Closing summary
Closing summary
Our live coverage is ending now. In the meantime, you can find all of our live US politics coverage here. Here is a summary of the key developments from today:
Donald Trump met with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu once again today in a closed-door meeting regarding Gaza. Earlier in the day, Netanyahu met JD Vance at Blair House, and Qatari officials visited the White House. A temporary ceasefire agreement in Gaza could be finalized by the end of the week, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said at a cabinet meeting.
The supreme court cleared the way for Donald Trump’s administration to resume carrying out mass job cuts and the restructuring of agencies. Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the court to dissent. The decision will allow planned workforce reductions to resume at the US departments of agriculture, commerce, health and human services, state, treasury, veterans affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.
Despite receiving permission from the Trump administration to hire more employees, the National Weather Service never posted 126 vacancies to the federal government’s hiring website, Politico reports. The news follows Democrats asking a government watchdog to investigate whether cuts at the forecasting agency affected its performance.
At a cabinet meeting today, Donald Trump said that he is “not happy” with Russian president Vladimir Putin. The news follows the president’s announcement that the US will resume weapons shipments to Ukraine, after the Pentagon ordered certain shipments paused. Guardian reporter Hugo Lowell today reported that the United States only has about 25% of the Patriot missile interceptors it needs for all of the Pentagon’s military plans after burning through stockpiles in the Middle East in recent months.
An unknown fraudster has used artificial intelligence to impersonate the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, contacting at least five senior officials.
Rightwing influencers in the US who are often aligned with Trump are angry that a joint justice department and FBI memo has dismissed the existence of a “client list” in the case against late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
The US government will ban sales of US farmland to Chinese buyers and other foreign adversaries, the agriculture secretary, Brooke Rollins, announced today.
New York City mayor Eric Adams faces lawsuits filed today by four former high-ranking police officers accusing the embattled Democrat of promoting corruption in the police department, the New York Times reports.
Eight men have been deported to South Sudan from the United States, following a supreme court ruling last month allowing the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries not their own. Only one is from South Sudan.
In a post on his social media platform, Trump said his administration will release “a minimum of 7” announcements regarding trade with other countries tomorrow.
State department to resume layoffs following supreme court ruling
The state department will resume layoffs following the supreme court’s ruling today on the Trump administration’s plan to downsize the federal government.
In a social media post, the agency, which has proposed firing nearly 2,000 employees, wrote: “We will continue to move forward with our historic reorganization plan.”
White House spokesperson Harrison Fields called the court’s ruling a “definitive victory for the president and his administration”, Reuters reports. However, the outlet also cited two anonymous White House sources that said the ruling did not mean agencies could resume layoffs immediately, noting the possibility of additional legal battles.
Updated
