Trump defense chief orders Pentagon to make cuts as IRS workers face mass layoffs – live | Trump administration
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.
Key events
Donald Trump was expected to sign at least one executive order on his flight back to Washington DC aboard Air Force One this evening, but no details are yet available about the content of those orders from the White House.
We’ll let you know when more information is available. Fox Business previously reported that at least one order would concern federal public benefits for undocumented immigrants.
Donald Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship may be headed to the Supreme court after an appeals court declined to grant a Justice Department request that would have lifted a lower court’s order blocking the president’s executive order.
The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals decision today means the case may be headed to the nation’s highest court, one month after Trump signed the executive order.
Here’s some more on the news that Trump’s Pentagon chief, Pete Hegseth, has told the defense department to plan for sweeping budget cuts.
In a statement late on Wednesday and reported by the AP, Robert Salesses, who is performing the duties of deputy secretary of defense, said “the time for preparation is over” and that “excessive bureaucracy” and programs targeting climate change or “other woke programs” – meaning diversity, equity and inclusion programs – would be targeted.
“To achieve our mandate from President Trump, we are guided by his priorities including securing our borders, building the Iron Dome for America, and ending radical and wasteful government DEI programs and preferencing,” Salesses said.
The “Iron Dome” proposal – named after the Israeli system – refers to an extensive air defense system for the US that Trump has said should include the ability to shoot down incoming missiles from space.
Donald Trump is expected to begin signing executive orders again this evening, this time aboard Air Force One as he returns to Washington from his Mar-a-Lago resort, where he’s been playing golf for the past four days.
According to a social media post from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, one of those executive orders will revoke “federal benefits to illegal aliens”.
Leavitt confirmed a post from a Fox News reporter, who wrote that “the order will direct every federal agency & department to identify all federally funded programs currently providing any financial benefits to illegal aliens, and ‘take corrective action’, ensuring that any federal funds to states and localities ‘will not be used to support sanctuary policies or assist illegal immigration.’”
Immigrants are already ineligible for most federal public benefits.
More than 140 people have been transferred to Guantanamo Bay, about two weeks since the Trump administration began deporting migrants there, CNN reports, citing federal data.
As of today, 13 flights have deported 142 migrants to the naval base.
Donald Trump is receiving widespread backlash after he likened himself to a “king” on social media following his administration’s decision to rescind New York City’s congestion pricing program.
“New York hasn’t labored under a king in over 250 years. We sure as hell are not going to start now,” New York governor Kathy Hochul said at a press conference today.
Here’s Maya Yang with the full story:
In one of his first moves since taking office, health secretary Robert F Kennedy has implemented Donald Trump’s anti-trans language across the department.
The department launched a website today, titled “Defending Women and Children”, which includes public guidance “defining sex” based on whether a person’s reproductive system produces eggs or sperm.
In reality, scientists define sex based on a variety of factors, including chromosomes, reproductive organs, hormone levels and gene expression – within which many intersex conditions exist.
The website also includes pages on ending “the chemical and surgical mutilation of children” and “ensuring only women and girls can compete in women’s sports”.
Since Trump returned to office last month, he has signed a series of executive orders targeting trans Americans, including by banning trans athletes from women’s sports, restricting healthcare for trans youth and transferring incarcerated trans women to men’s facilities; a US judge, however, temporarily blocked federal prisons from implementing the order to move trans people. Many of the orders have been framed as “defending women”.
IRS to reportedly fire thousands of workers
The Internal Revenue Service will fire 6,700 people as early as Thursday, 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.
