President Donald Trump says he plans to impose tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting next Tuesday, in addition to doubling the 10% universal tariff charged on imports from China
Sponsored
UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer to meet Trump as Europe worries about drifting US support for Ukraine
During his Thursday meeting at the White House, Starmer is expected to try to convince Trump that a lasting peace in Ukraine will endure only if Kyiv and European leaders are at the table as negotiations move forward with Moscow.
“We’re going to do the best we can to make the best deal we can for both sides,” Trump said Wednesday as he held the first Cabinet meeting of his second term. “For Ukraine, we’re going to try very hard to make a good deal so that they can get as much (land) back as possible.”
DOGE access to US intelligence secrets poses a national security threat, Democrats say
And Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers from Elon Musk about whether staffers at his Department of Government Efficiency have shared national security secrets over insecure communication channels.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia were joined by several other Democrats on a letter Thursday that asserts reckless actions by Musk and Trump’s cost-cutting initiative present a threat to national security by exposing secrets about America’s defense and intelligence agencies.
Such information would present huge advantages to U.S. adversaries by giving them critical information about Washington’s defense priorities and the resources assigned to various missions and objectives, the lawmakers said.
Secretary of Labor nominee faces backlash from both sides of abortion debate
If confirmed as Secretary of Labor, former U.S. Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer would be tasked with enforcing policies on workplace discrimination based on pregnancy status and outcome. But advocates on both sides of the abortion debate are speaking up against her nomination as she faces a hearing Thursday in front of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary.
Abortion rights groups have warned that Chavez-DeRemer has previously supported anti-abortion bills while in Congress.
Meanwhile, abortion opponents are pointing to a questionnaire in which Chavez-DeRemer said she’d worked at a Planned Parenthood clinic for just over a year in her early 20’s as reason to oppose her nomination. Chavez-DeRemer asserted in the questionnaire that she doesn’t personally support abortion and would not promote policies supporting abortion rights, NBC News reported.
The national anti-abortion group Students for Life Action called her nomination “extremely disappointing.”
Trump plans tariffs on Mexico and Canada for March 4, while doubling existing 10% tariffs on China
Posting on Truth Social, Trump says illicit drugs such as fentanyl are being smuggled into the United States at “unacceptable levels” and import taxes would force other countries to crackdown on the trafficking.
“We cannot allow this scourge to continue to harm the USA, and therefore, until it stops, or is seriously limited, the proposed TARIFFS scheduled to go into effect on MARCH FOURTH will, indeed, go into effect, as scheduled,” Trump wrote. “China will likewise be charged an additional 10% Tariff on that date.”
The prospect of escalating tariffs has already thrown the global economy into turmoil — with consumers expressing fears about inflation worsening and the auto sector possibly suffering if America’s two largest trading partners in Canada and Mexico are slapped with taxes. The prospect of higher prices and slower growth could create political blowback for Trump.
As Trump’s deadline to eliminate DEI nears, few schools openly rush to make changes
Schools and colleges across the U.S. face a Friday deadline to end diversity programs or risk having their federal money pulled by the Trump administration, yet few are openly rushing to make changes. Many believe they’re on solid legal ground, and they know it would be all but unprecedented — and extremely time-consuming — for the government to cut off funding.
State officials in Washington and California urged schools not to make changes, saying it doesn’t change federal law and doesn’t require any action. New York City schools have taken the same approach and said district policies and curriculum haven’t changed.
Leaders of some colleges shrugged the memo off entirely. Antioch University ’s chief said “most of higher education” won’t comply with the memo unless federal law is changed. Western Michigan University’s president told his campus to “please proceed as usual.”
EU pushes back hard against Trump tariff threats and his caustic comments that bloc is out to get US
The tit-for-tat dispute following the vitriolic comments of Trump aimed at an age-old ally and its main postwar economic partner further deepened the trans-Atlantic rift that was already widened by Trump’s warnings that Washington would drop security guarantees for its European allies.
Thursday’s EU pushback came after Trump told reporters “the European Union was formed in order to screw the United States. That’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it,” adding that it would stop immediately under his presidency.
Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency, went on a counteroffensive.
“The EU wasn’t formed to screw anyone,” Tusk said in an X post. “Quite the opposite. It was formed to maintain peace, to build respect among our nations, to create free and fair trade, and to strengthen our transatlantic friendship. As simple as that.”
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits rises to the highest level in 3 months
Applications for U.S. jobless benefits rose to a three-month high last week but remained within the same healthy range of the past three years.
The number of Americans filing for jobless benefits rose by 22,000 to 242,000 for the week ending Feb. 22, the Labor Department said Thursday. Analysts projected that 220,000 new applications would be filed.
Weekly applications for jobless benefits are considered a proxy for layoffs.
Proposed legislation takes aim at Trump’s meme coin
California Democrat Rep. Sam Liccardo, a freshman congressman who represents Silicon Valley, said he’s surprised the first piece of legislation he’s sponsoring takes aim at President Donal Trump’s meme coin.
“That wasn’t my plan when I ran for office, I can assure you,” said Liccardo, the former mayor of San Jose.
But the president’s launch of a meme coin just before taking office last month needed some kind of response, said Liccardo. Those who bought the meme coin right after launch made out, but the price quickly dropped leaving others with big losses. Even Trump-supporting crypto enthusiasts found the launch distasteful.
“That behavior is so self-evidently unethical that it raises the question why isn’t there a clear enough prohibition,” he said, adding that Trump’s meme coin raises concerns about transparency, insider trading and improper foreign influence.
A Project 2025 author carries out his vision for mass federal layoffs
The Trump administration’s demand that federal agencies plan to radically downsize is driven by a key figure in the conservative movement who has long planned this move: Russell Vought.
In Trump’s first term, Vought was a largely behind-the-scenes player who eventually became director of the influential but underappreciated Office of Management and Budget. He is back in that job in Trump’s second term after being the principal author of Project 2025, the conservative governing blueprint that Trump insisted during the 2024 campaign was not part of his agenda.
The memo Vought co-signed Wednesday is the clearest assertion of his power and the latest seminal writing for a man who argues the federal bureaucracy is an existential threat to the country itself and that it should dramatically downsize.
Pentagon orders new purge of social media sites to dump diversity, inclusion mentions by March 5
Building lethality in the military may be the buzzword for the new Trump administration, but busywork and paperwork have become the reality at the Pentagon, as service members and civilian workers are facing a broad mandate to purge all of the department’s social media sites and untangle confusing personnel reduction moves.
On Wednesday, the department’s top public affairs official signed and sent out a new memo requiring all the military services to spend countless hours poring over years of website postings, photos, news articles and videos to remove any mentions that “promote diversity, equity and inclusion.”
If they can’t do that by March 5, they have been ordered to “temporarily remove from public display” all content published during the Biden administration’s four years in office, according to a copy of the memo obtained by The Associated Press.
VA pauses billions in cuts as lawmakers and veterans decry loss of critical care
The Department of Veterans Affairs has temporarily suspended billions of dollars in planned contract cuts following concerns that the move would hurt critical veterans’ health services, lawmakers and veterans service organizations said Wednesday.
The pause affects hundreds of VA contracts that Secretary Doug Collins a day earlier described as simply consulting deals, whose cancellation would save $2 billion as the Trump administration works to slash costs across the federal government.
Supreme Court blocks order for Trump administration to release billions in US foreign aid
The Trump administration said it is eliminating more than 90% of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s foreign aid contracts and $60 billion in overall U.S. assistance around the world, putting numbers on its plans to eliminate the majority of U.S. development and humanitarian help abroad.
The Trump administration outlined its plans in both an internal memo obtained by The Associated Press and filings in one of those federal lawsuits Wednesday.
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.
Outside the USAID headquarters: Supporters, flowers and a somber mood
A small group of supporters stood outside under heavily overcast skies to thank workers for their service but declined to give their names for fear of retribution. There was a small bucket of flowers for the memorial inside to USAID employees who have died in service to the country.
Sponsored
