Trump administration orders Pentagon to plan for sweeping budget cuts - report
The US defense secretary, Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a memo obtained by the Washington Post.
Hegseth ordered the proposed cuts to be drawn up by 24 February, according to the memo, which includes a list of 17 categories that the Trump administration wants exempted. Among them: operations at the southern US border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense and acquisition of one-way attack drones and other munitions. If adopted in full, the proposed cuts would include tens of billions of dollars in each of the next five years.
According to the Post, the memo calls for continued “support agency” funding for several major regional headquarters, including Indo-Pacific command, northern command and space command. Notably absent from that list is European command, which has had a leading role in executing US strategy during the war in Ukraine; central command, which oversees operations in the Middle East; and Africa command, which manages the several thousand troops the Pentagon has spread across that continent.
“President Trump’s charge to DoD is clear: achieve peace through strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo, dated Tuesday.
The time for preparation is over – we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and re-establish deterrence. Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit.
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The Internal Revenue Service will fire 6,700 people as early as tomorrow, Government Executive reports, kicking off mass layoffs just as tax season begins. Further reductions in the size of the agency are expected.
Workers expected to be laid off tomorrow include mostly staff in their probationary periods. Those employees received noticed today that they must report to the office tomorrow.
Cuts to the tax agency come as the IRS has struggled to modernize its technology, which dates back to the 1960s, and reinvigorate its chronically understaffed workforce.
Energy secretary Chris Wright told Fox Business today that global warming is not neccessarily a bad thing.
“Everything in life has tradeoffs,” Wright said. “But a warmer planet with more CO2 is better for growing plants.” He claimed there is “14% more greenery around the planet today than there was 40 years ago.”
“Everything has a tradeoff,” he said. “There’s pluses to global warming as well as negatives. But the bottom line is it’s just nowhere near the world’s biggest problem today. Not even close, it seems to me.”
Donald Trump said he wanted to see “if I could get a couple of more years tacked on” to term, and that he considered giving “myself the Congressional Medal of Honor” after flying to Iraq on Air Force One in 2018.
Speaking at a Saudi-backed finance conference in Miami, the president said: “They’re saying that November 5, Election Day 2024 will go down as one of the most important days in the history of our country.
“I wanted to see if I could get a couple of more years tacked on, but I figured the fight wasn’t really worth it.”
Later, he recalled his first trip to a conflict zone, when he visited Iraq in 2018, saying he asked others on the flight, “Excuse me, I was very brave sitting in that cockpit, am I allowed to give myself the Congressional Medal of Honor?”
The Trump administration has ceased all funding to the Palestinian Authority security forces as part of its freeze on foreign aid, the Washington Post reports.
The authority governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank, and is competing to govern the post-war Gaza Strip. The US previously ended funding to the authority under Trump’s first presidency, but continued to fund the security forces during that period.
Continuing to speak at the Future Investment Initiative’s “Priority” summit in Miami, Donald Trump praised tech billionaire Elon Musk, who he said he had tasked to lead the so-called “department of government efficiency”.
“On my first day in office, I imposed an immediate federal hiring freeze, a federal regulation freeze and a foreign aid freeze. I signed an order creating the Department of Government Efficiency and put a man named Elon Musk in charge. Thank you, Elon for doing it,” he said.
Discussing investments from foreign countries and businesses in the United States, Donald Trump said that Japan is planning to invest $1tn in the US.
“On his recent visit to the White House, the Prime Minister of Japan announced he anticipates Japanese investment to the United States of well over a trillion dollars. And we’re working on an Alaska pipeline already, which is the closest point to Asia,” he said.
Speaking to global finance leaders in Miami, Donald Trump added that he’s “committed to making America the crypto capital” of the world.
“We want to stay at the forefront of everything, and one of them is crypto,” he said.
Trump says deregulated US "open for business"
Continuing his speech in Miami today, Donald Trump said the United States “is back and open for business”.
“I come today with a simple message for business leaders from all across the nation and all around the world, if you want to build the future, push boundaries, unleash breakthroughs, transform industries or make a fortune. If you want to make a fortune, most of you have already made a fortune. I want to say that there’s no better place on Earth than the current and future United States of America under a certain president named Donald J Trump,” he said.
“As of January 20, 2025 the dark days of high taxes, crushing regulations, rampant inflation, flagrant corruption, government weaponization, oh, I know about weaponization, and total incompetence will be gone for ever because the United States is back and open for business, and the golden age of America has officially begun.”
Walking on stage to his campaign anthem “God Bless the USA”, Donald Trump opened the Future Investment Initiative’s ‘Priority’ summit in Miami. The global finance conference, hosted by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, runs through Friday.
Trump kicked off his remarks by boasting about developments he oversaw in Miami and thanking Miami mayor Francis Suarez, who endorsed his run for the presidency.
He also thanked HRH. Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, who was seated next to tech billionaire Elon Musk.
After asking Musk to stand, Trump said: “We did a little show last night. I heard they got very good ratings too by the way” – referring to his and Musk’s joint appearance on Fox News with host Sean Hannity last night.
Hugo Lowell
In a blistering statement after asking a federal judge to dismiss the corruption case against New York mayor Eric Adams, the acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove invited justice department officials and prosecutors who disagreed with the decision to quit.
“I am personally committed to our shared fight: ending weaponized government, stopping the invasion of criminal illegal aliens, and eliminating drug cartels and transnational gangs from our homeland,” Bove said.
“For those at the Department who are with me in those battles and understand that there are no separate sovereigns in this Executive Branch, we’re going to do great things to make America safe again.
“For those who do not support our critical mission, I understand there are templates for resignation letters available on the websites of the New York Times and CNN,” Bove added.
The statement underscores how the new Trump leadership at the justice department prioritizes the administration’s political agenda in prosecutorial decisions and either expects their orders to be carried out, or for people to resign or be fired.
At the hearing in federal court on Wednesday, Bove hinted at the Department of Justice’s ongoing efforts to bring rank-and-file prosecutors in line, and called into question the motives behind the Adams prosecution.
“I would say the actual purpose of the prosecution is the subject of several ongoing investigations by the department,” Bove told district judge Dale E Ho.
In recent days, Bove has been moving with ruthless efficiency to tick through prosecutors who have been unwilling to follow his orders as the No 2 official at the department and chart a new course where Trump’s political agenda guides prosecution decisions.
Bove’s order directing the dismissal of the Adams case has become an inflexion point in that mission, after he weathered seven resignations in trying to get it down and ultimately put his own name on he motion to dismiss the charges to underscore his confidence in the matter.
In ordering the case be dropped, Bove wrote that “continuing these proceedings would interfere with the defendant’s ability to govern in New York City, which poses unacceptable threats to public safety, national security and related federal immigration initiatives and policies” to deport undocumented immigrants.
The memo made clear that aiding a mayor who wanted to help with the immigration crackdown, a national priority, outweighed continuing to bring bribery charges against a local mayor, and the justice department in future will balance policy priorities against the merits of a case.
Two more groups have sued the Trump administration over executive orders the president has signed regarding the environment and diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
A coalition of environmental groups, led by Earthjustice, filed suit in Alaska today arguing that Donald Trump exceeded his authority with an executive order that reversed the Biden administration’s ban on new offshore oil and gas leasing in coastal waters.
On his first day in office, Donald Trump signed an executive order aimed at “unleashing American energy”, while also overturning auto-emissions standards and rolling back restrictions on oil and gas expansion in Alaska.
The lawsuit, which argues that federal law does not authorize a president to revoke offshore protections, names Trump, Interior Secretary Doug Burgum and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick as defendants.
Meanwhile, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Lambda Legal filed suit on behalf of advocacy groups to challenge three of Trump’s recent orders regarding diversity, equity and inclusion.
The National Urban League, AIDS Foundation Chicago and the National Fair Housing Alliance argue that Trump’s orders will limit how they provide services to people nationwide.
The executive orders the groups are challenging includes ones targeting transgender Americans (“Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government”) and ending grants and other funding specific to this work (“Ending Radical and Wasteful DEI Programs and Preferencing” and “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity”).
“For these organizations, choosing between ending their diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility initiatives and losing federal funds is really no choice at all,” said Jin Hee Lee, director of strategic initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund, during a media briefing. “This is in direct violation of our clients’ free speech rights.”
Donald Trump will speak shortly at the Future Investiment Initiative, a global finance conference in Miami organized by Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund.
The president is expected to focus on his intention to bring major international investments to the US.
Last month, Saudi Arabia’s crown prince Mohammed bin Salman – who approved the 2018 murder of the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi – pledged $600bn in investments in the US.
Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who leads a private equity firm that has received billions of dollars from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, will speak at the conference. Other attendees include the chief executives of TikTok, Oracle, Uber, Sony Pictures Entertainment, BlackRock and Tishman Speyer.
White House calls Trump 'King'
The White House has reshared a social media post from Donald Trump, calling the president a king and picturing him in a crown.
This afternoon, Donald Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social: “CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
His post referenced a letter his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, sent to New York governor Kathy Hochul today, ending the Department of Transportation’s agreement with the state over a toll policy for lower Manhattan.
Shortly after, the White House shared the quote from Trump on social media, alongside a computer-generated image of a smiling Trump wearing a crown on a stylized version of a Time magazine cover, with the word “Time” replaced with “Trump”.
Lauren Gambino
In his address, Pritzker recalled in 1978 when a neo-Nazi group wanted to march through Skokie, Illinois, a Chicago suburb that he said was once home to the largest number of Holocaust survivors in the world. The ensuing legal battle and controversy ultimately led to a supreme court decision in favor of the group’s right to march. The demonstration was ultimately canceled days before and the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center was formed in Skokie.
Pritzker credited the resistance and resilience of ordinary Illinoians for defusing the Nazis threat.
“If we don’t want to repeat history then for god sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it,” he said.
Pritzker concluded the 30-plus minute speech with a call to action.
“Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance,” he said. “Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity Illinois and do not let the tragic spirit of despair overcome us when our country needs us most.”
Lauren Gambino
Pritzker, who is seen as a possible 2028 presidential contender, has adopted a far more confrontational posture toward the Trump administration than other blue-state governors.
“We don’t have kings in America and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one,” Pritzker vowed, as the official White House social media account posted a photo of Trump wearing a crown with the words “Long Live the King”.
In his remarks, he defended the approach, arguing: “Going along to get along does not work.”
Responding to scattered boos in the audience, the governor warned that Trump’s cuts to federal agencies would affect conservatives and liberals alike. “You can boo all you want until your constituents lose these services,” he said.
“If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this,” he continued. “It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. And all I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.”
Lauren Gambino
The Illinois governor JB Pritzker on Wednesday delivered a searing state-of-the-state address, likening Donald Trump’s stunning power grabs to the rise of Nazism in 1930s Germany.
“I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly,” Pritzker told a joint session of the Illinois house and senate in Springfield, the state’s capital. Speaking as “an American and a Jew” who helped build the state’s Holocaust Museum, Pritzker said he was “watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now”.
Trump’s attacks on DEI, LGBTQ people and immigrants was part of an “authoritarian playbook”, the Democratic governor said.
“They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems. I just have one question,” he said. “What comes next?”
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