Closing Summary
We are now closing the US politics blog. Here is a summary of events today:
The Trump administration has begun firing several hundred Federal Aviation Administration employees, just weeks after a January fatal mid-air collision at Ronald Reagan Washington National airport, the Associated Press reported. Probationary workers were targeted in late-night emails on Friday notifying them they had been fired, David Spero, president of the Professional Aviation Safety Specialists union, said in a statement.
The US federal tax collection agency is reportedly preparing to give a team member of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge), which has already gutted several federal agencies and sparked multiple lawsuits, access to personal taxpayer data.
Donald Trump’s administration has asked the supreme court to approve the firing of the head of a federal agency dedicated to protecting whistleblowers in the first appeal of Trump’s new term and a key test of his battle with the judicial branch. Hampton Dellinger, the head of the office of the special counsel (OSC), is among the fired government watchdogs who have sued the Trump administration, arguing that their dismissals were illegal and that they should be reinstated.
US secretary of state Marco Rubio, national security adviser Mike Waltz, and special envoy Steve Witkoff will meet with a Russian delegation in Riyadh on Tuesday, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that foreign minister Sergei Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, a foreign policy advisor to president Vladimir Putin, were flying to Riyadh on Monday.
Meetings between United States and Russian officials in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday should not be seen as a “negotiation” on Ukraine, a US state department spokesperson said, Agence France-Presse reported.
Keith Kellogg, Donald Trump’s special envoy for Ukraine, told reporters at Nato headquarters in Brussels that no one will impose a peace deal on the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and that he and the people of Ukraine would make that call.
French president Emmanuel Macron called leaders from key European Union nations and the United Kingdom to the Elysee Palace for an emergency meeting on Monday to discuss how to deal with the Trump administration and step up plans to increase defence spending.
Donald Trump will nominate his top prosecutor in Washington, Edward Martin, for a full and permanent term as US attorney for the District of Columbia, Trump said on social media on Monday, Reuters reported. Martin is already in the role in an interim capacity. His nomination will need to be approved by the Senate.
UK prime minister Keir Starmer is expected to meet with Donald Trump next week, Reuters reported, citing the prime minister’s spokesman.
US energy secretary Chris Wright described commitments to achieve net zero carbon emmissions by 2050 as a “sinister goal” and criticised the UK government’s attempts to hit clean energy targets.
The Kremlin said a US citizen briefly detained at a Moscow airport for allegedly travelling into Russia with cannabis-laced gummy sweets had been released ahead of Tuesday’s talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at improving ties, Agence France-Presse reported.
Updated
Net zero emissions by 2050 a 'sinister goal' - US energy secretary
US energy secretary Chris Wright described commitments to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 as a “sinister goal” and criticised the UK government’s attempts to hit clean energy targets.
“Net Zero 2050 is a sinister goal. It’s a terrible goal,” Wright said, speaking via video link at the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference held in London.
“The aggressive pursuit of it – and you’re sitting in a country that has aggressively pursued this goal – has not delivered any benefits, but it’s delivered tremendous costs.”
Wright also said his number one priority was for the government to “get out of the way” of the production of oil, gas and coal, Reuters reports.
Donald Trump’s administration said on Friday it had granted a liquefied natural gas export license to the Commonwealth LNG project in Louisiana, the first approval of LNG exports after Biden paused them early last year.
“We ended the pause and approved the Commonwealth LNG export terminal last Friday, and many more in the queue,” Wright said.
“The world simply runs on hydrocarbons and for most of their uses we don’t have replacements.”
On net zero, he took particular aim at the UK, saying its pursuit of a decarbonised energy system – which the current UK government wants to reach by 2030 – had damaged living standards and exported emissions elsewhere in the world.
“No one’s going to make an energy-intensive product in the United Kingdom any more. It’s just been displaced somewhere else,” he said.
“This is not energy transition. This is lunacy. This is impoverishing your own citizens in a delusion that this is somehow going to make the world a better place.”
Updated
