Judge temporarily blocks Trump administration from gutting USAid – live

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Donald Trump said Friday that he is appointing himself as chairman of the John F Kennedy Center for the performing arts.

“At my direction, we are going to make the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C., GREAT AGAIN,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.

The Kennedy Center is the country’s national cultural center and is run through a public-private partnership. The idea for such a center began with Eleanor Roosevelt in the 1930s and was authorized by Congress in 1958 under the National Cultural Center Act. It’s known for hosting music, theater, dance, artwork and performance art; and has hosted acts ranging from Tina Turner to Led Zeppelin.

Trump said he is immediately terminating multiple people from the Board of Trustees, including the chairman, saying they don’t “share our Vision for a Golden Age in Arts and Culture”. The president also brought up the topic of queer people, something he’s repeatedly harped on since being sworn into office, saying that the Kennedy Center “featured Drag Shows specifically targeting our youth – THIS WILL STOP”.

With what seemed like a hat tip to Kimberly Guilfoyle’s famous 2020 campaign speech for Trump, he signed off his Truth Social post saying: “THE BEST IS YET TO COME!”

During his first term, after artists’ protests and threats to boycott, Trump didn’t attend a single annual gala event at the Kennedy Center.

Alaskan lawmakers are aiming to halt the renaming of Denali to Mount McKinley.

The state senate unanimously voted on Friday to pass a resolution that urges Donald Trump to stop his plans to change the name of the highest peak in North America. The senate followed a similar vote of 31-8 in the state house last week.

Trump signed an executive order to rename Denali during his first week of office, saying it was to honor the former president. “President McKinley is honored for giving his life for our great nation,” the order reads.

Barack Obama changed the name of the mountain from Mount McKinley to Denali in 2015. That name change was to “recognize the sacred status of Denali to many Alaska Natives”.

Reverting the name to Mount McKinley has been unpopular even with Republicans. Lisa Murkowski, a Republican senator from Alaska, said that she “strongly disagreed” with Trump’s decision.

Judge who ordered temporary order to halt dismantling of USAid is Donald Trump appointee.

In 2019, Trump appointed Judge Carl Nichols to the US district court for the District of Columbia. Nichols blocked Marco Rubio from putting 2,200 USAid employees on leave starting midnight tonight, so that the legal proceedings could play out.

“They should not put those 2,200 people on administrative leave,” Nichols said during an emergency hearing on Friday. Nichols could also order Rubio to reinstate 500 employees who’ve already been put on leave, he said he was still weighing that decision. The judge said he would formalize his decision later tonight.

Two unions representing federal and foreign service workers brought the lawsuit against the government. They said dismantling the aid agency is “unconstitutional and illegal” and had “generated a global humanitarian crisis”. They argue that only Congress has the power to lawfully disassemble USAid.

A US Treasury threat intelligence analysis has reportedly designated staff from Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) as an “insider threat”.

Wired obtained an internal email on Friday that said Doge’s access to government payment systems is “the single biggest insider threat risk the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced”.

Musk has brought a group on young men onto his team to reportedly work to gain access to the government’s computer systems, causing outcry among democrats. Senator Chuck Schumer has called the group “an unelected shadow government … conducting a hostile takeover of the federal government”.

The young men, who are all under the age of 26, have little government experience and have been working at the behest of Musk to tap into internal systems at various federal agencies, including the Department of Education, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Treasury Department.

US judge to enter 'limited' temporary order to block Trump from moving to dismantle USAid

A US judge on Friday said he will enter a “very limited” temporary order blocking Donald Trump’s administration from taking certain steps to dismantle the US Agency for International Development (USaid), according to Reuters.

US district judge Carl Nichols in Washington said he would issue the order following a lawsuit by the largest US government workers’ union and an association of foreign service workers, who sued on Thursday to stop the administration’s efforts to dismantle the agency.

In a notice sent to the foreign aid agency’s workers on Thursday, the administration said it will keep 611 essential workers onboard at USaid out of a worldwide workforce that totals more than 10,000. This move has largely been directed by Elon Musk, who’s spearheading the president’s effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy.

A justice department official, Brett Shumate, told Nichols that about 2,200 USAid employees would be put on paid leave under the administration’s plans, saying: “The president has decided there is corruption and fraud at USAid.”

Pentagon is amassing more soldiers on the southern border

A US official said the agency will deploy about 1,500 more active-duty troops, bringing the total number to about 3,600, according to the Associated Press.

Moving troops south is part of Donald Trump’s plans to crack down on immigration and beef up security at the border. Trump signed several executive orders during his first week in office addressing immigration, including one declaring a national emergency at the southern border.

Roughly 1,600 active-duty troops have already been deployed, according to the Associated Press, and about 500 more are anticipated to head south within the next few days.

Trump signs executive order targeting South Africa

Donald Trump has signed an executive order to address “serious human rights violations occurring in South Africa”, Reuters reports, in the latest sign of worsening relations between the United States and Africa’s largest economy.

It was not yet clear how the order would affect South Africa, but it comes after secretary of state Marco Rubio accused the country of “anti-Americanism”, while Trump announced he would cut funding to the country over its efforts to reform land ownership.

Here’s more on the spat:

The shuttering of USAid continues apace, with its name taped over on a building directory outside its Washington DC headquarters:

USAid’s listing erased outside its headquarters in Washington DC. Photograph: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP

Only a few hundred staffers are set to remain at the organization that facilitates the US foreign aid strategy:

The day so far

Donald Trump has made clear he will fire “some” of the FBI agents who investigated the January 6 US Capitol attack, after the bureau turned over their names to a justice department official who was previously one of the president’s attorneys. Speaking at a joint press conference with Japan’s prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, the president also again backed dismantling the Department of Education and said he was “very proud” of the work of the “department of government efficiency”, despite objections from Democrats and advocacy groups. Earlier in the day, he renewed his offensive against USAid, and said he’d announce a new barrage of tariffs on unspecified countries next week.

Here’s what else has happened today:

• Trump said he is in “no rush” to make his plan to put the United States in charge of the Gaza Strip a reality.

• USAid’s dismantling may be a boon for China’s global influence, analysts say.

• The health and human services department and agencies under its umbrella – such as the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control – may be the next targets of Trump’s mass layoffs, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Just before he wrapped up his press conference with the Japanese prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, Donald Trump was asked if he had given Elon Musk and his “department of government efficiency” any particular orders of where to find areas to cut spending.

“We haven’t discussed that much. I’ll tell him to go here, go there. He does it. He’s got a very capable group of people, very, very, very, very capable. They know what they’re doing. They’ll ask questions, and they’ll see immediately, as somebody gets tongue-tied, that they’re either crooked or don’t know what they’re doing,” Trump said.

“I’ve instructed him go into education, go into military, go into other things as we go along, and they’re finding massive amounts of fraud, abuse, waste, all of these things,” the president added, without offering details.

The reporter speaking to Trump noted that social security and Medicare make up the bulk of federal spending. “Social security will not be touched, it’ll only be strengthened,” Trump replied, again without providing details of how he would do that and then pivoting to accusations that undocumented immigrants are accessing those benefits.