March 10, 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.

A federal judge ruled Monday that the US Department of Government Efficiency is likely covered by the Freedom of Information Act, a federal transparency law that allows outsiders to obtain internal government records detailing agency conduct.

The new preliminary ruling from US District Court Judge Casey Cooper is a major win for watchdog groups and others seeking to scrutinize the activity of the Elon Musk-led initiative, which has been at the center of President Donald Trump’s drastic overhaul of the federal bureaucracy.

But the order may not result in the immediate production of DOGE records sought by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the group that brought the case, because Cooper’s ruling can be appealed.

In the meantime, Cooper has issued a preservation order requiring the administration to save the records that CREW was seeking, raising the specter of contempt if DOGE is not taking adequate steps to retain its records.

Cooper said the Trump administration failed to rebut arguments by the challengers that DOGE was exercising “substantial independent authority” that put it under the umbrella of FOIA’s requirements.

Cooper’s said Trump’s DOGE-related executive orders had appeared to “endow USDS with substantial authority independent of the President,” and the judge pointed to public statements by Trump and Musk indicating “that USDS is in fact exercising substantial independent authority.”

The judge did not buy the claim that DOGE was playing merely an advisory role within the federal government, as he noted Musk’s extensive posting on social media bragging of the major changes DOGE had made.

Read more about the ruling.

Rep. Tim Burchett and Rep. Rich McCormick

Two conservative House Republicans told CNN on Monday they’re currently opposed to a House GOP plan to fund the government through September, a sign that Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump will have to flip GOP votes in order to pass their plan to avoid a shutdown.

With Democrats planning to vote against the bill, Johnson can only afford one GOP defection along party lines — and already, GOP Rep. Thomas Massie is opposed to the plan. If Congress does not pass funding legislation this week, the government will shut down after 11:59 p.m. ET on Friday.

GOP Reps. Tim Burchett and Rich McCormick both told CNN they are — at the moment — opposed to the Trump-backed plan. They said they had yet to speak with the president.

The Tennessee lawmaker said he likes the fact that Johnson’s bill, which includes $13 billion in domestic spending cuts and $6 billion in additional defense funding, has “less spending,” but he said his issue is the “fact that they push it over to the war pimps at the Pentagon, once again.”

“Nope,” McCormick told CNN’s Maju Raju when asked this evening if he’ll support the bill, arguing the plan to extend current funding levels through the end of the fiscal year and to address federal cuts in legislation later in the year is “abdicating power from the legislative branch to the executive branch” and not the constitutional process for appropriating funds.

Pressed on if he was a hard no, the Georgia lawmaker added, “No, I refuse to paint myself into the corner.”

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, said Monday that he’s directed the acting commissioner of the US Food and Drug Administration to take steps toward eliminating a rule called Generally Recognized As Safe, or GRAS.

The rule, an amendment to the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, states that the use of certain additives is not subject to premarket approval requirements if the additives meet specific criteria that experts have deemed to be safe for consumption. The FDA states that any substance purposely used as a food additive is subject to its approval, “unless the substance is generally recognized, among qualified experts, as having been adequately shown to be safe under the conditions of its intended use.”

It was intended to be applied narrowly to common ingredients such as sugar, vinegar and baking soda.

The FDA set up the current system in the late 1990s when the agency found that it couldn’t keep up with the flood of requests to approve new food additives.

But as the FDA itself noted, this voluntary guidance does “not establish legally enforceable responsibilities,” and critics say it’s easy for manufacturers to skip this step, adding new ingredients to products without any heads-up to regulators at all.

Since 2000, nearly 99% of any new food contact chemicals were greenlit for use by the food and chemical industry rather than the FDA, according to a 2022 analysis by the Environmental Working Group. In that 22-year period, food manufacturers asked the FDA’s permission to introduce a chemical 10 times, the analysis said.

A worker removes the signage outside of the USAID headquarters in Washington, DC, on February 7.

A federal judge on Monday, again, decided the money the federal government owes to US Agency for International Development contractors still needs to be paid.

The judge, Amir Ali of the US District Court in Washington, wrote in a lengthy opinion that the State Department and USAID’s approach of freezing foreign aid contracts at the start of the Trump administration had “dire humanitarian consequences and has devastated businesses and programs across the country.”

The judge said the administration has made no convincing arguments why the funds had to be turned off so suddenly, “setting off a shockwave” in businesses and nonprofits that relied on the contracts to work abroad. And he noted the administration appeared to be overstepping its power to control funding that Congress had approved.

Ali’s opinion joins others recently rebuking some of the Trump administration’s decisions as hurtful to the balance of powers between the branches of government.

Ali granted some of the contractors’ requests to be paid as part of an injunction Monday, but declined to micromanage how USAID makes grant decisions.

CNN’s Devan Cole and Tierney Sneed contributed to this report.

A federal appeals court offered its legal rationale today for why it sided last week with President Donald Trump in his efforts to fire the head of the Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent agency that investigates whistleblower retaliation within the executive branch.

What the court said: The Trump administration would likely succeed in arguing that the Supreme Court’s previous rulings limiting when Congress can constrain Trump’s firing power also applied to the OSC.

The impact of the opinion: The new opinion from the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit does not change the current circumstances around former special counsel Hampton Dellinger. But the opinion will guide how lower courts will deal with the other cases brought by heads of agencies or members of independent boards who were fired by Trump, despite laws that limit such terminations to narrow circumstances of malfeasance or incompetence.

Dellinger had argued that the OSC was distinct from the type of agencies in previous Supreme Court cases where the high court had greenlit a president’s termination of the agency head. But the circuit court said Monday that it was rejecting this argument.

The circuit noted that Dellinger, in his role as OSC head, had sought to reverse administration decisions to lay off thousands of employees.

“To be able to obtain the reinstatement of thousands of employees in a single agency, even if only temporarily, with such a vague standard of review seems to suggest the Special Counsel’s powers are not as limited as he claims,” the circuit wrote.

Speaker Mike Johnson speaks with reporters on Monday.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, facing a tough whip count ahead of an expected House vote tomorrow on the GOP funding plan, is working in close consultation with President Donald Trump to sway holdouts, and said he spoke with the president “about three hours ago.”

The speaker slammed House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries for whipping against the GOP stopgap measure, calling the move “shameful.”

“It is a clean CR (continuing resolution), there is zero reason for them not to support it. And I think it is pretty shameful they are instructing their members not to,” Johnson told reporters this evening.

Johnson said he hasn’t had any conversations with Jeffries about the bill.

“We have not since the text dropped but I look forward to talking with him about it,” he said.

Vice President JD Vance will huddle with House Republicans Tuesday morning at 9 a.m. ET ahead of an expected vote later in the afternoon on the House GOP funding plan, according to a person familiar.

This comes as House Republicans are working to lock down votes within their conference to pass their funding plan with House Democratic leaders opposed and little room for error for House Speaker Mike Johnson.

The US Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights on Monday sent letters to 60 colleges and universities it says are under investigation for Title VI violations “relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination,” warning them of possible consequences if they do not comply with Title VI protections of Jewish students.

Some of the country’s most prestigious institutions, including Stanford University and Johns Hopkins University, are on the list. All but two Ivy League institutions received letters, including Columbia University and Harvard University.

McMahon pointed to the “enormous” amount of taxpayer-funded investments the schools receive and said “that support is a privilege and it is contingent on scrupulous adherence to federal anti-discrimination laws.”

The announcement comes days after the Trump administration announced the cancellation of $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia, citing what it described as the school’s failure to quash antisemitism on campus.

It’s unclear how long many of the institutions have been under investigation, but the Office for Civil Rights on Friday directed its personnel to prioritize addressing a “backlog” of complaints alleging antisemitic violence and harassment.

Sen. Mark Kelly hit back at Elon Musk on Monday after the billionaire called him a “traitor” in response to a post from the Arizona Democrat urging continued US support to Ukraine.

Kelly, a former naval pilot and astronaut, announced Sunday on Musk’s social media platform that he had returned from his third trip to Ukraine, more than three years into its war with Russia. Musk later replied, “You are a traitor.”

Kelly visited a military hospital, where he spoke with injured service members, and was briefed by Ukrainian military leaders and US embassy officials, according to a news release.

GOP Rep. Don Bacon, who represents a competitive district, sharply criticized Musk’s remarks.

“It’s not decent, it’s not right,” he told CNN’s Manu Raju, adding “I don’t agree with Senator Kelly on some things, but we don’t call each other a traitor, and I think it reflects bad on the White House.”

The scuffle with Musk comes amid tensions between Washington and Kyiv, with President Donald Trump pausing shipments of US military aid and some intelligence sharing after a heated Oval Office meeting that ended in Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky being asked to leave the White House.

This post was updated with Rep. Bacon’s remarks.

The Senate voted 67-32 this evening to confirm Lori Chavez-DeRemer as Secretary of Labor.

GOP Sens. Mitch McConnell, Rand Paul and Ted Budd voted against confirming her nomination while 17 Democrats voted with the rest of the Republican conference to confirm Chavez-DeRemer.

With Chavez-DeRemer’s confirmation, the only Cabinet-level nominee yet to be confirmed is Rep. Elise Stefanik for the post of US Ambassador to the United Nations.

McConnell and Paul pointed to Chavez-DeRemer’s past support for the PRO Act.

McConnell, the former GOP leader, has voted against four of President Donald Trump’s nominees — more than any other Senate Republican.

Saudi Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman meets with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on the Royal Palace grounds in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Monday.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio thanked Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman “for once again hosting the United States in talks to help resolve the Ukraine war and secure a lasting peace,” according to a readout of their meeting in Jeddah.

The two met for more than two hours in the port city ahead of the high-stakes talks between the US and Ukraine on Tuesday. National Security Adviser Mike Waltz also attended the meeting. Rubio and Waltz met with the crown prince three weeks ago in Riyadh ahead of talks with the Russians.

At today’s meeting, “the leaders discussed Yemen and threats to navigation from Houthi terrorists that threaten global commerce, American interests, and Saudi citizens and infrastructure.”

“The Secretary talked about Syria, and ways to promote a stable government, free of terrorism,” the readout said.

“They discussed reconstruction in Gaza; the Secretary thanked the Crown Prince for hosting Arab countries and reiterated the United States firm commitment that any solution to the situation in Gaza must not include any role for Hamas,” it said.

Meanwhile, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff is expected to be in Moscow later this week, a source familiar told CNN. The source could not confirm whether Witkoff would meet with President Vladimir Putin, whom he met last month.

This post was updated with details on Witkoff’s trip.

In this handout photo from the Saudi Press Agency, Deputy Governor of the Holy City of Mecca Prince Saud bin Mishaal bin Abdulaziz meets Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during his visit to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on Monday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had a “very good meeting” on Monday, said Dmytro Lytvyn, presidential adviser.

Zelensky said on X that a “significant part” of his talks with the crown prince focused on the security guarantees his country would seek in a potential peace settlement with Russia.

The Ukrainian president is in Saudi Arabia ahead of high-stakes talks between a Ukrainian delegation and US officials on the war with Russia on Tuesday. Zelensky will not be in the meeting himself, but he said Ukraine hopes for “practical outcomes” from the talks.

This post has been updated with comments from Zelensky.

House Speaker Mike Johnson unveiled plans on Saturday for a government funding stopgap through September 30 — a measure intended to stave off a potential March 14 shutdown and buy time for President Donald Trump and GOP leaders to steer key pieces of the president’s agenda through Congress this summer.

The president himself on Saturday endorsed the measure.

The plan would increase defense spending by about $6 billion while domestic spending would drop by about $13 billion, GOP leadership aides said Saturday, stressing that there are no partisan policy add-ons. However, it does include certain White House funding requests, such as some new money for additional deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Here’s a 360-degree view of Washington today ahead of the vote on the bill:

Johnson expressed confidence the bill will pass: The House speaker said he plans to pass the stopgap funding plan with solely GOP votes, expressing confidence in his razor-thin GOP majority. He also implied the blame would be on Senate Democrats if it ultimately gets blocked.

Democrats urged to oppose plan: House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his leadership team urged their members to oppose the plan — marking one of the strongest whip operations that Democrats have undertaken against a GOP bill since Trump took office. In a note sent to members and obtained by CNN, Democratic leadership described the GOP funding plan as a “blank check for Elon Musk and President Trump to continue their campaign of destruction.”

Possible votes and opposition: Given Johnson’s tight margins, he would have almost no room for error without Democratic votes:

Senate waits in the wings: With GOP Sen. Rand Paul likely to oppose the bill, at least eight Democratic votes would be needed to overcome a filibuster. Senate Democratic leaders have yet to say whether they’ll whip their members to block it. On Monday, Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona said a government shutdown could give Trump — and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) — more leeway to slash federal departments. But Kelly would not say whether he would vote for the Republicans’ bill to keep the government open through September.

Other reactions: Mayor Muriel Bowser warned at a news conference that Washington, DC, would have to slash $1.1 billion of its approved budget if the bill passes. These cuts would strip funding away from public safety, education, and economic growth priorities, she said. DC City Administrator Kevin Donahue said that these cuts would result in an “immediate hiring freeze” followed by layoffs because 85% of the district’s budget is allocated for personnel.

This post was updated with reaction from the DC mayor.

The White House in Washington, DC, US, on February 27.

President Donald Trump did not appear on camera today – a rarity for the commander in chief – as the US stock market plunged in the wake of the president not ruling out a recession.

Asked about the market response, the White House credited the president’s policies with spurring investment and pointed to his first-term record on the economy.

The widespread selloff was mostly driven by anxiety about the impact of Trump’s tariffs. In a Fox News interview that aired Sunday, Trump said the US economy would see “a period of transition” and refused to rule out a recession.

A group of Senate Democrats slammed plans to cut tens of thousands of employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs in a letter today, warning that restoring staffing to 2019 levels would put recent agency improvements in jeopardy.

The group of about two dozen senators also claimed that it was “blatantly dishonest to claim veterans’ healthcare and benefits will not be impacted by the termination of up to 83,000 employees, including 20,000 Veterans.”

The letter, signed by a group led by the top Democrat on the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee, Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, comes hours after Collins told Fox News that the agency is looking at laying off about 80,000 employees.

The VA grew significantly under the Biden administration, particularly to help implement the PACT Act that President Joe Biden signed into law in 2022 as well as other bipartisan legislation, the Democrats noted in the letter. They argued that cutting staff “will cause veterans to wait longer for care, and the costs of that care will only increase over time as their medical conditions worsen.”

“Reductions in mental health care will undoubtedly leave more veterans abandoned as they attempt to overcome the invisible wounds of war,” the letter continued.

CNN earlier reported that department heads and human resources officials within the Department of Veterans Affairs are conducting a sweeping review of employees, with plans for a “Reduction in Force and Reorganization” expected to be published in June.

Members of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group, including Mahmoud Khalil, center, are surrounded by members of the media outside the Columbia University campus on April 30, 2024, in New York.

A federal judge in New York has blocked any efforts by President Donald Trump’s administration to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate and Palestinian activist, until a hearing Wednesday, according to court documents.

Khalil is expected to appear in court on Wednesday morning, according to the documents.

CNN previously reported that Khalil was arrested Saturday night by federal immigration authorities who said they were acting on a State Department order to revoke his green card, according to his attorney.

He was first brought to the Elizabeth Detention Center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, before being transferred over the weekend to an ICE processing center in Louisiana, three different migrant rights organizations in New York told CNN.

The organizations said the move to Louisiana is designed to make Khalil’s defense and access to legal resources more difficult.

CNN’s Gloria Pazmino and Priscilla Alvarez contributed reporting to this post.

Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers appears on CNN on Monday.

Former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said today that President Donald Trump’s dizzying back-and-forth on tariffs threatens to throw the US economy into a recession while causing prices to pick up.

He said that “when people are worried they’re not going to be able to get supplies in the future, or not be able to get supplies without paying big tariffs, prices actually go up.”

Summers added that the unpredictability sowed by the Trump administration could take a toll on both financial markets and the broader economy.

“We got a real possibility of a vicious cycle where a weakening economy leads to weaker markets, and then weaker markets lead to a weakening economy,” he said.

Some background: US stocks plunged, bitcoin stumbled and Wall Street’s fear gauge hit its highest level this year as concerns about Trump’s economic policy led to a widespread market selloff today.

The drop was mostly driven by anxiety about the impact of Trump’s tariffs. In an interview that aired Sunday, Trump said the US economy would see “a period of transition” and refused to rule out a recession.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem walks past journalists at the White House on Monday.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has terminated a program that is the linchpin for Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to trade information on cyber and physical security threats with critical infrastructure like power plants, election offices and water systems, according to a memo reviewed by CNN.

The program is being cut to carry out an executive order President Donald Trump signed last month to reduce the size of government, Noem wrote in the memo to employees last week.

The program — the Critical Infrastructure Partnership Advisory Council (CIPAC) — has been around since 2006. It gives companies the confidence to share sensitive information about cyber risks without fear of that information becoming public, according to current and former officials.

Some US officials have raised their concerns with Noem’s office about the program being terminated, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.

DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN cutting the program “eliminates redundancies to create a more efficient, streamlined Department.”

“Nothing precludes Secretary Noem from standing up additional and/or new discretionary committees that are better tailored to the specific needs of the Department,” McLaughlin said.

It’s unclear what if anything will replace CIPAC. Politico reported on the memo in its Monday newsletter.

The termination of the program, which is run by DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, comes as the administration continues to overhaul that agency by firing over 100 of its employees and pausing all of its election security work, pending a review.

On election security, CIPAC has convened voting equipment vendors and election offices to share cyberthreat intelligence and discuss cybersecurity standards for voting machines. For the power grid, the program has allowed electricity providers to discuss emergency grid orders and supply-chain defenses.

This post has been updated with comment from DHS.

Mary Lupien, a city council member from Rochester, New York, shouts as Vice President JD Vance speaks at the Congressional Cities Conference of the National League of Cities on Monday in Washington, DC.

Vice President JD Vance was repeatedly interrupted during his remarks today at the Congressional City Conference when was claiming there’s a relationship between immigration and steeper housing prices.

Per attendees at the event, one person shouting was talking about corporations, while another attendee was saying, “We disagree.”

Mary Lupien, a Rochester, New York, council member who spoke out against Vance, told CNN that the housing crisis “isn’t about who’s struggling the hardest - it’s about the billionaires and corporate landlords who have rigged the system against all of us. “

The vice president acknowledged the room for disagreement and encouraged dialogue with the public and the administration. Then he said,“Maybe don’t shout it in front of 2,000 people. I can’t even hear what you’re saying, sir.”

In response to further shouting from the audience, Vance said: “Well, I see, I see, I see, I see one of our nice representatives out here wants to, actually, I guess, continue to flood the country with illegal immigrants.”

“Please consider, consider our administration one with an open door,” Vance later added. “Please come to us when you have issues, even if you don’t like what we’re doing on the policy. … You guys have got to be able to come and talk to us, so keep doing a great job.”

This post was updated with a comment from council member Mary Lupien.