Trump signs order to expand IVF access ahead of joint interview with Musk – US politics live | US news

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Defense department prepares for layoffs

The Pentagon is preparing a list of probationary employees to turn over to the Trump administration’s “department of government efficiency”, with layoffs expected to begin as soon as this week, CNN and the Washington Post report.

Major US military commands, called combatant commands, were asked to submit lists of probationary employees by this afternoon, one official told CNN.

The news comes after Doge officials arrived at the Pentagon Friday, in what appeared to be their first meeting with defense department staff.

Earlier this month, Donald Trump confirmed that he had asked Musk to review spending in the defense department, which maintains a nearly $1tn budget annually. “I’ve instructed him to go check out education, to check out the Pentagon, which is the military. And you know, sadly, you’ll find some things that are pretty bad,” he said.

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Virginia governor Glenn Youngkin told the Associated Press today that he empathizes with federal employees concerned about mass layoffs.

“This workforce, which is talented and deep and experienced, is part of Virginia,” he said. “And so we want to make sure that first, they know that we understand. And second of all, we’re here to help them.”

Virginia is home to many federal workers based out of Washington DC.

Youngkin argued that the media had sensationalized the cuts across the federal workforce.

“This is about this is about stepping back and making sure that tax dollars are being appropriately managed and deployed,” he said.

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A federal judge will not immediately block Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” from accessing government data systems.

US district judge Tanya Chutkan found that there was not evidence to justify a temporary restraining order, although she noted serious questions about Musk’s authority.

In a separate case, another federal judge said he’ll decide “sooner rather than later” whether to temporarily block the Trump administration’s mass layoff of federal workers while a lawsuit brought by five unions moves forward.

US district judge Christopher Cooper said the case may depend on whether enough people were terminated to thwart the purposes that Congress had in mind when authorizing agency funding.

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Updated at 18.27 EST

Robert F Kennedy Jr began his work as the new head of Health and Human Services today at a welcome ceremony where he called for the agency to “scrutinize” vaccines, antidepressants and radiation emitted by radios, TVs and cellphones.

The former presidential candidate turned Trump ally was confirmed as the US’s senior health official on Thursday, despite having no training in public health.

Over the weekend, thousands of HHS employees were laid off in the Trump administration’s effort to cut the federal workforce.

During today’s ceremony, Kennedy called for a close study of vaccination recommendations, and described the new Make American Healthy Again commission, which Donald Trump established to investigate “the root causes of America’s escalating health crisis, with an initial focus on childhood chronic diseases” including pesticides, microplastics, ultra-processed foods, antidepressants and more.

Public health advocates have expressed concern that Kennedy, who is prone to repeating conspiracy theories, will be unable to sort the scientific evidence to make rigorous recommendations.

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Updated at 17.43 EST

Senate Democrats have written a letter urging the Trump administration to halt mass layoffs and lift a hiring freeze at the Internal Revenue Service ahead of tax season.

With tax-filing season underway, senior officials at the IRS identified 7,500 employees for dismissal, as we reported earlier today. That amounts to about 9% of the agency’s workforce.

The nine senators who signed the letter, led by Ron Wyden, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee, said the IRS needs to be fully staffed in order to process returns, send refunds and answer questions during tax season. They requested a response from the administration by 27 February.

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Furthering the confusion surrounding Elon Musk’s role at the so-called “department of government efficiency”, Donald Trump says “call him whatever you want”.

“Elon is, to me, a patriot,” Trump said. “You can call him an employee, you can call him a consultant, you can call him whatever you want, but he’s a patriot.”

Trump’s statement came just hours after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the tech billionaire is not in charge of Doge, while declining to state who was.

Trump and Leavitt’s statements come after a White House court filing on Monday that said the world’s richest man has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions”.

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Updated at 17.24 EST

Trump says ‘half-baked negotiator’ could have ended Ukraine war

Responding to Ukraine’s frustration at being left out of talks between the US and Russia in Saudia Arabia today, Donald Trump told reporters the country had an opportunity to join talks for the previous three years.

“A half-baked negotiator could have settled this years ago without the loss of much land, very little land, without the loss of any lives,” Trump said from his Mar-a-Lago home. He added that he could have prevented the Russian invasion.

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Updated at 18.28 EST

At his Mar-a-Lago executive order signing ceremony today, Trump has signed two more orders.

The first “reestablishes the longstanding norm that only the president or the attorney general can speak for the United States when stating an opinion as to what the law is”, an aide tells the Associated Press. The order comes as members of the Trump administration have considered disregarding judicial orders.

The second, a presidential memorandum, requires federal agencies to report waste, fraud and abuse that’s uncovered and details of programs that are eliminated. An aide described it as “imposing radical transparency requirements on government departments and agencies”.

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Updated at 16.58 EST

Trump vows to block AP until agency relents in Gulf dispute

Speaking from his Mar-a-Lago home today, Donald Trump said he will continue to block the Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One, until the news agency commits to calling the Gulf of Mexico the “Gulf of America”.

“The Associated Press just refuses to go with what the law is and what is taking place. It’s called the Gulf of America now. It’s not called the Gulf of Mexico any longer. I have the right to do it,” Trump said.

The president added that the move was also in response to the AP’s past coverage: “Now the Associated Press, as you know, has been very, very wrong on the election, on Trump, and the treatment of Trump, and other things having to do with Trump and Republicans and conservatives, and they’re doing us no favors.”

The Associated Press has said that it will not change its style on the Gulf of Mexico after Trump’s decision to change the body of water’s name because the move only holds authority within the US federal government.

“The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that placenames and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences,” the Associated Press said.

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Updated at 18.26 EST

Trump signs order to expand IVF access

As Donald Trump kicks off another afternoon signing executive orders, this time from his Mar-a-Lago home, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt says one will protect access to in vitro fertilization.

“The order directs policy recommendations to protect IVF access and aggressively reduce out-of-pocket and health plan costs for such treatments,” Leavitt wrote on social media.

The order requires the assistant to the president for domestic policy to submit to a list of policy recommendations “on protecting IVF access and aggressively reducing out-of-pocket and health plan costs for IVF treatment” to Trump within 90 days, according to a White House press release.

Access to such fertility treatments came under fire last year after Alabama’s largest fertility clinics stopped offering IVF after the state supreme court ruled embryos are “extrauterine children”. The ruling marked a significant victory for anti-abortion activists who’d promoted the language of fetal personhood nationwide.

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Updated at 17.04 EST

European leaders will gather in France for their own talks about the war in Ukraine tomorrow, French president Emmanuel Macron told local reporters as officials from the United States and Russia met in Saudi Arabia today without them.

In the interview, Macron described Russia as an “existential threat” to Europe, while leaving the door open for talks with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The assembly will come just days after US vice president JD Vance reprimanded European leaders in a speech that has been widely regarded as symbolizing the growing transatlantic rift between the US and Europe.

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Elon Musk is not in charge of the so-called “department of government efficiency”, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a press briefing today. She did not say who is the lead administrator of the agency.

Leavitt told reporters that Musk is “a senior adviser to the president, if you will”. She added that Doge cannot fire federal employees, and that the mass layoffs across federal agencies were at the direction of individual agencies.

In an appearance on Fox News today, she reiterated: “Elon Musk is a special government employee here at the White House serving at the direction of the president of the United States, Donald Trump,” before adding that Musk “has been tasked with overseeing Doge on behalf of the president”.

Her statements came after a White House court filing on Monday that said the world’s richest man has “no actual or formal authority to make government decisions”.

Read the full story here:

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Updated at 16.48 EST

Edward Helmore

The Trump administration has begun firing hundreds of employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), including some who maintain critical air traffic control infrastructure, despite four deadly crashes since inauguration day.

According to the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists (Pass) union, “several hundred” workers received termination notices on Friday.

Many of the workers were probationary employees, those employed for less than a year and lacking job protections, which makes them low-hanging fruit for the Trump administration’s streamlining efforts.

According to the US Office of Personnel Management, there are about 200,000 probationary employees within the federal government.

The firings at the FAA do not include air traffic controllers, but did appear to include engineers and technicians.

A spokesperson for the union said no probationary technicians had been fired, citing about 133 job cuts so far.

The positions terminated included maintenance mechanics, aeronautical information specialists, environmental protection specialists, aviation safety assistants and management administration personnel, but did not include airway transportation systems specialists who maintain and certify air traffic control equipment.

The full story is here:

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Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s controversial nominee for FBI director, is set to be confirmed for the role tomorrow.

Last Thursday, the Senate judiciary committee advanced the Trump loyalist’s nomination to lead the FBI, despite concerns raised by Democrats that Patel would purge the agency and weaponise its powers to retaliate against Trump’s political opponents.

Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the committee, said he had “highly credible information” that Patel had given orders to sack senior personnel when he had no power to do so as a private citizen – directly contradicting testimony he had given at a confirmation hearing.

He called the alleged misconduct “absolutely beyond the pale” and demanded an immediate investigation.

The allegations, made in a letter to the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz, and first reported by the New York Times (paywall), raised the possibility that Patel had committed perjury, he added.

Here is more on that:

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Updated at 15.40 EST

In this back-to-the-future world, Russia is fully restored to the top table while Ukraine and Europe are made to sit outside as the US and Russia sharpen their carving knives, writes my colleague Julian Borger.

The culmination of the Riyadh process, the US delegation made clear, will be a summit encounter between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, two leaders who share an imperial bent that leans towards great power spheres of influence.

It will not be the first time superpowers meet in the Middle East to divide a European state. The Tehran Conference in 1943 put a line right through eastern Europe. In Riyadh, Trump will take the Roosevelt role and Putin will play Stalin. It is long past the time when there was a place for a Churchill. Britain has joined the anxious European voices a long way offstage.

To the Ukrainians, and many Europeans, this does not feel like Tehran. They fear a new Munich, with the gilded chambers and acres of polished marble of the Diriyah Palace auditioning for the role of a latter-day Führerbau, the venue in September 1938 for the betrayal and carve-up of Czechoslovakia.

In Munich, the Czechoslovak delegation were kept in an adjoining room to await details of when and how they would surrender the Sudetenland to Hitler. On Tuesday, the Ukrainians were not even in the same country. Volodymyr Zelenskyy was nervously waiting for news in Turkey. He is due in Saudi Arabia next month to be briefed by the royal court and make his feelings clear.

As the chairs were being put away and the floors mopped in the Diriyah Palace, a new paradigm seemed to be coming into focus, one that was familiar from the 19th century and the cold war: great powers will make the decisions, while lesser states will anxiously wait for the big boys’ meetings to finish, and then call Riyadh to find out what has been decided.

In this back-to-the-future world, Russia is fully restored to the top table, its status assured by the size of its nuclear arsenal. (Sergei) Lavrov was delighted with the outcome of Tuesday’s meeting, noting the two sides “did not just listen to each other, but heard each other”. He predicted that follow-on talks would begin “as soon as possible”.

(Mohammed) Bin Salman emerged on Tuesday as the consigliere and hotelier to the mighty, there as a facilitator rather than dealmaker, but very much on the inside, unlike Europe. In the age of Trump, the Gulf monarchy takes precedence above Washington’s old democratic allies, even in European matters.

You can read Julian’s full analysis here:

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Updated at 15.08 EST

In light of the US-Russia talks we’ve been covering today and the dramatic shift in Washington’s approach to Moscow since Donald Trump took office, you might want to give a listen to today’s installment of Today in Focus. The Guardian’s central and eastern Europe correspondent Shaun Walker and host Michael Safi unpack a seismic week, where Trump has sidelined Kyiv and other European capitals from negotiations on ending Russia’s war in Ukraine – and then called into question the future of US support for Europe’s security altogether.

You can listen to it here:

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Updated at 14.52 EST

Osita Nwanevu

Elon Musk’s rampage through government shows us how we can finally close the book on what Trumpism is all about, writes Guardian columnist Osita Nwanevu.

By now, it should be clear to all who don’t have an emotional, political or professional investment in believing or pretending to believe otherwise that the American constitutional order has developed a kind of autoimmune disease. The very mechanisms the founders crafted to protect the republic are now an existential threat to it; in their greed and determination to implement the conservative agenda, Trump, Musk and Republicans empowered by those mechanisms are happily ignoring or working to override the parts of the constitution that don’t advantage them or suit their ends. As a matter of substance, this is a system that needs to be dramatically reformed or reimagined rather than rescued; as a matter of politics, one of the central lessons of this past election is that critical constituencies Democrats need to improve with in order to stay competitive federally care far less about protecting our sickly institutions than they care about a great many other things that they hoped Donald Trump would accomplish. As of now, even amid the mess in Washington, voters aren’t giving him marks that are all that terrible – a recent CBS poll found solid majorities of Americans describing his leadership so far as “tough”, “energetic”, “focused” and “effective”.

Democrats should be positioning themselves not as the guardians of America’s institutions but as the defenders of the American people’s concrete interests ⁠– showing and telling voters about all the federal government does for them every day and how the conservative agenda Trump, Musk and the Republican party are pursuing threatens and has always threatened them. The perversity of a man getting to rework their government purely because he happens to be the wealthiest person in the world and financially backed Trump’s campaign should, of course, also be underscored.

The especially ambitious might even try arguing to the American people that all the goings-on in Washington illustrate the danger of having so much wealth accumulate in the hands of a few in the first place. Elon Musk is gliding towards becoming the planet’s very first trillionaire. His access to the levers and gears of the federal government now could help him along in myriad ways. Even an improved political system would struggle to constrain the amount of power he possessed as a private citizen and has now leveraged into a public office; democratic republican governance will never be secured in America without turning our attention to the structure of our economic system as well. Dismantling the federal government to prevent that from happening was a key object of the conservative project before Trump. It has remained so with him at the head of the Republican party and will remain so whenever his time is up. Right now, that project is succeeding.

Osita’s full column is here:

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Senior federal prosecutor quits saying Trump officials demanded investigation into Biden contracts

Here is some more detail from CNN on the resignation of senior federal prosecutor Denise Cheung, citing what she called an improper demand by appointees of Donald Trump’s administration to launch a criminal probe of a government contract awarded under former president Joe Biden.

Cheung, who supervised criminal cases at the US attorney’s office in Washington, said she had been ordered to open a probe into a Biden-era Environmental Protection Agency funding decision.

When she declined to launch a grand jury investigation citing a lack of evidence and calling such a move “premature”, she said she was ordered instead to pursue an asset seizure to prevent the recipient of the contract from drawing down the government funds.

“I have been proud to serve at the U.S. Department of Justice and this office for over 24 years,” Cheung wrote in the letter to interim US attorney Ed Martin. “During my tenure, which has spanned over many different administrations, I have always been guided by the oath I took … to support and defend the Constitution.”

Spokespeople for the US attorney’s office and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Her resignation is the latest by career Justice Department prosecutors to protest what they see as improper political interference by the Trump administration in criminal investigations.

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Updated at 14.36 EST