The Latest: Trump says ceasefire should be canceled if Hamas doesn’t release hostages by Saturday
President Donald Trump said Palestinians in Gaza would not have a right to return under his plan for U.S. “ownership” of the war-torn territory, contradicting other officials in his administration who've sought to argue Trump was only calling for the temporary relocation of its population.
He also said he'll announce Monday that the United States will impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, including from Canada and Mexico, as well as other import duties later in the week.
Here's the latest:
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has cut about $900 million in Education Department contracts after concluding they were a waste of taxpayer money, officials said.
The Education Department said DOGE’s cuts spanned 90 contracts at the Institute of Education Sciences, a research branch of the federal agency. It included $1.5 million that went to a contractor to “observe mailing and clerical operations” at a U.S. Census facility in Indiana, the department said.
The Education Department did not immediately release further details about the contracts.
A spokesperson said the cuts won’t affect core operations at the Institute of Education Sciences, including the College Scorecard, which provides data about the cost and outcomes of U.S. universities
It wasn’t clear what time frame the $900 million in cuts covered. Congress appropriated the institute about $800 million in 2024, according to federal records.
A Trump appointee at the heart of the sweeping changes at the U.S. Agency for International Development is defending the near-shutdown of the agency, saying Trump officials have been faced with “noncompliance” and “insubordination” from staff.
Peter Marocco, the deputy administrator at the aid agency, submitted a statement Monday in a lawsuit brought by groups representing government employees.
Marocco is accusing agency employees of stalling and resisting the new administration’s freeze on funding for foreign aid and its attempts to review each program in depth.
Marocco says that makes it necessary to pull all but about 600 of the agency’s staffers off the job. The employees groups are urging a federal judge to restore USAID to its status before the administration.
A top official at the U.S. Department of Justice has ordered federal prosecutors to drop charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has cultivated a warm relationship with Trump.
In a two-page memo obtained by The Associated Press, acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove, an alumnus of the Manhattan office that brought the case, said the decision to dismiss the charges was reached without an assessment of the strength of the prosecution and was not meant to call into question the attorneys who filed the case.
Bove wrote that the pending prosecution has “unduly restricted” Adams’ ability to “devote full attention and resources to the illegal immigration and violent crime that has escalated under the policies of the prior Administration.”
▶ Read more about the Justice Department’s order
Trump’s senior advisers are expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy this week on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference to discuss the path toward ending Russia’s nearly three-year war in Ukraine.
Retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, Trump’s special envoy to Ukraine and Russia, told The Associated Press that the White House is ironing out details of the highly anticipated talks.
Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Kellogg are among the Trump officials traveling to Germany, and all could be involved.
Trump said Monday that he’d “probably” speak with Zelenskyy this week.
Trump has signed an executive order banning paper straws, which he said was a “No. 1 trending” issue.
“We’re going back to plastic straws,” Trump said.
The order rolls back a push by the Biden administration to phase out single-use plastic across the federal government.
Trump also signed an order loosening the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which was designed to keep U.S. officials from bribing foreign counters. Trump said the act was a “disaster” for American business interests overseas.
He also ordered funding ended for a federal management and executive training programing dating to the Johnson administration.
The Republican president said the Democratic former governor’s conviction and prison sentence “shouldn’t have happened.”
“I’ve watched him. He was set up by a lot of bad people, some of the same people I had to deal with,” Trump said at the White House as he signed the pardon.
▶ Read more about Blagojevich's pardon
Trump says the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas should be canceled if Hamas doesn’t release all the remaining hostages it is holding in Gaza by midday Saturday.
In comments to reporters as he signed a series of executive orders, Trump said it was ultimately up to Israel. But he warned that “all hell is going to break out” if the remaining hostages aren’t released, adding that he feared many were dead.
“I’m speaking for myself,” Trump said. “Israel can override it.”
Trump is removing the exceptions and exemptions from his 2018 tariffs on steel, meaning that all steel imports will be taxed at a minimum of 25%. Trump also hiked his 2018 aluminum tariffs to 25% from 10%.
“We were being pummeled by both friend and foe alike,” Trump said. “It’s time for our great industries to come back to America.”
The moves are part of an aggressive push by Trump to reset global trade, with Trump saying that tax hikes on the people and companies buying foreign-made products will ultimately strengthen domestic manufacturing. Outside economic analyses suggest the tariffs would increase costs for the factories that use steel and aluminum, possibly leaving U.S. manufacturers worse off.
Trump has signed an executive order that reverses a federal push away from plastic straws, declaring that paper straws “don’t work.”
The move by Trump — who has long railed against paper straws and whose 2019 reelection campaign sold Trump-branded reusable plastic straws for $15 per pack of 10 — targets a Biden administration policy to phase out federal purchases of single-use plastics, including straws, from food service operations, events and packaging by 2027, and from all federal operations by 2035.
Several U.S. states and cities have banned plastic straws because they pollute oceans and waterways and harm marine life. Some restaurants no longer automatically give plastic straws to customers. But plastic straws are only a small part of the problem. The environment is littered with single-use plastic food and beverage containers — water bottles, takeout containers, coffee lids, shopping bags and more.
Trump is asking longtime foreign policy adviser Richard Grenell to serve as the interim executive director of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts after the president fired members from the board of trustees last week and named himself the chairman.
“Ric shares my Vision for a GOLDEN AGE of American Arts and Culture, and will be overseeing the daily operations of the Center,” Trump said in a post on his social media network. “NO MORE DRAG SHOWS, OR OTHER ANTI-AMERICAN PROPAGANDA — ONLY THE BEST.”
The U.S. Agency for International Development has lost almost all ability to track $8.2 billion in unspent humanitarian aid after the Trump administration’s foreign funding freeze and idling of staff, a government watchdog said Monday.
The new administration’s rapid dismantling of USAID has left oversight of the humanitarian aid “largely nonoperational,” the inspector general’s office for USAID said.
That includes the agency’s greatly reduced ability to ensure no aid falls into the hands of violent extremist groups or goes astray in conflict zones, the watchdog said.
Trump has fired the director of the Office of Government Ethics, which oversees ethics requirements and compliance for 140-plus agencies within the executive branch.
A one-sentence statement on the group’s website read that it “has been notified that the President is removing David Huitema” and that it would revert to its acting director, Shelley K. Finlayson.
Huitema had been confirmed by the then-Democratic-controlled Senate in December for a five-year term.
Fox News’ Bret Baier asked Trump in an interview airing Monday if he saw the 40-year-old vice president as the 2028 Republican nominee.
Trump replied: “No, but he’s very capable. I mean, I don’t think that it, you know, I think you have a lot of very capable people. So far, I think he’s doing a fantastic job. It’s too early.”
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem has asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to lend her agency IRS workers to assist with immigration enforcement.
In a letter obtained by The Associated Press and dated Feb. 7, Noem asks Bessent for IRS workers to help with the Trump administration’s ongoing immigration crackdown efforts given the IRS’ boost in funding.
The federal tax collection agency originally received an $80 billion infusion of funds under the Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, though that money has already been clawed back.
The DHS asks for IRS workers to help with serving in interagency task forces with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, targeting employers engaged in unlawful hiring practices, monitoring undocumented people who report to ICE offices, and other tasks.
“Treasury has qualified law enforcement personnel available to assist with immigration enforcement, especially in light of recent increases to the Internal Revenue Service’s work force and budget,” Noem said.
The Trump administration has promised severe cutbacks to the IRS.
A 2023 debt ceiling and budget-cuts deal between Republicans and the White House resulted in $1.4 billion rescinded from the agency and a separate agreement to take $20 billion from the IRS over the next two years and divert those funds to other nondefense programs.
A representative from the Treasury did not respond to a request for comment.
Trump plans to sign an executive order Monday that would relax enforcement of a foreign corruption law in a move the White House claims would allow American companies to be more competitive.
The executive order will direct Attorney General Pam Bondi to pause enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act — which prohibits American companies operating abroad from using bribery and other illegal methods — while she issues new guidance that “promotes American competitiveness and efficient use of federal law enforcement resources,” according to a White House fact sheet about the order obtained by The Associated Press.
It was not clear how much the Trump administration plans to relax enforcement and whether it would open the door to permitting American companies to pay bribes in foreign countries.
Vance while in Paris is expected to push back on European efforts to tighten AI oversight while advocating for a more open, innovation-driven approach.
The vice president will have his first opportunity to make the administration’s case to world leaders and tech luminaries during Monday’s private working dinner at Élysée Palace hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron.
While in Paris. Vance will also deliver an address to the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit and hold talks with Macron, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
Vance’s diplomatic tour continues in Germany later this week where he will attend the Munich Security Conference and press European allies to increase their commitments to NATO and Ukraine.
His comments on the House floor Monday come as Republicans in the House and Senate pursue legislation that will enact President Donald Trump’s priorities, including extending many of the tax cuts passed in 2017.
Jeffries warned about the prospect of cuts to Medicaid, the federal-state health insurance program for low-income Americans, to help pay for GOP priorities. He called it a Republican “bait and switch.”
“Hospitals will close, including in rural America and urban America and the heartland of America,” Jeffries said. “Nursing homes will be shut down, and every-day Americans, children, seniors, those who are suffering with disabilities, will be hurt.”
It’s the latest step in the administration’s fast-paced dismantling of the six-decade-old aid agency.
The General Services Administration, which manages government buildings, confirmed in an email to The Associated Press that it had terminated the U.S. Agency for International Development’s lease on the headquarters. The building would be repurposed for some other government functions, the GSA said.
That’s according to a notice from the Federal Aviation Administration posted Monday. It comes after the Republican became the first sitting president to attend the Super Bowl this past Sunday.
GOP Sen. Susan Collins said she called Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to register her opposition. Collins said Kennedy promised her that as soon as he’s confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary, he will reexamine the administration’s initiative.
His confirmation vote is expected this week.
“I oppose the poorly conceived directive,” Collins, the chair of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee, said in a statement.
During his first term, Trump had commuted Blagojevich’s 14-year sentence for political corruption charges.
The news of the pardon is according to a person familiar with Trump’s plans who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. The person said Trump planned to sign the pardon Monday afternoon.
Blagojevich was convicted in 2011 and served eight years of his sentence before Trump cut short his term.
Blagojevich appeared on “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010, before his first corruption trial started. He drew praise from Trump at the time when he “fired” him as a contestant.
When U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department told their contractors to pause all work, Sadie Healy expected the impact to be “horrendous.”
But Healy, who runs a small global health consulting firm, Molloy Consultants, realized no one was documenting how bad the freeze on U.S. foreign aid would be. USAID wouldn’t be cataloging the impacts as President Donald Trump’s administration fired senior staff, shuttered its headquarters and then told its employees their jobs would end. The nonprofits and aid companies who worked with USAID were fighting to survive.
So Healy decided she would do it.
“I am an action person. The depression and the sadness that we knew this was going to cause was something I couldn’t deal with,” Healy said in an interview with The Associated Press. “So we called a Zoom meeting.”
Healy is one of a growing number of people and organizations in the international development ecosystem stepping forward to track the impact of the freeze on U.S. foreign aid.
▶ Read more about the foreign aid freeze
The item was reporting on a comment made by someone critical of efforts to dismantle the USAID agency.
Steve Herman, chief national correspondent for Voice of America, wrote on social media that “eliminating USAID ‘makes Americans less safe at home and abroad,’ says Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward.” He linked to Perryman’s comments.
Special envoy Richard Grenell said on X that “it isn’t too much to suggest this is treasonous. You don’t get to work against the official U.S. government policies while being paid by U.S. taxpayers.”
Herman, Grenell suggested, “should be immediately fired.”
Voice of America, a U.S.-government-funded agency, employs journalists to report around the world on what is going on in the United States. It has been operating since World War II.
Herman said Monday that he wasn’t authorized to comment.
And the judge ordered the White House to release all money.
U.S. District Court Judge John McConnell found there’s evidence that some federal grants and loans are still not going out to the recipients and ordered that the cash be released.
McConnell earlier ordered a halt to Trump administration plans for a sweeping freeze on federal funding. The Republican administration has said the pause was necessary to ensure federal spending fits with the president’s agenda.
The order comes in a lawsuit filed by nearly two dozen states.
▶ Read more about Trump and federal spending
The move purges the boards of members appointed by former President Joe Biden.
The president said in a post on his social media network Monday that he ordered the immediate dismissal of the board members after accusing them of having “been infiltrated by Woke Leftist Ideologues over the last four years.”
When Biden took office in 2021, his administration purged a number of members from the boards after Trump used the last two months of his first term to appoint loyalists to a number of boards.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in federal court in Boston by attorneys general from nearly two dozen states, challenges the Trump administration, Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health over efforts to reduce indirect costs to these institutions, including lab, faculty, infrastructure and utility costs.
“Massachusetts is the medical research capital of the country. We are the proud home of nation-leading universities and research institutions that save lives, create jobs, and help secure a better future,” Massachusetts Attorney Andrea Campbell said in a statement. “We will not allow the Trump Administration to unlawfully undermine our economy, hamstring our competitiveness, or play politics with our public health.”
The president announced his selection of Brodie on his social media network Monday. Brodie is co-president and general counsel of Brodie Generational Capital Partners.
Badr Abdelatty stressed “the importance of finding a political horizon for the Palestinian cause, leading to the establishment of an independent Palestinian state, and for the Palestinian people to enjoy the right of self-determination,” the Egyptian foreign ministry said in a statement.
A senior Hamas official blasted President Trump’s latest remarks about the U.S. ownership of Gaza, as “absurd.”
Izzat al-Rishq, a member of Hamas politico bureau, said the comments “reflect a deep ignorance of Palestine and the region.”
In comments released by Hamas early Monday, he said Trump’s approach toward the Palestinian cause will fail.
Over the weekend, some staff members at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau saw a sign of trouble to come.
Windows in two basement conference rooms were covered with brown paper and blue painter’s tape, concealing their occupants. Voices could be heard inside discussing cuts to government agencies. When the door was cracked open, there were young people with temporary badges.
It was fresh evidence that the agency, which was created to protect Americans from financial fraud, abuse and deceptive practices, was the newest target of Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency. Now the Washington headquarters is shut down for the week, and there are fears that it will be gutted like the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Pictures of the conference rooms were viewed by The Associated Press and the scene was described by two current employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.
▶ Read more about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
— Chris Megerian
The termination of Hampton Dellinger at the Office of Special Counsel comes as President Trump’s Republican administration is engaged in a massive overhaul of the federal government, testing the limits of well-established civil service protections by moving to dismantle federal agencies and push out staffers.
Dellinger was informed of his firing in an email Friday from the White House personnel director, who said he was writing on behalf of the president.
Dellinger notes in his lawsuit filed Monday in Washington federal court that the special counsel can be removed “only for inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
▶ Read more about the whistleblower agency
The Saudis are furious. The Danes are scrambling. Colombia has backed down. Mexico and Canada stand in a purgatory between tariff wars with the US and … not. China has retaliated, launching a trade war between the economic superpowers. The Brits, long proud of their “special relationship” with the United States, are leaning into their tradition of quiet diplomacy.
It’s as if President Donald Trump has flung a bag of marbles across the global stage, under the feet of foreign leaders who’ve often stepped together through eight decades of postwar global order.
Acknowledged publicly or not, world leaders are watching Trump’s wood-chipper approach to some American government institutions and wondering about those of the post-Cold War order: What of the U.S. roles in NATO, the United Nations, the World Bank and other pillars of the international order?
▶ Read more about Trump’s effect on the international community
That contradicts other officials in his administration who’ve sought to argue Trump was only calling for the temporary relocation of its population.
Less than a week after he floated his plan for the U.S. to take control of Gaza and turn it in “the Riviera of the Middle East,” Trump, in an interview with FOX News’ Bret Baier that was set to air Monday, said “No, they wouldn’t” when asked if Palestinians in Gaza would be have a right to return to the territory. It comes as he’s ramped up pressure on Arab states, especially U.S. allies Jordan and Egypt, to take in Palestinians from Gaza, who claim the territory as part of a future homeland.
“We’ll build safe communities, a little bit away from where they are, where all of this danger is,” Trump said. “In the meantime, I would own this. Think of it as a real estate development for the future. It would be a beautiful piece of land. No big money spent.”
▶ Read more about Trump’s plan for Gaza
The portal is for government workers.
In a letter addressed to “the Brave Public Servants,” the Democrats remind that the Whistleblower Protection Act “prohibits retaliation against federal employees who disclose evidence of wrongdoing.”
“If you have information you want to share about wrongdoing, abuse of power, and threats to public safety, we stand ready to support you,” wrote Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and the top Democrat on the Homeland Security and Government Oversight Committee Sen. Gary Peters.
They said Republicans are refusing to provide a check on the White House.
The group wrote an op-ed in the New York Times on Monday, sounding the alarm on the risks associated with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency accessing sensitive Treasury payment systems.
“These political actors have not been subject to the same rigorous ethics rules as civil servants,” said former Treasury heads Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Timothy Geithner, Jacob Lew and Janet Yellen in the Times op-ed.
“We are alarmed about the risks of arbitrary and capricious political control of federal payments, which would be unlawful and corrosive to our democracy,” they said.
They also issue a dire warning about the notion of selective suspension of congressionally authorized payments, which Musk regularly threatens on X, calling it “a breach of trust and ultimately, a form of default.”
After DOGE recently gained access to sensitive Treasury data including Social Security and Medicare customer payment systems, a federal judge over the weekend ordered that the Treasury Department should block access to anyone “other than civil servants with a need for access to perform their job duties” from its payment system, noting the risk of “irreparable harm.”
The S&P 500 rose 0.5% in early trading Monday, coming off a losing week bookended by worries about how potential tariffs could threaten the economy. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 261 points, and the Nasdaq composite was up 0.7%.
Treasury yields ticked lower in the bond market after Trump said over the weekend that he’ll impose 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports, as well as other import duties later in the week.
He reminded staff Monday morning that their office is closed and they should “not perform any work tasks.” The Associated Press viewed a copy of the email.
Employees were directed to contact the top lawyer for the Office of Management and Budget “to get approval in writing before performing any work task.”
The agency was created after the 2008 financial crisis and subprime mortgage-lending scandal, and it’s been a target of conservatives for years.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Joseph N. Laplante in New Hampshire comes after two similar rulings by judges in Seattle and Maryland last week.
A lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union contends President Trump’s order violates the Constitution and “attempts to upend one of the most fundamental American constitutional values.”
Trump’s Republican administration has asserted that children of noncitizens are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States and therefore are not entitled to citizenship.
The administration is appealing the Seattle judge’s block on Trump’s executive order.
▶ Read more about Trump’s birthright citizenship order
It came just hours after U.S. President Donald Trump announced he wants to slap new duties on all steel and aluminum imports to the U.S.
The rapid-fire shots of tariffs and import curbs hearken back to Trump’s first term in office, when the U.S. and China engaged in a trade war that spanned most of Trump’s first four years in office and was continued to a certain extent under his successor, Joe Biden.
Less than a month after returning to the White House on Jan. 20, Trump slapped 10% duties on all Chinese imports, a move that’s expected to raise prices on goods including laptops, toys and fast fashion.
China responded with 15% duties on coal and liquefied natural gas products, and a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery and large-engine cars imported from the U.S.
▶ Read more about tariffs between the U.S. and China
A man who had earlier identified himself as a USAID official, while refusing to identify himself further, is taking a harsh tone with staffers who arrive for work at agency headquarters.
“Go home,” the man told arriving staffers. “Just go.”
“Why are you here?” he asked.
Security guards have turned away USAID staffers who arrived for work at agency headquarters in Washington even after a court temporarily blocked a Trump administration order that would have pulled all but a fraction of aid and development staffers off the job worldwide.
A front desk officer on Monday told a steady stream of agency staffers in business clothes or USAID sweatshirts or T-shirts that he had a list of no more than 10 names of people allowed to enter the agency.
Staffers who hadn’t seen each other since President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk began dismantling their agency embraced each other.
The 40-year-old vice president, who was just 18 months into his tenure as a senator before joining Trump’s ticket, is expected, while in Paris, to push back on European efforts to tighten AI oversight while advocating for a more open, innovation-driven approach.
The AI summit has drawn world leaders, top tech executives, and policymakers to discuss artificial intelligence’s impact on global security, economics, and governance. High-profile attendees also include Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Guoqing, signaling Beijing’s deep interest in shaping global AI standards.
The event highlights a growing divide between the European Union and other players pushing for more regulations to make the fast-moving technology safer for the public, and the U.S., where the Trump administration has prioritized business-friendly policies and technological dominance.
▶ Read more about Vance and the AI summit
He cited the rising cost of producing the one-cent coin.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is so wasteful!” Trump wrote in a post Sunday night on his Truth Social site. “I have instructed my Secretary of the US Treasury to stop producing new pennies.”
The move by Trump is the latest in what’s been a rapid-fire effort by his new administration to enact sweeping change through executive order and proclamation on issues ranging from immigration, to gender and diversity, to the name of the Gulf of Mexico.
Trump had not discussed his desire to eliminate the penny during his campaign. But Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency raised the prospect in a post on X last month highlighting the penny’s cost.
▶ Read more about Trump and pennies
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This story has been updated to correct that Trump fired members of the board of trustees for the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, not the whole board.
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