Markets tumble after Trump's response to recession question; Congress barrels toward shutdown deadline

Ontario Premier Doug Ford spoke with NBC News’ Tom Llamas about his decision to impose a 25% tariff on Canadian electricity exports to three U.S. states in response to Trump’s trade war.

The House Rules Committee tonight advanced the six-month Republican extension of government funding.

That sets up the measure for floor action tomorrow, with a vote on final passage scheduled for 4 p.m. ET.

The House will first have to vote on the rule, which covers other bills for the week, too. If the rule is approved during a vote series scheduled for 1:30 p.m., the House will then debate the spending bill before a final vote in the 4 p.m. hour.

A federal judge ruled tonight that Elon Musk's Department of of Government Efficiency “likely” falls under the jurisdiction of the Freedom of Information Act, bringing DOGE one step closer to being treated as an official federal agency.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper ordered DOGE to process FOIA requests on an “expedited timetable” from the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonprofit organization that says it works to expose corruption by government officials.

Cooper noted how quickly DOGE is working through the federal government in making the argument that it should be covered by FOIA.

“In the less than two months since President Trump’s inauguration, [DOGE] has reportedly caused 3% of the federal civilian workforce to resign, shuttered an entire agency, cut billions of dollars from the federal budget, canceled hundreds of government contracts, terminated thousands of federal employees, and obtained access to vast troves of sensitive personal and financial data,” Cooper wrote.

Senate Democrats are largely condemning the recently released six-month spending bill from House Republicans, calling it “awful,” “a missed opportunity” and “a sort of grab bag of Republican priorities.”

But it’s not completely clear whether they would oppose the measure if the choice were passing the House bill or shutting down the government.

Democrats appear to have taken a stance of criticizing the bill while waiting to see whether the House can pass it with Republican votes before they say where they stand.

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who said the House bill "has lots of problems, didn't say whether he would vote for the legislation.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., took aim at Trump administration tariffs after major stock indexes plunged today.

"The stock market is comprised of millions of people who are simultaneously trading. The market indexes are a distillation of sentiment. When the markets tumble like this in response to tariffs, it pays to listen," Paul wrote on X.

Trump stoked fears in financial markets yesterday when he declined to rule out a recession, saying instead in a Fox News interview that the U.S. economy was undergoing “a period of transition.”

Paul and fellow Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had previously expressed opposition to Trump’s tariffs, arguing that they will raise costs to Americans in their state.

Rep. Chrissy Houlahan, D-Pa., said today that she introduced a resolution to censure Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., over “disparaging, derogatory, and racist” comments she made about Rep. Al Green, D-Texas.

Houlahan's office said in a statement that the resolution calls for censuring Boebert after she said in an interview with Real America’s Voice last week that Green went to "shake his pimp cane" at Trump as he delivered his joint address to Congress.

“After my discussion on the House floor last week when Speaker Johnson told me he’d have to censure half the members if he actually enforced the rules of the Congress, I decided to help, and tonight introduced a resolution to censure Representative Boebert for her racist and derogatory statements about Representative Al Green,” Houlahan said in a statement.

Responding to the censure resolution on X, Boebert mocked Houlahan, asking, "Who is Houlahan?"

When Trump wanted to make the case for his first term’s success in an interview last month, he turned to the stock market.

“I was very proud to have handed over the country when the stock market was higher than it was, previous to the pandemic coming in,” he said in a Fox News interview Feb. 9. “It was an amazing achievement.”

And in his second term, he has promised that trend would continue. “The stock market is going to be great,” he told the crowd at an investor conference Feb. 19.

But after stocks began a downward spiral last week on fears Trump’s use of tariffs will tip the United States into a recession, his tone has changed.

Read the full story here.

It’s the disaster she didn’t see coming.

Aileen Reneau, 30, had worked at the Federal Emergency Management Agency for less than a year, helping train first responders at FEMA’s Center for Domestic Preparedness, the only such facility in the country. She was also deployed to North Carolina for six weeks after Hurricane Helene.

Reneau, an Air Force veteran and mother of two, was laid off on Presidents Day. 

“It hurts,” she said. “It was a stab in the back.”

Read the full story here.

After one month and one trip to the Supreme Court and back, U.S. District Court Judge Amir Ali has formally ruled on the preliminary injunction in the USAID funding case.

In his ruling, Ali blocked the Trump administration from enforcing any terminations or suspensions to grants or contracts for foreign assistance from Jan. 20 to Feb. 13, the date of the initial temporary restraining order. The order also prevents the Trump administration from blocking any congressionally appropriated foreign aid funds from reaching the intended programs and agencies in the future.

“The constitutional power over whether to spend foreign aid is not the President’s own—and it is Congress’s own,” he wrote. “Defendants have yet to offer any explanation, let alone one supported by the record, for why a blanket suspension setting off a shockwave and upending reliance interests for thousands of businesses and organizations around the country was a rational precursor to reviewing programs.”

Today at 6 p.m. ET was the deadline for the Trump administration to pay back around $670 million to the plaintiffs and their members in foreign assistance from Jan. 20 to Feb. 13. Ali ordered the parties to file a status report by Friday, checking in on how much more of the remaining $1.3 billion has been paid back to the non-plaintiff groups in need of the funding. Ali said he expects at least 300 payments to be made each day this week.

A super PAC backing Vivek Ramaswamy for governor of Ohio is launching a $3 million ad campaign that highlights his endorsement from Trump — an early push to cement the biotech entrepreneur as the undisputed Republican front-runner more than a year before GOP voters select their nominee.

“He has a big, beautiful, bright future ahead,” Trump is seen and heard saying about Ramaswamy in one of the spots set to debut tomorrow. The 15-second ad, which was shared first with NBC News, also shows video of Trump and Ramaswamy embracing at an event last year.

A companion 30-second spot features a clip of Ramaswamy praising Trump and a narrator informing viewers of Trump’s support: “Endorsed by Trump, Vivek will make Ohio a state of excellence, the leading state to grow a business, get an education, raise a family.”

Read the full story here.

The Education Department sent a letter today to 60 universities it says are under investigation for “antisemitic discrimination and harassment,” warning of potential consequences if they do not “fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus.”

The list includes Columbia University, which recently had $400 million in government grants canceled by the Trump administration. Other schools include Harvard University, the University of California Berkeley and Yale University — some of the more than 40 campuses where pro-Palestinian protests took place last spring.

Federal immigration agents Saturday arrested Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, a U.S. permanent legal resident who helped organize protests last year. A judge today blocked his removal from the country.

Trump and his top aides are placing calls urging undecided Republican lawmakers to support a spending bill that House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., announced Saturday, three sources with knowledge of the calls told NBC News.

Vice President JD Vance will visit with House Republicans tomorrow during their weekly conference meeting, an additional source said.

To make holdouts feel more comfortable backing the bill, Trump and Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought have made assurances that they will use impoundment and rescissions in the future to claw back spending and have said they have begun working on a plan to do so.

The two legislative tools are rarely used because Congress, which controls the purse strings of the federal government, doesn’t like it when the executive branch doesn’t spend money it has appropriated.

Major stock indexes tanked today, continuing a sell-off that gathered steam last week as rattled investors began zeroing in on the prospect of a significant falloff in U.S. growth amid persistent inflation and a wobbling job market.

The broad S&P 500 index closed down 2.7%. Not only has it now given up all of Trump’s post-election gains, but it also fell to its lowest level since September and is essentially unchanged over the past seven months. It was the biggest one-day drop since December.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 4% as it plunged deeper into “correction” territory, meaning it is off more than 10% from recent highs. It was its worst day since 2022.

Read the full story here.

The Senate confirmed former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer as labor secretary this evening.

Chavez-DeRemer, R-Ore., who had endorsements from several labor unions, got bipartisan support in tonight's 67-32 vote. Seventeen Democrats voted to confirm her, and three Republicans voted against.

The Republican "no" votes came from Mitch McConnell and Rand Paul, of Kentucky, and Ted Budd, of North Carolina.

She is the last of Trump’s Cabinet secretaries to be confirmed, though Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., is still awaiting a confirmation vote for her nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, a Cabinet-level post.

Trump adviser and tech billionaire Elon Musk said today that he plans to double the size of his staff in the Department of Government Efficiency, which he noted is already working inside nearly every federal agency.

Musk’s comments about DOGE came in an interview on Fox Business as his budget-cutting team has faced growing pushback not only from the courts and congressional Democrats but also from members of Trump’s Cabinet.

Musk said that DOGE has about 100 staff members and that he planned to increase it to about 200.

“We’re trying to act broadly across all departments, so it’s not just one department at a time,” he told Larry Kudlow, a Fox Business host who worked in the first Trump administration.

Read the full story here.

Trump plans to sign an executive order today that is aimed at empowering state and local governments to handle disaster preparedness, according to a senior White House official.

Trump has repeatedly railed against the Federal Emergency Management Agency, saying in January: “I think we’re going to recommend that FEMA go away and we pay a percentage to the states.”

Critics have argued that states don’t have the resources to effectively handle major disaster relief. A Government Accountability Office report in 2022 found FEMA was 35% understaffed.

Elon Musk referred to federal spending on programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid as the areas that need to be eliminated.

"Most of the federal spending is entitlements," Musk said in a Fox Business interview with host Larry Kudlow, adding they're "the big ones to eliminate."

He then claimed that Democrats use the programs to "attract and retain illegal immigrants by essentially paying them to come here and then turning them into voters."

"So this is why the Democrats are so upset about the situation, because they're losing. You know, if we turn off this gigantic money magnet for illegal immigrants then they will leave, and they will lose voters," Musk said.

Trump said in an interview on NBC News' "Meet the Press" in December that "we’re not touching" Social Security, aside from making it “more efficient, but the people are going to get what they're getting."

Hayden Haynes, chief of staff to House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., slurred his speech and was "staggering" shortly before U.S. Capitol Police arrested him after Trump's speech at the Capitol last week, according to a newly released affidavit.

Haynes was charged today with driving under the influence of alcohol and operating a vehicle while impaired. He's due in Superior Court in Washington to be arraigned April 3. The D.C. attorney general's office will prosecute his case.

Haynes crashed his white Tesla sedan into a parked black Chevy Suburban, and an officer stopped him from leaving and told him to park his vehicle, according to an affidavit filed in court today. The reporting officer said that the Tesla's rear right bumper and rear right quarter panel were scratched and that the rear right taillight was cracked. The Black Chevy suburban had damage to the rear left panel, the officer said.

The reporting officer also said Haynes had an “unsteady walk," fell into the passenger seat and had trouble trying to get his registration. Haynes was “slurring his words when voice activating his vehicle to open the glove compartment,” the report said. Haynes was “staggering” and had “a strong odor consistent of alcohol emanating from his breath," and he is alleged to have told the officer that he had four drinks in a four-hour period.

Before heading to the polls in a general election, Greenlanders discuss Trump’s interest in the territory, plus independence from Denmark.

In an ongoing evidentiary hearing before Judge Amy Berman Jackson, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Chief Operating Officer Adam Martinez is testifying about the involvement of DOGE inside the CFPB, and the work — or lack thereof — that the agency has been able to get done since then.

“DOGE came in with a very hard fist,” Martinez said, comparing the experience to an audit. “I had the impression they knew exactly what they wanted to do, how they wanted to do it,” Martinez said of the Russell Vought-authorized DOGE presence inside CFPB, which initially numbered about half a dozen.

“There was a lot of confusion in the building,” Martinez said of the feeling of the rank-and-file. “There is still a lot of confusion about what is going on.”

“Is there any plan for someone to clearly call everyone together and say, 'Do your work'?" Jackson asked. “I don’t know,” Martinez replied. “I think there is hope. I have hope for the future. ... I think people want to go back to work and they want to do the work they are hired to do.”

Elon Musk and Sen. Mark Kelly sparred on X today, with the tech billionaire calling Kelly, a former Navy combat pilot, a "traitor" over a series of posts the Democratic senator wrote about his recent visit to Ukraine.

In his initial post, Kelly said that his trip to the war-torn country had reaffirmed his commitment to not give up on the Ukrainian people, adding that any peace deal "has to protect Ukraine’s security and can’t be a giveaway to Putin." Kelly also criticized Trump, saying the president was "trying to weaken Ukraine's hand."

"You are a traitor," Musk wrote in response to Kelly's posts.

"Traitor? Elon, if you don’t understand that defending freedom is a basic tenet of what makes America great and keeps us safe, maybe you should leave it to those of us who do," Kelly responded.

Vice President JD Vance was interrupted by protesters while delivering remarks this afternoon focused on housing costs at the National League of Cities conference in Washington, D.C.

The first of two interruptions came when Vance argued that illegal immigration was one of the drivers of increased housing demand and rising prices.

“You see a very consistent relationship between a massive increase in immigration and a massive increase in housing prices, and we have to be honest about that,” Vance was saying, as he was interrupted by a shouting protester.

He acknowledged the protester, saying the person “wants to, actually, I guess, continue to flood the country with illegal immigrants, making your communities and citizens unaffordable.”

Trump’s sweeping pardon of participants in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot does not extend to the separate crimes of one rioter who plotted to murder the law enforcement agents who investigated him, U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Varlan ruled today.

Edward Kelley, who was convicted on Jan. 6 charges after the government presented extensive evidence showing he was the fourth rioter to breach the Capitol after assaulting law enforcement, was pardoned by Trump along with more than 1,500 other convicted rioters. But Kelley had separately been charged with plotting to murder law enforcement officers involved in the investigation in a separate case. Kelley was convicted on those charges by a federal jury in Tennessee in November, and he is set to be sentenced on May 7.

The Justice Department has flip-flopped on the extent of Trump’s Jan. 6 pardon in other cases involving guns found in the homes of Capitol rioters, arguing that the president’s action should also give defendants a clean slate on other crimes or charges discovered in the course of Jan. 6 investigations.

Read the full story.

As part of Pentagon's efforts to reduce costs, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is expected to announce an initiative to cut as many as 10% of all general officer and flag officer billets, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the planning.

The effort, which has not been announced publicly, would call for the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps and Space Force to cut the total number of generals and admirals 8% to 10%, the officials explained.

Most of the generals and admirals whose jobs or billets are being cut or even downgraded will be eligible for retirement.

NASA is shutting down three of its offices to comply with Trump's executive orders that aim to slash the federal workforce.

The agency said that it is beginning a "phased approach to a reduction in force," and is closing NASA's Office of Technology, Policy, and Strategy; the Office of the Chief Scientist, and the Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Branch of the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

In a statement to NBC News, NASA officials said "a small number of individuals" were affected by the cuts, but did not specify how many workers were laid off.

In an email distributed to NASA employees, and obtained by NBC News, NASA’s acting administrator Janet Petro said the agency is “making difficult adjustments,” and “doing what is statutorily required of us, while also providing American citizens with an efficient and effective agency.”

"Our colleagues impacted by these changes have been valued members of our team. Their hard work has helped shape our successes in recent years, and we are deeply grateful for all they have contributed," Petro wrote in the email.

The reduction in force underway at NASA is distinct from sweeping cuts at other agencies, led by DOGE, which implemented mass terminations of “probationary” employees who were relatively new to their government jobs or roles.

Trump’s sweeping pardons of Jan. 6 rioters do not extend to the activities of a Capitol rioter who then plotted to murder the FBI special agents who investigated him, U.S. District Judge Thomas A. Varlan of the Eastern District of Tennessee ruled Monday.

Edward Kelley was the fourth rioter to breach the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Trump pardoned him and more than 1,500 other Capitol rioter defendants for their crimes on the day of his inauguration. But this case is about wholly separate conduct: His conviction for plotting to murder law enforcement officers involved in the investigation. Kelley was convicted for those crimes in November, and is set to be sentenced on May 7. 

While the Justice Department has reversed itself on the extent of Trump’s Jan. 6 pardons on other cases, they’ve consistently maintained that Trump did not intend to pardon Kelley (nor another Jan. 6er facing child pornography charges). 

The acting administrator of the General Services Administration informed employees today that those who are eligible can take an early retirement, noting that "additional restructuring and reductions" at the agency are coming.

In an email shared with NBC News, Stephen Ehikian, the acting GSA administrator, wrote that as the agency prepares "for additional restructuring and reductions, it is important to share that GSA has received authority from" the Office of Personnel Management to offer the voluntary early retirement program "to all eligible employees, including those impacted by the" reduction in force.

Ehikian noted that the early retirement program, VERA, "is often used by agencies undergoing reductions and restructuring as a means of achieving their workforce goals with less disruption to individuals and work units."

"I encourage each of you to consider your options as we move forward," Ehikian wrote. "The new GSA will be slimmer, more efficient, and laser-focused on efficiency and high-value outcomes."

Workers with the District Department of Transportation began transforming Black Lives Matter Plaza today, originally created as an act of defiance in 2020 when the streets of the country were erupting in civil protest following the murder of George Floyd.

The reconstruction of the mural began after Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., introduced legislation that threatened cutting federal funding if it was not painted over. The project is expected to take six to eight weeks.

Three separate outages appear to have hit Elon Musk’s X social media site today.

Thousands of reports of trouble accessing or using the site were first registered by Downdetector.com around 5:30 a.m. ET. It took about an hour before those issues subsided.

Then, around 9:30 a.m., the issues appeared to flare up again, with as many as 40,000 outage reports detected. It again took about an hour for that incident to dissipate.

Finally, around 11:10 a.m., the issues cropped up again, according to Downdetector.

Read the full story.

In a Truth Social post, Trump touted Immigration and Customs Enforcement's arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a pro-Palestinian former Columbia University graduate student who helped lead student protests last year demanding an end to the Israeli-Hamas war.

The president called Khalil's arrest "the first arrest of many to come."

"We will find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country — never to return again," Trump wrote. "If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here. We expect every one of America’s Colleges and Universities to comply."

The path to averting a government shutdown at the end of the week remains murky in the Republican-controlled Congress.

Speaker Mike Johnson is eying a House vote tomorrow on a six-month funding extension that was crafted on a partisan basis. His strategy is to rely on only Republican votes to pass it in the House and dare Democrats to oppose it.

If it passes the House, where a simple majority is needed, the legislation will require 60 votes in the Senate, meaning at least seven Democrats would need to back it to break a filibuster.

But congressional Democrats have blasted the stopgap funding measure after they were cut out of the negotiations. They object to some of the changes, which feature an increase in military spending and a reduction in nondefense money. And they have demanded guardrails on President Donald Trump and billionaire adviser Elon Musk’s attempts to slash or freeze some spending.

Read the full story.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford criticized Trump's economic policy again on CNN after announcing electricity surcharges for Americans in response to Trump's tariffs.

“There’s no reason for a recession,” Ford said on CNN. “I call it the ‘self-made Donald Trump recession.’”

The premier also said Trump should focus on China rather than the United States' No. 1 export market, adding "the problem's not Canada, it's China right now."

"He has to keep an eye on China," Ford said.

FBI Director Kash Patel has inquired about replacing his FBI security detail with private guards, and has also asked about maintaining a direct phone line to the White House, including in his car, two FBI officials familiar with the matter told NBC News. 

Traditionally, the FBI director has tried to maintain separate from the White House — even if he briefs officials on threats and participates in national security meetings — to avoid the appearance that the FBI is acting as the arm of one political side or the other.

This was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

Major stock indexes tanked Monday, continuing a sell-off that gathered steam last week as rattled investors began zeroing in on the prospect of a significant falloff in U.S. growth amid persistent inflation and a wobbling job market.

The broadest index of stocks, the S&P 500, was down as much as 2.1% Monday. Not only has it now given up all of Trump’s post-election gains, it is now at its lowest level since September and is essentially unchanged over the past seven months.

The tech-heavy Nasdaq was off 3.4% as it plunged deeper into “correction” territory. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped nearly 500 points, or 1.2%.

Read the full story here.

TORONTO — Ontario’s premier, the leader of Canada’s most populous province, announced that effective Monday it is charging 25% more for electricity to 1.5 million Americans in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.

Ontario provides electricity to Minnesota, New York and Michigan.

“I will not hesitate to increase this charge. If the United States escalates, I will not hesitate to shut the electricity off completely,” Ontario Premier Doug Ford said at a news conference in Toronto.

“Believe me when I say I do not want to do this. I feel terrible for the American people who didn’t start this trade war. It’s one person who is responsible, it’s President Trump.”

Ford said Ontario’s tariff would remain in place despite the one-month reprieve from Trump, noting a one-month pause means nothing but more uncertainty.

Read the full story.

Until recently, Amy Gleason was a relatively low-profile health care data cruncher with a passion for simplifying access to electronic medical records. Then, at the end of February, the White House announced Gleason had been named the acting administrator for the Department of Government Efficiency, elevating her to a prominent position in the Trump administration.

Gleason previously worked on projects related to health data at the U.S. Digital Service, DOGE’s predecessor, overlapping with Trump’s first term and the Biden administration.

However, the White House has not provided details about why, exactly, it selected Gleason to lead DOGE — a task force unit at the center of the administration’s efforts to streamline the federal government. 

The move has led many to question whether Gleason is truly in charge or whether the power resides with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a special government employee who has been the face of DOGE.

Read the full story.

Days after a federal judge reversed Trump’s firing of National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox, a crowd of supporters gathered outside the board’s D.C. headquarters this morning to welcome Wilcox back to her position. 

The crowd, cheering and offering hugs and claps as Wilcox entered the building, amassed in a show of support for the Biden-era appointee who has spent the last month fighting the Trump administration in federal court after she was dismissed from her chair position and later fired from the board.

The crowd outside the NLRB headquarters was led by Congressional Labor Caucus Co-Chair Rep. Steven Horsford, D-Nev., who delivered a speech praising Wilcox for taking a stand for American workers.

"I belong here at the NLRB," Wilcox told NBC News before entering the building this morning. "This case was not about me, it was about the agency and the people who work for the agency."

Amazon has announced it will begin streaming “The Apprentice“ — the reality TV show famous for boosting Trump’s profile — on its Prime Video service on Monday.

It’s the first time the show will be available on a streaming service, and the move highlights the close link between Trump’s time as a reality TV personality and his being elected president twice. The show’s executive producer, Mark Burnett, remains one of his closest allies.

Burnett, the British producer behind “The Apprentice,” as well as “Survivor” and “Shark Tank,” was appointed special envoy to the United Kingdom in December.

Read the full story.

Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East who has been involved in Ukraine talks, said on Fox News today that he hopes the U.S. signs a deal with Zelenskyy when both parties are in Saudi Arabia this week.

"I think that we’re going over there with an expectation that we’re going to make substantial progress," he said. "And so I’m certainly hopeful for that."

Witkff also said that the letter Zelenskyy sent Trump apologizing for their explosive Oval Office meeting was "an important step."

"There’s been a lot of discussion between our teams and the Ukrainians and the Europeans who are relevant to this discussion as well," he said. "And I would like to describe it as progress."

A video of Elon Musk carrying the bag of White House chief of staff Susie Wiles was shared widely online in China as a sign that wealth must still answer to power, especially it seems when there is a handbag involved.

“Guess spending time in China makes a difference — he’s got the social etiquette down perfectly,” read one comment on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, in a nod to a cultural norm here that men show good manners by carrying their partner’s purse.

Musk and Wiles, the first female White House chief of staff, were leaving the White House after a meeting Saturday when he appeared to offer to take her bag off her hands.

The Supreme Court today agreed to hear a challenge to law in Colorado that bans “conversion therapy” aimed at young people questioning their sexual orientation or gender identity.

The justices took up an appeal brought by Kaley Chiles, a Christian therapist, who argued that the restriction violates her free speech rights under the Constitution’s First Amendment.

Favored by some religious conservatives, the practice is aimed at encouraging gay or lesbian minors to change their sexual orientations and transgender children to identify as the gender identities assigned to them at birth. More than 20 states have bans on therapy aimed at minors.

Read the full story.

Ten Grand Canyon workers received termination letters last month as part of the Trump administration's sweeping efforts to downsize the federal government, according to NBC affiliate KPNX.

In interviews with KPNX, current and former park workers expressed concern that the layoffs would make the upcoming busy season even more challenging.

“Even when the fee booths are fully staffed, you can get a line that goes all the way back past Tusayan that lasts well over two hours,” Jim Landahl, who was fired, told KPNX. “Some people are probably going to see that line and just want to turn around and go back home to where they came from.”

Read the full story here.

The U.S. government is days away from a potential shutdown with funding set to run out Friday. NBC’s Garrett Haake reports for "TODAY" on what’s in the Republicans’ stop-gap plan.

Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Cory Booker, D-N.J., are reintroducing legislation today that would bar companies from receiving federal contracts if they’ve been found to have made serious, repeated or pervasive violations of child labor laws.

The senators reintroduced the bill ahead of the confirmation vote scheduled for this evening for Lori Chavez-DeRemer, the former Republican House member from Oregon who is President Donald Trump’s choice to serve as labor secretary.

Hawley and Booker’s legislation would require companies seeking federal contracts to disclose child labor violations by the company or any subcontractors during the prior three years. It would also require the labor secretary to compile a list of companies that are ineligible for federal contracts based on any violations.

TORONTO — Former central banker Mark Carney will become Canada’s next prime minister after the governing Liberal Party elected him its leader yesterday as the country deals with President Donald Trump’s trade war and annexation threat, and a federal election looms.

Carney, 59, replaces Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who announced his resignation in January but remains prime minister until his successor is sworn in in the coming days. Carney won in a landslide, winning 85.9% of the vote.

Read the full story.

Trump told reporters yesterday on Air Force One that the U.S. "really just about" has lifted the intel pause on Ukraine.

Trump had previously decided to pause intelligence assistance to Ukraine. NBC News has previously reported that former intelligence officials have said would hamper but not cripple Ukraine war efforts.

The Trump administration paused military and intelligence aid shortly after an explosive Oval Office confrontation between Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where the U.S. leaders berated a long-standing U.S. ally.

Zelenskyy will be in Saudi Arabia today ahead of a meeting with U.S. officials.

Chinese tariffs on a wide range of U.S. agricultural products take effect today in the latest escalation in trade tensions between the world’s two biggest economies.

China, which is the largest overseas market for U.S. farm products, announced the tariffs last week in retaliation for the Trump administration doubling its tariff on Chinese imports to 20%. They include a 15% tariff on chicken, wheat, corn and cotton and a 10% tariff on sorghum, soybeans, pork, beef, fruits, vegetables and dairy and fish products.

Goods that were shipped before today and are imported by April 12 are exempt from the new tariffs, Beijing said.

Though there remains hope that the U.S. and China can reach a deal to avoid an all-out trade war, China has warned it will “fight till the end” and that it is the U.S. that will suffer more from imposing trade barriers.

“Whether it is a tariff war or a trade war, both begin with harming others and end with harming oneself,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said today at a regular briefing in Beijing.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an overnight X post that the vast majority of U.S. Agency for International Development programs would be cut.

"After a 6 week review we are officially cancelling 83% of the programs at USAID," Rubio said, adding that the 5,200 contracts being canceled "spent billions of dollars in ways that did not serve, (and in some cases even harmed), the national interests of the United States."

Rubio said the administration would consult with Congress with the aim of administering the remaining USAID programs "more effectively under the State Department."

"Thank you to DOGE and our hardworking staff who worked very long hours to achieve this overdue and historic reform," he wrote.

The administration previously said it was eliminating more than 90% of USAID's foreign aid contracts.

Congressional Republicans unveiled their plan for a spending bill to avert a government shutdown as the deadline approaches Friday. NBC News’ Yamiche Alcindor reports.

The Senate is set to hold a vote this evening on former Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s nomination for labor secretary.

The Oregon Republican will be the last of Trump's Cabinet nominees to get a confirmation vote.

Chavez-DeRemer has received Democratic support both at the committee level and on the Senate floor. She also has received the support of several labor unions.

As a House lawmaker, Chavez-DeRemer supported a bill called the PRO act, which aimed to promote unions’ ability to organize. She walked back her support for that legislation during her confirmation hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is traveling to Saudi Arabia today to meet with Ukrainian officials.

The goal is to "advance the President's goal to end the Russia-Ukraine war," State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said in a statement.

Trump told reporters yesterday that he expects "pretty good results" out of Rubio's meetings in Saudi Arabia, and expressed optimism that Ukraine will sign a minerals deal agreement with the United States.