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      Jimmy Kimmel on Trump: ‘Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting’

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      Late-night hosts talk Donald Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, Trump’s first cabinet meeting and confusion over who leads the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge).Jimmy KimmelTrump announced another disquieting idea on Wednesday – to allow foreigners to purchase new “gold card” visas for $5m apiece – and Jimmy Kimmel was not happy about it. “What a good idea – I’ve always said our immigration system should run more like the customer rewards program at a casino in Atlantic City,” he joked on Wednesday evening.“Somehow, he’s managed to make everything disgusting,” Kimmel continued. “This is basically what he does at Mar-a-Lago. He’s selling memberships to a country club, but this club is actually our country. The land of the free, and by free I mean $5m bucks.”Trump also said he would consider selling the visas to Russian oligarchs: “I know some Russian oligarchs who are very nice people, it’s possible.”“Let me tell you something: he may know oligarchs, but not as well as they know him,” Kimmel quipped.Kimmel also mocked Elon Musk, who tried to defend Doge’s slash-and-burn approach to civil servant layoffs as an organization that owned up to mistakes. During Trump’s first cabinet meeting, Musk conceded that Doge “accidentally” canceled USAid’s Ebola prevention program, but “restored it immediately”.“Oh, well, that’s fine then,” Kimmel joked. “He only canceled our Ebola prevention for a couple of days, calm down, everybody.“That’s not an excuse,” he added. “Just ask the doctor – ‘As soon as I realized I unplugged my mother’s life support to charge my iPhone, I immediately plugged it back in.’”Stephen ColbertOn Wednesday, Trump held his first full cabinet meeting of his second term, “and everybody was there”, said Stephen Colbert on The Late Show. “It was a who’s who of why them?”“As commander in chief, Trump made it immediately clear who is in charge: Elon Musk,” Colbert continued. Musk, who attended the meeting, introduced himself as “humble tech support” because “that is almost a literal description of the work that the Doge team is doing”.“Well, of course. I mean, we’ve all had that call with tech support,” Colbert mocked. “Hello? Yes, you’re computer’s frozen? Have you tried turning it off and then firing 4,000 people with an email.”Trump rambled on in nonsense fashion about Doge, somehow landing on the topic of circumcision. “That long, rambling response actually reminds me of circumcision, because somebody really should have cut that dickhead off,” Colbert quipped.While Musk is supposedly head of Doge, the White House continues to insist that he’s not in court filings and through its press secretary. Finally, on Tuesday, for reasons that remain unclear, the White House stated the agency is led by the career civil servant Amy Gleason. “Why Gleason? We don’t know for sure!” said Colbert.At the time of the announcement, Gleason was on vacation in Mexico. When reached by reporters, she declined to comment. “I am not surprised,” said Colbert. “It’s really hard to speak clearly when you’re under a bus.”The Daily ShowAnd on The Daily Show, Desi Lydic mocked Trump’s proposed “gold card” visas, which he described as “green card privileges plus”.“Oh? Green card privileges plus? See, I was still getting America with ads,” Lydic joked. “Quick question: if I’m unhappy with America, can I cancel my subscription after seven days?”According to Trump, the gold card visas will be “a route to citizenship, and wealthy people will be coming into our country by buying this card. They’ll be wealthy, and they’ll be successful and they’ll be spending a lot of money.“Did this guy just put a cover charge on America?” Lydic wondered. “It’s $5m to get in, but he’ll waive it if you bring three hot girls with you.“I mean, I guess this beats the old way of becoming a citizen? Which was to marry Donald Trump,” she added.“Now you might be thinking, wait a second, if the US is just going to put citizenship up for sale, doesn’t that mean can any monster can buy one as long as they’re rich? Well, according to Trump, yes,” she continued, pointing to Trump’s comment that he knows Russian oligarchs who are “very good people”.“Seems like Trump watched Anora, and his takeaway from that movie was ‘we need to do more to help out that rich Russian teenager. He’s so good at sex!’” Lydic joked. More

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      Trump administration briefing: president praises Doge’s efforts and threatens US media

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      In his first full cabinet meeting of his second term, which was attended by Elon Musk, President Donald Trump praised dramatic planned cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and his planned 25% tariffs on European Union imports.Musk, who runs the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) team, said at the meeting that their goal was to achieve “$1tn in deficit reduction by financial year 2026” – already halving the $2tn in cuts he had promised during the campaign. He claimed this would require “saving $4bn per day, every day” until the end of September.Trump later signed an executive order designed to expand the Doge agency’s power.Here are the biggest stories in US politics on Wednesday, 26 February.Trump touts government-shrinking effort led by Musk – and signs executive order to increase its reachTrump used the first full cabinet meeting of his second term to emphasize his administration’s focus on drastically reducing the size of the federal government, with tech billionaire Elon Musk warning without evidence that “America will go bankrupt” without significant spending cuts.Read the full storyLater, Trump signed an executive order meant to expand Doge’s power. The new order calls for a “transformation” in federal spending on contracts, grants and loans by requiring agencies to create a centralized system to record and justify payments, which may be made public for transparency – an initiative that would be monitored by Musk’s team.Read the full storyTrump faces Truth Social backlash over AI video of Gaza Donald Trump is facing a backlash on his Truth Social platform after sharing an AI-created video of him sipping cocktails with a topless Benjamin Netanyahu in Gaza, in a future imagining of the Palestinian territory devastated by Israel’s war.The video presented a computer-generated vision of Trump’s property development plan for Gaza, under which he said he wants to “clean out” the population of about 2 million people. Named the “Riviera of the Middle East” plan, the proposal has been criticised as a blueprint for ethnic cleansing.Read the full storyTrump plans to cut more than 90% of USAid foreign assistance contractsThe Trump administration said it was eliminating more than 90% of the US Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60bn in overall US assistance around the world, the Associated Press reported.Wednesday’s disclosures give an idea of the scale of the Trump administration’s retreat from US aid and development assistance overseas, and from decades of US policy that foreign aid helps US interests by stabilizing other countries and economies and building alliances.Read the full storyWhite House gives deadline to plan mass layoffsUS government agency heads have been given a 13 March deadline to produce a plan for drastically slashing the federal workforce as Trump reinforced warnings that workers who failed to account for what they do could be fired.Read the full storyTrump: no significant guarantees in Ukraine dealTrump announced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit the White House on Friday to sign a rare earth minerals deal, but also said the US would not provide significant security guarantees to Ukraine as part of the agreement.Read the full storyTrump vows to slap 25% tariffs on EU Trump threatened to slap 25% tariffs on the European Union claiming the 27-country bloc was “formed to screw the United States”. He said he would soon release details of the latest tariff threat.Read the full storyBezos narrows focus of Washington Post opinion pagesJeff Bezos, the self-proclaimed “hands-off” owner of the Washington Post, emailed staffers on Wednesday about a change he is applying to the paper’s opinion section, which he said would now “be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” Bezos’s decision to inject more regular and weighty conservative theming will also see the departure of opinions editor David Shipley, although it was not immediately clear if he was fired for resisting Bezos’s direction, or chose to resign.Read the full storyTrump threatens to sue media after critical editorial A Wall Street Journal editorial slamming Trump’s tariff plans as terrible for the US economy and auto industry prompted a broadside from the president followed by threats to sue the media. Trump wrote on Truth Social the Journal is “soooo wrong” and threatened those publishing “Fake books and stories with the so-called ‘anonymous’, or ‘off the record’, quotes”.Read the full storyUS supreme court likely to back straight woman in ‘reverse discrimination’ caseThe US supreme court justices appeared to lean on Wednesday toward making it easier for people from “majority backgrounds”, such as white or heterosexual people, to pursue workplace discrimination claims, as they heard an appeal by an Ohio woman who claims she was denied a promotion and demoted because she is heterosexual.Read the full storyDoge quietly deletes billions in claimed savings from websiteWhen Elon Musk’s Doge posted its “wall of receipts” boasting of major savings to the federal budget, the list was billed as the proud public interface of a radical shake-up of the US government. But in the latest embarrassment to befall the site, Doge has stealthily expunged all of the five largest items on the “wall of receipts” after the much-vaunted “savings” were revealed to be so much hot air.Read the full storyWhat else happened today:

      New York City mayor Eric Adams asked a federal judge to toss out the corruption case against him, alleging prosecutorial misconduct.

      Apple has promised to fix a bug in its iPhone automatic dictation tool after some users reported it had suggested to them “Trump” when they said the word “racist”.

      A new book was announced on Joe Biden’s bid for a second term, promising to reveal a top-level cover-up about his health decline.

      Trump said that the Environmental Protection Agency might cut up to 65% of its employees and declined to comment in response to a question about whether he would ever allow China to take control of Taiwan by force.

      Trump said that tariffs on Canada and Mexico will continue, and that a 25% tariff on the European Union was coming soon.

      Health secretary Robert F Kennedy said that two people had died from a measles outbreak, but did not provide details about the deaths. Earlier on Wednesday, it was reported that one child had died of measles. More

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      Trump cabinet flunkies hail wannabe Caesar and Elon, his oligarch pal

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      On Tuesday, just over a mile from the White House, the classicist Mary Beard spoke to an audience about Roman emperors. “An autocrat is somebody who kills you when he’s being his most generous,” she remarked. “You go to dinner, you think, wow, this is wonderful! But the generosity of the autocrat is always potentially lethal.”On Wednesday, Donald Trump held his first full cabinet meeting. The mood was warm and convivial and, some might say, generous. Housing secretary Scott Turner offered a prayer that included: “Thank you, God, for President Trump.”Was it just an accident that the TV camera framed the scene as the antithesis of DEI? Viewers could see seven men in suits with Trump in the middle, then another row of seven men in suits sitting behind. Nearly all of them were white. (Yes, there were women and people of colour at the meeting – but not many.)The Vice-president, JD Vance, was in attendance but there was no doubt whom this emperor had appointed as consul. Trump invited Elon Musk, the tech billionaire running the so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), to speak before any of his cabinet secretaries after claiming that everyone present was supportive.Wearing a black “Make America great again” cap, Musk jokingly referred to himself as “humble tech support” – people laughed dutifully – and claimed that his haphazard efforts to take a chainsaw to the federal government can save a trillion dollars and dig the country out of debt. “It’s not an optional thing, it’s an essential thing,” he said. “If we don’t do this, America will go bankrupt.”It sounds fine in theory. But Doge, mostly consisting of young male software engineers fuelled by pizza and Red Bull, has been a disaster. It fired the people who oversee the nuclear weapons stockpile then hastily tried to rehire them, only to find they were hard to contact because they could not access their work email accounts. It claimed to have saved $8bn on a terminated contract that was actually worth only $8m. Musk falsely stated that the US spent $50m on condoms for Gazans. And it emerged this week Doge quietly deleted the top five items from its public ledger of alleged savings after they turned out to be nothing of the sort.Musk – who brought similar unholy chaos to Twitter when he bought it – admitted to the cabinet that Doge will make mistakes, but said it will fix them quickly. “So, for example, with USAid, one of the things we accidentally canceled briefly was Ebola prevention. So we restored the Ebola prevention immediately, and there was no interruption.”Not reassuring.Then came the most autocratic episode of the meeting. Trump, both generous and lethal, asked his cabinet: “Is anybody unhappy with Elon? If you are, we’ll throw him out of here.”To the crocodiles? Or as his pal Vladimir Putin favours, from a high window? From this assembly of fawners, flatterers and flunkies, there was nervous laughter and applause.Triumphant, the president assured reporters: “They have a lot of respect for Elon, that he’s doing this, and some disagree a little bit but I will tell you for the most part I think everyone’s not only happy – they’re thrilled.”Game respects game. Musk, a fan boy of far-right movements all over Europe, showed an impressively instinctive feel for totalitarianism.He said: “President Trump has put together I think the best cabinet ever, literally, and I do not give false praise. This is an incredible group of people. I don’t think such a talented team has ever been assembled. I think it’s literally the best cabinet the country’s ever had … ”Then came a telling slip from the world’s richest man: “I think the company [sic] should be incredibly appreciative of the people in this room.”The cabinet on which Musk lavished such praise includes Pete Hegseth, a former Fox News host accused of sexual assault and alcohol abuse, and Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine conspiracy theorist who once dumped a dead bear cub in New York’s Central Park. Less Marvel’s Avengers than Star Wars cantina.Kennedy was asked by reporters about a measles outbreak in Texas in which a child reportedly died, the first measles fatality in the US for a decade. His lackluster response: “It’s not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”The whole meeting was yet another sorry exercise in worshipping an authoritarian and normalising a bully. Musk tried to defend the emails he sent to government employees, asking what they did last week, as not a “performance review” but a “pulse check review” because some people on the government payroll are dead.Trump rounded off the meeting by observing: “The country’s got bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run.”Yet as Jon Stewart noted this week on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, Doge will not touch the $3bn in subsidies given to oil and gas companies, a hedge fund loophole worth $1.3bn a year, or the $2tn given to defence contractors to build a fighter jet that will soon be obsolete. “This is where the real money is,” Stewart said.Not even a functioning democracy ever did much about those. So hopes for a country run by a wannabe Caesar and his oligarch pal are not high. More

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      White House denies some reporters access to Trump cabinet meeting – live

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      The White House on Wednesday reportedly denied reporters from Reuters, the AP, and other news organizations access to President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.Reuters is reporting that the White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper.TV crews from ABC and Newsmax, along with correspondents from Axios, the Blaze, Bloomberg News and NPR were permitted to cover the event.This comes as on Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it would take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.The head of the Environmental Protection Agency has urged the Trump administration to strike down a key scientific finding that has served as the foundation for US climate change policy, The Washington Post reports.In a report submitted to the White House, EPA administrator Lee Zeldin recommended revising the agency’s 2009 determination that greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health and welfare.This report, established under the Clean Air Act, provides the legal basis for various climate regulations affecting motor vehicles, power plants, and other major pollution sources.Senator Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Banking Committee, urged President Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security to adopt a firm approach toward China, pointing to concerns over Chinese startup DeepSeek’s artificial intelligence technology, Reuters reports.Warren called on nominee Jeffrey Kessler to strengthen AI chip regulations introduced by former President Joe Biden’s administration in January.“In light of DeepSeek, we must reinforce our controls on (China),” Warren wrote, calling for a series of other actions on Chinese tech efforts.Several Democratic senators made dramatic returns to Washington to vote against Republicans’ budget blueprint on Tuesday night.California Congressman Kevin Mullin, who had been absent while recovering from a blood clot and infection following knee surgery, went straight to the airport after being discharged from the hospital, while Colorado Congresswoman Brittany Pettersen returned to teh House floor with her newborn son, Sam, nestled in her arms.Their dramatic – and surprise – appearances were part of an effort by Democrats to block Republicans’ plan to advance major pieces of Donald Trump’s tax cut and immigration agenda.“I have a message for Donald Trump: nobody fights harder than a mom,” Petterson wrote on X. “Republican leadership may have denied my ability to vote by proxy but that didn’t stop us from voting against this disastrous budget that strips away health care and food for seniors, veterans, kids and families across Colorado — all to give tax breaks to billionaires like Elon Musk.”The bill ultimately passed in a 217-215 vote. Only one Democrat, Arizona congressman Raúl Grijalva, who has cancer, returned for the vote. But up until the moment the vote ended, Republicans were working to overcome unified Democratic opposition to the plan, which would likely result in steep cuts to social safety net programs, including Medicaid.“After three surgeries, a blood clot, an infection and being hospitalized for over a week, the moment I was discharged I immediately rushed to the airport so I could get on a plane to D.C. and vote NO on Republicans’ disastrous budget plan,” Mullin said in a statement after the vote. “They are trying to make the most devastating cuts to Medicaid the nation has ever seen – $880 billion – all so they can give more tax cuts to billionaires and corporations.”On board the flight, Mullin’s wife, Jessica Stanfill-Mullin, helped administer IV antibiotics to him.Here are some photos coming in from the wires showing demonstrators gathered on the floor of the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday, protesting cuts to USAid funding.Organized by ActUp’s Health Global Access Project, the protesters temporarily occupied the rotunda before Capitol Police arrested 21 of them.One of the big moments of today came from Donald Trump’s first officials cabinet meeting. Here were some of the key moments during the public portion of Trump’s first official cabinet meeting of his second term:

      Trump announced that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Washington DC to sign the rare earth minerals agreement. He praised Doge, claiming, without evidence, that it has saved billions.

      Elon Musk also delivered remarks and warned that without cost-cutting, the country could go “bankrupt” describing himself as “tech support”. He acknowledged mistakes made by Doge, such as when they accidently cancelled an Ebola prevention effort, but he said, they “restored it immediately and there was no interruption”.

      Trump also mentioned that the Environmental Protection Agency might cut up to 65% of its employees and declined to comment in response to a question about whether he would ever allow China to take control of Taiwan by force.

      Trump said that tariffs on Canada and Mexico will continue, and that a 25% tariff on the European Union was coming soon.

      Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy said that two people had died from a measles outbreak, but did not provide details about the deaths. Earlier on Wednesday, it was reported that one child had died of measles.
      Other news that happened today:

      UK prime minister Keir Starmer left for Washington today prior to his meeting with Donald Trump set for Thursday in what will be his biggest diplomatic test to date.

      US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said that the US will invest up to $1bn to combat the spread of bird flu, including increasing imports of eggs.

      President Donald Trump threatened to sue journalists and authors who use “anonymous” sources in their reporting.

      Minnesota Governor Tim Walz will not run for Minnesota’s newly open US Senate seat, according to his spokesperson.

      The US abstained from World Trade Organization condemnation of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.

      California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he is launching his own podcast.

      The US supreme court heard oral arguments in a case that could radically transform workplace discrimination claims.

      New York City Mayor Eric Adams asked a federal judge to toss out the corruption case against him.

      A meeting between EU foreign policy chief and US secretary of state Marco Rubio was cancelled, with both sides citing scheduling conflicts.

      Trump urged Apple to end its diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

      The Trump administration issued a memo directing federal agencies to plan for sweeping layoffs of government employees, according to the Associated Press and other news agencies.

      A US judge has briefly extended an order reinstating the head of a federal watchdog agency responsible for protecting whistleblowers who had challenged his firing by Trump.

      The Trump administration said that New York City must end its congestion pricing program by 21 March, according to Reuters.

      Trump announced that his administration is reversing concessions given to Venezuela on an oil transaction agreement by former president Joe Biden.

      The Trump administration will require undocumented immigrants aged 14 and older to register with the federal government or face possible fines or prosecution.

      The Senate confirmed Trump’s pick for US trade representative, Jamieson Greer.
      The US Securities and Exchange Commission has told unionized employees they will have to return to the office in mid-April, unless they have certain exemptions, per a memo seen by Reuters.In the memo, SEC Chief Operating Officer Ken Johnson told staff that they will be required to work on-site beginning 14 April 2025 and said that the return-to-work directive would “best position the SEC to fulfil the agency’s mission.”In response, the National Treasury Employees Union Chapter 239, which represents SEC employees, said in an email to members seen by Reuters, that the SEC’s action “plainly violates” the union contract and called the order illegal.“Like you, the union only received notice of this order by the SEC management moments ago,” the email reportedly said. Reuters is reporting that the union’s 2023 collective bargaining agreement outlines telework options for approved employees and that the agreement lasts three years.This comes as similar efforts have occurred at the agency with non-unionized staff, and across the federal workforce, in response to a mandate by President Donald Trump that officials fire remote or hybrid work arrangements.A US judge has briefly extended an order reinstating the head of a federal watchdog agency responsible for protecting whistleblowers who had challenged his firing by Donald Trump.According to Reuters, US district judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington said Hampton Dellinger, the head of the office of special counsel, could remain in his post through at least Saturday.Jackson said the extension would give her time to draft a permanent ruling in the case.Last week, the US supreme court temporarily kept Dellinger on the job as the head of the federal agency that protects government whistleblowers, in its first word on the many legal fights over the agenda of Trump’s second presidency.The justices said in an unsigned order that Dellinger could remain in his job at least until Wednesday. And now, that has been extended to at least Saturday, per Reuters.The Trump administration says in a letter made public on Wednesday that New York City must end its congestion pricing program by 21 March, according to Reuters.Last week, the transportation department announced that it intends to rescind federal approval of New York City’s congestion pricing program, that is designed to reduce traffic and raise money to upgrade ageing subway and bus systems.Two New York City transit agencies have filed suit to block the decision.The letter today comes as this week it was reported by the New York Times that New York’s congestion pricing plan raised $48.6m in tolls during its first month and that it has exceeded expectations and is on track to raise billions of dollars for the New York’s transit system.The revenue numbers were the latest sign that the tolling plan was working.President Donald Trump’s stated plan to slap a 25% tariff on exports from the European Union to the United States will result in a serious trade conflict, Norway’s prime minister Jonas Gahr Store said today to news agency NTB. Norway is not a member of the European Union but it closely integrated with the bloc on trade.A planned meeting between European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and US secretary of state Marco Rubio was reportedly abruptly cancelled on Wednesday, according to the Associated Press.Both sides blamed scheduling challenges, the AP said, but European officials said they were caught off-guard.In other news today, Utah is poised to become the first state in the US to ban fluoride from its water systems with a bill now before its Republican governor, Spencer Cox. The bill outlaws the adding of fluoride to water “in or intended for public water systems”, and adds that it repeals any previous laws “including sections about providing fluoridated water upon resident request and under emergency circumstances”.Cox has not publicly indicated support or opposition to the bill. If he signs it, fluoride would be banned across Utah starting 7 May, the Salt Lake Tribune reports.Although the bill would remove fluoride from public taps, it would also allow pharmacists to prescribe fluoride supplements to individuals.The bill, HB81, was approved last Friday. “I’m pleased to announce that HB81 has passed both the House and senate and is headed to the governor for his signature,” wrote Stephanie Gricius, the Republican who sponsored it, on social media. “I’m so grateful to everyone who helped push this policy.”Read more about it here:The White House on Wednesday reportedly denied reporters from Reuters, the AP, and other news organizations access to President Donald Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.Reuters is reporting that the White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper.TV crews from ABC and Newsmax, along with correspondents from Axios, the Blaze, Bloomberg News and NPR were permitted to cover the event.This comes as on Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it would take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.Trump has announced that his administration is reversing concessions given to Venezuela on an oil transaction agreement by former president Joe Biden.In a post on Truth Social, Trump said that he ordered that the agreement, “dated November 26, 2022” be terminated “as of the March 1 option to renew”.Additionally, Trump said, that Venezuela’s “regime has not been transporting the violent criminals that they sent into our Country (the Good Ole’ U.S.A.) back to Venezuela at the rapid pace that they had agreed to.“I am therefore ordering that the ineffective and unmet Biden ‘Concession Agreement’ be terminated as of the March 1st option to renew” he added.The Trump administration will require undocumented immigrants aged 14 and older to register with the federal government or face possible fines or prosecution.The US Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that under the “Protecting the American People Against Invasion” executive order signed by Donald Trump last month undocumented immigrants must also provide their fingerprints, while parents must ensure children under 14 are registered. The department will provide “evidence” of their registration and those 18 and over must carry that document at all times.The announcement comes as Trump has sought to harshly crackdown on immigration and implement a mass deportation campaign. Since taking office, his administration has attempted to suspend a refugee resettlement program (a judge blocked the cancellation), moved to cut off legal aid for immigrant kids (although it later walked back that decision), sought to allow immigration raids in schools and churches (another judge blocked such efforts in some houses of worship) and has begun sending undocumented immigrants to Guantánamo.Under the program announced this week, undocumented immigrants 14 and older in the US for 30 days or more will be required to register and undergo fingerprinting. Parents and guardians must register children under 14, and once children reach that age they must reapply and be fingerprinted, DHS said on its website. Those who do not comply can face criminal penalties, including misdemeanor prosecution, and fines.More on this story here:The Trump administration announced it will take control of the White House press pool, stripping the independent White House Correspondents’ Association (WHCA) of its longstanding role in deciding which journalists have access to the president in intimate settings.The move has immediately triggered an impassioned response from members of the media – including a Fox News correspondent who called it a “short-sighted decision”.The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, made the announcement during Tuesday’s press briefing, framing the move as democratizing access to the president.“A group of DC-based journalists, the White House Correspondents’ Association, has long dictated which journalists get to ask questions of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said.“Not any more. Today, I was proud to announce that we are giving the power back to the people.”The announcement upends over 70 years of established protocol of journalists themselves – not government officials – determining the rotating reporters who travel with the president on Air Force One and cover events in the Oval Office or Roosevelt Room.You can read more on this story here:Senate confirms Donald Trump’s pick for US trade representativeIn a 56-43 vote, Jamieson Greer was confirmed as the country’s top trade negotiator.Of those who voted in favor of Greer’s confirmation, five were Democrats: Senators John Fetterman, John Hickenlooper, Gary Peters, Elissa Slotkin and Sheldon Whitehouse.Greer is a former lawyer for the air force and served as the chief of staff for Robert Lighthizer, the US trade representative during Trump’s first term. Greer will play a key role in Trump’s tariff plans.Senator Ron Wyden, the ranking member of the Senate finance committee, opposed Greer’s confirmation and said: “Mr Greer will be a rubber stamp for the Trump Tax, the kneejerk decision to slap tariffs on nearly everything Americans buy and make high prices even higher.”Here were some of the key moments during the public portion of Trump’s first official cabinet meeting of his second term.

      Trump opened his meeting by announcing that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will visit Washington DC on Friday to sign an agreement regarding rare earth minerals.

      Trump spoke about the costs of eggs, and how his administration was working to “get the prices down”.

      During the meeting, Trump praised Doge and said, without evidence, that the initiative had cut billions and billions of dollars.

      Trump then asked Elon Musk to stand up and deliver some remarks about his work with Doge. In his remarks, Musk thanked the administration for its support and claimed that if costs don’t get cut, the country will go “bankrupt”. Musk also described himself as “tech support” and said that Doge was doing lots of work to “fix the government computer systems”.

      Musk acknowledged that Doge “won’t be perfect” and said that Doge accidently cancelled an Ebola prevention effort, but “restored it immediately and there was no interruption”.

      Musk said that Doge will send another ultimatum email to federal workers. “We want to give people every opportunity to send an email,” Musk said. Trump also told the room that the federal employees who have not responded so far are “on the bubble” and later added, “maybe they’re going to be gone”.

      Trump said that the Environmental Protection Agency plans to cut up to 65% or so of its employees.

      Trump declined to comment in response to a question about whether he would ever allow China to take control of Taiwan by force. The US president then went on to say that he has a great relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

      Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick, spoke about the new “gold card” plan and said that 200,000 of them could add up to $1tn.

      During the meeting, Trump heavily criticized former president Joe Biden, and criticized the Afghanistan withdrawal and the southern border.

      Trump once again said that he wanted Canada to become the 51st US state.

      Trump said that he will not be stopping tariffs on Canada or Mexico and that he will be announcing tariffs on the European Union soon. “It’ll be 25% generally speaking,” Trump said. “And that’ll be on cars and all other things.”

      Trump described Putin as a “very cunning person” and a “very smart guy”. He also said that he thinks “we are going to have a deal” regarding the war in Ukraine and said that Putin will “have to” make concessions.

      Health Secretary Robert F Kennedy, said that two people had died from a measles outbreak, but did not provide details about the deaths. Earlier on Wednesday, it was reported that one child had died of measles.
      Trump says that the US has “gotten bloated and fat and disgusting and incompetently run” before criticizing former president Joe Biden calling him the “worst president in the history of our country”. More

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      Fired USAid workers and HIV activists hold ‘die-in’ to protest Trump and Musk

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      Fired USAid employees and advocates for people with HIV staged a protest in a Capitol office building on Wednesday, warning that Donald Trump’s drive to dismantle the agency tasked with implementing Washington’s foreign aid agenda imperils the fight against the virus.Wearing white T-shirts that read “Aids funding cuts kill” and chanting “Congress has blood on its hands, unfreeze aid now”, around three dozen protesters lay down in the rotunda of the Cannon House office building, home to the offices of representatives from both parties. Capitol police said about 20 arrests were made of demonstrators who defied their orders to disperse.“What we are demanding of Congress is that they stop behaving like doormats in the face of this attack on humanitarian assistance that truly is highly effective and life-saving,” Asia Russell, executive director of Health Gap, a global advocacy group fighting against HIV, said prior to the protest.“It’s very hard to overstate what’s at stake regarding humanitarian assistance.”The protest came as USAid remained frozen by the Trump administration’s rapid moves to close the agency. Over the weekend, the agency announced that it was placing all but a small number of its employees worldwide, as well as nearly 2,000 staffers based in the United States, on paid leave. Those working in Washington DC have been invited to retrieve their belongings from its headquarters, which is set to be turned into office space for US Customs and Border Protection, one of the agencies implementing Trump’s hardline immigration policies.On Tuesday, a federal judge reportedly gave the government a two-day deadline to release billions of dollars in foreign aid funds that had been held back after Trump ordered USAid to stop work. If those funds are not restored, former USAid employees who attended the protest at the Capitol warned, the global fight against HIV will be set back.The United States has been a leader in the campaign against the virus that causes Aids through Pepfar, a program that provides medication to 20 million people worldwide and was established during Republican George W Bush’s presidency. But USAid’s abrupt closure has stopped payments to providers working with the program worldwide.“This is not controversial, and what is happening is not government efficiency, it’s government fraud, waste and abuse when it comes to what Doge is doing,” said the fired USAid contractor Van Credle, referring to Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency”, which spearheaded the dismantling of her agency as well as other deep cuts to federal services.The Republican majorities elected to both the Senate and House last November have thus far shown little interest in saving USAid and even supported its closure, despite the fact that foreign assistance has in the past enjoyed support on both sides of the aisle. Kelsey Crow, a contractor at the agency’s bureau of global health who lost her job, said the protest was meant to encourage lawmakers who previously supported USAid to step up.“So much of our work at USAid is mandated by Congress, and so for Congress to not be taking action, for Congress to be holding hearings that are pushing out lies and falsehoods about USAid to say that the waivers are back when we know that they’re actually not turned on and the money’s not actually flowing, it’s incredibly disappointing,” Crow said.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPeter Kerndt, a physician who spent five years with USAid coordinating the fight against tuberculosis in African and Asian countries, said it will be “impossible” to achieve a global goal of eliminating the virus by 2030 if the agency goes away.“For this administration, for Elon Musk to call USAid a criminal organization that should die and to gleefully celebrate that he spent the weekend putting USAid in the wood chipper instead of going to a party is such an insult to all of the workers, both here and in the country,” he said. “But most of all, the people that suffer are the people that we were there to help.”Andrew Roth contributed reporting More

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      White House gives federal agency heads deadline to produce plan for layoffs

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      US government agency heads have been given a 13 March deadline to produce a plan for drastically slashing the federal workforce as Donald Trump reinforced warnings that workers who failed to account for what they do could be fired.A White House memo issued on Wednesday directed bosses to provide details of their workforce reduction plans in the most specific instruction yet to managers to cut stuff who are deemed unnecessary or inefficient.“The federal government is costly, inefficient, and deeply in debt,” reads the seven-page, acronym-laden document, jointly written by Russ Vought, the newly installed director of the White House’s office of management and budget, and Charles Ezell, acting director of the office of personnel management (OPM).“Tax dollars are being siphoned off to fund unproductive and unnecessary programs that benefit radical interest groups while hurting hardworking American citizens.”As a remedy, it adds specific guidance to an executive order issued by Trump this month mandating large-scale “reductions in force” across government department and agencies.It calls for the elimination of “agency components and employees performing functions not mandated by statute or regulation who are not typically designated as essential during a lapse in appropriations”.“Agencies should focus on the maximum elimination of functions that are not statutorily mandated while driving the highest-quality, most efficient delivery of their statutorily-required functions,” the memo states.View image in fullscreen“Each agency will submit a Phase 1 ARRPs [agency reductions in force and reorganization plans] … for review and approval no later than March 13, 2025.”The dryly bureaucratic language was hardened by Trump at his first cabinet meeting in the White House on Wednesday, during which he said he spoke with the Environmental Protection Agency secretary, Lee Zeldin, about cutting “65 or so per cent” from the agency.Trump’s ally Elon Musk, head of the self-styled “department of government efficiency” unit that is spearheading the search for spending cuts, said he would send a second email asking federal workers to detail what they achieved at work.More than 1 million members of the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce have not replied to Musk’s initial demand that they describe their previous week’s work in five bullet points. Several of Trump’s cabinet members – including the FBI director, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard, director of the office of national intelligence – instructed staff not to answer because of the risks of revealing classified information.“Those million people that haven’t responded, they are on the bubble,” Trump said. “I wouldn’t say that we’re thrilled about it. Maybe they don’t exist. Maybe we’re paying people that don’t exist. [But] a lot of those people who have not responded …it’s possible those people will be fired.” More

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      #AltGov: the secret network of federal workers resisting Doge from the inside

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      After seeing Elon Musk’s X post on Saturday afternoon about an email that would soon land in the inboxes of 2.3 million federal employees asking them to list five things they did the week before, a clandestine network of employees and contractors at dozens of federal agencies began talking on an encrypted app about how to respond.Employees on a four-day, 10-hours-a-day schedule wouldn’t even see the email until Tuesday – past the deadline for responding – some noted. There was also a bit of snark: “bonus points to anyone who responds that they spent their government subsidy on hookers and blow,” one worker said.Within hours, the network had agreed on a recommended response: break up the oath federal employees take when hired into five bullet points and send them back in an email: “1. I supported and defended the constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”“2. I bore true faith and allegiance to the same,” and so on.It was only the latest effort by a growing and increasingly busy group banding together to “expose harmful policies, defend public institutions and equip citizens with tools to push back against authoritarianism”, according to Lynn Stahl, a contractor with Veterans Affairs and a member of the network. Increasingly, the group is also trying to help its members and others face the thousands of layoffs that have been imposed across the federal government.Calling itself #AltGov, the network has developed a visible, public-facing presence in recent weeks through Bluesky accounts, most of which bear the names or initials of federal agencies, aimed at getting information out to the public – and correcting disinformation – about the chaos being unleashed by the Trump administration.With 40 accounts to date, their collective megaphone is getting louder, as most of the accounts have tens of thousands of followers, with “Alt CDC (they/them)” being the largest, at nearly 95,000 followers.The network has also formed a group and a series of sub-groups on Wire, the encrypted messaging app, to share information and develop strategies – as played out on Saturday.View image in fullscreenThe #AltGov hashtag has roots in the first Trump administration, perhaps most famously through the “ALT National Park Service” account on what was then Twitter, according to Amanda Sturgill, journalism professor at Elon University, whose book We Are #AltGov: Social Media Resistance from the Inside documents the earlier phenomenon. (That account, with its 774,000 followers, has since moved to Bluesky. Its online presence is parallel to and separate from the #AltGov network.)The original #AltGov Twitter accounts were dedicated to “sharing information about what was happening inside government – which usually doesn’t get covered as much, because it usually works”, Sturgill said. Examples included the first Trump administration’s deletion of data and separation of families through immigration policies, she said.The people behind those accounts also banded together to “provide services the government wasn’t providing” – like helping coordinate hurricane relief and distributing masks during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic. Those efforts were often coordinated in Twitter group chats.It was “a movement, more than an organization”, Sturgill said – and the same could be said of the current version, which moved its social media presence from X (formerly Twitter) to Bluesky “because of the Elon mess”, said Stahl, referring to Musk’s 2022 purchase of the app. “It’s not safe to organize [on X] anymore,” she added.The current iteration has not been reported on to date, but the numbers of the Bluesky #AltGov accounts have doubled in recent weeks without media attention, Stahl said. The group internally vets all members “to make sure people work where they say”.View image in fullscreen“#AltGov dates from the first Trump administration, but it’s even more needed now,” said an employee at Fema, the disaster response agency, who requested anonymity to avoid being targeted at work. She recently launched an #AltGov Fema account on Bluesky. With nearly 13,000 followers, the account says it’s dedicated to “helping people before, during, and after (this democratic) disaster”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Every federal employee takes an oath,” said the Fema employee. “When I did it, I teared up.” She said one reason she decided to join #AltGov was because “information [from the federal government] is so compromised right now. Everything is going on behind closed doors.”As an example, she mentioned the moment nearly two weeks ago when Trump and Musk brought attention to her agency, claiming that Fema was spending $59m on housing immigrants in New York hotels. The administration fired four Fema employees. So she turned to Bluesky and posted on the #AltGov Fema account:
      Fiction: FEMA paid $59 million last week for illegal immigrants to stay luxury hotel rooms in NYC
      Fact: FEMA administered funds allocated by Congress via the Shelter and Services Program (for [Customs and Border Protection]) which reimburses jurisdictions for immigration-related expenses. FEMA just sends the payments.
      “The official story the federal government was telling was a lie!” the #AltGov member told the Guardian. “Of course they didn’t throw CBP under the bus – because to them, those are the people who lock up immigrants.”Stahl, the federal contractor, said that #AltGov members are also increasingly turning their attention to what she called “action plans” for everyday citizens, such as calling members of Congress and attending town halls. “The idea is to get regular people aware of what’s happening … [and] maybe even inspire some people to run for office,” she said.And as Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) swings its “chainsaw” through federal payrolls and piles up layoffs, #AltGov members also are using encrypted chats to figure out how federal employees can help one another. “[A]re we thinking of gathering resources for terminated folks?” one #AltGov member recently asked on Wire. “We are gonna need food bank info and benefits and anything the [federal] unions don’t cover.” Others weighed in on building a website to cover such information.Sturgill said the first go-round of #AltGov was “interesting … [because] it kind of stood up a different way of governing by putting it in direct contact with people – a ‘government with the people’. Whether this [version] can take it further depends on how much of the government is left.” More

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      Trump defends Musk as backlash to federal workers ultimatum grows

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      Donald Trump has stepped in to defend Elon Musk from a mounting backlash in his own administration after some cabinet members told US federal workers to ignore the billionaire entrepreneur’s demand that they write an email justifying their work.The US president was driven to intervene amid the first signs of internal dissension over the disruptive impact of Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which Trump has authorised to seek mass firings in the federal workforce and reduce supposed waste and corruption.Newly confirmed cabinet officials, including the FBI director, Kash Patel, and Tulsi Gabbard, the national intelligence director, told underlings not to comply with a weekend order from Musk for all staff to send an email detailing their past week’s work by midnight on Monday or face termination.As other government departments added to the pushback, the office of personnel management (OPM) issued a statement advising employees to respond but removed the sacking threat, while giving agency heads the authority to excuse staff from Musk’s demand.“Agency heads may exclude personnel from this expectation at their discretion and should inform OPM of the categories of the employees excluded and reasons for exclusion,” the OPM wrote in a statement. “It is agency leadership’s decision as to what actions are taken.”Cabinet officials will face Musk on Wednesday as the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said that the tech billionaire will join Trump’s first cabinet meeting despite not being a member of the cabinet.He will be “talking about all of Doge’s efforts and how all of the cabinet secretaries are identifying waste, fraud and abuse at their respective agencies”.With his wealthiest and most high-profile lieutenant threatened with loss of face and authority, Trump used a meeting with the French president, Emmanuel Macron at the White House on Monday to deliver a vote of confidence.“What he’s doing is saying: ‘Are you actually working?’ Trump said. “And then, if you don’t answer, like, you’re sort of semi-fired or you’re fired, because a lot of people aren’t answering because they don’t even exist.“I thought it was great because we have people that don’t show up to work and nobody even knows if they work for the government.”On Tuesday Trump added further to the confusion regarding Musk’s demand for an emailed response while talking to reporters in the Oval Office. “It’s somewhat voluntary,” he said, but added that “if you don’t answer, I guess you get fired”.Musk’s original post at the weekend had come after Trump had praised Doge’s work but urged him to “get more aggressive”.Intelligence-related bodies, including the FBI, CIA and the National Security Agency, argued that employees could risk divulging classified information if they complied.There was also resistance from other agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon – both run by key Trump loyalists Kristi Noem and Pete Hegseth respectively, and which told employees not to respond. The Department of Justice told its staff that they need not do so “due to the sensitive and confidential nature of the department’s work”.The Department of Health and Social Services (DHSS) – headed by one of Trump’s most contentious nominees, Robert F Kennedy Jr – told workers to be vague if they wished to answer.“Assume that what you write will be read by malign foreign actors and tailor your response accordingly,” staff were told in an email.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA more audacious sign of dissent was on display at the Department of Housing and Urban Development (Hud), where television monitors played what appeared to be AI-generated false images of Trump sucking Musk’s toes in a loop, with “long live the real king” written over the footage, according to the Washington Post, citing people working at the department.The episode crystallised an air of rebellion at many government agencies amid a mounting spate of court actions challenging the legality of Doge’s actions.“There’s a full revolt going on right now,” Doug Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a centre-right thinktank, told the Washington Post. “Doge’s stated objective was to reorganize the agencies to meet their goals, but Cabinet heads want to run their own agencies, and they are objecting to the across-the-board cuts coming from Musk’s team.”Despite the backlash, Musk took Trump’s comments as a signal to again threaten workers with the sack.“Subject to the discretion of the President, they will be given another chance. Failure to respond a second time will result in termination,” he posted on his own social media platform, Twitter/X, on Monday.A later post mocked the resistance to his original email. “Absurd that a 5 min email generates this level of concern!” he wrote. “Something is deeply wrong.”The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), a union representing about 800,000 of the 2.3 million-strong federal workforce, said Musk’s original email was a cynical ploy aimed at intimidating workers into resigning.“If we took the time to comment on each and every ridiculous thing that Elon Musk tweets out, we’d never get any work done,” Brittany Holder, a union spokesperson said. “AFGE will challenge any unlawful discipline, termination or retaliation against our members and federal employees across the country.” More