LOS ANGELES – President Donald Trump is expected to announce a “massive” new infrastructure initiative on his first full day in office, the White House said on Tuesday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt teased the announcement during an interview on “FOX & Friends” on Tuesday morning. She said Trump will hold an event at 4 p.m. ET to detail the initiative.
Building on Biden’s bill
The backstory:
As a candidate in 2016, Trump promised to push a $1 trillion infrastructure bill through Congress. He talked about the topic as president often during his first term from 2017 to 2021, but it did not come to fruition.
Former President Joe Biden signed a $1 trillion infrastructure bill into law in 2021 with Republican and Democrat lawmakers to fund thousands of projects to rebuild roads and bridges and fund new climate resilience and broadband initiatives.
The second Trump administration and the new Congress will have opportunities to put their stamp on the infrastructure law Biden passed. Agency officials will be able to award tens of billions of dollars in remaining competitive grants, Brookings Institution said in a blog in November.
AI and firings
The president announced on his Truth social account that he would be firing more than 1,000 presidential appointees “who are not aligned with our vision,” including some high-profile names.
Trump fired chef and humanitarian Jose Andres from the President’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition, retired Gen. Mark Milley from the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, former State Department official Brian Hook from the board of the Wilson Center and former Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms from the President’s Export Council.
Biden also removed many Trump appointees in his first days in office, including former press secretary Sean Spicer from the board overseeing the U.S. Naval Academy.
Trump also planned to announce a new partnership to invest in artificial intelligence on Tuesday.
Three major business leaders — SoftBank Group CEO Masayoshi Son, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Oracle Corp. Chairman Larry Ellison — were scheduled to join Trump in the afternoon to announce the creation of a new company called Stargate, which would invest up to $500 billion over the next four years in AI infrastructure, according to the White House.
Stargate intends to start building the project in Texas.
The Source: Information for this article was gathered from FOX Business and The Associated Press. This story was reported from Los Angeles.