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      Transgender US military personnel must be identified and stood down, says Pentagon memo

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      Transgender service members will be separated from the US military unless they receive an exemption, according to a Pentagon memo filed in court on Wednesday – essentially banning them from joining or serving in the armed forces.Donald Trump signed an executive order in January that took aim at transgender troops in a personal way – at one point saying that a man identifying as a woman was “not consistent with the humility and selflessness required of a service member”.This month, the Pentagon had said that the US military would no longer allow transgender individuals to join and would stop performing or facilitating procedures associated with gender transition for service members.Wednesday’s late-evening memo went further. It said that the Pentagon must create a procedure to identify troops who are transgender within 30 days and then within 30 days of that, must start to separate them from the military.“It is the policy of the United States government to establish high standards for service member readiness, lethality, cohesion, honesty, humility, uniformity, and integrity,” said the memo, dated 26 February.“This policy is inconsistent with the medical, surgical, and mental health constraints on individuals with gender dysphoria or who have a current diagnosis or history of, or exhibit symptoms consistent with, gender dysphoria.”There is no requirement for transgender troops to self identify and the Pentagon doesn’t have a precise number.The Pentagon said waivers would be granted only “provided there is a compelling government interest in retaining the service member that directly supports warfighting capabilities”.It added that for a waiver, troops must also be able to meet a number of criteria, including that the service member “demonstrates 36 consecutive months of stability in the service member’s sex without clinically significant distress”.The military has about 1.3 million active duty personnel, according to Department of Defense data. Transgender rights advocates say there are as many as 15,000 transgender service members. Officials say the number is in the low thousands.The move, which goes further than restrictions Trump placed on transgender service members during his first administration, was described as unprecedented by advocates. “The scope and severity of this ban is unprecedented. It is a complete purge of all transgender individuals from military service,” said Shannon Minter of the National Center For Lesbian Rights (NCLR).The memo was filed in court as part of a lawsuit brought by NCLR and GLAD Law. The suit challenges the constitutionality of the January executive order and argues that it violates the equal protection component of the fifth amendment.This month, the US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, said people with gender dysphoria already in the military would be “treated with dignity and respect”. More

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      Top Democrat says Trump may seek mineral deal with both Russia and Ukraine

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      Donald Trump may be pursuing a mineral rights deal with Vladimir Putin and Russia as well as with Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Ukraine, a top Senate Democrat has warned, discussing the US president’s demand that Kyiv grant US firms access to 50% of its rare-earth reserves, as a price for helping end the war three years after Russia invaded.“I think anything that helps position Ukraine for any peace negotiations is a positive move,” said Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the ranking Democrat on the Senate foreign relations and armed services committee, who recently visited Ukraine.“Now, what we heard when we were in Ukraine is that 40-50% of those mineral deposits are actually in territory controlled by the Russians. Maybe part of the deal is President Trump is going to get a deal with Vladimir Putin on the mineral rights too. So … that could be a little tricky.”Shaheen was speaking to the One Decision podcast, hosted by the former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, the former CIA director Leon Panetta and the reporter Christina Ruffini.Saying Ukraine cannot expect to regain all territory taken by Russia, and rejecting Kyiv’s aim of joining Nato, Trump has demanded a deal with Ukraine as repayment for military support. On Wednesday, Trump said Zelenskyy would visit Washington on Friday to sign a “very big agreement that will be on rare earth and other things”.Trump did not offer details of a deal but said he was “not going to make security guarantees beyond very much,” adding: “We’re going to have Europe do that.”Trump is due to meet Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, on Thursday. Starmer has said the UK is willing to contribute peacekeeping troops.Shaheen said: “I do think there is support to do everything we can to help get a peace in Ukraine. And from my perspective, one of the most important aspects of that is ensuring that the Ukrainians are positioned in the most positive, favorable way for them. If this deal helps with that, and President Zelenskyy is comfortable signing it, then I support that.”Shaheen said her visit to Ukraine, with fellow Democrat Michael Bennet, of Colorado, and Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican, proved “compelling, disturbing”.The senators visited Bucha, where Russian troops carried out a massacre in 2022. The town “showed the resilience of the Ukrainian people,” Shaheen said, adding: “They’re willing to resist. And it showed just what a murderous thug Vladimir Putin is.”Shaheen said the senators “met with the mayor of Bucha, we met with the priest. There had been a mass grave of a couple of hundred of the civilians who were killed. There were over 500 killed in Bucha in that 33-day siege [the final toll is unclear]. It was horrific. It was absolutely brutal. Finding the graves, taking the corpses out of the graves.“We met with the investigators who were investigating each murder individually, and they showed us the picture of the Russian commander who had given the order. And it was very clear that the order was to frighten the civilians, to do everything you can to try and reduce any resistance from the civilians. And for me … I thought this was a small village someplace in the hinterlands of Ukraine, but it’s not, it’s a suburb of Kyiv, and the tanks were stopped right there at the suburb.“So it really pointed out the stark contrast between the Russians and the Ukrainians and what’s at stake in this war.”Trump has stirred huge controversy by seeming to favor Putin and Russia in regards to the war in Ukraine, not least by beginning talks for a settlement without including Ukraine or European powers.Asked about Trump’s lie that Zelenskyy was a dictator who started the war, Shaheen said: “It’s very distressing. And the president’s wrong. He’s just wrong … Vladimir Putin is the dictator. President Zelenskiy was duly elected by the people of Ukraine, and he has a higher favorability rating than Donald Trump.” More

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      Trump plans to cut more than 90% of USAid foreign aid contracts

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      The Trump administration said it is 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 cuts detailed by the administration would leave few surviving USAid projects for advocates to try to save in what are current court battles with the administration.The Trump administration outlined its plans in an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press and in filings in one of those federal lawsuits.The supreme court intervened in that case late Wednesday and temporarily blocked a court order requiring the administration to release billions of dollars in foreign aid by midnight.Wednesday’s disclosures also give an idea of the scale of the 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.Donald Trump and ally Elon Musk have hit foreign aid harder and faster than almost any other target in their push to cut the size of the federal government. Both men say USAid projects advance a liberal agenda and are a waste of money.Trump on 20 January ordered what he said would be a 90-day program-by-program review of which foreign assistance programs deserved to continue, and cut off all foreign assistance funds almost overnight. The funding freeze has stopped thousands of US-funded programs abroad, as the administration and Musk’s “department of government efficiency” teams have pulled the majority of USAid staff off the job through forced leave and firings.In the federal court filings on Wednesday, nonprofits owed money on contracts with USAid describe Trump political appointees and members of Musk’s teams terminating USAid’s contracts around the world at breakneck speed, without time for any meaningful review, they say.“’There are MANY more terminations coming, so please gear up!”’ lawyers for the nonprofits wrote, quoting an email sent by a USAid official to staff on Monday.The state department said Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, had reviewed the terminations.In all, the Trump administration said it will eliminate 5,800 of 6,200 multi-year USAid contract awards, for a cut of $54bn. Another 4,100 of 9,100 state department grants were being eliminated, for a cut of $4.4bn.The Washington Free Beacon was the first to report on the memo.The memo described the administration as spurred by a federal court order that gave officials until the end of the day Wednesday to lift the Trump administration’s monthlong block on foreign aid funding.“In response, State and USAid moved rapidly,” targeting USAid and state department foreign aid programs in vast numbers for contract terminations, the memo said.The nonprofits, among thousands of contractors, owed billions of dollars in payment since the freeze began, call the en masse contract terminations a maneuver to get around complying with the order to lift the funding freeze temporarily.Trump administration officials – after repeated warnings from the federal judge in the case – also said on Wednesday they had finally begun paying USAid bills again after the month-long halt on payments, freeing for delivery a few million of billions of dollars owed. 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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      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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      Canada’s American coach Marsch ‘ashamed’ of Trump’s 51st state comments

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      Canada head coach Jesse Marsch took direct aim at Donald Trump and the current state of discourse in the US in comments to media on Wednesday.“If I have one message to our president, it’s lay off the ridiculous rhetoric about Canada being the 51st state,” said Marsch, who grew up in Wisconsin and enjoyed a 13-year career in Major League Soccer before moving into coaching. “As an American, I’m ashamed of the arrogance and disregard that we’ve shown one of our historically oldest, strongest and most loyal allies.”Marsch was addressing the media in Los Angeles, where he appeared with other representatives of the four nations participating in the Concacaf Nations League finals, set to be hosted at SoFi Stadium at the end of next month. Canada will play Mexico in one semi-final on 20 March with the US and Panama playing each other on the same day, raising the possibility that the two nations will play each other in either the Nations League final or third place game on 23 March.Trump has repeatedly antagonized Canada in comments and through official policy proposals like tariffs during his second term. On multiple occasions he has said that Canada could become “the 51st state” of the United States and has proposed tariffs that experts predict would kick off a trade war between the countries.Trump’s comments have already resonated in the sports world. The US national anthem was booed repeatedly at NHL and NBA games in Canada, while the countries’ meeting at the NHL’s 4 Nations Face-Off became an overtly political spectacle. In the final of that tournament, the Canadian national anthem singer changed the song’s lyrics in a direct rebuke to Trump, before Canada set off wild celebrations with a victory.Marsch, the former Leeds United, RB Leipzig, RB Salzburg and New York Red Bulls head coach, said on Wednesday that international tournaments like the Nations League “mean something different now” given the current political climate, and said he finds the 51st state discourse to be “unsettling and frankly insulting.”“Canada is a strong, independent nation that’s deeply rooted in decency, and it’s a place that values high ethics and respect, unlike the polarized, disrespectful and often now, hate-fueled climate that’s in the US,” Marsch said. “It’s one of the things that I’ve enjoyed the most about our team, is that they exemplify this as human beings and as a team … So for me right now I couldn’t be prouder to be the Canadian national team coach. I found a place that embodies, for me, the ideals and morals of what not just football and a team is, but what life is, and that’s integrity, respect and the belief that good people can do great things together.”Canada, who appeared in their first men’s World Cup in 36 years in 2022, hired Marsch in 2024 and have continued to thrive. The team progressed to the third place game at the 2024 Copa América, and defeated the US 2-1 in a September friendly later that year. A win against Mexico at the Nations League finals would stretch the team’s unbeaten run to six games since the Copa América.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“One thing’s for sure, when I look forward to a month from now … I know this will fuel our team, the mentality we have, the will we have to play for our country, the desire we have to go after this tournament in every way and show on and off the pitch exactly what Canadian character is,” Marsch said.US men’s national team head coach Mauricio Pochettino was not present at the event, replaced instead by former USMNT defender and current US Soccer President of Sporting Oguchi Onyewu. Asked to respond to Marsch’s comments, Onyewu said: “We’re all here to promote the Concacaf Nations League, and all of my comments are to promote the Concacaf Nations League, SoFi Stadium, and the strong competition that we have on this panel right now.” More

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      Outcry as White House starts dictating which journalists can access Trump

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      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 upended more than 70 years of protocol of journalists – not government officials – determining which rotating reporters travel with the president on Air Force One and cover events in the Oval Office or Roosevelt Room.“Moving forward, the White House press pool will be determined by the White House press team,” Leavitt said. She added that while legacy outlets would still be included, the administration would be “offering the privilege to well-deserving outlets who have never been allowed to share in this awesome responsibility” – notably podcasters and rightwing media.As the media reeled from the attack on the press pool, the three main wire services that routinely report on the US presidency released a joint statement protesting Donald Trump’s decision to bar the Associated Press from official events.Reuters and Bloomberg News joined AP in decrying Trump’s move to restrict AP’s access to the president. The top editors of each of the wires said the unprecedented action had threatened the principle of open reporting and would harm the spread of reliable information to individuals, communities, businesses and global financial markets.“It is essential in a democracy for the public to have access to news about their government from an independent, free press,” the three editors said.The standoff between Trump and AP began on 14 February when the White House announced it was indefinitely barring AP reporters from the Oval Office and Air Force One. Officials said the step had been taken to punish AP for refusing to amend its style guide to change the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America”, as Trump had dictated.AP immediately sued over the restriction, but on Monday a federal judge declined to restore the wire service’s access to presidential events in the short term. Another hearing in the case, which is ongoing, is scheduled for next month.The White House wasted no time implementing the new policy over the composition of the press pool, ejecting a HuffPost reporter from Wednesday’s press pool rotation and removing Reuters from its traditional spot – just one day after the announcement. Also on Wednesday morning, Trump mused on legal action against journalists and publishers in a Truth Social post.“At some point I am going to sue some of these dishonest authors and book publishers, or even media in general, to find out whether or not these ‘anonymous sources’ even exist,” Trump posted, adding: “maybe we will create some NICE NEW LAW!!!”The announcement triggered immediate alarm among journalists who argue that the role of the WHCA is to make sure Americans who use any of the major mediums – including radio, television, print, wires and photography – are able to get the same access to Trump’s world.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“This move does not give the power back to the people – it gives power to the White House,” posted Jacqui Heinrich, a Fox News senior White House correspondent and WHCA board member. “The WHCA is democratically elected by the full-time White House press corps.”Heinrich added: “WHCA has determined pools for decades because only representatives FROM our outlets can determine resources all those outlets have – such as staffing – in order to get the President’s message out to the largest possible audience, no matter the day or hour.”In a separate missive on X, Heinrich also pointed out the press corps “from across a broad spectrum of tv, radio, print, stills, wires and new media” cover the White House full-time.“This is a short-sighted decision, and it will feel a lot different when a future Democratic administration kicks out conservative-leaning outlets and other critical voices,” she wrote.The WHCA president, Eugene Daniels, said the move “tears at the independence of a free press in the United States” and “suggests the government will choose the journalists who cover the president”. He noted the White House did not consult with the WHCA before making the announcement.Later on Wednesday, the White House denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to Trump’s first cabinet meeting in keeping with the administration’s new policy regarding media coverage.The White House denied access to an Associated Press photographer and three reporters from Reuters, HuffPost and Der Tagesspiegel, a German newspaper. More