Here's what's happening today
- President Donald Trump issued exemptions on tariffs on a number of goods coming into the United States from Mexico and Canada, just days after sweeping tariffs on the two countries went into effect. He also signed an executive order creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
- Trump held a Cabinet meeting, with Elon Musk in attendance, and said he made it clear that department heads were the ones responsible for making staffing cuts. The comments come as Republicans in Congress face backlash over DOGE cuts.
- The House voted this morning to censure Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, for his disruption of Trump's joint address to Congress on Tuesday. As the censure was read to Green on the House floor, some Democratic lawmakers shouted "Shame on you!" to Republicans, prompting the speaker to call a recess.
- Marty Makary, Trump's nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration, testified at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, where he faced questions about the abortion pill, vaccine advisory meetings and the measles.
Coverage of this live blog has ended. For the latest news, click here.
Trump puts new limits on Elon Musk’s authority amid backlash to DOGE cuts
Trump said he told his Cabinet secretaries during a meeting today that staffing decisions will be left up to them, not Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency.
Trump said he instructed Cabinet members to work alongside DOGE on spending and workforce reductions while clarifying that final job cuts will be at the discretion of the department leaders.
“We just had a meeting with most of the Secretaries, Elon, and others, and it was a very positive one,” Trump said on Truth Social. “It’s very important that we cut levels down to where they should be, but it’s also important to keep the best and most productive people.”
“As the Secretaries learn about, and understand, the people working for the various Departments, they can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go. We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet,’” he added.
Trump allies launch a bid to take control of a powerful Washington legal group
Two of Trump’s allies have launched bids for leadership roles with the D.C. Bar Association, an under-the-radar effort that would give them more control over the influential legal group.
The push comes amid bar associations’ confrontations with the Trump administration, and some federal attorneys have looked to their state groups for ethical guidance amid Trump’s rapid reshaping of government.
Bradley Bondi — a lawyer who is Attorney General Pam Bondi’s brother — and Alicia Long — a deputy to Ed Martin, Trump’s interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia — are running for president and treasurer. The election runs from April to June, according to the organization’s website.
While the general public may not pay much attention to bar associations, lawyers do. The nongovernmental groups decide who gets to be a lawyer — and who gets to stay a lawyer when misconduct allegations are involved. The D.C. Bar, as it is known, has more than 120,000 members, and, by virtue of its location, it is where a significant number of federal attorneys are licensed.
Chinese foreign minister warns U.S. against tariffs
U.S.-China ties must be based on mutual respect, China’s foreign minister said today as he criticized U.S. tariffs on Chinese imports.
“The China-U.S. economic and trade relationship is reciprocal and mutually beneficial,” Foreign Affairs Minister Wang Yi told reporters at the National People’s Congress, the annual gathering in Beijing of China’s rubber-stamp parliament. “If cooperation is chosen, both sides will benefit; if pressure is applied unilaterally, China will respond resolutely.”
Trump’s 10% tariff on Chinese goods was doubled Tuesday to 20%. China responded by imposing additional tariffs of up to 15% on some U.S. goods, as it did when the first 10% tariff took effect on Feb. 4.
Wang also addressed the U.S. fentanyl crisis, which Trump has cited as justification for his tariffs on goods from China, Canada and Mexico. Wang said that while China has worked with the United States to stem the flow of precursor chemicals from China, the deadly crisis “is a domestic issue that the U.S. itself must confront and resolve.”
China warned the United States this week that it would “fight till the end,” whether it’s “a tariff war, a trade war or any other type of war.”
GOP Sen. Thom Tillis slams Trump-aligned operative who called to replace him in North Carolina Senate race
Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., blasted a conservative political consultant with close ties to Trump’s orbit who questioned whether he could win re-election next year.
Tillis was responding to a post on X by Arthur Schwartz, who said Republicans will “need a new senate candidate in NC” in 2026, pointing to a poll from the Democratic firm Public Policy Polling that found Tillis trailing Democratic former Gov. Roy Cooper in a hypothetical general election matchup.
“The president needs a majority to continue his agenda,” Tillis said in an interview today. “Behavior by people like this guy, it’s the thing that’s the single greatest threat to us to deliver the majority next year.”
Tillis said Schwartz “doesn’t have the temperament to be anywhere around the political circles that guarantee that we come back into a majority next year.”
Trump’s FDA pick says he’ll review whether abortion pill must be dispensed in person again
Dr. Marty Makary, Trump’s nominee to lead the Food and Drug Administration, said today that he would review a Biden-era rule that allowed patients to get mifepristone without seeing a health care provider in person.
The Biden administration initially eliminated the in-person dispensing requirement in 2021 and made the change permanent in 2023. The change expanded access to the drug, as people were allowed to use telemedicine to get prescriptions and the pill.
Makary appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee for his hearing to be FDA commissioner.
“I do think it makes sense to review the totality of data and ongoing data,” Makary said, referring to how patients get mifepristone.
Trump signs executive order establishing U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve
Trump signed an executive order today creating a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, marking a major shift in U.S. digital asset policy.
White House crypto and artificial intelligence czar David Sacks, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, wrote on X that the reserve will be funded exclusively with bitcoin seized in criminal and civil forfeiture cases, ensuring that taxpayers bear no financial burden.
According to estimates, the U.S. government controls 200,000 bitcoins, though no full audit has ever been conducted. Trump’s order mandates a comprehensive accounting of federal digital asset holdings and prohibits the sale of bitcoin from the reserve, positioning it as a permanent store of value.
In addition, the order establishes a U.S. Digital Asset Stockpile, managed by the Treasury Department, to hold other confiscated cryptocurrencies.
Ukrainians in the U.S. fear being deported to a war zone as uncertainty looms
Ukrainian immigrants who fled the ongoing war with Russia and now live in the United States with temporary legal status told NBC News they are terrified they could soon face deportation back to an active war zone. In Ukraine, life as they once knew it has long been bombed away.
Trump said today that he would soon decide whether to revoke temporary legal status of Ukrainians who came to the United States during the war. “We’re certainly not looking to hurt them,” he said. “There were some people that think that’s appropriate, and some people don’t, and I’ll be making a decision pretty soon.”
Even before his comments, a sense of abandonment and dread had swept through the community given the administration’s targeting of legal programs for immigrants, as well as the growing hostility and withdrawal of support for Ukraine, they said.
“It’s been like a nightmare. We are scared, and we feel uncertain of everything around us,” said Daria, 41, a Ukrainian immigrant and mother of four living in Florida who came to the United States after the war started in February 2022.
Trump's Ukraine envoy blames Zelenskyy after U.S. cuts off intel sharing
Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, this morning blamed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy when he was asked about the implications of Washington's stopping intelligence sharing with Kyiv.
"Very candidly, they brought it on themselves," Kellogg said in an interview at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring to last week's explosive clash between Trump and Zelenskyy at the White House.
"You don't negotiate peace discussions in public. You don't try to challenge the president of the United States in the Oval Office," Kellogg said. "And he was forewarned."
Kellogg, the most recent Trump administration official to have visited Ukraine, met with Zelenskyy last month in Kyiv, one day after U.S. and Russian negotiators met in Saudi Arabia to initiate peace talks without Ukrainian officials.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Trump national security adviser Mike Waltz announced this week the administration had paused military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine.
The administration said it had opted to suspend the assistance until Ukraine’s government showed it was ready to pursue peace negotiations.
Sen. Tim Kaine argues the stock market and inflation numbers prompted tariffs walk-back
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., argued this afternoon that Trump delayed tariffs on certain imports from Canada and Mexico today because of the financial and economic landscape.
“They’re not backing off out of the kindness of their heart. Trump's backing off of these tariffs because it’s a horrible idea. Economically, they’re looking at bad news in the stock market, bad news and inflation,” Kaine said in an interview with MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.
Trump signed an executive order this afternoon postponing his previously announced tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada until April 2. Yesterday, he said automobiles would be exempt from the tariffs following requests from the Big Three U.S. car manufacturers.
'They announced this charitable decision today, we’ll back off for the tariffs another month. ... They backed down because tariffs are a stupid idea that only hurt Americans,” Kaine said.
Trump took 'extremely abusive' tone in call with Trudeau, source says
A day after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called new U.S. tariffs "a very dumb thing to do," Trump struck an "abusive" tone in his call with Trudeau, according to a Western government official.
“I’m told that the meeting that [Trump] had with Mr. Trudeau yesterday, again it was a tag team — [Commerce Secretary Howard] Lutnick and the vice president — and I’m told that it was extremely abusive on the part of the president," the official said. "And everyone is asking themselves the question: How do we deal with this level of irrationality, and also this level of abuse?”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump today walked back some of the U.S. tariffs on Mexican and Canadian goods.
The official also talked about the intelligence alliance known as Five Eyes — comprising Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States — and said there are "serious discussions going on about what information can be shared with the United States."
"The Five Eyes have always worked on the premise that we don’t spy on each other. I don’t think that’s reliable anymore," the official said, adding that Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, "and these other characters — I don’t think we can have any degree of normalcy in the relationship. That’s right now where we are, and I don’t see any way that changes.”