Thank you all for following the Guardian’s live blog. Here are some of the top stories of the day.
A judge has blocked pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation from the US. New York judge Jesse Furman issued the order on Monday after Donald Trump confirmed the arrest of the permanent US resident with a green card. A hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday.
The US senate on Monday confirmed Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as Donald Trump’s Labor secretary in a vote that drew rare bipartisan support and opposition. In a 67-32 vote, 17 Democrats joined most Republicans to support Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries rejected Republicans’ go-it-alone strategy to avert a government shutdown, saying Democrats would not back their plan to fund federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year.
Los Angeles district attorney Nathan Hochman says that he opposes the resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted for the 1989 killing of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez.
Today’s final numbers from Wall Street are out and the three main indices have continued to drop. The S&P 500 fell 2.7%, the Dow Jones dropped 2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 4% as investors sold shares in the so-called “magnificent seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla.
The US senate on Monday confirmed Lori Chavez-DeRemer to serve as Donald Trump’s Labor secretary in a vote that drew rare bipartisan support and opposition.
In a 67-32 vote, 17 Democrats joined most Republicans to support Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination. Three Republicans, including former Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell opposed her nomination, on the grounds that she was too pro-labor.
Trump’s choice of Chavez-DeRemer, a former congresswoman from Oregon whose father was a member of the Teamsters union, was seen as a nod to the support he drew from union households that were once a cornerstone of Democrats’ coalition.
Several prominent labor unions, including the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, endorsed her nomination.It made for a strange re-orientation, with pro-workers’ rights Democrats and anti-union Republicans questioning her relatively pro-labor record. Pressed on her past support for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act– the so-called Pro Act – during her confirmation hearing, she demurred: “I do not believe the secretary of labor should write the laws.”
Judge blocks pro-Palestinian activist's deportation
A judge has blocked pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s deportation from the US.
New York judge Jesse Furman issued the order on Monday after Donald Trump confirmed the arrest of the permanent US resident with a green card. A hearing has been scheduled for Wednesday.
Khalil was detained by Ice agents despite having a green card and therefore being a permanent US resident. Khalil’s attorney said Ice agents hung up the phone during the detention when she asked if they had a warrant.
Furman, an appointee of former president Barack Obama, said the government could not remove Khalil outside the state or the country until a ruling was made on the case.
Updated
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries rejected Republicans’ go-it-alone strategy to avert a government shutdown, saying Democrats would not back their plan to fund federal agencies through the rest of the fiscal year.
“It is not something we could ever support,” Jeffries told reporters on Capitol Hill. “House Democrats will not be complicit in the Republican effort to hurt the American people.
“The House Republican so-called spending bill does nothing to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Quite the opposite,” he said, adding that the bill would “quite dramatically” cut health benefits and nutritional assistance programs for children and American families.
Jeffries did not take questions and it remains unclear whether any House Democrats will support the GOP spending bill, which could come up for a vote as early as Tuesday. House Republicans hold a wafer-thin majority and can only afford to lose a handful of votes in order to pass the measure.
Congress must act by midnight on Friday to avoid a partial government shutdown.
Updated
Los Angeles district attorney Nathan Hochman says that he opposes the resentencing of Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were convicted for the 1989 killing of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez. In a press release on Monday, Hochman’s office said that after reviewing thousands of pages of records and transcripts and hundreds of hours of video, he found that the brothers lied during their testimony and tried to get others to lie on their behalf. Hochman said in a statement:
As a full examination of the record reveals, the Menendez brothers have never come clean and admitted that they lied about their self-defense … The Court must consider such lack of full insight and lack of acceptance of responsibility for their murderous actions in deciding whether the Menendez brothers pose an unreasonable risk of danger to the community.
The brothers were sentenced for the killings in 1996 and sentenced to life sentences without the possibility of parole.
Read the rest of Hochman’s rationale here.
Updated
Protests are underway in New York following the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia University’s pro-Palestinian protests last year. Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card who is a recent Columbia graduate, was arrested over the weekend by immigration authorities.
Updated
Wall Street suffers major losses as fears grow over Trump tariff effect
Today’s final numbers from Wall Street are out and the three main indices have continued to drop. The S&P 500 fell 2.7%, the Dow Jones dropped 2%, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 4% as investors sold shares in the so-called “magnificent seven” – Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Nvidia and Tesla. Tesla’s shares had their worst day since September 2020, falling 15%.
The fall came a day after Trump skirted around questions about a potential recession on Sunday. Asked if he expected a recession, Trump said: “There is a period of transition, because what we’re doing is very big … It takes a little time, but I think it should be great for us.”
Kevin Hassett, the head of the national economic council, told CNBC on Monday that any uncertainty around Trump’s trade policies would be resolved by early April and that the policies were “creating jobs in the US”.
Updated
We’re about 10 minutes away from the market’s close and things are not looking good on Wall Street.
Traders have been rattled for days by fears that Donald Trump’s tariffs against China, Canada and Mexico, and vow to impose “reciprocal” levies against countries worldwide next month, will send the US economy into recession.
The terror has been particularly bad today, leading to steep sell offs in the three main indices. The broad-based S&P 500 is currently down 2.5%, while the benchmark Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost 1.9%. Over at the tech-heavy Nasdaq, the bleeding has resulted in a 4% loss.
Needless to say, this is not what a president who touts the stock market as a barometer of their economic success would like to see.
Updated
Trump administration revokes security clearances for Democratic officials and critics
National intelligence director Tulsi Gabbard has announced that she has revoked the security clearances of several former members of Joe Biden’s administration, as well as critics of Donald Trump.
“Per @POTUS directive, I have revoked security clearances and barred access to classified information for Antony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Lisa Monaco, Mark Zaid, Norman Eisen, Letitia James, Alvin Bragg, and Andrew Weissman, along with the 51 signers of the Hunter Biden ‘disinformation’ letter. The President’s Daily Brief is no longer being provided to former President Biden,” Gabbard wrote on X.
The decision to revoke the security clearance of Blinken, the former secretary of state, appears to have been announced last month. Trump earlier withdrew the clearances of Biden and former joint chiefs of staff chairman Mark Milley.
Beyond the Biden administration, Gabbard targeted James, who has pursued a civil fraud suit against the Trump Organization, and Manhattan district attorney Bragg, who successfully prosecuted the president on felony business fraud charges.
Updated
A former top social security administration official accused Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” of lying about alleged fraud discovered in the agency, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:
A former chief of staff at the US Social Security Administration (SSA) described how agents of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) – Elon Musk’s government cost-cutting operation – were imposed on the agency, assailing senior staff with questions “based on the general myth of supposed widespread fraud” and acting with dangerous disregard for data confidentiality.
In a declaration filed with a lawsuit on Friday and referring to the Doge agents Mike Russo and Akash Bobba, Tiffany Flick said: “We proposed briefings to help Mr Russo and Mr Bobba understand the many measures the agency takes to help ensure the accuracy of benefit payments, including those measures that help ensure we are not paying benefits to deceased individuals.
“However, Mr Russo seemed completely focused on questions … based on the general myth of supposed widespread social security fraud, rather than facts.”
Flick also said she was “not confident” Doge agents had “the requisite knowledge and training to prevent sensitive information from being inadvertently transferred to bad actors”, given its agents have “never been vetted by SSA or trained on SSA data, systems or programs”.
“In such a chaotic environment, the risk of data leaking into the wrong hands is significant,” Flick said.
ACLU warns pro-Palestinian activist's arrest meant 'to intimidate and chill speech'
The Trump administration’s decision to have immigration authorities arrest pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil for alleged support of Hamas is an attack on free speech, the American Civil Liberties Union warned.
“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American,” said Ben Wizner, director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project.
“The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the U.S. and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes. To be clear: the first amendment protects everyone in the US. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate. The government must immediately return Mr Khalil to New York, release him back to his family and reverse course on this discriminatory policy.”
Updated
Activists were arrested while disrupting the CERAWeek fossil fuel conference on Monday, chanting “people over profit”.
The protesters blocked the street outside the conference hotel in Houston, where energy secretary Chris Wright and top brass from energy companies including Shell and Exxon spoke on Monday.
Among those arrested was local organizer Yvette Arellano of Texas environmental justice group Fenceline Watch.
“Human rights, not sacrifice,” she chanted as the police escorted her away.
Updated
As the CERAWeek oil and gas conference convened fossil fuel bigwigs in Houston on Monday, hundreds of activists staged a protest down the street.
“We need clean air, not another billionaire,” they chanted.
Among the featured speakers at the rally was Yvette Arellano, founder and director of Fenceline Watch, a Houston-based environmental justice organization. Last year, she was barred from attending CERAWeek despite raising $8,500 for a ticket.
“Unfettered” fossil fuel expansion, she said, is taking a toll on the climate while polluting vulnerable communities in Texas and beyond.
“It’s our communities that are being harmed,” she said.
Other activists hail from communities as far flung as Appalachia and the Standing Rock Indigenous reservation in North Dakota.
A story to watch this week is Congress’s scramble to pass spending legislation and avert a shutdown that will begin Friday at midnight. These things often come down to the wire, but the Guardian’s Joseph Gedeon reports that Donald Trump is on board with the House GOP’s proposal to keep the government open. Whether enough of their lawmakers are remains to be seen:
Republican lawmakers are scrambling to avert a government shutdown set to begin on Saturday, with Donald Trump’s backing for a temporary funding measure having suddenly silenced the usual conservative opposition.
The stopgap funding bill, known as a continuing resolution (CR), would maintain government operations at current funding levels through 30 September, the end of the fiscal year. Republican US House speaker Mike Johnson said he plans to hold a procedural vote on Monday, aiming for a passage vote on Tuesday before sending lawmakers home for recess.
Trump instructed reluctant fellow Republicans to fall in line behind the stopgap bill that would fund the government through September. “All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week,” the president wrote on Saturday on his Truth Social platform.
Maryam Alwan, a Palestinian American senior at Columbia who has protested alongside Mahmoud Khalil, told Reuters she was “horrified for my dear friend Mahmoud, who is a legal resident, and I am horrified that this is only the beginning”.
Columbia issued a revised protocol for how students and school staff should deal with federal immigration agents seeking to enter private school property, Reuters reports, saying they could enter without a judicial arrest warrant in “exigent circumstances”, which it did not specify.
“By allowing ICE on campus, Columbia is surrendering to the Trump administration’s assault on universities across the country and sacrificing international students to protect its finances,” the Student Workers of Columbia said in a statement.
Updated
The move to arrest and detain Palestinian student activist Mahmoud Khalil comes after the Trump administration announced last week that it would revoke about $400m in federal grants and contracts from Columbia University.
The Trump administration alleges that the university has not done enough to stop antisemitism on campus.
“Universities must comply with all federal antidiscrimination laws if they are going to receive federal funding. For too long, Columbia has abandoned that obligation to Jewish students studying on its campus,” education secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement on Friday.
Updated
Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest is the first publicly known deportation effort under Trump’s promised crackdown on students who joined protests against the war in Gaza that swept college campuses last spring, the Associated Press reported Sunday.
The Trump administration has claimed participants forfeited their rights to remain in the country by supporting Hamas.
Updated
‘Reeks of McCarthyism’: outrage after Ice detains Palestinian student activist
Before Trump addressed Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest, free speech organizations and advocates are expressing outrage over his detention over the weekend.
Khalil, a permanent US resident with a green card, was taken into custody by federal immigration authorities on Saturday night, who reportedly said that they were acting on a state department order to revoke his green card.
Read the full story:
Trump confirms arrest and detention of Palestinian activist: 'the first arrest of many to come'
In a post on Truth Social, president Donald Trump confirmed the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Palestinian activist and permanent US resident with a green card.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump said.
The president said Ice took Khalil, who led protests at Columbia University during his time as a student there, into custody after his executive order and claimed, without evidence, that similar activists on college campuses are paid agitators, not students.
Here’s the text of Trump’s full post:
Following my previously signed Executive Orders, ICE proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University. This is the first arrest of many to come. We know there are more students at Columbia and other Universities across the Country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity, and the Trump Administration will not tolerate it. Many are not students, they are paid agitators. We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again. If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply. Thank you!
Updated
Ontario imposes tax on power exports to three US states in retaliation for tariffs
Ontario premier Doug Ford announced a 25% tax on exports of electricity to New York, Minnesota and Michigan in retaliation for the tariffs Donald Trump imposed on Canada last week, the Associated Press reports.
Trump has since exempted many Canadian products from the 25% levies, but Ford refused to back down and warned he may increase the surcharge or even cut off electricity exports entirely if the United States escalates its tariffs.
Here’s more, from the AP:
“I will not hesitate to increase this charge. If the United State escalates, I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference in Toronto.
“Believe me when I say I do not want to do this. I feel terrible for the American people who didn’t start this trade war. It’s one person who is responsible, it’s President Trump.”
Ford said Ontario’s tariff would remain in place despite the one-month reprieve from Trump, noting a one-month pause means nothing but more uncertainty. Quebec is also considering taking similar measures with electricity exports to the U.S.
Ford’s office said the new market rules require any generator selling electricity to the U.S. to add a 25% surcharge. Ontario’s government expects it to generate revenue of $300,000 Canadian dollars ($208,000) to CA$400,000 ($277,000) per day, “which will be used to support Ontario workers, families and businesses.”
The new surcharge is in addition to the federal government’s initial CA$30 billion ($21 billion) worth of retaliatory tariffs have been applied on items like American orange juice, peanut butter, coffee, appliances, footwear, cosmetics, motorcycles and certain pulp and paper products.
The day so far
Secretary of state Marco Rubio announced that USAid had cancelled the majority of its programs, while the rest will be folded into the state department. The decision was reportedly made early, and after many of the shuttered aid agency’s partners believed they had more time to request to preserve their programs. It was also met with approval from Elon Musk, after reports emerged last week that he squabbled with Rubio at a cabinet meeting attended by Donald Trump. Meanwhile, the arrest of pro-Palestinian activist and US green card holder Mahmoud Khalil by immigration agents has sparked concerns that the Trump administration is looking to retaliate against speech it does not approve of. The homeland security department said Khalil’s detention was in line with an executive order targeting “activities aligned to Hamas”.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
Wall Street fell significantly as traders grew concerned over the possibility that Trump’s trade war will send the US economy into a recession.
A top state department official has a history of insulting his boss in social media posts, among many other questionable statements.
Trump will sign more executive orders at 3pm, though the White House did not say what they will concern.
Ihan Omar, a Democratic congresswoman and critic of Israel, had this to say about news that pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil had been arrested:
Utterly outrageous. This is un-American.
The forced disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil for nothing more than constitutionally protected speech is a clear assault on first amendment rights and a blatant act of authoritarianism.
Khalil must be released.
The Trump administration has been quick to highlight arrests of suspected undocumented immigrants by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement. But, as the Guardian’s Marina Dunbar reports, not everyone they arrest is in the country illegally:
A Virginia man who was detained by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents despite being an American citizen says he is reconsidering his support for Donald Trump in his triumphant 2024 presidential election campaign.
Jensy Machado, a naturalized US citizen, said he was in a car when he was stopped by Ice agents while on his way to work in Manassas, Virginia, where a large-scale immigration enforcement operation was recently taking place after Trump took office for a second time in January following repeated campaign promises of mass deportations.
“They just got out of the car with the guns in their hands and say: ‘Turn off the car, give me the keys, open the window,’ you know. Everything was really fast,” the 38-year-old Machado told the news stations Telemundo 44 and NBC 4 Washington.
Machado was driving to work with two other men when Ice suddenly stopped him near his home. Agents brandishing guns surrounded his truck.
“I was a Trump supporter,” he said on Wednesday. “I voted for Trump last election, but, because I thought it was going to be like ... against criminals, not every Hispanic, Spanish-lookalike.”
According to Machado, the agents told him the name of a man who had a deportation order and had given Machado’s home address. He responded by telling the agents that man’s name wasn’t his – and offered to show them his Virginia driver’s license.
But he says that the agents did not ask to see his ID. Instead, they ordered him to leave his car, and they placed handcuffs on him. An agent then asked Machado how he got into the country.
The homeland security department has confirmed that pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest was related to an executive order signed by Donald Trump that is intended to crack down on “activities aligned to Hamas”.
In response, IfNotNow, an association of American Jews opposed to Israel’s policy towards Palestinians, said Khalil’s arrest amounted to an “abduction”:
This weekend, the Trump administration abducted and disappeared Palestinian Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who holds a green card, for protesting the Israeli military’s genocidal assault on his people. Plainclothes DHS agents seized Mahmoud as he was returning home with his wife, who is eight months pregnant, and is reportedly holding him in a detention center in Louisiana. This attack, which most acutely targets Palestinian students and advocates for Palestinian rights, also enables Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power against his political opponents.
It is utterly despicable that they are carrying out this authoritarian lurch under the guise of fighting for Jewish safety. Let’s be perfectly clear: not only does destroying higher education and abducting students for political speech not keep Jews safe, it actively endangers us. Laying waste to our democracy and people’s lives in the name of protecting Jews will inevitably foster resentment of us and only grow the antisemitic threats we face.
Here’s more on what we know about Khalil’s arrest:
Donald Trump’s decision to cut back on assistance to Ukraine – including military aid and intelligence sharing that Kyiv has relied on for its defense – is not sitting well with everyone in his party.
From the Capitol, Nebraska congressman Don Bacon told CNN that Trump was turning his back on the United States’s promise as a protector of freedom globally:
We were the leader of the free world, but it appears to many leaders and people all over, to include Republicans in Nebraska, that this administration is walking away from that legacy that was built by Ike Eisenhower and all these presidents and really a capstone of Ronald Reagan peace through strength and building these close alliances, and we are undermining that legacy right now.
I’m not interested in a foreign policy that is totally built on realism or transactionalism, where it’s just what do we have in it for us. I believe in having a foreign policy that’s a mix of realism, protecting our country, and idealism, where we’re the leaders standing for freedom, free markets, rule of law, and … we got to be clear eyed, but also have moral clarity.
Zelenskyy arrives in Saudi Arabia as US expects 'substantial progress' in Ukraine talks
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has arrived in Saudi Arabia for negotiations that could pave the way for a minerals deal sought by the United States, which last week cut off aid and intelligence sharing Ukraine relies on to fend off the Russian invasion.
Earlier in the day, Steve Witkoff, Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy, said he expected “substantial progress” in the talks, which he said would be aimed at securing “a framework for a peace agreement and an initial ceasefire”.
We have a separate live blog covering this fast-moving story, and you can follow it here:
Donald Trump’s dismantling of USAid will strike a sharp blow to efforts to confront the climate crisis, the Guardian’s Fiona Harvey reports:
Donald Trump’s withdrawal of US overseas aid will almost decimate global climate finance from the developed world, data shows, with potentially devastating impacts on vulnerable nations.
The US was responsible last year for about $8 in every $100 that flowed from the rich world to developing countries, to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions and cope with the impacts of extreme weather, according to data from the analyst organisation Carbon Brief.
About $11bn was spent last year, and a similar amount would have been spent by the US on climate finance this year under a continuation of Joe Biden’s plans, the analysis found.
But among the first actions of Trump on resuming the US presidency, in a turbulent two months, have been to withdraw the US from the Paris climate agreement, and to eviscerate overseas aid efforts, of which climate finance is a part.
The White House has halted much of the funding to USAid, the government’s overseas aid agency that provides about a third of US climate finance, and contributions to the international Green Climate Fund and the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage.
Tariff fears spark Wall Street sell off
US stock indices are dropping in early morning trading as Wall Street fears Donald Trump’s trade war against major US partners and vows to impose further tariffs beginning next month will spark a recession.
As of the time of this post, the broad-based S&P 500 was down 1.7%, and the tech-rich Nasdaq had dropped 2.7%. Both indices had fallen throughout last week, after Trump imposed tariffs on Canada and Mexico and doubled them on China, though he later relaxed the levies on the United States’s neighbors.
We have a live blog covering the latest in business news, and you can read it here:
Meanwhile, CNN reports that a top state department official was hired despite having a history of insulting his boss, secretary of state Marco Rubio.
Darren Beattie, the acting under secretary of state for public diplomacy, deleted tweets calling Rubio “low IQ”, among other disparagements. Beattie has a history of offensive social media comments, and was removed from his job as a White House speechwriter in 2018 after he attended a conference of white nationalists.
He’s nonetheless back in the second Trump administration. Here’s what he once thought of Rubio:
In a now-deleted tweet on January 7, 2021, Beattie invoked far-right conspiracy theories about Rubio’s past, referencing “Wainwright Park” — a curfew violation from Rubio’s teenage years that was later twisted into baseless speculation that Rubio is gay — and “foam,” a reference to similarly unfounded claims about Rubio attending foam parties at gay nightclubs.
“Forget Wainwright park, forget the foam, forget the war promotion and the neocon sugar daddies, forget the low IQ, forget the 2016 primary, Rubio is TOUGH ON CHINA (and good for military industrial complex) So be a good DOG and vote for him!!!” Beattie wrote.
A follow-up tweet about Rubio said, “What happens in the Cabana stays in the Cabana #Rubio.”
Beattie followed up his tweet with one that mocked what he perceived as Rubio’s attempt to rebrand himself as a nationalist, while sarcastically saying he supported tax credits for Black Lives Matter and criticizing his hawkish rhetoric on China.
“If a bunch of DC wonks try to reinvent Marco Rubio as a nationalist, but a ‘respectable’ one who promises tax credits to BLM supporters and is “TOUGH ON CHINA” will you be a good dog and vote for him?” the tweet said.
“Does Marco Rubio have a future in politics?” Beattie asked in another deleted tweet.
Beattie deleted three other tweets from July 23, 2020, that called efforts to rebrand Rubio a nationalist a “scam,” “nonsense” and “fake.”
“The idea behind the Hawley/Rubio scam is this. They are smart enough to know the rebranded neoconservatism of Nikki Haley and Crenshaw has no legs. Also smart enough to know free-market libertarianism has no legs,” Beattie wrote.
The Bulwark has more reporting on Marco Rubio’s announcement that most of USAid’s programs had been canceled, including that the decision appears to have been made earlier than expected:
State officials had actually been notified last week that agencies and partners had until March 12 (i.e., Wednesday) to submit forms to the Office of Foreign Assistance for the foreign aid review process. USAID was operating on that timeline, though through a parallel review track. “The Office of Foreign Assistance (F) will coordinate Department of State responses to OMB,” read the email reviewed by The Bulwark.
A source familiar with the matter said the forms that they were being asked to submit involved numerous questions that had to be filled out for “every single partner.” Some people were simultaneously working through official channels to get previously canceled USAID awards un-terminated as of Friday.
But two days before the March 12 deadline, Rubio announced the review was over: 5,200 contracts were cancelled, and “in consultation with Congress,” he wrote, the administration intends “for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.”
Elon Musk responded to Marco Rubio’s announcement of major cuts to USAid, and wrote:
Tough, but necessary. Good working with you.
The important parts of USAID should always have been with Dept of State.
Last week, it was reported that Rubio and Musk argued in front of Donald Trump during a meeting of cabinet secretaries, which the president denied. Nonetheless, the Tesla billionaire and chair of the “department of government efficiency” has made a point of publicly complimenting Rubio.
Rubio announces cancellation of most USAid programs
Secretary of state Marco Rubio has announced that USAid will cancel the majority of its programs, while the rest will be folded into the state department.
Writing on X, Rubio said:
After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID.
The 5200 contracts that are now cancelled spent tens of billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the core national interests of the United States.
In consultation with Congress, we intend for the remaining 18% of programs we are keeping (approximately 1000) to now be administered more effectively under the State Department.
Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform.
It’s unclear what impact the decision will have on a federal judge’s deadline today for the dismantled aid agency to pay $2b in bills:
Updated
Speaking of executive orders, the White House says Donald Trump will sign more, unspecified measures at 3pm ET.
Also on the president’s agenda today is a 2pm meeting with tech company CEOs, and a swearing in for the new Secret Service director at 5pm.
Ice arrests Palestinian activist after Trump executive order
Immigration agents have taken into custody Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist who as a student at Columbia University was a leader of protests against Israel’s invasion of Gaza.
The arrest comes after Donald Trump signed an executive order shortly after taking office that is intended to revoke the visas of students who take part in pro-Palestinian activity. But Khalil is a green card holder, and his lawyer is expected to challenge his arrest, while fellow activists are outraged at what they see as the Trump administration retaliating against him for his speech.
Here’s more on his arrest:
US Secret Service shoots armed man near White House after confrontation
An armed man believed to be traveling from Indiana was shot by US Secret Service agents near the White House after a confrontation early Sunday – while Donald Trump was out of town, according to authorities.
No one else was injured in the shooting that happened around midnight about a block from the White House, according to a Secret Service statement. The president was in Florida at the time of the shooting.
The Secret Service received information from local police about an alleged “suicidal individual” who was traveling from Indiana and found the man’s car and a person matching his description nearby.
“As officers approached, the individual brandished a firearm and an armed confrontation ensued, during which shots were fired by our personnel,” the Secret Service said in a statement.
The man was hospitalized. The Secret Service said his condition was “unknown”.
The Metropolitan police department will investigate because the shooting involved law enforcement officers. The police department declined to provide more details.
When Wyoming legislators in 2022 passed a law banning trans girls from competing in middle and high school girls’ sports, the Cowboy State, by its governor’s own estimate, had a grand total of four transgender student athletes competing within its boundaries.
Still, in this year’s legislative session, which wrapped up on Friday, trans athletes were again a focus of lawmakers. They introduced bills to extend the ban on trans women in athletics to intercollegiate sports and ban universities from competing against teams with trans women.
Lawmakers also proposed legislation requiring public facilities from restrooms to sleeping quarters to correspond with assigned sex at birth, restrooms in public schools to have exclusive use designations by assigned sex at birth, prohibiting the state from requiring the use of preferred pronouns, and establishing legal definitions for “biological sex”, “man” and “woman”.
Five of the seven bills made it through the legislature. The volume of proposals spotlights the new conservative vision of the role of government emerging in the state, as well as the Republican divisions on the issue.
Debate on trans-focused bills isn’t new to this legislative session. In 2022, Mark Gordon, Wyoming’s governor, described the state’s trans sports bill as “draconian” but still let it pass into law. Last year, 10 bills were introduced on the topic, and the legislature enacted a ban on gender affirming care for minors.
Major Alzheimer’s disease research centers across the country face a $65m funding gap amid a Trump administration-imposed delay, with at least one struggling to retain highly trained staff.
Although courts have ruled a government-wide funding freeze is illegal, the administration has managed to delay research funding by canceling scientific meetings and failing to publish forthcoming meetings in the Federal Register, both which are legally required.
“The applicants know what their scores are, they know if their scores are really good they’re very, very likely to be funded, but now they can’t be funded because the advisory councils haven’t met,” said Jeremy Berg, a former director of the National Institute of General Medicine Sciences.
As the Trump administration seeks to reshape government and cut costs in line with its priorities, scientific institutions, and in particular the $48bn-budgeted National Institutes of Health (NIH), have come under attack.
Funding delays have affected nearly every research field, from pediatric cancer to dementia, as part of a multi-pronged strategy of draconian cuts. Government cost-cutting measures come ahead of an expected push to extend Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which overwhelmingly enriched the wealthy.
A radical makeover at the US department of justice has seen key drives to fight corruption hamstrung in ways that could benefit US businesses operating abroad and foreign kleptocrats, including some Russian oligarchs.
The moves have sparked sharp criticism by former US prosecutors, transparency experts and top Democrats, who warn that the moves to cut back on anti-corruption efforts is a huge setback for American efforts to clean up global business practices and tackle the power of oligarchs and of authoritarian rulers.
Donald Trump’s US attorney general Pam Bondi – long an ally of the president – has moved fast to halt enforcement actions for six months under the 1977 Foreign Corrupt Practices Act that bars bribes by US businesses to win overseas deals, which some American firms have long charged gives certain foreign firms a competitive edge.
Trump sounded bullish while signing an executive order in February to halt the department’s FCPA investigations for six months to review policy guidelines. “It’s going to mean a lot more business for America,” Trump boasted, to the dismay of critics.
In another fast foreign shift at the DoJ, a Bondi memo last month indicated that two units aimed at fighting kleptocracy – including some major Russian oligarchs – were being disbanded with some lawyers redeployed to focus on new priorities involving fighting drug cartels and transnational crime.
US added to international watchlist for rapid decline in civic freedoms
The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms.
Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia.
The watchlist is part of the Civicus Monitor, which tracks developments in civic freedoms across 198 countries. Other countries that have previously been featured on the watchlist in recent years include Zimbabwe, Argentina, El Salvador and the United Arab Emirates.
Mandeep Tiwana, co-secretary general of Civicus, said that the watchlist “looks at countries where we remain concerned about deteriorating civic space conditions, in relation to freedoms of peaceful assembly, association and expression”.
The selection process, the website states, incorporates insights and data from Civicus’s global network of research partners and data.
The decision to add the US to the first 2025 watchlist was made in response to what the group described as the “Trump administration’s assault on democratic norms and global cooperation”.
Donald Trump has not treated Greenlanders with respect since expressing his renewed interest in acquiring the vast, mineral-rich Arctic island, Greenland’s prime minister was quoted on Monday as saying.
Trump reiterated his interest in acquiring the island during his address to Congress last Tuesday, painting a picture of prosperity and safety for the “incredible people” of Greenland, an autonomous territory of the kingdom of Denmark, Reuters reported.
Trump reaffirmed that message in a Truth Social post early on Monday, writing: “We will continue to keep you safe, as we have since World War II. We are ready to invest billions of dollars to create new jobs and make you rich.”
Greenland’s prime minister, Mute Egede, told Danish public broadcaster DR in an interview aired on Monday: “We deserve to be treated with respect, and I don’t think the US president has done that recently since he took office.”
“I think that the recent things the American president has been doing means that people don’t want to get as close to (the US) as they might have wanted in the past,” he added.
“We need to draw a line in the sand and put more effort into (cultivating relations with) the countries that show us respect for the future we want to build,” said Egede, in comments aired a day before Greenland holds a general election.
Egede has repeatedly said that Greenland, whose population is only 57,000, belongs to its people and that it should decide on its own future. He supports full independence for Greenland.
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Republican lawmakers warn Trump tariffs hurting US business
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and will be bringing you the latest news over the next few hours.
We start with news that Republicans are growing concerned that Donald Trump’s tariffs are hurting the US economy, with constituents telling them they are struggling financially.
Business owners, exporters and farmers have told lawmakers that Trump’s expanding trade war and threat of steep tariffs against Canada, Mexico and Europe are having a direct impact on business in the US, The Hill reports.
“The Canadian tariffs will definitely have a detrimental impact on the economy of Maine and on border communities in particular,” said Senator Susan Collins. “We have for example a major paper mill in northern Maine right on the border that gets its pulp from Canada.”
“That mill alone, which is by far the biggest employer in the region, employs 510 people directly. I’ve talked to the owner of that mill, the imposition of a 25% tariff could be devastating,” she added.
“I have every major industry in Kentucky lobbying me against them; the cargo shippers, the farmers, the bourbon manufacturers, the home-builders, the home sellers – you name it – fence manufacturers,” senator Rand Paul told The Hill.
“The bourbon industry says they’re still hurt from the retaliatory tariffs” during Trump’s first term, he said. “So do the farmers.”
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