This concludes our live coverage for the day, but we will return to keep chronicling the second  on Thursday. Thanks for reading, and here are some of the day’s developments:

### Trump Administration Clears Immigration from Guantánamo Detention Center

Before the courts could weigh in on the legality of ’s  statement, the US government-owned broadcaster said:

> “SCHUMER SHUTDOWN: Democrats are bent on shutting the government down.”

The Republicans, having passed a House bill that makes cuts Democrats find unacceptable, now need at least eight Democrats to vote with them for any stopgap funding measure, since 60 votes are required; there are only 53 Republican senators, and one of them, **Rand Paul**, has said he is “a hell no!” on the bill.

On the Senate floor earlier on Wednesday,  “Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort. But Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their Continuing Resolution without any input, any input, from Congressional Democrats. Because of that, Republicans do not have the votes in the Senate to invoke cloture on the House CR.”

**Charlie Kirk**, the influential podcaster and founder and chief of the pro-Trump youth group Turning Point USA,  a video clip of Schumer’s speech with the caption: “Chuck Schumer now owns the shutdown.” But the edited clip Kirk shared left out the end of Schumer’s remarks, which was a call to negotiate: “I hope our Republican colleagues will join us to avoid a shutdown on Friday.”

“Charlie is right,” the senator **Markwayne Mullin**, an Oklahoma Republican, replied. He added: “President Trump doesn’t want a shutdown. But if we do, Senate Democrats will 100% own it.”

That talking point was echoed by the senator **Pete Ricketts**, a Nebraska Republican, who wrote: “If the government shuts down, it is because of Chuck Schumer and the Democrats”.

At Tuesday’s promotional event for Elon Musk’s line of Tesla electric vehicles at the White House, Trump refused to drive one of the cars, and scoffed at the idea that his predecessor, Joe Biden, had done so at a similar event. There is video of Biden doing so, in August 2021, at an event to promote electric vehicles that Musk reportedly was angry at being excluded from over anti-union policies.

### Judge Halts Trump Executive Order Banning Law Firm That Worked with Democrats from Federal Contracts

The federal judge **Beryl Howell** has blocked an executive order that **Donald Trump** signed last week directing agencies to terminate contracts and no longer interact with Perkins Coie, a law firm that worked with Democrats during the 2016 and 2020 presidential campaigns.

Howell handed down a temporary restraining order against , which cited Perkins Coie’s involvement , a compendium of rumors and unverified allegations that sparked a political firestorm when it became public just before Trump’s first inauguration, but has since been discredited.

Since taking office, Trump has targeted law firms that assisted the former special counsel **Jack Smith**’s aborted prosecutions of him, and dismissed government lawyers who were involved in the cases. Here’s more on that:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) has condemned Donald Trump’s comment that the Democratic Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer is “a Palestinian”.

“President Trump’s use of the term ‘Palestinian’ as a racial slur is offensive and beneath the dignity of his office. He should apologize to the Palestinian and American people,” said the Cair national executive director, **Nihad Awad**.

“It is the continuing dehumanization of the Palestinian people that has resulted in horrific hate crimes against Palestinian-Americans, the US-enabled genocide in Gaza, and decades of denial of Palestinian human rights by successive presidential administrations.”

Updated at 16.06 EDT
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