Page 11 - Us Government

US govt inefficient, AI can offset losing some public workers, says Musk

In a wide-ranging conversation on Sunday with financier Michael Milken, Musk also spoke about his brain-implant company, Neuralink, and ongoing developments at SpaceX, according to the person

JD Vance blends diplomacy, dealmaking and family time in global travels

When JD Vance was running for vice president, he walked across an airport tarmac in Wisconsin one August day when his campaign travels happened to intersect those of Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris and approached Air Force Two. Besides wanting to take a poke at Republican Donald Trump's rival for avoiding the press, Vance said, "I just wanted to check out my future plane. It's an aircraft he now knows well. In the opening months of Trump's term, Vice President Vance has travelled all over the globe family in tow to conduct top-level diplomacy for the administration, in addition to taking a number of domestic trips. His international forays have featured a mix of meetings with world leaders, sharply crafted speeches advancing US policy, soft power appearances to build goodwill and family time at tourist sites along the way. Diplomacy before family and cultural sights Vance's trips have included a five-day trip to Europe in February, a hastily reorganised trek to ...

CIA, other spy agencies set to shrink workforce under Trump admin plan

The White House plans to cut staffing at the CIA and other intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, Trump administration officials told members of Congress, The Washington Post reported Friday. A person familiar with the plan but not authorised to discuss it publicly confirmed the changes to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The administration plans to reduce the CIA workforce by 1,200 over several years, and cut thousands of positions at the NSA and other intelligence agencies. The Post reported that the reductions at the CIA include several hundred people who have already opted for early retirement. The rest of the cuts would be achieved partly through reduced hirings and would not likely necessitate layoffs. In response to questions about the reductions, the CIA issued a statement saying CIA Director John Ratcliffe is working to align the agency with Trump's national security priorities. These moves are part of a holistic strategy to infuse th

US labels Haitian gangs as terror groups as experts warn of impact on aid

The US on Friday officially designated a powerful gang coalition in Haiti as a foreign terrorist organisation, raising concerns the move could deepen the country's humanitarian crisis at a critical time. The Viv Ansanm coalition, which means Living Together, joins a list of eight Latin American criminal organisations under that category. Gran Grif, the biggest gang to operate in Haiti's central Artibonite region, also was added to the list, as reported by The Associated Press on Tuesday. The age of impunity for those supporting violence in Haiti is over, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement Friday. The US Department of State warned that persons, including American citizens, that engage in certain transactions or activities with these entities, or these individuals may expose themselves to sanctions risk. But it's nearly impossible for aid groups and others to avoid dealing with gangs in Haiti. The Viv Ansanm coalition controls at least 85 per cent of the capital,

Rubio takes on 2 key security roles after embracing Trump's vision

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been thrown into two top national security jobs at once as President Donald Trump presses forward with his top-to-bottom revamp of US foreign policy, upending not only longstanding policies that the former Florida senator once supported but also the configuration of the executive branch. Trump's appointment of Rubio to temporarily replace Mike Waltz as national security adviser is the first major leadership shake-up of the nascent administration, but Waltz's removal had been rumoured for weeks ever since he created a Signal group chat and accidentally added a journalist to the conversation where top national security officials shared sensitive military plans. So, just over 100 days into his tenure as America's top diplomat, Rubio now becomes just the second person to hold both positions. He follows only the late Henry Kissinger, who served as both secretary of state and national security adviser for two years under Presidents Richard Nixon and ...

Mangione wants murder case dropped, cites double jeopardy in CEO killing

Luigi Mangiones lawyers urging a judge Thursday to throw out his state murder charges in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, arguing that the New York case and a parallel federal death penalty prosecution amount to double jeopardy. If that doesn't happen, they want terrorism charges dismissed and prosecutors barred from using evidence collected during Mangione's arrest last December, including a 9 mm handgun, ammunition and a notebook in which authorities say he described his intent to wack an insurance executive. Mangione's lawyers also want to exclude statements he made to police officers who took him into custody at a McDonald's restaurant in Altoona, Pennsylvania, 230 miles (about 370 kilometers) west of New York City, after a five-day search. Among other things, prosecutors say the Ivy League graduate apologised to officers for the inconvenience of the day, and expressed concern for a McDonald's employee who alerted them to his whereabouts, saying: A lot of peop

From Tokyo to LA, workers observe May Day, many voice concerns about Trump

Shouting banzai! or live long, thousands of people gathered in a Tokyo park on Thursday and marched through the streets to the banging of traditional drums, as Japan kicked off celebrations to mark May Day. The holiday, also known as International Workers' Day or Labour Day, marks the struggles and achievements of workers and the labour movement around the world. Thousands of people are expected to attend rallies and marches across the US, including in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia. For our children to be able to live with hope, the rights of workers must be recognised, said Junko Kuramochi, a member of a mothers' group who marched in Japan's capital. US organisers say their message this year is focused on fighting back against President Donald Trump's policies targeting immigrants, federal workers and diversity initiatives. Even in Japan, some said Trump's policies hung over the day like a shadow. One truck in the Tokyo march featured a doll that looked like ...

US govt expands grounds for cancelling international students' legal status

The federal government is expanding the reasons international students can be stripped of their legal status in the US, where thousands have come under scrutiny in a Trump administration crackdown that has left many afraid of being deported. Attorneys for international students say the new reasons allow for quicker deportations and serve to justify many of the actions the government took this spring to cancel foreign students' permission to study in the US After abruptly losing their legal status in recent weeks with little explanation, students around the country filed challenges in federal courts. In many cases, judges made preliminary rulings that the government acted without due process. Then the government said it would issue new guidelines for cancelling a student's legal status. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement document shared Monday in a court filing said valid reasons now include the revocation of the visas students used to enter the US. In the past, if a student's v

US govt's new policy terminates legal status of international students

The US government has begun shedding new light on a crackdown on international students, spelling out how it targeted thousands of people and laying out the grounds for terminating their legal status. The new details emerged in lawsuits filed by some of the students who suddenly had their status cancelled in recent weeks with little explanation. In the past month, foreign students around the US have been rattled to learn their records had been removed from a student database maintained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Some went into hiding for fear of being picked up by immigration authorities or abandoned their studies to return home. On Friday, after mounting court challenges, federal officials said the government was restoring international students' legal status while it developed a framework to guide future terminations. In a court filing Monday, it shared the new policy: a document issued over the weekend with guidance on a range of reasons students' status can be ...

As Elon Musk gained power in Washington, his popularity fell, shows poll

Elon Musk spent years building cachet as a business titan and tech visionary, brushing aside critics and sceptics to become the richest person on the planet. But as Musk gained power in Washington in recent months, his popularity has waned, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Centre for Public Affairs Research. Just 33 per cent of US adults have a favourable view of Musk, the chain-saw-wielding, late-night-posting, campaign-hat-wearing public face of President Donald Trump's efforts to downsize and overhaul the federal government. That share is down from 41 per cent in December. It was a shame that he crashed and burned his reputation, said Ernest Pereira, 27, a Democrat who works as a lab technician in North Carolina. He bought into his own hype. The poll found that about two-thirds of adults believe Musk has held too much influence over the federal government during the past few months although that influence may be coming to an end. The billionaire entrepreneur i

100 days of DOGE: Deep cuts spark chaos and delays across US agencies

Nearly 100 days into what Trump and tech billionaire Elon Musk have called a mission to make the federal bureaucracy more efficient

Trump admin begins State Department overhaul to cut redundancy: Rubio

Work that fell to the Under Secretary for Civilian Security, Human Rights, and Democracy will now be placed under a new Coordinator for Foreign Assistance and Humanitarian Affairs

Google to face US govt in court over search monopoly breakup attempt

Google will confront an existential threat Monday as the US government tries to break up the company as punishment for turning its revolutionary search engine into a ruthless monopoly. The drama will unfold in a Washington courtroom during the next three weeks during hearings that will determine how the company should be penalised for operating an illegal monopoly in search. The proceedings, known in legal parlance as a remedy hearing, feature a parade of witnesses that includes Google CEO Sundar Pichai. The US Department of Justice is asking a federal judge to order a radical shake-up that would ban Google from striking the multibillion dollar deals with Apple and other tech companies that shield its search engine from competition, share its repository of valuable user data with rivals and force a sale of its popular Chrome browser. The moment of reckoning comes four-and-half-years after the Justice Department filed a landmark lawsuit alleging Google's search engine had been abusi

Trump draft order proposes radical reshaping of US State Department

Some employees writing on a foreign service-dedicated Reddit page also expressed doubt about how such an order could be implemented

White House proposes significant cuts to State dept, UN, Nato funding

The White House's Office of Management and Budget has proposed gutting the State Department's budget by almost 50 per cent, closing a number of overseas diplomatic missions, slashing the number of diplomatic staff, and eliminating funding for nearly all international organizations, including the United Nations, many of its agencies and for NATO headquarters, officials said. The proposal, which was presented to the State Department last week and is still in a highly preliminary phase, is not expected to pass muster with either the department's leadership or Congress, which will ultimately be asked to vote on the entire federal budget in the coming months. Officials familiar with the proposal say it must still go through several rounds of review before it even gets to lawmakers, who in the past have amended and even rejected White House budget requests. Though the proposal is preliminary, it gives an indication of the Trump administration's priorities and coincides with massive job and

International students challenge widespread US visa revocations in court

Several international students who have had their visas revoked in recent weeks have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration, arguing the government denied them due process when it suddenly took away their permission to be in the US. The actions by the federal government to terminate students' legal status have left hundreds of scholars at risk of detention and deportation. Their schools range from private universities like Harvard and Stanford to large public institutions like the University of Maryland and Ohio State University to some small liberal arts colleges. In lawsuits against the Department of Homeland Security, students have argued the government lacked justification to cancel their visa or terminate their legal status. Why is the government canceling international students' visas? Visas can be canceled for a number of reasons, but colleges say some students are being singled out over infractions as minor as traffic violations, including some long in the past. In

Wisconsin teen killed parents to fund plot to assassinate Trump, FBI says

Nikita Casap is currently in the Waukesha County jail on a $1 million bond and is expected in court next month to enter a plea

Trump's registration rules not to impact H-1B holders, but rise in concern

The move is part of US President Donald Trump's attempt to crack down on illegal immigration and deport millions living illegally

Pressed for evidence, US cites power to deport Mahmoud Khalil for beliefs

Facing a deadline from an immigration judge to turn over evidence for its attempted deportation of Columbia University activist Mahmoud Khalil, the federal government has instead submitted a brief memo, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, citing the Trump administration's authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country damages US foreign policy interests. The two-page memo, which was obtained by The Associated Press, does not allege any criminal conduct by Khalil, a legal permanent US resident and graduate student who served as spokesperson for campus activists last year during large demonstrations against Israel's treatment of Palestinians and the war in Gaza. Rather, Rubio wrote Khalil could be expelled for his beliefs. He said that while Khalil's activities were otherwise lawful, letting him remain in the country would undermine US policy to combat anti-Semitism around the world and in the United States, in addition to efforts to protect Jewish students from ..

Defence chiefs from 30 nations to attend Nato talks on future Ukraine force

Britain and France are convening a meeting of defence ministers from around 30 countries on Thursday to press ahead with plans to deploy troops to Ukraine to police any future peace agreement with Russia. The meeting at NATO headquarters the first between defence ministers representing the so-called coalition of the willing comes after a visit to Kyiv last week by senior British and French military officers. It's expected to work on fleshing out an agreement reached at an earlier meeting between leaders. As usual with coalition gatherings, the United States will not take part, but the success of the coalition's operation hinges on US backup with airpower or other military assistance. However, the Trump administration has made no public commitment that it will do so. Amid that uncertainty and US warnings that Europe must take care of its own security and that of Ukraine in future, the force is seen as a first test of the continent's willingness to defend itself and its interests.