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Hear what stood out to CNN’s Paula Reid about the Supreme Court’s decision
03:24 – Source: CNN
Hear what stood out to CNN’s Paula Reid about the Supreme Court’s decision
03:24
• Trade war: President Donald Trump said his call today with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau ended in a “‘somewhat’ friendly manner,” but he did not mention any potential compromise on the trade war between the two nations. US stocks however rallied after the administration said it would grant a one-month exemption for tariffs on Canada and Mexico that affect automakers.
• Court rulings: A divided Supreme Court rejected Trump’s request to keep billions in foreign aid approved by Congress frozen. Separately, a federal appeals court allowed the president to remove the head of a government watchdog agency while a legal challenge to his firing plays out.
• Cuts at the VA: The administration is planning to cut tens of thousands of employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to a memo obtained by CNN.
• US-Hamas talks: The US is negotiating directly with Hamas about hostages and the Gaza ceasefire, upending its tradition of not talking to groups it considers terrorist organizations, according to officials.
The Trump administration has already terminated 2,400 Veterans Affairs employees, according to a Tuesday letter addressed to the Veterans Affairs secretary from two Maine lawmakers, independent Sen. Angus King and Democratic Rep. Jared Golden.
The letter to Secretary Doug Collins expressed “utmost concern” about the lack of a stated reason for the firings and the number of veterans among those who have been fired.
Some background: The administration is ultimately planning to cut tens of thousands of employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs, according to an internal memo obtained by CNN.
Rep. Derrick Van Orden said Elon Musk distanced himself and the Department of Government Efficiency effort from the widespread firings across the federal government, which he blamed on federal department heads, during a meeting with House Republicans on Wednesday evening.
Musk told the group that recently announced plans to cut employees at the Department of Veterans Affairs “wasn’t a DOGE decision,” Van Orden told CNN’s Manu Raju.
CNN has reported on a March 4 memo from the VA chief of staff Christopher Syrek that the VA and DOGE will move “aggressively” to restructure across the entire department and “resize” the workforce.
Van Orden said Musk told lawmakers the “individual departments” were involved in plans to cut employees across the federal government, and that DOGE was making the “assumption” that department heads know who was being “unproductive” and would “reward the people that are being productive.”
He told CNN that “yeah,” Musk was telling House Republicans he was not involved in the firings, and that Musk did not pass judgement on the merits of the deep job cuts.
Musk has been a central figure in the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal government, though the White House has made clear that Musk is serving as a special government employee and is not officially tasked with leading DOGE.
President Donald Trump said he told Washington, DC, Mayor Muriel Bowser on Wednesday to crack down on the homeless encampments in the nation’s capital, particularly those outside the White House and State Department.
Last year, several encampments across the city were cleared out after homelessness in Washington jumped 14% in 2023.
Elon Musk acknowledged to House Republicans that the Department of Government Efficiency has made some mistakes as decisions about certain federal freezes and firings have had to be reversed.
The comments came in his closed-door meeting with GOP lawmakers.
Multiple GOP members told CNN that Musk walked them through how DOGE has approached cuts to the federal government and had members of his team address the group as well. A number of Republicans asked questions, with some raising concerns about how the process has been handled.
One GOP lawmaker detailed why Republicans are pushing Musk behind closed doors, while remaining publicly supportive.
“Republican members may be reticent to criticize Elon publicly because they understand that you praise in public. If you’re good teammate, you criticize behind closed doors,” the lawmaker said.
Elon Musk emerged from a meeting with House Republicans after nearly two hours, telling reporters, “there’s a lot of room — opportunity to improve expenditures in the government, and we’re making good progress.”
Pressed by CNN’s Manu Raju on if Congress should get a vote on these cuts, Musk replied, “well they do have a vote on it.” Asked if that could include a rescissions package, Musk replied “yeah, sure.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson said the idea of a legislative package codifying cuts made by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency was discussed during the meeting.
“We talked about that because most of this will be part of the [fiscal year 2026] budgeting process and the appropriations. And if there are savings and things that relate to [fiscal year 2025] and we have already passed the [continuing resolution], then yes, of course, you will have rescissions” that come from the executive branch, he told reporters as he left the meeting.
Some context: During the tech billionaire’s meeting with GOP senators earlier today, Sen. Rand Paul, a strong advocate for shrinking government, made the case that DOGE’s cuts should be moving through Congress in the form of rescissions packages in order to be protected from the courts.
A rescissions package makes changes to funding that was appropriated by Congress and only requires a simple majority vote in the Senate and a majority vote in the House. Republicans have control of both chambers.
The challenge for Republicans, however, is that voting on rescissions packages means that they will be on the record for voting for cuts that could be unpopular with some in the American public and even with some of their own constituents.
This post was updated with Speaker Johnson’s remarks.
GOP Rep. Andrew Garbarino of New York was shocked to learn that 4,000 Internal Revenue Service employees in his district are on the verge of losing their office space when he met today with Treasury union representatives.
The IRS office in Garbarino’s Long Island district is one of over 100 offices across the country that help with taxpayer assistance that the Trump administration is looking to close, according to a list circulated last month and reviewed by CNN.
Despite being in the middle of tax season, a total of 7,400 IRS probationary employees have already been laid off according to documents provided to CNN, and plans are being drafted to eventually cut the agency’s workforce in half, according to sources.
The IRS has long been a political punching bag for Republicans, particularly after Democrats bolstered the agency with billions in new funding meant to help modernize the nation’s tax collector. Congressional leaders secured a bipartisan agreement to cut the IRS by $20 billion last year.
But in the height of tax season, some Republicans acknowledge that the core functions of the federal agency need to be preserved.
“We want to make sure that the efforts to find waste, fraud and abuse don’t impair the necessary functions of the federal government,” GOP Rep. Dan Newhouse told CNN when asked about cuts being made to the IRS.
President Donald Trump on Tuesday imposed blanket 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico, and doubled tariffs on those from China.
In response, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he would implement a 25% tariff on $20.7 billion ($30 billion Canadian) of US goods immediately, followed by an additional $86.2 billion ($125 billion Canadian) in 21 days’ time.
Here’s what else you should know:
A call with Trudeau:
- Following the imposed tariffs, Trudeau and Trump had a nearly one-hour phone call that Trudeau’s office described as “constructive.” While Trump said the leaders’ call ended in a “‘somewhat’ friendly manner,” he did not mention any potential compromise on the 25% tariff.
Auto tariff delay:
- Trump granted an exemption on autos tariffs on Mexico and Canada for one month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday.
- Leavitt said that “reciprocal tariffs will still go into effect on April 2. But at the request of the companies associated with USMCA, the president is giving them an exemption for one month so they are not at an economic disadvantage.”
- US stocks rose Wednesday following the one-month reprieve on auto tariffs for Canada and Mexico, easing investor concerns about a global trade war.
Tariff disturbance:
- Trump conceded Tuesday during his address to a joint session of Congress that his steep new tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China will cause “a little disturbance,” saying, “tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening, and it will happen rather quickly.”
- Leavitt said Trump “told the truth, and he was realistic, and he level set with the American people” when he said tariffs will cause “a little disturbance.”
Mexico’s response:
- Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said Wednesday that her country could pursue other trade partners “if necessary” following Trump’s tariffs.
- Sheinbaum said Tuesday that she planned to announce retaliatory tariffs on American imports, as well as non-tariff measures, Sunday.
Chaos within the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has come to light in a recent court filing showing emails and documents from employees inside the agency amid efforts to dismantle it, illustrating a team scrambling to make do with recent firings and confusion on what work is allowed to be completed.
Employees were left puzzled following instructions from Russell Vought, the acting director of CFPB, last month explicitly ordering them to stop working altogether and saying that “any urgent matters” would require approval in writing from the bureau’s chief legal officer.
Those instructions kickstarted a flurry of uncertainty and hesitancy behind the scenes that has picked up this week. Mark Paoletta, CFPB chief legal officer, said in an email on Sunday that it had come to his attention that some employees had not been performing statutorily required work.
“Let me be clear: Employees should be performing work that is required by law and do not need to seek prior approval to do so,” Paoletta wrote, according to the court filing.
About CFPB: It protects consumers from financial abuses and serves as the central independent agency for consumer financial protection authorities. President Donald Trump fired the previous director of the CFPB, Rohit Chopra, last month before the agency’s work had been halted. The effort to gut the agency was made apparent with an Elon Musk tweet last month that read: “CFPB RIP” with a tombstone emoji.
An ensuing court battle has produced the filing with revealing internal emails showing how the agency isn’t meeting its obligations. A federal judge has put in place an order that blocks the agency from making any substantial changes, especially to its data, personnel and funding reserves, but even that is a challenge to comply with, the agency emails reveal.
CNN’s Katelyn Polantz contributed to the report.
During today’s White House briefing, press secretary Karoline Leavitt said she had been passed a note from President Donald Trump instructing her to tout a poll showing that a majority of viewers who watched his speech to Congress the night before approved of it.
The moment — showing the president was tuning in real-time to his press secretary’s briefing — underscores how the former reality TV star cares about the messaging of his administration.
The graphic of the poll was shown on the screen behind Leavitt for several minutes during the briefing as well, and she had also mentioned it during her opening remarks as well.
Some more background: According to CNN’s polling conducted by SSRS, the GOP-heavy audience greeted the speech with tempered positivity. Roughly seven in 10 speech-watchers said they had at least a somewhat positive reaction to the address, with a smaller 44% offering a very positive response. That’s lower than the 57% of viewers who rated Trump’s initial address to Congress very positively eight years ago, or the 51% who said the same of President Joe Biden’s initial address in 2021. It also comes just below the 48% “very positive” rating Trump saw for his 2018 State of the Union.
The hit musical show “Hamilton” announced today that it will cancel performances scheduled for next year at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC, citing President Donald Trump’s firing of the center’s former president and board members.
CNN has reached out to the Kennedy Center for comment.
Shortly after taking office, Trump announced plans to gut the Kennedy Center and appoint himself as chairman — a position he was elected to after firing members of its board.
Seller — noting that the play was first performed at the center during Trump’s first administration — stressed that this move is not “against his administration, but against the partisan policies of the Kennedy Center as a result of his recent takeover.”
Some background: The cancellation comes after other prominent producers and events pulled away from the center in recent weeks.
Issa Rae, who starred in the TV show “Insecure,” cancelled her event, “An Evening with Issa Rae,” citing that there has been “an infringement on the values” of the Kennedy Center.
Television producer Shonda Rhimes, who served as the board’s treasurer, also resigned last month.
The US is negotiating directly with Hamas about hostages and the Gaza ceasefire, upending its tradition of not talking to groups it considers terrorist organizations, according an Israeli official and the White House.
An Israel official told CNN that Israel is aware of direct contacts between the United States and Hamas. And White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed talks were taking place.
The contact was first reported by Axios, which said the talks happened in recent weeks in the Qatari capital of Doha.
Leavitt was asked why the US was negotiating “directly and for the first time ever with Hamas.”
“When it comes to the negotiations that you’re referring to, first of all, the special envoy who’s engaged in those negotiations does have the authority to talk to anyone,” she said, referring to the US hostage envoy, Adam Boehler.
When asked about the scope of the talks, Leavitt said: “These are ongoing talks and discussions. I’m not going to detail them here.”
What the president said: President Donald Trump issued a “last warning” today to Hamas to release all hostages held in Gaza.
“’Shalom Hamas’ means Hello and Goodbye — You can choose. Release all of the Hostages now, not later, and immediately return all of the dead bodies of the people you murdered, or it is OVER for you,” Trump posted on Truth Social.
Hamas responds: Hamas spokesperson Hazem Qassem told CNN that Trump’s social media post would “complicate matters regarding the ceasefire agreement” and embolden Israel’s government to avoid implementing the deal.
CNN’s Kit Maher, Ibrahim Dahman and Mohammed Tawfeeq contributed to this post.
A federal appeals court is allowing President Donald Trump to remove the head of a government watchdog agency while a legal challenge to his firing plays out.
In a brief, unsigned order issued this afternoon, the DC Circuit Court of Appeals granted a request by the administration to put on hold a lower-court ruling that said Trump’s firing of Hampton Dellinger was unlawful. That ruling said Dellinger, the head of the Office of Special Counsel, was entitled to stay at his post.
The appeals court said it would expedite its review of the lower-court ruling.
It’s possible that Dellinger will appeal the court’s order to the Supreme Court on an emergency basis.
Read more details here about the case.
President Donald Trump met at the White House Wednesday with eight hostages who were released by Hamas, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
In one of the photographs posted to the president’s official X account, Eli Sharabi stands next to Trump as he holds a framed drawing that was gifted to him. The left side depicts Jews in the Holocaust with the words, “Never Again.” The right side depicts hostages being held by Hamas with the word, “Again.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson was noncommittal about President Donald Trump’s request for Congress to repeal the CHIPS and Science Act, a law that invested in domestic semiconductor production and passed with bipartisan majorities in 2022.
“We’re going to wait on the president’s FY 26 (fiscal year 2026 budget request). See how it goes,” the Republican speaker told reporters today.
In his address to Congress last night, Trump called the CHIPS Act “horrible.”
“You should get rid of the CHIPS Act and whatever is left over, Mr. Speaker, you should use it to reduce debt or any other reason you want to,” he said.
In the Senate: Earlier today, Majority Leader John Thune said that he was not aware that Trump wanted to get rid of the act and sounded doubtful that it could be repealed as 17 Republicans voted for in 2022.
House Democrats failed to block an effort to kill a proposed censure against Democratic Rep. Al Green for his protest at the President Donald Trump’s Tuesday night address to Congress.
The House voted 209-211 along party lines to advance the censure effort, with Green voting present.
The House is expected to hold the vote to censure Green tomorrow, according to a GOP aide.
Remember: GOP Rep. Daniel Newhouse formally introduced a censure resolution against the Texas lawmaker, who was removed by the House sergeant at arms after standing up and shouting during the opening minutes of Trump’s speech.
For some centrist Democrats, the censure vote puts them in the uncomfortable spot of defending a fellow member’s outbursts during Trump’s speech. Green wasn’t the only one who staged a protest: Several other progressive Democrats walked out, shouted back at the president from their seats, and held up signs, despite guidance from party leadership to remain restrained in their response to keep the focus on Trump and his agenda.
The Trump administration appears to have ordered at least a partial halt to the crucial intelligence that the US shares with Ukraine to defend against the Russian invasion, following a clash in the Oval Office between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and US President Donald Trump last week.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not say today if the pause on intelligence sharing is temporary or permanent. Statements from national security adviser Mike Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe indicated that a pause is in place, but the extent of the limitations was not clear. Both officials also suggested that the halt may be short-lived if the president can be satisfied that Ukraine has taken steps toward negotiations to end the war.
Ukrainian and US officials have agreed to meet “in the near future,” Zelensky’s top aide Andriy Yermak said today following a phone call with US National Security Adviser Michael Waltz.
Kyiv and its allies are meanwhile scrambling to come up with a plan to shore up its defense capabilities after Trump suspended military shipments to Ukraine on Monday.
Given the continued tensions, here’s how Europe is responding:
First steps to a plan for ending the war: Kyiv and Europe are working on a plan for the first steps toward ending Russia’s war, Zelensky said. Ukraine and European countries shared “a common vision for ending the war and ensuring security guarantees,” he said, reiterating the importance of Europe, Ukraine and US negotiating together. The president said he had discussed the plan with Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Portuguese Prime Minister Luis Montenegro and Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof.
Macron speaks about a “new era”: Europe is “entering a new era” in the wake of its long-standing ally, the US, changing its position on Ukraine, “casting doubt on what will happen next,” President Emmanuel Macron said today. The French leader stressed that Europe has to “continue to help the Ukrainians to resist” Russia’s attempts to claim control of their country. He issued a stark warning about the difficult path facing Europe. “I want to believe that the United States will remain by our side, but we need to be ready if that were not the case,” Macron said, highlighting that the current “moment demands decisions without precedent.”
Meeting of European leaders: Macron announced his plan to invite European leaders to Paris next week to work on a plan to deliver a “durable peace” for Ukraine. He said he plans to gather the leaders of countries who may end up deploying peacekeeping troops to Ukraine “once peace has been signed” to prevent Russia from re-invading.
Ahead of Elon Musk’s meeting with House Republicans Wednesday evening, GOP Rep. Rich McCormick said he plans to express his support for tech billionaire’s efforts to slash federal spending, but also to advocate for more restraint in the process.
When pressed on what he meant by a “half step back,” McCormick noted that Musk has been open about wanting to correct the Department of Government Efficiency’s missteps and said that he wants “to continue that learning process, so we can do it right.”
The Georgia congressman was one of several Republican members who have faced heat during recent town halls over DOGE’s federal funding cuts and other controversial Trump policies.
House GOP leadership have since instructed members to avoid in-person events in their districts and to instead opt for virtual Q&A’s.
Some of the House’s staunchest conservatives sounded uncharacteristically upbeat about passing a stopgap funding bill next week — suggesting that Speaker Mike Johnson may be able to unite his narrow GOP majority behind a spending strategy the hard-right typically loathes.
Members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus suggested they could soon back a plan by Johnson to keep the government funded through September 30, even without major changes to reflect President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency cuts in his first six weeks in office.
The plan extends current spending levels — which were signed into law by former President Joe Biden and does not include DOGE cuts — but it also doesn’t include the language Democrats are seeking to restrict Trump’s repeated attempts to override Congress’ spending powers.
Rep. Andy Harris, who leads the Freedom Caucus, said the group wouldn’t formally decide to support the plan until party leaders release legislative text, which is expected sometime over the weekend. But he said he believed that the GOP support would ultimately be there.
Support from the Freedom Caucus will be critical for Johnson to pass the funding bill and avoid a shutdown March 14. Johnson can only lose a handful of lawmakers, and Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky has already signaled that he will oppose the bill. The vast majority of House Democrats are expected to oppose the measure, which they said does nothing to rein in Trump’s unilateral authority to intervene with congressional spending decisions.
In the past, members of the Freedom Caucus haven’t typically supported stopgap funding bills. But conservatives say they’re open to it if it means advancing the rest of Trump’s agenda.
Tiffany Hedges, a recently fired Internal Revenue Service employee, takes issue with President Donald Trump’s claims about the federal workforce.
On Tuesday night during his address to Congress, President Donald Trump told a national audience, “We have thousands of federal workers who have not been showing up to work. My administration will reclaim power from this unaccountable bureaucracy.”
Hedges, from Cincinnati, says it took her six months to get a job with the IRS. She was hired as a contact representative at the office in Covington, Kentucky, but spent only four weeks on the job before she was terminated. In that job, Hedges assisted people who could not pay their taxes with plans to help them pay.
Hedges and one of her colleagues, Tara Bennett, also a contact representative who was recently fired, told CNN they were frustrated with Trump’s comments about the work of DOGE and the mass firings. Bennett, who says she voted for Trump, is from Erlanger, Kentucky.
Refuting Trump’s comments, she said, “There’s time codes for everything you do throughout the day.” She said managers go over those codes and match them up with the work the employee does, which means “there’s no way that you can’t be accountable.”
Hedges, who says she voted for Harris, also had a very pointed response to the repeated claims by Trump and Elon Musk that they’ve uncovered massive waste and fraud in the federal government: “If anything, we’re trying to help out, you know, with the government to retrieve the money… and without us there to retrieve it, that’s when everything will get messy.”
See below how federal agencies have been impacted by the cuts.
A federal judge said today that the Trump administration’s efforts to implement drastic cuts to federal funding for public health research likely broke the law.
In issuing a new preliminary injunction, Judge Angel Kelley pointed to the “the loss of life” that would result if the cuts were implemented and research trials were forced to be suspended, even if just temporarily.
The Boston-based and Biden-appointed judge previously issued a temporary restraining order halting the Trump policy. The policy would have capped a stream of federal funding known indirect cost rates at 15%, from an average of more than 27%, and would reduce funding for research institutions by billions of dollars.
The judge’s 76-page opinion said that the administration’s sweeping cuts, which were announced with little notice, likely ran afoul of both regulatory requirements and a law passed by Congress that sought to prevent the first Trump administration from implementing such a policy.
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