Page 75 - Donald Trump Administration

Trump's pick McMahon for education chief to seek approval to lead agency

Linda McMahon faces an unusual test on Thursday as she seeks Senate approval to lead an agency the president wants her to destroy. If President Donald Trump has his way, his pick for education secretary would be the last in the role. The Republican president has promised to close the agency, saying it has been infiltrated by radicals, zealots and Marxists. A plan being considered by the White House would direct the education secretary to dismantle the department as much as legally possible while asking Congress to abolish it completely. At a White House news conference last week, Trump said he wanted McMahon to put herself out of a job. Trump has yet to sign an order on the department's shutdown, and some of McMahon's advisers pressed to delay it until after her hearing. Yet it's expected to be the central subject of Thursday's hearing before the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. Democrats have been gearing up to grill McMahon on her willingness to execute

Trump admin's move to cut govt spending pose risk to largest contractors

The efforts, led by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, have sparked concern about companies with federal contract exposure

Musk, DOGE see their powers expand while federal staff, remit stay shrouded

President Donald Trump signed a new executive order on Tuesday that makes DOGE even more powerful

Elon Musk's X agrees to pay about $10 million to settle Trump's lawsuit

That makes X the second social media platform to settle with Trump over the suspension of his accounts following the storming of the US Capitol by his supporters in January 2021

75,000 US federal workers accept Trump's buyout programme, judge approves

The buyout is one of many approaches Trump is taking to slash a civilian workforce of 2.3 million that he has blasted as ineffective and biased against him

Trump signs proclamations to close steel, aluminium tariff loopholes: WH

Leavitt noted that Trump continues to take bold action to protect the steel and aluminium industries of the US

US senate confirms Tulsi Gabbard as Trump's 'director of intelligence'

The Senate on Wednesday confirmed Tulsi Gabbard as President Donald Trump's director of national intelligence after Republicans who had initially questioned her experience and judgment fell in line behind her nomination. Gabbard was an unconventional pick to oversee and coordinate the country's 18 different intelligence agencies, given her past comments sympathetic to Russia, a meeting she held with now-deposed Syrian President Bashar Assad and her previous support for government leaker Edward Snowden. Gabbard, a military veteran and former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii, was confirmed by a 52-48 vote, with Democrats opposed in the sharply divided Senate where Republicans hold a slim majority. The only "no' vote from a Republican came from Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. She will take over the top intelligence post as Trump works to reshape vast portions of the federal government. Intelligence agencies including the CIA have issued voluntary resignation offers to staffers, .

Trump says lower interest rates would go hand-in-hand with tariffs

A Reuters poll showed the Federal Reserve was expected to wait until the next quarter before cutting rates again. Tariffs could fuel US inflation and postpone rate cuts

Israeli military calls up reservists as Gaza ceasefire tensions rise

Trump meanwhile wants Saudi Arabia, which has vast influence in other Arab and Muslim countries, to normalise ties with Israel

Trump admin battles employee lawsuit to block dismantling of USAID

The Trump administration will present an unforgiving argument for dismantling the US Agency for International Development to a federal judge Wednesday: USAID is rife with insubordination" and must be shut down for the administration to decide what pieces of it to salvage. The argument, made in an affidavit by political appointee and deputy USAID administrator Pete Marocco, comes as the administration confronts a lawsuit by two groups representing federal employees. USAID staffers deny insubordination and call the accusation a pretext to break up the more than 60-year-old agency, one of the world's biggest donors of humanitarian and development assistance. Accounts of USAID staffers filed Tuesday in support of the lawsuit revealed new details of the destruction of the agency. That includes a sworn statement from a USAID staffer describing a specific leader in billionaire Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency teams allegedly directing USAID staffers on Monday in the immedia

Trump admin readies reciprocal US tariffs as trade war fears mount

The plans drew condemnation from Mexico, Canada and the European Union, while Japan and Australia said they were seeking exemptions from the duties

Trump may revive 1930 trade discrimination law for reciprocal US tariffs

Trump has said the new US tariff rates would take effect "almost immediately," and Section 338 of the Trade Act of 1930 would give him a quick path to imposing them

US CFPB likely terminates some probationary staff due to inefficiency

The removal is a possibility as White House asked agencies for lists of probationary employees and recommendations on whether they should stay- a move by administration to neutralize CFPB

Is Elon Musk taking over the US govt: Here's how state capture works

Musk's aim could be to capture different pieces of the US government and turn the state into a tool for wealth extraction

White House plans to nominate new chiefs for bank, market regulators

White House intends to nominate Jonathan Gould as the head of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and Brian Quintenz as chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission

Elon Musk, other Trump allies ratchet up a rhetoric against US judiciary

Musk took to his X social media platform to attack the judge who ordered US health agencies to temporarily restore websites they took offline in response to an executive order by Trump

Donald Trump's new crypto company launches strategic 'token reserve'

The announcement comes at a time when Trump and his family businesses are increasingly turning to making money from the world of crypto

Tackling debt: Trump 2.0 actions, inactions to revive the US economy

Trump told reporters that the effort to slash spending could cut $1 trillion from the federal budget, which totaled $6.75 trillion in the most recent fiscal year

Trump's move to halt US bribery law sparks fears of 'Wild West' deals

To its fans, it's an undeniable force for good in a corrupt world, a groundbreaking anti-bribery statute that has brought powerful businessmen to heel for secretly paying off foreign government officials to win contracts abroad. To detractors, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act unfairly hobbles American companies while foreign rivals not so encumbered swoop in. On Monday, President Donald Trump took a side. It sounds good on paper but in practicality, it's a disaster, Trump said while signing an executive order freezing enforcement of the law. It's going to mean a lot more business for America. The consequences could be dramatic, depending on Trump's next move. If he halts many prosecutions, essentially defanging the law, it could help US businesses win deals abroad. But it also could tarnish America's image, allow corrupt autocrats ruling over impoverished people to get even richer and lead France, Britain, Japan and other wealthy countries to weaken their own anti-bribery laws so

US court won't halt order requiring Trump admin to unfreeze federal cash

A federal appeals court on Tuesday refused to halt a judge's order requiring the Trump administration to release billions of dollars in federal grants and loans. States say the money remains frozen even after a court blocked a sweeping pause on federal funding. The Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals turned back the emergency appeal, though it said it expected the lower court judge to act quickly to clarify his order. The Justice Department argued the sweeping lower court order to keep all federal grants and loans flowing was intolerable judicial overreach. That ruling came from U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island, the first judge to find that the administration had disobeyed a court order. McConnell is presiding over a lawsuit from nearly two dozen states filed after the administration issued a boundary-pushing memo purporting to halt all federals grants and loans, worth trillions of dollars. The plan sparked chaos around the country. The administrat