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 today:
A Trump-forward budget proposal imperiling Medicaid narrowly passed in the Republican-led House. The budget plan includes an estimated $800bn in potential cuts from Medicaid, a federal program providing healthcare coverage to more than 72 million Americans. The resolution also includes a $4.5tn in tax cuts and increased funding for defense and border security, offset by $2tn in spending reductions over the next decade.
Nearly 6,000 veterans have been fired across the federal government since the start of Donald Trump’s term, according to a new analysis by House Democrats. The report, compiled from data provided by the office of personnel management, estimates that roughly 38,000 federal workers have been fired since Trump took office last month and empowered Elon Musk’s ‘efficiency’ agency to dramatically reduce the federal workforce.
Trump has said that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is likely to visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal to pay for US military aid to defend against Russia’s full-scale invasion. The announcement followed days of tense negotiations between the US and Ukraine in which Zelenskyy alleged the US was pressuring him to sign a deal worth more than $500bn that would force “ten generations” of Ukrainians to pay it back.
Trump reinstated a rule requiring cost transparency in healthcare. The rule requires hospitals to publish online the prices for some of their most common services, including MRI scans and caesarean section deliveries. The lack of transparency has often left patients shocked by medical bills.
Trump signed an executive order instructing the commerce secretary to launch an investigation into whether foreign copper production and imports threaten US economic and national security. According to White House officials, the investigation could lead to new tariffs on foreign copper, a material essential to manufacturing and construction, as well as critical to the US military and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.
‘More than one million’ federal workers have responded to Elon Musk/Doge’s ultimatum email, the White House has claimed. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, also said agency heads will “determine the best practices” for dealing with the ‘what did you do last week’ email in terms of whether people should respond and who, if anyone, would get fired. NBC News reported that responses to the email will reportedly be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether their jobs are necessary.
In a significant shift of journalistic power, the White House press team will now decide which journalists and media outlets will make up the White House press pool. Leavitt said legacy outlets will still be allowed to join and participate in the press pool, but the “privilege” will also be extended to “new voices” from “well-deserving outlets”. It builds on the decision to revoke the Associated Press’s full access to presidential events over its continued use of “Gulf of Mexico” as opposed to “Gulf of America”.
Some 40% of the federal contracts the Trump administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows. Doge last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on Doge’s “wall of receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.
Meanwhile, more than 20 civil service employees resigned from Doge, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services. “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
A federal judge in Seattle blocked the Trump administration’s effort to halt the nation’s refugee admissions system. US district judge Jamal Whitehead said in his ruling after the hearing on Tuesday that the president’s actions amounted to an “effective nullification of congressional will” in setting up the nation’s refugee admissions program. “The president has substantial discretion ... to suspend refugee admissions,” Whitehead told the parties. “But that authority is not limitless.”
A US judge extended an order blocking the Trump administration from instituting a sweeping freeze on trillions of dollars in federal funding by pausing grants, loans and other financial support. US district judge Loren AliKhan in Washington wrote that while some funds had become unfrozen since she first temporarily blocked the administration’s spending pause, there remained a risk the administration might again try to shut off funding. The judge said for those reasons she agreed with groups representing nonprofits and small business that a preliminary injunction was necessary blocking a further funding freeze.
A federal judge in Washington has ordered the Trump administration to pay foreign aid funds to contractors and grant recipients by 11.59pm on Wednesday night, saying there was no sign that it had taken any steps to comply with his earlier order that the funds be unfrozen.
The Senate confirmed Daniel Driscoll, an Iraq war veteran and adviser to JD Vance, as secretary of the army.
Updated
The tax cut proposals in this GOP budget blueprint passed on Tuesday center on $4.5tn in tax breaks, which would extend the tax cuts Trump implemented during his first term.
These tax cuts are currently set to expire later this year and the proposed package aims to prolong them. But the details of how these tax breaks would be structured haven’t been specified yet.
Trump’s tax cuts helped billionaires massively during his first term, with the richest families in the US paying a lower tax rate than the working class for the first time in history in 2018.
Several lawmakers are concerned that the proposed cuts – especially the $880bn over the next decade assigned to the committee overseeing healthcare spending, including Medicaid, and the $230bn allocated to the agriculture committee responsible for food stamps – could hinder their constituents back home.
“The House Republican budget will make people sicker and poorer,” said Ken Martin, chair of the Democratic National Committee. “It will force even more families to live paycheck to paycheck while giving the wealthiest Americans a windfall big enough to buy a new private jet.”
Next steps involve weeks of committee hearings to draft the full legislative text, as well as negotiations with the Senate, where Republicans have their own scaled-back version.
Updated
Undocumented immigrants in the US who fail to register with the federal government could face fines, imprisonment, or both, according to a directive issued Tuesday by the Department of Homeland Security.
“The Trump administration will enforce all our immigration laws – we will not pick and choose which laws we will enforce,” a DHS spokesperson said. “We must know who is in our country for the safety and security of our homeland and all Americans.”
According to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services website, all immigrants over the age of 14 who were not fingerprinted or registered when applying for a US visa and who remain in the country for 30 days or longer must register and be fingerprinted.
Once registered and fingerprinted, DHS will provide evidence of registration, which immigrants over the age of 18 are required to carry at all times.
Last month, upon returning to office, Donald Trump declared illegal immigration at the US-Mexico border a national emergency and directed DHS to ensure that immigrants register with the federal government.
The administration is also working to end the Biden-era CBP One entry program, which allowed hundreds of thousands of migrants to legally enter the US by scheduling appointments through an app.
Updated
Trump-forward budget proposal imperiling Medicaid narrowly passes in Republican-led House
The House narrowly passed the budget resolution by a 217-215 vote after an intense push by Mike Johnson, the speaker, and Donald Trump.
The budget plan includes an estimated $800bn in potential cuts from Medicaid, a federal program providing healthcare coverage to more than 72 million Americans. The resolution also includes a $4.5tn in tax cuts and increased funding for defense and border security, offset by $2tn in spending reductions over the next decade.
The budget measure needed to pass by the 14 March deadline or risk a government shutdown.
Updated
The Social Security Administration said on Tuesday that it dissolved its office of civil rights and equal opportunity, and its employees will be put on administrative leave as of today.
Lee Dudek, Social Security’s acting commissioner, said in a statement that terminating the civil rights office “advances the President’s goal to make all of government more efficient in serving the American public”.
The agency’s office of civil rights and equal opportunity is responsible for planning and implementing programs designed to ensure equal opportunity in employment for all employees regardless of race, color, national origin, etc., according to its webpage.
SSA says it will transfer responsibility for processing civil rights complaints and reasonable accommodation requests to other agency offices “to ensure compliance with existing legal authorities”.
Updated
Nearly 6,000 veterans have been fired across the federal government since the start of Trump’s term, according to a new analysis by House Democrats.
The report, compiled from data provided by the office of personnel management, estimates that roughly 38,000 federal workers have been fired since Trump took office last month and empowered Elon Musk’s ‘efficiency’ agency to dramatically reduce the federal workforce.
“Our veterans make significant sacrifices in service of our country, but those sacrifices do not seem to matter to President Trump and unchecked billionaire Elon Musk,” Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro, ranking member of the House appropriations committee, said in a statement. “They are an essential part of our federal workforce, bringing their expertise to every single agency. Republicans are turning their back on them, allowing Musk to fire at least 6,000 veterans and leave them with no way to feed their families or keep a roof over their heads.”
Republicans have countered that the cuts are a necessary part of a long-overdue effort to root out government waste and inefficiency.
The federal government is the largest US employer of veterans, who comprise about 30% of the workforce.
Updated
Trump says Zelenskyy set to visit White House on Friday to sign minerals deal
Donald Trump has said that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is likely to visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal to pay for US military aid to defend against Russia’s full-scale invasion.
The announcement followed days of tense negotiations between the US and Ukraine in which Zelenskyy alleged the US was pressuring him to sign a deal worth more than $500bn that would force “ten generations” of Ukrainians to pay it back.
Media outlets reported late on Tuesday that the terms of an agreement had been reached.
“I hear that he’s coming on Friday,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “Certainly it’s OK with me if he’d like to.”
According to the Financial Times, which first reported the deal, the new terms of the deal did not reportedly include the onerous demands for a right to $500bn in potential revenue from exploiting the resources, which include rare earth metals and Ukrainian oil and gas resources.
A framework for the deal included joint ownership of a fund to develop Ukraine’s mineral resources with certain caveats for those resources already contributing to the state budget.
More on the story here:
Updated
The Guardian’s labor reporter, Michael Sainato, spoke to USAid workers who are expected to be ‘escorted’ back to the office to collect their belongings amid Trump’s bid to shut down the foreign aid agency.
Staff who spoke to the Guardian sounded the alarm over the impact of these moves on global security, warning that closing USAid and withdrawing foreign aid is “only leaving war on the table”.
The agency is “the canary in the coal mine” as Trump seeks to test the limits of his executive powers, said one USAid official, who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation and harassment. “We see us as the most acute and boldest example of overreach, that checks and balances ought to restrain the powers of the president and the president should abide by the powers of Congress and the courts.
“Can the president act like a king? We’re a glaring flare for all of those things.”
The agency has been subjected to attacks and conspiracy theories about its work, with Elon Musk and his supporters making false claims about funding, including a baseless claim about the agency sending $50m to Gaza for condoms, and false claims about grants such as the suggestion by the so-called “department of government efficiency” that $21m had been sent to India to influence elections.
Musk has called the agency “a criminal organization” and argued that it was “time for it to die”. Pushed on his false condoms claim earlier this month, he responded: “Some of the things I say will be incorrect.”
Health clinics reliant on USAid grants in Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, Iraq and other countries around the world have been forced to shut down and international aid groups have already cut thousands of jobs due to the funding freeze.
The Trump administration is fighting challenges in court to freeze all USAid funding, place nearly all employees on leave.
“USAid was established by act of Congress. It needs to be un-established by act of Congress. They are ignoring that rule,” the USAid official said. “I would guess around 500 workers, no one has provided specifics, senior leaders, HR and IT people, are left behind to participate in the dismantling of the agency.”
Contracts and grants are still being cut and terminated, with only a small fraction of the agency’s work abroad still continuing, they said. “We’re a lifesaving agency. They certainly have done damage that will take years to undo, but even though they’ve closed the building and banned us from it, we’re not done. We still exist,” they said.
Read the full story here:
Americans are getting more concerned about a potential economic downturn caused by the policies of Donald Trump’s administration.
US consumer confidence plummeted in February, the biggest monthly decline in nearly four years, the Conference Board, a business research group, said on Tuesday. Inflation and a significant increase in mentions of trade and tariffs were the top concerns for respondents to the board’s survey.
The group’s consumer confidence index plummeted this month to 98.3 from 105.3 in January. That’s far below the expectations of economists, who projected a reading of 103, according to a survey by FactSet.
The proportion of consumers expecting a recession over the next year jumped to a nine-month high, the board said.
Consumer spending accounts for about two-thirds of US economic activity and is closely watched by economists for signs about how the American consumer is feeling.
Updated
Trump’s Iron Dome for America system is now reportedly called Golden Dome
Donald Trump’s Iron Dome for America initiative for a missile defense system protecting US skies from attack has been reportedly renamed the Golden Dome for America.
In a video published on Thursday, secretary of defense Pete Hegseth referred to the project as “the Golden Dome or Iron Dome”. A defense official confirmed shortly after that the name of the initiative has been officially changed to “Golden Dome”, according to military news website Defense One.
A spokesperson for Space Force did not respond to a Guardian query on the possible name change.
The idea of a new name comes as a team of technical experts has been assembled by the US Space Force to determine which programs can help build out the initiative.
The Iron – or perhaps now Golden – Dome for America executive order, signed by Trump on 27 January, is a directive for Hegseth to submit a comprehensive plan that details an implementation strategy, including the required architecture, for a missile defense system.
Trump is known for his grand renaming of things, including the Gulf of Mexico, which is now known officially in the US as the Gulf of America, as well as having a gaudy taste for golden and luxurious decorations, such as that which often adorn his apartments and buildings like Trump Tower in New York.
The defense system focuses heavily on the concept of space-based sensors and interceptors. The company that currently dominates the market for such equipment is the Elon Musk-owned SpaceX, leading to concerns that this project is another way for Musk to make money from federal programs.
Read the full story here:
John Thune, the Senate majority leader, is defending the Trump administration’s cuts to federal workers and programs, calling them a long overdue “scrub” of the federal government.
Still, the Republican from South Dakota acknowledged that the reductions are affecting the home states of GOP senators.
“I think we all understand that this government, the federal government, is long in need of the kind of scrub that is being done to figure out how we can do things better,” Thune said at the Capitol.
He said that senators would make the Trump administration aware if programs, such as those that impact health and safety, are at risk.
The Trump administration plans to cut employees at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development who assist officials and citizens in navigating government housing programs, the AP reports.
These cuts are among the first steps in the administration’s broader plan to reduce HUD’s workforce by half.
The field policy and management division is expected to lose at least 145 employees – about 40% of its staff – by 18 May.
A memo from the HUD secretary Scott Turner, dated Monday, states that all positions within the office at a certain pay grade and below “are being abolished”.
Updated
Trump reinstates rule on healthcare cost transparency
Trump reinstated a rule requiring cost transparency in healthcare.
The rule requires hospitals to publish online the prices for some of their most common services, including MRI scans and caesarean section deliveries. The lack of transparency has often left patients shocked by medical bills.
Trump previously issued a similar order during the final year of his first term.
Hospitals and insurers had strongly opposed the rule, with many failing to comply.
“It’s been unpopular in some circles because people make less money,” Trump said. “But it’s great for the patient. It’s great for the people in our country.”
Updated
Fox News senior White House correspondent, Jacqui Heinrich, condemned the Trump administration’s decision to determine which outlets have access to the president as part of the press pool, a selection that the White House Correspondents’ Association makes.
“This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House,” Heinrich posted on X. “The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House press corps.”
“WHCA has determined pools for decades because only representatives FROM our outlets can determine resources all those outlets have – such as staffing – in order to get the President’s message out to the largest possible audience, no matter the day or hour,” she added.
Updated
USAid staffers have only 15 minutes to retrieve belongings from their former offices, according to The Associated Press.
For nearly three weeks, many staffers at the agency’s main building in Washington have been barred from entering as the administration continues dismantling the facility.
Several employees have requested permission to retrieve personal items, including family photos and work shoes stored in drawers.
The notice about the arrangements says that aid workers must undergo security screening before reentering.
The Guardian’s labor reporter Michael Sainato reports that, in the notice, staffers were told to “bring their own boxes, bags, tape, and/or other containers to remove their personal items; these items will not be provided”.
“Neither USAID, nor any of our assisting agencies, will provide boxes, tape, protective wrapping, or other packaging materials to assist with the retrieval process,” the notice reads.
Updated
President Donald Trump signed an executive order suspending security clearances for lawyers at the Covington & Burling law firm that worked with special counsel Jack Smith.
Smith led the federal cases against Trump on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 election defeat and mishandling of classified documents.
The order comes less than a month after the US justice department fired more than a dozen prosecutors who worked on the criminal cases against Trump in a move to purge people who worked for Smith.
Donald Trump said he wants to begin selling gold cards for $5m to foreigners who want to move to the US and create jobs.
The president said the immigration program, which he said was legal, could start in about two weeks. He added it is possible Russian oligarchs could qualify for the gold cards.
“That’s going to give you Green Card privileges,” he said on Tuesday. “Plus, it’s going to be a route to citizenship and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card.”
White House officials said that the administration aims to end the EB-5 visa program and replace it with the gold card.
“They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful, and they’ll be spending a lot of money and paying a lot of taxes and employing a lot of people,” Trump added.
Updated
Edward Wong of the New York Times reports that Trump appointees at USAid have sent recently-fired employees a list of more than 100 weapons they are prohibited from bringing when returning to the office to collect their belongings.
Firearms, axes, martial arts weapons, including nunchucks and throwing stars, were in the list, as well as spearguns and dynamite.
Staff will collect their personal belongings at the Ronald Reagan Building this Thursday and Friday
There have been no known recent incidents of aid agency employees making weapon-related threats, Wong reports.
Updated
Trump signs executive order to launch investigation into foreign copper production
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Tuesday instructing the commerce secretary Howard Lutnick to launch an investigation into whether foreign copper production and imports threaten US economic and national security.
According to White House officials, the investigation could lead to new tariffs on foreign copper, a material essential to manufacturing and construction, as well as critical to the US military and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence.
The administration said it intends to move quickly on the investigation, but no timeline was given.
Updated
The day so far
‘More than one million’ federal workers have responded to Elon Musk/Doge’s ultimatum email, the White House has claimed. Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, also said agency heads will “determine the best practices” for dealing with the ‘what did you do last week’ email in terms of whether people should respond and who, if anyone, would get fired. NBC News reported that responses to the email will reportedly be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether their jobs are necessary.
In a significant shift of journalistic power, the White House press team will now decide which journalists and media outlets will make up the White House press pool. Leavitt said legacy outlets will still be allowed to join and participate in the press pool, but the “privilege” will also be extended to “new voices” from “well-deserving outlets”. It builds on the decision to revoke the Associated Press’s full access to presidential events over its continued use of “Gulf of Mexico” as opposed to “Gulf of America”.
Some 40% of the federal contracts that the Trump administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows. Doge last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on Doge’s “wall of receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.
Elon Musk will attend Trump’s first official cabinet meeting on Wednesday, Leavitt confirmed at the White House press briefing.
Meanwhile, more than 20 civil service employees resigned from Doge, saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services. “We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
House speaker Mike Johnson hinted that the planned budget vote might not go ahead this evening. The budget resolution is on thin ice after at least four GOP lawmakers have come out against it, amid internal ideological turmoil in the party over proposed cuts to Medicaid. Given the slim majority in the House, Johnson can’t afford to lose more than one Republican vote, assuming both parties are in full attendance.
A federal judge in Seattle blocked the Trump administration’s effort to halt the nation’s refugee admissions system. US district judge Jamal Whitehead said in his ruling after the hearing on Tuesday that the president’s actions amounted to an “effective nullification of congressional will” in setting up the nation’s refugee admissions program. “The president has substantial discretion ... to suspend refugee admissions,” Whitehead told the parties. “But that authority is not limitless.”
A US judge extended an order blocking the Trump administration from instituting a sweeping freeze on trillions of dollars in federal funding by pausing grants, loans and other financial support. US district judge Loren AliKhan in Washington wrote that while some funds had become unfrozen since she first temporarily blocked the administration’s spending pause, there remained a risk the administration might again try to shut off funding. The judge said for those reasons she agreed with groups representing nonprofits and small business that a preliminary injunction was necessary blocking a further funding freeze.
A federal judge in Washington has ordered the Trump administration to pay foreign aid funds to contractors and grant recipients by 11.59pm on Wednesday night, saying there was no sign that it had taken any steps to comply with his earlier order that the funds be unfrozen.
The Senate confirmed Daniel Driscoll, an Iraq war veteran and adviser to JD Vance, as secretary of the army.
Updated
Donald Trump was scheduled to sign yet another round of executive orders in the Oval Office at 3pm ET today but he’s running behind. We’ll bring you updates as we get it.
The White House announcement this morning did not say what topics will be covered or how many will be signed.
Since taking office last month Trump has signed 73 executive orders, according to the office of the federal register – that’s more than any president since FDR in 1937.
Updated
Judge gives Trump administration Wednesday night deadline to pay foreign aid funds
This report is from Reuters.
A federal judge in Washington has ordered the Trump administration to pay foreign aid funds to contractors and grant recipients by 11.59pm on Wednesday night, saying there was no sign that it had taken any steps to comply with his earlier order that the funds be unfrozen.
US district judge Amir Ali’s order came in a telephone hearing in a lawsuit brought by organizations that contract with and receive aid from the US Agency for International Development and the State Department. It applies to work done before 13 February, when the judge issued his earlier temporary restraining order.
It was the third time Ali had ordered the administration officials to release foreign aid funds that were frozen after Donald Trump ordered a 90-day pause on all foreign aid, throwing global humanitarian relief efforts into chaos.
Plaintiffs in the lawsuit have said they will have to shut down completely if they are not paid soon. They allege that the administration has violated federal law and the US constitution in refusing to pay out the funds and in dismantling USAid.
The foreign aid agency on Sunday said that all of its staff except certain essential workers would be put on paid administrative leave, and that 1,600 positions in the US would be eliminated.
You can read more about USAid and what the freeze means for millions of people around the world here:
Updated
Judge extends block on Trump administration's freeze on federal funding
This report is from Reuters.
A US judge on Tuesday extended an order blocking the Trump administration from instituting a sweeping freeze on trillions of dollars in federal funding by pausing grants, loans and other financial support.
US district judge Loren AliKhan in Washington wrote that while some funds had become unfrozen since she first temporarily blocked the administration’s spending pause, there remained a risk the administration might again try to shut off funding.
The judge said for those reasons she agreed with groups representing nonprofits and small business that a preliminary injunction was necessary blocking a further funding freeze.
“The injunctive relief that defendants fought so hard to deny is the only thing in this case holding potentially catastrophic harm at bay,” she wrote.
Those groups sued after the White House’s Office of Management and Budget on 27 January issued a memo directing federal agencies to temporarily pause spending on federal financial assistance programs.
That memo said the freeze was necessary while the administration reviewed grants and loans to ensure they are aligned with Trump’s executive orders, including ones ending diversity, equity and inclusion programs and directing a pause on spending on projects seeking to combat climate change.
OMB later withdrew that memo after it became the subject of two lawsuits, one before AliKhan and another before a judge in Rhode Island by Democratic state attorneys general. But the plaintiffs argued the memo’s withdrawal did not mean the end of the policy itself.
They pointed to a social media post on X by White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt shortly after the memo was withdrawn saying: “This is NOT a rescission of the federal funding freeze. It is simply a rescission of the OMB memo.”
Updated
Federal judge in Seattle blocks Trump’s effort to halt the refugee admissions system
This report is from the Associated Press.
A federal judge in Seattle has blocked Donald Trump’s effort to halt the nation’s refugee admissions system.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by major refugee aid groups, who argued that Trump’s executive order suspending the federal refugee resettlement program ran afoul of the system Congress created for moving refugees into the US.
Lawyers for the administration argued that Trump’s order was well within his authority to deny entry to foreigners whose admission to the US “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States”.
US district judge Jamal Whitehead said in his ruling after the hearing on Tuesday that the president’s actions amounted to an “effective nullification of congressional will” in setting up the nation’s refugee admissions program.
“The president has substantial discretion ... to suspend refugee admissions,” Whitehead told the parties. “But that authority is not limitless.”
Justice Department lawyer August Flentje indicated to the judge that the government would consider whether to file an emergency appeal.
The plaintiffs include the International Refugee Assistance Project on behalf of Church World Service, the Jewish refugee resettlement agency HIAS, Lutheran Community Services Northwest, and individual refugees and family members. They said their ability to provide critical services to refugees - including those already in the US - has been severely inhibited by Trump’s order.
Some refugees who had been approved to come to the US had their travel canceled on short notice, and families who have waited years to reunite have had to remain apart, the lawsuit said.
Updated
Peter Baker of the New York Times has compared the White House’s decision to take control of the press pool covering the president and its banning the Associated Press from key White House spaces to treatment of the press under the Kremlin. He wrote on X:
Having served as a Moscow correspondent in the early days of Putin’s reign, this reminds me of how the Kremlin took over its own press pool and made sure that only compliant journalists were given access.
The message is clear. Given that the White House has already kicked one news organization out of the pool because of coverage it does not like, it is making certain everyone else knows that the rest of us can be barred too if the president does not like our questions or stories.
Every president of both parties going back generations subscribed to the principle that a president doesn’t pick the press corps that is allowed in the room to ask him questions. Trump has just declared that he will.
Important to note, though: None of this will stop professional news outlets from covering this president in the same full, fair, tough and unflinching way that we always have. Government efforts to punish disfavored organizations will not stop independent journalism.
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries vowed “not one” Democratic vote on the Republican budget proposal that could come to the floor as early as this evening.
Jeffries declared from the steps of the US Capitol, surrounded by Democratic lawmakers and advocates:
Let me be clear, House Democrats will not provide a single vote to this reckless Republican budget. Not one, not one, not one.
The press conference was intended to be a show of protest against the Republican bill – the legislative vehicle for enacting Trump’s tax cut and immigration agenda. The minority leader is under pressure to stand up to the Republican majority. Activists have keyed in on the possible cuts to Medicaid, the government insurance program for low-income and disabled Americans.
Jeffries said:
The Republican budget represents the largest Medicaid cut in American history.
Children will be devastated. Families will be devastated. People with disabilities will be devastated. Seniors will be devastated. Hospitals will be devastated, nursing homes will be devastated.
In an earlier press conference on Tuesday, House Republicans accused Democrats of “defending and even advocating for government waste, fraud and abuse”.
Updated
At a rally on Capitol Hill, progressives lawmakers and activists railed against Republicans’ plan to enact Donald Trump’s sweeping tax cut and immigration agenda. A vote could take place as early as this evening, according to House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Opposition to the House budget resolution has been steadily building over the last few weeks. During last week’s recess, constituent anger over Republicans’ proposed cuts to Medicaid and other social safety net programs as well as Elon Musk’s efforts to dismantle the federal government boiled over at town halls and Congressional offices across the country.
At the Capitol Hill protest, led by the progressive political advocacy group, People’s Action, Senator Chris Murphy assailed the Republican budget bill as the “most massive transfer of wealth and resources from poor people and the middle class to the billionaires and corporations in the history of this country”.
He continued:
You’re talking about $880 billion of cuts to Medicaid. And I get it, like, $880 billion, what does that mean, right? That’s a huge number. Nobody understands. Let me tell you what that means. That means that sick kids die in this country. That means that hospitals in depressed communities and rural communities close their doors, right? That means that drug and addiction treatment centers disappear all across this country.
Congressman Greg Casar, chair of the Progressive Caucus, compared the moment to the early days of Trump’s first term, when Congressional Republicans, newly in the majority, attempted to repeal the Affordable Care Act. The effort prompted a widespread backlash and ultimately failed in the Senate, with a dramatic thumbs-down vote by the Arizona Republican John McCain.
“The American people won and those House Republicans lost,” Casar said. “We’re right back in the same situation, because today, something is happening in America. Americans are rising up to say, ‘We want a government by and for the people, not by and for the billionaires.’”
This post was updated to add the name of the group that organized the Capitol Hill rally – People’s Action.
More on opposition to the Trump administration here:
Updated
Asked why Dan Bongino was named deputy director of the FBI rather than a current special agent, as is normal practice, Leavitt claims Bongino got the job because he understands the depth of “past corruption” at the agency.
The press briefing is over now.
Updated
Leavitt is also asked what Trump meant when he said federal workers who don’t respond to Doge’s ultimatum email would be fired or “semi-fired”.
She doesn’t clarify things.
She’s also asked again who is the Doge administrator. She repeats what she said earlier: Elon Musk is overseeing Doge, and there are “career officials and political appointees” at Doge.
She says she won’t reveal the name of the individual at this briefing but would be happy to follow up and provide it to the reporter, generously adding: “We’ve been incredibly transparent about the way Doge is working.”
Updated
Leavitt is asked about Republican concerns about how (Doge’s) cuts are being carried out, citing Richard McCormick, a Representative from Georgia, who fears “it’s too rapid for people to adapt to” and worries that it’s coming off as “discompassionate”.
Leavitt says McCormick is just one Senator (he’s actually a Representative) and says the most important people are the American people, who support Doge’s efforts to tackle “waste, abuse and fraud”.
Leavitt rejects that cabinet secretaries including at the FBI and DoJ were “caught off-guard” by Doge’s ultimatum email.
She claims “anonymous sources, probably career bureaucrats, have leaked that to many of you in this room”. She adds:
Everybody is working as one team and the president respects the decisions of his cabinet secretaries to tell their staff not to respond to that email because they did so out of interest of national security, and they didn’t want to risk confidential information.
Elon Musk will attend Trump's first cabinet meeting on Wednesday
Leavitt says the Tesla CEO will be attending the president’s first cabinet meeting tomorrow.
He will be “talking about all of Doge’s efforts and how all of the cabinet secretaries are identifying waste, fraud and abuse at their respective agencies”.
Updated
Leavitt is asked if Trump is planning on whipping any votes for support for the House budget vote and if so to whom is he making calls.
She says Trump “has made it clear to the Hill what his priorities for a budget are”. She says he has told the Speaker [Mike Johnson], [Senate] leader [John] Thune, adding the Senate and the House know what Trump wants “and what the American people want”.
“He expects Congress to get it done,” she adds. “He’s looking at the proposal from the House, and he will also be looking at the proposal, I believe, the Senate is drafting up as well.”
Asked who is the “Doge administrator” referenced in Trump’s executive order which created the group, Leavitt says the president tasked Elon Musk with overseeing the Doge effort, adding that there are “career officials and political appointees” helping run Doge.
She brushes off a follow-up question asking if that means Elon Musk is the administrator.
Leavitt says there is no update on negotiations on a Ukraine minerals deal and when Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit the US.
Leavitt is asked about Elon Musk’s reasoning that the emails were sent out to confirm whether the workers were actually alive. She is also asked about NBC’s report that the responses are going to go into an AI generator to evaluate whether their jobs are necessary. Is all of this to see if people are actually working or is it an effort to cut some of those jobs?
Leavitt says she hasn’t seen NBC News’s report and she hasn’t heard that from Doge or Musk.
'More than 1 million' federal workers have responded to Doge's 'what did you do last week' email, White House claims
Asked when is the deadline referred to in Elon Musk’s deadline second email to federal workers, Leavitt says agency heads will “determine the best practices for their employees at their specific agencies”.
“The secretaries are responsible for their specific workforce, and this is true of the hirings and the firings that have taken place,” she says.
She adds that unless their agency has told them not to, workers should reply to the email.
She claims more than a million workers have so far responded, including herself.
It took me about a minute and a half to think of five things I did last week. I do five things in about ten minutes, and all federal workers should be working at the same pace that President Trump is working.
Asked about Elon Musk’s second email to federal workers threatening that they will be fired if they don’t respond, Leavitt says Trump asked for Musk to be “more aggressive” and five bullet points isn’t a great ask.
She says the president defers to his cabinet secretaries to “pursue the guidance relative to their respective workforce”.
She claims Trump, Musk and the entire cabinet are working as one team.
Updated
White House press team to determine press pool, spokesperson says, in shift of journalistic power
The White House press pool will now be determined the White House press team, Leavitt says.
For decades, a group of DC-based journalists – the White House Correspondents’ Association – has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States in these most intimate spaces. Not anymore.
I am proud to announce that we are giving power back to the people who read your papers, who watch your television shows and who listen to your radio stations.
She says legacy outlets will still be allowed to join and participate in the press pool, but the “privilege” will also be extended to “new voices” from “well-deserving outlets”.
Updated
Karoline Leavitt doubles down on the White House’s decision to revoke full access to presidential events for the Associated Press (though she has quoted their reporting in her intro).
The Trump administration barred the AP’s access to the Oval Office, Air Force One and events held at the White House earlier this month for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage after the president renamed it the “Gulf of America”.
To ram home the point, there is a huge map of the Gulf Coast beside Leavitt, as there has been in the Oval Office, referring to the “Gulf of America” and a huge red stamp reading “VICTORY” over it.
Updated
The White House daily press briefing is happening now, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt taking questions. I’ll bring you the main lines.
Updated
Linda McMahon, Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the education department, has said she “wholeheartedly” agrees with his plan to abolish the federal agency.
“President Trump believes that the bureaucracy in Washington should be abolished so that we can return education to the states, where it belongs,” a statement from McMahon reads.
“I wholeheartedly support and agree with this mission.”
The statement came in response to questions asked by Democratic senators Elizabeth Warren and Andy Kim ahead of a full Senate vote on her confirmation.
During her confirmation hearing before the Senate education panel earlier this month, McMahon said Trump would like to “look, in totality, at the department of education”, adding that she “believes that the bureaucracy of it should be closed.”
The White House has dismissed the resignations of more than 20 civil service employees from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).
“Anyone who thinks protests, lawsuits, and lawfare will deter President Trump must have been sleeping under a rock for the past several years,” a statement by the White House’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, reads.
President Trump will not be deterred from delivering on the promises he made to make our federal government more efficient and more accountable to the hardworking American taxpayers.
Updated
The state department has ordered officials worldwide to deny visas to transgender athletes attempting to come to the US for sports competitions and to issue permanent visa bans against those who are deemed to misrepresent their birth sex on visa applications.
The 24 February state department cable obtained by the Guardian instructs visa officers to apply Immigration and Nationality Act section 212(a)(6)(C)(i) – the “permanent fraud bar” – against trans applicants. Unlike regular visa denials, this section triggers lifetime exclusion from the United States with limited waiver possibilities.
“In cases where applicants are suspected of misrepresenting their purpose of travel or sex, you should consider whether this misrepresentation is material such that it supports an ineligibility finding,” reads the directive from the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio.
The instructions come after Donald Trump issued an executive order on 5 February barring trans athletes from competing in women’s sports. While signing the order, the president directed the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, to deny visas to “men attempting to fraudulently enter the United States while identifying themselves as women athletes” during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles – which will take place under Trump’s watch.
Updated
More than 20 Musk staffers resign over Doge’s ‘dismantling of public services’
More than 20 civil service employees resigned on Tuesday from Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), saying they were refusing to use their technical expertise to “dismantle critical public services”, the Associated Press reports.
“We swore to serve the American people and uphold our oath to the constitution across presidential administrations,” the 21 staffers wrote in a joint resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press. “However, it has become clear that we can no longer honor those commitments.”
Senate confirms Trump pick to be army secretary
The Senate on Tuesday confirmed Daniel Driscoll, an Iraq war veteran and adviser to JD Vance, as secretary of the army, Reuters reports.
The Senate voted 66 to 28 to confirm Driscoll, who served in the army for 3-1/2 years, including a deployment in Iraq from October 2009 to July 2010. Several Democrats joined Republicans in backing president Donald Trump’s nominee.
Updated
The day so far
House speaker Mike Johnson has appeared to give himself wiggle room on whether the budget resolution vote will happen tonight. House GOP leaders had been determined to move forward with the “one big, beautiful bill” to advance Trump’s agenda, but with such a slim majority and at least four Republicans still a “no” this morning, there is a chance it could all get delayed until Johnson is sure he has the numbers (assuming both parties are in full attendance, just one Republican “no” would sink it). He told reporters: “Stay tuned.”
Elsewhere, some 40% of the federal contracts that the Trump administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows. Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on Doge’s “wall of receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.
More on Doge, responses to the Musk-directed email to government employees about what work they had accomplished in the last week will reportedly be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether their jobs are necessary, three sources with knowledge of the system have told NBC News. The information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate and process human language, the sources said. The AI system will determine whether someone’s work is mission-critical or not.
Musk repeated the threat that federal employees could be fired if they failed to reply to the email on Monday evening, writing on X, which he owns: “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.” No further details were given.
Over in Europe, the Kremlin appeared to contradict Trump’s assertion that Russia was open to European peacekeepers being deployed in Ukraine, and referred reporters to an earlier statement that such a move would be unacceptable to Moscow. Russia has repeatedly said it opposes having Nato troops on the ground in Ukraine, with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov saying last week that Moscow would view that as a “direct threat” to Russia’s sovereignty, even if the troops operated there under a different flag, Reuters reported. Meanwhile the Kremlin said Russia had lots of rare earth metal deposits and that it was open to doing deals to develop them after Vladimir Putin held out the possibility of such collaboration with the US.
Updated
'There may be a vote tonight, there may not be - stay tuned': Mike Johnson hints budget plan vote could be delayed
Asked how he responds to (Republican) critics like Thomas Massie (which he so far hasn’t acknowledged at all) who argue that this budget resolution will make the deficit worse not better, Johnson says the objective is deficit neutrality, adding “if we can reduce the deficit, even better”.
He says while they are trying to find savings for taxpayers, they are also trying to “bend the curb on the debt”.
He’s also asked if he still plans to hold the vote today or will it be delayed. Johnson says “we’re planning to take up our budget resolution as early as today” adding he’ll be “working with all the members throughout the day to get to that”. He then appeared to hint it could get delayed:
There may be a vote tonight, there may not be – stay tuned.
He blames Democratic “outrageous demands” that are “unprecedented and probably unconstitutional” for “making individual appropriations bills almost impossible” to pass. So, in other words, he didn’t address that there are concerns coming from within the GOP regarding his budget plan and why some may vote against it.
The press conference is over now.
Updated
Asked to respond to Donald Trump calling Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “dictator” last week and for his thoughts on Trump’s false claim that Ukraine was responsible for the war Russia started, Johnson starts talking about something else.
He says Trump is a “great dealmaker” who is “setting the table for both sides to speak”. He claims Trump is “the only person on the planet who has the ability to make that happen”.
He mentions the prospect of the US working with Ukraine with regard to “production of precious minerals that are needed” and adds “we want to get back to free and fair elections”, seemingly repeating Trump’s bogus claim (and key Kremlin talking point) that Zelenskyy has refused to hold elections during the war so he can stay in power. (In fact, Zelenskyy won the presidency in a landslide and enjoys continued popular support. He declared martial law and therefore had to postpone new elections because his country was, as you will remember, invaded).
The second part of the question asked Johnson whether he has rethought his move to bring aid for Ukraine to the fore last year. He doesn’t answer this either.
Updated
Johnson hails Doge's efforts: 'we out to be standing up and applauding'
Johnson declines to give a view on whether Elon Musk should allow Trump’s cabinet members to make their own decisions on personnel.
But he says he’s “excited” about Doge’s efforts as it is achieving its goal of scaling down the size and scope of government.
He says “we ought to be standing up and applauding” Musk’s prediction he can identify and eliminate $3tn in “waste” of taxypayer dollars.
Updated
Mike Johnson claims Medicaid needs 'shoring up' amid concerns of cuts to program
Asked by a reporter to confirm unequivocally that there won’t be any cuts to Medicaid further down the line, speaker Mike Johnson claims the program is “hugely problematic” because of “a lot of fraud, waste and abuse” and needs “shoring up”.
He claims it wastes $50bn a year in taxpayer dollars in “fraud alone” and eliminating “fraudulent payments” will save “a lot”. He also claims there are “a lot” of savings to be achieved by ensuring illegal aliens are not enrolled (undocumented migrants are not eligible for Medicaid).
He repeats that the bill doesn’t mention Medicaid, but doesn’t explain where funding for the plan will otherwise come from.
Updated
House speaker Mike Johnson reiterates the “one big, beautiful bill” will include securing the border, restoring America’s energy dominance, and avoiding tax increases.
He suggests there is still a way to go before he has the numbers to win the vote tonight:
We’re working right now to get everybody on board. I think everyone wants to be on this train, not in front of it, so we’re going to answer their many questions and get everybody on board.
Updated
At the press conference, House majority leader Steve Scalise says the budget plan delivers on Trump’s mandate from voters – to secure the border, to not increase taxes, and to have more energy produced in the US. “The American people asked for all these things,” he says.
He says Medicaid isn’t mentioned in the bill, dismissing concerns over cuts to it as Democratic “hysteria”. He fails to mention concerns from lawmakers in his own party on possible cuts to the program and does not address where the money to fulfil Trump’s agenda will come from.
Updated
Among the thousands of government workers culled by Musk’s agency were an educator, archaeologist and scientist, who have spoken to Alaina Demopoulos.
The scientist, who works on food sustainability issues in the north east, was 10 weeks away from the end of her three-year probationary period when the Trump administration launched its mass firings of federal workers. A new mom, she decided to take a deferred resignation so she could get severance pay. She said:
Government workers are real people with families who dedicated their lives and expertise to service. It feels like we’re being treated as grifters or terrorists, when we’re not. A lot of us have given up options for much higher incomes in order to do the work that we thought was going to help the world. This is a huge, huge loss for science, because now government researchers are going to shift into the private sector. There’s a lot of good work that the world won’t even know to miss, because we won’t get to do it.
An archaeologist who worked for the National Resources Conservation Services in North Dakota received a generic form letter that still said “template” in the document title, informing him he was being fired for performance-based reasons. He is exploring legal options.
An educator at a national forest in Oregon said:
I feel like we’re being attacked. There have always been people who are anti-government, but now I feel like people see all government employees as villains. I really cared about the work I did, and I didn’t go into this because I wanted to make six figures. The forest or park services have always been very bipartisan, and it’s not something you can easily throw away.
You can read the full piece here:
Updated
The press conference hasn’t started yet but in a blow for Mike Johnson and in an update from his previous comments which we reported earlier, Warren Davidson has told The Hill he will not support the House GOP’s budget resolution.
The Representative from Ohio said he wants leadership to “communicate a binding plan for discretionary spending ahead of March 14,” which is the government funding deadline.
Johnson can only afford to lose one vote on the budget resolution, if both sides are in full attendance.
Updated
House Republican leaders are about to hold a press conference following a closed-door meeting ahead of today’s key vote on the budget resolution. You can watch the press conference live here. I’ll be bringing you the main takeaways.
Doge will use AI to assess responses of federal workers who were told to justify their jobs via email
Responses to the Elon Musk-directed email to government employees about what work they had accomplished in the last week will reportedly be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether their jobs are necessary, three sources with knowledge of the system have told NBC News.
The information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate and process human language, the sources said. The AI system will determine whether someone’s work is mission-critical or not.
Musk’s threats that federal employees could be fired if they failed to reply to the email caused mass confusion on Monday, as workers struggled with how – or whether – to respond. Several government agencies, including the FBI Pentagon, and state department, told their employees not to respond.
Musk repeated the threat on Monday evening, writing on X, which he owns: “Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination.”
Three House Republicans signal opposition to GOP budget plan ahead of vote
As of this morning, three House Republicans, have signaled their opposition to the budget resolution. The Republican majority is so narrow that should they vote against, and should all Democrats be present and also vote against, Mike Johnson’s budget plan is doomed.
Victoria Spartz, Tim Burchett and Thomas Massie have said they are opposed as they want deeper spending cuts, but still plan to speak to GOP leadership ahead of the vote. Massie wrote on X on Monday:
If the Republican budget passes, the deficit gets worse, not better.
Others like Warren Davidson have said they want answers about a government funding deal before they can vote for the budget resolution. Davidson posted on X on Monday:
Let’s be clear. There is no path to pass the @HouseGOP budget plan until it includes the plan for ALL spending. The current plan skips 3/14 altogether. Until that is addressed, there is no viable path to pass the budget resolution.
Jeff Van Drew, a Trump loyalist, told Time Magazine he’s prepared to vote against the budget resolution as the proposed cuts to Medicaid are too extreme. He said he called the president to express his opposition to the plan.
I told him I very well may not vote for this, and I’m certainly waiting until the last minute to see if some changes can be made, because I’m very unhappy.
Van Drew added that they’re “aligned” on not wanting to cut people’s access to health care, but the New Jersey Republican also said Trump didn’t ask him to support the budget resolution.
Other centrist Republicans remain undecided.
Updated
Moment of truth for Mike Johnson amid struggle to get GOP behind budget plan
It’s coming down to the wire for beleaguered House speaker Mike Johnson, who is trying to rally GOP holdouts behind his budget plan for enacting Donald Trump’s agenda before the showdown vote this evening.
Amid Republican opposition threatening to derail his bill, Johnson was up late last night locked in talks with holdouts from across his party who remain skeptical of his outline plan for tax and spending cuts - as well as border security, energy and defense policy - via a single reconciliation bill.
The House proposal – the “one big, beautiful bill” which Trump endorsed last week - would add $4.5tn to the deficit through tax cuts while demanding enormous cuts to federal benefits programs to pay for them. Under the plan’s strict rules, Republicans must either slash a target $2tn from mandatory programs (such as Medicare, Medicaid and food assistance) to make up for current deficit projection or scale back their proposed tax breaks by an equal amount, which would create even bigger deficits in the short-term.
Since Trump was elected on the promise of sweeping tax cuts, Republican lawmakers are feeling the pressure to deliver on that. But at the heart of Johnson’s predicament is that he’s ideologically trapped between hardline deficit hawks who want deeper spending cuts on one wing of his party and nervous moderates who don’t want significant cuts to Medicaid on the other, particularly those in swing seats where large numbers of constituents rely on the program.
While Medicaid isn’t explicitly mentioned in the House GOP budget resolution, in reality a large chunk of the suggested cuts would have to come from the program to offset Trump’s tax cuts, border security buildup and other priorities, as the president has already ruled out any cuts to Social Security and Medicare. He told Fox News Medicaid would not be “touched” bar a clampdown on “fraud”, which seems … open to interpretation. Johnson is now scrambling to win over wavering moderates by convincing them frontline cuts to the program are off the table and he’ll find the staggering $880bn in savings in his budget plan through cuts to other programs.
Assuming every Democrat turns up and votes against the bill, with a thin majority in the House Johnson can’t afford to lose more than one Republican vote. But he told reporters last night he predicted he had enough support and expected the floor vote to go ahead as planned: “I think we’re on track.” He also asked for prayers.
The vote is expected to start at 6.05pm ET tonight.
Updated
Kremlin disputes Trump's claims over Ukraine peacekeepers
The Kremlin appeared to contradict Donald Trump’s assertion that Russia was open to European peacekeepers being deployed in Ukraine, and referred reporters to an earlier statement that such a move would be unacceptable to Moscow.
Russia has repeatedly said it opposes having Nato troops on the ground in Ukraine, with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov saying last week that Moscow would view that as a “direct threat” to Russia’s sovereignty, even if the troops operated there under a different flag, Reuters reports.
Asked about Trump’s comment, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:
There is a position on this matter that was expressed by the Russian foreign minister, Lavrov. I have nothing to add to this and nothing to comment on. I leave this without comment.
Trump said on Monday that both he and Putin accepted the idea of European peacekeepers in Ukraine if a settlement was reached to end the war.
“Yeah, he will accept that,” Trump said. “I specifically asked him that question. He has no problem with it.”
Nearly 40% of contracts canceled by Doge are expected to produce no savings
This report is from the Associated Press.
Some 40% of the federal contracts that the Trump administration claims to have canceled as part of its signature cost-cutting program aren’t expected to save the government any money, the administration’s own data shows.
Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” last week published an initial list of 1,125 contracts that it terminated in recent weeks across the federal government. Data published on Doge’s “wall of receipts” shows that more than one-third of the contract cancellations, 417 in all, are expected to yield no savings.
That’s usually because the total value of the contracts has already been fully obligated, which means the government has a legal requirement to spend the funds for the goods or services it purchased and in many cases has already done so.
Dozens of them were for already-paid subscriptions to the AP, Politico and other media services that the administration said it would discontinue. Others were for research studies that have been awarded, training that has taken place, software that has been purchased and interns that have come and gone.
An administration official said it made sense to cancel contracts that are seen as potential dead weight, even if the moves do not yield any savings. The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
You can read the full story here.
Donald Trump is scheduled to sign yet more executive orders in the Oval Office at 3pm ET today, according to the White House.
It did not specify how many orders would be signed or what topics they would address.
Since taking office last month Trump has signed 73 executive orders, according to the Office of the Federal Register – that’s more than any president since FDR in 1937.
Updated
‘He believes he is the law’: anti-Maga conservatives view Trump as threat to constitution
Michael Fanone, the former police officer who defended the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, looked out at the attendees of the Principles First summit and denounced Donald Trump in the strongest possible terms for pardoning roughly 1,500 people who participated in the insurrection.
“He pardoned them because he wants people to know that if you commit crimes on his behalf, he’s got your back,” Fanone said on Saturday. “They are operating under the assumption that, if they commit violent criminal acts on Donald Trump’s behalf, that he will pardon them for future violence.”
Fanone’s words appeared prescient later that afternoon, when he and three other officers were confronted by Enrique Tarrio, the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys group. Tarrio received a prison sentence of 22 years for seditious conspiracy and other charges related to his role in the insurrection, but Trump pardoned him last month. In a video that Tarrio shared on social media, he taunted Fanone and the other officers – Daniel Hodges of the Metropolitan police department and former Capitol police officers Aquilino Gonell and Harry Dunn – as “fucking cowards”.
You can read the full report here:
Norwegian Refugee Council to suspend ’lifesaving’ aid after US funding freeze
One of Europe’s largest humanitarian organisations announced on Tuesday that it would have to suspend “lifesaving” US-funded aid in 21 countries this week.
The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), said in a statement that the crisis was triggered by the US government’s “continued failure to issue outstanding payments for completed and ongoing authorised work”,
Donald Trump has ordered the suspension of foreign assistance and called for the closure of the United States Agency for International Development (USAid), which distributes US humanitarian aid globally, Agence France-Presse reports.
The organisation said it had $20 million in outstanding requests to the United States, which had already been spent on “21 countries affected by wars, disasters, and displacement”.
The NRC said the funding situation had “created a liquidity crisis” that the organisation “can no longer absorb”, and that it would have to lay off aid workers.
Suspended projects include bakeries providing daily bread to people in Sudan, water and sanitation support in Sudan and the DRC, and emergency shelter and support for cyclone-affected families in Mozambique.
The NRC said it would suspend these programmes on 28 February, and called on the US government to release outstanding payments and “lift all stop work orders to best ensure lifesaving assistance is able to continue”.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio previously announced waivers for lifesaving humanitarian programmes, but NRC said “neither funding nor communication on when money will be transferred has since been received”.
A Trump administration move to suspend funding to the World Health Organization has frozen $46 million for its operations in Gaza, a top WHO official said on Tuesday.
Dr Rik Peeperkorn, the WHO representative for Occupied Palestinian Territories, said the freezing would leave six areas underfunded, including Emergency Medical Teams (EMT) operations, rehabilitation of health facilities, coordination with partner organisations and medical evacuations.
Kremlin says Russia has rare earth metals the US needs and is open to cooperation
The Kremlin said on Tuesday that Russia had lots of rare earth metal deposits and that it was open to doing deals to develop them after President Vladimir Putin held out the possibility of such collaboration with the United States.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said:
The Americans need rare earth metals. We have a lot of them.
We have our own plans to develop strategic resources, but there are quite broad prospects for cooperation here.
Putin told state TV on Monday that Russia was open to joint projects with American partners - including government and the private sector - under a future Russia-US economic deal, Reuters reports.
US president Donald Trump has pledged that “major economic development transactions with Russia” would take place.
Peskov said there was still a lot of work to be done to normalise relations between Moscow and Washington before any economic deals could be struck.
“Next on the agenda is the issue of resolving the Ukrainian crisis”, he said. “And then, especially since the Americans themselves have also spoken about it, it will be time to consider possible projects related to trade, economic and investment cooperation.”
Peskov added: “When there comes, let’s say, a moment of political will, we will be open to this (cooperation on rare earth metals),”
Former defense secretary Chuck Hagel and other former US national security officials on Tuesday warned that China was outpacing the US in critical technology fields and urged Congress to increase funding for federal scientific research.
The appeal comes a week after the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funds science research, fired 170 people in response to President Donald Trump’s order to reduce the federal workforce.
An NSF spokesman declined to comment on reports that hundreds more layoffs were possible and that the agency’s budget could be slashed by billions.
The ex-officials want Congress to provide at least $16 billion authorised for the NSF in the fiscal year 2025, according to a letter seen by Reuters which was addressed to Trump, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, and Mike Johnson, speaker of the US House of Representatives.
“China is making significant strategic investments in basic and applied research and positioning the country to outpace us in critical areas that could determine the outcome of future conflicts,” the letter said. “This is a race that we cannot afford to lose.”
Amid pushback, Musk threatens federal workers with sacking if they fail to reply to email
Hello and welcome to our rolling US politics coverage:
The fallout from Musk’s demand for government workers to justify their work in a bullet-point list continues.
The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which manages the federal workforce, walked back on an ultimatum issued by Elon Musk at the weekend that would have forced its workers to resign if they did not submit the requested list of their recent accomplishments.
It marks one of the first signs of internal pushback to the Tesla billionaire’s campaign to downsize the federal workforce.
The OPM announced that responding to Musk’s email was not mandatory and that failing to respond by midnight on Monday would not be considered a resignation, as Musk had warned.
Musk, however, continued to insist that workers will be expected to respond or they would lose their jobs.
“Subject to the discretion of the president, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination,” Musk said on Monday afternoon.
Earlier in the day Donald Trump had spoken in support of the demand
“By asking the question, tell us what you did this week, what he’s doing is saying, are you actually working?” the president said.
But the ultimatum had already run into resistance with the FBI, the state department and the Pentagon among the agencies instructing employees not to answer the message. Other department heads advised staff to comply, while some told workers to wait for further guidance before responding.
Attorneys for federal workers said in a lawsuit Musk had violated the law with his weekend demand. An updated lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in California and was provided to the Associated Press, is trying to block mass layoffs.
In other developments:
Donald Trump said Vladimir Putin would accept European peacekeepers in Ukraine as part of a potential deal to end the three-year war. Trump was speaking alongside French president Emmanuel Macron at the White House as the leaders sought to smooth over a transatlantic rift to achieve peace.
The Trump-Macron meeting came as the US voted against a United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, siding with countries such as North Korea, Belarus and Sudan over European allies.
Trump said the US and Ukraine are “very close” to coming to terms on a rare earth minerals agreement, in comments made during a visit from French president Emmanuel Macron amid European concerns over the US position on Ukraine.
A federal judge on Monday denied a request by the Associated Press to immediately restore full access to presidential events for the news agency’s journalists, but said the issue required more exploration before ruling. The Trump administration barred the outlet earlier this month for continuing to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage after the president renamed it the “Gulf of America”.
A federal judge has blocked the government downsizing team Doge from accessing sensitive data maintained by the US education department and the US office of personnel management. US district judge Deborah Boardman in Greenbelt, Maryland issued the temporary restraining order at the behest of a coalition of labour unions.
A federal judge has extended protections for trans women in prison. The judge, who blocked the Federal Bureau of Prisons from carrying out Donald Trump’s executive order that would have transferred three incarcerated trans women into men’s facilities earlier this month, has extended protections for nine additional women.
A federal judge blocked immigration agents from conducting enforcement operations in houses of worship for some religious groups, the Associated Press reported. US district judge Theodore Chang found that the Trump administration policy could violate their religious freedom and should be blocked while a lawsuit challenging it plays out.
Former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has launched his campaign for Ohio governor.
