Trump fires USAID inspector general; appeals court rejects bid to reinstate federal funding freeze

Marc Fogel, the American who was held by Russia for 3½ years before he was released today, has arrived at the White House.

Trump walked out to await Fogel’s arrival, and the two shook hands and had an emotional exchange. Fogel thanked the president profusely.

They then held hands for a moment before Fogel shook hands with members of Congress, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa.

Two top officials at Immigration and Customs Enforcement have been demoted amid frustration by Trump administration officials that the agency isn’t arresting or deporting people quickly enough, three administration officials confirmed to NBC News.

The sources said Russell Hott and Peter Berg, the top two officials in ICE’s enforcement division, have been reassigned.

Todd Lyons, who previously led the ICE field office in Boston, has been named acting head of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations, two of the officials said.

A spokesperson for ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment this evening.

Trump’s “border czar,” Tom Homan, and budget director, Russell Vought, pleaded with Senate Republicans at a meeting this afternoon to send the administration more money to carry out their immigration crackdown plans.

“Tom Homan said, ‘I am begging you for money,’” Senate Budget Committee Chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., told reporters. “Russ Vought said that ‘we’re running out of money for [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. We can’t rob other accounts any longer.’”

Graham said the Trump administration is asking for an additional $175 billion for immigration enforcement, including ICE agents, detention beds and deportation resources.

Read the full story here.

The Japanese government said it had requested an exemption from Trump's new tariffs on steel and aluminum.

“We will carefully examine the details of these measures and their impact on our country and firmly take necessary action,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in Tokyo.

Though Trump has said there will be no exemptions, he said yesterday that he was considering one for Australia, citing the U.S. trade surplus with it.

Australia was exempted from steel and aluminum tariffs during the first Trump administration, while the United States and Japan negotiated a duty-free quota arrangement during the Biden administration.

The American Federation of Government Employees, a union representing 800,000 federal and Washington, D.C., government workers, criticized a new executive order from Trump that directs federal agencies to coordinate with DOGE on making job cuts.

The group’s national president, Everett Kelley, said in a statement that efforts to whittle the federal workforce through "reckless, unjustified cuts" were aimed at rewarding "Musk and Trump's billionaire buddies."

“Firing huge numbers of federal employees won’t decrease the need for government services. It will just make those services harder or impossible to access for everyday Americans, veterans, and seniors who depend on them,” Kelley said.

The top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee has sent a letter to the Justice Department inspector general accusing Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, of secretly orchestrating the firings of FBI officials a day after Katel told the committee under oath that he was not aware of any plan to do so.

“If these allegations are true, Mr. Patel may have perjured himself before the Senate Judiciary Committee,” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., wrote.

Durbin said he has spoken to whistleblowers who told him that Patel has been relaying instructions to White House deputy chief of staff for policy Stephen Miller, who then relayed Patel’s instructions to acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove.

Read the full story here.

As Trump outlines his plan to relocate Palestinians to neighboring countries, Arab voters in Dearborn, Michigan, who supported him as a candidate are reacting to his comments about controlling the Gaza Strip.

The inspector general at the U.S. Agency for International Development was fired today, a day after his office released a report detailing the negative impact of the Trump administration’s dramatic downsizing of the agency, according to a letter obtained by NBC News.

Paul Martin, who had been USAID’s inspector general since 2023, was notified of his dismissal by email.

“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as Inspector General of the United States Agency for International Development is terminated, effective immediately,” Trent Morse, deputy director of the Office of Presidential Personnel, informed Martin in an email obtained by NBC News. “Thank you for your service.”

Read the full story here.

Liberal Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor said today that courts must use their “soft power” to persuade people to comply with rulings on contentious issues.

She made the comments at an event at Miami Dade College in Florida in the wake of a growing chorus among some allies of Trump, including Vice President JD Vance, who have pushed back against recent court rulings that have stymied some of his aggressive executive orders.

The criticism has prompted concern that the administration could defy certain court rulings it disagrees with, with some describing the nation as being on the verge of a constitutional crisis.

Read the full story here.

Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager, has been hired at the Department of Homeland Security as a special government employee, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Lewandowski shares the status of “special government employee” with Musk, who's running Trump's advisory Department of Government Efficiency.

In his new capacity, Lewandowski has influence over hiring and personnel decisions and access to much of DHS without having been given a security clearance, the source said.

Politico first reported Lewandowski’s special government employee status.

A federal appeals court today rejected the Trump administration’s bid to pause a lower court’s order that temporarily halted a massive freeze in federal funding.

A judge in Rhode Island yesterday blocked the funding freeze and ordered the government to “immediately restore frozen funding.”

In its ruling today, a three-judge panel for the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals wrote that the “defendants do not cite any authority in support of their administrative stay request or identify any harm related to a specific funding action or actions that they will face without their requested administrative stay.”

Read the full story here.

Trump said today that he was signing an executive order to give Musk more power over the federal workforce, adding to Musk’s swift and sweeping consolidation of political influence.

With Musk standing to his right in the Oval Office, Trump praised DOGE’s work. And he said he wanted Musk to now do more, even as DOGE faces multiple lawsuits from labor unions and Democratic state attorneys general over whether it is acting within the law.

The executive order directs federal agencies to “coordinate and consult” with DOGE to cut jobs and limit hiring, according to a summary provided by the White House. Every agency will be ordered to “undertake plans for large-scale reductions in force” and limit hiring to only “essential positions,” the summary says.

Read the full story here.

A snowstorm in Washington has prompted a bipartisan agreement to postpone the Senate’s confirmation vote on Tulsi Gabbard to be director of national intelligence.

Instead of voting on Gabbard’s nomination at 12:30 a.m. ET today, as was planned, the Senate will return to vote at 11 a.m. ET.

After the vote on Gabbard, the Senate will take a procedural vote on whether to advance Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination for secretary of health and human services.

The Senate has agreed to count the time after 1 a.m. ET as part of the required 30 hours of debate before Kennedy’s confirmation vote. In other words, Kennedy’s confirmation vote could happen at 7 a.m. Thursday, unless an agreement among all 100 senators changes it.

The Education Department has agreed to temporarily limit DOGE employees from accessing various department systems.

The agreement runs through Monday, allowing time for a briefing on a request from legal groups representing the University of California Student Association for a court order to block DOGE employees from accessing or sharing students’ private data held by the Education Department.

Lawyers representing the student association had sued the Education Department arguing that "the scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is enormous and unprecedented" amid reporting that DOGE-linked people had accessed internal systems at the department that stored federal student aid information.

Trump signed an executive order to give DOGE more power while Musk spoke with reporters in the Oval Office. “We post our actions to the DOGE handle on X and to the DOGE website, so all of our actions are maximally transparent,” Musk said.

The Associated Press said the White House violated the First Amendment today when it barred an AP reporter from entering an executive order signing.

The AP said the White House restricted the reporter’s access after the news organization did not update its editorial standards renaming the Gulf of Mexico as the “Gulf of America.”

“It is alarming that the Trump administration would punish AP for its independent journalism. Limiting our access to the Oval Office based on the content of AP’s speech not only severely impedes the public’s access to independent news, it plainly violates the First Amendment,” the AP’s executive editor, Julie Pace, said in a statement.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the AP's statement.

In an effort to cut costs at the State Department, the Trump administration is considering closing a slate of U.S. consulates and diplomatic posts around the world, three administration officials told NBC News today.

Consulates in Europe, Canada, Mexico and the Pacific Islands are among those that could be shuttered. The officials said that Trump has reviewed a list of consulates but that no final decisions have been made and that a timeline for possible closures has yet to be set.

Some consulates have been placed under review by officials at the State Department, who have been asked to assess their relevance to Trump’s "America First" agenda as a measure of their importance. Officials are also considering the diplomatic necessity of the consulates and considering the types of additional government activities that could take place in them, like military contacts with other countries and intelligence gathering.

Trump said Marc Fogel, the American who was held by Russia for 3½ years before he was released today, will be at the White House around 10 p.m. ET.

"He’s coming, he’s back tonight," Trump told reporters at the Oval Office this afternoon.

A White House official confirmed to NBC News that Fogel and Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, are expected to land at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, around 9 p.m. ET on Witkoff's private plane.

Rep. Buddy Carter, R-Ga., introduced a bill today that calls for renaming Greenland “Red, White and Blueland.”

The measure would require renaming Greenland on U.S. government maps and documents, a move in support of Trump’s efforts to acquire the territory from Denmark.

The bill's text says it would “authorize the President to enter into negotiations with the Government of Denmark to purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland.”

Conservative lawmakers introduced a bill today that would move the U.S. Agency for International Development's "Food for Peace" program under the Agriculture Department to keep the international food security program intact amid Trump's efforts to shut down USAID.

“This free gift from the American people is more than food,” said Rep. Tracey Mann, R-Kan., whose constituents have long enjoyed economic benefits from the USAID program. “It’s diplomacy and feeds the most vulnerable communities while helping them recognize the freedom, prosperity and good America can establish across the globe.”

Mann, alongside co-sponsors of the bill, said the move would “equip American producers to serve hungry people” while allowing the Trump administration to continue making cuts to “wasteful spending.”

Trump’s tariffs, both implemented and just threatened, are causing “chaos” for the U.S. automotive industry, according to Ford Motor CEO Jim Farley.

Farley, the chief executive of America’s second-largest automaker, described 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum, as well as threatened levies of the same amount on Mexico and Canada, as adding “a lot of cost and a lot of chaos” to the industry.

“President Trump has talked a lot about making our U.S. auto industry stronger, bringing more production here, more innovation in the U.S., and if his administration can achieve that, it would be one of … the most signature accomplishments,” Farley said today aa Wolfe Research conference. “So far what we’re seeing is a lot of cost, and a lot of chaos.”

Read the full story here.

Citadel CEO Ken Griffin sent a stern warning against the negative impact of Trump’s combative approach to U.S. trade policy.

“From my vantage point, the bombastic rhetoric, the damage has already been done,” Griffin said today at the UBS Financial Services Conference in Key Biscayne, Florida. “It’s a huge mistake to resort to this form of rhetoric when you’re trying to drive a bargain, because ... it tears into the minds of CEOs, policymakers that we can’t depend upon America as our trading partner.” 

Trump signed an order last night that would impose 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports. He has already enacted a 10% duty on all Chinese imports while pausing his 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada temporarily.

Read the full story here.

Musk visited Trump in the Oval Office this afternoon.

Musk's Department of Government Efficiency seeks to cut government staff and costs. It has recently targeted the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said he reiterated Jordan and the region’s “steadfast opposition” to Trump's plan to resettle millions of Palestinians out of Gaza at a meeting today with Trump.

“Rebuilding Gaza without displacing the Palestinians and addressing the dire humanitarian situation should be the priority for all,” he said on X. “Achieving just peace on the basis of the two-state solution is the way to ensure regional stability.”

Read the full story here.

A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to temporarily restore webpages for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration that were suddenly taken down to comply with Trump’s executive order decrying “gender ideology.”

Last month, federal health workers were instructed not to refer to or promote “gender ideology” — a term conservative groups often use to describe what they consider “woke” views on sex and gender. That led to the widespread deletion of agency pages that mentioned gender, including a number of pages about HIV prevention and emergency contraception. Other pages included information about transgender people and gay and bisexual men, as well as survey data on youth behavior.

The administration has since restored some webpages — including two about HIV — but several others remain down. 

A federal judge in New York issued an order today clarifying that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent can access sensitive agency computer systems that are off-limits to members of Musk's Department of Government Efficiency.

The Justice Department had asked U.S. District Judge Jeannette A. Vargas to modify an emergency order one of her colleagues handed down over the weekend barring "political appointees, special government employees, and government employees detailed from an agency outside the Treasury Department" from accessing sensitive data.

Lawyers for the Justice Department contended that could be read as barring Bessent, who's a political appointee. In her ruling, Vargas said that wasn't the case — the other judge was referring to appointees outside Treasury — but she modified the order to specifically exclude Treasury Department officers who have been nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate.

The coalition of states that had secured the order had opposed the Justice Department's request and argued that Bessent should be barred from accessing those systems, but Vargas denied the request.

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, signaled she will support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services, saying her recent conversations with him have assuaged her doubts. 

Collins said in a statement that she spoke to Kennedy about his controversial positions on vaccines and that “he told me he believed in the efficacy of the polio vaccine, and said he would help restore Americans’ confidence in vaccines and our health agencies. I am also encouraged that Mr. Kennedy agreed to regular meetings with the chairman of the HELP Committee, who is a physician.”

The pair also discussed the Trump administration’s recent cuts to funding for the National Institutes of Health, a point of concern for Collins, who said Kennedy confirmed that he will re-examine the initiative if he is confirmed. 

“I contacted Mr. Kennedy about the administration’s decision to impose an arbitrary cap on the indirect costs that are part of NIH grants and negotiated between the grant recipient and NIH,” Collins said. “He stated that as soon as he is confirmed, he will lead a re-examination of this initiative. I will continue to follow up with him to prevent the needless loss of jobs and to ensure that the vital biomedical research funded by the NIH continues.”

The Senate is expected to vote on Kennedy's nomination this week.

More than 3,600 employees of the FBI — roughly 10% of its workforce — are on probationary status, FBI Agents Association spokesperson Paul Nathanson said.

The Trump administration has continued to spark fears within the bureau after the White House's Office of Personnel Management asked the FBI for a list of names of short-tenured “probationary employees,” who have limited appeal rights. Trump is also seeking to compile a list of FBI agents who worked on Jan. 6 cases and has pledged to fire some of them.

Nathanson said in a statement that the dismissals of FBI personnel on probationary status is a “major concern.”

"Mass firings without case transitions will compromise ongoing operations," Nathanson said. "All Special Agents on probation have already undergone extensive training at Quantico. Their work is essential to ongoing operations, and replacing them would require significant time and resources to recruit and train new personnel."

Former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who was convicted on political corruption charges in 2011 and pardoned by Trump yesterday, is under consideration to be the next U.S. ambassador to Serbia, a source with knowledge of the matter said.

Politico first reported that Blagojevich was in the running for the post.

In his first presidential term, Trump commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence. 

In between his political corruption trials, Blagojevich once appeared on Trump’s reality television show “Celebrity Apprentice.” Trump called the Democratic former governor “a very fine person” after pardoning him.

When asked if he was considering Blagojevich for the ambassadorial spot, Trump said yesterday, "No, but I would. He’s now cleaner than anybody in this room. He got a pardon. He’s cleaner than anybody in the room."

An American schoolteacher held by Russia for three and a half years will be released and allowed to come home, the White House said today.

Marc Fogel had been sentenced to 14 years in prison by Russia and was considered “wrongfully detained” by the United States.

“By tonight, Marc Fogel will be on American soil and reunited with his family and loved ones thanks to President Trump’s leadership,” national security adviser Mike Waltz said Tuesday in a statement.

Read the full story here.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II said Tuesday that he would take in 2,000 Palestinian children from Gaza who are very sick or have cancer in response to a plan by Trump to resettle the residents of the war-torn strip.

Trump called the offer a “beautiful gesture” and said he believed “99%” that something could be worked out with Egypt, another regional partner that had bristled at the president’s surprise plan. “We’ll have some others helping,” Trump added.

Seated with Trump in the Oval Office, Abdullah said they must ensure a plan that satisfies all parties, a not-insignificant obstacle as questions remain about how each country might move to relocate a swell of people who have suffered months of devastation, and which some fear will further undermine efforts to create a Palestinian state.

More than 1 million Palestinians remain without homes, and the king declined to say whether he would be willing to take in refugees in larger numbers. “We have to look at the best interests of the United States, of the people in the region, especially to my people of Jordan,” he said.

Read the full story here.

House Republicans remain divided over their budget blueprint for Trump’s agenda, but GOP leaders are pushing ahead with a committee markup on the proposal this week. 

Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, a member of the House Budget Committee, told NBC News “we’ll see” when asked if they can reach a deal by Thursday, when the committee has scheduled a markup of the legislation.

“There’s still a lot of variables left unanswered,” Roy said.

Trump announced he is sending Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to Ukraine to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“This War MUST and WILL END SOON — Too much Death and Destruction,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social this afternoon. “The U.S. has spent BILLIONS of Dollars Globally, with little to show. WHEN AMERICA IS STRONG, THE WORLD IS AT PEACE.”

Last week, Trump said he would continue sending aid to Ukraine in exchange for access to the country’s critical minerals — an idea previously floated by Republican senators.

“I want security of the rare earth, and they’re willing to do it,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.

Former New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio said today that he agrees with the Justice Department’s move to dismiss the federal indictment against the city’s current mayor, Eric Adams, saying the corruption charges "were not strong enough." 

"I don’t think they should have been brought, but I’m not comfortable, of course, with what’s happening in Washington, with the Justice Department," De Blasio, a Democrat, told MSNBC’s Ana Cabrera, adding that the case needed to be resolved before the June Democratic primary for mayor. "I’m not comfortable with what Donald Trump is doing to our institutions and how he’s undermining our democracy."

Adams, a Democrat and Trump ally who is up for re-election, faced counts including bribery and soliciting campaign contributions from foreign nationals.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., slammed the Trump administration's efforts under Elon Musk to gut the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, saying the move contradicts Trump’s campaign trail promise of improving the financial prospects for Americans.

“Instead of doing that, he’s turned around, he’s actually cutting the parts of government that help bring down costs for American families, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is the perfect example,” Warren told MSNBC’s Ali Vitali. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the federal agency charged with safeguarding Americans against predatory financial practices from banks and lenders, was proposed by Warren when she was a professor at Harvard Law School and formed under the Obama administration following the 2008 financial crisis. 

New York City Mayor Eric Adams thanked the Department of Justice for ordering the federal corruption charges filed against him be dropped, but acknowledged “many New Yorkers still question my character.”

“I thank the Justice Department for its honesty. Now we can put this cruel episode behind us and focus entirely on the future of our city. It’s time to move forward,” Adams said at a briefing this afternoon.

Acting U.S. Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove ordered federal prosecutors in New York to drop five criminal counts, including bribery, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and solicitation of a contribution by a foreign national, from Adams’ case on Monday night.

Read the full story here.

Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has sent a letter to the Justice Department's inspector general accusing FBI director nominee Kash Patel of secretly orchestrating the firings of FBI officials, despite the nominee's testifying to the committee that he was not aware of any such plan.

Durbin said he has been speaking to whistleblowers who have told him Patel has been providing instructions to Trump White House aide Stephen Miller, who then relays the instructions to acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove. 

Notes from one meeting about firing FBI executives allegedly read, “KP wants movement at FBI, reciprocal action at DOJ,” according to Durbin's letter.

A senior official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency instructed subordinates to freeze funding for a wide array of grant programs yesterday, just hours after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration — for the second time — to stop such pauses.

In an email with the subject line “URGENT: Holds on awards,” Stacey Street, the director of the agency’s Office of Grant Administration, told her team to freeze funding for grant programs going back several years, including those focused on emergency preparedness, homeland security, firefighting, protecting churches from terrorism and tribal security.

“For all awards FY23 and prior: put financial holds on all of your awards — all open awards, all years (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024),” Street wrote, using the shorthand “FY” for fiscal year.

NBC News obtained screenshots of the email from a recipient, who requested anonymity out of fear of reprisal.

Read the full story here.

Trump told reporters that "there is nothing to buy" with regard to his plan for the U.S. to take ownership of Gaza, but instead the U.S. would "take" or "have" the territory. 

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., warned in remarks on the chamber floor today that Trump cannot ignore the decisions of the federal judiciary in halting numerous elements of his policy agenda in the last few weeks.

“Donald Trump is not free to bulldoze his way through the rule of law. He is an executive, not a monarch,” Schumer said. “He swore an oath faithfully to execute the duties of his office, and when the courts speak, Donald Trump must accept their judgments and honor the Constitution.”

Schumer criticized Vice President JD Vance, who wrote in a post on X over the weekend, “Judges aren’t allowed to control the executive’s legitimate power.”

"With respect to the vice president, the issue here isn’t the courts trying to control the president, it’s the president trying to control the law" and decide for himself which laws should or shouldn’t be applied, Schumer said.

“Congress makes the law; the courts interpret the law. We all learned that in grade school. That’s how checks and balances work in a constitutional republic,” Schumer said. “Donald Trump does not reign supreme when the courts speak.”

House Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., told reporters today that Democrats might not support an upcoming spending bill that Congress has to pass by mid-March because of Trump's proposed cuts to the Department of Education.

If Republicans “won’t stand up for our kids and end their war on students, then they should not ask for our votes to pass a government funding bill," he said.

Aguilar added that Democrats are “happy to negotiate” with their Republican colleagues, but added that there is “very little appetite [to] help Republicans when we don’t trust that Donald Trump is going to spend the resources that we’ve allocated for education.”

“None of us are making plans for March 15. That’s for sure,” he added.

Trump said Palestinians would not be allowed back into Gaza under his proposal for the area, while Hamas has paused the release of Israeli hostages. NBC News’ Aaron Gilchrist reports on Trump’s warning to Hamas and explains why the Israeli-Hamas ceasefire is on hold.

Contractors that work with the U.S. Agency for International Development sued the Trump administration today and asked a federal judge to act immediately.

The lawsuit filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., alleges that the funding cuts violate both federal law and the Constitution.

"Neither the president nor his subordinates have authority to thwart duly enacted statutes and substitute their own funding preferences for those Congress has expressed through legislation," the lawsuit says.

Plaintiffs include HIAS, a Maryland-based nonprofit that receives 58% of its funding from the U.S. government, including USAID, and Management Sciences for Health, a Virginia-based group that receives 88% of its funding from USAID.

For-profit plaintiffs include Chemonics International, based in Washington, D.C., and Maryland-based DAI Global. Both receive the bulk of their revenue from USAID.

Steve Bannon, a longtime Trump ally, pleaded guilty today to felony fraud for helping to defraud donors who were giving money to build a wall at the southern U.S. border.

In exchange for the guilty plea, he agreed to a conditional discharge and waived his right to appeal. 

Bannon will not be allowed to serve as an officer or director of a charity or any charitable organization in New York state, or any fundraising or not-for-profit organization in the state. He will not be allowed to receive or hold assets for any charitable organizations.

Read the full story.

Several government watchdog organizations are calling on the Senate to demand answers about Trump's firing last month of 18 inspectors general.

"Inspectors general are uniquely positioned to give Congress the information it needs to conduct effective oversight and pass meaningful legislation," the groups wrote in a letter to senators today that was obtained by NBC News. "The removal of multiple IGs at once raises significant concerns about maintaining the integrity and continuity of oversight. These abrupt dismissals undermine the ability of IGs to conduct thorough and impartial investigations, potentially deterring accountability at a critical time."

The organizations said that the Senate must act and demand "full explanations from President Trump as to why each inspector general was removed, as mandated by law."

The letter was signed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the Project on Government Oversight, Taxpayers for Common Sense, Public Citizen, American Oversight, Hispanic Leadership Fund, National Taxpayers Union, R Street Institute, and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance.

Rep. Jared Moskowitz, D-Fla., said in an interview this morning that he thinks a two-state solution between Israelis and Palestinians is "dead" at the moment.

In an interview on CNN, Moskowitz was asked what he thinks about Trump appearing to abandon the idea of a two-state solution, in which Palestinians would create their own state, in favor of a U.S. takeover of the Gaza Strip.

"Look, that's not going to happen," Moskowitz said of Trump's proposal. "But I do think a two-state solution at this moment is dead. There is no path."

Trump said this morning that he is instructing EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin to reinstate water standards that he had implemented during his first term for various home appliances that he said were terminated by Biden.

"I am hereby instructing Secretary Lee Zeldin to immediately go back to my Environmental Orders, which were terminated by Crooked Joe Biden, on Water Standards and Flow pertaining to SINKS, SHOWERS, TOILETS, WASHING MACHINES, DISHWASHERS, etc., and to likewise go back to the common sense standards on LIGHTBULBS, that were put in place by the Trump Administration, but terminated by Crooked Joe. I look forward to signing these Orders. THANK YOU!!!" he wrote on his Truth Social account.

Toward the end of his first term, Trump's administration finalized rules that reversed water efficiency standards on washing machines and showerheads after the president complained about low water pressure from these appliances.

Barack Obama is the most liked among the five living current or former presidents, according to a new Gallup survey.

The poll found 59% had a favorable view of Obama, compared with 36% who held an unfavorable view. He was followed by George W. Bush (52% favorable versus 34% unfavorable), and then Bill Clinton (48%-41%).

Bush's ratings were the least divided by party, while Clinton's image has steadily improved over time, Gallup said.

President Donald Trump was the fourth most-liked, with 48% viewing him favorable compared to 50% unfavorably.

Joe Biden was last, with just 39% viewing him favorably, to 57% unfavorably.

The poll surveyed a representative sample of the U.S. population from Jan. 21 to 27.

Military families protesting the Defense Department’s anti-DEI push heckled Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on his arrival at U.S. European Command headquarters in Germany today.

On a visit to the U.S. military’s key European military hub in Stuttgart, Hegseth was booed by around two dozen people who live at the base in an apparent demonstration against the policies currently being implemented by the Trump administration. 

The demonstrators at the short protest repeatedly chanted “DEI,” apparently in a reference to the recent ban Hegseth has placed on some books in Defense Department schools. Hegseth last week ordered the restriction of learning materials covering subjects that included psychology and immigration in DOD schools.

Read the full story.

Trump is expected to meet today with Jordan’s King Abdullah II and Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah at the White House.

The president will hold bilateral meetings and have lunch with them, which will be closed to the press. A joint press conference, which is customary when foreign leaders meet with the president at the White House, is not scheduled.

The meeting comes as Trump has expanded on his plans for the Gaza Strip, stating in an interview that aired yesterday that he would build a permanent home for Palestinian refugees outside of the Gaza Strip. He suggested he would make deals with Jordan and Egypt to build places for them to live in those countries, while the U.S. would take control of Gaza.

Officials from the two Middle Eastern countries have repeatedly refused to accept Palestinian refugees from Gaza. Trump, however, said yesterday that he would consider withholding U.S. aid to Egypt and Jordan if they do not agree to his plan.

Former Interior Secretary Deb Haaland is running for governor of New Mexico, looking to be the first Native American woman to be elected governor of a state. 

Haaland launched her campaign this morning in an online video after hinting at an announcement for the last few days. 

Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham isn’t running for re-election, as state law bars governors from seeking a third consecutive term, making Haaland the front-runner on the Democratic side.

Read the full story.

Trump railed this morning against federal judges who have blocked efforts by the Elon Musk-run Department of Government Efficiency to root out waste in the government.

“Billions of Dollars of FRAUD, WASTE, AND ABUSE, has already been found in the investigation of our incompetently run Government,” Trump wrote on Truth Social about DOGE, which is not an official agency.

“Now certain activists and highly political judges want us to slow down, or stop,” he wrote. “Losing this momentum will be very detrimental to finding the TRUTH, which is turning out to be a disaster for those involved in running our Government. Much left to find. No Excuses!!!”

Trump officials have dismissed these court rulings, provoking fears that the administration could eventually ignore these judicial decisions.

The arm of the Democratic Party focused on state legislative races announced its initial target map for the upcoming election cycle today, identifying 10 states where they will seek to combat President Donald Trump’s agenda and prepare for the next redistricting cycle at the end of the decade.

In plans shared first with NBC News, the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) will target the state Houses in Virginia and Pennsylvania, where Democrats have one-seat majorities, as well as both chambers of the state Legislature in Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin and Alaska.

The legislatures in those four states are narrowly divided. Minnesota’s House is expected to be tied following a special election next month, while Democrats have a one-seat majority in the state Senate. In Michigan, Democrats hold a one-seat majority in the state Senate while Republicans have a three-seat majority in the state House.

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During the AI Action Summit in Paris, Vice President JD Vance told world leaders that the U.S. would be "the gold standard" in AI technology, adding that the emerging technology will make Americans "more productive, more prosperous and more free.”

Pope Francis criticized Trump's mass deportation policy in a letter to U.S. bishops yesterday and pleaded with people not to give into "narratives that discriminate."

"The act of deporting people who in many cases have left their own land for reasons of extreme poverty, insecurity, exploitation, persecution or serious deterioration of the environment, damages the dignity of many men and women, and of entire families, and places them in a state of particular vulnerability and defenselessness," he wrote in the letter.

Francis said that the "true common good is prompted" when people welcome and protect the "most fragile, unprotected and vulnerable."

"I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters," he wrote.

The FBI says it has discovered more records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and will release them.

In 2020, the FBI began storing and electronically inventorying closed case files from field offices across the country at a central records complex, the agency said in a statement. That resulted in a more comprehensive records inventory that, along with technological advances to automate the record-keeping processes, allowed the bureau to more quickly search and locate records. 

The FBI conducted a new records search after Trump’s executive order seeking the declassification of the assassination files of JFK, as well as Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr., resulting in about "2400 newly inventoried and digitized records that were previously unrecognized as related to the JFK assassination case file," the agency said. 

"The FBI has made the appropriate notifications of the newly discovered documents and is working to transfer them to the National Archives and Records Administration for inclusion in the ongoing declassification process,” it said.

 

Trump signed an executive order last night pausing enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which forbids companies in the U.S. from bribing foreign officials.

In a fact sheet, the White House said “overenforcement” of the law, which was enacted in 1977, made American companies less competitive and that Trump was ordering “revised, reasonable enforcement guidelines.”

“It’s going to mean a lot more business for America,” Trump said as he signed the order in the Oval Office. 

Gary Kalman, executive director of the U.S. office of anti-corruption watchdog Transparency International, said in a statement that Trump’s executive order “diminishes — and could pave the way for completely eliminating — the crown jewel in the U.S.’s fight against global corruption,” Reuters reported.

Trump says he has spoken with Chinese President Xi Jinping since his inauguration, though neither the U.S. nor China has reported any calls between the two leaders during that period.

Asked in a Fox News interview whether he had spoken with Xi since the Jan. 20 inauguration, Trump said, “Yeah, and I’ve talked to him, and I talked to his people too. His people come in all the time,” without specifying when a call had taken place or what was discussed.

Asked about Trump’s comments at a regular briefing in Beijing, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Xi and Trump had a scheduled phone call Jan. 17, before the inauguration, and that China had “issued a relevant press release.”

Trump said last week that he was in “no rush” to speak with Xi amid fears of a trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. Beijing announced tariffs of 10% to 15% on some U.S. products last week, minutes after a 10% U.S. tariff on all Chinese goods imports went into effect.

U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum “will not go unanswered,” the president of the European Commission said, warning that they would bring a tough response from the 27-nation European Union.

“I deeply regret the U.S. decision to impose tariffs on European steel and aluminum exports,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said in a statement. “Tariffs are taxes — bad for business, worse for consumers.”

“Unjustified tariffs on the E.U. will not go unanswered — they will trigger firm and proportionate countermeasures,” she continued. 

“The E.U. will act to safeguard its economic interests. We will protect our workers, businesses and consumers.”