Trump administration live updates: DHS heads toward shutdown; Munich Security Conference kicks off – NBC News

The next round of negotiations between the U.S., Ukraine and Russia has been scheduled for Feb. 17 and 18 in Geneva, Dmytro Lytvyn, an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, confirmed today.

“The Ukrainian delegation is preparing,” Lytvyn said in a WhatsApp message to reporters.

Russian state media outlet TASS also reported the new set of talks, citing an announcement by Russian President Vladimir Putin spokesman Dmitri Peskov.

“This time, the Russian delegation will be led by Russian presidential aide [Vladimir] Medinsky,” Peskov said.

The White House didn’t immediately respond to NBC News’ request for comment.

Dubai has named a new chairman for DP World, one of the world’s largest logistics companies, replacing the outgoing head who was named in the Jeffrey Epstein documents.

The announcement by the government’s Dubai Media Office did not specifically name Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem. However, it said that Essa Kazim was named DP World’s chairman and Yuvraj Narayan was named group CEO. Those were positions held by Sulayem.

DP World has long been a pillar of the economy of the Middle Eastern city. DP World is a logistics giant that runs the Jebel Ali port in Dubai and operates terminals in other ports around the world.

The announcement comes a day after financial groups in Canada and the United Kingdom said they’ve paused future ventures with DP World after newly released emails showed a yearslong friendship between Sulayem, and Epstein.

The emails — some referencing porn, sexual massages and escorts — surfaced in the cache of Epstein-related documents recently released by the U.S. Department of Justice.

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House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., ordered the cancellation of the military flight, hotel reservations and credentials members of Congress had for the Munich Security Conference, Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., told NBC News today.

It wasn’t clear to Crow whether the cancelation was related to the expected shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security as a result of the divisions within Congress over whether to fund the department as lawmakers negotiation an overhaul of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Crow and several other lawmakers who were originally part of a nearly two-dozen member House delegation, wound up flying commercially, booking their own hotel rooms, and obtaining credentials to attend the summit and, for those in the official program, deliver speeches.

Crow told NBC News that the speaker’s decision was the wrong move, saying the U.S. needed to be represented at the conference by more officials than just Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

The CIA released a new Mandarin-language video yesterday appealing to members of China’s military to spy for the United States and work toward “a brighter future,” weeks after Beijing ousted a top general as part of a dramatic purge of top brass.

The video is the latest in a series aimed at recruiting potential informants in China’s regime, a top priority for the U.S. spy agency, which has sometimes struggled to cultivate human sources in a country known for its extensive electronic surveillance apparatus.

The new video posted on social media portrays a fictional disillusioned mid-level officer in China’s military, who laments corrupt party leaders’ enriching themselves while capable men are “deemed a threat and unceremoniously removed.” It then describes how to safely contact the CIA.

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The White House fired the top federal prosecutor for upstate New York just hours after he was sworn into office.

Donald Kinsella, who has worked for decades as a government attorney and in private practice, was appointed and sworn in as the U.S. attorney in the Northern District of New York in a private ceremony on Wednesday, the court said on its website. Later that day, he was fired in an email from the White House.

Kinsella told NBC News yesterday that the email came from the deputy director of presidential personnel, Morgan DeWitt Snow, and that it said the “president directed that I be removed,” without any explanation.

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The top lawyer at Goldman Sachs, Kathy Ruemmler, said yesterday that she would leave the prestigious Wall Street firm amid controversy over her email correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein, which the Justice Department disclosed in recent weeks.

In an interview with The Financial Times, Ruemmler said: “I made the determination that the media attention on me, relating to my prior work as a defence attorney, was becoming a distraction.”

Serving as a close adviser to Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, Ruemmler has drawn intense scrutiny for weeks as the Justice Department dumped millions of pages of files related to Epstein, the convicted sex trafficker.

Ruemmler was White House counsel in the Obama administration.

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Trump’s pick for a top State Department post faces bipartisan opposition after a Republican senator pressed the nominee over his past remarks about Israel and the Holocaust.

Sen. John Curtis, R-Utah, came out against Jeremy Carl’s nomination to be assistant secretary of state for international organizations after a confirmation hearing yesterday, where he challenged Carl on comments he made as recently as 2024.

“After reviewing his record and participating in today’s hearing, I do not believe that Jeremy Carl is the right person to represent our nation’s best interests in international forums, and I find his anti-Israel views and insensitive remarks about the Jewish people unbecoming of the position for which he has been nominated,” Curtis said in a statement.

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An annual gathering of top international security figures that last year set the tone for a growing rift between the United States and Europe opens today, bringing together many top European officials with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and others.

The Munich Security Conference opens with a speech by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, one of 15 heads of state or government from European Union countries whom organizers expect to attend.

The many other expected guests at the conference that runs until Sunday include Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi. In keeping with the conference’s tradition, there will also be a large delegation of members of the U.S. Congress.

“Trans-Atlantic relations have been the backbone of this conference since it was founded in 1963 … and trans-Atlantic relations are currently in a significant crisis of confidence and credibility,” conference chairman Wolfgang Ischinger told reporters earlier this week. “So it is particularly welcome that the American side has such great interest in Munich.”

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The Department of Homeland Security is poised to shut down this weekend as Congress remained deadlocked yesterday on a path forward before leaving town for a weeklong holiday break.

The White House and Democratic leaders have continued to trade offers, signaling some hope for an agreement. But it remains unclear which Democratic demands the White House will agree to when it comes to slapping restraints on immigration enforcement after federal agents killed two American citizens in Minnesota.

With Congress out of town, DHS will shut down beginning at 12:01 a.m. Saturday. That means that federal employees at agencies such as FEMA, the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard won’t be paid, though most of them will continue showing up for work because their jobs are considered critical.

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