Trump is ready to take his fight against transgender athletes to the International Olympic Committee.

Trump said Wednesday during a signing ceremony for an executive order aimed at banning transgender athletes from women’s sports that his administration wants the IOC to “change everything having to do with the Olympics and having to do with this absolutely ridiculous subject” ahead of the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles.

The order empowers the Secretary of State’s office to pressure the IOC to amend standards governing Olympic sporting events “to promote fairness, safety and the best interests of female athletes by ensuring that eligibility for participation in women’s sporting events is determined according to sex and not gender identity or testosterone reduction.”

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First-of-their-kind lawsuits, near-daily staff memos from the little-known acting FBI director and abject fear among agents that they could lose their jobs have distracted and destabilized the FBI workforce, a half-dozen current and former federal law enforcement officials with experience in the bureau told NBC News. 

The tensions at the country’s most powerful federal law enforcement agency follow a Trump administration request for the names of thousands of agents assigned to work on Capitol riot-related investigations. Assurances from the administration that it will review agents’ conduct and not necessarily fire them have not quelled fears of mass firings.

If the new administration fires or punishes agents involved in the Jan. 6 investigations — referred to within the bureau as simply “1-6” — it could affect the FBI in three dangerous ways, the current and former law enforcement officials said.

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The top Democrats on the Senate and House committees with jurisdiction over the Education Department are demanding information about the Trump administration’s plans to dismantle the department. 

Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee ranking member Bernie Sanders of Vermont and House Education Committee ranking member Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut sent the letter to the department's acting secretary along with other congressional Democrats.

The lawmakers are requesting information about any access being given to the department’s sensitive data and steps being taken to safeguard it, communications and details related to department employees placed on leave, and whether grant money has been blocked or terminated. 

Trump’s nominee to lead the Department of Education, Linda McMahon, will testify at her confirmation hearing before the Senate panel next Thursday.

Trump's pick for secretary of education, Linda McMahon, will sit before the Senate HELP Committee next Thursday for her confirmation hearing, the committee announced this morning.

Democratic committee members are expected to grill McMahon on the president's proposed plans to abolish the Department of Education, as sources familiar with the plans told NBC News that Trump is preparing an executive order to do so.

Trump has long promised to end the department. In September 2023, Trump posted a video saying that “very early in the administration,” he would be "closing up the Department of Education in Washington, D.C., and sending all education and education work and needs back to the states."

The push to close the Education Department, which was established during President Jimmy Carter's tenure in 1979, is also listed in Project 2025. Last month, Reps. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., and David Rouzer, R-N.C., both filed bills that would eliminate the department, with Massie's proposal garnering 27 Republican co-sponsors.

House Speaker Mike Johnson and Majority Leader Steve Scalise will lead a group of House Republicans to the White House today for a meeting with Trump on their budget plans, according to the Louisiana lawmakers' spokespeople.

Yesterday, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Republicans in that chamber will proceed “as early as next week” with their own multitrack approach to a reconciliation bill. Johnson pushed back on that idea, saying the House “needs to lead this.” 

House Republican leadership is in favor of a one-bill approach to reconciliation, which allows for the expedited consideration of tax and spending measures. At the GOP retreat in Miami last week, Johnson said the House Budget Committee would start the process by marking up a budget resolution upon its return to the Capitol. That meeting has yet to be scheduled.

The budget resolution is the first step of the reconciliation process. 

Trump announced at the National Prayer Breakfast at the Washington Hilton hotel this morning that he plans to create a freedom of religion commission and a task force to address anti-Christian bias.

"I will be creating a brand new presidential commission on religious liberty. It's going to be a very big deal, which will work tirelessly to uphold this most fundamental right. Unfortunately, in recent years, we've seen this sacred liberty threatened like never before in American history," Trump said.

The president said he would also have Attorney General Pam Bondi lead a task force at the Justice Department to address anti-Christian bias.

"The mission of this task force will be to immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination within the federal government, including at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI, terrible, and other agencies," he said. "In addition, the task force will work to fully prosecute anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society and to move heaven and earth to defend the rights of Christians and religious believers nationwide."

The Senate Judiciary Committee is postponing a vote on Kash Patel's nomination for FBI director to next week at the request of Democrats on the panel.

The committee allows any of its senators to push the committee vote on a nomination by one week. Only one such delay is allowed.

Committee Democrats are planning to hold a press conference at Capitol Hill later this morning on the request.

The Judiciary Committee is now expected to hold its vote next Thursday, which, if successful, would send Patel's nomination to the full Senate for confirmation.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino agreed to expand cooperation between the U.S. military and Panama’s security forces, the Pentagon said, amid U.S. threats to "take back" the Panama Canal, which Trump says is under undue Chinese influence.

During a call yesterday, Hegseth and Mulino "agreed on the strong relationship and many security interests that the United States and Panama share, to include safeguarding the Panama Canal," a Pentagon spokesperson said.

Mulino, who met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio over the weekend, said after their talks that Panama was looking to end its involvement in China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure program, a move Rubio hailed as “a great step forward” for Panama’s U.S. relations.

Both Panama and China deny that Beijing has control over the U.S.-built canal, which has been governed and operated by the independent Panama Canal Authority since the U.S. transferred control of the canal to Panama in 1999.

Trump doubled down on controversial plans for the Gaza Strip today, saying the Palestinian enclave would be “turned over to the United States by Israel” once the war there ends.

The comments in a string of posts on Truth Social followed his proposal for the U.S. to “take over” and “develop” Gaza, which were derided by rivals and even questioned by close allies earlier this week.

Israeli officials did not immediately comment on the president’s latest comments, though in an interview on Fox News yesterday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump’s initial proposal.

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