Musk boasts about ‘thrashing bureaucracy’ in cozy joint interview with Trump – US politics live | Trump administration

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Donald Trump intends to nominate advisers from his first term to top justice department posts, including John Eisenberg to lead the national security division and Brett Shumate for the civil division, Reuters reports.

Shumate is already acting head of the civil division and managing the department’s defense of the administration against a slew of lawsuits over federal worker firings, the dismantling of federal agencies and the attempts by Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” to access sensitive data.

Shumate, who was a partner in the Jones Day law firm that has longstanding ties to Trump, unsuccessfully defended the Republican president’s executive order curtailing the right to automatic birthright citizenship in the US, which a federal judge last month ruled was “blatantly unconstitutional”.

He was a deputy assistant attorney general in the civil division’s federal programs branch during Trump’s first term from 2017-2021.

Eisenberg was legal adviser to the national security council during Trump’s first White House term, as well as an assistant to the president and deputy counsel to the president for national security affairs.

He also held senior positions in the justice department including a deputy assistant attorney general in the office of legal counsel. Eisenberg clerked for supreme court justice Clarence Thomas, a member of the high court’s conservative majority.

Patrick Davis will be nominated to lead the office of legislative affairs, the department said in a statement, in what would be his third stint there. During Trump’s first term, he served as deputy associate attorney general.

All three posts require confirmation by the Senate. The announcement comes a day after Trump said he has instructed the justice department to terminate all remaining US attorneys from the previous administration of Joe Biden, asserting without evidence that the department had been “politicized like never before”.

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Updated at 10.56 EST

Trump issues executive order to expand his power over agencies Congress made independent

Donald Trump has signed an executive order making independent regulatory agencies established by Congress now accountable to the White House – a move that some experts said clashes with mainstream interpretations of the constitution.

The order forces major regulators such as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to report new policy priorities to the executive branch for approval, which will also have a say over their budgets.

In a fact sheet, the White House described the move as, “ensuring that all federal agencies are accountable to the American people, as required by the constitution”.

“The order notes that article II of the US constitution vests all executive power in the president, meaning that all executive branch officials and employees are subject to his supervision,” the fact sheet said. The order will also apply to the Federal Reserve but will exempt the central bank’s authority over monetary policy.

The latest apparent power grab from the Trump administration would give the office of management and budget head, Russell Vought, oversight over a suite of major agencies – including regulators of Wall Street, campaign finance, telecommunications companies, labor and even the Postal Service.

The Trump order aligns with campaign promises to make independent agencies accountable to the president and a pledge Vought made in 2023:

What we’re trying to do is identify the pockets of independence and seize them.

You can read more here:

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Updated at 10.47 EST

Trump administration officials scrambled over the weekend to rehire hundreds of employees they fired last Thursday at the National Nuclear Security Administration, CNN reported on Tuesday.

More than 300 employees were initially fired at the agency, which manages the US’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. All but around 25 have since been reinstated, two current NNSA employees with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

Officials backtracked on the terminations on Friday after multiple members of Congress petitioned the energy secretary, Chris Wright, to reverse course, explaining the dire national security implications.

Rob Plonski, a deputy division director at NNSA, wrote on LinkedIn on Friday:

We cannot expect to project strength, deterrence, and world dominance while simultaneously stripping away the federal workforce that provides strategic oversight to ensure our nuclear enterprise remains safe, secure, and effective.

Donald Trump said on Tuesday that he was not concerned about the firings. He told reporters traveling with him in West Palm Beach, Florida:

No, not at all, I think we have to just do what we have to do. It’s amazing what’s being found right now – it’s amazing. Some, if we feel that, in some cases, they’ll fire people and then they’ll put some people back, not all of them, because a lot of people were let go.

You can read CNN’s report here.

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Updated at 10.27 EST

As Donald Trump’s administration continues to fire thousands of federal workers and radically slash federal spending, some Republicans are growing unnerved, Axios reports.

As the cuts start to hit GOP lawmakers’ districts and states, some have told Axios there is a larger conflict brewing over the constitutional issue of whether the president can bypass Congress on such decisions.

One House Republican told Axios that the efforts of Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) to shutter the US Agency for International Development (USAid), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies could bring the situation to a head. They said:

I think you’re going to see a clash when they … start abolishing (agencies). Say like USAid, right? We authorized that. That’s a creature of Congress. If they try to do something like that, then you’re going to get into a constitutional argument or crisis.

The Senate appropriations committee chair, Susan Collins told Axios the administration is moving “too fast”. She said Elon Musk’s team should wait until agency heads are confirmed and can take “a more surgical approach”.

She went on to say some recent actions “violate restrictions that are in current law” and the team is “making mistakes”, referencing the accidental firing of officials working on bird flu.

Don Bacon, a representative from Nebraska, said:

Before making cuts rashly, the administration should be studying and staffing to see what the consequences are. Measure twice before cutting. They have had to backtrack multiple times.

Alaska senator Lisa Murkowski told Axios of her state’s many federal workers:

We all want efficiencies, there is a way to do it, and the way these people have been treated has been awful in many cases. Awful.

She posted on X, the social media platform owned by Musk, four days ago that the administration’s approach was causing “confusion, anxiety and trauma” to civilians:

Dozens of Alaskans – potentially over 100 in total – are being fired as part of the Trump administration’s reduction-in-force order for the federal government.

Many of these abrupt terminations will do more harm than good, stunting opportunities in Alaska and leaving holes in our communities. We can’t realize our potential for responsible energy and mineral development if we can’t permit projects. We will be less prepared to manage summer wildfires if we can’t support those on the front lines. Our tourism economy will be damaged if we don’t maintain our world-class national parks and forests.

I share the administration’s goal of reducing the size of the federal government, but this approach is bringing confusion, anxiety, and now trauma to our civil servants – some of whom moved their families and packed up their whole lives to come here. Indiscriminate workforce cuts aren’t efficient and won’t fix the federal budget, but they will hurt good people who have answered the call to public service to do important work for our nation.

My staff and I are in close touch with agency and department officials, trying to get answers about the impact of these terminations. Our goal is to forestall unnecessary harm – for people and Alaska’s federal priorities – but the response so far has been evasive and inadequate.

Iowa senator Chuck Grassley told RadioIowa it is “a tragedy for people that are getting laid off”, but that “this is an executive branch decision”. He added:

Congress can’t do anything except complain about it.

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Updated at 10.18 EST

Trump cuts threaten a ‘generation of scientists’ as many weigh leaving US

The Trump administration’s planned cuts to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) not only threaten essential biomedical research in the US, but the livelihoods of researchers – and some are seriously considering leaving the country.

A 27 January memo from the Office of Management and Budget instructed federal agencies to pause funding allocations to ensure they serve Donald Trump’s goals, including “ending ‘wokeness’ and the weaponization of government, promoting efficiency in government, and Making America Healthy Again”.

On 7 February, the administration implemented a policy that would cut NIH funding to research institutions by over two-thirds. A federal judge has since blocked the cuts – for now.

Biomedical scientists depend on the NIH to fund their employment. Many are expected to cover a large proportion of their own salaries with NIH grants. Scientists studying neuroscience, diabetes, autism and bird flu became emotional as they spoke to the Guardian about the possibility of losing their life’s work.

Read the full report here:

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State department orders cancellation of media subscriptions around world

The state department has reportedly ordered its outposts around the world to cancel all subscriptions to news and media outlets that are supposedly “non-mission critical” in another extraordinary Trump administration crackdown on normal information channels.

An email memo was circulated to embassies and consulates earlier this month explaining that the move was a further effort to cut costs by the federal government, the Washington Post reported late on Tuesday.

The newspaper cited the 11 February directive to foreign posts as reading: “Posts are asked to immediately place Stop Work Orders on all non-mission critical contracts/purchase orders for media subscriptions (publications, periodicals, and newspaper subscriptions) that are not academic or professional journals.”

The state department did not respond to a request for comment by the Washington Post. The Guardian has submitted a request for comment.

The reported directive to cancel news subscriptions will apply at hundreds of US diplomatic offices across the globe and a state department official who asked not to be named while discussing internal departmental matters told the Post that embassy teams around the world would be hindered by having media subscriptions cut off, especially for important activities such as examining threats to US national security and arranging trips in risky areas for diplomats and staff.

The restrictions apply to outlets such as national newspapers and global news agencies.

Another reported memo, sent on 14 February, told relevant staff to make it a priority to cancel such mainstream media outlets as the Economist, the New York Times, Politico, Bloomberg News, the Associated Press and Reuters, the Post said.

Staff who object to canceling a subscription can apply to keep it but must briefly put forward strong justifications.

A state department employee who spoke anonymously to the Post described access to the news as necessary and said of the directive: “This will endanger American lives overseas because we are being cut off from news sources that are needed on a daily basis.”

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Donald Trump and his wealthiest backer, the multibillionaire Elon Musk, expressed gushing admiration for each other in a Fox News interview in which each accused the media of trying to drive them apart.

Interviewed together in the White House, the pair spoke of each other in such warm terms that the interviewer, Sean Hannity, was moved to say: “I feel like I’m interviewing two brothers here.”

The united front was maintained to reject accusations that Musk’s so-called “department of government of efficiency” (Doge) – which has upended huge swaths of the federal bureaucracy in a supposed attempted to find “waste, fraud and corruption” – is a violation of the US constitution, saying their critics were themselves guilty of this.

They also dismissed complaints that Musk, who has billions of dollars of government contracts through his ownership of companies such as SpaceX and Tesla, had serious conflicts of interest that could lead him to skew federal spending in his favour.

Asked by Hannity how he would respond if he saw a conflict, Trump said: “He wouldn’t be involved.” Musk followed up by saying:

I’ll recuse myself. I mean, I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever.

The interview was aired after a chorus of criticism of Musk’s prominent role in Trump’s administration and suggestions from critics that he was usurping the president’s power, earning the appellation of “President Musk” in some quarters, including the cover of Time magazine.

Amid speculation of incipient tensions supposedly fuelled by Trump’s known dislike of sharing the limelight, the pair went to great lengths to show personal fealty to each other.

Read the full report on the lovefest here:

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Updated at 09.37 EST

Putin says Trump told him Ukraine will be included in peace talks and claims Russia is ready to negotiate

Vladimir Putin has reportedly said Donald Trump told him Ukraine would take part in future peace talks.

The Russian president is quoted by Interfax and Tass agencies as saying he is ready to get back to negotiations on Ukraine, which is a priority for Russia. He also praised the US-Russia talks, saying their purpose was to increase trust between the two countries, and that the two sides acted without “bias or judgment”.

He reportedly said that he would be happy to meet Trump, but that meeting still needs to be prepared.

My colleague Jane Clinton has more over on our Europe live blog:

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Updated at 09.24 EST

Speaking of approval ratings, Donald Trump’s has ticked slightly lower in recent days as more Americans worried about the direction of the economy as the president threatens a host of countries with tariffs, a Reuters/Ipsos poll found.

The six-day poll, which closed on Tuesday, showed 44% of respondents approved of the job Trump is doing as president, down from 45% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll conducted 24-26 January. Trump’s approval rating stood at 47% in a 20-21 January poll conducted in the hours after his return to the White House.

The share of Americans who disapprove of his presidency has risen more substantially, to 51% in the latest poll, compared with 41% right after he took office.

Trump enjoys a relatively high rate of approval on his immigration policy, with 47% of respondents backing his approach that has included promises to ramp up deportations of migrants in the country illegally. The share was little changed from January.

But the share of Americans who think the economy is on the wrong track rose to 53% in the latest poll from 43% in the 24-26 January poll. Public approval of Trump’s economic stewardship fell to 39% from 43% in the prior poll.

A pillar of Trump’s political strength has been public belief that his policies will be good for the economy, and his rating on the economy remains significantly higher than the final readings of his predecessor in office, Joe Biden, who ended his term with a 34% approval rating on the economy. But Trump’s rating for the economy is well below the 53% he had in Reuters/Ipsos polling conducted in February 2017, the first full month of his first term as president.

In the latest poll, only 32% of respondents approved of Trump’s performance on inflation, a potential early sign of disappointment in his performance on a core economic issue after several years of rising prices weakened Biden ahead of last year’s presidential election.

A recent report from the US Labor Department showed consumer prices rose by the most in nearly one-and-a-half years in January, with Americans facing higher costs for a range of goods and services. Other economic data has shown US households expect inflation to pick up following Trump’s 1 February announcements for steep tariffs on imports from China, Mexico and Canada.

While the levies on Mexico and Canada have since been delayed until March, Trump has set 12 March as the start date for other tariffs on imported steel and aluminum and he has directed his staff to devise global reciprocal tariffs.

Further, 54% percent of respondents in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll said they opposed new tariffs on imported goods from other countries, while 41% were in favor of them. Increasing tariffs on Chinese goods had higher levels of support, with 49% in favor and 47% against.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll, which was conducted online, surveyed 4,145 US adults nationwide and had a margin of error of about two percentage points in either direction.

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Updated at 09.23 EST

Emil Bove takes leading role in implementing Trump takeover of DoJ

Emil Bove, the acting deputy attorney general, moving with ruthless efficiency last week to dismiss the corruption case against the New York mayor, Eric Adams, appeared to reflect the new praxis at the justice department where Trump’s political agenda will guide prosecutorial decisions.

The department filed the motion to dismiss on Friday with the signatures of Bove and two trial attorneys – the public integrity section’s senior litigation counsel Edward Sullivan and the acting head of the criminal division Antoinette Bacon – that cemented the decision.

While the presiding US district judge Dale Ho has ordered an evidentiary hearing to examine the circumstances under which the charges were withdrawn, including the protest resignation of the acting US attorney in Manhattan, the case is widely seen as over in practical terms.

The move to force through the dismissal showed the new course that Bove is charting as the justice department’s number-two official, implementing Donald Trump’s vision of the unitary executive theory, where the president directs the decisions of every agency.

In ordering the case be dropped, Bove wrote that “continuing these proceedings would interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security and related federal immigration initiatives and policies” to deport undocumented immigrants.

The memo made clear that aiding a mayor who wanted to help with the immigration crackdown, a national priority, outweighed continuing to bring bribery charges against a local mayor, and the justice department in future will balance policy priorities against the merits of a case.

And Bove’s effort to press forward with the dismissal also reflected his determination to bring the justice department to heel after weathering resignations in protest from seven prosecutors that appeared to verge on insubordination, according to people familiar with the situation.

Read more here:

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Updated at 09.10 EST

Zelenskyy says Trump living in disinformation bubble after blaming Ukraine for Russian invasion

The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said Donald Trump is “living in a disinformation bubble” after the US president last night appeared to blame Ukraine for Russia’s illegal 2022 invasion.

Trump’s comments, made last night in Florida, were his first on Ukraine since the US held peace talks with Russia in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, earlier on Tuesday. He said he was “very disappointed” that Zelenskyy had complained about Ukraine not being invited to the talks, adding:

You’ve been there for three years … You should have never started it. You could have made a deal.

The comments parrot one of Vladimir Putin’s main talking points which is that Ukraine was somehow to blame for Russia’s invasion.

Trump also falsely suggested that Zelenskyy is unpopular at home with a 4% approval rating and is blocking elections in Ukraine. In fact Zelenskyy declared martial law after Russia invaded and the latest polls show 57% of Ukrainians trust his leadership.

Zelenskyy accused the US of bringing Russia out of diplomatic isolation by holding the bilateral talks in Riyadh, and warned of “a lot of disinformation coming out of Russia” as he called out Trump’s misleading statements.

Unfortunately, President Trump, with all due respect for him as the leader of a nation that we respect greatly … is living in this disinformation bubble.

Zelenskyy added that the focus is on what support Europe can provide to Ukraine if there is a reduction in US assistance. He also pointedly rejected the current US draft deal on minerals saying it was “not ready”, drafted under US law, and offering inadequate compensation.

I can’t sell it away, I can’t sell our state.

The Ukrainian president rejected any suggestion of making broad concessions to Russia, saying any such idea was widely rejected by Ukrainians, and challenged the US Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, visiting Kyiv today, to go and talk to ordinary Ukrainians about their reception of Trump’s comments.

Zelenskyy also opposed the use of the word “conflict” to describe Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, saying it is a deliberate attempt to soften the perception of the aggression.

For all the latest on Ukraine and Europe, head over to our Europe live blog:

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Updated at 09.00 EST

Trump signs executive order expanding access to IVF, says White House

by Léonie Chao-Fong and Carter Sherman

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF).

The order directs the domestic policy council to make recommendations to “aggressively” reduce the costs for accessing IVF, according to a White House fact sheet. Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said on X that the order was evidence of the president’s “promises kept” – even though the order does not directly change any policy and does not, on its own, fulfill Trump’s campaign pledge to make the government or insurance companies cover IVF.

“Americans need reliable access to IVF and more affordable treatment options, as the cost per cycle can range from $12,000 to $25,000,” the fact sheet reads.

“It is the policy of my administration to ensure reliable access to IVF treatment, including by easing unnecessary statutory or regulatory burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable.”

During the 2024 presidential election, Trump recast his position on IVF as a strong supporter of the treatment, declaring himself the “father of IVF” while at the same time admitting he only recently discovered what the procedure involved.

Read the full report here:

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Updated at 08.24 EST

Donald Trump and Elon Musk lavished praise on each other while defending the Doge overhaul in a joint interview on Fox News.

Musk boasted of a “thrashing of the bureaucracy as we try to restore democracy and the will of the people” when asked about criticism of the so-called “department of government efficiency”.

The pair joked around in the cozy hour-long primetime TV interview with Sean Hannity who at one point was moved to say: “I feel like I’m interviewing two brothers here.”

Trump said Musk, as the face of Doge had identified 1% in alleged waste, fraud and abuse adding that he thinks the billionaire is “going to find $1tn”.

They also dismissed complaints that Musk, who has billions of dollars of government contracts through his ownership of companies such as SpaceX and Tesla, had serious conflicts of interest that could have lead him to skew federal spending in his favour.

Asked by Hannity how he would respond if he saw a conflict, Trump said: “He wouldn’t be involved.” Musk followed up by saying: “I’ll recuse myself. I mean, I haven’t asked the president for anything, ever.”

In other developments:

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to expand access to in vitro fertilization (IVF). The order directs the domestic policy council to make recommendations to “aggressively” reduce the costs for accessing IVF, according to a White House fact sheet.

Trump criticized the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, appearing to blame Ukraine for the war with Russia after the Ukrainian leader complained about being left out of peace talks between the US and Russia. “Today I heard: ‘Oh, well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years … You should have never started it. You could have made a deal,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian reaction.

Zelenskyy responded to Trump’s comments by saying the US president “is living in this disinformation bubble”.

Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, Keith Kellogg is in Kyiv to meet with Zelenskyy – a day after top US and Russian diplomats held discussions in Saudi Arabia.

The New York City mayor, Eric Adams, will face a federal judge on Wednesday who will decide whether to grant the justice department’s request to dismiss corruption charges against him after lawyers explain the abrupt change in position just weeks before an April trial.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio met with the leader of the United Arab Emirates. President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan told Rubio on Wednesday that his country rejects a proposal to displace Palestinians from their land, the Emirati state news agency WAM reported.

Top prosecutor Denise Cheung resigned on Tuesday after refusing to investigate a government contract awarded during Biden’s tenure, as Trump continues to attempt to exert tighter control over the justice department, an agency traditionally seen as independent of White House influence.

Trump expanded his offensive against trading partners on Tuesday, threatening 25% tariffs on imported cars, and similar or higher duties on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors, AFP reports.

Hundreds of Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) employees were fired as part of a wave of terminations of federal workers over the holiday weekend and Tuesday, the Washington Post reports, adding the move could affect people struggling to rebuild and prepare for disasters.

A Republican-led Senate committee is scheduled to hold a hearing today on Trump’s nominee for labor secretary, Lori Chavez-DeRemer. Chavez-DeRemer supported a bill called the Pro Act, a top priority of labor unions, and is endorsed by the Teamsters Union, NBC reports.

An Israeli official said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has appointed a close confidant, the US-born Ron Dermer, to lead negotiations for the second stage of the ceasefire with Hamas. Dermer previously served as Israel’s ambassador to the US and is a former Republican activist with strong ties to the Trump White House.

One in five Americans have said they are “doom spending” – purchasing more items than usual – owing to concerns over Trump’s tariffs, reflecting heightened consumer anxiety over potential price hikes and economic uncertainty.

Trump’s cuts threaten a “generation of scientists” as many weigh leaving the US.

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Updated at 09.29 EST