What to know today
- President Donald Trump is granting certain automakers a one-month exemption from tariffs on Canada and Mexico that went into effect this week. Trump spoke to the Big Three automakers and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
- Trump met with conservative House members at the White House, and Elon Musk huddled with House Republicans to talk about the Department of Government Efficiency's efforts to reduce the size of government. Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance visited the southern border in Texas.
- White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed that the United States is talking directly to Hamas about releasing hostages after a six-month ceasefire ended over the weekend. Trump later threatened to have Hamas leaders and Gazans killed if hostages are not immediately released.
- In a blow to Trump, the Supreme Court backed a lower-court ruling ordering the administration to pay $2 billion to contractors from the U.S. Agency for International Development. A separate ruling handed Trump a temporary victory in his effort to fire a top government watchdog who was appointed by former President Joe Biden.
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Musk and Republicans discuss package to vote on DOGE cuts as shutdown looms
Musk met with Senate Republicans for nearly two hours in a closed-door lunch meeting today, seeking to reassure them amid voter anxiety over the sweeping cuts his Department of Government Efficiency is making.
They discussed a “rescission” package that the White House could send to Congress to codify his cuts through a measure that can get around the 60-vote hurdle in order to get around legal challenges to the administration’s power to act unilaterally.
“To me, it’s ephemeral now. I love all the stuff they’re doing, but we got to vote on it. So my message to Elon was let’s get over the impoundment idea, and let’s send it back as a rescission package,” Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., told reporters. “Because then what we have to do is lobby to get to 51 senators or 50 senators to cut the spending.”
Multiple senators said Musk was surprised to learn there was a viable legislative pathway to making DOGE’s cuts permeant. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said Musk was “so happy” when he heard the news, telling reporters that Musk pumped his fists and danced.
Rubio on Trump's ultimatum to Hamas: 'He doesn’t say these things and not mean it'
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview that Trump's threat to Hamas today was genuine.
“I’m glad he’s putting those statements out,” Rubio said on Fox News. “He doesn’t say these things and not mean it. As folks are finding out around the world, if he says he’s going to do something, he’ll do it.”
Trump said on Truth Social that he would have Hamas leaders and Gazans killed if hostages in the Gaza Strip were not immediately released.
"I am sending Israel everything it needs to finish the job, not a single Hamas member will be safe if you don’t do as I say," Trump wrote. "I have just met with your former Hostages whose lives you have destroyed. This is your last warning!"
Rubio last week expedited the delivery of roughly $4 billion in U.S. military aid to Israel.
Discussing the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Rubio told Fox News that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy "sabotaged" and "undermined" Trump's efforts to negotiate an end to the conflict.
Rubio said he has not met with Russian negotiators since mid-February, when he led a delegation of U.S. officials to Saudi Arabia to initiate peace talks.
"It's hard to follow up when the other side of the conflict is saying they're not interested in peace at all, and that was the message that was coming across," Rubio said. "Hopefully that's been corrected."
Hunter Biden cites financial woes in request for federal judge to dismiss laptop data case
Hunter Biden asked a federal judge today to dismiss his lawsuit against an ex-Trump aide that centers on the publication of contents of a laptop attributed to the former president’s son, saying his dwindling financial resources have made it difficult to proceed with litigation.
In documents filed in federal court in California, Biden’s attorneys urged U.S. District Judge Hernan D. Vera to dismiss the 2023 lawsuit filed against Garrett Ziegler. They said Biden “has suffered a significant downturn in his income and has significant debt in the millions of dollars range.”
His financial troubles were made worse, Biden’s attorneys said, after the wildfires in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles “upended” his life by making his rental home “unlivable for an extended period of time.”
Biden “has had difficulty in finding a new permanent place to live as well as finding it difficult to earn a living,” they wrote, adding that he needs to direct his time and available resources to dealing with his relocation, the damage to his rental house and his family’s living expenses, “as opposed to this litigation.”
Republicans can't meet their own budget target without cutting Medicare or Medicaid, budget office says
House Republicans cannot meet their own budget target that is necessary to pass Trump’s legislative agenda without making significant cuts to Medicare or Medicaid, the official budget scorekeeper confirmed today.
House Republicans adopted a budget blueprint last week that opens the door to pass Trump’s policy priorities on immigration, energy and taxes. It instructs the House Energy and Commerce Committee to cut spending under its jurisdiction by $880 billion.
The Congressional Budget Office, a nonpartisan in-house think tank that referees the process, said that when Medicare is set aside, the total funding in the committee’s jurisdiction is $8.8 trillion over 10 years. Medicaid accounts for $8.2 trillion of that, or 93%.
When Medicare and Medicaid are excluded, the committee oversees a total of $581 billion in spending — much less than the $880 billion target — the CBO said. The letter outlining the figures was in response to a query by Reps. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., the ranking member of the Energy and Commerce Committee, and Brendan Boyle, D-Pa. the ranking member of the Budget Committee.
Musk says 'we're not using much AI' in processing government info
Speaking to reporters after tonight's meeting with House Republicans, Musk said artificial intelligence is playing a small role in his efforts to reduce the size of the federal government.
“Right now, we’re not using much AI, honestly,” Musk said in response to a question from NBC News.
NBC News has reported that responses to the Musk-directed email to government employees about what work they had accomplished in the past week were expected to be uploaded into an AI system to determine whether those jobs are necessary.
Musk also said his message to House Republicans tonight was about the '"opportunity" to tackle government spending.
"There’s a lot of room, lot of opportunity, to improve expenditures in the government, and then we’re making good progress," Musk said.
Reporters also asked Musk about remarks by Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., mentioning him in the official Democratic response to Trump's speech last night.
"I don’t know who she is," he said.
Musk met with House Republicans after he spent nearly two hours in a closed-door lunch meeting with Senate Republicans, where they discussed efforts to codify the cuts he hass implemented through his Department of Government Efficiency.
Senate Republicans had expressed a desire for greater transparency into DOGE as Musk seeks to reduce government spending by drastically cutting the federal workforce and budget.
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s chief of staff arrested on DUI charge after Trump speech
Hayden Haynes, the chief of staff to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and one of the most powerful aides on Capitol Hill, was arrested after Trump’s joint address to Congress on suspicion of drunken driving after his car struck a Capitol vehicle, two law enforcement sources told NBC News. Johnson’s office confirmed the incident.
One of the sources told NBC News that a police report indicated that Haynes hit a Capitol vehicle around midnight and that he was arrested and released with a citation to appear in court. The arrest came after Trump’s speech last night, when Johnson presided over the House floor and sat just behind Trump’s left shoulder.
“A driver backed into a parked vehicle last night around 11:40 p.m.,” U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement. “We responded and arrested them for DUI.”
Haynes is a trusted and longtime aide to Johnson. He has been chief of staff in the speaker’s office since Johnson won the top job in the House in October 2023. Before that, Haynes was chief of staff to Johnson in his personal office from 2017 to 2023. He also had worked in various roles for former Sen. David Vitter, another Louisiana Republican, from 2009 to 2016.
House Republicans tee up vote to censure Rep. Al Green for disrupting Trump’s speech
House Republicans today teed up a vote to censure Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, for disrupting Trump’s address last night.
The House voted along party lines, 209-211, to defeat a Democratic motion to table the censure resolution introduced by Rep. Dan Newhouse, R-Wash. After the resolution cleared that procedural hurdle, the final vote on whether to censure Green is expected tomorrow.
Green defended his actions at the outset of Trump’s speech last night, which included standing in the aisle of the House chamber and waving his cane at Trump.
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warned Green to sit down or face removal from the chamber, and when Green continued his protest, Johnson ordered the House sergeant at arms to escort him from the chamber.
Republicans block Senate Democrats' attempts to pass resolutions backing Ukraine and condemning Putin
Senate Democrats failed to pass six resolutions that would have affirmed U.S. support for Ukraine amid its war with Russia and condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin for "the ongoing violence" and "systematic human rights abuses" carried out by Russian armed forces.
The two Republicans who blocked a majority of the resolutions were Armed Services Committee Chair Roger Wicker, of Mississippi, and Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch, of Idaho, both vocal supporters of aiding Ukraine.
Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., filed a resolution calling on Putin to immediately withdraw forces from Ukraine. While supported the idea, Risch said the resolution would be meaningless.
"This is going to have absolutely zero effect of any kind," he said. "You’re delusional if you think it’s going to have any effect of any kind on Vladimir Putin."
Another resolution, from Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., would have condemned “the ongoing violence, including crimes against humanity and systematic human rights abuses" carried out by the Russian armed forces at Putin's direction.
The Senate unanimously agreed to a similar resolution three years ago, but today Wicker argued that it could interfere with the ongoing negotiations to end the war.
“This is not the time for elected members of the House and Senate to be passing resolutions. Take a deep breath. Let the negotiators do their work, and for heaven’s sake, not do anything that might in some way be interpreted as being belligerent or counterproductive. And for that reason, I do object,” he said.
Wicker also objected to a resolution from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., that would have reaffirmed the "partnership between the United States and Ukraine."
The other failed resolutions filed by Senate Democrats would have condemned Putin for the "abduction, forcible transfer, and facilitation of the illegal deportation" of Ukrainian children, reaffirmed the United States' opposition to "forcibly acquiring the territory of another state" and emphasized the Senate's position that Russia started the war against Ukraine.
Trump has falsely claimed that Ukraine was to blame for Russia's invasion.
Government ethics watchdog removed from post amid legal fight with Trump administration
A federal appeals court said today that Trump can fire a top government watchdog in the latest round of a legal fight over the authority to dismiss federal officials.
The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for Washington, D.C., put on hold on a lower court’s ruling that found Hampton Dellinger’s termination at the Office of Special Counsel was “unlawful.” The court said it would expedite its review of that ruling, but in the meantime Dellinger can be removed from his post.
The White House and Dellinger did not immediately respond to requests for comment tonight.
The ruling is a temporary win for Trump as his administration seeks to carry out mass firings of federal workers, including nearly two dozen government watchdog officials.
Congressional Republicans ‘don’t see a huge appetite’ for Trump’s push to repeal the CHIPS Act
In the closing weeks of last year’s presidential campaign, House Speaker Mike Johnson quickly walked back remarks he made while standing alongside a vulnerable Republican member in New York.
Johnson, R-La., had pledged to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act if Trump became president — a position he quickly realized was not popular in battleground districts and one that could hurt his members’ re-election bids.
“The CHIPS Act is not on the agenda for repeal,” Johnson said in a statement that soon followed his October comments.
Fast-forward to last night, and Trump, now president, made a request of Johnson on camera during a nationally televised speech before a joint session of Congress: Repeal the CHIPS Act.