The Latest: Trump’s pick for budget director expected to ramp up his Project 2025 vision
The Republican-led Senate is expected to confirm a chief architect of Project 2025 as director of the Office of Management and Budget on Thursday, despite round-the-clock speeches by Democrats who lack the votes to stop it. Russ Vought is working closely with Elon Musk to vastly reduce the size and capacity of the federal government, the nation's largest employer.
While Vought awaits confirmation, Musk has orchestrated an unprecedented financial incentive for people to leave their government jobs, promising several months of pay in return for their resignation. More than 2 million workers face a deadline of 11:59 p.m. EST Thursday to decide if they should leave.
Shockwaves continue from Trump's proposal to take over the war-ravaged Gaza Strip and redevelop it without its 2.3 million Palestinians. The idea has been roundly rejected by the Palestinians and U.S. allies across the Middle East with the exception of Israel, which said it has begun preparations to move them out by land, sea and air. Human Rights Watch and other groups say it would amount to “ethnic cleansing,” the forced removal of an entire population through violence.
Here's the latest:
President Donald Trump’s nominee for education secretary will face her first confirmation test next week.
Linda McMahon is scheduled to go before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on Feb. 13. If confirmed, Trump said her top priority will be dismantling the agency, saying he wants McMahon “to put herself out of a job.”
McMahon, 76, is a longtime Trump ally and former CEO of World Wrestling Entertainment. She led the Small Business Administration during Trump’s first term.
President Donald Trump on Thursday blamed last week’s deadly collision of a passenger jet and Army helicopter on what he called an “obsolete” computer system used by U.S. air traffic controllers, and he vowed to replace it.
Trump said during an event that “a lot of mistakes happened” on Jan. 29 when an American Airlines flight out of Wichita, Kansas, collided with an Army helicopter as the plane was about to land at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington, killing all 67 people on board the two aircraft.
In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, Trump blamed diversity hiring programs for the crash. But on Thursday, he blamed the computer system used by the country’s air traffic controllers.
“It’s amazing that it happened,” Trump said during a speech at the National Prayer Breakfast at the U.S. Capitol. “And I think that’s going to be used for good. I think what is going to happen is we’re all going to sit down and do a great computerized system for our control towers. Brand new — not pieced together, obsolete.”
▶ Read more about Trump’s response to the crash
Trump is tapping Attorney General Pam Bondi to lead an effort to root out “anti-Christian bias” nationwide.
The president said during the National Prayer Breakfast that the task force would be directed to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination.”
It’s envisioned as an office within the White House that Trump said would place a special emphasis on bias within the federal government, “at the DOJ, which was absolutely terrible, the IRS, the FBI — terrible — and other agencies.”
The emergence of X owner Elon Musk as the most influential figure around President Donald Trump has created an extraordinary dynamic — a White House adviser using one of the world’s most powerful information platforms to sell the government’s talking points while intimidating its detractors.
The world’s richest man is using the social media platform as a cudgel and a megaphone for the Republican administration at a time when his power to shape the electorate’s perspective is only growing, with more Americans getting their news from ‘influencers’ online. Musk alone has 215 million followers.
Requests for comment from Musk’s special commission, the Department of Government Efficiency, and X were not returned.
Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University and the author of “How Democracies Die,” said “This is a combination of economic, media and political power that I believe has never been seen before in any democracy on Earth.”
▶ Read more about how Musk is wielding his power
IRS employees involved in the 2025 tax season will not be allowed to accept the Trump administration’s offer to be paid to quit until after the taxpayer filing deadline.
A letter to IRS employees Wednesday says such workers are exempt until May 15.
Union leaders and worker advocates have criticized the proposal and question whether the Trump administration will honor its terms.
“This country needs skilled, experienced federal employees,” said Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union. “We are urging people not to take this deal because it will damage the services to the American people and it will harm the federal employees who have dedicated themselves and their career to serving.”
▶ Read more about how Trump’s push to get federal workers to quit affects the IRS
The Trump administration’s decision to close the U.S. Agency for International Development has drawn widespread criticism from congressional Democrats and raised questions and concern about the influence billionaire ally Elon Musk wields over the federal government.
The United States is by far the world’s largest source of foreign assistance, although several European countries allocate a much bigger share of their budgets to aid. USAID funds projects in some 120 countries aimed at fighting epidemics, educating children, providing clean water and supporting other areas of development.
▶ Read more about the global impact of closing USAID
A federal judge is considering next steps in a slow-moving court case over whether to release documents that could spell legal trouble for Prince Harry.
The influential Heritage Foundation sued the Department of Homeland Security during the Biden administration, seeking to reveal if he lied on his immigration paperwork about past drug use or received special treatment when he and his wife Meghan Markle moved to Southern California.
“People are routinely deported for lying on immigration forms,” Heritage’s attorney Samuel Dewey told reporters after a Wednesday hearing.
▶ Read more about the case involving Prince Harry
Democratic senators are still at it, having talked through the night to protest Trump’s pick of Russ Vought as budget director.
Seizing the Senate floor is one of the remaining tools the minority party has to stonewall a confirmation. Democrats unanimously oppose Vought, a Project 2025 author who is influential in Musk’s DOGE efforts to gut government.
Sen. John Hickenlooper, D. Colo., said his office was flooded with complaints over Trump’s temporary freeze of federal funds, which has since been rescinded and blocked by a court. He said Congress has appropriated this money and the White House cannot unilaterally cut it.
Republicans have the votes to easily confirm Vought once the 30 hours of debate expires Thursday.
Two Elon Musk allies have “read only” access to Treasury Department payment systems, but no one else will get access for now, including Musk himself, under a court order signed Thursday.
It comes in a lawsuit filed by federal workers unions trying to stop the billionaire’s Department of Government Efficiency from following through on what they call a massive privacy invasion.
Two Musk allies, Marko Elez and Tom Krause, have been made “special government employees” and already have access to the system, government attorneys have said.
The temporary order blocks further access by DOGE as U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly considers the case.
Related to Rubio’s first stop on his trip, the U.S. State Department said late Wednesday on X that the Panamanians had agreed to allow U.S. warships to transit the Panama Canal without charge.
But Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino later denied that, saying Thursday he had told U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a day earlier that he could neither set the fees to transit the canal nor exempt anyone from them, so he was surprised by the statement suggesting otherwise.
The State Department had no immediate comment Thursday.
The fees had been one focus of President Donald Trump’s complaints about the canal, which he has threatened to retake from Panama unless Panama severely limits Chinese influence in the area.
The Trump administration plans to seize a jet that belongs to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro 's government.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio will announce the seizure on Thursday in the Dominican Republic, the last stop of his Latin American tour, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter and a State Department document obtained by The Associated Press. Publicly, the State Department calls it a “law enforcement engagement.”
Carrying out the seizure required Rubio to get Justice Department approval and to free up more than $230,000 in frozen foreign aid to cover storage and maintenance fees.
The U.S. seized another of Maduro’s planes from the Dominican Republic in September 2024.
The State Department document says this plane is a Dassault Falcon 200 that Maduro and top aides used to travel the world in violation of U.S. sanctions.
▶ Read more about Rubio and the Venezuelan jet
Candidate Donald Trump promised voters an administration that wouldn’t waste precious American lives and taxpayer treasure on far-off wars and nation-building.
But just weeks into his second term, President Trump is proposing to use American power to “take over” and reconstruct Gaza, to reclaim U.S. control of the Panama Canal and to buy Greenland from Denmark.
The rhetorical shift from America First to America Everywhere is flummoxing some of his allies.
“The pursuit for peace should be that of the Israelis and the Palestinians,” Sen. Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, posted on social media. “I thought we voted for America First. We have no business contemplating yet another occupation to doom our treasure and spill our soldiers’ blood.”
▶ Read more on how people are trying to understand Trump’s imperialistic comments
Democrats said workers shouldn’t accept the deferred resignation program because it wasn’t authorized by Congress, raising the risk they won’t get paid. Unions have sued to stop Trump’s plans, and a judge will consider whether to block the offer at a hearing Thursday afternoon in Boston.
“It’s a scam and not a buyout,” said Everett Kelley, president of the American Federation of Government Employees. “If it was me, I wouldn’t do it.”
An employee at the Department of Education who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation said the administration appears desperate to get people to sign, but there are too many red flags, such as a clause waiving the right to sue if the government fails to honor its side of the deal.
By Chris Megerian, Collin Binkley and Byron Tau.
▶ Read more on the Trump administration effort to persuade federal workers to resign
When the Rev. Mariann Budde called for Trump to show mercy to Americans scared about his second term in office, the president retorted online that she was “not very good at her job” and owed the public an apology. Catholic Vice President JD Vance has jabbed at top US leaders of his own church over immigration issues.
Many clergy across the country are worried about the removal of churches from the sensitive-areas list. And religious refugee resettlement groups are among those that were left scrambling after federal aid was cut off.
▶ Read more about Trump and religion
During the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump said his relationship with religion had “changed” after a pair of failed assassination attempts last year, as he advocated for Americans to “bring God back into our lives.”
“I really believe you can’t be happy without religion, without that belief,” Trump said. “Let’s bring religion back. Let’s bring God back into our lives.”
Trump reflected on having a bullet coming within a hair’s breadth of killing him at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year, telling lawmakers and attendees, “It changed something in me, I feel.”
“I feel even stronger,” he continued. “I believed in God, but I feel, I feel much more strongly about it. Something happened.”
The president, who’s a nondenominational Christian, called religious liberty “part of the bedrock of American life” and called for protecting it with “absolute devotion.”
▶ Read more about Trump and religion
Trump said Palestinians would be “resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.”
He added that the U.S. would work “with great development teams from all over the World,” and “slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth.”
Trump reasserted his commitment to his Gaza plan the day after his top diplomat and his chief spokesperson walked back that the president is advocating for the permanent relocation of Palestinians from Gaza, after American allies and even Republican lawmakers rejected the U.S. taking “ownership” of the territory.
President Donald Trump says “no soldiers by the U.S. would be needed” to carry out his proposal for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip and redevelop the war-torn territory.
The comments come two days after Trump, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side, suggested relocating Gaza residents and redeveloping the land for people from around the world.
“The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” Trump said in a posting on his Truth Social platform.
The Republican-led Senate is expected to confirm a chief architect of Project 2025 as director of the Office of Management and Budget on Thursday.
Senate Democrats vowed to give around-the-clock speeches to protest Trump’s nomination of Russ Vought to the influential position, and all 47 said they would vote against him. But as the minority party in the Senate, that’s not enough to stop his confirmation.
Vought also is influential in the effort to broadly dismantle the federal government, led by Elon Musk’s DOGE team.
Dwight D. Eisenhower was the first president to attend the prayer breakfast, in February 1953, and every president since has spoken at the gathering.
Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Republican Sen. Roger Marshall of Kansas are the honorary co-chairs of this year’s event.
In 2023, the National Prayer Breakfast split into two dueling events, the one on Capitol Hill largely attended by lawmakers and government officials and a larger private event for thousands at a hotel ballroom. The split occurred when lawmakers sought to distance themselves from the private religious group that for decades had overseen the bigger event, due to questions about its organization and how it was funded.
In 2023 and 2024, President Joe Biden, a Democrat, spoke at the Capitol Hill event, and his remarks were livestreamed to the other gathering.
Trump attended the official prayer breakfast and will also speak at a separate prayer breakfast at a Washington hotel sponsored by a private group.
President Donald Trump says “no soldiers by the U.S. would be needed” to carry out his proposal for the United States to take over the Gaza Strip and redevelop the war-torn territory.
The comments come two days after Trump, with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side, laid out his vision for relocating Gaza residents and redeveloping the land for people from around the world.
“The Gaza Strip would be turned over to the United States by Israel at the conclusion of fighting,” Trump said in a posting on his Truth Social platform. He added that Palestinians would be “resettled in far safer and more beautiful communities, with new and modern homes, in the region.”
He added that the U.S. would work “with great development teams from all over the World,” and “slowly and carefully begin the construction of what would become one of the greatest and most spectacular developments of its kind on Earth.”
Trump reasserted his commitment to his Gaza plan the day after his top diplomat and his chief spokesperson walked back that the president is advocating for the permanent relocation of Palestinians from Gaza, after American allies and even Republican lawmakers rejected the U.S. taking “ownership” of the territory.
The Republican-led Senate is expected to confirm a chief architect of Project 2025 as director of the Office of Management and Budget on Thursday.
Senate Democrats vowed to give around-the-clock speeches to protest Trump’s nomination of Russ Vought to the influential position, and all 47 of them said they would vote against him. But as the minority party in the Senate, that’s not enough to stop his confirmation.
Vought also is influential in the effort to broadly dismantle the federal government, led by Elon Musk's DOGE team.
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