Closing summary
We’re wrapping things up now – thanks for following along. Here’s what happened today:
Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth after it emerged that Hegseth had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.
A former top Pentagon spokesperson, John Ullyot, condemned Hegseth and said it had been a “month of total chaos” in an opinion essay that said the defense secretary would be unlikely to remain in his role.
Republican congressman Don Bacon suggested he would not keep Hegseth in place were he was the president. Bacon, who sits on the House armed services committee, did not explicitly call for Hegseth’s resignation but said he had “concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience”.
The White House denied an NPR report that it had begun the process of looking for a new secretary of defense. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the report was “total FAKE NEWS”.
The Trump administration is planning to pull an additional $1bn of funding for Harvard University amid an escalating fight with the university, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Harvard University sued the Trump administration alleging the Trump administration is trying to “gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard” and violating the first amendment.
Four House Democrats have travelled to El Salvador to call attention to the flight of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador. Congress members Maxwell Frost of Florida, Robert Garcia of California, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine Dexter of Oregon are in El Salvador to facilitate Garcia’s return to the United States.
Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer who is being held at a Louisiana detention facility because of his activism, is now a father.
US stock markets started falling again on Monday morning as Donald Trump continued attacks against the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, who the president called “a major loser” for not lowering interest rates.
The US supreme court is hearing arguments today in a case that could threaten Americans’ access to free preventive healthcare services under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse, containing her driver’s license, apartment keys, passport, DHS access badge, blank checks and about $3,000 in cash, was stolen while she was dining at a restaurant in Washington DC on Sunday night.
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Paul Atkins has been sworn in as SEC chairman.
Atkins, who most recently served as chief executive of financial services consultancy Patomak Global, was an SEC commissioner under President George W. Bush.
“I am honored by the trust and confidence President Trump and the Senate have placed in me to lead the SEC,” said Atkins in a statement. “As I return to the SEC, I am pleased to join with my fellow Commissioners and the agency’s dedicated professionals to advance its mission to facilitate capital formation; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and protect investors. Together we will work to ensure that the U.S. is the best and most secure place in the world to invest and do business.”
Noor Abdalla has fought for the release of her husband even in the waning days of her pregnancy. A statement published on 8 April she wrote:
“They are trying to silence you. They are trying to silence anyone who dares to speak out against the atrocities happening in Palestine. But they will fail. We will not be silenced. We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free.”
Now, in her first days of motherhood, Abdalla has vowed to continue to fight for Khalil’s release. “I know when Mahmoud is freed, he will show our son how to be brave, thoughtful, and compassionate, just like his dad.”
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Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer who is being held at a Louisiana detention facility because of his activism, is now a father.
Noor Abdalla, his wife, released a statement on Monday evening:
“I welcomed our son into the world earlier today without Mahmoud by my side. Despite our request for ICE to allow Mahmoud to attend the birth, they denied his temporary release to meet our son. This was a purposeful decision by ICE to make me, Mahmoud, and our son suffer.”
Earlier this month, an immigration judge ruled that Khalil is eligible to be deported from the United States. Khalil was arrested on 8 March on grounds that he is considered to be a threat to US foreign policy.
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The Department of Education announced it will restart federal student loan payments next month for millions of borrowers and will eventually begin garnishing people’s wages.
According to AP, the government will start collection through the treasury department’s offset program on 5 May. The offset program withholds government payments including tax refunds, federal wages and other benefits from people who owe money to the government. The government will also begin to garnish the wages of borrowers who are in default after a 30-day notice.
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Senate Republicans are throwing their support behind defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
“These nameless leakers from the Pentagon want a military that’s woke, not lethal,” a new post on X from the Senate Republicans account read. “That’s why they’re trying to smear Pete Hegseth. Senate Republicans stand behind @POTUS and Secretary Hegseth.”
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Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador, is “in good conditions and in an excellent state of health”, according to a state department attestation submitted to a federal court overseeing García’s case.
The declaration is part of the daily updates US district judge Paula Xinis has ordered the federal government to provide on whether and how it is complying with her order to bring García back to the US.
The declaration read: “On April 20 and 21, our Ambassador requested an update from the Salvadoran government regarding the physical location and custodial status of Mr Abrego García. The Salvadoran government responded on April 21 that Mr Abrego García is being held at the Centro Industrial penitentiary facility in Santa Ana, ‘in good conditions and in an excellent state of health.’”
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Trump said that the US can’t give everyone they are trying to deport a trial. In a post on Truth Social, Trump said giving everyone a trial would “take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country.”
“Such a thing is not possible to do,” he said in his post, lamenting that courts making it harder to deport undocumented immigrants.
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In its lawsuit, Harvard alleges the government is violating the first amendment as well as several federal laws and regulations. And that cutting off federal funding to these research efforts would have “severe and long-lasting” consequences.
“Research that the government has put in jeopardy includes efforts to improve the prospects of children who survive cancer, to understand at the molecular level how cancer spreads throughout the body, to predict the spread of infectious disease outbreaks, and to ease the pain of soldiers wounded on the battlefield,” Garber wrote in a statement.
In its complaint, Harvard says that the university “rejects antisemitism and discrimination in all of its forms and is actively making structural reforms to eradicate antisemitism on campus” but that the government “announced a sweeping freeze of funding for medical, scientific, technological, and other research that has nothing at all to do with antisemitism and Title VI compliance”.
“Moreover, Congress in Title VI set forth detailed procedures that the Government ‘shall’ satisfy before revoking federal funding based on discrimination concerns,” the complaint reads.
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Harvard president Alan Garber reiterated that the Trump administration had doubled down on its response to the university’s refusal to comply with the administration’s demands, despite claims that the letter indicating Harvard’s federal research funding was at risk was sent by mistake.
“The government has, in addition to the initial freeze of $2.2 billion in funding, considered taking steps to freeze an additional $1 billion in grants, initiated numerous investigations of Harvard’s operations, threatened the education of international students, and announced that it is considering a revocation of Harvard’s 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status,” Garber wrote. “These actions have stark real-life consequences for patients, students, faculty, staff, researchers, and the standing of American higher education in the world.”
Harvard is suing the Trump administration
In a new lawsuit, Harvard University alleged the Trump administration is trying to “gain control of academic decision-making at Harvard”, several news outlets are reporting.
The university is fighting back against the administration’s threat to review about $9bn in federal funding after Harvard officials refused to comply with a list of demands that included appointing an outside overseer to ensure that the viewpoints being taught at the university were “diverse”.
In a letter announcing the university’s decision to reject Trump’s demands, Harvard president Alan Garber wrote: “No government — regardless of which party is in power — should dictate what private universities can teach, whom they can admit and hire, and which areas of study and inquiry they can pursue.”
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Government watchdog group American Oversight has asked a judge to order the Trump administration to keep records of its messages including those in the second Signal group chat Pete Hegseth shared Yemen attack details with.
American Oversight initially filed the lawsuit on 25 March, but amended the suit following revelations that Hegseth reportedly shared the details of an attack on Yemen’s Houthi group in a Signal chat that included his wife and brother.
The lawsuit asks the judge to declare that these Signal messages are “federal records subject to the Federal Records Act (FRA)”.
“It is now evident the administration’s unlawful use of Signal to conduct — and delete — sensitive government business is a feature and not a bug,” said Chioma Chukwu, the interim executive director of American Oversight. “We cannot stand idly by while senior government officials share imminent attack plans with their family and friends, putting our national security at risk and betraying the men and women in uniform whose very lives are endangered as a result.”
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A judge has issued a temporary restraining order, blocking New York City mayor Eric Adams’s administration from allowing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) from operating from Rikers Island, according to Gothamist.
The temporary block was requested by the New York city council, which is suing the Adams administration over its attempt to broker a deal with Ice for the use of the Rikers Island.
In the ruling, Judge Mary V Rosado wrote: “City Hall and all other New York City government officials, officers, personnel and agencies are prohibited from taking any steps towards negotiating, signing or implementing any memoranda of understanding with the federal government regarding federal law enforcement presence on Department of Correction property.”
In the lawsuit, New York city council alleged Adams entered into a “corrupt bargain” with the Trump administration to get the mayor’s federal charges dropped.
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Nadine Menendez, the wife of former New Jersey senator Bob Menendez, has been convicted of accepting bribes of gold bars, cash and a luxury car, according to the Associated Press. Prosecutors said she played centrally in a scheme in which Menendez accepted bribes from three New Jersey men looking for help with their business and legal troubles. The couple maintains their innocence.
The senator, who resigned from the Senate in August after his conviction, is expected to start an 11-year sentence in June. During an FBI raid of the duo’s home, officials found $150,000 worth of gold bars and $480,000 in cash stuffed in various belongings and a Mercedes-Benz that was also allegedly a bribe.
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Summary of the day so far
Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth after it emerged that Hegseth had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.
A former top Pentagon spokesperson, John Ullyot, slammed Hegseth and said it had been a “month of total chaos” in an opinion essay that said the defense secretary would be unlikely to remain in his role.
Republican congressman Don Bacon suggested he would not keep Hegseth in place were he was the president. Bacon, who sits on the House armed services committee, did not explicitly call for Hegseth’s resignation but said he had “concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience”.
The White House denied an NPR report that it had begun the process of looking for a new secretary of defense. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the report was “total FAKE NEWS”.
The Trump administration is planning to pull an additional $1bn of funding for Harvard University amid an escalating fight with the university, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Four House Democrats have travelled to El Salvador to call attention to the flight of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador. Congress members Maxwell Frost of Florida, Robert Garcia of California, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine Dexter of Oregon are in El Salvador to facilitate Garcia’s return to the United States.
US stock markets started falling again on Monday morning as Donald Trump continued attacks against the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, who the president called “a major loser” for not lowering interest rates.
The US supreme court is hearing arguments today in a case that could threaten Americans’ access to free preventive healthcare services under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse, containing her driver’s license, apartment keys, passport, DHS access badge, blank checks and about $3,000 in cash, was stolen while she was dining at a restaurant in Washington DC on Sunday night.
Donald Trump offered public support for defense secretary Pete Hegseth a day after it emerged that Hegseth had shared information about US strikes in Yemen last month in a second Signal group chat that included family, his personal lawyer and several top Pentagon aides.
The details that Hegseth sent in the Signal group chat were essentially the same information that he shared in a separate Signal group chat earlier this year that mistakenly included the editor of the Atlantic in addition to JD Vance and other top Trump officials, a person directly familiar with the messages said.
Trump called the defense secretary on Sunday after the story broke and aides concluded that it had been leaked to the news media by a former Hegseth aide who was in the group chat but abruptly fired last week.
Trump has resisted firing top officials in his second term, not wanting to be seen as caving to a media swarm even if he has been unhappy with the negative coverage. Trump also stuck by his national security adviser, Mike Waltz, who had added the editor of the Atlantic to the first chat.
According to a person familiar with the call, Trump told Hegseth that he had his support and that disgruntled leakers were to blame for the story.
Trump also told his team to back Hegseth in public, and senior Trump aides repeated their defense line that none of the information shared in either of the group chats were classified, although the accusations have centered on why it was shared with Hegseth’s wife, for instance, since she is not a Pentagon official.
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Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar’s comments on Sunday came hours after the supreme court released justice Samuel Alito’s dissenting opinion on the court’s decision to block the Trump administration from deporting more Venezuelans held in north Texas’s Bluebonnet detention center.
In his dissent, Alito criticized the decision of the seven-member majority, saying the court had acted “literally in the middle of the night” and without sufficient explanation. The “unprecedented” relief was “hastily and prematurely granted”, Alito added.
Alito, whose dissent was joined by his fellow conservative justice Clarence Thomas, said there was “dubious factual support” for granting the request in an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union to block deportations of accused gang members that the administration contends are legal under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
In his dissent, Alito said the applicants had not shown they were in “imminent danger of removal”. He wrote:
In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order.
“I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate,” Alito added.
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Amy Klobuchar, the Democratic senator from Minnesota, warned on Sunday that the US was “getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis”, but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off.
Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union:
I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the Congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold.
She added that Donald Trump is “trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis”.
Klobuchar said the supreme court should hold Trump administration officials in contempt if they continue to ignore a court order to facilitate the return of Kilmar Ábrego García from El Salvador, the Maryland resident the government admitted in court it had deported by mistake.
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US stock markets started falling again on Monday morning as Donald Trump continued attacks against the Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, who the president called “a major loser” for not lowering interest rates.
Trump is pressuring the Fed to cut rates, probably to appease the stock market, which plummeted after he announced his newest slate of tariffs. But Wall Street isn’t taking the bait and appears to be reacting in opposition to Trump’s attacks against Powell.
On Monday morning the Dow was down 1,000 points, 2.8%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite was over 3% down and the S&P 500 fell 2.9%.
Former tech stocks favorites Tesla and Nvidia were both down over 5% on Monday, while the value of the dollar fell to multiyear lows against most major currencies.
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The supreme court is hearing arguments today in a case that could threaten Americans’ access to free preventive healthcare services under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
At issue is the constitutionality of the US preventive services taskforce, which plays a critical role in determining which preventive services health insurers must cover without cost to patients.
The 16-member panel of medical experts, appointed by the health secretary without Senate confirmation, has designated dozens of life-saving screenings and treatments as essential preventive care.
If the justices uphold the lower court’s ruling, health associations said in a filing, life-saving tests and treatments that have been cost-free would become subject to co-pays and deductibles, deterring many Americans from obtaining them.
The case represents the latest in a long series of legal challenges to Barack Obama’s signature healthcare legislation to reach the nation’s highest court since its passage in 2010. A big critic of the program during his first term, Trump and his administration have now taken over the case after the Biden administration initially filed the appeal.
Republican congressman Don Bacon, in an interview with Politico, said defense secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to use a private device or Signal to communicate classified information was especially troubling. He said:
Russia and China put up thousands of people to monitor all these phone calls at the very top, and the No. 1 target besides the president … would be the secretary of defense.
Russia and China are all over his phone, and for him to be putting secret stuff on his phone is not right. He’s acting like he’s above the law – and that shows an amateur person.
Bacon’s comments come after an opinion essay also published in Politico by John Ullyot, a former top Pentagon spokesperson, who slammed Hegseth’s leadership of the Department of Defense.
“It looks like there’s a meltdown going on,” Bacon said.
There’s a lot – a lot – of smoke coming out of the Pentagon, and I got to believe there’s some fire there somewhere.
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First Republican lawmaker calls for Hegseth to go
Don Bacon, a Republican congressman from Nebraska who serves on the House armed services committee, has become the first sitting GOP lawmaker to suggest Donald Trump should fire his defense secretary, Pete Hegseth.
Bacon, a former air force general, told Politico:
I had concerns from the get-go because Pete Hegseth didn’t have a lot of experience. I like him on Fox. But does he have the experience to lead one of the largest organizations in the world? That’s a concern.
He said it was “totally unacceptable” that Hegseth reportedly shared sensitive information about military operations in Yemen in a private Signal chat that included his wife, his brother and personal lawyer. Bacon added:
I’m not in the White House, and I’m not going to tell the White House how to manage this … but I find it unacceptable, and I wouldn’t tolerate it if I was in charge.
White House denies NPR report on search under way to replace Hegseth
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says that a report from NPR that the White House had begun the process of looking for a new secretary of defense is “total FAKE NEWS”.
The NPR report, which was published just minutes ago, cites a US official who NPR says is not authorized to speak publicly.
Leavitt said in a post on X that President Trump “stands strongly behind” defense secretary Pete Hegseth.
The NPR report came this afternoon Hegseth made headlines again on Sunday after reports alleged that he was involved in a second Signal chatroom that included his wife and brother where he allegedly shared sensitive information about planned strikes in Yemen.
Earlier on Monday, Trump had said that he stood “strongly behind” Hegseth.
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President Donald Trump is set to meet with executives from major retailers including Walmart, Target, Home Depot and Lowe’s today, to discuss the impact of Trump’s tariffs on their businesses.
The news of the meeting was first reported by Bloomberg News.
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Summary of the day so far
Pressure is mounting on defense secretary Pete Hegseth following reports that he shared details of a US attack on Yemeni Houthi rebels last month in a second Signal chat that he created himself and included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people.
A former top Pentagon spokesperson, John Ullyot, slammed Hegseth and said it had been a “month of total chaos” in an opinion essay that said the defense secretary would be unlikely to remain in his role.
Trump defended Hegseth, saying he was doing a “great job”. The White House said Trump “stands strongly behind” his defense secretary. Hegseth himself blamed “disgruntled former employees”.
The Trump administration is planning to pull an additional $1bn of funding for Harvard University amid an escalating fight with the university, according to a Wall Street Journal report.
Four House Democrats have travelled to El Salvador to call attention to the flight of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador. Congress members Maxwell Frost of Florida, Robert Garcia of California, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine Dexter of Oregon are in El Salvador to facilitate Garcia’s return to the United States.
The US supreme court is hearing arguments today in a case that could threaten Americans’ access to free preventive healthcare services under the Affordable Care Act, commonly known as Obamacare.
Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse, containing her driver’s license, apartment keys, passport, DHS access badge, blank checks and about $3,000 in cash, was stolen while she was dining at a restaurant in Washington DC on Sunday night.
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Trump to pull additional $1bn in funding for Harvard University - report
The Trump administration is planning to pull an additional $1bn of funding for Harvard University amid an escalating fight with the university, according to a report.
The administration has become “furious” with Harvard after it released a letter sent by administration officials listing its demands that Harvard allow federal government oversight of admissions, hiring and the ideology of students and staff, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The additional $1bn would target the school’s funding for health research, the paper said.
It would follow some $2.2bn in federal funding already frozen to Harvard after the university refused to concede to a number of the administration’s demands.
Trump has also called for its tax-exempt status to be revoked, a potentially illegal move, against Harvard.
Vice-President JD Vance met with India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, on Monday.
Vance and Modi welcomed “significant progress” in talks for an early trade deal between the two countries, according to the White House.
The US-India bilateral trade agreement will focus on “promoting job creation and citizen well-being in both countries, with the goal of enhancing bilateral trade and supply-chain integration in a balanced and mutually beneficial manner”, it said.
Vance arrived in Delhi earlier on Monday for a largely personal four-day visit to the country with his family, which will include visiting the Taj Mahal and making a speech in the city of Jaipur.
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Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem’s purse was stolen while she was dining at a restaurant in Washington DC on Sunday night, according to law enforcement sources.
Noem’s purse contained her driver’s license, apartment keys, passport, DHS access badge, blank checks and about $3,000 in cash.
Noem, who was asked about the theft at the White House Easter Egg Roll, acknowledged the incident and said the matter has not been resolved.
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Trump defends Hegseth: 'He’s doing a great job'
Donald Trump, speaking to reporters at the annual Easter Egg roll at the White House, defended his defense secretary Pete Hegseth following reports of a second Signal chatroom used to discuss sensitive military operations.
“Pete’s doing a great job,” the president said. “Just ask the Houthis how he’s doing.”
It’s just fake news. They just bring up stories. It sounds like disgruntled employees. He was put there to get rid of a lot of bad people and that’s what he’s doing. You don’t always have friends when you do that.
Donald Trump promised to “bring religion back in America” during remarks at the annual Easter Egg roll at the White House.
Addressing a crowd on the South Lawn from the Blue Room Balcony, Trump said he had ordered US flags to be flown half-mast in honor of Pope Francis, who he described as a “good man”.
“He loved the world and it’s an honor to do that,” Trump said.
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Maxwell Frost, the Democratic congressman from Florida, posted to X this morning confirming that he and three other House Democrats had arrived in El Salvador.
Frost accused Donald Trump of “illegally arresting, jailing, and deporting people with no due process”, adding:
We must hold the Administration accountable for these illegal acts and demand Kilmar’s release. Today it’s him, tomorrow it could be anyone else.
Yassamin Ansari, a Democrat congresswoman from Arizona, warned that the country is in a “constitutional crisis”.
“I’m in El Salvador to shine a light on Kilmar’s story and keep the pressure on Donald Trump to secure his safe return home,” she said.
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Kilmar Ábrego García's family says House Democrats visit to El Salvador 'sends a powerful message'
Four House Democrats have travelled to El Salvador to call attention to the flight of Kilmar Ábrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported to El Salvador.
Congress members Maxwell Frost of Florida, Robert Garcia of California, Yassamin Ansari of Arizona and Maxine Dexter of Oregon are in El Salvador to facilitate Garcia’s return to the United States, they said in a statement. A statement about their visit reads:
The congressional members are in El Salvador to bring attention to President Trump’s illegal defiance of the binding and unanumous supreme court decision in Noem v. Abrego Garcia that demands the administration facilitate Abrego’s Garcia’s return and due process in the United States.
Jennifer Vasquez Sura, the wife of Ábrego García, said she was “deeply grateful” to them and that the visit “sends a powerful message”.
“The fight to bring Kilmar home isn’t over,” she said.
I’m fighting for Kilmar and for all the other Kilmars who have been unjustly deported without due process. We need Congress to keep showing up, both here and abroad, until justice is served and the rights of everyone are protected.
Donald Trump plans to speak with Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, today to discuss the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal and the nuclear talks with Iran, according to an Axios report.
Here’s more on the continued attacks by Donald Trump on the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.
If Trump were to fire the head of the central bank, such a move would be unprecedented.
The president has historically respected the independence of the central bank, and kept out of its way – even if there was disagreement over Fed policy. But, of course, it looks like Trump is following his own playbook.
Can Trump legally fire the Fed chair?
The clearest answer: right now, probably not, but things could change.
On Wednesday, Powell affirmed that the Fed’s independence “is a matter of law”. “We’re not removable except for cause,” Powell said. “Fed independence has pretty broad support across both political parties and on both sides of the hill.”
But he also mentioned a case going through the supreme court that may alter the power the president has over federal agencies, going off Trump firing an official with the National Labor Relations Board. It’s unclear how the court will rule, but it allowed the firings to stand, overruling a lower court.
“I don’t think that that decision will apply to the Fed, but I don’t know,” Powell said. “It’s a situation that we’re monitoring carefully.”
The Fed’s next board meeting is on 6 and 7 May. Trump is probably trying to pressure the Fed ahead of it, but it is unlikely that officials will budge.
Here’s what else to know about what is going on between Trump and the Federal Reserve.
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US government employees “improperly” shared sensitive documents, including White House blueprints, with thousands of federal workers, the Washington Post first reported on Sunday.
Staff with the General Services Administration (GSA), an independent agency that oversees the construction and preservation of government buildings, shared a Google Drive folder contacting confidential files to all GSA staff members, totaling more than 11,200 people.
The folder was mistakenly uploaded to a Google workplace with the incorrect settings, making it accessible to all workers, a source told the Axios website after the Post’s story broke.
It is unclear if any of the documents shared were classified, but experts have warned that sharing some documents, including White House floor plans, poses obvious security risks.
Trump demands 'major loser' Fed chair to lower interest rates
Donald Trump has warned that the economy could slow down unless interest rates are lowered immediately, as he resumed his attacks on the chair of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell.
Posting to Truth Social, Trump called Powell a “major loser” and “Mr. Too Late”, writing:
With these costs trending so nicely downward, just what I predicted they would do, there can almost be no inflation, but there can be a SLOWING of the economy unless Mr. Too Late, a major loser, lowers interest rates, NOW.
Trump has on previous occasions expressed a wish for Powell to be gone for his role. Last week, Trump claimed Powell would resign if he asked him to. Powell himself has said that he would not resign if asked to do so by the president.
Powell warned last week that Trump’s s tariffs were generating a “challenging scenario” for the central bank and were likely to worsen inflation.
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Democrats urge Trump to fire Hegseth
Pressure mounted on Pete Hegseth to be fired as defense secretary following reports of a second Signal chatroom used to discuss sensitive military operations.
The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.
Tammy Duckworth, a Democratic senator from Illinois and combat veteran, said the second Signal chat put the lives of our men and women in uniform at greater risk:
How many times does Pete Hegseth need to leak classified intelligence before Donald Trump and Republicans understand that he isn’t only a f*cking liar, he is a threat to our national security?
“Every day he stays in his job is another day our troops’ lives are endangered by his singular stupidity,” Duckworth said. “He must resign in disgrace.”
Jack Reed, a Democratic senator from Rhode Island, a senior member of the Senate armed services committee, said the report “is another troubling example of Secretary Hegseth’s reckless disregard for the laws and protocols that every other military service member is required to follow”.
Reed called on Hegseth to “immediately explain why he reportedly texted classified information that could endanger American service members’ lives on a commercial app that included his wife, brother, and personal lawyer.”
Hegseth “must be fired,” Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said.
The details keep coming out. We keep learning how Pete Hegseth put lives at risk. But Trump is still too weak to fire him.
Joe Biden has also posted about the death of Pope Francis, saying the pontiff was “unlike any who came before him”.
“It is with great sadness that Jill and I learned of the passing of His Holiness Pope Francis,” Biden wrote in a statement on X.
Pope Francis will be remembered as one of the most consequential leaders of our time and I am better for having known him.
For decades, he served the most vulnerable across Argentina and his mission of serving the poor never ceased. As Pope, he was a loving pastor and challenging teacher who reached out to different faiths. He commanded us to fight for peace and protect our planet from a climate crisis. He advocated for the voiceless and powerless. He made all feel welcome and seen by the Church. He promoted equity and an end to poverty and suffering across the globe.
And above all, he was a Pope for everyone. He was the People’s Pope - a light of faith, hope, and love.
Donald Trump posted to Truth Social this morning following the news that Pope Francis died on Friday morning.
Trump wrote:
Rest in Peace Pope Francis! May God Bless him and all who loved him!
Among the last people to see and speak to the pontiff in the hours before his death early on Monday morning was JD Vance.
The pair met on Sunday morning at the Domus Santa Marta guest house where, according to the Vatican, the two men spoke for a few minutes to exchange Easter greetings.
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth suggested that disgruntled former employees who were recently fired were responsible for leaking the information about his use of Signal group chats.
“This is what the media does,” Hegseth said on Monday.
They take anonymous sources, disgruntled former employees and they try to slash and burn people and ruin their reputations.
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Hegseth says he and Trump are 'on the same page all the way'
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth said he has spoken with Donald Trump after reports that he shared sensitive information about a March attack on Yemen in a private Signal group that included his wife and brother.
Hegseth spoke as he arrived at the White House for the annual Easter egg hunt:
I have spoken with the president and we are going to continue fighting. On the same page all the way.
Trump 'stands strongly behind' Hegseth, says White House
Donald Trump “stands strongly behind” defense secretary Pete Hegseth, the White House has said, after a Sunday report alleging that he shared sensitive information about planned strikes in Yemen in a private Signal group chat that included his wife and brother.
The White House’s press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Monday:
The president absolutely has confidence in secretary Hegseth. I spoke to him about it this morning, and he stands strongly behind him.
Leavitt, speaking to Fox News this morning, said Hegseth is doing a “phenomenal job”, adding:
This is what happens when the entire Pentagon is working against you and working against the monumental change that you are trying to implement.
Top Hegseth aide says Pentagon in 'total chaos', warns 'bigger bombshells' to come
The Pentagon’s former chief spokesperson, John Ullyot, has written an opinion article detailing a “month of total chaos” at the department of defense and suggesting that the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, is unlikely to remain in his role.
In the piece published in Politico on Sunday, Ullyot warns that “even bigger bombshell stories” will probably come this week, following the New York Times report that Hegseth shared details about a Houthi strike in another Signal chat that included his wife and brother. He wrote:
It’s been a month of total chaos at the Pentagon. From leaks of sensitive operational plans to mass firings, the dysfunction is now a major distraction for the president – who deserves better from his senior leadership.
Ullyot described the department as being “in disarray under Hegseth’s leadership” and noted the firings of several top Pentagon officials in the last several days.
President Donald Trump has a strong record of holding his officials to account. Given that, it’s hard to see Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth remaining in his position for much longer.
Updated
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth did not address the latest report that he shared detailed plans about a military operation against the Houthis in a second Signal group chat.
Instead, Hegseth replied late on Sunday to a post on X from the Democratic party which said it was time for the defense secretary to go.
In response, Hegseth wrote:
Your agenda is illegals, trans & DEI – all of which are no longer allowed [at the department of defense].
Pentagon spokesperson says 'we will never back down' over reports of second Signal group war chat
The Pentagon’s chief spokesperson Sean Parnell issued a statement last night following the New York Times report that defense secretary Pete Hegseth shared detailed information about a March attack on Houthis that included his wife, brother and personal lawyer.
“Another day, another old story – back from the dead,” Parnell said in a post on X.
The Trump-hating media continues to be obsessed with destroying anyone committed to President Trump’s agenda. This time, the New York Times — and all other Fake News that repeat their garbage — are enthusiastically taking the grievances of disgruntled former employees as the sole sources for their article.
He went on:
There was no classified information in any Signal chat, no matter how many ways they try to write the story. What is true is that the Office of the Secretary of Defense is continuing to become stronger and more efficient in executing President Trump’s agenda.
We’ve already achieved so much for the American warfighter, and will never back down.
Updated
Fears of a new wave of deportations and student visa cancellations are rising at a number of Florida’s most diverse universities after administrators signed agreements recasting campus police as federal immigration agents.
Miami’s Florida International University (FIU) is one of at least 11 state colleges to enroll in the top tier of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) 287(g) program that trains local police departments for “limited” involvement in immigration operations.
The partnerships give campus officers broad new powers to stop, question and detain students about their immigration status, and share information directly with Ice, which students and faculty members believe could escalate the Trump administration’s assault on those studying in the US from abroad.
Nationally, more than 1,400 international students and recent graduates perceived by the government to be pro-Palestinian have had their F-1 or J-1 visas canceled by the homeland security department, according to a tally by Inside Higher Ed, with the Miami New Times reporting dozens in Florida.
Public figures across the world have paid tribute to Pope Francis after his death, including US vice-president JD Vance who met the “obviously very ill” pontiff on Sunday.
Vance met Pope Francis in Rome on Easter Sunday, just hours before the pontiff’s death aged 88.
Months after Francis criticised president Donald Trump’s administration over their plans to deport migrants en masse, Pope Francis offered Vance three chocolate Easter eggs for his three young children in Sunday’s brief meeting.
“I just learned of the passing of Pope Francis,” Vance posted to X.
“My heart goes out to the millions of Christians all over the world who loved him.
“I was happy to see him yesterday, though he was obviously very ill.”
The US supreme court is set on Monday to consider the legality of a provision of the Obamacare law, formally called the Affordable Care Act, that helps ensure that health insurers cover preventive medical care such as cancer screenings at no cost to patients, Reuters reported.
The federal government has appealed a lower court’s determination that the US preventive services taskforce, which under Obamacare has a major hand in choosing what services will be covered, is composed of members who were not validly appointed.
Its 16 members are appointed by the US secretary of health and human services without Senate confirmation. Several Texas Christians and two small businesses sued in federal court in Texas in 2020 to challenge the taskforce’s structure.
It is the latest in a years-long series of challenges to the 2010 law, Democratic former president Barack Obama’s signature legislative achievement, to reach the supreme court.
If the justices uphold the lower court’s ruling, health associations said in a filing, life-saving tests and treatments that have been cost-free would become subject to co-pays and deductibles, deterring many Americans from obtaining them.
The case centers on whether the preventive services taskforce wields power to such an extent that its members must be appointed by the president and confirmed by the US Senate, as required by the US constitution’s Appointments Clause, rather than the current arrangement.
Hundreds of marches, pickets and cleanup events are taking place across the US in the run-up to Earth Day on Tuesday, as environmental and climate groups step up resistance to the Trump administration’s authoritarianism and its “war on the planet”.
A fortnight after the “Hands Off” mobilization brought millions to the streets, national and grassroots organizers are teaming up with pro-democracy groups for “All Out on Earth Day” – a wave of actions to demand the right to live free, healthy lives.
In New York, thousands of people gathered in lower Manhattan on Saturday for the “Hands Off Migrants march” endorsed by dozens of climate and migrant justice groups, calling for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to get out of New York – and New York to get out of fossil fuels. The two movements converged amid Trump’s crackdown on migrants and embrace of fossil fuels – which will drive further climate collapse and forced migration.
Meanwhile in Milwaukee, a Stop the Cuts march organized by Indivisible and 50501 called out Republican lawmakers backing the unprecedented cuts to healthcare, education, environmental protections and climate funding.
Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Stoere and finance minister Jens Stoltenberg will meet with US president Donald Trump in Washington on Thursday, the prime minister’s office said.
The meeting at the White House will, among other things, cover the security policy situation, Nato and the war in Ukraine as well as trade and business topics, the statement on Monday said.
“Norway and the US cooperate in a number of areas, and the US is an important trading partner for Norway. I look forward to talking about areas where we can cooperate even more closely in the future,” Stoere said.
Pete Hegseth shared Yemen attack details in second Signal chat – report
Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I’ll be bringing you the latest news lines over the next few hours.
We start with news that defense secretary Pete Hegseth sent detailed information about military strikes on Yemen in March to a private Signal group chat that he created himself and included his wife, his brother and about a dozen other people, the New York Times reported.
The Guardian has independently confirmed the existence of Hegseth’s own private group chat.
According to unnamed sources familiar with the chat who spoke to the Times, Hegseth sent the private group of his personal associates some of the same information, including the flight schedules for the F/A-18 Hornets that would strike Houthi rebel targets in Yemen, that he also shared with another Signal group of top officials that was created by Mike Waltz, the national security adviser.
The existence of the Signal group chat created by Waltz, in which detailed attack plans were divulged by Hegseth to other Trump administration officials on the private messaging app, was made public last month by Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic, who had been accidentally added to the group by Waltz.
The fact that Hegseth also shared the plans in a second Signal group chat, according to “people familiar with the matter” who spoke to the Times, is likely to add to growing criticism of the former Fox weekend anchor’s ability to manage the Pentagon, a massive organization which operates in matters of life and death around the globe.
According to the Times, the private chat also included two senior advisers to Hegseth – Dan Caldwell and Darin Selnick – who were fired last week after being accused of leaking unauthorized information.
See our full report here:
In other news:
Immigration officials detained a US citizen for nearly 10 days in Arizona, according to court records and press reports. Jose Hermosillo, a 19-year-old New Mexico resident visiting Arizona, was detained by border patrol agents in Nogales, a city along the Mexico border about an hour south of Tucson. Hermosillo’s wrongful arrest and prolonged detention comes amid escalating attacks by the Trump administration on immigrants in the US.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, who travelled to El Salvador last week to meet Kilmar Ábrego García, the man at the center of a wrongful deportation dispute, said on Sunday that his trip was to support Ábrego García’s right to due process because if that was denied then everyone’s constitutional rights were threatened in the US. The White House has claimed Ábrego García was a member of the MS-13 gang though he has not been charged with any gang related crimes and the supreme court has ordered his return to the US be facilitated.
Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar warned on Sunday that the US is “getting closer and closer to a constitutional crisis”, but the courts, growing Republican disquiet at Trump administration policies, and public protest were holding it off. “I believe as long as these courts hold, and the constituents hold, and the congress starts standing up, our democracy will hold,” Klobuchar told CNN’s State of the Union, adding “but Donald Trump is trying to pull us down into the sewer of a crisis.”
Massachusetts governor Maura Healey said on Sunday that Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University and other schools are having detrimental ripple effects, with the shutdown of research labs and cuts to hospitals linked to colleges. During an interview on CBS’s Face the Nation, the Democratic governor said that the effects on Harvard are damaging “American competitiveness”, since a number of researchers are leaving the US for opportunities in other countries. After decades of investment in science and innovation, she said: “intellectual assets are being given away.”
A draft Trump administration executive order reported to be circulating among US diplomats proposes a radical restructuring of the US state department, including drastic reductions to sub-Saharan operations, envoys and bureaus relating to climate, refugees, human rights, democracy and gender equality. The changes, if enacted, would be one of the biggest reorganizations of the department since its founding in 1789, according to Bloomberg, which had seen a copy of the 16-page draft.
