February 5, 2025: Donald Trump presidency news

Our live coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency has ended for the day. Follow the latest updates or read through the posts below.

Representatives of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have landed at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the health care coverage of more than 150 million Americans, and have been given access to the agency’s systems.

Musk, a billionaire who has long railed against waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, confirmed Wednesday that he feels CMS is rife with problems.

“Yeah, this is where the big money fraud is happening,” he said on X, which he owns, in response to a post of the Wall Street Journal story that first reported DOGE’s arrival at the agency.

According to the Wall Street Journal, DOGE’s representatives have been granted access to payment and contracting systems but have not yet received access to databases containing identifiable health information about Medicare and Medicaid enrollees.

More on the agency: CMS has had issues with improper payments, which include payments that shouldn’t have been made or those made for the incorrect amount. More than $100 billion in improper payments were made in 2023, accounting for 43% of the government-wide total for that year, according to the US Government Accountability Office.

The agency had $1.5 trillion in outlays in fiscal year 2024, about 22% of total federal spending.

Overall, Musk has said DOGE aims to slash between $1 trillion and $2 trillion from the federal budget, which totaled about $6.8 trillion in the last fiscal year.

President Donald Trump has nominated Dr. Mehmet Oz, a former famous television host, to lead CMS, but he has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.

CNN’s Phil Mattingly contributed reporting to this post.

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press upon arrival at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on February 2, as he returns to the White House from Florida.

The Trump administration and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency have recently targeted an array of federal agencies from the Department of Education to the US Agency for International Development (USAID.)

Musk and his team have been focused on federal cash flows in the government as they look to streamline agencies and slash spending, as well as getting rid of diversity, equity and inclusion — known as DEI — in the federal workforce in compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive action.

Here’s the latest on Trump’s agency changes:

Deferred resignation program: A Trump administration official familiar with the matter says at least 40,000 people have opted into the deferred resignation program ahead of a Thursday deadline that could soon leave many federal workers without a job.

Roughly 2 million federal employees received the offer, which allows workers to leave voluntarily and be paid through September 30 but not have to continue working.

An Office of Personnel Management (OPM) spokesperson says the number “is growing and OPM doesn’t plan to release deferred resignation numbers until after the deadline.”

Most employees at the Department of Commerce, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, received an email about the so-called federal employee buyout Monday afternoon, CNN previously reported. One official warned that lower staffing at these agencies could negatively impact the ability to disperse life-saving weather warnings to communities during natural disasters.

A series of removals: Erica Roach, OPM’s chief financial officer, was pushed out this week, two sources with knowledge of the situation told CNN.

David Lebryk, the top civil servant at the Treasury Department, left unexpectedly last week after Trump-affiliated officials expressed interest in stopping certain payments made by the federal government, according to three people familiar with the situation.

Dismantling USAID: Over the last two weeks, the Trump administration has made significant changes to the USAID, the agency charged with delivering humanitarian assistance overseas, including dozens of senior officials put on leave, thousands of contractors laid off and a freeze put on billions of dollars in humanitarian assistance to other countries.

On Wednesday, five former leaders of the agency across Republican and Democratic administrations spoke out against the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle it and called on “Congress to swiftly protect the Agency’s statutory role.”

Democrat’s plans to counter Trump: Democratic lawmakers are mapping out a “coordinated effort” to counter the moves by Trump, including those to restructure the federal government and its workforce.

According to Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine, “there’s a litigation strategy, a state court strategy, a legislative strategy in Congress, and a political strategy” to counter the president’s actions.

The chief financial officer of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which manages more than $1 trillion in funds, was pushed out this week, two sources with knowledge of the situation told CNN.

Her departures is the latest in a series of top career officials who have been removed from their jobs atop federal agencies by Trump political appointees working in coordination with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency effort.

The CFO, Erica Roach, was asked last week in a meeting with a Trump political appointee if she was someone they could “trust” and if she was “loyal,” according to one of the sources.

The source said Roach responded that she “always” does “the right thing.” Roach was not given a reason for why she was removed from her role but rather offered another position that would have been a demotion, the source said. She chose to resign instead.

Federal shake-up: Musk and his team have been focused on federal cash flows in the government as they look to streamline agencies and slash spending. At the Treasury Department, the top civil servant David Lebryk, left unexpectedly last week after Trump-affiliated officials expressed interest in stopping certain payments made by the federal government, according to three people familiar with the situation.

“The only way to stop fraud and waste of taxpayer money is to follow the payment flows and pause suspicious transactions for review. Obviously,” Musk posted on his social media platform X on Monday.

OPM did not respond to a request for comment.

At least 40,000 people have opted into the deferred resignation program, according to a Trump administration official familiar with the matter. Roughly 2 million federal employees received the offer, which allows workers to leave voluntarily and be paid through September 30 but not have to continue working.

An Office of Personnel Management spokesperson says the number “is growing and OPM doesn’t plan to release deferred resignation numbers until after the deadline.”

The spokesperson declined to provide more information, including details about the agency breakdown.

Workers have communicated their acceptance of the offer by responding to OPM’s mass email and through direct conversations with their agency managers, according to the Trump administration official.

OPM says the deadline will be at 11:59 p.m. ET Thursday.

Reuters first reported the updated number which CNN reported was at least 20,000 as of Tuesday afternoon.

Remember: The Trump administration is planning widespread layoffs among the federal workforce soon, leaving employees who don’t accept its deferred resignation offer at risk of losing their jobs, two Trump administration officials told CNN.

The layoffs, which are being referred to internally as sweeping “Reductions in Force,” are expected to begin soon after the Thursday deadline that the OPM set for workers to accept the resignation package, the officials said.

Federal workers unions quickly lashed out at the deferred resignation offer, questioning its legality and stressing that the administration might not be able to follow through on it.

CNN’s Tami Luhby contributed reporting.

Visitors walk up a stair during the opening of the restoration project at the historic Bimaristan Al-Muayyad Sheikh hospital following renovations carried out in partnership between Egypt's Tourism and Antiquities Ministry and the United States Agency for International Development.

Five former leaders of the US Agency for International Development (USAID) across Republican and Democratic administrations spoke out against the Trump administration’s attempts to dismantle the humanitarian agency and called on “Congress to swiftly protect the Agency’s statutory role.”

In a Wednesday statement obtained first by CNN, the five former administrators said that to “weaken and even destroy the Agency is to the benefit of neither political party and the detriment of all Americans.”

They defended the USAID workforce, which has come under vicious rhetorical attack by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

They served under the Biden, Obama, George W. Bush, Clinton, and Reagan administrations, respectively.

“Failure to maintain the global engagement that foreign aid enables, to honor the men and women of our civilian service as we do those in the military, or weaken and even destroy the Agency is to the benefit of neither political party and the detriment of all Americans,” they wrote.

The Trump administration has taken a series of steps to dismantle the agency – a move that the Congressional Research Service says in violation of the law.

Keep reading here about what the former USAID leaders said about Trump’s changes.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the appointment to a top State Department position of a Trump appointee with a history of racist and misogynistic comments who was formerly fired from the administration for attending a conference frequented by white nationalists

Rubio said that Darren Beattie applied and “went through the process that the transition office went through” before being named acting Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy. A different nominee would be put forward for the position permanently, Rubio said.

Asked about reports of Beattie’s history of making White nationalist comments, Rubio did not respond and instead pointed to Beattie’s focus as acting undersecretary.

“He’s someone who was brought on board because he’s strongly committed to ending the censorship programs that were being operated out of the State Department, which can no longer continue and will no longer continue,” said Rubio during remarks to the press in Guatemala City.

Rubio did not elaborate on which so-called “censorship programs” he was referring to.

More on the official: Beattie was appointed to serve as the acting under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, a key role that is responsible for helping shape US messaging abroad related to counterterrorism and violent extremism, according to the State Department website.

A speechwriter for the first Trump administration, Beattie was fired in 2018 after CNN revealed he spoke at a prominent White nationalist conference in 2016. He has repeatedly espoused extreme racist views online.

Pam Bondi testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee during her confirmation hearing in Washington, DC, on January 15.

Attorney General Pam Bondi laid out a plan for eliminating DEI policies at the Justice Department and targeting such policies in the private sector as part of a series of memos released Wednesday.

The department will evaluate its own use of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility policies. This includes whether organizations were awarded federal grants by DOJ to “advance” DEI, and whether other actions the department has taken, such as police reform agreements, take DEI into consideration, according to one memo.

In another memo, Bondi said that the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division will “investigate, eliminate, and penalize illegal DEI and DEIA programs” in the private sector and educational institutions that receive federal funds.

The department should also shift away from bringing cases under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA, Bondi said. This will “free resource(s) to address more pressing priorities, and ends the risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion,” she said. FARA prosecutions should instead be limited to instances of “more traditional espionage,” the new attorney general added.

Additionally, Bondi said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) should shift its focus away from alcohol and tobacco enforcement and instead help investigate other department priorities like immigration-related firearms or drug smuggling cases.

At least 104 Indian citizens were deported from the US Tuesday night on a military aircraft, according to officials from India’s Punjab state. The move comes as US President Donald Trump has made stemming migration a top priority.

The C-17 aircraft, carrying migrants mainly from India’s Gujarat, Maharashtra and Punjab states, landed Wednesday afternoon local time in the northwest city of Amritsar, Punjab officials said. It marked the longest distance flight since the Trump administration began deploying military aircraft for migrant transportations, according to a US official.

Friends and family of some of the returnees told CNN of the hardships the deportees faced to get to the United States, only for them to be sent back soon after arrival.

Manriasat Singh, whose 23-year-old cousin Akashdeep Singh was among those on the deportation flight, told CNN that Akashdeep “sounded low.”

Akashdeep left for the US seven months ago, spending nearly $60,000 for the journey that his father had acquired by selling two-thirds of their land, his cousin told CNN. Shortly after Akashdeep’s arrival to the United States in January, he was detained and deported from there, his cousin said. “His parents are happy that he has not spent ten years in jail and is returning. At least he is alive,” Manriasat added.

More context: Akashdeep’s story is not unique. In just four years, the number of Indian citizens entering the US illegally has surged dramatically — from 8,027 in the 2018 to 2019 fiscal year to 96,917 during 2022 to 2023 period, government data showed.

Young Indian people looking for work opportunities have made up a sizable portion of undocumented migrants in the US, some of whom are making the dangerous trek through Latin America to reach the US southern border.

Lakbhir Singh, a former Punjab village leader, knows one of the deported Indian citizens.

He said the repatriated man’s “family is distraught.” The family had sold their property and spent thousands of dollars “to send their son abroad and the boy came back,” Lakbhir said. He said unemployment was driving young people in his area to leave.

While the Indian government has announced their intent to receive its deported citizens back, local leaders are calling for greater measures to be taken to address the root of the problem.

CNN’s Priscilla Alvarez contributed reporting to this post.

Elon Musk is seen at Donald Trump's inauguration at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, on January 20.

A federal judge in Washington on Wednesday tried to nail down how Elon Musk and his team from the Department of Government Efficiency are accessing the Treasury Department’s sensitive payments system.

But government attorneys shed little light on DOGE’s mission and had few definitive answers.

Lawyers for the Justice Department told Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the DC District Court that Musk himself and the White House hadn’t seen copies of the sensitive personal data contained in the department’s payments system, as federal workers have feared.

“Not that I’m aware of,” Brad Humphreys, the Justice Department attorney, hedged at the court hearing Wednesday.

“I don’t know if I can say nothing has been done” with records in the system, Humphreys said, adding that the Justice Department doesn’t believe Americans’ privacy has been breached at this time.

The hearing is one of the first where Musk’s attempts to remake the federal government via DOGE and his tech-focused affiliates have come under scrutiny. The court proceedings are likely to draw out more answers in the coming days about DOGE and one of its most explosive forays into the inner-workings of the federal government.

The Treasury payment system distributes Americans’ tax returns, Social Security benefits, disability payments and federal employees’ salaries — all information with significant privacy laws protecting it.

Humphreys explained that DOGE itself only is setting “high-level policy” across the administration, and people working with DOGE are attempting to implement that policy in agencies.

Marko Elez and Tom Krause — two people affiliated with Musk, DOGE and the executive office of the president — are now employees at the Treasury Department, the Justice Department confirmed in court. Elez and Krause are special government employees — the same contractor-like designation that Musk also has as a new federal employee. Both Elez and Krause came to the government from technology companies in the private sector after Trump took office.

Elez and Krause now have access to the computer system that’s used by Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service to cut more than $5 trillion in checks for the federal government each year, Humphreys told the judge. The men don’t have the ability to make changes to the Treasury payments system, nor does the Justice Department believe the employees have shared it or discussed it with anyone outside of the Treasury Department, Humphreys told the judge.

President Donald Trump is in the process of getting back materials obtained in the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, including classified materials, two sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

Trump’s Florida estate was searched in August 2022. According to court records, about 100 recovered classified documents were mixed in with other seized items, such as clothes, gifts, unclassified documents and press clippings.

While Trump had previously been accused of unlawfully retaining sensitive material after leaving office, his return to the White House means he now once again has broad authority over the control of US government classified material.

Among the personal items the FBI took — and would now be returned to Trump — are golf shirts, birthday cards, and pictures of Celine Dion that were at the property.

Since Trump’s criminal case is now closed, the Justice Department is working to return items gathered in the investigation. Prosecutors and FBI agents who ran the investigation have been instructed by DOJ that items seized will be returned.

US District Judge Aileen Cannon dismissed the classified documents case against Trump in July, saying that the appointment of special counsel Jack Smith was unconstitutional.

CNN’s Casey Gannon contributed reporting to this post.

In a brief pull aside with CNN’s Kaitlan Collins Wednesday, Sen. Tommy Tuberville said he doesn’t believe “there’s going to be a lot of people — our troops” in Gaza after Trump declined to rule out boots on the ground during a news conference Tuesday.

The Alabama Republican said Steve Witkoff, who serves as President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, “gave us all the details of what they’ve talked about,” during a lunchtime meeting with Republican senators earlier Wednesday, adding “a lot of people” told Witkoff they didn’t want to see a large military deployment to Gaza.

On Tuesday, Trump declined to rule out sending American troops to help secure Gaza after saying the US would take ownership of the Palestinian enclave.

“As far as Gaza is concerned, we’ll do what is necessary. If it’s necessary, we’ll do that. We’re going to take over that piece that we’re going to develop it,” he said when questioned whether he was willing to send US troops to fill a security vacuum in Gaza.

Pressed on Trump’s comments, Tuberville said: “We’ll have to see what President Trump wants to do on that, but you gotta leave all options open.”

“What’s going on right now it’s not working, and we got to help the people, the Palestinian people, out. Something’s got to be done,” he added.

President Donald Trump joined by women athletes signs the “No Men in Women’s Sports” executive order in the East Room at the White House on February 5 in Washington, DC.

Before signing an executive order Wednesday to try to ban transgender women from competing in women’s sports in schools and other settings, President Donald Trump repeated a lie he told last year. He asserted that two Olympians who won gold in women’s boxing events in 2024 were men who “transitioned.”

“Who could forget last year’s Paris Olympics, where a male boxer stole the women’s gold medal after brutalizing his female opponent so viciously that she had to forfeit just after 46 seconds, and she was a championship fighter. And actually they had two women, or two people, that transitioned, and both of them won gold medals, and they won them very convincingly,” Trump said.

Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee, said last year: “We have two boxers who are born as a woman, who have been raised a woman, who have a passport as a woman, and who have competed for many years as women. And this is the clear definition of a woman. There was never any doubt about them being a woman.”

In addition to the International Olympic Committee, Khelif herself and her father noted last year that Khelif was born and raised as female and had always competed as a woman. Taiwan News reported that Lin was registered as a female at birth and had participated in female boxing events since middle school.

Before their triumphs in the Olympics, Khelif and Lin were disqualified in 2023 from the world championships held by the International Boxing Association — an organization with extensive ties to the Russian government that was stripped of official recognition by the International Olympic Committee for a variety of problems, including a history of corruption. The authority has claimed that a gender eligibility test showed Khelif and Lin had “competitive advantages over other female competitors,” but it has never substantiated this assertion.

Regardless of the merits of the 2023 disqualifications, there is simply no basis for claiming Khelif and Lin “transitioned.”

People walk past the rubble of collapsed buildings along Saftawi street in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip on January 20, 2025 a day after a ceasefire deal in the war between Israel and Hamas went into effect.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt repeatedly said Wednesday that President Donald Trump was advocating for a “temporary” relocation of Palestinians from Gaza — a view that on its surface appeared at odds with the plan Trump revealed a day earlier to “resettle people permanently” in a different area.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Leavitt said Trump had been weighing the plan for some time, but that it hadn’t been written down before Tuesday’s news conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Later, asked if the president’s plan would mean “any and all Palestinians who want to stay in Gaza on their land will be allowed to do so,” she repeated the assertion Trump was looking for only temporary resettlement.

She said two more times that Palestinian refugees would be relocated “temporarily,” including when questioned whether her use of the word amounted to a specific shift.

What Trump has said Tuesday: “You look over the decades, it’s all death in Gaza. This has been happening for years. It’s all death. If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people permanently in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed, not be knifed to death like what’s happening in Gaza,” he said alongside Netanyahu.

Later, he said he did not believe returning to Gaza should be an option. And asked whether Palestinians should have a right to return to Gaza during the rebuilding, Trump said he couldn’t see it.

“Arab Americans for Trump,” a group that supported President Donald Trump in the 2024 election, announced Wednesday that it is changing its name to “Arab Americans for Peace” following the president’s comments on Gaza Tuesday evening.

While the group, which advocates for a two-state solution, said it still believes that Trump is “committed” to peace in the region, it said in a statement that it has an “issue” with Trump suggesting that the US “will take over Gaza” and that the Palestinians who live there should leave.

The group, which was not part of the Trump campaign, also highlighted in the statement that Trump hasn’t met with Arab leaders since taking office late last month.

Remember: On Tuesday, during a joint-press conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump said the US will “own” the Gaza Strip and “develop it.” He did not rule out sending US troops to the area.

It is unclear how Trump’s land-grab would proceed, what its legal authorities would be and who would pay for the effort.

Protesters took to state capitols and city streets across the country Wednesday in opposition of President Donald Trump in the first organized act of nationwide resistance since he took office last month.

The demonstrations were part of the 50501 movement — a broad effort to rally in 50 states at 50 capitols in one day. According to organization’s website, the 50501 movement’s key concerns are combating oppressive policies, eroding liberties and divided communities.

Nationwide across the dozens of protests, some small and some large, thousands of protestors blocked off sidewalks and areas outside of state capitol buildings Wednesday where they marched, chanted and carried signs.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, protesters marched down the sidewalks surrounding the capitol, according to footage from CNN affiliate WTVD. One person was carrying a banner that read “Stop Project 2025.”

Marchers also filled the streets of Boston, Massachusetts. Signs included messages such as “Refuse a Fascist America,” “Stop the felon” and “It’s a coup,” footage from CNN affiliate WBZ shows.

In Atlanta, protesters standing across from the capitol building chanted “We’re here, we’re clear, we want Donald out of here” and “No justice, no peace.” One person carried a signed that read “Democracy not oligarchy.”

Demonstrators in several cities also expressed their opposition to Elon Musk — who the White House says is a “special government employee.” Some experts have questioned the legality of Musk’s actions in that position, including gaining access to federal payment systems.

Other notable protests were reported outside Trump Tower in Chicago, the Kentucky capitol annex and outside the Michigan state capitol.

This post has been updated with information from protests across the country.

President Donald Trump signed an executive action Wednesday to deliver on a political issue central to his 2024 campaign: banning transgender women from competing in women’s sports.

He claimed in his remarks, that due to his executive action “the war on women’s sports is over.”

Trump signed the executive order titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” at an afternoon signing ceremony in the East Room, surrounded by dozens of women including some young girls in athletic uniforms. He called several of the young girls over to surround him while he signed the executive order.

“Now you’re going to go out and win those events,” Trump said as he handed out the pens to the children.

More on the order: The measure Trump signed Wednesday is two-pronged, leaning on compliance with Title IX, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in education programs or activities that receive funding from the federal government, as well as federal engagement with the private sector.

The president also said that he has instructed Secretary of State Marco Rubio to “make clear to the International Olympic Committees…. that America categorically rejects transgender lunacy.”

Ahead of signing the measure, Trump called it “a historic executive order to ban men from competing in women’s sports. It’s about time,” to loud cheers from the crowd.

“From now on, women sports will be only for women,” he said, adding that his administration will “defend the proud tradition of female athletes.” Trump warned that schools that don’t comply with the new order will be “investigated for violations of Title IX” and could lose federal funding.

This post has been updated with more details on the executive actions. CNN’s Donald Judd contributed reporting to this post.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt speaks during a news conference in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on February 5 in Washington, DC.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, responding Wednesday to a question about a right-wing conspiracy theory, announced that the federal government would cancel $8 million worth of Politico subscriptions.

Leavitt elevated a bogus claim spreading on social media that Politico and the Associated Press for years received millions of dollars from the US Agency for International Development, which President Donald Trump and Elon Musk have targeted by placing staff on leave.

In reality, the payments represented the whole of the federal government’s subscriptions to the news outlets’ services. All federal agencies combined spent $8.2 million last year on Politico Pro, according to USASpending.gov.

At a White House press briefing, Leavitt told reporters that she had been made aware of USAID funding to media outlets, including Politico, and noted that taxpayer dollars that have been allocated toward “essentially subsidizing subscriptions to Politico on the American taxpayers’ dime will no longer be happening.”

But as reporters quickly pointed out in response to false statements on social media, the payments are not exclusively USAID funds.

“I looked at these contracts and I have my own fun fact,” Byron Tau, an investigative reporter at the Associated Press, said via X. “This is occurring because agencies (not just USAID) are buying subscriptions to Politico’s Pro editorial product, not because Politico is getting grants or other federal funding.”

Read more about what prompted the announcement here.

Even before National Weather Service (NWS) employees received the so-called buyout offers this week, America’s public forecasting agency was suffering its lowest staffing in decades.

Now, the NWS — whose mission is to protect lives and property, ensuring Americans have sufficient time to evacuate before a hurricane or tornado strikes — is staring down further staff reductions and the nomination of an agency leader they are wary of.

Most employees at the Department of Commerce, including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, received an email about the so-called federal employee buyout formally known as the “deferred resignation program” Monday afternoon, CNN previously reported.

And at least one representative from Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, gained access to NOAA’s IT systems this week, according to three people familiar with the situation, with the goal of sniffing out activity and employees connected to diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

Inside the NWS, there are grave fears of what a potential 5-10% cut of staff could mean for their ability to operate weather radar and provide timely and free forecasts for this year’s hurricane season, a person familiar with the situation told CNN.

There are 12 people who work in the National Hurricane Center’s specialist forecasting unit, where staffing levels have been steady over the past decade, according to James Franklin, who served as the hurricane unit’s branch chief and worked there for many years.

Hiring new people at NWS and its parent agency NOAA has been painstakingly slow for years, said Mary Glackin, the former president of the American Meteorological Society and a former high-ranking NOAA official.

Read more about the potential impacts here.

Senate Republicans are preparing to take a first step to advance President Donald Trump’s agenda next week when they plan to move a budget resolution through committee.

GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham, the budget chairman, walked members through it during Wednesday’s lunch.

The move would unlock the first step in the process for Senate Republicans to move Trump’s agenda and could set up a major clash with House Republicans as Senate Republicans plan to break up border provisions and tax provisions into two separate bills.

The first bill would bolster defense and border security and leave the complicated task of tax cuts to later in the year.

Republicans in the Senate said Wednesday that the two bills could always be combined later in the House.

House Republicans are still engaged in a back and forth internally about the scope of cuts they need to satisfy the right flank and some conservatives are growing impatient with Speaker Mike Johnson. That played out in conference Wednesday morning when Rep. Byron Donalds of Florida confronted the speaker.

Graham told reporters that there would be $150 billion for border security and $150 billion for the military, spread out over four years, and that the relevant committees have been directed to find pay-fors to comply with the Senate’s reconciliation rules.

Pressed on the fact that this puts the Senate on a collision course with the House, who would prefer to have it all in one bill, as Trump had proposed, Graham insisted that two bills is the better option.