Vivek Ramaswamy formally announces candidacy for Ohio governor
Vivek Ramaswamy formally announced his candidacy in the Ohio governor's race today, saying he will lead it to be "the state of excellence in America.”
"I am honored to officially announce my candidacy to serve as the next Governor of Ohio," Ramaswamy said in a post on X alongside a video clip that shows him making the announcement at a campaign event in Cincinnati.
"President Trump is reviving our conviction in America. We require a leader here at home who will revive our conviction in Ohio," Ramaswamy, who ran in the GOP presidential primary last year before dropping out and endorsing Trump, said at the event. "I will lead Ohio to be the top state in the country where patriots across America actually flock to instead of Florida and Texas. I will lead Ohio to be the state of excellence in America."
NBC News previewed Ramaswamy's plans to make a bid for governor. He had previously opted to step aside from co-directing the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency with Musk.
The Trump administration is considering eliminating U.S. Africa Command
The Trump administration is considering eliminating U.S. Africa Command as part of a downsizing of the Pentagon, according to two U.S. officials and another person familiar with the discussions.
The idea under consideration is to move AFRICOM to a subcommand position under European Command, the two U.S. officials said. EUCOM and AFRICOM already work closely together.
Defense officials who are in favor of the move have argued it would eliminate bureaucracy, the U.S. officials said. It also could make it easier for Trump to withdraw U.S. troops out of certain places in Africa, such as Somalia. The U.S. launched an air strike in Somalia on Feb. 16 and another one over the weekend.
But a smaller U.S. presence in Africa could create a vacuum that U.S. adversaries like Russia and China can fill, one U.S. official warned.
The Pentagon did not respond to a request for comment.
AFRICOM was established in 2007 and became fully operational on Oct 1, 2008. Marine Corps Gen. Michael E. Langley became the sixth commander of AFRICOM in August 2022 and was expected to rotate out of the job this summer.
Roughly 2,000 personnel are assigned to AFRICOM, including military, civilian and contractor employees, according to the Defense Department. More than half of them work at AFRICOM’s headquarters in Stuttgart, Germany, while others are at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, and RAF Molesworth in the U.K., according to the Defense Department.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth visited AFRICOM’s Germany headquarters during a trip to Europe this month, a stop the Pentagon described in a news release as “part of a broader engagement that also included a stop at U.S. European Command (EUCOM).”
GOP lawmaker sticks with supporting DOGE, says constituents don't like Musk
A Republican lawmaker confronted by constituents on federal cuts during an event in his district last week said he is “sticking” with his support of DOGE.
Rep. Kevin Hern, R-Okla., said his constituents are supportive of the DOGE mission but have an issue with the man at the center of the slash-and-burn effort: Elon Musk.
“I’ve not heard anyone say they don’t want to cut anything. It’s just that they don’t like Elon. That it’s,” Hern told NBC News. “We’re moving forward with the cuts.”
Hern said he will continue to hear out his constituents.
“We’re continuing to move forward. We’ll continue to answer questions. I took questions for over an hour from my constituents back home last week, and y’all listen, we represent everybody. I’m gonna take questions,” Hern said. “But I still think the right thing to do is to get our government under control. We’re $37 trillion in debt and growing. It’s not gonna get better if we keep doing same thing the same way we’ve always done it.”
Meanwhile, another House Republican who faced blowback over DOGE, Rep. Rich McCormick of Georgia, has struck a different tune after being confronted by constituents at a town hall last week. McCormick told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution “we’re just moving a little too fast” on the cuts.
“We should have impact studies on each department as we do it, and I’m sure we can do that. We’re moving really, really rapidly, and we don’t know the impact,” he said.
Republican introduces articles of impeachment against a judge who ruled against the Trump administration
Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., introduced articles of impeachment today against a federal judge who ruled this month that the Trump administration had to restore health-related webpages and databases that had been scrubbed to comply with the president's executive order targeting “gender ideology.”
The pages included information about HIV prevention, emergency contraception and information about the LGBT community, including suggestions on how to develop clinical trials. U.S. District Judge John D. Bates of Washington, D.C., issued a temporary restraining order against removing the pages in response to a suit from the nonprofit group Doctors for America.
In the articles of impeachment, Ogles accused Bates, who was appointed by President George W. Bush in 2001, of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”
The lawmaker’s filing follows rhetoric from Trump allies seeking to discredit judges, with experts warning of a potential “constitutional crisis” if the administration refuses to comply with court rulings. Musk appeared to celebrate Ogles’ filing on X, saying, “Time to impeach judges who violate the law.”
For the measure to be successful, a majority of the Republican-led House would have to vote in favor of impeachment, followed by two-thirds of the Senate voting to convict the judge.
Ogles introduced a measure last month that proposed an amendment to the Constitution which would allow Trump to seek a third term in office.
HHS warns employees that responses to Elon Musk’s request may ‘be read by malign foreign actors’
The Department of Health and Human Services sent agency employees an email Monday afternoon warning them that any responses to Elon Musk’s request that they share their accomplishments from the past week might “be read by malign foreign actors.”
Four HHS employees shared the email with NBC News.
“On Saturday, you received an email from [the U.S. Office of Personnel Management] entitled ‘What did you do last week,’” the email, which came from [email protected], began. “The directive stated employees were to submit five bullets detailing their accomplishments in the past week. In discussions with OPM Officials yesterday and today OPM has now rescinded that mandatory requirement.”
FDA rehires staff to its medical devices division after mass layoffs
The Trump administration is reinstating some employees in the Food and Drug Administration’s medical devices division after dozens were laid off as part of a government-wide cost-cutting initiative led by Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Around 180 employees from the FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, including physicians and cybersecurity experts, were let go on Feb. 15, two workers said they were told by their supervisors.
“These people are indispensable,” one said. “Many of these roles require so much training and specialization and are so important for keeping people alive.”
Mike Johnson says Elon Musk 'cracked the code' on federal bureaucracy
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., praised Elon Musk today saying the tech billionaire leading the Trump administration's newly created Department of Government Efficiency had “cracked the code” to bypass the so-called deep state in government.
"How many of you know that bureaucracy was not forthcoming, right? They're not transparent. That's the whole point. That's the problem. That's the deep state we talk about," Johnson said at an event in Washington, D.C., hosted by the conservative political advocacy group Americans For Prosperity.
"But Elon has cracked the code. He is now inside the agencies. He's created these algorithms that are constantly crawling through the data. And as he told me in his office, the data doesn't lie. We're going to be able to get the information. We're going to be able to transform the way the federal government works at the end of this, and that is a very exciting prospect. It is truly a revolutionary moment for the nation," Johnson added.
Many House Republicans have been confronted by constituents in their districts over Musk's approach to cutting agency budgets and federal jobs. Much of their anger has been on display at town halls and other local events.
French President Macron meets with bipartisan group of senators
French President Emmanuel Macron is meeting with a bipartisan group of senators in the Capitol.
The lawmakers meeting with Macron are Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., and fellow Republican Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, John Barrasso of Wyoming, Jim Risch of Idaho, and Susan Collins of Maine.
They are joined by Democratic Sens. Michael Bennet of Colorado, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Mark Warner of Virginia, Dick Durbin of Illinois, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, and Chris Coons of Delaware.
The meeting comes after Macron and Trump held a bilateral meeting at the White House today.
DOGE will use AI to assess the responses from federal workers who were told to justify their jobs via email
Responses to the Elon Musk-directed email to government employees about what work they’d accomplished over the past week are expected to be fed into an artificial intelligence system to determine whether those jobs are necessary or not, according to three sources with knowledge of the system.
The information will go into an LLM (Large Language Model), an advanced AI system that looks at huge amounts of text data to understand, generate, and process human language, the sources said. The AI system will determine whether someone’s work is mission-critical or not.
Trump administration does not have to allow Associated Press access yet, judge rules
A federal judge today declined to issue a temporary restraining order for The Associated Press in its effort to gain full access to the Trump administration, asking for a fuller briefing before making a decision.
The Associated Press has accused Trump administration officials of violating its First Amendment protections by refusing it access because of its style policy.
The AP was barred indefinitely from accessing the Oval Office and Air Force One, as it had in the past, because of its refusal to change its style for the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America.”