Vice President JD Vance expressed confidence Friday that a deal to sell TikTok and keep the social media app running in the U.S. would largely be in place by an April deadline.

“There will almost certainly be a high-level agreement that I think satisfies our national security concerns, allows there to be a distinct American TikTok enterprise,” Vance, whom President Donald Trump has asked to help broker the deal, said in an interview with NBC News aboard Air Force Two. 

The scale of the Trump administration’s legal battles continued to expand this week, with a federal judge ordering the government to rehire potentially thousands of probationary workers and the administration turning to the Supreme Court to combat the large number of nationwide injunctions slowing its agenda.

The orders by U.S. District Judges William Alsup and James Bredar on Thursday were among the largest-scale rulings against the administration to date out of the more than 100 lawsuits it’s facing as a result of its efforts to reshape the government. The orders give at least a temporary reprieve to tens of thousands of fired workers.

The administration, meanwhile, has clearly grown frustrated with the repeated intervention from the courts. It went to the Supreme Court on Wednesday to challenge three nationwide orders barring President Donald Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship from being implemented — and asking the court to “declare that enough is enough” when it comes to such orders.

Here’s a look at the biggest legal developments of the past week.

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Moments after being sworn in, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney firmly dismissed the prospect of Canada becoming a part of the United States as Trump and his allies continue to pitch the idea.

"We will never, ever, in any way, shape or form, be part of the United States. America is not Canada," Carney told reporters. "We are very fundamentally different countries."

On the sidelines of a G7 gathering today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio acknowledged the "disagreement" between Trump and the Canadian government on the topic. He described Trump as believing Canada would benefit economically by becoming a part of the United States.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Sean McCauley resigned from the Justice Department this week, calling his work on Jan. 6 cases the "opportunity of a lifetime" and the attorneys within the now-defunct Capitol Siege Section of the U.S. Attorney's Office some of "the finest, brightest attorneys in the country" who created a historic record of the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol by Donald Trump supporters who bought into the president's lies about the 2020 election.

Trump pardoned more than 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants on the day of his inauguration and appointed Interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin to take over as the city's chief prosecutor. Multiple assistant U.S. attorneys who worked worked Capitol cases were soon fired, and Martin more recently demoted key leaders to entry-level positions.

During a press conference on Capitol Hill, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., dismissed multiple questions about his confidence in Senate Minority Leader Schumer, saying “next question” twice and then eventually accusing a reporter of playing “parlor games” to take the focus off the American people.

When asked whether Schumer had acquiesced to Trump, he said it was a question best addressed by the Senate — and that there are still Senators who have not decided or declared how they'll vote on the GOP-led continuing resolution. Jeffries added that he and his colleagues “anxiously await that vote.” 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., faces a moment of turmoil after retreating from his initial vow to block a six-month government funding bill written by Republicans, a move that infuriated fellow Democrats in the House and liberal advocates — and raised questions about his effectiveness as party leader in the Senate.

Schumer, who has served as Democrats’ leader in the Senate for eight years, has typically managed to find consensus within his party. But he now finds himself on the defensive in one of the first major legislative fights of the second Trump administration, even drawing rebukes from longtime allies.  

In an extraordinary move, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called on Senate Democrats to defy him and reject the GOP bill, while continuing to push for a shorter-term bill to keep the government funded ahead of a midnight deadline. 

“Democratic senators should listen to the women,” Pelosi said in a statement. “Appropriations leaders Rosa DeLauro and Patty Murray have eloquently presented the case that we must have a better choice: a four-week funding extension to keep [the] government open and negotiate a bipartisan agreement. America has experienced a Trump shutdown before — but this damaging legislation only makes matters worse.”

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Trump’s dizzying tariffs rhetoric has caught the economy flat footed.

While Trump has long lauded trade duties as a solution to a host of economic woes, it has been the tariffs’ erratic roll-out — and shifting rationales — that has alarmed investors.

Below is a play-by-play of how Trump’s trade rhetoric — and responding measures by the nations he has targeted — has played out.

Read the timeline.

Eight years ago, Trump spoke about the U.S.-Canada relationship in glowing terms.

He hosted Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the White House in February 2017 for one of his first joint appearances alongside a foreign leader. Trump opened by noting the nations “share much more than a border,” highlighting “the special bonds that come when two nations have shed their blood together — which we have.”

“America is deeply fortunate to have a neighbor like Canada,” Trump said. “We have before us the opportunity to build even more bridges, and bridges of cooperation and bridges of commerce.”

Fast-forward to Thursday, weeks after Trump initiated a full-scale trade war with Canada, and it’s clear the president doesn’t believe the U.S. should share a border — or much else — with its Canadian neighbors.

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CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — Former U.S. Sen. Alan Simpson, a political legend whose quick wit bridged partisan gaps in the years before today’s political acrimony, has died. He was 93.

Simpson died early Friday after struggling to recover from a broken hip in December, according to a statement from his family and the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, a group of museums where he was a board member for 56 years.

“He was an uncommonly generous man,” Pete Simpson, his older brother, said in the statement. “And I mean generous in an absolutely unconditional way. Giving of his time, giving of his energy — and he did it in politics and he did it in the family, forever.”

Along with former Vice President Dick Cheney, Simpson was a towering Republican figure from Wyoming, the least-populated state. Unlike Cheney, Simpson was famous for his humor.

“We have two political parties in this country, the Stupid Party and the Evil Party. I belong to the Stupid Party,” was among Simpson’s many well-known quips.

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