Summary
That’s it from us after a very busy Friday. Here’s what happened:
Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, has said reports of tariffs starting 1 March are false before announcing new tariffs Donald Trump plans to impose on countries starting tomorrow, including: “25% tariffs on Mexico, 25% tariffs on Canada, and a 10% tariff on China for the illegal fentanyl that they have sent to our country, which has killed tens of millions of Americans.”
Trump said he expected tariffs on oil and gas to be announced on 18 February and then said he would decrease the tariffs on Canadian oil to 10%. He also said he planned “substantial” tariffs on the European Union.
A government memo sent on Wednesday directed agencies to strip “gender ideology” from websites, contracts and email signatures by Friday at 5pm ET. Some federal websites were taken down as government employees scrambled to meet the deadline. FAA.gov remained dark by Friday evening. The CDC took down a variety of health resources including a fact sheet about HIV and trans people; lessons on how to create a supportive environment in schools for trans and non-binary students; and information about National Transgender HIV Testing Day as well as contraception.
Mexico is awaiting any potential US tariffs with a “cool head”, its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said on Friday. “We will always defend the dignity of our people, respect for our sovereignty and a dialogue as equals without subordination,” she said.
Trump orders USDA to take down websites referencing climate crisis. The landing pages on the United States Forest Service website for key resources, research and adaptation tools – including those that provide vital context and vulnerability assessments for wildfires – had gone dark, leaving behind an error message or just a single line: “You are not authorized to access this page.”
Senator Mark Warner, who is the vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee, called the Trump administration’s decision to fire top FBI officials “deeply alarming”.
CBS News is expected to comply with the Federal Communications Commission’s request for the unedited transcript from the 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris, the former vice-president, according to several reports. The interview took place in October of 2024 and was the subject of Trump’s $10bn lawsuit against CBS that accused the network of editing the interview in a way that benefitted Harris’s campaign.
The FBI has been directed by the DOJ to compile and hand over a list of current and former employees who worked on cases related to the 6 January riots, several publications are reporting. The DOJ said it needs to receive the list by noon ET on Tuesday to commence a review to determine whether they need to make any other personnel moves.
The US hopes to start moving immigrants to Guantánamo Bay in 30 days.
A large number of federal employees have taken the Trump administration’s offer of a financial buyout to resign. Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said he didn’t have an exact number of federal employees who had taken the financial payout to resign from their posts, but that initial briefings indicate it’s a significant number of workers, according to Reuters.
The Senate confirmed the former North Dakota governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary late on Thursday. The vote was 79-18, with the majority of Senate Democrats joining every Republican in voting for Burgum.
Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro will meet with Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, the country’s communications ministry has confirmed. As we reported earlier, Grenell is expected to discuss deportation flights among other things during his trip to Venezuela.
Canada will respond immediately with a series of forceful countermeasures if Donald Trump goes ahead with a threat to impose tariffs, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau said. On Thursday, Trump repeated his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that would begin at 25% and “may or may not rise with time”.
Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has urged undocumented Colombians in the US to quit their jobs “immediately” and return to Colombia as soon as possible. “Wealth is only produced by the working people,” Petro said on X. “Let’s build social wealth in Colombia.”
David Lebryk, the top-ranking career official in the treasury department, is departing after a clash with allies of Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, the Washington Post reports. The report, citing sources, said Lebryk and Musk’s surrogates clashed over access to a sensitive system used to pay out more than $6tn a year in social security and Medicare benefits as well as federal salaries, government contract payments and tax refunds.
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Central California communities prepare for potential flooding after Trump order to 'maximize' water supplies
Communities in central California rushed to prepare for potential flooding on Friday, due to the layers of chaos Trump has inflicted on the state’s water distributions.
Responding to an order from Trump to “maximize” water supplies, the Army Corps of Engineers abruptly began releasing flows out of Sierra Nevada reservoirs at levels local officials said would inundate areas downriver, Politico reported. Local water managers were given just an hour to alert nearby farms and neighborhoods.
“I’ve been here 25 years, and I’ve never been given notice that quick,” Victor Hernandez, who oversees water management on one of the rivers, told Politico, adding that it had been “alarming and scary”.
The issue is the latest example of how Trump’s inflammatory remarks – which incorrectly tied the devastating Los Angeles wildfires to California’s water policy – have created more headaches in the state.
Hernandez and other local officials were reportedly able to convince the corps to slow their releases to a third of what had been planned, preventing what could have been an incredibly dangerous situation, but there are still concerns that the releases will do more harm than good.
The water won’t be diverted to Los Angeles to support wildfire efforts, especially because the flames are already largely extinguished. Meanwhile, releases will mean there’s less water available for irrigating during drier times.
Trump didn’t seem to get the message. Posting on X on Friday, he said: “Everybody should be happy about this long fought Victory![sic]” sharing a photo of rushing water that he claimed he “just opened in California”. He added a bit more misinformation for good measure: “I only wish they listened to me six years ago – There would have been no fire!”
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FBI directed to hand over names of current and former staff who worked on 6 January cases
The FBI has been directed by the DOJ to compile and hand over a list of current and former employees who worked on cases related to the 6 January riots, several publications are reporting. The DOJ said it needs to receive the list by noon ET on Tuesday and then will commence a review to determine whether they need to make any other personnel moves.
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CBS News plans to hand over unedited Kamala Harris interview to FCC
CBS News is expected to comply with the Federal Communications Commission’s request for the unedited transcript from the 60 minutes interview with Kamala Harris, the former vice-president, according to several reports. The interview took place in October of 2024 and was the subject of Trump’s $10bn lawsuit against CBS that accused the network of editing the interview in a way that benefitted Harris’s campaign.
“We are working to comply with that inquiry as we are legally compelled to do,” a CBS News spokesperson told the New York Times on Friday.
Anna Gomez, a Democratic FCC commissioner, said this was a “retaliatory move” that was part of a “concerning pattern of implementing the will of the Administration”.
“This latest action to weaponize our broadcast licensing authority is no different,” Gomez wrote. “It revives a complaint that had been previously dismissed by FCC experts due to lack of evidence and because it fell far short of the high standard needed for agency action. Let’s be clear. This is a retaliatory move by the government against broadcasters whose content or coverage is perceived to be unfavorable. It is designed to instill fear in broadcast stations and influence a network’s editorial decisions.”
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The Illinois governor JB Pritzker has directed the state’s hiring authority, the department of central management services, to reject any 6 January rioters who apply for state government jobs, NBC News first reported.
In a memo to the authority, Pritzker wrote that the state’s personnel code “requires the rejection of candidates for State employment who have engaged in infamous or disgraceful conduct” and that “any participation in the January 6 insurrection” should qualify as such conduct.
“These rioters were accused or convicted of a combination of felonies and misdemeanors, including but not limited to: violence against law enforcement officers, threats against Members of Congress, destruction of federal property, and many other crimes,” the memo reads. “These crimes attacks threatened public safety as Members of Congress, staff, and other workers who were forced to hide from the violence for hours. I am committed to building a State workforce that upholds our shared values and delivers results for the people of Illinois. Our State workforce must reflect the values of Illinois and demonstrate honesty, integrity, and loyalty to serving the taxpayers. No one who attempts to overthrow a government should serve in government.”
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Ed Martin, interim US attorney, has fired more than two dozen federal prosecutors who worked on 6 January riot cases, the Washington Post reported, citing sources.
The prosecutors received an email notifying them they were being terminated at 5pm on Friday, according to the Post. The memo also directed them to retain all documents related to “personnel decisions regarding attorneys hired to support” 6 January casework.
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The US will reportedly start moving migrants to Guantánamo Bay in 30 days
House border czar Tom Homan told the Washington Post that they will “hopefully” start moving migrants to Guantánamo in 30 days.
“Hopefully within 30 days we’ll start moving people there,” Homan said.
Trump initially said Guantánamo would hold 30,000 migrants but Homan said they would start with a small number at first.
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Top Democrat calls firing of FBI officials 'deeply alarming'
Senator Mark Warner, who is the vice-chair of the Senate intel committee, called the Trump administration’s decision to fire top FBI officials “deeply alarming”.
“At a time when we are facing a multitude of threats to the homeland – from terrorism and espionage to drug trafficking and Salt Typhoon – it is deeply alarming that the Trump administration appears to be purging dozens of the most experienced agents who are our nation’s first line of defense,” Warren said in a statement.
At least six senior FBI officials were told to to retire, resign or be fired by Monday. Agents who worked on the investigation of the 6 January Capitol riot could also be fired as soon as today, CBS reported citing sources.
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The US Census Bureau website is also down as of 5.31pm ET.
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Federal Aviation Administration website goes dark
As of 5.27pm ET, the FAA website was not accessible. The link, FAA.gov, directed to a blank page that said: “This site can’t be reached.” The site went dark after the Trump administration said they would put a pause on most government websites by 5pm today.
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We haven’t seen any federal websites that have gone dark as of yet, though Reuters is reporting the US Census website is down for some. We are still able to access it for the moment.
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Trump orders USDA to take down websites referencing climate crisis
On Thursday, the Trump administration ordered the US agriculture department to remove its websites documenting or referencing the climate crisis.
By Friday, the landing pages on the United States Forest Service website for key resources, research and adaptation tools – including those that provide vital context and vulnerability assessments for wildfires – had gone dark, leaving behind an error message or just a single line: “You are not authorized to access this page.”
In a directive issued by the United States Department of Agriculture’s office of communications, officials instructed website managers across the agency to “identify and archive or unpublish any landing pages focused on climate change”, according to Politico. It also included a Friday deadline to list the mentions in a spreadsheet for further review. As of publication, the USDA’s Climate Hubs – helpful sites that connect producers to local programs and research – are still live.
The move is just one in a dizzying flurry of orders issued in the first two weeks of the Trump administration as it attempts to drastically reshape the federal government and halt key investments made to blunt the effects of global heating.
Trump repealed environmental protections put in place by Joe Biden, declared a misguided energy emergency to hasten already-booming fossil fuel extraction, and withdrew from the Paris climate agreement.
The administration also added confusion and chaos within federal agencies by halting hiring and pausing projects, along with issuing a widespread buyout offer that would guarantee federal workers pay and benefits through September 2025 if they resign within the next week.
It’s unclear what the agencies will do with the websites or the policies and studies once detailed on them; links to the landing pages are still live, even if the information on each page has been blocked.
Read more:
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A government memo sent on Wednesday directed agencies to strip “gender ideology” from websites, contracts and email signatures by Friday 5pm ET.
Some changes that were implemented:
The office of personnel management directed staff to remove pronouns from email signatures and shutter employee resource groups.
The Bureau of Prisons renamed a website titled “inmate gender” to “inmate sex” and no longer included a list of trans inmates.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention took down health information including a fact sheet about HIV and trans people; lessons on how to create a supportive environment in schools for trans and non-binary students; and information about National Transgender HIV Testing Day and contraception.
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Trump administration planning to pause most federal government websites - report
CBS News is reporting that most federal government websites are expected to go dark at 5pm ET.
We’ll update as we get more details.
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The justice department announced that John Harold Rogers, a former senior adviser to the Federal Reserve, was arrested for allegedly conspiring to steal trade secrets and share them with China, according to Reuters.
Rogers was an adviser in the division of international finance between 2010 and 2021. He allegedly shared economic data and sensitive information about interest-rate discussions with Chinese co-conspirators while pretending to teach in China.
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Trump official claims large number of federal employees have taken buyout offer
A large number of federal employees have taken the Trump administration’s offer of a financial buyout to resign.
Deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said he didn’t have an exact number of federal employees who had taken the financial payout to resign from their posts, but that initial briefings indicate it’s a significant number of workers, according to Reuters.
Trump offered about 2 million federal employees buyouts in an effort to drastically reduce the size of the federal government.
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Trump says 'something substantial' with tariffs coming to EU and details products affected
Hi there, Johana Bhuiyan taking over.
We have a few more details from Donald Trump on the tariffs he plans to impose on Canada, Mexico and China. The US president told reporters that he plans to place tariff on products like chips, oil and gas and that the tariffs on oil and gas should be expected by 18 February.
Earlier, he said he planned to impose a 25% tariff on Mexico, 25% tariff on Canada, and 10% tariff on China. Now, he has said he will decrease the tariffs on Canadian oil to 10%, according to Reuters.
He also said he plans on “doing something substantial” with tariffs on the European Union.
His earlier announcement of tariffs sparked a stock market sell-off, as Wall Street fears a coming trade war. Trump said he wasn’t worried about the stock market disruptions and acknowledged that tariffs may result in “short-term” disruptions and that the costs are sometimes passed down to consumers, according to Reuters.
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Schools and universities responding to complaints of sexual misconduct must return to policies created during Donald Trump’s first term, according to new guidance issued on Friday by the education department.
In a memo to education institutions across the nation, the agency clarified that Title IX, a 1972 law barring discrimination based on sex, will be enforced according to a set of rules created by the former education secretary Betsy DeVos.
The rules govern how complaints of misconduct are investigated and how to settle cases where students present differing accounts.
Colleges have already been returning to DeVos’s 2020 rules in recent weeks since a federal judge in Kentucky overturned the Biden administration’s Title IX rules. The court’s decision in effect ordered a return to the earlier Trump administration rules.
A statement from the education department called Biden’s rules an “egregious slight to women and girls”.
State department workers ordered to remove pronouns from email signatures by end of day
US state department employees must scrub gender pronouns from their email signatures by Friday evening, according to an internal email obtained by the Guardian.
The directive came from former ambassador Tibor P Nagy, now the acting under-secretary for management, writing to staff that the department was also launching a comprehensive review to eliminate what he called “gender ideology” from government communications and programs.
“The Department of State is reviewing all agency programs, contracts and grants that promote or incubate gender ideology,” Nagy wrote in the email. “All employees are required to remove any gender identifying pronouns from email signature blocks by 5pm today.”
Trump administration to fire FBI agents involved in investigations of Trump – reports
The Trump administration is set to expand a purge of career law enforcement officials by firing FBI agents who had been engaged in investigations into Donald Trump, according to multiple reports.
Officials acting at the direction of the administration have spent the last week working to identify individual employees who participated in politically sensitive investigations for possible termination, Associated Press reports.
It is not yet clear how many agents will be affected. At least six senior FBI agents have been ordered to retire, resign or be fired by Monday, CNN reports. According to Reuters, the senior FBI officials are based in major cities including Miami, Philadelphia, Washington, New Orleans and Las Vegas.
The FBI Agents Association has called the reported planned firings “outrageous actions by acting officials [that] are fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents”.
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Donald Trump will meet with Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Tuesday.
The US president invited the Israeli prime minister earlier this week to be the first foreign leader to visit the White House, in a major concession to a US ally who is wanted by the international criminal court for war crimes.
A letter from the US leader said it would be his “honor” to host Netanyahu as his first foreign leader during his second term to “discuss how we can bring peace to Israel and its neighbors, and efforts to counter our shared adversaries”.
“There will be a single working meeting 4 February and more details will soon be forthcoming,” Reuters reports, citing a US official.
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David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland shooting, compared this moment, when Democrats are still reeling from their losses in November and confronting four more years of Donald Trump‘s leadership, to the sense of powerlessness that gripped many after the massacre at his high school in 2018.
Despite significant challenges to their efforts, gun-safety activists successfully pushed a bipartisan coalition of Florida lawmakers to enact new regulations on firearms.
“The politicians and pundits told us change was impossible. But we didn’t listen. We fought like hell and won,” Hogg told the Guardian.
Hogg, who is now seeking one of the Democratic National Committee’s vice-chair positions, pointed to that Florida campaign as a potential model for the party’s future.
“Republicans are cowards. When you stand up and fight, they crumble,” he said.
We put them on defense when we changed gun laws after Parkland, and even forced Trump to sign gun reforms. We can do that again and force him to confront the movement he fears most – us.
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Members of the Democratic National Committee will convene tomorrow in National Harbor, Maryland, to fill a number of senior leadership positions, including the chair.
David Hogg, a survivor of the Parkland school shooting turned gun safety and youth leadership advocate, is seeking one of the vice-chair positions and has pledged to build a Democratic party that is “bold, unapologetic, and fights for what we believe”.
“Right now, it’s easy to feel like we are at the mercy of Donald Trump – his chaos, cruelty, and incompetence – but we are not and we cannot let that feeling take hold,” Hogg told the Guardian.
We need to go on offense and put the Republicans on defense. This campaign, more than anything, has made me even more hopeful about the future of our party. Regardless of who wins, I know that we’re going to build a future where Democrats are determined to fight and win everywhere.
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David Sundberg, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, has been fired, NBC News reports.
Sundberg was notified on Thursday that he had been fired and is preparing to exit in the next few days, according to the outlet, citing senior law enforcement sources.
Sundberg is the highest ranking field agent to be ousted so far in the Trump administration’s purge of top executives at FBI headquarters and leaders of the bureau’s field offices across the country, according to the outlet.
Agents from the Washington field office were heavily involved in both of special counsel Jack Smith’s investigations of Donald Trump.
As the Trump administration continues to get rid of diversity programs throughout the government, it is deleting any mention of the words “diversity”, “equity” and “inclusion”.
That meant that in the Internal Revenue Service’s procedural handbook for employees, the terms were wiped out when referring to finances and tax procedures rather than actual DEI programs, the Wall Street Journal reported.
Webpages that previously included information on the agency’s diversity measures are now gone, showing a “page not found” message.
Donald Trump’s administration officials are deleting these pages and programs across the government after Trump ordered them to end any DEI-related initiatives and cancel contracts that promote these ideas.
He encouraged employees to rat out their colleagues who were clandestinely working on diversity issues, setting up a tip line that has been spammed by internet users with jokes and explicit content.
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Interim summary
Here’s a look at where things stand:
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said reports of tariffs from 1 March are false before announcing new tariffs Donald Trump plans to impose on countries from tomorrow, including: “25% tariffs on Mexico, 25% tariffs on Canada, and a 10% tariff on China for the illegal fentanyl that they have sent to our country, which has killed 10s of millions of Americans.”
Mexico is awaiting any potential US tariffs with a “cool head”, its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said on Friday. “We will always defend the dignity of our people, respect for our sovereignty and a dialogue as equals without subordination,” she said.
The Senate confirmed the former North Dakota governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary late on Thursday. The vote was 79-18, with the majority of Senate Democrats joining every Republican in voting for Burgum.
Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro will meet with Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, the country’s communications ministry has confirmed. As we reported earlier, Grenell is expected to discuss deportation flights among other things during his trip to Venezuela.
Canada will respond immediately with a series of forceful countermeasures if Donald Trump goes ahead with a threat to impose tariffs, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau said. On Thursday, Trump repeated his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that would begin at 25% and “may or may not rise with time”.
Colombia’s president, Gustavo Petro, has urged undocumented Colombians in the US to quit their jobs “immediately” and return to Colombia as soon as possible. “Wealth is only produced by the working people,” Petro said on X. “Let’s build social wealth in Colombia.”
David Lebryk, the top-ranking career official in the treasury department, is departing after a clash with allies of Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, the Washington Post reports. The report, citing sources, said Lebryk and Musk’s surrogates clashed over access to a sensitive system used to pay out more than $6tn a year in social security and Medicare benefits as well as federal salaries, government contract payments and tax refunds.
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In response to why Donald Trump feels that Guantánamo Bay is a safe and secure place to house migrants, Karoline Leavitt said:
“The president feels it’s an appropriate place. Taxpayers are already funding it. The space is there? Why not use it?”
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In response to a question on reports regarding shortage of staffing at federal aviation agencies Karoline Leavitt said:
“The president is intent on ensuring that we are increasing staffing at these agencies and that’s why he signed a very strong executive order … terminating DEI hiring practices at the FAA.”
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White House says Trump will impose tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China from Saturday
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said reports of tariffs taking effect on 1 March are false before announcing new tariffs Donald Trump plans to impose on countries from Saturday, including:
“25% tariffs on Mexico, 25% tariffs on Canada, and a 10% tariff on China for the illegal fentanyl that they have sent to our country, which has killed 10s of millions of Americans.”
Leavitt’s claim that tens of millions of Americans has died is false. The National Institute on Drug Abuse believes fatalities are in the tens of thousands in recent years.
Reuters had earlier reported a new tariff regime would begin on 1 March.
Leavitt also said Trump had not made up his mind about a timeline for implementing tariffs against the European Union.
She declined to say whether any future tariff would be one-size fits all or different for each EU member state.
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In response to a question on whether Donald Trump will sign a proclamation of Black History month, Karoline Leavitt said:
“The president looks forward to signing a proclamation celebrating Black History Month. I actually spoke with our great staff secretary. It’s in the works of being approved and it’s going to be ready for the president’s signature to signify the beginning of that tomorrow.”
In further attacks against DEI, Karoline Leavitt went on to say:
“We certainly have seen the deterioration of federal hiring standards at the Federal Aviation Administration, and the president wants to increase those standards.
He wants pilots in this country who have the great responsibility of flying American citizens by the 10s of millions every single day to be chosen for that position based on their merit and their skills.”
Echoing Donald Trump’s attacks against DEI as a cause for the collision, Karoline Leavitt said:
“On his second day in office, the president signed a memorandum to immediately stop Biden’s DEI hiring programs and return to non-discriminatory merit based hiring and in 2018 during President Trump’s first term …”
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White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt is now delivering remarks at a press briefing.
“Everyone in this White House continues to mourn the victims and keep their friends and families in our thoughts and prayers during this unimaginable time,” Leavitt said.
Mexico 'prepared' and waiting for US tariff decision with 'cool head', says Sheinbaum
Mexico is awaiting any potential US tariffs with a “cool head”, its president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said on Friday.
“We will always defend the dignity of our people, respect for our sovereignty and a dialogue as equals without subordination,” she said.
We will wait, as I have always said, with a cool head, when taking decisions. We are prepared and we maintain this dialogue.
Sheinbaum added that the Mexican government is in ongoing dialogue with the Trump administration, where they have “discussed various topics”.
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The Trump administration’s purge of dozens of senior officials at the US agency for international development (USAid) was temporarily challenged after an employee rescinded the original directive, calling it an “illegal” violation of “due process”.
Hours later, the employee was also placed on administrative leave, according to multiple reports.
Nearly 60 senior career officials at USAid were placed on leave on Monday after Donald Trump ordered a sweeping freeze on most US foreign assistance. An internal memo sent to employees said the new leadership identified several actions in the agency that “appeared to be designed to circumvent the president’s executive orders and the mandate from the American people”.
NBC reports that in an email to the dozens of employees who had been placed on leave, USAid director of employee and labor relations Nick Gottlieb wrote:
The materials show no evidence that you engaged in misconduct. As a result, I no longer have authority to maintain you in this status.
Gottlieb acknowledged that he did not know how long his decision would hold. “You may receive another email within the day reinstating your leave status. However, that notice will not come from me,” he wrote, adding, “I wish you all the best – you do not deserve this.”
Gottlieb was also placed an administrative leave hours later for refusing a request from USAid’s front office and Trump’s newly created “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to issue “immediate termination notices to a group of employees without due process”, the outlet reports.
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Trump to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting 1 March – report
Donald Trump is expected to announce new tariffs against Canada and Mexico that will begin on 1 March, Reuters reports.
Sources told the news agency that they did not have details on a final tariff rate, but noted Trump has consistently said that he plans to impose a 25% tariff on imports from the two countries.
Separately, an administration official said Trump was reviewing tariff plans, which may allow for some specific exemptions for certain imports, Reuters reports.
Any exemptions would be “few and far between”, the official said.
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Samoa’s prime minister, Fiame Naomi Mataʻafa, has criticised Robert F Kennedy Jr’s views and the spread of vaccine misinformation related to the deadly 2019 measles outbreak that claimed the lives of at least 83 people, mostly babies in her country.
It comes as Kennedy, who is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the top US health agency, faced attacks in Senate confirmation hearings this week with Democratic lawmakers accusing him of covering up his anti-vaccine views.
Kennedy, who denies being anti-vaccine, visited Samoa in 2019, four months before the measles outbreak was declared. Although it was not an official visit, he met with government representatives and anti-vaccine influencers, in what health advocates and experts claim was a disinformation campaign that stoked distrust in vaccines.
“If he is the messenger for anti-vaxxers, as a leader, I do not agree with him,” Fiame told the Guardian in her first public comments on Kennedy after the first day of his confirmation hearings in the US.
Members of the Democratic National Committee will elect their next chair on Saturday, as the party grapples with how to rebuild itself after devastating losses in the November elections.
The winner of the DNC chair race will help shape the message and priorities of the Democratic party, giving them a crucial role in the party’s efforts to win back the House of Representatives in 2026.
The race has attracted a large field of candidates, but two state party chairs – Ken Martin of Minnesota and Ben Wikler of Wisconsin – have emerged as the frontrunners.
Until its final days, the chair race had appeared rather sleepy, an accurate reflection of a party exhausted after a grueling and ultimately disastrous presidential election.
But the chair candidates have grown punchier as the race draws to a close, and the late entry of Faiz Shakir, who ran Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, has injected new energy into the race.
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Senate confirms Doug Burgum as interior secretary
The Senate confirmed the former North Dakota governor Doug Burgum as interior secretary late on Thursday.
The vote was 79-18, with the majority of Senate Democrats joining every Republican in voting for Burgum.
Burgum, a billionaire former businessman, was governor of North Dakota, the third largest oil and natural gas producer in the country, between 2016 and 2024.
As interior secretary, he will manage US federal lands including national parks and wildlife refuges, as well as oversee relations with 574 federally recognized Native American tribes.
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Donald Trump has claimed that the military helicopter involved in the midair collision in Washington DC on Wednesday was flying too high at the time of the accident.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote:
The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That’s not really too complicated to understand, is it???
It is unusual for a president to weigh in like this, especially on social media, and suggest the cause of a collision, when officials have not yet revealed its cause and it remains under investigation by federal transportation authorities.
All 64 people on the passenger plane, along with the three people in the army helicopter, died on Wednesday night after the two aircraft crashed into each other in midair close to the Reagan National airport.
The bodies of more than 40 people had been recovered from the icy Potomac River by Friday morning, where the wreckage now lies.
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Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro to meet with US envoy
Venezuela’s president Nicolás Maduro will meet with Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, the country’s communications ministry has confirmed.
As we reported earlier, Grenell is expected to discuss deportation flights among other things during his trip to Venezuela.
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What is a tariff?
A tariff is a tax on imports, or foreign goods brought into the United States.
Who pays for tariffs?
This is a question that many Americans asked after the election. Trump has said foreign countries pay for tariffs, but tariffs are actually paid by American companies that import goods from abroad.
So if an American car manufacturer is importing a part from Mexico, it will have to pay a tariff on the part once it arrives in the country.
Why is Trump threatening to levy tariffs?
The US imports more goods than its exports – the trade deficit. Not all economists agree that trade deficits are bad but Trump has railed against them for years and tariffs are his preferred tool to deal with them.
Tariffs became a big deal in 2018 during Trump’s first term when he levied tariffs on some products from China and on metal imports. He also threatened to put tariffs on imports from Mexico, in retaliation for the large number of migrants who were crossing the border at the time. Trump eventually backed down from the tariffs in 2020.
In other words, this is all a bit deja vu.
The way that tariffs work, in Trump’s mind, is that high tariffs will incentivize American companies to move their manufacturing from abroad to American shores.
“All you have to do is build your plant in the United States, and you don’t have tariffs,” Trump said just a few weeks before the election.
But getting out of the complex global manufacturing ecosystems is nearly impossible for many companies. It takes years to get a factory up and running, so even if a company theoretically wanted to bolster its domestic manufacturing to avoid tariffs, Trump’s term would likely be over by the time it was ready.
Have a question about tariffs? We’re here to help. Email callum.jones@theguardian.com and we’ll answer in a future story.
Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s senior trade and manufacturing adviser, said he did not know whether the president will impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico.
“I have no breaking news for you on that,” Navarro told CNBC on Friday. “I can’t tell you when; I can talk a little about why.”
He said “one of the big reasons we think about tariffs, and that’s the fentanyl,” adding: “The boss wants to do something about that.”
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JB Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, has been blocking people who took part in the January 6 attack on the Capitol from working in state jobs, NBC reports.
In a written directive to the state’s primary hiring authority, the department of central management services, obtained by the outlet, Pritzker wrote:
These rioters attacked law enforcement officers protecting people in the Capitol, disrupted the peaceful transfer of power, and undermined bedrock principles of American democracy. Our State workforce must reflect the values of Illinois and demonstrate honesty, integrity, and loyalty to serving the taxpayers. No one who attempts to overthrow a government should serve in government.
The directive comes after Donald Trump issued sweeping pardons and commutations for about 1,500 people who were involved in the January 6 attack.
One of the US Capitol attackers pardoned by Donald Trump at the start of his second presidency has been handed a 10-year prison sentence for killing a woman in a drunk-driving crash, according to authorities.
Emily Hernandez served 30 days in federal prison after she joined the mob of Trump supporters who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 and was photographed holding the broken nameplate of Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker at the time.
She was among 1,500 people with roles in the Capitol uprising who received unconditional pardons from – or had their sentences commuted by – Trump on 20 January, but that clemency did not solve all of her legal problems.
Hernandez, 24, on Wednesday was sentenced to a decade in prison for getting into a car wreck while driving drunk on an interstate in Franklin county, Missouri, in 2022 and killing Victoria Wilson, court records first reviewed by NBC News show. Hernandez also injured Wilson’s husband, Ryan Wilson, with whom she had two sons.
Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, said his government has responded to what Donald Trump is “focused on and what is motiviating him to consider applying tariffs as early as tomorrow”.
“Our border is safe and secure,” Trudeau said at a meeting on Canada-US relations on Friday.
Right now, we’re showing the new American administration that they have a strong partner in Canada when it comes to upholding border security, all while simultaneously underscoring that we won’t back down, that if tariffs are implemented against Canada, we will respond. We won’t relent until tariffs are removed and, of course, everything is on the table.
“I won’t sugar coat it,” he added, warning that Canadians “could be facing difficult times in the coming days and weeks”.
Canada ready with 'forceful, immediate' response if US imposes tariffs, says Trudeau
Canada will respond immediately with a series of forceful countermeasures if Donald Trump goes ahead with a threat to impose tariffs, Canada’s prime minister Justin Trudeau said.
On Thursday, Trump repeated his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico that would begin at 25% and “may or may not rise with time”.
Trudeau, in remarks to a meeting of an advisory council on Canada-US relations, said:
If the president does choose to implement any tariffs against Canada, we’re ready with a response – a purposeful, forceful but reasonable, immediate response.
“It’s not what we want, but if he moved forward, we will also act,” Trudeau added.
Jaime Harrison, the outgoing chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), has said the party should have stuck with Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election.
Harrison, in an interview with Associated Press as his leadership comes to a close, said that Kamala Harris’s shortened campaign timeline may have damaged her electoral chances.
“Had she had more runway, it would have been probably easier for her and for the campaign. We were building a race for Joe Biden,” he said.
Asked whether he believed that Democrats should have stuck with Biden, Harrison said:
That’s my normal default, is that you stick by your people … My nature is, ‘I’m on the team with you, you’re my quarterback. You got sacked a few times. But you know what? I’m going to block the hell out of the next person that’s coming at you.’ And that is not always the mentality of everybody in my party.
The DNC is expected to elect a new chair on Saturday.
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Richard Grenell, Donald Trump’s envoy for special missions, is expected to meet with Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, on Friday, CNN reports.
Grenell is expected to discuss deportation flights among other things during his trip to Venezuela, the outlet reports.
Grenell held secret talks in 2020 with one of Maduro’s closest allies, Jorge Rodríguez, who swore Maduro in for his third term in office earlier this month.
Trump’s appointment of Grenell has left some wondering if an agreement may be reached with Maduro involving the deportation of Venezuelan migrants from the US and access to Venezuela’s massive oil reserves for US companies in exchange for Washington accepting Maduro’s power grab.
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Colombian president urges undocumented Colombians in the US to return 'as soon as possible'
Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro has urged undocumented Colombians in the US to quit their jobs “immediately” and return to Colombia as soon as possible.
“Wealth is only produced by the working people,” Petro said on X. “Let’s build social wealth in Colombia.”
He added that the department of social prosperity would offer credits to returnees who enroll in its programs.
Donald Trump has been accused of launching an “attack on the rule of law” as three former heads of the top US labor watchdog criticized the unprecedented firing of a top official.
The abrupt removal of Gwynne Wilcox from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) leaves the agency “out of business” unless a replacement is nominated, they warned – and highlights a “real danger” to the independence of regulators and adjudicators now Trump is back in the White House.
In interviews with The Guardian, previous chairs of the NLRB described the dismissal of Wilcox as a “usurpation” of power that “reeks of discriminatory motive”.
The White House blamed decisions taken by Wilcox and Jennifer Abruzzo, the NLRB’s general counsel, as it fired the pair earlier this week.
The move leaves the agency’s board with only two members, short of the quorum of three required to issue significant decisions on US labor disputes. Wilcox, the first Black woman to serve on the board, has pledged to pursue “all legal avenues” to challenge her firing.
Secretary of state Marco Rubio will travel to Panama, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic beginning on Saturday, the state department said.
Rubio will travel to Central America to “advance President Trump’s America First foreign policy,” the department said.
Secretary Rubio’s engagements with senior officials and business leaders will promote regional cooperation on our core, shared interests: stopping illegal and large-scale migration, fighting the scourge of transnational criminal organizations and drug traffickers, countering China, and deepening economic partnerships to enhance prosperity in our hemisphere.
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Senior treasury official to leave after clash with Musk allies – report
David Lebryk, the top-ranking career official in the treasury department, is departing after a clash with allies of Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, the Washington Post reports.
The report, citing sources, said Lebryk and Musk’s surrogates clashed over access to a sensitive system used to pay out more than $6tn a year in social security and Medicare benefits as well as federal salaries, government contract payments and tax refunds.
It was unclear why the team tied to Musk sought access to the payment system.
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Why Trump tariffs will be ‘very bad for America and for the world’
As Donald Trump threatens to slap steep tariffs on many countries, he is boasting that his taxes on imports will be a boon to the US economy, but most economists strongly disagree.
Many say Trump’s tariffs will increase inflation, slow economic growth, hurt US workers and result in American consumers footing the bill for his tariffs.
“Virtually all economists think that the impact of the tariffs will be very bad for America and for the world,” said Joseph Stiglitz, an economics professor at Columbia University and a winner of the Nobel memorial prize in economic sciences. “They will almost surely be inflationary.”
“It’s inconceivable that other countries won’t retaliate,” said Stiglitz, who was chair of Bill Clinton’s council of economic advisers.
Even if some of the governments might not want to retaliate, their citizens will demand that you can’t allow yourself to be beaten up. When you make like a gorilla thumping on his chest, are countries just going to say, ‘Are we chopped liver?’ Their politics will demand that they do something.
The tariffs, tensions and fears of retaliation and a trade war will likely cause many businesses to reduce their planned investments, and that, economists say, will hurt economies worldwide.
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Federal government workers have been left “shell-shocked” by the upheaval wrought by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency.
Since being restored to the White House on 20 January, Trump has gone on a revenge spree against high-profile figures who previously served him but earned his enmity by slighting or criticising him in public.
He has cancelled Secret Service protection for three senior national security officials in his first presidency, fired high-profile figures from government roles on his social media site, and stripped 51 former intelligence officials of their security clearances for doubting reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop as possible Russian disinformation.
Some senior officials saw the writing on the wall and resigned before his return, but others adopted a hope-for-the-best attitude – only to be shocked by what awaited them, according to insiders.
“The most commons refrain I’m hearing from people who have left but are still talking to people on the inside is: ‘I knew it was going to be bad but I didn’t think it was going to be this bad,’” said Mark Bergman, a veteran Democratic lawyer.
“There’s certainly shell shock. My view is that Trump is animated by his revenge and retribution agenda.”
Read the full story here:
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As well as threatening to introduce tariffs on Canada, Mexico, and China, as we reported earlier, Donald Trump has said he will impose 100% tariffs on the Brics countries if they attempt to replace the US dollar as the dominant reserve currency.
The Brics is made up of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa as well as recent entrants Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the UAE.
While the dollar remains by far the world’s primary reserve currency, the past few years have seen discussions among Brics members about increasing the amount of trade done using their national currencies, or even the possibility of establishing a common currency.
“We are going to require a commitment from these seemingly hostile Countries that they will neither create a new BRICS Currency, nor back any other Currency to replace the mighty U.S. Dollar or, they will face 100% Tariffs,” Trump said in a post on social media.
“There is no chance that BRICS will replace the U.S. Dollar in International Trade, or anywhere else, and any Country that tries should say hello to Tariffs, and goodbye to America!”
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Yesterday saw Donald Trump’s controversial nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert F Kennedy Jr, grilled about his views at a Senate confirmation hearing.
Watch independent senator Bernie Sanders ask Kennedy whether he believes discredited claims about a link between vaccines and autism.
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US national to be released by Hamas
A US national is among three hostages set to be released by Hamas under the terms of the ceasefire deal with Israel.
In a post to Telegram on Friday, Abu Obeida, a spokesperson for Hamas’s armed wing, said Israeli-American Keith Siegel would be freed on Saturday alongside Yarden Bibas and Ofer Kalderon.
Siegal, 65, was taken hostage with his wife, Aviva, and was seen in a video released by Hamas last year.
His wife was released in the first hostage-for-prisoner exchange in November 2023.
You can follow all the latest on the latest exchanges on our Middle East live blog.
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Trump’s comments on tariffs also covered China, who he accused of helping to fuel the opioid crisis in the US via imports of fentanyl.
“With China I’m also thinking about something because they’re sending fentanyl into our country and because of that they’re causing us hundreds of thousands of deaths,” he said.
“China is going to end up paying a tariff also for that and we’re in the process of doing that. We’ll make a determination on what it’s going to be, but China has to stop sending fentanyl into our country and killing our people.”
Trump has threatened to introduce a 10% tariff on all Chinese goods, having imposed tariffs on around $370bn (£298bn) worth of Chinese imports during his first term as president.
Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is significantly more powerful then heroin. It has legitimate medical uses for pain management, but is also used recreationally.
In 2020, the US Drug Enforcement Administration said China was the “primary source of fentanyl and fentanyl-related substances trafficked through international mail”.
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Here’s more on those comments from Donald Trump threatening to impose 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada, two of the US’s largest trading partners.
He said he was making the threat “for a number of reasons” but that he wants both countries to do more to secure their borders to reduce illegal migration and the flow of fentanyl into the US.
Asked whether oil imports would be excluded from the tariffs, he said “we may or may not”, adding that it would depend on prices and whether the two countries “treat us properly”.
Canada and Mexico are the top two sources of US oil imports, accounting for 52% and 11% respectively in 2023, according to data from the US Department of Energy.
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Trump says he will impose trade tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Saturday
Good morning and welcome to our live coverage of the latest from US politics and Donald Trump’s second week in office.
First up, the US president has repeated his threat to impose tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, saying they will be introduced on Saturday.
Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, he said the tariffs would begin at 25% and “may or may not rise with time”.
He also repeated threats to impose new tariffs on goods from China, citing its role in the fentanyl trade, and on the Brics countries.
Stay with us for more on that and all the day’s developments.
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