March 20, 2025: Donald Trump presidency news

Secretary of Education Linda McMahon reacts during an education event and executive order signing in the East Room of the White House on Thursday.

President Donald Trump on Thursday spoke about beginning to dismantle the Department of Education, telling Education Secretary Linda McMahon that she’s “presiding over something that’s so important” and that when she’s done with the process, he will find “something else” for her.

After Trump signed an executive action that begins the dismantling process, McMahon released a statement saying it sends “education back to the states where it so rightly belongs.”

“Education is fundamentally a state responsibility. Instead of filtering resources through layers of federal red tape, we will empower states to take charge and advocate for and implement what is best for students, families, and educators in their communities,” McMahon’s statement read.

President Donald Trump said today that some critical Department of Education programs will still exist even though he is taking the first steps to dismantle the department.

The Education Department is responsible for administering federal funding for students with disabilities, who fall under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, along with Title I funding for low-income schools and federal student loan payments like Pell Grants.

Trump, shortly before signing the executive order aimed at dismantling the department, said Pell Grants, Title I funding and money for students with disabilities will be “fully preserved.”

Some background: Hours before Trump’s signing ceremony, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Department of Education would continue to oversee federal Pell Grants and student loans, along with enforcing civil rights laws and funding for special education.

President Donald Trump speaks at an education event and executive order signing in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Thursday.

President Donald Trump is speaking from the White House before he’s expected to sign an executive order aimed at beginning the process to dismantle the Department of Education.

Remember: Getting rid of the Department of Education entirely would require an act of Congress. One administration official said earlier today the president will direct Education Secretary Linda McMahon to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the states.”

President Donald Trump said Thursday he would be signing a deal “very shortly” on rare earth minerals with Ukraine.

This deal was what brought Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to the White House last month, but it was never ultimately signed after a tense Oval Office meeting between him and Trump and Vice President JD Vance.

Projecting optimism about reaching an end to the war, Trump referenced recent phone calls with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Zelensky.

“We spoke yesterday with, as you know, President Putin and President Zelensky, and we would love to see that come to an end, and I think we’re doing pretty well in that regard,” he said. “I believe we’ll get it done. We’ll see what happens.”

Trump spoke with Putin on Tuesday and Zelensky on Wednesday.

At a press briefing on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the White House had “moved beyond the economic minerals deal.”

“We are at a place of peace. We’re at a partial ceasefire, and we’re moving towards a full cease fire and a long standing peace in this conflict,” Leavitt continued.

Later asked what moving beyond meant, Leavitt said: “It means the minerals deal was that first set of framework that you all saw in that very public meeting with President Zelensky and President Trump in the Oval Office. We are now focused on a long term peace agreement.”

US District Judge James Boasberg chastised the Justice Department on Thursday, saying it did not obey his order to turn over information about deportations the Trump administration carried out last weekend.

His response is the latest in a back-and-forth between the judge and DOJ, which has brought questions about whether the Trump administration would be willing to blatantly defy a court order. It’s also resulted in a call from President Donald Trump that Boasberg be impeached and a rare rebuke of the president from Chief Justice John Roberts.

Boasberg had ordered the administration to turn over the information by noon ET Thursday or invoke the “state-secrets privilege” in its bid to avoiding provide the information. But in a brief order Thursday afternoon, the judge said the department had instead submitted a sealed filing “shortly after” the deadline where it “evaded its obligations.”

The DOJ filing, Boasberg wrote, included a sworn statement from an official with the ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations who “repeated the same general information about the flights” and went on to say that Cabinet secretaries are “’are currently actively considering whether to invoke the state secrets privilege over the other facts requested by the Court’s order.’”

Boasberg, the chief judge of the federal trial-level court in Washington, DC, said he was ordering the Justice Department to “show cause” as to how two deportation flights it allowed to continue last Saturday did not violate orders he issued that day temporarily blocking the administration’s ability to remove individuals under the Alien Enemies Act. The judge had ordered all planes carrying migrants being deported under the act to turn around immediately.

A sign in front of the entrance of the Social Security Administration's main campus on Wednesday in Woodlawn, Maryland.

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Social Security Administration from giving members of the Department of Government Efficiency access to agency data containing individuals’ personally identifiable information.

The new temporary restraining order from US District Judge Ellen Hollander also requires DOGE affiliates to delete any personally identifiable information data they’ve acquired from the agency. She also ordered them to remove any software they’ve installed in the agency’s systems.

Her order, however, allows the DOGE affiliates to access Social Security data that is redacted or anonymized — but only if those DOGE representatives receive proper training and are subject to a background check.

Attorney General Pam Bondi speaks before President Donald Trump at the Justice Department in Washington, Friday, March 14, 2025. (Pool via AP)

Attorney General Pam Bondi announced charges against three people Thursday for allegedly throwing Molotov cocktails at Tesla properties as part of a nationwide Trump administration effort to arrest people accused of violence against the company.

People in Oregon, Colorado and South Carolina allegedly attacked Tesla cars and charging stations, the department said, adding that one of the defendants was armed with a suppressed AR-15 when he was arrested.

“Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars,” Bondi said in a statement.

The Justice Department did not name the defendants, who could each face up to 30 years in prison.

Police across the United States are have been investigating repeated acts of vandalism and attacks, CNN has reported, including gunshots fired at a Tesla showroom. Law enforcement officials have claimed that the attacks are an effort to target CEO Elon Musk for his political affiliation.

The department and the FBI have charged at least four people with federal crimes related to the attacks. Bondi has said investigators are looking into whether there is evidence that the attacks are coordinated.

Watch CNN’s Laura Coates explain more about the charges:

The 2026 midterms are more than a year and a half away, but Democrats across the country are blitzing digital platforms with fundraising ads spotlighting Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency’s steep cuts to the federal government.

It reflects an emerging strategic consensus among Democratic campaigns, which have in near-unison seized on the tech billionaire as they seek to rebuild amid unified GOP control of government.

Here are some of the candidates and groups who put out ads:

People arrive at the US Department of Education on March 20, in Washington, DC.

President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order today to start the process of dismantling the Department of Education. During his presidential campaign, he said he wanted to close the agency and send “all education and education work and needs back to the states.”

Here’s a look at how the Department of Education was created and what it does:

• How it was created: In 1979, then-President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat from Georgia, signed legislation making the Department of Education a Cabinet-level agency — fulfilling a campaign pledge he made to one of the country’s largest teachers’ unions, the National Education Association. Previously, federal education programs were housed in other agencies.

• Funneling money to states and schools: Some of the Department of Education’s biggest jobs are to administer federal funding appropriated by Congress to K-12 schools and manage the federal student loan and financial aid programs. Two of the biggest funding programs for K-12 schools are the Title I program, which is meant to help educate children from low-income families, and the IDEA program, which provides schools with money to help meet the needs of children with disabilities. The Department of Education also distributes about $30 billion a year to low-income college students via the Pell grant program and manages the $1.6 trillion student loan portfolio.

• Conducting oversight and making regulations: The Department of Education also has an oversight role and engages in federal rulemaking. Its Office of Civil Rights, for example, is tasked with investigating alleged discrimination complaints at colleges and K-12 schools, which increased significantly after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel last October. The office had seven of its 12 regional offices shuttered and nearly half of its staff laid off earlier this month. The department can also create federal regulations. Some of the agency’s rules have recently touched on issues at play in the culture wars that seeped into local politics during the Covid-19 pandemic.

• Past efforts to abolish the department: Then-President Ronald Reagan, a Republican, called for eliminating the agency just one year after it started operating in 1980 — but backed off when there appeared to be little support in Congress. During Trump’s first term as president, his administration proposed merging the Education and Labor departments into one federal agency. Even though Republicans controlled both the Senate and House of Representatives at the time, the proposal did not go anywhere.

With reporting from Katie Lobosco, Jeff Zeleny, Sunlen Serfaty and Betsy Klein.

Elon Musk, the world’s richest person and a close ally of President Donald Trump, made political contributions this week to several Republican lawmakers who support impeaching judges who are blocking the Trump administration’s agenda, according to a person familiar with the giving.

Musk has repeatedly called for removing judges on his social media platform, X.

The contributions went to the campaigns of Reps. Eli Crane, Lauren Boebert, Andy Ogles, Andrew Clyde, Derrick Van Orden and Brandon Gill. Musk also donated to Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Grassley has not called for judicial impeachments but harshly criticized an order by US District Judge James Boasberg that the government temporarily halt deporting individuals while he weighed a legal challenge to Trump use of the Alien Enemies Act in removing migrants. Grassley also has pledged action from his committee.

The New York Times first reported the contributions.