Donald Trump has announced he will target foreign films with a 100% tariff. The US president has also called for the reopening of the notorious Alcatraz prison, which shut in 1963, and – as ever – answered a smorgasbord of questions from journalists. Listen to Trump 100 as you scroll.
Monday 5 May 2025 23:00, UK
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After hailing it as the “most beautiful” word in the dictionary, Donald Trump has threatened more tariffs, this time on the film industry.
The US president said the country’s movie industry is “dying a very fast death” as he announced plans for a 100% tariff on non-US films.
He said they represent a “national security threat” when first mentioning the plans in a post on Truth Social.
But the White House poured cold water over Trump’s plan, insisting no final decisions have been made on foreign film tariffs.
Meanwhile, Trump doubled down on it when speaking later in the evening from the Oval Office.
Watch this report from our US correspondent Martha Kelner
He said the US film industry had been “decimated by other countries” as he added he will be meeting film officials because he wants “to make sure they’re happy with it”.
Trump also addressed another of his plans he announced over the weekend – which was to reopen Alcatraz prison that has been closed since 1963.
He said the prison represents “something very strong, very powerful in terms of law and order” before adding “we’ll see if we can bring it back in large form”.
Trump was also asked about a picture of him dressed up as the Pope which was shared on Truth Social and by the official White House account on X – take a look in our 19.30 post.
“I had nothing to do with it,” he told reporters.
“That’s not me that did it, I’ve got no idea where it came from, maybe it was AI.
“I know nothing about it… actually my wife thought it was cute.”
A group submitted a plan to Donald Trump about increasing domestic film production after meeting dozens of leading film and television organisations.
SP Media Group has said Hollywood ambassador Jon Voight and his special adviser Steven Paul held an in-person discussion at Mar-a-Lago.
Their proposal includes federal tax incentives, significant changes to several tax codes and establishing co-production treaties with foreign countries.
It also includes a focus on job training and tariffs in certain circumstances.
Watch: Trump says US film industry has been ‘decimated’
“We’ve spent months meeting with top leaders across the film and television industry, and there is broad agreement that runaway production has become a serious issue that needs to be addressed now,” said SP Media Group/Atlas Comics president Scott Karol.
“This plan is about levelling the playing field so that producing right here in America is not only a competitive option, but the first choice.”
The White House and its relevant policy advisers are reviewing the proposal.
Earlier, we told you Donald Trump was scheduled to meet Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina (see 16.06 post).
Karelina was released from a Russian prison last month after spending more than a year in custody after allegations of giving financial support to Ukraine’s military.
She was arrested in Russia in February last year and sentenced to 12 years in a penal colony after she donated $52 to a charity that sends aid to Ukraine.
The moment Karelina met Trump has now been shared by the White House…
An update to bring you on a major news line from last week after Donald Trump’s then-national security adviser Mike Waltz left his post.
Trump swiftly announced that US secretary of state Marco Rubio would be filling that role on an interim basis, and he has now held his first senior directors meeting at the national security council.
Our US partner network NBC News is reporting that Rubio told the group that the only staffing change right now is Waltz, with his team remaining in place.
According to a source, Rubio’s core message to the group was that “the mission continues”.
Sky News’ Yalda Hakim and NBC’s Richard Engel have covered world events for years. Now they’ve teamed up to share their experiences from the frontline.
The pair debrief from global flashpoints and discuss their encounters with the biggest decision-makers. They’re also joined by some of those key players to help make sense of world events.
From the war in Ukraine, to the conflict in the Middle East and Donald Trump’s second presidency, there is no better place for analysis and expertise.
New episodes from Richard and Yalda come out every Wednesday. This week,
Listen below – or click here to visit their YouTube channel where you can watch all the episodes.
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By David Blevins, Sky correspondent in Washington
If you didn’t know what Donald Trump’s team meant when they talked about “flooding the zone”, you do now.
He isn’t making news by the day, he’s making it by the hour, overwhelming the political sphere to saturation point.
In an interview with NBC News on Sunday morning, he was asked if he thought everyone in the US, citizens and non-citizens, was entitled to due process and replied: “I don’t know.”
When asked if he thought he had to uphold the constitution, again he replied: “I don’t know.”
A strange answer from a man who took the presidential oath in January, vowing to, among other things, “preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the United States.”
By Sunday evening, he was writing a new headline, vowing to re-open the infamous Alcatraz prison in San Francisco Bay to “house America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.”
But news moves faster than the Marine One helicopter, from which he later emerged at the White House to announce he was imposing a 100% tariff on all foreign movies.
We don’t have to guess the aim of this firehose of news. His former strategist Steve Bannon told us.
It was 2018 when he advised the MAGA faithful that the key to victory was to “flood the zone with s**t”, or to take so many simultaneous actions that their opponents are overwhelmed.
But there could be another reason for the plethora of lines coming from the president in the last 24 hours – deflection.
The last cargo to leave China before tariffs were imposed will arrive in the United States this week.
He will be keen to minimise scrutiny of the impending impact of his tariffs on prices and supply chains.
As Donald Trump announces plans for more tariffs, countries are still scrambling to work out how they can avoid them.
After being re-elected over the weekend, Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has said he had a “very warm and positive conversation” with Trump.
Australia was hit with the baseline 10% levy when Trump announced sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs at the start of last month on what he labelled as “Liberation Day”.
At the time, Albanese was critical of the measure, and described it as “totally unwarranted”.
But speaking after his re-election, Albanese told reporters that he and Trump would “continue to engage” on tariffs, and that “we will engage with each other on a face-to-face basis at some time in the future”.
Trump had previously said that Albanese, who took office in 2022, had been “very nice to me, very respectful to me” and that they have a “very good relationship”.
We’ve been bringing you reaction after Donald Trump announced plans to target films made outside the US in his latest tariffs move.
But our US correspondent Martha Kelner says there are “questions and concerns” over targeting the industry.
She points to shares in the likes of Disney, Netflix, and Paramount sliding (see 17.15 post) and says there are “questions about whether these tariffs would apply retroactively to films already in production”.
Watch as Kelner reports from Los Angeles
“For example, Sony Pictures has Spider-Man 4 which is being produced in the UK at the moment, would these tariffs apply to that production or not?
“Plenty of industry figures are saying that this will only result in fewer productions being made and more of a reliance on digital production techniques rather than boosting the industry here.”
Kelner wraps up by saying that Trump promised to make Hollywood “great again” but adds that there’s a degree of scepticism about whether the tariffs are the “magic stardust” that this industry in the US needs at the moment.
A Signal-like messaging app used by Donald Trump’s former national security adviser Mike Waltz has been temporarily suspended after a reported hack.
Pictures emerged last week showing Waltz – who has since been removed from his role – using the messaging app at a cabinet meeting.
In an email, Smarsh, which runs the TeleMessage app, said it was “investigating a potential security incident” and was suspending all its services “out of an abundance of caution”.
Watch: Waltz at cabinet meeting day before his ousting
Just as he steps away from the microphone at the end of his news conference, Donald Trump is asked about Israel’s plan to capture all of the Gaza Strip.
Benjamin Netanyahu has described that plan as intensive, with troops to remain there for an unspecified length of time.
You can read more on that in the story below.
Trump comes back to the podium and says “we’re going to help the people of Gaza get some food, people are starving”.
“We’re going to help the people of Gaza because they’re being treated very badly by Hamas,” he adds.
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