Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from the last few hours:
Donald Trump and Elon Musk appeared on Fox News this evening in their first joint televised appearance. The pair repeated frequent talking points in an obsequious interview with Sean Hannity.
The Senate confirmed Howard Lutnick to lead the Commerce Department, and voted to advance Kash Patel’s nomination to lead the FBI, setting up a vote later this week.
Trump said his administration could soon hit foreign cars with tariffs of around 25%, and added that semiconductor chips and drugs are set to face higher duties.
Responding to Ukraine’s frustration at being left out of talks between the US and Russia in Saudia Arabia today, Trump told reporters the country had an opportunity to join talks for the previous three years and implied that Ukraine had started the war, which began when Russia invaded the country.
The Pentagon is preparing a list of probationary employees to turn over to the “department of government efficiency”, with layoffs expected to begin as soon as this week. Thousands more are expected to be fired across the federal government, including at the Internal Revenue Service just as tax season begins.
Trump signed two executive orders today: one ordering research “on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment” and the other reestablishing “the longstanding norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is”.
Elon Musk is not in charge of the so-called “department of government efficiency”, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a press briefing today. She did not say who is the lead administrator of the agency. Furthering the confusion, Trump said “call him whatever you want”.
The Trump administration has begun firing hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), including some who maintain critical air traffic control infrastructure, despite four deadly crashes since inauguration day.
The head of the food division at the US Food and Drug Administration has quit in protest over sweeping staff cuts that he warns will hamper the agency’s ability to protect public health.
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Elon Musk told Sean Hannity “I haven’t asked the president for anything ever,” seeking to reassure listeners that he would recuse himself from any political decisions that involved his companies, which hold many lucrative government contracts. Donald Trump reiterated that Musk wouldn’t be involved in any decisions involving his companies.
Since Musk spent $250m on Trump’s reelection, the president has formed a deep connection with the tech billionaire, naming him to lead the newly formed “department of government efficiency”. Doge is currently overseeing mass layoffs at the defense department and other agencies that have contracts with Musk companies such as SpaceX and Starlink.
Elon Musk has told Sean Hannity that the aim of the Trump administration and its so-called “department of government efficiency” is “to try to get a trillion dollars out of the deficit.”
“I think he’s going to find a trillion dollars,” Trump added, saying he believed it would only be a small shortage of the fraud, waste and abuse really in government spending.
Seeking to reassure voters, the president said social security will not be affected by the cuts, as he has oft repeated, and that abolishing the department of education will send school control back to the states.
More than halfway through, Fox News’ interview with Donald Trump and Elon Musk is shaping up to be an obsequious affair. Apparently seeking to ingratiate himself with the president and tech billionaire, Sean Hannity has lauded Trump and Musk repeatedly on their work since Trump resumed the presidency in January.
During his interview with Donald Trump and Fox News’ Sean Hannity, Elon Musk said those worried about his power as an unelected advisor to the president should be more concerned about the thousands of unelected federal employees in the government’s civilian workforce.
Elon Musk told Sean Hannity that he supported Donald Trump’s nomination of Robert F Kennedy Jr to lead the nation’s top health agency.
“He’s unfairly maligned as someone who is anti-science. But I think he just wants to question the science which is the essence of the science. The scientific method fundamentally is about always questioning the science,” Musk said.
His comments came at the president’s prodding after Hannity asked Musk to describe his various tech enterprises.
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Wearing a t-shirt that said “tech support,” Elon Musk told Sean Hannity that he was there to “provide the president with technology support’.
“One of the biggest functions of the Doge team is just making sure that the presidential executive orders are actually carried out,” Musk said.
“The president is the elected representative of the people, so it’s representing the will of the people. And if the bureaucracy is fighting the one of the people, and preventing the president from implementing what the people want. Then what we live in is a bureaucracy and not a democracy,” he added.
Musk’s comments came after a day of differing statements as the White House tried to define the tech billionaire’s role.
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Sean Hannity kicked off his interview with Donald Trump and Elon Musk this evening by asking the pair about the social media platform, X’s, recent $10m settlement with the president. The president and tech billionaire dismissed the question as unimportant.
“I left it up to the lawyers,” Musk said.
“I think it’s a very low … I was looking to get much more money than that, so you gave him a discount,” Trump said.
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Fox News is about to begin airing Sean Hannity’s interview with Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk, the pair’s first televised joint appearance.
We’ll bring you the latest from the interview as it begins.
Three transgender women who were incarcerated in women’s facilities cannot be moved to men’s prisons, a federal judge has ruled. The facilities must also continue to provide the women with hormone therapy.
US District Judge Royce Lamberth issued the preliminary injunction today, which extends a temporary restraining order he issued 4 February, until the court rules further on the case. The ruling could challenge an executive order Donald Trump issued which directed the US bureau of prisons to make sure “males are not detained in women’s prisons or housed in women’s detention centers” and that no federal funds go to gender-affirming treatment or procedures for people in custody.
The ruling only applies to these three trans women. According to the judge, there are only 16 trans women housed in women’s facilities across the country.
The Senate has voted to advance Kash Patel’s nomination, teeing up a confirmation vote for Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Bureau of Investigation later this week.
The Senate voted 48-45 along party lines to advance the confirmation. Republican swing votes, senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins, either would not confirm or were undecided on how they would vote, CNN reports.
The procedural vote sets the stage for a final confirmation vote on one of Trump’s most controversial nominees later this week.
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Howard Lutnick confirmed as commerce secretary
The Senate has confirmed Howard Lutnick to lead the Commerce Department, voting 51-45 for the president’s pick.
The billionaire investment banker was a key fundraiser for Donald Trump’s 2020 and 2024 campaigns. He has voiced his support for “across-the-board” tariffs.
“My way of thinking, and I discussed this with the president, is country by country, macro,” he said at a confirmation hearing last month. “We can use tariffs to create reciprocity, fairness and respect.”
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The Trump administration has fired more than 10 percent of employees at the National Science Foundation, according to the New York Times.
Michael England, a spokesman for the foundation, said in a statement that the agency fired 168 probationary employees, and that it “had approximately 1,450 career employees prior to the cuts.”
The foundation is an independent agency within the US federal government that was founded in 1950 to promote research and education within the fields of science and engineering.
Catholic bishops are suing the Trump administration for recently suspending funding for refugee resettlment under its ban on foreign aid.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops is the largest private resettlment program in the US and one of 10 national agencies that serve refugees. The conference says the halt in foreign aid has resulted in the Trump administration witholding millions of dollars, including for reimbursements of costs incurred before the ban went into effect. The lawsuit notes that the resettlement program isn’t even foreign aid – but rather domestic support for newly arrived refugees.
“The Catholic Church always works to uphold the common good of all and promote the dignity of the human person, especially the most vulnerable among us,” said Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the USCCB. “The conference suddenly finds itself unable to sustain its work to care for the thousands of refugees who were welcomed into our country and assigned to the care of the USCCB by the government after being granted legal status.”
As the Trump administration faces lawsuits brought by labor unions and advocacy groups concerned about privacy and constitutional issues related to “Department of Government Efficiency” members’ access to treasury systems, and their data about Americans, US treasury secretary Scott Bessent is arguing that “American taxpayers don’t have to be concerned about any of this”.
In an interview on Fox News, Bessent also said that “very little” of the costs from Trump’s tariffs plan will be passed on to American consumers, the Associated Press reports.
Many economists disagree, and say, as Steven Greenhouse noted in a recent Guardian analysis, that “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,” Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist who advised Bill Clinton’s administration, said in January.
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The JFK Library Foundation offered this brief statement about the sudden closure of Boston’s John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum this afternoon, my colleague Lauren Gambino reports:
“The sudden dismissal of federal employees at the JFK Library forced the museum to close today. As the Foundation that supports the JFK Library, we are devastated by this news and will continue to support our colleagues and the Library.”
The library foundation directed all media queries to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington DC. The museum’s website currently says that it will reopen on Wednesday.
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Planning a trip to a national park this summer? Trump’s government staffing cuts may affect those vacation plans.
The Trump administration has now fired about 1,000 newly hired National Park Service employees who maintain and clean parks, educate visitors and perform other functions as part of its broad-based effort to downsize government, the Associated Press reports.
The firings weren’t publicly announced but were confirmed by Democratic senators and House members. They have been a part of a chaotic rollout of an aggressive program to eliminate thousands of federal jobs plan led by Musk and his Doge agency.
Park advocates say the permanent staff cuts will leave hundreds of national parks understaffed and facing tough decisions about operating hours, public safety and resource protection.
For some context on how the Trump administration’s choices could affect some of the United States’ most beloved national parks this summer, you can return to this investigation from the Guardian’s Gabrielle Canon, on what happened at Joshua Tree national park during the last Trump administration:
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The John F Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston abruptly closed Tuesday afternoon, with a sign on its door blaming an “executive order”. But its website later posted it would reopen Wednesday, the Associated Press reports.
According to local media reports, staff ushered guests out at about 2 pm. The paper sign taped to the glass doors read: “Due to the executive order, the JFK Library will be closed until further notice.”
It’s unclear what executive order the sign was referring to.
The library’s website ran a red banner across the top announcing the indefinite closure, with no further details. Early Tuesday evening, it changed to read: “The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum will reopen on Wednesday February 19.”
The National Archives and Records Administration, which administers the 16 presidential libraries nationwide, didn’t immediately comment to the Associated Press. The Guardian’s queries about the situation were also not immediately answered.
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At a presss conference today, Donald Trump said his administration could soon hit foreign cars with tariffs of around 25%, and added that semiconductor chips and drugs are set to face higher duties.
Asked if he had decided the rate of a threatened tariff on cars from overseas, Trump said he would “probably” announce that on 2 April, “but it’ll be in the neighborhood of 25%”.
Regarding threatened tariffs on semiconductors and pharmaceuticals, Trump said: “It’ll be 25% and higher, and it’ll go very substantially higher over the course of a year.”
Here’s Callum Jones with the full story:
Defense department prepares for layoffs
The Pentagon is preparing a list of probationary employees to turn over to the Trump administration’s “department of government efficiency”, with layoffs expected to begin as soon as this week, CNN and the Washington Post report.
Major US military commands, called combatant commands, were asked to submit lists of probationary employees by this afternoon, one official told CNN.
The news comes after Doge officials arrived at the Pentagon Friday, in what appeared to be their first meeting with defense department staff.
Earlier this month, Donald Trump confirmed that he had asked Musk to review spending in the defense department, which maintains a nearly $1tn budget annually. “I’ve instructed him to go check out education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military. And you know, sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad,” he said.
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Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin told the Associated Press today that he empathizes with federal employees concerned about mass layoffs.
“This workforce, which is talented and deep and experienced, is part of Virginia,” he said. “And so we want to make sure that first, they know that we understand. And second of all, we’re here to help them.”
Virginia is home to many federal workers based out of Washington DC.
Youngkin argued that the media had sensationalized the cuts across the federal workforce.
“This is about this is about stepping back and making sure that tax dollars are being appropriately managed and deployed,” he said.
A federal judge will not immediately block Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” from accessing government data systems.
US district judge Tanya Chutkan found that there was not evidence to justify a temporary restraining order, although she noted serious questions about Musk’s authority.
In a separate case, another federal judge said he’ll decide “sooner rather than later” whether to temporarily block the Trump administration’s mass layoff of federal workers while a lawsuit brought by five unions moves forward.
US district judge Christopher Cooper said the case may depend on whether enough people were terminated to thwart the purposes that Congress had in mind when authorizing agency funding.
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Robert F Kennedy Jr began his work as the new head of Health and Human Services today at a welcome ceremony where he called for the agency to “scrutinize” vaccines, antidepressants and radiation emitted by radios, TVs and cellphones.
The former presidential candidate turned Trump ally was confirmed as the US’s senior health official on Thursday, despite having no training in public health.
Over the weekend, thousands of HHS employees were laid off in the Trump administration’s effort to cut the federal workforce.
During today’s ceremony, Kennedy called for a close study of vaccination recommendations, and described the new Make American Healthy Again commission, which Donald Trump established to investigate “the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis, with an initial focus on childhood chronic diseases” including pesticides, microplastics, ultra-processed foods, antidepressants and more.
Public health advocates have expressed concern that Kennedy, who is prone to repeating conspiracy theories, will be unable to sort the scientific evidence to make rigorous recommendations.
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Senate Democrats have written a letter urging the Trump administration to halt mass layoffs and lift a hiring freeze at the Internal Revenue Service ahead of tax season.
With tax-filing season underway, senior officials at the IRS identified 7,500 employees for dismissal, as we reported earlier today. That amounts to about 9% of the agency’s workforce.
The nine senators who signed the letter, led by Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the IRS needs to be fully staffed in order to process returns, send refunds and answer questions during tax season. They requested a response from the administration by 27 February.
Trump on Musk: 'Call him whatever you want'
Furthering the confusion surrounding Elon Musk’s role at the so-called “department of government efficiency”, Donald Trump says “call him whatever you want”.
“Elon is, to me, a patriot,” Trump said. “You can call him an employee, you can call him a consultant, you can call him whatever you want, but he’s a patriot.”
Trump’s statement came just hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the tech billionaire is not in charge of Doge, while declining to state who was.
Trump and Leavitt’s statements come after a White House court filing on Monday that said the world’s richest man has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions”.
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Trump says 'half-baked negotiator' could have ended Ukraine war
Responding to Ukraine’s frustration at being left out of talks between the US and Russia in Saudia Arabia today, Donald Trump told reporters the country had an opportunity to join talks for the previous three years.
“A half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives,” Trump said from his Mar-a-Lago home. He added that he could have prevented the Russian invasion.
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At his Mar-a-Lago executive order signing ceremony today, Trump has signed two more orders.
The first “reestablishes the longstanding norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is”, an aide tells the Associated Press. The order comes as members of the Trump administration have considered disregarding judicial orders.
The second, a presidential memorandum, requires federal agencies to report waste, fraud and abuse that’s uncovered and details of programs that are eliminated. An aide described it as “imposing radical transparency requirements on government departments and agencies”.
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Trump vows to block AP until agency relents in Gulf dispute
Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago home today, Donald Trump said he will continue to block the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, until the news agency commits to calling the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”.
“The Associated Press just refuses to go with what the law is and what is taking place. It’s called the Gulf of America now. It’s not called the Gulf of Mexico any longer. I have the right to do it,” Trump said.
The president added that the move was also in response to the AP’s past coverage: “Now the Associated Press, as you know, has been very, very wrong on the election, on Trump, and the treatment of Trump, and other things having to do with Trump and Republicans and conservatives, and they’re doing us no favors.”
The Associated Press has said that it will not change its style on the Gulf of Mexico after Trump’s decision to change the body of water’s name because the move only holds authority within the US federal government.
“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that placenames and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences,” the Associated Press said.
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Trump signs order to expand IVF access
As Donald Trump kicks off another afternoon signing executive orders, this time from his Mar-a-Lago home, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says one will protect access to in vitro fertilization.
“The order directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments,” Leavitt wrote on social media.
The order requires the assistant to the president for domestic policy to submit to a list of policy recommendations “on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment” to Trump within 90 days, according to a White House press release.
Access to such fertility treatments came under fire last year after Alabama’s largest fertility clinics stopped offering IVF after the state supreme court ruled embryos are “extrauterine children”. The ruling marked a significant victory for anti-abortion activists who’d promoted the language of fetal personhood nationwide.
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European leaders will gather in France for their own talks about the war in Ukraine tomorrow, French president Emmanuel Macron told local reporters as officials from the United States and Russia met in Saudi Arabia today without them.
In the interview, Macron described Russia as an “existential threat” to Europe, while leaving the door open for talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The assembly will come just days after US vice president JD Vance reprimanded European leaders in a speech that has been widely regarded as symbolizing the growing transatlantic rift between the US and Europe.
Elon Musk is not in charge of the so-called “department of government efficiency”, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a press briefing today. She did not say who is the lead administrator of the agency.
Leavitt told reporters that Musk is “a senior adviser to the president, if you will”. She added that Doge cannot fire federal employees, and that the mass layoffs across federal agencies were at the direction of individual agencies.
In an appearance on Fox News today, she reiterated: “Elon Musk is a special government employee here at the White House serving at the direction of the president of the United States, Donald Trump,” before adding that Musk “has been tasked with overseeing Doge on behalf of the president”.
Her statements came after a White House court filing on Monday that said the world’s richest man has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions”.
Read the full story here:
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The Trump administration has begun firing hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), including some who maintain critical air traffic control infrastructure, despite four deadly crashes since inauguration day.
According to the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (Pass) union, “several hundred” workers received termination notices on Friday.
Many of the workers were probationary employees, those employed for less than a year and lacking job protections, which makes them low-hanging fruit for the Trump administration’s streamlining efforts.
According to the US Office of Personnel Management, there are about 200,000 probationary employees within the federal government.
The firings at the FAA do not include air traffic controllers, but did appear to include engineers and technicians.
A spokesperson for the union said no probationary technicians had been fired, citing about 133 job cuts so far.
The positions terminated included maintenance mechanics, aeronautical information specialists, environmental protection specialists, aviation safety assistants and management administration personnel, but did not include airway transportation systems specialists who maintain and certify air traffic control equipment.
The full story is here:
Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for FBI director, is set to be confirmed for the role tomorrow.
Last Thursday, the Senate judiciary committee advanced the Trump loyalist’s nomination to lead the FBI, despite concerns raised by Democrats that Patel would purge the agency and weaponise its powers to retaliate against Trump’s political opponents.
Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the committee, said he had “highly credible information” that Patel had given orders to sack senior personnel when he had no power to do so as a private citizen – directly contradicting testimony he had given at a confirmation hearing.
He called the alleged misconduct “absolutely beyond the pale” and demanded an immediate investigation.
The allegations, made in a letter to the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, and first reported by the New York Times [paywall], raised the possibility that Patel had committed perjury, he added.
Here is more on that:
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In this back-to-the-future world, Russia is fully restored to the top table while Ukraine and Europe are made to sit outside as the US and Russia sharpen their carving knives, writes my colleague Julian Borger.
The culmination of the Riyadh process, the US delegation made clear, will be a summit encounter between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, two leaders who share an imperial bent that leans towards great power spheres of influence.
It will not be the first time superpowers meet in the Middle East to divide a European state. The Tehran Conference in 1943 put a line right through eastern Europe. In Riyadh, Trump will take the Roosevelt role and Putin will play Stalin. It is long past the time when there was a place for a Churchill. Britain has joined the anxious European voices a long way offstage.
To the Ukrainians, and many Europeans, this does not feel like Tehran. They fear a new Munich, with the gilded chambers and acres of polished marble of the Diriyah Palace auditioning for the role of a latter-day Führerbau, the venue in September 1938 for the betrayal and carve-up of Czechoslovakia.
In Munich, the Czechoslovak delegation were kept in an adjoining room to await details of when and how they would surrender the Sudetenland to Hitler. On Tuesday, the Ukrainians were not even in the same country. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was nervously waiting for news in Turkey. He is due in Saudi Arabia next month to be briefed by the royal court and make his feelings clear.
As the chairs were being put away and the floors mopped in the Diriyah Palace, a new paradigm seemed to be coming into focus, one that was familiar from the 19th century and the cold war: great powers will make the decisions, while lesser states will anxiously wait for the big boys’ meetings to finish, and then call Riyadh to find out what has been decided.
In this back-to-the-future world, Russia is fully restored to the top table, its status assured by the size of its nuclear arsenal. [Sergei] Lavrov was delighted with the outcome of Tuesday’s meeting, noting the two sides “did not just listen to each other, but heard each other”. He predicted that follow-on talks would begin “as soon as possible”.
[Mohammed] Bin Salman emerged on Tuesday as the consigliere and hotelier to the mighty, there as a facilitator rather than dealmaker, but very much on the inside, unlike Europe. In the age of Trump, the Gulf monarchy takes precedence above Washington’s old democratic allies, even in European matters.
You can read Julian’s full analysis here:
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In light of the US-Russia talks we’ve been covering today and the dramatic shift in Washington’s approach to Moscow since Donald Trump took office, you might want to give a listen to today’s installment of Today in Focus. The Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent Shaun Walker and host Michael Safi unpack a seismic week, where Trump has sidelined Kyiv and other European capitals from negotiations on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine - and then called into question the future of US support for Europe’s security altogether.
You can listen to it here:
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Elon Musk’s rampage through government shows us how we can finally close the book on what Trumpism is all about, writes Guardian columnist Osita Nwanevu.
By now, it should be clear to all who don’t have an emotional, political or professional investment in believing or pretending to believe otherwise that the American constitutional order has developed a kind of autoimmune disease. The very mechanisms the founders crafted to protect the republic are now an existential threat to it; in their greed and determination to implement the conservative agenda, Trump, Musk and Republicans empowered by those mechanisms are happily ignoring or working to override the parts of the constitution that don’t advantage them or suit their ends. As a matter of substance, this is a system that needs to be dramatically reformed or reimagined rather than rescued; as a matter of politics, one of the central lessons of this past election is that critical constituencies Democrats need to improve with in order to stay competitive federally care far less about protecting our sickly institutions than they care about a great many other things that they hoped Donald Trump would accomplish. As of now, even amid the mess in Washington, voters aren’t giving him marks that are all that terrible – a recent CBS poll found solid majorities of Americans describing his leadership so far as “tough”, “energetic”, “focused” and “effective”.
Democrats should be positioning themselves not as the guardians of America’s institutions but as the defenders of the American people’s concrete interests – showing and telling voters about all the federal government does for them every day and how the conservative agenda Trump, Musk and the Republican party are pursuing threatens and has always threatened them. The perversity of a man getting to rework their government purely because he happens to be the wealthiest person in the world and financially backed Trump’s campaign should, of course, also be underscored.
The especially ambitious might even try arguing to the American people that all the goings-on in Washington illustrate the danger of having so much wealth accumulate in the hands of a few in the first place. Elon Musk is gliding towards becoming the planet’s very first trillionaire. His access to the levers and gears of the federal government now could help him along in myriad ways. Even an improved political system would struggle to constrain the amount of power he possessed as a private citizen and has now leveraged into a public office; democratic republican governance will never be secured in America without turning our attention to the structure of our economic system as well. Dismantling the federal government to prevent that from happening was a key object of the conservative project before Trump. It has remained so with him at the head of the Republican party and will remain so whenever his time is up. Right now, that project is succeeding.
Osita’s full column is here:
Senior federal prosecutor quits saying Trump officials demanded investigation into Biden contracts
Here is some more detail from CNN on the resignation of senior federal prosecutor Denise Cheung, citing what she called an improper demand by appointees of Donald Trump’s administration to launch a criminal probe of a government contract awarded under former president Joe Biden.
Cheung, who supervised criminal cases at the US attorney’s office in Washington, said she had been ordered to open a probe into a Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency funding decision.
When she declined to launch a grand jury investigation citing a lack of evidence and calling such a move “premature”, she said she was ordered instead to pursue an asset seizure to prevent the recipient of the contract from drawing down the government funds.
“I have been proud to serve at the U.S. Department of Justice and this office for over 24 years,” Cheung wrote in the letter to interim US attorney Ed Martin. “During my tenure, which has spanned over many different administrations, I have always been guided by the oath I took ... to support and defend the Constitution.”
Spokespeople for the US attorney’s office and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Her resignation is the latest by career Justice Department prosecutors to protest what they see as improper political interference by the Trump administration in criminal investigations.
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Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy postponed his visit to Saudi Arabia in order to not give “legitimacy” to Tuesday’s US-Russia meeting in Riyadh, Reuters reports.
Earlier Zelenskyy announced he had postponed his trip to Saudi Arabia, which was expected on Wednesday, until 10 March.
The Ukrainian leader said he had not been invited to the meeting between US and Russian delegations. “We want no one to decide anything behind our backs... No decision can be made without Ukraine on how to end the war in Ukraine,” he said.
Kyiv “didn’t want to appear to give anything that happened in Riyadh any legitimacy,” a source told Reuters.
For more on this head to our Europe live blog:
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Thousands more federal workers targeted for job cuts
Donald Trump’s administration targeted bank regulators, rocket scientists and tax enforcers on Tuesday as it sought to fire thousands more federal employees in an unprecedented assault on the civil service, Reuters reports.
With tax-filing season underway, senior officials at the Internal Revenue Service identified 7,500 employees for dismissal, with possibly more on the chopping block, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has swept through federal agencies slashing thousands of jobs since Trump became president last month and put Musk in charge of a drastic overhaul of government.
The White House has not said how many people it plans to fire and has given no numbers on the mass layoffs so far. The information to date has come from employees of federal agencies.
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which oversees banks, said it has fired an unknown number of new hires, according to an email seen by Reuters. The cuts could potentially worsen staffing problems at a 6,000-person agency where more than one in three workers are eligible for retirement.
Roughly 1,000 new hires, including rocket scientists, at NASA were expected to be laid off on Tuesday as well, according to two people familiar with the space agency’s plans, with more cuts possible.
“People are scared and not speaking up to voice dissent or disagreement,” said one employee at the 18,000-person agency who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Layoffs were also expected at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which handles flood insurance and disaster response, as well as its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, sources said.
The Trump administration plans to fire hundreds of senior Department of Homeland Security employees this week, according to an administration official and a second source familiar with the matter.
The planned firings, first reported by NBC News, would target people viewed as not aligned with Trump, the sources said. Among the workers swept up in the overhaul of dozens of agencies are those reviewing Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink and others monitoring an outbreak of H5N1 bird flu that has infected millions of chickens and cattle this year.
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A longtime federal prosecutor in Washington DC who serves as head of the criminal division in one of the most important offices in the country abruptly resigned on Monday, according to an email sent to colleagues.
“I took an oath of office to support and defend the Constitution and I have executed this duty faithfully during my tenure, which has spanned through numerous Administrations,” Denise Cheung wrote in an email seen by CBS.
Cheung did not specify why she stepped down, but she is one of several prosecutors who resigned from the Justice Department. Some of those who resigned did so in protest of a directive from the acting deputy attorney general to drop the corruption case against New York Mayor Eric Adams.
Cheung oversaw major federal investigations including the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021.
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Hundreds of employees at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have been fired by the Trump administration, including “disease detectors”.
Among the 750 CDC employees notified on Saturday via email were Laboratory Leadership Service fellows, informally known as ‘disease detectors,’ who trained public health laboratory staffers and supported outbreak response efforts.
“If you’re not testing, you don’t know what disease is there,” a LLS fellow who received a notice of termination told NBC News.
As a result of the Trump administration’s larger effort to reduce the size of the federal workforce, the CDC was informed last week that 1,300 jobs, mainly probationary employees, would be cut – nearly 10% of its workforce.
Donald Trump’s re-election has “turbocharged” climate accountability efforts including laws which aim to force greenhouse gas emitters to pay damages for fueling dangerous global warming, say activists.
These “make polluters pay” laws, led by blue states’ attorneys general, and climate accountability lawsuits will be a major front for climate litigation in the coming months and years. They are being challenged by red states and the fossil fuel industry, which are also fighting against accountability-focused climate lawsuits waged by governments and youth environmentalists.
On day one of his second term, the US president affirmed his loyalty to the oil industry with a spate of executive actions to roll back environmental protections and a pledge to “drill, baby, drill”. The ferocity of his anti-environment agenda has inspired unprecedented interest in climate accountability, said Jamie Henn, director of the anti-oil and gas non-profit Fossil Free Media.
“I think Trump’s election has turbocharged the ‘make polluters pay’ movement,” said Henn, who has been a leader in the campaign for a decade.
Ukraine officials say US is ‘appeasing’ Russia with talks in Riyadh
Ukraine reacted with gloom and dismay on Tuesday to the meeting between the US and Russia in Saudi Arabia, with officials in Kyiv saying the Trump administration was “appeasing” Moscow.
They said negotiations between the two delegations got under way in Riyadh just hours after Russia attacked Ukraine with dozens of drones. At least two people were killed and 26 injured in strikes across the country.
It was absurd for Moscow to talk about peace while killing Ukrainians, said Mykhailo Podolyak, an adviser to the head of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s office. The latest salvo of 176 drones fired at Ukraine represented Russia’s actual “negotiating position”, he posted.
Without criticising the Trump administration directly, he said the high-level US-Russia talks had not been properly prepared, adding that they were merely a forum for more Russian “ultimatums”.
“Encouragement rather than coercion, a voluntary and bizarre renunciation of strength in favour of disheartening and unmotivated appeasement of the aggressor,” Podolyak wrote, summing up Kyiv’s negative reaction.
There is widespread scepticism that Russia would abide by any ceasefire deal unless it was underpinned by security guarantees – from the US and other western powers. Podolyak said there was no point in having a “fake peace” that would lead to “an inevitable continuation of the war”.
You can read Luke’s report here:
Food head at FDA quits citing Trump administration’s mass staff cuts
The head of the food division at the US Food and Drug Administration has quit in protest over sweeping staff cuts that he warns will hamper the agency’s ability to protect public health.
Jim Jones, who joined the agency in September 2023, cited “indiscriminate” layoffs to 89 staff members, including key technical experts. In his resignation letter to the acting FDA commissioner, Sara Brenner, seen by Bloomberg News, Jones said the cuts would make it “fruitless” to continue in his role given the Trump administration’s “disdain for the very people” needed to implement food safety reforms.
“I was looking forward to working to pursue the department’s agenda of improving the health of Americans by reducing diet-related chronic disease and risks from chemicals in food,” Jones wrote.
Some of those recent efforts include the January banning of controversial food dye Red No 3, a bright red color additive that was found to cause cancer in male lab rats.
Specialists in nutrition, infant formula and food-safety response, including 10 staff members responsible for reviewing potentially unsafe food ingredients, were targets of layoffs, according to the letter.
The FDA did not respond to a request for comment.
The full story is here:
Trump to sign executive orders before airing of first joint interview with Musk
Donald Trump is set to sign new executive orders later today while his first joint television interview with adviser Elon Musk will air in prime time.
The White House has not commented on the new executive orders Trump will sign at his Mar-a-Lago golf club and home. It is expected to begin at 4pm ET.
Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders since returning to the presidency in January, including enacting steep tariffs, ending birthright citizenship, curbing DEI and “gender radicalism” in the military and pardoning January 6 rioters. (Here is a compilation of all the executive orders Trump has signed so far).
Trump and Musk’s interview is with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity and is scheduled to air at 9pm ET.
In an excerpt from the interview, Musk said he “used to be adored by the left” but “less so these days” because of the work he is doing at Trump’s direction.
“They call it Trump derangement syndrome. You don’t realize how real this is until you can’t reason with people,” Musk said, adding that normal conversations with Democrats about the president are impossible because “it’s like they’ve become completely irrational.”
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Trump administration gives schools a fortnight to end DEI programs or risk losing federal money
The Trump administration is giving America’s schools and universities two weeks to eliminate diversity initiatives or risk losing federal money, the Associated Press reports.
In a memo on Friday, the education department gave an ultimatum to stop using “racial preferences” as a factor in admissions, financial aid, hiring or other areas. Schools are being given 14 days to end any practice that treats students or workers differently because of their race.
The sweeping demand could upend education in myriad ways. The memo targets college admissions offices, ordering an end to personal essays or writing prompts that can be used to predict an applicant’s race. It forbids dorms or graduation events for students of certain races. Efforts to recruit teachers from underrepresented groups could be seen as discrimination.
It’s meant to correct what the memo described as rampant discrimination in education, often against white and Asian students.
“Schools have been operating on the pretext that selecting students for ‘diversity’ or similar euphemisms is not selecting them based on race,” said Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights. “No longer. Students should be assessed according to merit, accomplishment and character.”
The memo itself doesn’t change federal law but reflects a change in the federal government’s interpretation of anti-discrimination laws. Under its broad language, nearly any practice that brings race into the discussion could be considered racial discrimination.
As legal justification for the new memo, it cites the 2023 Supreme Court decision barring race as a factor in college admissions. Although the ruling applied only to admissions, the memo says it “applies more broadly.”
“Put simply, educational institutions may neither separate or segregate students based on race, nor distribute benefits or burdens based on race,” it said.
The move is an extension of Donald Trump’s executive order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
On Monday the education department announced it also cut $600 million in grants for organizations that train teachers. The programs promoted “divisive” concepts like DEI, critical race theory and social justice activism, the department said.
My colleague Joanna Partridge has this helpful explainer on Trump’s DEI rollback here:
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A Republican congresswoman has proposed making Donald Trump’s birthday a public holiday, in an effort probably doomed to failure in Congress but obviously intended to curry favor with the president.
Claudia Tenney, a representative from New York’s Finger Lakes region, introduced legislation on Friday aiming to combine the US annual commemoration of Flag Day with a new observance of Trump’s birthday on 14 June, arguing that the president is “the most consequential … in modern American history”.
“His impact on the nation is undeniable,” Tenney said in a news release. On X, she suggested that Trump’s birthday deserved the same treatment as that of George Washington, which is observed annually as a federal holiday on the third Monday of February.
Among other differences, Washington helped the US win its independence from Great Britain and served as its first president. Trump was the first to be elected after being found guilty of felonies – specifically, 34 related to falsifying business records involving hush-money payments to the adult film star Stormy Daniels right before the 2016 election that he won.
Many users on X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, who has overseen the slashing of various federal agencies on behalf of the Trump administration, mocked Tenney’s proposal. “Is this satire?” one asked.
The full story is here:
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If you’re in need of a refresh on the high drama engulfing New York mayor Eric Adams, my colleague Eric Berger has this overview of his controversial career and the corruption case.
Last week, the US Department of Justice moved to drop criminal charges against Adams, in what many see as a blatant quid pro quo for getting Adams onboard as a political ally to a Donald Trump administration seemingly intent on launching a radical remaking of American government.
It was a move that raised alarm among many residents of the city and legal experts about what many see as Trump – and Adams – undermining the integrity of the US judicial system and American democracy.
Earlier this week, a top official at the justice department ordered the acting US attorney in the southern district of New York to stop prosecuting Adams for allegedly accepting bribes and illegal campaign contributions from foreign sources.
The move was the latest stop in a dramatic term for America’s highest-profile mayor, which has seen the former cop elected as a Democrat but then drift rightwards, especially after Trump was elected and Adams faced prosecution. In heavily Democratic New York, Adams is now seen as an ally to Trump and has even reportedly flirted with the idea of becoming a Republican.
Since being indicted in September, Adams has made regular overtures to Trump, including visiting him at his resort in Florida and skipping scheduled Martin Luther King Jr Day events in the city to attend Trump’s inauguration.
Some observers said Adams was trying to obtain a pardon from Trump and ignoring his responsibilities as mayor. Adams claimed he has not discussed his legal case with Trump and that he had been talking with the president to help the city.
Whatever Adams’s intentions were, Trump now appears to have helped him and, in doing so, added to the perception he will ignore the rule of law when it benefits him politically.
The full piece is here:
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A federal judge is expected to rule today on a request by 14 US states to temporarily block Elon Musk and the government downsizing team known as Doge set up by Donald Trump from accessing information systems at several federal agencies, Reuters reports.
DC-based US district judge Tanya Chutkan said at a hearing on Monday that she would try to rule within 24 hours on an emergency request by the Democratic state attorneys general seeking to block Musk and Doge from accessing government systems and firing employees at seven agencies.
The judge sounded skeptical at Monday’s hearing that the attorneys general had met the legal standard needed to grant a temporary restraining order.
Doge has swept through federal agencies slashing thousands of jobs and dismantling various programs since Trump returned to office last month and put Musk in charge of rooting out “wasteful spending” as part of the Republican president’s dramatic overhaul of government.
The state attorneys general who brought the case want to bar Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” from accessing information systems at the departments of labor, education, health and human services, energy, transportation and commerce, and at the Office of Personnel Management.
They also asked Chutkan to prevent Musk and his Doge team members from firing federal employees or putting them on leave.
The states have argued that Musk wields the kind of power that can be exercised only by an officer of the government who has been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate under language in the constitution called the appointments clause.
The states also have said Doge itself has not been authorized by Congress.
Around 20 lawsuits have been filed in various federal courts challenging Musk’s authority, which have led to differing results. On Monday, Washington-based district judge Randolph Moss declined to issue a temporary restraining order sought by the University of California Student Association to prevent the Department of Education from disclosing information to individuals affiliated with Doge.
Moss said the students failed to show they would suffer irreparable harm if their information is accessed by the Doge team members, who are obligated to follow privacy regulations. The judge also noted that any students who suffered harm from improper disclosure of their information could seek monetary damages afterward.
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My colleagues Pjotr Sauer and Luke Harding have this report on the US-Russia talks on Ukraine in Riyadh.
Top US and Russian officials have met in Saudi Arabia for the most extensive negotiations between the two countries in three years, agreeing to continue planning an end to the Ukraine war amid concerns in Kyiv and across Europe that Donald Trump could push for a settlement favoring Vladimir Putin.
After the almost five-hour-long talks at Diriyah Palace in Riyadh, the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said the two sides had agreed to create a high-level team to support Ukraine peace talks and to explore closer relations and economic cooperation.
The statements highlighted a tectonic shift in Washington’s approach to Russia, moving away from the Biden administration’s efforts to isolate Moscow.
Rubio said an end to the Ukraine conflict must be acceptable to all involved, including Ukraine, Europe and Russia, adding that its European allies were consulted on Ukraine. Still, no Ukrainian or even European officials were present at the meeting.
Putin’s chief foreign policy adviser, Yuri Ushakov, said the two sides had agreed for negotiators to talk about Ukraine and had briefly discussed the conditions needed for a Putin-Trump summit, although he noted this was unlikely to take place next week.
Ushakov further said the meeting “went well” and was “a serious conversation on all issues”.
The full write-up is here:
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Trump immigration dragnet ensnares people at check-ins and court hearings
People attending recent mandatory immigration check-ins or court appearances have been escorted out in federal custody after the Trump administration allegedly tricked, lied to, or otherwise deceived them as part of its mass deportation campaign.
Amid a blitz of immigration-related policy changes over the last few weeks, Donald Trump and his subordinates have greenlit the ability of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) to conduct potential civil enforcement operations at courthouses, including in immigration courts.
They have also reportedly set daily arrest quotas between at least 1,200 and 1,500 and gotten angry when agents have not consistently met those targets – pressure from the top that is probably incentivizing officers on the ground to go after the lowest-hanging fruit instead of people with serious criminal records.
Read the full report here:
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Judge orders hearing over Trump DOJ's bid to throw out Eric Adams corruption case
A federal judge has ordered US prosecutors to appear in court this week to explain the reasons why they are seeking to dismiss criminal charges filed against New York mayor Eric Adams and the “scope and effect” of the mayor’s consent, Reuters reports.
The hearing comes after a justice department official appointed by Donald Trump ordered prosecutors to seek dismissal of the case, which is widely seen as a reward for his help with Trump’s immigration agenda. At least a half-dozen federal prosecutors resigned rather than obey the order, but other officials eventually formally sought dismissal on Friday.
US district judge Dale Ho ordered the parties to appear at a hearing on Wednesday at 2pm EST to discuss the matter.
Four deputies to Adams plan to resign in a withdrawal of support for the embattled Democratic mayor, as the growing chaos engulfs his three-year-old administration.
Adams, who has warmed to Trump since being indicted last year on charges of taking bribes from Turkish officials, has pleaded not guilty.
In ordering prosecutors to dismiss the case, acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove said the charges were distracting Adams from helping Trump crack down on illegal immigration, one of the administration’s top priorities.
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White House says Elon Musk is not part of Doge
Elon Musk’s role in the Trump administration is as a White House employee and senior adviser to the president, and is not an employee of the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and has no decision-making authority, the White House said in a court filing on Monday.
Although the tech billionaire is said to be leading Trump’s administration’s sweeping cost-cutting efforts, according to a filing signed by Joshua Fisher, director of the Office of Administration at the White House, Musk can only advise the president and communicate the president’s directives.
“Like other senior White House advisors, Mr Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself,” it said.
Fisher’s filing, made in a case brought against Musk by the state of New Mexico, said that Musk was not an employee of the US Doge Service, or the US Doge Service Temporary Organization.
In his declaration to the court, Fisher said:
In his role as a Senior Advisor to the President, Mr. Musk has no greater authority than other senior White House advisors.
Like other senior White House advisors, Mr. Musk has no actual or formal authority to make government decisions himself.
Mr. Musk can only advise the President and communicate the President’s directives.
Fisher compared Musk’s role to that of Anita Dunn, who served as a senior advisor to former president Joe Biden.
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Process for US-Russia talks on Ukraine to start 'as soon as possible', Lavrov says
The Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, later said the two sides had agreed to start “as soon as possible” the process for Ukraine peace talks, and Russia will be waiting for the US to confirm its representatives for the talks and then appoint their own.
He then echoed Rubio’s sentiments about “creating conditions” for broader US-Russia cooperation, including on “resuming consultations on geopolitical issues,” and “removing the artificial barriers in the way of mutually beneficial economic cooperation.”
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Ukraine peace 'key to unlock' economic opportunities with Russia, Rubio says
My colleague Jakub Krupa reports that the US state secretary Marco Rubio has said part of the focus of the talks with Russia is on “ensuring that our diplomatic missions can function” and lead “vibrant diplomatic” relations.
He then said the second element is to conduct peace talks on Ukraine, which will include “engagement and consultation” with Ukraine and “partners in Europe”.
But ultimately, at the third step, the US wants to move to “engage in identifying the extraordinary opportunities that exist should this conflict come to acceptable end … to partner with Russians geopolitically, on issues of common interest, and frankly economically,” Rubio said.
Obviously, the diplomatic one is one we think we hope to move pretty quickly on, because this involves the treatment of our respective missions.
The second one will be difficult, which is the question of Ukraine and the end of that conflict.
But I think that’s essential in order for the third to even be possible, which is our ability to work together on other geopolitical matters of common interest, and, of course, some pretty unique, potentially historic, economic partnerships as well.
The key that unlocks the door for those opportunities, however, is the end to this conflict.
FDA staff reviewing Musk's Neuralink were included in Doge employee firings - Reuters
US Food and Drug Administration employees reviewing Elon Musk’s brain implant company Neuralink were fired over the weekend as part of a broader purge of the federal workforce, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.
The cuts included about 20 people in the FDA’s office of neurological and physical medicine devices, several of whom worked on Neuralink, according to the two sources, who asked not to be identified because of fear of professional repercussions.
That division includes reviewers overseeing clinical-trial applications by Neuralink and other companies making so-called brain-computer interface devices, the sources said.
Both sources said they did not believe the employees were specifically targeted because of their work on Neuralink’s applications.
The loss of roughly 20 employees will hamper the agency’s ability to quickly and safely process medical device applications of all sorts, including Neuralink’s, according to the sources and outside experts.
“It’s intimidating to the FDA professionals who are overseeing Neuralink’s trial,” said Victor Krauthamer, a former FDA official for three decades, including a stint as acting director of the office that reviews human-trial requests for brain implants.
“We should be worried about the whole trial, and the protection of the people in the trial.”
The FDA, White House and Musk did not immediately respond to comment requests. Trump has said that Musk will excuse himself from any conflicts of interest between his various business interests and his efforts to cut costs for the federal government.
The full story is here:
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A quarter of Americans have dumped their favorite stores in a backlash against corporations that have shifted their public policies to align with the Trump administration, according to a poll exclusively shared with the Guardian.
Four out of 10 Americans have shifted their spending over the last few months to align with their moral views, according to the Harris poll.
31% of Americans reported having no interest in supporting the economy this year – a sentiment especially felt by younger (gen Z: 37%), Black (41% v white: 28%), and Democratic consumers (35% v 29% of independents and 28% of Republicans).
A quarter (24%) of respondents have even stopped shopping at their favorite stores because of their politics (Black: 35%, gen Z: 32%, Democratic: 31%).
More Democrats (50%) indicated they were changing their spending habits compared with Republicans (41%) and independents (40%). Democrats were also more likely to say they have stopped shopping at companies that have opposing political views to their own – 45% of Democrats indicated so, compared with 34% of Republicans.
It’s a sign that consumers with liberal views are starting to use their wallets in response to politics in the private sector. Most recently, this has been seen with a backlash against Target – the seventh-largest retailer in the US that has enjoyed a typically favorable reputation among liberal consumers.
In January, Target announced it was ending some of its diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) policies, including a program that helped the company carry more Black- and minority-owned brands in its stores, saying it was trying to “stay more in step with the evolving external landscape”.
You can read the full story here:
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Ukraine peace talks must mean permanent end to war and be acceptable to all sides, US says after Russia meeting
The US delegation is now speaking to the media. My colleague Jakub Krupa reports that Michael Waltz, the US national security adviser, has said the Ukraine talks with Russia will include discussion of territory and security guarantees, adding:
This needs to be a permanent end to the war, and not a temporary end, as we’ve seen in the past.
Marco Rubio, the US secretary of state, went on to say that the agreement must be acceptable to all sides:
What’s important to understand is two things. The first is [that] the only leader in the world who can make this happen, who can even bring people together to begin to talk about it in a serious way, is President Trump.
The second thing I would say is that in order for a conflict to end, everyone involved in that conflict has to be okay with it has to be it has to be acceptable to them.
He added:
The goal is to bring an end to this conflict in a way that’s fair, enduring, sustainable and acceptable to all parties involved. What that looks like? Well, that’s what this what the ongoing engagement is going to be all about.
For more on that head over to our Europe live blog:
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, said officials at the US-Russia talks agreed to restore embassy staffing and create a high-level team to negotiate peace in Ukraine peace and promote economic cooperation, AP reports.
Rubio said that actions over the last several years have reduced both countries’ diplomatic missions’ abilities to operate. He said: “We’re going to need to have vibrant diplomatic missions that are able to function normally in order to be able to continue these conduits.”
US and Russia agree to start push towards peace in Ukraine - US state department
The United States and Russia agreed on Tuesday to address “irritants” to the US-Russia relationship and begin working on a path to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, the State Department said, making clear the effort was in its early stages.
“One phone call followed by one meeting is not sufficient to establish enduring peace,” department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said after meetings in Saudi Arabia.
Russia’s sovereign wealth fund chief Kirill Dmitriev told Reuters of the talks: “I think it is too early to talk about compromises, we can say that the sides started communicating with each other, started listening to each other, started the dialogue.”
He said Russian and US officials had a separate discussion on future economic cooperation, including global energy prices.
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Russia-US talks end as Kremlin officials says no date set for Trump-Putin meeting
The talks between Russian and US officials in Saudi Arabia have wrapped up, a senior Kremlin official told Russian state TV on Tuesday.
President Vladimir Putin’s foreign affairs advisor, Yuri Ushakov, who attended the talks in Riyadh alongside Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov, told Russia’s Channel one that no date has been set yet for a meeting between Putin and Trump, the Associated Press reports.
He said the meeting was “unlikely” to take place next week.
“The delegations of the two countries need to work closely together. We are ready for this, but it is still difficult to talk about a specific date for the meeting of the two leaders,” Ushakov said
Top Social Security official leaves after clash with Musk’s Doge over sensitive data request
Michelle King, the top official at the Social Security Administration, left her position on Sunday after refusing a request from Elon Musk’s Doge to access sensitive government records at the agency, The Washington Post reports.
King had spent several decades at the agency and was made acting commissioner last month.
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields confirmed King’s departure in a statement.
“President Trump has nominated the highly qualified and talented Frank Bisignano to lead the Social Security Administration, and we expect him to be swiftly confirmed in the coming weeks,” Fields said.
“In the meantime, the agency will be led by a career Social Security anti-fraud expert as the acting commissioner. President Trump is committed to appointing the best and most qualified individuals who are dedicated to working on behalf of the American people, not to appease the bureaucracy that has failed them for far too long.”
Donald Trump appointed Leland Dudek, a manager in charge of Social Security’s anti-fraud office as acting commissioner while Bisignano is vetted by the Senate.
DNC chair outlines pro-worker, union focus in first memo in fight against Trump
The newly elected chair of the Democratic National Committee, Ken Martin, has warned his party that the Republicans are now seen as the party of the working class and vowed to win back the trust of American workers as the Democrats seek to rebuild after their losses in the 2024 presidential election.
In his first memo in the role, seen by the Guardian, Martin said, after the election, “for the first time in modern history, Americans now see the Republicans as the party of the working class and Democrats as the party of the elites”.
The memo, titled “Democrats Will Fight Against Trump’s War on Working People”, comes as Martin is set to meet with United Steel Workers members in Pittsburgh today.
“By joining together in a union, working people have secured better wages, workplace protections, healthcare and the weekend. Because here’s the thing: unions expand opportunities for all workers – not just those who are members,” Martin wrote.
Read the full report here:
Trump nominates January 6 activist to serve as top DC prosecutor
A conservative activist who has consistently defended the January 6 storming of the Capitol has been nominated by Donald Trump to serve as the permanent top federal prosecutor in the city where it happened.
Trump named Ed Martin for US attorney for the District of Columbia, the top prosecutor for all serious local crimes by adults in the district. His appointment must be confirmed by the US Senate.
Martin has echoed Trump’s baseless and incorrect claims that the 2020 election was stolen, including speaking at a “Stop the Steal” rally in DC on 5 January, and consistently defended the actions of the insurrectionists.
He has said he was part of the crowds of Trump supporters who gathered near the White House in Washington DC on 6 January to hear Trump urge them to march on the US Capitol, where many engaged in a attempt to overthrow the results of the 2020 election and keep Trump in power.
Read the full report here:
US and Russian officials in Riyadh are breaking for a working lunch, Reuters reports, citing the Russian foreign ministry.
Four deputies to New York mayor resign in fallout over dropped corruption charges
Four deputies to New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, resigned on Monday as the growing chaos following a justice department request to drop corruption charges against him, widely seen as a reward for his help with Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, engulfs his three-year-old administration.
According to reports, four of Adams’ deputies – first deputy mayor Maria Torres Springer, deputy mayor for operations Meera Joshi, deputy mayor for health and human services Anne Williams-Isom, and deputy mayor for public safety Chauncey Parker – said they were stepping down.
“I am disappointed to see them go, but given the current challenges, I understand their decision and wish them nothing but success in the future,” Adams said in a statement.
Torres-Springer, Williams-Isom and Joshi issued a joint statement, citing “the extraordinary events of the last few weeks” and “oaths we swore to New Yorkers and our families” as what led them to the “difficult decision” to leave.
Hello and welcome to the US politics blog.
US and Russian officials have been holding talks in Riyadh on the war in Ukraine - the first in-person discussion between top officials in years.
The US delegation includes US secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff. From Russia is Putin’s foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov.
The officials are expected to discuss ways to end the three-year-old conflict in Ukraine and restore American-Russian relations.
Their talks could pave the way for a summit between US president Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine, which is not attending, says no peace deal can be made on its behalf. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in an interview on Monday that the US is trying to “please” Russia following the shock policy shift on the Ukraine war under Donald Trump.
Meanwhile in other developments:
Four deputies to New York’s mayor, Eric Adams, resigned on Monday as the growing chaos after a justice department request to drop corruption charges against him, widely seen as a reward for his help with Donald Trump’s immigration agenda, engulfs his three-year-old administration.
Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed that, with Donald Trump’s support, his government will “finish the job” of neutralising the threat from Iran, amid US reports that Israel is considering airstrikes against Iranian nuclear sites in the coming few months.
A US judge on Monday questioned the authority of billionaire Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” (Doge) but was sceptical of a request to block Doge from accessing sensitive data and firing employees at half a dozen federal agencies, the Associated Press reports.
FDA staff reviewing Elon Musk’s Neuralink were included in Doge employee firings, sources have told Reuters.
Donald Trump’s administration has warned of cuts in federal funding for academic institutions and universities if they continue with diversity, equity and inclusion programmes.
A conservative activist who has consistently defended the January 6 storming of the Capitol has been nominated by Donald Trump to serve as the permanent top federal prosecutor in the city where it happened. Trump named Ed Martin for US attorney for the District of Columbia. His appointment must be confirmed by the US Senate.
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