President Donald Trump is expected to host the first White House Crypto Summit on Friday. The forum comes as Trump continues his efforts to enact a sweeping agenda and reshape the federal government. Follow for live updates. Read More Breaking News
• Warning to Russia: President Donald Trump threatened new sanctions on Russia, including on its banking sector, in response to Moscow’s continued bombardment of Ukraine — a notable warning after weeks of conciliatory statements toward Russia and President Vladimir Putin.
• DOGE ruling: A federal judge is denying an attempt by federal workers’ unions to lock down potentially private personal information from the Department of Government Efficiency’s work in the Treasury Department. The job cuts by Elon Musk’s government efficiency team began to show up in the latest jobs report released Friday, with federal government employment shrinking by 10,000 jobs.
• Tariff delay: Trump signed executive orders Thursday delaying tariffs until April 2 on goods from both Mexico and Canada that are covered by the trade agreement signed between the three countries during his first term.
• Crypto summit: Trump is hosting the first White House crypto summit Friday for “prominent founders, CEOS, and investors from the crypto industry.” Ahead of the summit, the president established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a stockpile of other digital assets through an executive order.
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Democratic attorneys general from several states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration Thursday over the government’s mass layoffs of federal employees — layoffs, the challengers say, that are inflicting economic harm on their states.
Other legal challenges to the administration’s employee termination tactics have had only mixed success, as some judges have concluded that courts should not play a role in what they see as employment disputes. The Democratic attorneys general are arguing in their new case that, beyond the harm the layoffs are causing the employees themselves, the mass terminations are costing their states tax revenue.
The complaint estimates that, for the District of Columbia alone, the administration’s firing of probationary employees will cause “millions of dollars in lost annual income tax revenue.”
The states also argue that, because the administration is allegedly not following the proper procedures for the layoffs, states are having to “scramble and expend additional resources to identify even which agencies have conducted layoffs” so that they can offer unemployment insurance and other required benefits.
“Some Plaintiff States have also lost the benefit of services provided by federal employees embedded within state agencies, without any time to prepare,” the lawsuit said. It was filed in Maryland’s US District Court and has been assigned to Judge James Bredar, an appointee of former President Barack Obama.
White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said he’s “positively surprised” by the jobs report numbers and there’s been “progress” on fentanyl crossing the border.
“I think it’s a fantastic report. It’s showing exactly what President Trump intends to do. He intends to reduce government spending to get rid of wasteful government jobs and to create manufacturing jobs, and that’s what you see,” Hassett said Friday on “CNN News Central.”
He said government workers will “probably have a bigger decline” next month with an increase in manufacturing jobs. Hasset also said he expects leisure jobs to increase as well, as he blamed the flu on travel and leisure numbers.
Trump tariffs: When discussing Trump’s back and forth on tariffs, Hassett said there’s been progress on fentanyl and called it an “ongoing negotiation.”
“President Trump has adjusted the parameters over time as he’s seen progress because we need to have some progress. Tens of thousands of Americans are dying of fentanyl, and we’ve seen the Canadians and the Mexicans crack down in a good way,” he said.
Hassett said, “We’ve seen progress like they’re sending criminals here. They’re cracking down on cartels. We’ve seen pictures of facilities that are being shut down, and so President Trump has been impressed by some of the progress, not like obviously, in the end what’s going to matter is are there fewer deaths from fentanyl in America. That’s the thing we’re going to care the most about.”
The State Department is moving to close nearly a dozen consulates around the world, according to a source familiar with the matter and a congressional aide.
The moves come as the agency eyes broader organizational changes and significant reductions in its workforce both domestically and abroad. The Trump administration, spurred by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, has taken drastic steps to shrink the federal workforce.
As outposts of US diplomatic missions, consulates provide services like visa processing and other services for American citizens in need. They also serve to collect information to send back to Washington, DC, from areas away from nations’ capitals. Officials say they are an important diplomatic tool as the US looks to counter nations like China. Most consulates do not have a large workforce.
A memo was circulated within the State Department identifying a number of consulates the agency was looking to shutter, mostly in Western Europe, one source said. According to a congressional aide, the State Department informed Capitol Hill last month that it was looking to close ten outposts – Leipzig, Hamburg, and Dusseldorf in Germany, Bordeaux, Rennes, Lyon and Strasbourg in France, Ponta Delgado in Portugal and Belo Horizonte in Brazil.
On Monday, the State Department said it was moving forward with the closure of the consulate in Gaziantep, Turkey, a base for humanitarian work with Syria.
A State Department spokesperson, asked about the closures, said the agency “continues to assess our global posture to ensure we are best positioned to address modern challenges on behalf of the American people.”
A federal judge is denying an attempt by federal workers’ unions to lock down potentially private personal information from the Department of Government Efficiency’s work in the Treasury Department.
The major ruling Friday came from the Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the DC District Court, who previously grilled Trump administration lawyers about Elon Musk’s role in DOGE and who may be directing DOGE staffers’ efforts within the Treasury Department.
Kollar-Kotelly said, however, that the workers’ unions hadn’t presented enough evidence to clear the high bar needed for emergency relief. She denied their request for a preliminary injunction over DOGE and the Treasury Department’s access to sensitive banking information in its payments systems.
“If Plaintiffs could show that Defendants imminently planned to make their private information public or to share that information with individuals outside the federal government with no obligation to maintain its confidentiality, the Court would not hesitate to find a likelihood of irreparable harm,” the judge wrote on Friday. “But on the present record, Plaintiffs have not shown that Defendants have such a plan.”
The judge noted that the Treasury Department has taken steps to monitor and control DOGE’s access to a highly protected payment system used for sending out payments on trillions of dollars of bills across the federal government.
The department has also told the court it is limiting risk that sensitive information could be disclosed outside of government.
Some context: The case is one of several that have challenged DOGE’s access to data and personal information in various federal agencies under privacy laws.
The cases are largely not yet clearing the bar for judges to block DOGE’s access indefinitely, but the court fights are continuing as defendants try to gather more evidence about what DOGE is doing and Musk’s role in the staffers’ work.
President Donald Trump on Friday threatened new sanctions on Russia, including on its banking sector, in response to Moscow’s continued bombardment of Ukraine — a significant warning as he seeks to end the conflict.
The new threat was notable after weeks of conciliatory statements toward Russia and its President Vladimir Putin, including saying he was open to lifting sanctions.
Now, Trump says he could slap new, tougher sanctions on Russia in his bid to end the war.
“Based on the fact that Russia is absolutely “pounding” Ukraine on the battlefield right now, I am strongly considering large scale Banking Sanctions, Sanctions, and Tariffs on Russia until a Cease Fire and FINAL SETTLEMENT AGREEMENT ON PEACE IS REACHED,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late. Thank you!!!” he went on.
It comes one week following an Oval Office blowup among Trump, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Vice President JD Vance, which resulted in Zelensky being told to leave the White House. The US has since paused intelligence sharing and military aid to Ukraine.
On the battlefield: Russian forces launched a deadly aerial attack on Ukraine overnight, targeting energy facilities across the country, Ukrainian authorities said on Friday.
The missile and drone strikes killed at least two people and injured seven others in the southern Kherson region, officials said. Two people were wounded in the central Poltava region.
Damage to residential buildings and energy facilities was reported in several regions, including Kharkiv in the east, Odesa in the south and Ternopil in western Ukraine.
The attacks damaged natural gas production facilities, Ukraine’s state-run oil and gas firm Naftogaz said in a statement.
Naftogaz said Friday’s strikes were the 17th combined missile and drone attack on its facilities — the latest barrage in near-daily aerial attacks aimed at weakening Ukrainian defenses and degrading the country’s energy infrastructure during the harsh winter months.
CNN’s Daria Tarasova-Markina contributed reporting to this post.
President Donald Trump’s effort to cut federal government spending by eliminating jobs as part of the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency drove federal employment lower last month, declining by 10,000 jobs. That represents the worst month of federal government hiring since June 2022.
Of those 10,000 cuts, 3,500 were postal workers. Musk has been advocating for privatizing the US Postal Service, saying earlier this week “we should privatize anything that can reasonably be privatized.”
Federal government cuts are likely to continue to weigh on future employment reports as DOGE looks to cut the headcounts at more government agencies.
President Donald Trump said Thursday that he sent a letter to Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, urging his country to reach a nuclear deal with the US, telling Fox Business in an interview that he believes he can negotiate an agreement “that would be just as good as if you won militarily.”
“I hope that Iran– and I’ve written them a letter saying, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate’– because if we have to go in militarily, it’s going to be a terrible thing for them,” Trump told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo in an interview at the White House. “I said, ‘I hope you’re going to negotiate, because it’s going to be a lot better for Iran,’ and I think they want to get that letter—the alternative is we have to do something, because you can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”
During his first term in office, Trump withdrew from the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran and ordered a US-led strike with Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, drawing the ire of Tehran.
The president has previously said he wants to enter talks for a new deal with Iran, but the message from Iran has been mixed, with Khamenei saying last month that talks with the United States were “not smart.”
Earlier this week, during a meeting with US officials in Saudi Arabia, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that Russia has offered to participate in nuclear talks between the US and Iran.
“There are two ways Iran can be handled: militarily, or you make a deal. I would prefer to make a deal, because I’m not looking to hurt Iran,” Trump said Thursday. “I would rather negotiate a deal– I’m not sure that everybody agrees with me, but we can make a deal that would be just as good as if you won militarily.”
In the first full jobs report under President Donald Trump’s second administration, employment growth rebounded in February as the US economy added 151,000 jobs, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data released Friday.
The unemployment rate edged up to 4.1% from 4% the month before.
February’s report marks another solid month of job gains and a continuation of a historic expansion of the labor market.
Whether that continues, however, remains to be seen. Recent economic data has shown that uncertainty and layoffs are on the rise amid some monumental policy shifts from the Trump administration.
Economists were expecting that job growth would pick up at a 160,000 net gain.
President Donald Trump will deliver remarks today at the White House digital assets summit in the State Dining Room, according to a White House news release.
Ahead of the first-ever White House crypto summit, Trump established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a stockpile of other digital assets through an executive order on Thursday.
The Treasury Department will set up an office to administer the reserve, which will be capitalized with Bitcoin (BTC) confiscated by the government as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, according to the order.
“Bitcoin is the original cryptocurrency,” the order said. “Because there is a fixed supply of BTC, there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a strategic bitcoin reserve.”
The order also created a US Digital Asset Stockpile under the Treasury Department to manage other coins and assets. On Sunday, Trump posted on social media that he would direct the government to stockpile bitcoin, ethereum and three other tokens, which prompted backlash from the crypto industry.
The Trump administration continued its efforts to reshape the federal government Thursday with new guidance from the Social Security Administration telling employees they cannot access “general news” websites from their work-issued devices effective immediately.
According to a memo obtained by CNN, employees are also prohibited from accessing sports websites and from online shopping. Any exceptions will have to be approved by the employee’s supervisor.
“These additional restrictions will help reduce risk and better protect the sensitive information entrusted to us in our many systems,” the agency wrote in the memo.
Here’s what else happened Thursday:
Administration takes aim at lawsuits: The Trump administration is taking a shot at the onslaught of emergency lawsuits being filed against it by invoking a rarely used rule that can force people who challenge the government to post money at the start of a court case, according to a White House memo.
Trump message to Cabinet heads: During a nearly 90-minute meeting one week after his first Cabinet meeting, Trump delivered a clear message to his Cabinet behind closed doors. He told his agency heads that while Elon Musk’s effort to slash the size and spending of the federal government has his full support, they are the ones, not Musk, who are in charge of staffing at their respective agencies. “Keep all the people you want, everybody that you need,” Trump told his Cabinet, as he recounted to reporters later in the Oval Office.
Executive order on Strategic Bitcoin Reserve: President Donald Trump has officially established a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve through an executive order, according to an X post by David Sacks, the White House czar for AI and cryptocurrency. The Treasury Department will set up an office to administer the reserve, which will be capitalized with Bitcoin (BTC) forfeited to the government as part of criminal or civil asset forfeiture proceedings, according to the order.
Judge gives Monday deadline on foreign aid: A federal judge said the Trump administration must, by Monday, pay back money owed to nonprofits and contractors who sued over a freeze on foreign aid for the work they had already completed.
Immigration prosecutions: Newly installed Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche issued a directive to federal prosecutors and agents across the country on his first day in office: increase immigration prosecutions. Assistant United States attorneys “must commit to investigations and prosecutions targeting all of the insidious results of the four-year invasion of illegal immigration that we are now working to repel,” Blanche wrote in a message Thursday to department employees obtained by CNN, adding that more cases should be brought by prosecutors.
President Donald Trump could decide soon to take the first steps to eliminate the Department of Education, people familiar with the matter said, as he looks to dramatically shrink the size of the federal government.
White House officials have prepared an executive order directing Education Secretary Linda McMahon to begin the process of dismantling the agency, the sources said.
Trump has long signaled his intention to close the department, but fully eliminating it will require Congress to act, McMahon said during confirmation hearings earlier this year. She was confirmed Monday.
Lawmakers from both sides of the aisle have cautioned about the ramifications of eliminating the department. Here’s what they’re saying:
Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, the ranking member on the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, called Trump’s order to dismantle the Education Department a “disaster” for working class families and children with disabilities. “There are programs in the Department of Education which provide substantial amounts of help to low income and working class communities, communities where it is hard, where the tax base is very, very low,” the independent Vermont senator said. “Through the Department of Education, kids with disabilities — and there are millions of them in America — get the help that they need.”
Republican Sen. Susan Collins told reporters that she does not support eliminating the Education Department, pointing to critical programs for children with disabilities and those who come from low-income families. The Senator from Maine also argued that Trump does not have the authority to eliminate the department. “There are synergies that occur having them all in one department. There may be a case for spinning off some programs, there may be a case for downsizing the department, but those are decisions that the new secretary should make,” Collins said.
GOP Sen. Thom Tillis told reporters he learned in his experience in the North Carolina legislature and in a parent-teacher association that “the federal government has an outsized influence over controlling the classroom.” He said Trump is trying to return power to state and local governments, which he supports, and pointed to current “missed opportunities” for states to be “laboratories of education,” adding, “but they’ve got to be careful.” Asked if he thinks the Trump administration can dismantle the Education Department without congressional action, Tillis said he thinks “most of it is going to require statutory authority, but not all of it.”
