Democratic states sue Trump administration over order to halt funding for gender-affirming care
Three Democratic states sued the Trump administration on Friday over its order to ban federal funding for gender-affirming care for transgender people under 19.
Washington state Attorney General Nick Brown filed the federal lawsuit in the Western District of Washington. The attorneys general of Oregon and Minnesota, and three doctors, also joined as plaintiffs. The complaint argues that the order discriminates against transgender people.
Trump signed an executive order last month directing federally run insurance programs, including Medicaid and TRICARE for military families, to exclude coverage for such care. It also calls on the Department of Justice to pursue litigation and legislation to oppose it.
Medicaid programs in some states cover gender-affirming care. The new order suggests that the practice could end, and targets hospitals and universities that receive federal money and provide the care.
During a press conference, Trump said he expected to fire “some” of the FBI investigators who worked on cases involving the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
FDA employees get unexpected calls about return-to-office policy
Some Food and Drug Administration employees received unexpected phone calls from their managers this week regarding the Trump administration’s mandate that workers return to the office five days a week, according to two people who got such calls.
In the phone conversations, managers informed the employees that they would be ordered back to the office by March 17.
Discussions about office policies are typically more formal and conducted over email, one of the employees said. Because of that, both workers — who asked that their names not be published to protect their jobs — said they felt that the calls were scare tactics aimed at pressuring them to accept the buyout offer that the Trump administration has offered.
“It felt like an attempt to scare people into taking the buyout deal before it was too late,” one source said.
A federal judge temporarily paused the proposed buyout offer until at least Monday. More than 60,000 federal employees have taken the offer so far, according to the White House. The FDA has more than 18,000 employees, according to the agency’s website.
Trump says he will 'pick out a target' for DOGE as he directs cost-cutting mission
Asked about his conversations with Elon Musk, whom Trump has launched on a far reaching cost-cutting mission across the federal government, the president said the two men have not spent time dwellig on the details of the project.
“We have not discussed that much,” Trump told reporters during a press conference at the White House on Friday. “I’ll tell him to go here, go there. He does it. He’s got a very capable group of people, very, very, very, very capable. They know what they’re doing.”
Describing their working relationship, Trump said he had “instructed” Musk to “go into education, go into military, go into other things as we go along.”
The president said he will “pick out a target” for DOGE to enter, and claimed the team is unearthing “massive” government fraud, waste and abuse. There could be “some areas of high intelligence” that Trump said he would tackle himself.
“But I think everything’s fertile,” he continued. “You know, we’re a government. We have to be open.”
San Francisco sues Trump administration for targeting sanctuary cities
San Francisco officials filed a federal lawsuit on Friday against the Trump administration, arguing Trump’s executive orders that promise to withhold federal funding from sanctuary cities and prosecute local law enforcement officials who refuse to comply with federal immigration enforcement efforts are unconstitutional.
The suit, co-led by San Francisco and Santa Clara County officials in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, comes as the latest in a series of sanctuary cities and state attorneys general suing the Trump administration over recent immigration-related executive orders.
“They’ve targeted sanctuary localities and states with executive orders and agency actions meant to illegally compel local jurisdictions into carrying out the President’s priorities and allowing the federal government to commandeer local law enforcement officers as ICE agents, the federal actions made clear that cities like San Francisco will be defunded if we do not give up our local authority and autonomy and comply,” said San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu during a press conference announcing the lawsuit.
“I want to be clear, the Trump administration is asserting a right it does not have. They are trying to tell us how to use our resources and to commandeer our local law enforcement. This is the federal government coercing local officials to bend to their will or face defunding or prosecution, and that is illegal or authoritarian,” said Chiu.
Trump says DOGE doesn't need access to sensitive Treasury payment system data
During a press conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump was asked about reports that DOGE has access to Treasury Department payment systems, including information that includes Americans' social security numbers, home addresses and bank accounts.
"Why does DOGE need all of that?" a reporter asked Trump.
“Well, it doesn’t, but they get it very easily. We don’t have very good security in our country," the president answered.
On Wednesday, the Trump administration agreed to temporarily block most DOGE staffers from accessing the systems that contain sensitive personal information.
Republicans eye dueling budget votes next week as Mike Johnson faces pressure to act
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., is eying a committee vote next week to kickstart a massive multi-trillion-dollar package to advance President Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.
But first, Johnson needs to unify his small and fractious Republican majority before the House can even begin working on the bill.
Johnson is eager to project imminent success as he faces pressure to get his ducks in a row from the GOP-controlled Senate, where the chamber’s budget committee plans to move forward next week with a dueling resolution that takes a different approach.
But House Republicans are divided on the parameters of a party-line bill that seeks to address tax, border and energy policy — from how much spending to cut, which programs to slash, how much red ink to add and how to structure a tax overhaul.
USAID name stripped from D.C. headquarters
Letter by letter, crews are currently scraping off the signage displaying “U.S. Agency for International Development” from the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington where the agency's headquarters once was.
Trump says he may meet with Zelenskyy next week
Trump said he may meet next week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Washington, as he seeks to bring the long-running war between Ukraine and Russia to an end.
"I will probably be meeting with President Zelenskyy next week, and I will probably be talking to President Putin," Trump said during his Oval Office meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba. "I’d like to see that war end for one primary reason. They’re killing so many people."
Asked whether he would travel overseas to meet Zelenskyy, Trump said it "could be" a sit-down in Washington.
Trump has urged an end to the war for months and dwelled on the devastation wrought by the years of fighting.
“I’d like to see it end just on a human basis,” Trump said. “It’s a ridiculous war.”
Democrat demands House speaker respond over Musk's access to Americans' data
Rep. Debbie Dingell, D-Mich., slammed Elon Musk’s broad access to the U.S. Treasury payments data and indicated she would not be open to discussing the Republicans' spending bill until House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has addressed Musk’s access to such data.
“People should be outraged” Dingell told MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell. “This kind of data that is being collected on them, everything from their Social Security numbers to their home addresses to their health information. … I’m not going to read anything until we know they’re going to come talk to us and say what’s on the table.”
Congressional conservatives are seeking to pass a reconciliation bill that would fund the government by a March 14 deadline.
“I want to say that right now Mike Johnson’s got to come and talk to people in the house,” Dingell said, referencing the Democratic push for clarity on Musk’s access to American data “They’ve got to be talking to the Senate. We don’t know exactly what’s going on.”