low-income people off health insurance.

According to The Independent's D.C. bureau chief Eric Michael Garcia, when confronted over the plan in President Donald Trump's "big, beautiful bill" to force states to institute work requirements for Medicaid, Justice said, "Biblically, we are supposed to work."

First Lady Melania Trump’s renovation of Jackie Kennedy’s iconic Rose Garden during Donald Trump’s first term drew widespread criticism. Now, President Trump is renovating that space once again—this time transforming it into a Mar-a-Lago-style patio—sparking a fresh wave of backlash from critics.

President Trump defended what Newsweek described as “bulldozing” part of the Rose Garden, saying the change was intended to make the space more accessible for women wearing high heels, according to The Daily Beast. The renovations also involve removing several trees, including a saucer magnolia reportedly planted to honor President John F. Kennedy.

The GOP met a procedural roadblock on Friday in their quest to shutter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Senate parliamentarian said the Senate Banking Committee violated procedural rules in its effort to approve zeroing out the $6.4 billion in funding the bureau receives each year. The measure is part of President Donald Trump's 1,000-page "One Big, Beautiful Bill Act," his signature piece of legislation that Democrats have fought for over a month.

President Donald Trump proclaimed that his own director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, was "wrong" about Iran in an exchange with reporters on a New Jersey tarmac on Friday after it was pointed out to him that she had said the intelligence community currently has no evidence Iran posesses or is building a nuclear weapon.

Less than an hour after this exchange, Gabbard took to X to claim the media was making things up and she had never actually contradicted Trump on Iran at all.

President Donald Trump on Friday afternoon touted a "wonderful" new treaty to end a violent conflict between two African countries, even as he again bemoaned that he'll receive no Nobel Peace Prize for his effort.

"I am very happy to report that I have arranged, along with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a wonderful Treaty between the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the Republic of Rwanda, in their War, which was known for violent bloodshed and death, more so even than most other Wars, and has gone on for decades," Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.

Chief Judge James Boasberg of the D.C. Circuit Court issued a stern rebuke on Friday of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's record retention efforts related to "Signalgate."

The scandal erupted after former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz added Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, to a group chat about a strike on Yemen's Houthi rebels. The group chat also included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

President Donald Trump launched a tirade at Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell late on Friday, calling on Powell to immediately lower interest rates.

"'Too Late' Powell complains about costs, much of which were produced by the Biden Fake 'Government,' but he could do the biggest and best job for our Country by helping to lower Interest Rates and, if he reduced them to the number they should be, 1% to 2%, that 'numbskull' would be saving the United States of America up to $1 Trillion Dollars per year," Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social.

President Donald Trump's budget chief has a scheme to simply declare certain funding passed by Congress as canceled — but some Senate Republicans are pushing back, decrying this plan as illegal and a violation of the separation of powers, Politico reported Friday.

Specifically, Office of Management and Budget chief Russ Vought, the architect of the Project 2025 agenda, calls this plan a "pocket rescission."

President Donald Trump's White House rejected the Pentagon's choice to oversee the National Security Agency, a pick who had the support of embattled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to a report.

Hegseth has appeared to have fallen out of favor with Trump in recent weeks, with reports indicating he was sidelined and shut out from Trump’s inner circle from critical war planning, especially on Iran. Hegseth’s influence has diminished following "Signalgate," in which he reportedly leaked imminent attack plans in a group chat that mistakenly included a journalist.