Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from the last few hours:
Speaking at the Future Investiment Initiative, a global finance conference in Miami organized by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, today, Donald Trump said the United States is “back and open for business” and that the “dark days of high taxes, crushing regulations, rampant inflation, flagrant corruption, government weaponization…and total incompetence will be gone for ever.”
Trump escalated his attack on Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he called “a dictator without elections” who had “done a terrible job”. Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy had said Trump was “living in a disinformation bubble”, in response to the president last night blaming Ukraine for Russia’s illegal invasion.
The White House has reshared a social media post from Trump, calling the president a king and picturing him in a crown.
Illinois governor JB Pritzker delivered a searing state-of-the-state address, likening Donald Trump’s stunning power grabs to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany.
In a blistering statement after asking a federal judge to dismiss the corruption case against New York mayor Eric Adams, the acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove invited justice department officials and prosecutors who disagreed with the decision to quit.
The Internal Revenue Service will fire 6,700 people as early as Thursday, kicking off mass layoffs just as tax season begins. Further reductions in the size of the agency are expected.
The Trump administration has ordered the Pentagon to plan for sweeping budget cuts, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years.
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Donald Trump was expected to sign at least one executive order on his flight back to Washington DC aboard Air Force One this evening, but no details are yet available about the content of those orders from the White House.
We’ll let you know when more information is available. Fox Business previously reported that at least one order would concern federal public benefits for undocumented immigrants.
Donald Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship may be headed to the Supreme court after an appeals court declined to grant a Justice Department request that would have lifted a lower court’s order blocking the president’s executive order.
The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision today means the case may be headed to the nation’s highest court, one month after Trump signed the executive order.
Here’s some more on the news that Trump’s Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, has told the defense department to plan for sweeping budget cuts.
In a statement late on Wednesday and reported by the AP, Robert Salesses, who is performing the duties of deputy secretary of defense, said “the time for preparation is over” and that “excessive bureaucracy” and programs targeting climate change or “other woke programs” – meaning diversity, equity and inclusion programs – would be targeted.
“To achieve our mandate from President Trump, we are guided by his priorities including securing our borders, building the Iron Dome for America, and ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing,” Salesses said.
The “Iron Dome” proposal – named after the Israeli system – refers to an extensive air defense system for the US that Trump has said should include the ability to shoot down incoming missiles from space.
Donald Trump is expected to begin signing executive orders again this evening, this time aboard Air Force One as he returns to Washington from his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he’s been playing golf for the past four days.
According to a social media post from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, one of those executive orders will revoke “federal benefits to illegal aliens”.
Leavitt confirmed a post from a Fox News reporter, who wrote that “the order will direct every federal agency & department to identify all federally funded programs currently providing any financial benefits to illegal aliens, and ‘take corrective action’, ensuring that any federal funds to states and localities ‘will not be used to support sanctuary policies or assist illegal immigration.’”
Immigrants are already ineligible for most federal public benefits.
More than 140 people have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay, about two weeks since the Trump administration began deporting migrants there, CNN reports, citing federal data.
As of today, 13 flights have deported 142 migrants to the naval base.
Donald Trump is receiving widespread backlash after he likened himself to a “king” on social media following his administration’s decision to rescind New York City’s congestion pricing program.
“New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years. We sure as hell are not going to start now,” New York governor Kathy Hochul said at a press conference today.
Here’s Maya Yang with the full story:
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In one of his first moves since taking office, health secretary Robert F Kennedy has implemented Donald Trump’s anti-trans language across the department.
The department launched a website today, titled “Defending Women and Children”, which includes public guidance “defining sex” based on whether a person’s reproductive system produces eggs or sperm.
In reality, scientists define sex based on a variety of factors, including chromosomes, reproductive organs, hormone levels and gene expression – within which many intersex conditions exist.
The website also includes pages on ending “the chemical and surgical mutilation of children” and “ensuring only women and girls can compete in women’s sports”.
Since Trump returned to office last month, he has signed a series of executive orders targeting trans Americans, including by banning trans athletes from women’s sports, restricting healthcare for trans youth and transferring incarcerated trans women to men’s facilities; a US judge, however, temporarily blocked federal prisons from implementing the order to move trans people. Many of the orders have been framed as “defending women”.
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IRS to reportedly fire thousands of workers
The Internal Revenue Service will fire 6,700 people as early as Thursday, Government Executive reports, kicking off mass layoffs just as tax season begins. Further reductions in the size of the agency are expected.
Workers expected to be laid off tomorrow include mostly staff in their probationary periods. Those employees received noticed today that they must report to the office tomorrow.
Cuts to the tax agency come as the IRS has struggled to modernize its technology, which dates back to the 1960s, and reinvigorate its chronically understaffed workforce.
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Energy secretary Chris Wright told Fox Business today that global warming is not neccessarily a bad thing.
“Everything in life has tradeoffs,” Wright said. “But a warmer planet with more CO2 is better for growing plants.” He claimed there is “14% more greenery around the planet today than there was 40 years ago.”
“Everything has a tradeoff,” he said. “There’s pluses to global warming as well as negatives. But the bottom line is it’s just nowhere near the world’s biggest problem today. Not even close, it seems to me.”
Donald Trump said he wanted to see “if I could get a couple of more years tacked on” to term, and that he considered giving “myself the Congressional Medal of Honor” after flying to Iraq on Air Force One in 2018.
Speaking at a Saudi-backed finance conference in Miami, the president said: “They’re saying that November 5, Election Day 2024 will go down as one of the most important days in the history of our country.
“I wanted to see if I could get a couple of more years tacked on, but I figured the fight wasn’t really worth it.”
Later, he recalled his first trip to a conflict zone, when he visited Iraq in 2018, saying he asked others on the flight, “Excuse me, I was very brave sitting in that cockpit, am I allowed to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor?”
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The Trump administration has ceased all funding to the Palestinian Authority security forces as part of its freeze on foreign aid, the Washington Post reports.
The authority governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and is competing to govern the post-war Gaza Strip. The US previously ended funding to the authority under Trump’s first presidency, but continued to fund the security forces during that period.
Continuing to speak at the Future Investment Initiative’s “Priority” summit in Miami, Donald Trump praised tech billionaire Elon Musk, who he said he had tasked to lead the so-called “department of government efficiency”.
“On my first day in office, I imposed an immediate federal hiring freeze, a federal regulation freeze and a foreign aid freeze. I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge. Thank you, Elon for doing it,” he said.
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Discussing investments from foreign countries and businesses in the United States, Donald Trump said that Japan is planning to invest $1tn in the US.
“On his recent visit to the White House, the Prime Minister of Japan announced he anticipates Japanese investment to the United States of well over a trillion dollars. And we’re working on an Alaska pipeline already, which is the closest point to Asia,” he said.
Speaking to global finance leaders in Miami, Donald Trump added that he’s “committed to making America the crypto capital” of the world.
“We want to stay at the forefront of everything, and one of them is crypto,” he said.
Trump says deregulated US 'open for business'
Continuing his speech in Miami today, Donald Trump said the United States “is back and open for business”.
“I come today with a simple message for business leaders from all across the nation and all around the world, if you want to build the future, push boundaries, unleash breakthroughs, transform industries or make a fortune. If you want to make a fortune, most of you have already made a fortune. I want to say that there’s no better place on Earth than the current and future United States of America under a certain president named Donald J Trump,” he said.
“As of January 20, 2025 the dark days of high taxes, crushing regulations, rampant inflation, flagrant corruption, government weaponization, oh, I know about weaponization, and total incompetence will be gone for ever because the United States is back and open for business, and the golden age of America has officially begun.”
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Walking on stage to his campaign anthem God Bless the USA, Donald Trump opened the Future Investment Initiative’s ‘Priority’ summit in Miami. The global finance conference, hosted by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, runs through Friday.
Trump kicked off his remarks by boasting about developments he oversaw in Miami and thanking Miami mayor Francis Suarez, who endorsed his run for the presidency.
He also thanked HRH. Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, who was seated next to tech billionaire Elon Musk.
After asking Musk to stand, Trump said: “We did a little show last night. I heard they got very good ratings too by the way” – referring to his and Musk’s joint appearance on Fox News with host Sean Hannity last night.
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In a blistering statement after asking a federal judge to dismiss the corruption case against New York mayor Eric Adams, the acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove invited justice department officials and prosecutors who disagreed with the decision to quit.
“I am personally committed to our shared fight: ending weaponized government, stopping the invasion of criminal illegal aliens, and eliminating drug cartels and transnational gangs from our homeland,” Bove said.
“For those at the Department who are with me in those battles and understand that there are no separate sovereigns in this Executive Branch, we’re going to do great things to make America safe again.
“For those who do not support our critical mission, I understand there are templates for resignation letters available on the websites of the New York Times and CNN,” Bove added.
The statement underscores how the new Trump leadership at the justice department prioritizes the administration’s political agenda in prosecutorial decisions and either expects their orders to be carried out, or for people to resign or be fired.
At the hearing in federal court on Wednesday, Bove hinted at the Department of Justice’s ongoing efforts to bring rank-and-file prosecutors in line, and called into question the motives behind the Adams prosecution.
“I would say the actual purpose of the prosecution is the subject of several ongoing investigations by the department,” Bove told district judge Dale E Ho.
In recent days, Bove has been moving with ruthless efficiency to tick through prosecutors who have been unwilling to follow his orders as the No 2 official at the department and chart a new course where Trump’s political agenda guides prosecution decisions.
Bove’s order directing the dismissal of the Adams case has become an inflexion point in that mission, after he weathered seven resignations in trying to get it down and ultimately put his own name on he motion to dismiss the charges to underscore his confidence in the matter.
In ordering the case be dropped, Bove wrote that “continuing these proceedings would interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security and related federal immigration initiatives and policies” to deport undocumented immigrants.
The memo made clear that aiding a mayor who wanted to help with the immigration crackdown, a national priority, outweighed continuing to bring bribery charges against a local mayor, and the justice department in future will balance policy priorities against the merits of a case.
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Two more groups have sued the Trump administration over executive orders the president has signed regarding the environment and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
A coalition of environmental groups, led by Earthjustice, filed suit in Alaska today arguing that Donald Trump exceeded his authority with an executive order that reversed the Biden administration’s ban on new offshore oil and gas leasing in coastal waters.
On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at “unleashing American energy”, while also overturning auto-emissions standards and rolling back restrictions on oil and gas expansion in Alaska.
The lawsuit, which argues that federal law does not authorize a president to revoke offshore protections, names Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as defendants.
Meanwhile, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Lambda Legal filed suit on behalf of advocacy groups to challenge three of Trump’s recent orders regarding diversity, equity and inclusion.
The National Urban League, AIDS Foundation Chicago and the National Fair Housing Alliance argue that Trump’s orders will limit how they provide services to people nationwide.
The executive orders the groups are challenging includes ones targeting transgender Americans (“Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”) and ending grants and other funding specific to this work (“Ending Radical and Wasteful DEI Programs and Preferencing” and “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”).
“For these organizations, choosing between ending their diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives and losing federal funds is really no choice at all,” said Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund, during a media briefing. “This is in direct violation of our clients’ free speech rights.”
Donald Trump will speak shortly at the Future Investiment Initiative, a global finance conference in Miami organized by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
The president is expected to focus on his intention to bring major international investments to the US.
Last month, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman – who approved the 2018 murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi – pledged $600bn in investments in the US.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who leads a private equity firm that has received billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will speak at the conference. Other attendees include the chief executives of TikTok, Oracle, Uber, Sony Pictures Entertainment, BlackRock and Tishman Speyer.
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White House calls Trump 'King'
The White House has reshared a social media post from Donald Trump, calling the president a king and picturing him in a crown.
This afternoon, Donald Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
His post referenced a letter his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, sent to New York governor Kathy Hochul today, ending the Department of Transportation’s agreement with the state over a toll policy for lower Manhattan.
Shortly after, the White House shared the quote from Trump on social media, alongside a computer-generated image of a smiling Trump wearing a crown on a stylized version of a Time magazine cover, with the word “Time” replaced with “Trump”.
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In his address, Pritzker recalled in 1978 when a neo-Nazi group wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb that he said was once home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors in the world. The ensuing legal battle and controversy ultimately led to a supreme court decision in favor of the group’s right to march. The demonstration was ultimately canceled days before and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center was formed in Skokie.
Pritzker credited the resistance and resilience of ordinary Illinoians for defusing the Nazis threat.
“If we don’t want to repeat history then for god sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it,” he said.
Pritzker concluded the 30-plus minute speech with a call to action.
“Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance,” he said. “Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity Illinois and do not let the tragic spirit of despair overcome us when our country needs us most.”
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Pritzker, who is seen as a possible 2028 presidential contender, has adopted a far more confrontational posture toward the Trump administration than other blue-state governors.
“We don’t have kings in America and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one,” Pritzker vowed, as the official White House social media account posted a photo of Trump wearing a crown with the words “Long Live the King”.
In his remarks, he defended the approach, arguing: “Going along to get along does not work.”
Responding to scattered boos in the audience, the governor warned that Trump’s cuts to federal agencies would affect conservatives and liberals alike. “You can boo all you want until your constituents lose these services,” he said.
“If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this,” he continued. “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. And all I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”
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The Illinois governor JB Pritzker on Wednesday delivered a searing state-of-the-state address, likening Donald Trump’s stunning power grabs to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany.
“I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly,” Pritzker told a joint session of the Illinois house and senate in Springfield, the state’s capital. Speaking as “an American and a Jew” who helped build the state’s Holocaust Museum, Pritzker said he was “watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now”.
Trump’s attacks on DEI, LGBTQ people and immigrants was part of an “authoritarian playbook”, the Democratic governor said.
“They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems. I just have one question,” he said. “What comes next?”
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Good afternoon, and thanks for joining our US politics coverage today – nearly one month into the second Trump administration. I’m Cecilia Nowell, taking over our coverage into the evening.
Donald Trump’s first and second vice presidents have had markedly different reactions to the president’s comments on the war in Ukraine.
In an interview published today by the conservative British tabloid, the Daily Mail, JD Vance warned Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that “badmouthing” Trump is a bad idea.
“The idea that Zelenskyy is going to change the president’s mind by bad mouthing him in public media, everyone who knows the President will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration,” Vance said.
Meanwhile, former vice president Mike Pence – who notably fell out of favor with the president after the 6 January attack on the US Capitol and declined to endorse Trump in the 2024 election – struck a different tone.
“Ukraine did not ‘start’ this war. Russia launched an unprovoked and brutal invasion claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. The Road to Peace must be built on the Truth,” Pence wrote on social media today.
Both comments follow an escalating exchange between the US and Ukrainian presidents. After Trump implied Ukraine had started the war, which began after Russia invaded Ukraine, during a press conference yesterday, Zelenskyy said Trump was trapped in a Russian “disinformation bubble”. Today, Trump called Zelenskyy “a dictator” and warned that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”.
Here are Pjotr Sauer and Luke Harding with more:
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The day so far
Much of the day so far has been dominated by the fallout of Donald Trump’s unprecedented and extraordinary attack on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he called “a dictator without elections” who had “done a terrible job”. In the rant rife with falsehoods about the Ukrainian leader’s popularity among other things, Trump warned Zelenskyy that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”.
Trump accused Zelenskyy (baselessly) of benefiting from continuing US financial and military support, suggesting he had an interest in prolonging the war rather than seeking its end. Trump’s latest comments, which parrot key talking points of Vladimir Putin’s regime, cast serious doubt on future US aid to Ukraine and mark the most explicit threat yet to end the war on terms favourable to Moscow. European leaders are scrambling to contain the crisis (German chancellor Olaf Scholz called Trump’s comments “wrong and dangerous”), while several Republican lawmakers in the US rushed to distance themselves from Trump’s remarks.
Earlier in the day, Zelenskyy had said Trump was “living in a disinformation bubble”, in response to the US president last night blaming Ukraine for Russia’s illegal invasion. Trump made the comments in response to Zelenskyy’s concerns that Ukraine had not been invited to the talks between the US and Russia on Tuesday.
Elsewhere:
The Trump administration has ordered the Pentagon to plan for sweeping budget cuts, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post. Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years. He has given a deadline of 24 February.
Senate majority leader John Thune said the upper chamber will still go ahead and begin vote-a-rama on the budget plan tomorrow, according to Fox News. This is despite Trump throwing his support behind the House’s competing version of the budget blueprint earlier on Wednesday.
The Trump administration said it is not disbursing funds for thousands of foreign aid contracts and grants despite a federal judge’s order last week to lift a widespread freeze on foreign aid funding.
A federal judge refused on Tuesday to immediately block Elon Musk and Doge from accessing government data systems or participating in worker layoffs. The US district judge Tanya Chutkan found that there were legitimate questions about the billionaire’s authority but said there was not enough evidence of grave legal harm to justify a temporary restraining order.
Donald Trump signed an executive order making independent regulatory agencies established by Congress now accountable to the White House – a move that some experts said clashes with mainstream interpretations of the constitution. The order forces major regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to report new policy priorities to the executive branch for approval, which will also have a say over their budgets.
The Trump administration’s planned cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) not only threaten essential biomedical research in the US, but the livelihoods of researchers – and some are seriously considering leaving the country.
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Further to the news that Donald Trump has thrown his support behind the House’s budget plan, Fox News reports that Senate majority leader John Thune has said the upper chamber will still go ahead and begin vote-a-rama on the budget plan tomorrow.
Trump administration orders Pentagon to plan for sweeping budget cuts – report
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.
Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by 24 February, according to the memo, which includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern US border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense and acquisition of one-way attack drones and other munitions. If adopted in full, the proposed cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.
According to the Post, the memo calls for continued “support agency” funding for several major regional headquarters, including Indo-Pacific command, northern command and space command. Notably absent from that list is European command, which has had a leading role in executing US strategy during the war in Ukraine; central command, which oversees operations in the Middle East; and Africa command, which manages the several thousand troops the Pentagon has spread across that continent.
“President Trump’s charge to DoD is clear: achieve peace through strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, dated Tuesday.
The time for preparation is over – we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and re-establish deterrence. Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit.
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All the effort Kyiv had expended in wooing the White House, combining flattery with bribery and a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, imploded in minutes when Volodymyr Zelenskyy broke the fundamental rule of the new global reality: he told the truth about Donald Trump.
It is hardly surprising Zelenskyy lost his cool. Part of the reason he has a 57% confidence rating in the latest poll (13% above Trump’s own current standing) is because he has led his country through years of war with his heart vividly on his sleeve. Having been subjected to eight years of Russian aggression, followed by an entirely unprovoked full-on invasion which has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian citizens, and then to be told on the world stage: “You should have never started it”, would be too much for most people.
When slighted and sprayed with Trumpian falsehoods, other world leaders, with much less at stake, have resorted to a “smile-and-wave” default strategy, deflecting direct questions and changing the subject to some aspect of relations with Washington that is still functioning normally.
Zelenskyy did not do this on Wednesday. Instead, he said out loud the bit that European leaders keep quiet. Trump, he observed, is “trapped in this disinformation bubble”. He was stating the obvious, but not even Zelenskyy could have known how fetid the air inside Trump’s bubble has become. Now we know.
Trump’s tirade on his own app, Truth Social, is a distillation of the greatest hits of Russian disinformation from the past three years. He said Zelenskyy was “A Dictator without Elections” (something Trump has never said about Putin) who had hoodwinked the Biden administration into a $350bn war of choice, which only “TRUMP” could fix. The president’s repeated references to himself in the third person and all caps erased any lingering doubts about the single unifying compulsion now driving Trump foreign policy.
Read Julian’s full analysis here:
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This is an extract from my colleague John Crace’s weekly UK politics sketch – and this week he’s focusing on Trump:
Even by his recent standards, Tuesday night’s stream of unconsciousness from Donald Trump took some beating. Hot on the tail of excluding Ukraine from the first round of peace talks with Russia and in effect threatening to withdraw the US from Nato, the Donald has now suggested it was Kyiv who started the war with Moscow.
More than that, he declared President Zelenskyy’s popularity ratings had slid to just 4% in his own country and that he had assumed the role of dictator by not holding elections. He ended by claiming that the US had given more than three times as much aid to Ukraine than the rest of Europe combined. You could almost hear Vladimir Putin cheering from the sidelines. He couldn’t have written the script any better. It was perfection.
It goes without saying that everything the US president had said was complete doggy-bollox. Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and seized Crimea. There was then a pause in hostilities before Putin invaded a second time almost exactly three years ago. Claiming Ukraine started the war was like believing that Poland invaded Germany to trigger the second world war.
That was just the start. Trump’s claim that Zelenskyy’s approval ratings were 4% were just his delusional, senescent fantasies. The real figure is 57%: about 10% higher than the Donald’s own. And no one in their right mind is suggesting Ukraine holds elections while the war is ongoing. There again, Trump is clearly not in his right mind. His aid figures are also way off. Collectively, Europe has given Ukraine £132bn since the start of the war. America has given £114bn.
While a shrink would have a field day trying to untangle the workings of the Trump psyche – is he a narcissist or solipsist? Does he actually believe what he says or do his words have an independent existence to his brain? – it’s left to the rest of us to pick up the pieces. Much as they might like not to, other world leaders have to find a way of engaging with him. The Donald is the most powerful man on the planet and whatever he says counts for something.
You can read the full politics sketch here:
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The French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, will visit Washington next week amid other meetings aimed at bringing an end to Russia’s war in Ukraine, US national security advisor Mike Waltz said on Wednesday.
Asked about the chances of reaching a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, Waltz told Fox News in an interview: “We’re engaging on all sides, and then the next step is we’re going to put technical teams forward to start talking more details.”
It comes amid fears of an irreconcilable rift between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy after the former leader launched a war of false words on the Ukrainian president, whom he called “a dictator” and warned that he “better move fast” or he “won’t have a country left”. (We have factchecked Trump’s rant here).
The unprecedented escalation of tensions between Kyiv and Washington came after senior US and Russian officials met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss the war in Ukraine, as well as economic and political cooperation, indicating a fundamental shift in the US approach to Moscow.
In the latest edition of This Week in Trumpland, my colleague Adam Gabbatt writes:
What came of those talks? Well, on Tuesday Trump came out with a curiously Putin-centric view of the war, and of how to end it. Declaring himself ‘disappointed’ that Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine’s president, had objected to not being part of talks which directly affect the future of his country, Trump blamed Ukraine for Russia’s invasion, and trotted out Kremlin talking points about Zelenskyy’s approval rating among Ukrainians.
In a few days Trump has apparently swallowed whole Russia’s revisionist claims about how the war began, and potentially driven a rift between the US and Europe in how it should end. Could it be that the author of Think Big and Kick Ass, and Trump 101: The Way to Success (both books were actually ghostwritten, but you get the idea), doesn’t really know much about kicking ass or the route to success? It’s not for me to say.
You can sign up for Adam’s weekly newsletter here.
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Following Donald Trump’s incendiary comments earlier today calling the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a “dictator” who had “done a terrible job”, Republicans have moved swiftly to distance themselves from Trump’s attacks.
The North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, who has just come from a visit to Ukraine, said Putin does not want peace, he “wants to dictate the world”. “That invasion was the responsibility of one human being on the face of this planet: Vladimir Putin,” Tillis told NBC News. On Trump calling Zelenskyy a dictator: “It’s not a word I would use.”
The Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski told CNN: “I would like to see that in context because I would certainly never refer to President Zelenskyy as a dictator.”
Speaking to HuffPost, the South Dakota senator Mike Rounds called Zelenskyy “the duly elected” president of Ukraine. “I think he has been a key component in the fact that they’ve been able to withstand the Russian attacks,” Rounds said. He answered “no” when asked if US foreign policy was realigning with Russia.
Don Bacon, a Representative for Nebraska, posted on X: “Putin started this war. Putin committed war crimes. Putin is the dictator who murdered his opponents. The EU nations have contributed more to Ukraine. Zelenskyy polls over 50%. Ukraine wants to be part of the West, Putin hates the West. I don’t accept George Orwell’s doublethink.”
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'Did not see that one coming': Trump backs House budget plan
Donald Trump threw his support behind the House’s budget blueprint on Wednesday, throwing a curveball into the Senate’s plan to vote on a competing version this week, Politico reports.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, the president said:
The House and Senate are doing a SPECTACULAR job of working together as one unified, and unbeatable, TEAM, however, unlike the Lindsey Graham version of the very important Legislation currently being discussed, the House Resolution implements my FULL America First Agenda, EVERYTHING, not just parts of it! We need both Chambers to pass the House Budget to “kickstart” the Reconciliation process, and move all of our priorities to the concept of, “ONE BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL.” It will, without question, MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
The House Speaker, Mike Johnson, who quickly celebrated Trump’s endorsement on X, plans to bring the plan to the floor for a vote next week.
Trump’s announcement comes as the Senate leadership has prepared their own budget plan, which would divide up the president’s policy priorities into two bills, for a floor vote in the coming days.
“As they say, did not see that one coming,” said Senate majority leader John Thune, telling reporters that he hoped to gain further clarity on the future of the two-bill plan from a previously scheduled lunch meeting with vice-president JD Vance.
“We’ve got a plan that we think makes sense,” Thune told reporters. “We’re planning to proceed. But you know, obviously, we are interested in and hoping to hear with more clarity where the White House is coming from.”
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Donald Trump’s efforts to influence US cultural institutions received more pushback on Tuesday, as a group of more than 400 artists sent a letter to the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) calling on the organization to resist the president’s restrictions on funding for projects promoting diversity or “gender ideology”.
The letter, first reported by the New York Times, comes after the NEA declared that federal grant applicants – which include colleges and universities, non-profit groups, individual artists and more – must comply with regulations stipulated by Trump’s executive orders. The new measures bar federal funds from going toward programs focused on “diversity, equity and inclusion” or used to “promote gender ideology”.
“While the arts community stands in solidarity with the NEA, we oppose this betrayal of the Endowment’s mission to ‘foster and sustain an environment in which the arts benefit everyone in the United States’,” the letter reads. “We ask that the NEA reverse those changes to the compliance requirements.”
Here’s more on that story:
A group of labor and taxpayer advocacy groups have sued the Trump administration over the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge)’s access to Internal Revenue Service files.
The complaint, filed in federal court for the District of Columbia on Tuesday, argues Doge should not have access to highly sensitive information like social security numbers, income, net worth and bank account information.
“The results have already been catastrophic,” the complaint says. “Doge has seized control of some of the most carefully protected information systems housed at the treasury department, the Department of Labor, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and taken hold of all sensitive personnel information at the office of personnel management.
“Doge’s spread through the government continues to be rapid, now reaching the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). This case seeks to protect the privacy and the legal rights of millions of Americans, and thousands of small business owners, who depend upon the IRS.”
Donald Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders since returning to the presidency in January, including enacting steep tariffs, ending birthright citizenship, curbing DEI and “gender radicalism” in the military and pardoning January 6 rioters.
The US president promised in his inaugural speech that these orders would amount to a “complete restoration of America”.
Here’s a handy explainer about all the executive orders Trump has signed since retaking the White House:
After firing more than 1,000 employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Trump administration is reversing course in one area and reinstating about nearly a dozen people who worked on the Veterans Crisis Line, a confidential toll-free hotline and online chat and or text support for veterans experiencing a mental health crisis and considering self-harm.
The dismissals, which were effective immediately, were made to save the department more than $98m a year.
US senator Tammy Duckworth of Illinois told CNN that many of those who were reinstated weren’t new Veterans Affairs employees, but rather had served in the US government for up to 18 years.
Trump administration keeps USAid contracts frozen despite court order
The Trump administration said in a court filing late on Tuesday night that it is not disbursing funds for thousands of foreign aid contracts and grants despite a federal judge’s order last week to lift a widespread freeze on foreign aid funding, Reuters reports.
The administration said in the filing that it was complying with US district judge Amir Ali’s temporary restraining order, pointing to a line in the order saying that the US Agency for International Development (USAid) and the state department were not barred from “enforcing the terms of contracts and grants”.
It said it was reviewing the frozen agreements and had determined that all of them allowed the administration to terminate or suspend them, either on their own terms or “implicitly”.
It also said that USAid and the state department had legal authority to halt payments that did not depend on Donald Trump’s 20 January executive order freezing foreign aid, which Ali’s order barred the administration from enforcing.
The administration asked that, if it had “misunderstood” Ali’s temporary order, the judge convert it into a longer-term injunction that it would be able to appeal immediately.
Peter Maybarduk of the legal group Public Citizen, which represents the non-profit plaintiffs, called the filing “outrageous” and said that “people who long have been partners of the United States, in vulnerable situations around the world, will suffer as a result of this failure to restore funding, funding the US already had promised, and that a court last week ordered the government provide”.
Dozens of Democrats denounced the Trump administration’s actions towards USAid on Friday, the Hill reports. In their letter, addressed to the president, they said:
The repercussions of these actions will be felt in the form of increased maternal and child mortality, reduced access to education, economic hardship, and heightened vulnerabilities to gender-based violence and exploitation of women.
At a time when women and girls are disproportionately affected by global conflicts, climate crises, and economic instability, continued programmatic and financial support in conflict zones such as Afghanistan, Syria, Ukraine, Haiti, and Democratic Republic of Congo amongst many others are essential to combatting global health challenges.
Despite long-standing bipartisan support for USAid initiatives that fight violence against women and girls, the proposed elimination of USAid and its funding would roll back years of progress across the globe and violate US law.
To find out more about USAid’s reach and what it means for those around the world who receive it, I’d recommend this episode of Today In Focus with my colleague Nesrine Malik:
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Federal judge refuses to block Musk team’s access to US government data
A federal judge refused on Tuesday to immediately block Elon Musk and the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from accessing government data systems or participating in worker layoffs, the Associated Press reports.
The US district judge Tanya Chutkan found that there were legitimate questions about the billionaire’s authority but said there was not enough evidence of grave legal harm to justify a temporary restraining order.
The decision came in a lawsuit filed by 14 Democratic states challenging Doge’s authority to access sensitive government data. The attorneys general argued that Musk was wielding the kind of power that the constitution says can be held only by those elected or confirmed by the Senate.
The Trump administration has maintained that layoffs are ordered by agency heads and asserted that despite his public cheering of the effort, Musk is not running Doge’s day-to-day operations himself.
Doge has tapped into computer systems across multiple agencies with Trump’s blessing, digging into budgets and searching for what he calls waste, fraud and abuse, even as a growing number of lawsuits allege Doge is violating the law.
Chutkan recognized the concerns of the states, which include New Mexico and Arizona.
“Doge’s unpredictable actions have resulted in considerable uncertainty and confusion,” she wrote. The states’ questions about Musk’s apparent “unchecked authority” and lack of congressional oversight for Doge are legitimate and they may be able to successfully argue them later, she found.
Still, at this point, it remains unclear exactly how Doge’s work will affect the states, and judges can only issue orders to block specific, immediate harms, she found.
Trump calls Zelenskyy a 'dictator without elections' and tells him to ‘move fast’ or lose country
In a Truth Social post Donald Trump wrote that Volodymyr Zelenskyy “better move fast” or he won’t have a country left and called the Ukrainian president a “dictator without elections”.
The Ukrainian leader earlier on Wednesday accused Trump of being trapped in a “disinformation bubble” after the US president blamed Ukraine for Russia’s illegal invasion and falsely suggested Zelenskyy was unpopular in Ukraine and blocking elections in the country, which he repeats here:
Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING.’ He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden ‘like a fiddle.’ A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only ‘TRUMP,’ and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the ‘gravy train’ going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…..
For more on this head over to our Europe live blog:
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Donald Trump said that he has directed the Department of Justice to fire all remaining former Biden-era US attorneys, claiming the department “has been politicized like never before”, the Hill reports.
In a post on his social media platform, Truth Social, the president wrote:
Over the past four years, the Department of Justice has been politicized like never before. Therefore, I have instructed the termination of ALL remaining ‘Biden Era’ U.S. Attorneys. We must ‘clean house’ IMMEDIATELY, and restore confidence. America’s Golden Age must have a fair Justice System – THAT BEGINS TODAY!
While it is standard for US attorneys to resign following a change in administration, justice department lawyers – both current and former – note that incoming administrations typically request resignations rather than issuing abrupt termination letters, according to Reuters.
On Monday, several Biden-appointed US attorneys announced their resignations, while others had already left the government the previous week.
The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, Danielle Sassoon, resigned on Thursday rather than obey a justice department order to drop corruption charges against the New York City mayor, Eric Adams. Denise Cheung, the top criminal prosecutor in Washington, resigned on Tuesday after refusing to launch what she called a politically driven investigation into Biden-era climate spending.
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Donald Trump intends to nominate advisers from his first term to top justice department posts, including John Eisenberg to lead the national security division and Brett Shumate for the civil division, Reuters reports.
Shumate is already acting head of the civil division and managing the department’s defense of the administration against a slew of lawsuits over federal worker firings, the dismantling of federal agencies and the attempts by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” to access sensitive data.
Shumate, who was a partner in the Jones Day law firm that has longstanding ties to Trump, unsuccessfully defended the Republican president’s executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US, which a federal judge last month ruled was “blatantly unconstitutional”.
He was a deputy assistant attorney general in the civil division’s federal programs branch during Trump’s first term from 2017-2021.
Eisenberg was legal adviser to the national security council during Trump’s first White House term, as well as an assistant to the president and deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs.
He also held senior positions in the justice department including a deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel. Eisenberg clerked for supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, a member of the high court’s conservative majority.
Patrick Davis will be nominated to lead the office of legislative affairs, the department said in a statement, in what would be his third stint there. During Trump’s first term, he served as deputy associate attorney general.
All three posts require confirmation by the Senate. The announcement comes a day after Trump said he has instructed the justice department to terminate all remaining US attorneys from the previous administration of Joe Biden, asserting without evidence that the department had been “politicized like never before”.
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Trump issues executive order to expand his power over agencies Congress made independent
Donald Trump has signed an executive order making independent regulatory agencies established by Congress now accountable to the White House – a move that some experts said clashes with mainstream interpretations of the constitution.
The order forces major regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to report new policy priorities to the executive branch for approval, which will also have a say over their budgets.
In a fact sheet, the White House described the move as, “ensuring that all federal agencies are accountable to the American people, as required by the constitution”.
“The order notes that article II of the US constitution vests all executive power in the president, meaning that all executive branch officials and employees are subject to his supervision,” the fact sheet said. The order will also apply to the Federal Reserve but will exempt the central bank’s authority over monetary policy.
The latest apparent power grab from the Trump administration would give the office of management and budget head, Russell Vought, oversight over a suite of major agencies – including regulators of Wall Street, campaign finance, telecommunications companies, labor and even the Postal Service.
The Trump order aligns with campaign promises to make independent agencies accountable to the president and a pledge Vought made in 2023:
What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.
You can read more here:
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Trump administration officials scrambled over the weekend to rehire hundreds of employees they fired last Thursday at the National Nuclear Security Administration, CNN reported on Tuesday.
More than 300 employees were initially fired at the agency, which manages the US’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. All but around 25 have since been reinstated, two current NNSA employees with knowledge of the matter told CNN.
Officials backtracked on the terminations on Friday after multiple members of Congress petitioned the energy secretary, Chris Wright, to reverse course, explaining the dire national security implications.
Rob Plonski, a deputy division director at NNSA, wrote on LinkedIn on Friday:
We cannot expect to project strength, deterrence, and world dominance while simultaneously stripping away the federal workforce that provides strategic oversight to ensure our nuclear enterprise remains safe, secure, and effective.
Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was not concerned about the firings. He told reporters traveling with him in West Palm Beach, Florida:
No, not at all, I think we have to just do what we have to do. It’s amazing what’s being found right now – it’s amazing. Some, if we feel that, in some cases, they’ll fire people and then they’ll put some people back, not all of them, because a lot of people were let go.
You can read CNN’s report here.
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As Donald Trump’s administration continues to fire thousands of federal workers and radically slash federal spending, some Republicans are growing unnerved, Axios reports.
As the cuts start to hit GOP lawmakers’ districts and states, some have told Axios there is a larger conflict brewing over the constitutional issue of whether the president can bypass Congress on such decisions.
One House Republican told Axios that the efforts of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to shutter the US Agency for International Development (USAid), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies could bring the situation to a head. They said:
I think you’re going to see a clash when they … start abolishing [agencies]. Say like USAid, right? We authorized that. That’s a creature of Congress. If they try to do something like that, then you’re going to get into a constitutional argument or crisis.
The Senate appropriations committee chair, Susan Collins told Axios the administration is moving “too fast”. She said Elon Musk’s team should wait until agency heads are confirmed and can take “a more surgical approach”.
She went on to say some recent actions “violate restrictions that are in current law” and the team is “making mistakes”, referencing the accidental firing of officials working on bird flu.
Don Bacon, a representative from Nebraska, said:
Before making cuts rashly, the administration should be studying and staffing to see what the consequences are. Measure twice before cutting. They have had to backtrack multiple times.
Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski told Axios of her state’s many federal workers:
We all want efficiencies, there is a way to do it, and the way these people have been treated has been awful in many cases. Awful.
She posted on X, the social media platform owned by Musk, four days ago that the administration’s approach was causing “confusion, anxiety and trauma” to civilians:
Dozens of Alaskans – potentially over 100 in total – are being fired as part of the Trump administration’s reduction-in-force order for the federal government.
Many of these abrupt terminations will do more harm than good, stunting opportunities in Alaska and leaving holes in our communities. We can’t realize our potential for responsible energy and mineral development if we can’t permit projects. We will be less prepared to manage summer wildfires if we can’t support those on the front lines. Our tourism economy will be damaged if we don’t maintain our world-class national parks and forests.
I share the administration’s goal of reducing the size of the federal government, but this approach is bringing confusion, anxiety, and now trauma to our civil servants – some of whom moved their families and packed up their whole lives to come here. Indiscriminate workforce cuts aren’t efficient and won’t fix the federal budget, but they will hurt good people who have answered the call to public service to do important work for our nation.
My staff and I are in close touch with agency and department officials, trying to get answers about the impact of these terminations. Our goal is to forestall unnecessary harm – for people and Alaska’s federal priorities – but the response so far has been evasive and inadequate.
Iowa senator Chuck Grassley told RadioIowa it is “a tragedy for people that are getting laid off”, but that “this is an executive branch decision”. He added:
Congress can’t do anything except complain about it.
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Trump cuts threaten a ‘generation of scientists’ as many weigh leaving US
The Trump administration’s planned cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) not only threaten essential biomedical research in the US, but the livelihoods of researchers – and some are seriously considering leaving the country.
A 27 January memo from the Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agencies to pause funding allocations to ensure they serve Donald Trump’s goals, including “ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again”.
On 7 February, the administration implemented a policy that would cut NIH funding to research institutions by over two-thirds. A federal judge has since blocked the cuts – for now.
Biomedical scientists depend on the NIH to fund their employment. Many are expected to cover a large proportion of their own salaries with NIH grants. Scientists studying neuroscience, diabetes, autism and bird flu became emotional as they spoke to the Guardian about the possibility of losing their life’s work.
Read the full report here:
State department orders cancellation of media subscriptions around world
The state department has reportedly ordered its outposts around the world to cancel all subscriptions to news and media outlets that are supposedly “non-mission critical” in another extraordinary Trump administration crackdown on normal information channels.
An email memo was circulated to embassies and consulates earlier this month explaining that the move was a further effort to cut costs by the federal government, the Washington Post reported late on Tuesday.
The newspaper cited the 11 February directive to foreign posts as reading: “Posts are asked to immediately place Stop Work Orders on all non-mission critical contracts/purchase orders for media subscriptions (publications, periodicals, and newspaper subscriptions) that are not academic or professional journals.”
The state department did not respond to a request for comment by the Washington Post. The Guardian has submitted a request for comment.
The reported directive to cancel news subscriptions will apply at hundreds of US diplomatic offices across the globe and a state department official who asked not to be named while discussing internal departmental matters told the Post that embassy teams around the world would be hindered by having media subscriptions cut off, especially for important activities such as examining threats to US national security and arranging trips in risky areas for diplomats and staff.
The restrictions apply to outlets such as national newspapers and global news agencies.
Another reported memo, sent on 14 February, told relevant staff to make it a priority to cancel such mainstream media outlets as the Economist, the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, the Associated Press and Reuters, the Post said.
Staff who object to canceling a subscription can apply to keep it but must briefly put forward strong justifications.
A state department employee who spoke anonymously to the Post described access to the news as necessary and said of the directive: “This will endanger American lives overseas because we are being cut off from news sources that are needed on a daily basis.”
Donald Trump and his wealthiest backer, the multibillionaire Elon Musk, expressed gushing admiration for each other in a Fox News interview in which each accused the media of trying to drive them apart.
Interviewed together in the White House, the pair spoke of each other in such warm terms that the interviewer, Sean Hannity, was moved to say: “I feel like I’m interviewing two brothers here.”
The united front was maintained to reject accusations that Musk’s so-called “department of government of efficiency” (Doge) – which has upended huge swaths of the federal bureaucracy in a supposed attempted to find “waste, fraud and corruption” – is a violation of the US constitution, saying their critics were themselves guilty of this.
They also dismissed complaints that Musk, who has billions of dollars of government contracts through his ownership of companies such as SpaceX and Tesla, had serious conflicts of interest that could lead him to skew federal spending in his favour.
Asked by Hannity how he would respond if he saw a conflict, Trump said: “He wouldn’t be involved.” Musk followed up by saying:
I’ll recuse myself. I mean, I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever.
The interview was aired after a chorus of criticism of Musk’s prominent role in Trump’s administration and suggestions from critics that he was usurping the president’s power, earning the appellation of “President Musk” in some quarters, including the cover of Time magazine.
Amid speculation of incipient tensions supposedly fuelled by Trump’s known dislike of sharing the limelight, the pair went to great lengths to show personal fealty to each other.
Read the full report on the lovefest here:
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Putin says Trump told him Ukraine will be included in peace talks and claims Russia is ready to negotiate
Vladimir Putin has reportedly said Donald Trump told him Ukraine would take part in future peace talks.
The Russian president is quoted by Interfax and Tass agencies as saying he is ready to get back to negotiations on Ukraine, which is a priority for Russia. He also praised the US-Russia talks, saying their purpose was to increase trust between the two countries, and that the two sides acted without “bias or judgment”.
He reportedly said that he would be happy to meet Trump, but that meeting still needs to be prepared.
My colleague Jane Clinton has more over on our Europe live blog:
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Speaking of approval ratings, Donald Trump’s has ticked slightly lower in recent days as more Americans worried about the direction of the economy as the president threatens a host of countries with tariffs, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.
The six-day poll, which closed on Tuesday, showed 44% of respondents approved of the job Trump is doing as president, down from 45% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted 24-26 January. Trump’s approval rating stood at 47% in a 20-21 January poll conducted in the hours after his return to the White House.
The share of Americans who disapprove of his presidency has risen more substantially, to 51% in the latest poll, compared with 41% right after he took office.
Trump enjoys a relatively high rate of approval on his immigration policy, with 47% of respondents backing his approach that has included promises to ramp up deportations of migrants in the country illegally. The share was little changed from January.
But the share of Americans who think the economy is on the wrong track rose to 53% in the latest poll from 43% in the 24-26 January poll. Public approval of Trump’s economic stewardship fell to 39% from 43% in the prior poll.
A pillar of Trump’s political strength has been public belief that his policies will be good for the economy, and his rating on the economy remains significantly higher than the final readings of his predecessor in office, Joe Biden, who ended his term with a 34% approval rating on the economy. But Trump’s rating for the economy is well below the 53% he had in Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted in February 2017, the first full month of his first term as president.
In the latest poll, only 32% of respondents approved of Trump’s performance on inflation, a potential early sign of disappointment in his performance on a core economic issue after several years of rising prices weakened Biden ahead of last year’s presidential election.
A recent report from the US Labor Department showed consumer prices rose by the most in nearly one-and-a-half years in January, with Americans facing higher costs for a range of goods and services. Other economic data has shown US households expect inflation to pick up following Trump’s 1 February announcements for steep tariffs on imports from China, Mexico and Canada.
While the levies on Mexico and Canada have since been delayed until March, Trump has set 12 March as the start date for other tariffs on imported steel and aluminum and he has directed his staff to devise global reciprocal tariffs.
Further, 54% percent of respondents in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll said they opposed new tariffs on imported goods from other countries, while 41% were in favor of them. Increasing tariffs on Chinese goods had higher levels of support, with 49% in favor and 47% against.
The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 4,145 US adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about two percentage points in either direction.
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Emil Bove takes leading role in implementing Trump takeover of DoJ
Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, moving with ruthless efficiency last week to dismiss the corruption case against the New York mayor, Eric Adams, appeared to reflect the new praxis at the justice department where Trump’s political agenda will guide prosecutorial decisions.
The department filed the motion to dismiss on Friday with the signatures of Bove and two trial attorneys – the public integrity section’s senior litigation counsel Edward Sullivan and the acting head of the criminal division Antoinette Bacon – that cemented the decision.
While the presiding US district judge Dale Ho has ordered an evidentiary hearing to examine the circumstances under which the charges were withdrawn, including the protest resignation of the acting US attorney in Manhattan, the case is widely seen as over in practical terms.
The move to force through the dismissal showed the new course that Bove is charting as the justice department’s number-two official, implementing Donald Trump’s vision of the unitary executive theory, where the president directs the decisions of every agency.
In ordering the case be dropped, Bove wrote that “continuing these proceedings would interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security and related federal immigration initiatives and policies” to deport undocumented immigrants.
The memo made clear that aiding a mayor who wanted to help with the immigration crackdown, a national priority, outweighed continuing to bring bribery charges against a local mayor, and the justice department in future will balance policy priorities against the merits of a case.
And Bove’s effort to press forward with the dismissal also reflected his determination to bring the justice department to heel after weathering resignations in protest from seven prosecutors that appeared to verge on insubordination, according to people familiar with the situation.
Read more here:
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Zelenskyy says Trump living in disinformation bubble after blaming Ukraine for Russian invasion
The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Donald Trump is “living in a disinformation bubble” after the US president last night appeared to blame Ukraine for Russia’s illegal 2022 invasion.
Trump’s comments, made last night in Florida, were his first on Ukraine since the US held peace talks with Russia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, earlier on Tuesday. He said he was “very disappointed” that Zelenskyy had complained about Ukraine not being invited to the talks, adding:
You’ve been there for three years … You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.
The comments parrot one of Vladimir Putin’s main talking points which is that Ukraine was somehow to blame for Russia’s invasion.
Trump also falsely suggested that Zelenskyy is unpopular at home with a 4% approval rating and is blocking elections in Ukraine. In fact elections are banned while the country is under martial law, which was declared in the days after Russia invaded, the latest polls show 57% of Ukrainians trust Zelenskyy’s leadership, and polls also indicate that most Ukrainians – including politicians critical of the president – believe that now is not the right time for a vote.
Zelenskyy accused the US of bringing Russia out of diplomatic isolation by holding the bilateral talks in Riyadh, and warned of “a lot of disinformation coming out of Russia” as he called out Trump’s misleading statements.
Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect for him as the leader of a nation that we respect greatly … is living in this disinformation bubble.
Zelenskyy added that the focus is on what support Europe can provide to Ukraine if there is a reduction in US assistance. He also pointedly rejected the current US draft deal on minerals saying it was “not ready”, drafted under US law, and offering inadequate compensation.
I can’t sell it away, I can’t sell our state.
The Ukrainian president rejected any suggestion of making broad concessions to Russia, saying any such idea was widely rejected by Ukrainians, and challenged the US Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, visiting Kyiv today, to go and talk to ordinary Ukrainians about their reception of Trump’s comments.
Zelenskyy also opposed the use of the word “conflict” to describe Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, saying it is a deliberate attempt to soften the perception of the aggression.
For all the latest on Ukraine and Europe, head over to our Europe live blog:
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Trump signs executive order expanding access to IVF, says White House
by Léonie Chao-Fong and Carter Sherman
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF).
The order directs the domestic policy council to make recommendations to “aggressively” reduce the costs for accessing IVF, according to a White House fact sheet. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on X that the order was evidence of the president’s “promises kept” – even though the order does not directly change any policy and does not, on its own, fulfill Trump’s campaign pledge to make the government or insurance companies cover IVF.
“Americans need reliable access to IVF and more affordable treatment options, as the cost per cycle can range from $12,000 to $25,000,” the fact sheet reads.
“It is the policy of my administration to ensure reliable access to IVF treatment, including by easing unnecessary statutory or regulatory burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable.”
During the 2024 presidential election, Trump recast his position on IVF as a strong supporter of the treatment, declaring himself the “father of IVF” while at the same time admitting he only recently discovered what the procedure involved.
Read the full report here:
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Donald Trump and Elon Musk lavished praise on each other while defending the Doge overhaul in a joint interview on Fox News.
Musk boasted of a “thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people” when asked about criticism of the so-called “department of government efficiency”.
The pair joked around in the cozy hour-long primetime TV interview with Sean Hannity who at one point was moved to say: “I feel like I’m interviewing two brothers here.”
Trump said Musk, as the face of Doge had identified 1% in alleged waste, fraud and abuse adding that he thinks the billionaire is “going to find $1tn”.
They also dismissed complaints that Musk, who has billions of dollars of government contracts through his ownership of companies such as SpaceX and Tesla, had serious conflicts of interest that could have lead him to skew federal spending in his favour.
Asked by Hannity how he would respond if he saw a conflict, Trump said: “He wouldn’t be involved.” Musk followed up by saying: “I’ll recuse myself. I mean, I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever.”
In other developments:
Donald Trump has signed an executive order to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). The order directs the domestic policy council to make recommendations to “aggressively” reduce the costs for accessing IVF, according to a White House fact sheet.
Trump criticized the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, appearing to blame Ukraine for the war with Russia after the Ukrainian leader complained about being left out of peace talks between the US and Russia. “Today I heard: ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years … You should have never started it. You could have made a deal,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian reaction.
Zelenskyy responded to Trump’s comments by saying the US president “is living in this disinformation bubble”.
Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg is in Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy – a day after top US and Russian diplomats held discussions in Saudi Arabia.
The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, will face a federal judge on Wednesday who will decide whether to grant the justice department’s request to dismiss corruption charges against him after lawyers explain the abrupt change in position just weeks before an April trial.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio met with the leader of the United Arab Emirates. President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan told Rubio on Wednesday that his country rejects a proposal to displace Palestinians from their land, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported.
Top prosecutor Denise Cheung resigned on Tuesday after refusing to investigate a government contract awarded during Biden’s tenure, as Trump continues to attempt to exert tighter control over the justice department, an agency traditionally seen as independent of White House influence.
Trump expanded his offensive against trading partners on Tuesday, threatening 25% tariffs on imported cars, and similar or higher duties on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, AFP reports.
Hundreds of Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) employees were fired as part of a wave of terminations of federal workers over the holiday weekend and Tuesday, the Washington Post reports, adding the move could affect people struggling to rebuild and prepare for disasters.
A Republican-led Senate committee is scheduled to hold a hearing today on Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Chavez-DeRemer supported a bill called the Pro Act, a top priority of labor unions, and is endorsed by the Teamsters Union, NBC reports.
An Israeli official said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed a close confidant, the US-born Ron Dermer, to lead negotiations for the second stage of the ceasefire with Hamas. Dermer previously served as Israel’s ambassador to the US and is a former Republican activist with strong ties to the Trump White House.
One in five Americans have said they are “doom spending” – purchasing more items than usual – owing to concerns over Trump’s tariffs, reflecting heightened consumer anxiety over potential price hikes and economic uncertainty.
Trump’s cuts threaten a “generation of scientists” as many weigh leaving the US.
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