Trump Administration Live Updates: Trump Officials Break With Musk Over Ultimatum to Federal Workers
"Musk’s ultimatum: Federal personnel officials walked back Elon Musk’s demand that government workers justify their jobs in an email or face termination, saying that his request had been “voluntary.” The update from the Office of Personnel Management came after Trump-appointed officials at some agencies told employees not to respond. But confusion persisted: President Trump said workers who did not comply would be fired or “sort of semi-fired,” while Mr. Musk said employees would be given a second chance to respond or be terminated. Read more ›
Trump-Macron: Mr. Trump and President Emmanuel Macron of France met at the White House on the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, displaying an old friendship but diverging on the war. Mr. Macron said that any agreement “must not mean a surrender of Ukraine.” Mr. Trump said nothing about what Russia should give up to end the fighting and reiterated his demand that the United States get a share of Ukraine’s mineral wealth, as the two countries appeared to be nearing a deal. Read more ›
I.R.S. chief: The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is expected to announce on Tuesday that he is retiring, according to three people familiar with the move. Doug O’Donnell, who has spent nearly 40 years at the I.R.S., would be the latest agency head to depart after Mr. Musk’s team pushed for access to sensitive data and mass layoffs. Read more ›
Speaker Mike Johnson is huddling with House Republicans this morning here on Capitol Hill, trying to put together the votes to pass their budget resolution later today. He is facing possible defections from a group of moderates who are leery that the legislation could pave the way for deep Medicaid cuts in their districts, as well as a handful of conservatives who want even deeper cuts.
One of those moderates is Representative David Valadao of California, whose predicament we wrote about here. Almost 2 in 3 of his constituents are on Medicaid.
Alarmed by cuts already made to federal agencies that help safeguard elections, and fearful that more could be coming, a bipartisan group of the nation’s top state election officials has appealed to Kristi Noem, the secretary of homeland security, for help.
In a rare move, the ordinarily restrained National Association of Secretaries of State wrote to Ms. Noem, the former South Dakota governor, on Friday asking that critical election programs and protections be spared during an upcoming agency review.
Emil Bove III, the acting deputy attorney general, stood stone-faced and alone at the prosecution table inside the federal courthouse in Manhattan last week to do a job his onetime colleagues in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York would not.
Mr. Bove, who runs the day-to-day operations of the Justice Department under President Trump, was there to seek the dismissal of corruption charges against Mayor Eric Adams, a task seen as so dubious that two prosecutors in a prideful office known as the “Sovereign District of New York” resigned rather than carry out his demands to do it.
The acting commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service is expected to announce on Tuesday that he is retiring, according to three people familiar with the move, the latest agency head to depart after Elon Musk’s team pushed for access to sensitive data and mass layoffs.
Doug O’Donnell, who has spent nearly 40 years at the I.R.S., took over the agency last month after the last commissioner stepped down at the beginning of President Trump’s term. Melanie Krause, the chief operating officer at the I.R.S., is expected to become the new acting leader after Mr. O’Donnell leaves on Friday, the people said on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
A government watchdog lawyer whose dismissal by President Trump has been stalled by the courts announced on Monday that his office would seek to pause the mass firings of some probationary federal workers.
The lawyer, Hampton Dellinger, who leads the Office of Special Counsel, a government agency that protects whistle-blowers, said his office had determined that the firings might violate the law.
A federal judge in Washington said on Monday that the way the Trump administration set up and has been running Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency may violate the Constitution.
The skepticism expressed by the judge, Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, did not come as part of a binding ruling, but it suggested that there could be problems looming for Mr. Musk’s organization, which is also known as the U.S. DOGE Service.
A federal judge cleared the way on Monday for the White House to continue barring The Associated Press from covering news events with President Trump, extending a legal fight over freedom of speech and press access, which Mr. Trump has long sought to challenge.
The Associated Press sued several top Trump administration officials last week, accusing them of violating the First and Fifth Amendments by barring its reporters from press events. The White House began turning away the wire service’s reporters this month, raising objections to its editorial decision to continue to refer to the Gulf of Mexico in its coverage, rather than calling the body of water the Gulf of America.
Ukraine and the United States are closing in on an agreement that would grant Washington a share of Kyiv’s revenues from natural resources, President Trump and a Ukrainian government official said Monday, after an intense pressure campaign from the American president to strike a deal.
Mr. Trump said that President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine may come to the White House this week or next week to sign the agreement. “The agreement’s being worked on now. They’re very close to a final deal,” Mr. Trump said on Monday at the White House."
No comments:
Post a Comment