JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
It's the first full day in office for President Trump, and he's been spending time on some of his biggest priorities, working with congressional Republicans on a legislative plan to cut taxes and cut government spending, and meeting with tech leaders who talked about a big investment that they're making. For more, we are joined now by NPR senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith. Hi there.
TAMARA KEITH, BYLINE: Hi.
SUMMERS: Tam, let's just start with that investment. What can you tell us?
KEITH: Yeah. There were three executives with Trump at the White House for this announcement - Masayoshi Son of SoftBank, Sam Altman of OpenAI and Larry Ellison of Oracle. They announced the creation of a new company called Stargate. It will build new AI infrastructure, so massive data centers. And they said it will be a $100 billion investment right out of the gate and up to 500 billion over the next four years. Here's Trump.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Creating over 100,000 American jobs almost immediately. This monumental undertaking is a resounding declaration of confidence in America's potential under a new president. Let me be - a new president - I didn't say it. They did.
KEITH: The business leaders did credit Trump with making this happen, getting this built in America. Son even echoed Trump's language about it being a golden age for America. But it is not clear how many of those jobs will be short-term construction jobs or more durable.
SUMMERS: Now, didn't Trump make another announcement with the CEO of SoftBank just last month?
KEITH: He did. It was at Mara-a-Lago. They announced $100 billion investment in the U.S. And it wasn't entirely clear from their remarks today whether this is part of that or something separate. Larry Ellison said that the first 10 data centers that are part of this deal are already under construction in Texas, and that kind of thing doesn't happen overnight. Trump, when he was president before, was known for bringing in executives for big, splashy announcements, and it appears that it has resumed with this.
SUMMERS: OK. And we know that Trump was also holding meetings with congressional leaders. Did anything come out of those sessions?
KEITH: Well, you know, to follow through on some of the biggest campaign promises, Trump is going to need help from Congress, which is narrowly controlled by Republicans. He wants to extend and expand tax cuts passed during his first term, and he needs a whole lot of funding and other policy changes to fully enact his immigration agenda. In the meeting today with GOP leaders, they settled on a path forward, a tactical plan. My colleague Deirdre Walsh reports that they agreed to move his agenda in one big bill. And Trump said this afternoon that he thinks he's going to be able to get it done more easily now by connecting it with disaster relief funding for the California wildfires. He figures Democrats want disaster funding so badly, they could vote for it.
SUMMERS: OK, last thing before we let you go - we know that President Trump has signed stacks and stacks of executive actions, a lot of action there. Has the dust started to settle? What do we know about those?
KEITH: Yeah, not really - White House officials are still just getting their email accounts set up. And as you might expect with this much activity, there are a lot of unanswered questions about how some of his orders and proclamations will actually be implemented. It is very likely that Trump signs even more orders this week. We've already seen websites come down for programs that Trump ended by executive action, and there's a new site for the Department of Government Efficiency, which just has an image of a cartoon dog and a golden dollar sign with the slogan - the people voted for major reform. And this is certainly a period of major and sudden change.
SUMMERS: That is NPR's Tamara Keith. Thanks as always.
KEITH: You're welcome. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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