March 8, 2025: Donald Trump presidency news

Our live coverage of Donald Trump’s presidency has moved here.

Members of House Democratic leadership said Saturday they plan to vote against the House GOP spending plan released earlier in the day, arguing that it “recklessly cuts” domestic spending programs.

“Equally troublesome, the legislation does nothing to protect Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, while exposing the American people to further pain throughout this fiscal year. We are voting No,” they added.

It remains unclear how strongly Democrats — whose voters back home are furious over Trump’s cuts to federal programs — are willing to turn next week’s funding deadline into a showdown with the president, if it risks a government shutdown that could hurt even more federal workers.

Immigration authorities don’t need to revert to a Biden-era policy limiting arrests at schools after officials in Denver challenged new policies from the Trump administration, a federal judge ruled Friday.

US District Judge Daniel Domenico said Denver Public Schools failed to prove that a drop in attendance was due to the Trump administration’s new policy. It wasn’t clear how much of the fear surrounding possible enforcement actions in schools was really due to the new rules as opposed to broader concerns of increased immigration actions, he said.

The new policy has not yet been acted upon, according to a group representing large urban school districts across the US.

Besides a drop in attendance, Denver Public Schools says it has had to divert resources to respond to fear among students and families over the lifting of longtime rules restricting immigration enforcement near schools, churches and other sensitive locations.

The ruling came just days after Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and the Democratic leaders of other cities were in Washington to answer questions from Republican members of Congress about their so-called sanctuary city policies.

The lawsuit was brought by the school district, not the city.

Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

President Donald Trump insisted Saturday that Elon Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have “a great relationship,” despite The New York Times’ report that the pair clashed at a Cabinet meeting Thursday.

“ELON AND MARCO HAVE A GREAT RELATIONSHIP. ANY STATEMENT OTHER THAN THAT IS FAKE NEWS!!! DJT,” Trump posted on Truth Social.

The post follows similar remarks from Trump on Friday in the Oval Office, where he said, “Elon gets along great with Marco and they’re both doing a fantastic job. There is no clash.”

Some background: CNN previously reported that Musk’s attempts to gut the federal workforce and reshape it in Trump’s image, including giving sweeping orders to employees across the government, has begun to grate on Cabinet secretaries and members of Congress, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

The president told his agency heads Thursday that while Musk’s effort to slash the size and spending of the federal government has his full support, they are the ones, not Musk, who are in charge of staffing at their respective agencies, CNN previously reported. The meeting, which Trump said would be repeated every two weeks, was among the first examples of the president acting to rein in Musk’s broad powers.

The country’s preeminent federal fire training academy canceled classes, effective immediately, on Saturday amid the flurry of funding freezes and staffing cuts by President Donald Trump’s administration.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency announced that National Fire Academy courses were canceled amid a “process of evaluating agency programs and spending to ensure alignment with Administration priorities,” according to a notice sent to instructors, students and fire departments. Instructors were told to cancel all future travel until further notice.

Firefighters, EMS providers and other first responders from across the country travel to the NFA’s Maryland campus for the federally funded institution’s free training programs.

The academy opened in 1973 to combat a growing number of fatal fires nationwide. At the time, the National Commission on Fire Prevention and Control envisioned it to be the “West Point of the Fire Service,” according to a report from the organization.

For firefighters, including those on the front lines of deadly blazes that ravaged California this year, having an essential training institution “shut down under the presumption that there’s waste, fraud and abuse” has been demoralizing, Bashoor said.

FEMA and the National Fire Academy did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Elon Musk is emerging as a new star in Democratic ads and fundraising appeals, as politicians from Virginia to Wisconsin try to seize on the tech billionaire’s role in slashing the federal government to motivate their voters and donors.

A leading Democratic outside group recently launched ads in nearly two dozen House races that seek to paint vulnerable GOP incumbents as willing to cut spending on health care for children and the elderly to benefit billionaires such as Musk. The ads from House Majority Forward show images of Musk wielding the chainsaw that he held aloft last month during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference as he celebrated pursuing steep spending cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency.

The Tesla CEO also has a starring role in a digital ad campaign from the Virginia House Democratic Caucus that seeks to expand the party’s narrow majority in the state House of Delegates. And he’s featured in new commercials that back the liberal candidate running for an open judicial seat in Wisconsin in an election that could change the ideological balance of the state’s Supreme Court.

Recent polling suggests that Musk is an unpopular messenger for the administration’s cost-cutting moves — particularly among the Democratic voters that the party needs to turn out in off-year elections in places such as Virginia.

Read more about the ad blitz here.

A group of labor unions is asking a federal court for an emergency order to stop Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing the sensitive Social Security data of millions of Americans.

The motion for emergency relief was filed late Friday in federal court in Maryland by the legal services group Democracy Forward against the Social Security Administration and its acting commissioner, Leland Dudek. The unions want the court to block DOGE’s access to the vast troves of personal data held by the agency.

Included in the filing is an affidavit from Tiffany Flick, a former senior official at the agency who says career civil servants are trying to protect the data from DOGE.

Karianne Jones, a lawyer for the unions and a retiree group behind the lawsuit, said it is not fully clear what kind of access DOGE might have to personal data about taxpayers. But she said the apparent scope and the lack of information about what DOGE is looking for mean the potential impact is “huge.”

The Social Security Administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit, which was originally filed last month.

In similar cases brought against DOGE, judges have not always agreed that the risks are imminent enough to block its access to government systems.

President Donald Trump walks across the South Lawn to board Marine One at the White House in Washington, DC, on Friday.

President Donald Trump heralded a proposed stopgap government funding bill unveiled Saturday by House Speaker Mike Johnson, urging Republicans to “please!” unite and vote for the package, buying the administration and lawmakers time to craft a more significant funding bill later in the year.

“The House and Senate have put together, under the circumstances, a very good funding Bill (“CR”)! All Republicans should vote (Please!) YES next week,” Trump said in a post to social media.

The House is expected to vote on the bill Tuesday ahead of the March 14 funding deadline.

Trump warned Republicans against shutting down the government as he called on them to “remain UNITED.” Democrats have blasted the House GOP spending plan.

“Democrats will do anything they can to shut down our Government, and we can’t let that happen. We have to remain UNITED — NO DISSENT — Fight for another day when the timing is right. VERY IMPORTANT. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!” he said.

Congressional Democrats’ top two spending negotiators both blasted the House GOP spending plan on Saturday, ratcheting up the possibility of a dramatic clash in Congress next week over the March 14 government funding deadline.

Her counterpart in the House, Connecticut Rep. Rosa DeLauro, wrote in her own statement that she strongly opposes the GOP bill, calling it “a power grab for the White House and further allows unchecked billionaire Elon Musk and President Trump to steal from the American people.”

Both Murray and DeLauro want Congress to instead pass a short-term stopgap bill so that both parties can return to bipartisan negotiations over this year’s funding measure.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries have not yet weighed in. But if House Republicans can successfully pass the measure in their chamber early next week, it will intensify pressure on Senate Democrats to accept the GOP’s funding measure — or risk being blamed for a shutdown after that March 14 deadline.

Senate Republicans will need at least eight Democratic votes to help them pass the spending plan, with one GOP senator — Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky — currently opposed.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz speaks during a campaign rally in Tucson, Arizona in November 2024.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz believes he and former Vice President Kamala Harris in hindsight shouldn’t have played it “so safe” in their campaign against Donald Trump and JD Vance.

“We shouldn’t have been playing this thing so safe,” the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee told Politico in an interview published Saturday.

Walz was selected to be Harris’ running mate after then-President Joe Biden shockingly dropped his reelection bid late in the campaign and Harris announced she’d run at the top of the ticket.

In his interview with Politico, Walz argued the Democratic campaign should have done more town halls with voters despite the possibility of facing hostility.

“I think we probably should have just rolled the dice and done the town halls, where (voters) may say, ‘You’re full of sh*t, I don’t believe in you,’” he said. “I think there could have been more of that.”

Walz, a former high school football coach, said, “In football parlance, we were in a prevent defense to not lose, when we never had anything to lose because I don’t think we were ever ahead.”