Closing Summary
We are now closing the US politics blog. Here is a summary of events today:
The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, just weeks after a January fatal mid-air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National airport, the Associated Press reported. Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails on Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.
The US federal tax collection agency is reportedly preparing to give a team member of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which has already gutted several federal agencies and sparked multiple lawsuits, access to personal taxpayer data.
Donald Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to approve the firing of the head of a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers in the first appeal of Trump’s new term and a key test of his battle with the judicial branch. Hampton Dellinger, the head of the office of the special counsel (OSC), is among the fired government watchdogs who have sued the Trump administration, arguing that their dismissals were illegal and that they should be reinstated.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and special envoy Steve Witkoff will meet with a Russian delegation in Riyadh on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy advisor to president Vladimir Putin, were flying to Riyadh on Monday.
Meetings between United States and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday should not be seen as a “negotiation” on Ukraine, a US state department spokesperson said, Agence France-Presse reported.
Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, told reporters at Nato headquarters in Brussels that no one will impose a peace deal on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and that he and the people of Ukraine would make that call.
French president Emmanuel Macron called leaders from key European Union nations and the United Kingdom to the Elysee Palace for an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss how to deal with the Trump administration and step up plans to increase defence spending.
Donald Trump will nominate his top prosecutor in Washington, Edward Martin, for a full and permanent term as US attorney for the District of Columbia, Trump said on social media on Monday, Reuters reported. Martin is already in the role in an interim capacity. His nomination will need to be approved by the Senate.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer is expected to meet with Donald Trump next week, Reuters reported, citing the prime minister’s spokesman.
US energy secretary Chris Wright described commitments to achieve net zero carbon emmissions by 2050 as a “sinister goal” and criticised the UK government’s attempts to hit clean energy targets.
The Kremlin said a US citizen briefly detained at a Moscow airport for allegedly travelling into Russia with cannabis-laced gummy sweets had been released ahead of Tuesday’s talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at improving ties, Agence France-Presse reported.
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Net zero emissions by 2050 a 'sinister goal' - US energy secretary
US energy secretary Chris Wright described commitments to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 as a “sinister goal” and criticised the UK government’s attempts to hit clean energy targets.
“Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It’s a terrible goal,” Wright said, speaking via video link at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference held in London.
“The aggressive pursuit of it – and you’re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal – has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous costs.”
Wright also said his number one priority was for the government to “get out of the way” of the production of oil, gas and coal, Reuters reports.
Donald Trump’s administration said on Friday it had granted a liquefied natural gas export license to the Commonwealth LNG project in Louisiana, the first approval of LNG exports after Biden paused them early last year.
“We ended the pause and approved the Commonwealth LNG export terminal last Friday, and many more in the queue,” Wright said.
“The world simply runs on hydrocarbons and for most of their uses we don’t have replacements.”
On net zero, he took particular aim at the UK, saying its pursuit of a decarbonised energy system – which the current UK government wants to reach by 2030 – had damaged living standards and exported emissions elsewhere in the world.
“No one’s going to make an energy-intensive product in the United Kingdom any more. It’s just been displaced somewhere else,” he said.
“This is not energy transition. This is lunacy. This is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place.”
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Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, told reporters at Nato headquarters in Brussels on Monday that no one will impose a peace deal on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and that he and the people of Ukraine would make that call.
He said a trip to Ukraine is still being finalised and said that he would meet with Zelenskyy, Reuters reports.
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The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was meeting on Monday with Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the state department said, during the top diplomat’s first Middle East tour.
The meeting in Riyadh began just before 6pm (15.00 GMT), a state department official said.
Rubio was expected to discuss Donald Trump’s widely criticised plan for the United State to take control of the Gaza Strip and move its Palestinian inhabitants elsewhere, Reuters reports.
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We have a further report on the IRS story from earlier (see post 11.31), from my colleague Edward Helmore in New York.
The US federal tax collection agency is reportedly preparing to give a team member of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which has already gutted several federal agencies and sparked multiple lawsuits, access to personal taxpayer data.
The New York Times and the Washington Post both reported early on Monday that the Internal Revenue Service had received a request for access to a classified system that contains sensitive personal financial records.
The request, which is reportedly under review, would give Doge officials “broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets, including tax returns”.
One of these, the integrated data retrieval system (IDRS), gives tax agency employees the ability to see IRS accounts and bank information, the Washington Post reported.
“Waste, fraud and abuse have been deeply entrenched in our broken system for far too long,” said Harrison Fields, a White House spokesperson. “It takes direct access to the system to identify and fix it.”
Read the full report here:
A ‘great shock’: Julianne Moore’s children’s book under review by Trump administration
Julianne Moore has said it is a “great shock” to learn that one of her books had been “banned by the Trump Administration” from schools serving the children of US military personnel and civilian defence employees.
The Boogie Nights and Mary & George star wrote that she was “truly saddened” by the news in an Instagram post on Sunday.
Last Monday, the Department of Defense circulated a memo stating that it is examining library books “potentially related to gender ideology or discriminatory equity ideology topics”. After access to all library books was suspended for a week for a review, a “small number of items” were identified and have been kept for “further review”, it said.
Moore’s Freckleface Strawberry, a story about a girl who dislikes her freckles but learns to live with them, is among the books caught up in the blanket review, according to a list obtained by the Guardian. However, it is not known whether the title was selected for further review or for withdrawal.
“It is a book I wrote for my children and for other kids to remind them that we all struggle, but are united by our humanity and our community,” said Moore.
The review of library books is part of an examination of all “instructional resources”, according to the Defense Department, to check that its schools are aligned with Trump’s recent executive orders Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling and Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism.
Read the full report here:
US-Russia meeting in Riyadh not Ukraine 'negotiation' - Washington
Meetings between United States and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday should not be seen as a “negotiation” on Ukraine, a US State Department spokesperson said, Agence France-Presse reports.
“I don’t think that people should view this as something that is about details or moving forward in some kind of a negotiation,” Tammy Bruce said on Monday, adding president Trump had tasked officials to “follow up effectively” on Wednesday’s call he had with Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, spoke with President Trump ahead of an informal meeting of European leaders in Paris on Ukraine, a French presidency official said on Monday, Reuters reports.
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Trump to nominate top prosecutor Martin for permanent term as US attorney for DC
Donald Trump will nominate his top prosecutor in Washington, Edward Martin, for a full and permanent term as US Attorney for the District of Columbia, Trump said on social media on Monday, Reuters reports.
Martin is already in the role in an interim capacity. His nomination will need to be approved by the Senate.
Last month Martin asked a judge to drop charges against a man who took part in the 6 January, 2021, assault on the US Capitol whom he also represented as a defence attorney.
Lawyers are generally prohibited from taking both sides in the same case and US Justice Department regulations require lawyers to step aside from cases involving their former clients for at least a year.
Martin, who has said he was present outside the Capitol during the siege, also represented two other people found guilty of taking part in the attempt to overturn Trump’s 2020 election defeat. He has faulted the Justice Department for what he described as misconduct in investigating the attack.
A private spokesperson for Martin had told Reuters earlier this month that he was in compliance with the requirements for his position.
Trump granted clemency on his first day in office to nearly all of the 1,600 people charged with playing a role in the riot.
US says its meeting with Russia is to determine what's possible in Ukraine
Talks between US and Russian officials scheduled for Tuesday in Saudi Arabia are to determine what is possible to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, US State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said on Monday.
Bruce told reporters in Riyadh that the meeting, involving secretary of state Marco Rubio, White House national security advisor Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, was a step to determine if the Russians are serious about talks toward peace.
Bruce said:
This is a follow-up on that initial conversation between [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and President [Donald] Trump about perhaps if that first step is even possible, what the interests are, if this can be managed.
Trump begins firings of FAA air traffic control staff just weeks after fatal Washington DC plane crash
The Associated Press reports that the Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, upending staff on a busy air travel weekend and just weeks after a January fatal mid-air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National airport.
Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails on Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.
The affected workers include personnel hired for FAA radar, landing and navigational aid maintenance, one air traffic controller told the Associated Press. The air traffic controller was not authorized to talk to the media and spoke on condition of anonymity.
Spero said messages began arriving after 7pm on Friday and continued late into the night. More might be notified over the long weekend or barred from entering FAA buildings on Tuesday, he said.
The employees were fired “without cause nor based on performance or conduct”, Spero said, and the emails were “from an ‘exec order’ Microsoft email address” – not a government email address.
The firings hit the FAA when it faces a shortfall in controllers. Federal officials have been raising concerns about an overtaxed and understaffed air traffic control system for years, especially after a series of close calls between planes at US airports. Among the reasons they have cited for staffing shortages are uncompetitive pay, long shifts, intensive training and mandatory retirements.
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Solar has taken off in red states. Trump’s funding freeze is causing panic
Mike Mullett strains to see through sheets of misty rain while driving through working-class neighborhoods of Columbus, a quaint town in southern Indiana.
He’s trying to find the senior center, multi-family homes and rent-assisted properties – more than 530 in total – that he and many other locals hope will receive $4.42m in federal funding for solar electricity projects.
But now that money is at risk.
On 20 January, Donald Trump paused billions of dollars of federal grant funding for clean energy and other projects around the country initiated by the Biden administration’s Green New Deal.
“We’ve been slavishly working on a plan since April 2023 that would provide solar energy to hundreds of households in two low- and moderate-income Columbus neighborhoods,” says Mullett. The project was expected to be rolled out in April, with previously approved funding thought to have been made available by 14 February.
“Unless the Trump administration makes a 180-degree turn on funding, that expectation will obviously not be met.”
Read the full report here:
Trump's Russia-Ukraine envoy will visit Ukraine Thursday
My colleague Jakub Krupa is leading our live Europe coverage today. He has more details on Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, commenting on the US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia.
In comments reported by the Associated Press and Reuters, he said Ukraine won’t take part in US-Russia talks this week on ending the war and won’t accept the outcome of the talks if Ukraine doesn’t take part.
Speaking to journalists on a conference call from the United Arab Emirates, Zelenskyy said his government had not been invited to Tuesday’s planned talks in Saudi Arabia.
He said they would “yield no results”, given the absence of any Ukrainian officials.
“Ukraine regards any negotiations on Ukraine without Ukraine as ones that have no result, and we cannot recognise … any agreements about us without us,” he said.
Keith Kellogg, the Trump administration’s Russia-Ukraine envoy, is expected to visit Ukraine on Thursday.
You can read more on our Europe live blog:
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A US judge has scheduled a rare holiday court hearing on Monday, in a case brought by Democratic state attorneys general seeking to protect major federal agencies from Elon Musk’s Doge team.
US district judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington DC on Sunday called the hearing for Monday, the Presidents Day holiday when federal courts are closed.
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Personnel from Elon Musk’s Doge team will visit the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control command centre in Warrenton, Virginia, on Monday, as the Trump administration says it wants to reform the system. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, disclosed the plan in a social media post on Sunday, Reuters reports.
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We have a little more on next week’s meeting between the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, and Donald Trump.
PA reports that when asked about comments made by the US vice-president, JD Vance, on free speech in the UK, the prime minister’s spokesperson said:
There’s going to be a wide range of issues that we’ll be working with the new US administration on.
The prime minister looks forward to meeting president Trump shortly to discuss how we can deepen the special relationship across trade, investment and security.
He added: “The prime minister will travel to Washington DC next week.”
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‘It comes from racism’: immigrant workers on Trump’s deportation push
Donald Trump has ramped up anti-immigration fervor into his second presidency, promising mass deportations, pushing to increase arrests and bolstering public relations efforts to amplify arrests. The moves have sent a wave of terror through the undocumented worker community that underpins large parts of the US economy.
“Every day I wake up and walk out the door, I go with the hope of going to work, but with the fear of not being able to come back,” said a construction worker and single parent in Texas who obtained immigration protection under the Biden administration. She requested to remain anonymous due to fears about her immigration status.
“Every day I worry if something happens, who will take my kids,” she said. “I have only one child born in the US. They are the only one who might be able to return, but me and the other kids would not be able to come back.”
She claimed that since Trump took office for his second term, there had been fewer opportunities to work construction jobs given the increased fear of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) raids at workplaces.
Read the full report here:
UK prime minister Keir Starmer is expected to meet with Donald Trump next week, Reuters reports, citing the prime minister’s spokesman.
Here is a little more on US and Russian officials meeting in Riyadh.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday on a previously planned trip.
US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who are set to arrive later on Monday, will be joining him at the talks with Russian officials, Reuters reports.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy advisor to president Vladimir Putin, would fly to the Saudi capital Riyadh on Monday.
“They are expected to hold a meeting with their American counterparts on Tuesday, which will focus primarily on restoring the entire complex of Russian-American relations,” Peskov said.
“It will also be devoted to the preparation of possible negotiations on the Ukrainian settlement and the organisation of a meeting between the two presidents.”
The talks will be among the first high-level, in-person discussions in years between Russian and US officials and are meant to precede a meeting between the US and Russian presidents.
Peskov declined to comment when asked if Putin and US President Donald Trump would meet face-to-face in Saudi Arabia later this month.
‘This is a coup’: Trump and Musk’s purge is cutting more than costs, say experts
Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s radical drive to slash billions of dollars in annual federal spending with huge job and regulatory cuts is spurring charges that they have made illegal moves while undercutting congressional and judicial powers, say legal experts, Democrats and state attorneys general.
Trump’s fusillade of executive orders expanding his powers in some extreme ways in his cost-cutting fervor, coupled with unprecedented drives by the Musk-led so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to slash many agency workforces and regulations, have created chaos across the US government and raised fears of a threat to US democracy.
Trump and Musk have also attacked judges who have made rulings opposing several of their moves after they ended up in court, threatening at least one with impeachment and accusing him of improper interference.
“In the US, we appeal rulings we disagree with – we don’t ignore court orders or threaten judges with impeachment just because we don’t like the decision. This is a coup, plain and simple,” Arizona’s attorney general, Kris Mayes, said.
Trump and Musk, the world’s richest man and Trump’s largest single donor, now face multiple rebukes from judges and legal experts to the regulatory and staff cuts they have engineered at the treasury department, the US Agency for International Development and several other agencies.
You can read the full report here:
The Kremlin said a US citizen briefly detained at a Moscow airport for allegedly travelling into Russia with cannabis-laced gummy sweets had been released ahead of Tuesday’s talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at improving ties, Agence France-Presse reports.
Asked about reports that a US citizen - identified as Kalob Wayne Byers - was released after being arrested on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said: “As on Tuesday the restoration of relations will be discussed, these events can be seen in that context.”
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Donald Trump wants the Supreme Court to allow him to fire the ethics chief who is head of the federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers, AP reports.
The emergency appeal is the start of what probably will be a steady stream seeking to undo lower court rulings that have slowed his second term agenda.
The Justice Department’s filing obtained by AP asks the conservative-majority court to lift a judge’s order temporarily reinstating Hampton Dellinger as the leader of the Office of Special Counsel.
Dellinger was nominated by President Joe Biden and sued the Trump administration after he was fired by email this month.
Meanwhile in other developments:
The Trump administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programmes, the Associated Press (AP) reports. Three US officials who spoke to AP said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday. But by late Friday night, the agency’s acting director, Teresa Robbins, issued a memo rescinding the firings for all but 28. The hundreds let go at NNSA were part of a the “department of government efficiency” (Doge) purge across the Department of Energy that targeted about 2,000 employees.
Donald Trump told reporters on Sunday he believes he could meet “very soon” with Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss ending the war in Ukraine. Trump said he was working hard to achieve peace, and said he believes both Putin and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy want to stop fighting.
Trump has been criticised for likening himself to Napoleon amid attacks on judges. The president posted on social media “he who saves his country does not violate any laws’ quote attributed to the French emperor. The post came at the end of another tumultuous week during which Trump acolytes questioned the legitimacy of judges making a succession of rulings to stall his administration’s aggressive seizure or dismantling of federal institutions and budgets.
French president Emmanuel Macron has called leaders from key European Union nations and the United Kingdom to the Elysee Palace for an emergency meeting Monday to discuss how to deal with the Trump administration and step up plans to increase defence spending.
US Secretary of State Rubio, National Security Adviser Mike Waltz, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff will meet with Russian delegation in Riyadh on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said.
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Elon Musk's Doge pushes to access taxpayer data from IRS
Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) is making an unprecedented push for access to an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) that houses detailed financial information about every taxpayer, business and nonprofit in the US, raising alarms over privacy, security, and government overreach, The Washington Post reports.
According to the publication, Doge is requesting access to a classified IRS system that contains the sensitive personal financial records of millions of Americans.
The request, which is reportedly under review, would give Doge officials “broad access to tax-agency systems, property and datasets. Among them is the Integrated Data Retrieval System, or IDRS, which enables tax agency employees to access IRS accounts — including personal identification numbers — and bank information,” the Washington Post reports.
A Trump administration official defended the move, stating that Doge staff are working to mission is to “eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse, and improve government performance to better serve the people”.
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