Trump will delay some tariffs on Mexico and Canada for a month amid economic fears

The White House says Trump has signed an executive order creating a strategic bitcoin reserve and a digital asset stockpile.

Both stockpiles will be fed from cryptocurrency assets seized by the U.S. government through civil or criminal forfeiture proceedings, Trump’s cryptocurrency czar, venture capitalist David Sacks, wrote on the social platform X.

“This means it will not cost taxpayers a dime,” Sacks said.

Trump’s order directs a “full accounting” of the digital assets the federal government owns and authorizes the Commerce and Treasury secretaries to develop “budget-neutral” strategies to boost the bitcoin stockpile, he said.

Aside from bitcoin, the best-known cryptocurrency, the federal government will not acquire digital assets except those seized through court proceedings, Sacks said.

Trump briefly sent cryptocurrency prices soaring over the weekend when he made a surprise announcement that he wants the U.S. government to purchase and hold a variety of digital assets.

References to a World War II Medal of Honor recipient and the first women to pass Marine infantry training are among the tens of thousands of photos and online posts marked for deletion as the Defense Department works to purge diversity, equity and inclusion content, according to a database obtained by The Associated Press.

The database, which was confirmed by U.S. officials and published by AP, includes more than 26,000 images that have been flagged for removal across every military branch. The eventual total could be much higher.

The majority of the Pentagon purge targets women and minorities. It also removes a large number of posts that mention various commemorative months — such as those for Black and Hispanic people.

In some cases, photos seemed to be flagged for removal simply because their file included the word ”gay,” including an image of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, during World War II.

Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S. says it’s important to inform Americans on how Russia is attacking Ukraine not only militarily but ideologically by denying Ukraine’s identity and history.

“It is the war on multiple fronts,” Markarova said Thursday via a prerecorded video statement played at a Ukrainian studies conference at Notre Dame University in Indiana.

“Our brave soldiers and civilians defend Ukraine’s physical and spiritual integrity while we diplomats, scholars and experts continue our efforts on information fronts by educating American and international societies about what is really at stake and why Ukraine resists so persistently and so relentlessly, even in the most difficult situations,” she said.

She said it’s important to “restore historical justice” and recognize that “appropriation of Ukraine’s culture and denial of our national identity remains the key avenues of Russia’s criminal war against Ukraine.”

A federal judge on Thursday gave the Trump administration until Monday to pay nearly $2 billion in debts to partners of the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, thawing the administration’s six-week funding freeze on all foreign assistance.

U.S. District Judge Amir Ali ruled in favor of nonprofit groups and businesses that sued over the funding freeze, which has forced organizations around the world to slash services and lay off thousands of workers.

Ali issued his order a day after a divided Supreme Court rejected the Trump administration’s bid to freeze funding that flowed through USAID. The high court instructed Ali to clarify what the government must do to comply with his earlier order requiring the quick release of funds for work that had already been done.

▶ Read more about the Trump administration’s unpaid debts

French President Emmanuel Macron invoked “centuries-old history” in a response to Trump’s suggestion that France may not come to defend the United States if the country was attacked, despite being a NATO ally.

“Lafayette came,” Macron said during a news conference in Brussels. “Pershing made the journey in the opposite direction.”

Macron added that he met American WWII veterans who landed on Omaha Beach a few days ago.

France and the U.S. “have always been there for each other,” he said.

“We are loyal and faithful allies,” Macron said, expressing “respect and friendship” towards U.S. leaders. “I think we’re entitled to expect the same.”

Trump is expressing uncertainty that NATO would come to the U.S.’s defense if the country were attacked, though the alliance did just that after 9/11 — the only time in its history that the defense guarantee has been invoked.

Trump also suggested Thursday in the Oval Office that the U.S. might abandon its commitments to the alliance if member countries don’t meet defense spending targets. A day prior, his pick for NATO ambassador assured senators that the administration’s commitment to the military alliance was “ironclad.”

The federal judge wants Charles Ezell, acting head of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, to appear at a hearing next week to explain the firings.

Judge William Alsup in San Francisco initially found that the wholesale firings of probationary employees were likely unlawful because Ezell’s independent agency has no authority to fire workers at other federal agencies. The OPM manages the federal civil service.

A coalition of labor unions and others filed suit, saying the federal agencies fired the employees on Ezell’s orders.

Ezell has said the agencies made the decisions on their own.

An assistant U.S. attorney said the Trump administration is considering whether to comply with the order or appeal. The government has until Monday to decide.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz blamed Trump for the “uncertainty and the destructive chaos” in Washington as his administration presented an updated budget forecast Thursday.

“There is a storm in the federal level, and that storm is Donald Trump,” Walz told reporters.

Walz, who was Kamala Harris’ running mate in the 2024 presidential election, spoke after his budget commissioner and her team said their projections did not include the impacts of potential cuts in federal funding because the situation in Washington is so uncertain.

“This is chaos. It’s nonsense,” Walz said. “It’s not how you run any business, let alone the federal government. And the impact on states is immense.”

If threatened cuts happen, Management and Budget Commissioner Erin Campbell said it could blow “a dramatic hole” in the state budget.

Trump signed an executive order in January pushing to early April the deadline for TikTok to cut ties with its China-based parent company, ByteDance, or face a ban in the U.S.

Asked Thursday about a possible extension, Trump said one isn’t needed at this time because there’s still a month to go before the deadline.

“But if I needed the extension, I’d probably get an extension,” he said, adding, “We have a lot of interest in TikTok.”

Trump says he has instructed department secretaries to work with DOGE but “be very precise” about which federal workers stay or go.

He told them to use a “‘scalpel’” — writing in a social media post — “rather than the hatchet.”

Those comments come amid mounting legal disputes over billionaire Elon Musk’s attempts to centralize management of the government workforce and bypass Congress — making the tech entrepreneur both an admired and deeply feared figure in Trump’s second administration.

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Elon Musk is telling Republican lawmakers that he’s not to blame for the firings of thousands of federal workers as he pushes to downsize the government.

Instead, the billionaire said in private talks this week that those decisions are left to the various federal agencies.

The message from one of Trump’s most influential advisers came as Republicans publicly support Musk’s mandate at the Department of Government Efficiency to dig up waste, fraud and abuse.

Privately, however, they are raising questions as personnel cuts ripple out across the country.

▶ Read more about Musk’s talks with lawmakers

The Justice Department is moving to beef up staffing at federal prosecutors’ offices along the U.S. border as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, according to a memo obtained by The Associated Press.

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote in a memo sent to the Justice Department workforce on Thursday that federal prosecutors “must commit to investigations and prosecutions targeting all of the insidious results of the four-year invasion of illegal immigration that we are now working to repel.”

Blanche is authorizing U.S. attorneys’ offices in border districts to hire lawyers to work on investigations and prosecutions related to illegal immigration, drug trafficking and cartels. Other government lawyers, especially those at Main Justice in Washington, “are encouraged” to volunteer for details or permanent transfers to border districts, he wrote.

“I want the Cabinet members to keep good people,” the president told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump added, “I don’t want to see a big cut where a lot of good people are cut.”

He also suggested that agency leaders would take the lead, but Elon Musk could make his own push if reductions don’t go far enough.

Agencies have occasionally needed to reinstate fired workers who handled critical tasks, such as maintaining nuclear weapons.

Trump said he expects to go to Saudi Arabia soon and that the leaders of the oil-rich kingdom have agreed to make a $1 trillion investment in the United States.

“So I said, ‘I’ll go if you pay a trillion dollars, $1 trillion to American companies,’” Trump said. “They’ve agreed to do that, so I’m going to be going there.”

Trump also made Saudi Arabia the first country he visited during his first White House term. He said the upcoming visit would likely happen sometime in the next month and a half.

The Saudis hosted talks last month between senior U.S. and Russian officials to discuss Moscow’s ongoing war in Ukraine. The Saudis are also expected to host talks next week between U.S. and Ukrainian officials about ending the war.

Last December, Trump said on his social media platform: “The Republican Party will use its best efforts to eliminate Daylight Saving Time, which has a small but strong constituency, but shouldn’t! Daylight Saving Time is inconvenient, and very costly to our Nation.”

He softened those comments Thursday when asked about the upcoming switch to daylight saving time.

“It’s a 50-50 issue. When something’s a 50-50 issue, it’s hard to get excited about it,” he said. “I assume people would like to have more light later, but some people want to have more light earlier because they don’t want to take their kids to school in the dark.”

A U.S. special envoy says Ukraine was given “fair warning” by the White House before Trump ordered a pause this week on U.S. military assistance and intelligence sharing with Kyiv.

Trump’s envoy to Ukraine and Russia, retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, said Thursday that the Ukrainians are to blame for the pause.

“The best way I can describe it is sort of like hitting a mule with a two-by-four across the nose,” Kellogg said at an event Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations. “You got their attention.”

Zelenskyy later called the heated words “regrettable.”

▶ Read more on the pause on U.S. assistance to Ukraine

Second lady Usha Vance will lead the U.S. delegation to the Special Olympics in Turin, Italy.

The games begin with the opening ceremony Saturday.

As one of her first official assignments as second lady, Vance will be among eight people in the U.S. presidential delegation. The others are:

• Shawn Croley, Chargé d’Affaires a.i., U.S. Embassy to Italy and San Marino
• Trent Michael Morse, Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director of Presidential Personnel
• Riley M. Barnes, Senior Bureau Official of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State
• Douglass Benning, Consul General, U.S. Consulate Milan, Italy
• Rachel Campos-Duffy, FOX News Host and wife of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation
• Boris Epshteyn, Senior Counsel and Senior Advisor to Trump
• Richard Walters, Partner at FGS Global

A federal judge agreed Thursday to reinstate a board member whom President Trump removed from the National Labor Relations Board.

Boardmember Gwynne Wilcox sued Trump after he fired her and the agency’s general counsel, Jennifer Abruzzo, on Jan. 27.

U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell in Washington, D.C., ruled that Trump did not have the authority to remove Wilcox from the NLRB.

Wilcox’s attorneys said no president had tried to remove an NLRB member. They argued that board members can only be fired “for neglect of duty or malfeasance in office” and only after giving notice and holding a hearing.

During a hearing Wednesday, Howell jokingly referred to herself as a “speed bump” for the case on its way to the Supreme Court.

▶ Read more about the ruling on Trump and the NLRB

Appearing before a capacity crowd of journalists who crammed into the department’s small press briefing room and an overflow conference space across the hall, spokesperson Tammy Bruce parried virtually all the questions she was asked during the roughly 45-minute event.

That included declining to answer most queries about the status of Gaza ceasefire talks, discussions with Russia and Ukraine on ending their conflict and the state of U.S. foreign aid, which the administration has gutted in its first six weeks.

He signed a presidential memorandum directing the Justice Department to ask judges to require litigants to post injunction bonds. Essentially, Trump wants to force people to put up money if they’re seeking a temporary restraining order against his policies.

The president said that it was “from a legal standpoint, really a very big thing.”

Will Scharf, the cabinet secretary, said the tactic could be used “whenever someone tries to challenge our policies in court.” If the litigants lose, they would forfeit the bond, meaning they would be “held financially responsible for the disruption of federal activities that their actions have caused.”

Trump is postponing 25% tariffs on many imports from Mexico and some imports from Canada for a month amid widespread fears of the economic fallout from a broader trade war.

Trump said in the Oval Office that he still plans to impose “reciprocal” tariffs starting April 2.

“Most of the tariffs go on April the second,” Trump said before signing the orders. “And then we have some temporary ones and small ones, relatively small, although it’s a lot of money having to do with Mexico and Canada.”

Imports from Mexico that comply with the 2020 USMCA trade pact will be excluded from the 25% tariffs for a month, according to the orders signed by Trump.

Imports from Canada — especially autos and auto parts — that comply with the trade deal will also avoid the 25% tariffs for a month. The potash that U.S. farmers import from Canada will be tariffed at 10%, the same rate at which Trump wants to tariff Canadian energy products.

The CIA is laying off some recently hired officers as Trump’s moves to downsize and reshape the federal government reverberate through the intelligence community.

A CIA spokesperson said Thursday that the agency is reviewing personnel hired within the past two years and that officers whose behavior or suitability make them a poor fit will be let go.

The agency didn’t say how many staffers are expected to be fired but said the job of working for America’s preeminent spy agency “is not for everyone.”

In his nightly address, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he would travel to Saudi Arabia on Monday and his team would stay on to hold talks with U.S. officials.

“I am scheduled to visit Saudi Arabia to meet with the Crown Prince. After that, my team will stay in Saudi Arabia to work with American partners. Ukraine is most interested in peace,” Zelenskyy said.

Trump’s beef with America’s three biggest trading partners — Mexico, Canada and China — is befuddling decisions on which suppliers to use, where factories go, what prices to charge.

Take Marc Rosenberg, founder and CEO of The Edge Desk in Deerfield, Illinois.

He’s getting ready to introduce a fancy ergonomic chair to help ease back pain and boost productivity. He figures the most expensive one will sell for more than $1,000. But he can’t settle on a price amid the tariff spat.

“The misdirection is making it very tough to plan,’’ he said.

Now that Trump imposed a 20% tariff on imports from China, Rosenberg is reluctantly reducing his next shipment.

▶ Read more about baffled business leaders

Trump has signed proclamations recognizing March 2025 as Women’s History Month and Irish American Heritage Month. He signed a similar document last month recognizing February as Black History Month.

The moves come despite Trump’s push to rid the government of diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Some of his Cabinet agencies have banned affinity groups and other recognitions of people’s identity or heritage. Trump also ordered schools to end diversity programs or have their federal money pulled.

Trump posted on social media that Elon Musk joined his meeting with Cabinet members to discuss his Department of Government Efficiency, and that they’ll meet again every two weeks to discuss their progress in cutting the government workforce.

Trump called it “an incredible success” and seemed to indicate that Cabinet secretaries, rather than DOGE, will decide who is fired.

“They can be very precise as to who will remain, and who will go. We say the ‘scalpel’ rather than the ‘hatchet,’ Trump said.

A White House official has said in response to lawsuits that Musk is not a DOGE employee and has “no actual authority to make government decisions himself.”

Trump renamed the U.S. Digital Service as the U.S. DOGE Service and established it within the Executive Office of the President, which is generally not subject to many Freedom of Information Act requirements but must retain records under the Presidential Records Act.

That’s according to Greg Ahearn, president and CEO of The Toy Association. He predicts price hikes of 15% to 20% on games, dolls, cars and other toys in the coming months, since nearly 80% of toys sold in the U.S. are sourced from China.

Many toy makers are now renegotiating prices with retailers and taking a hard look at ways to cut costs on their products. But some, like Basic Fun CEO Jay Foreman, say tariffs leave no choice for retailers but to raise the prices U.S. consumers pay. Florida-based Basic Fun imports Tonka trucks, Care Bears and other toys from China.

▶ Read more about toys and tariffs

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The Illinois Democrat is pushing for answers about how staff cuts at the Department of Veterans Affairs affected the Veterans Crisis Line.

Duckworth and four other Democratic senators wrote Thursday to President Donald Trump and VA Secretary Doug Collins requesting details, by job category, on two waves of VA layoffs.

The letter specifically asks how many crisis line staff were dismissed and reinstated. Duckworth’s office said at least two employees involved with crisis line operations were reinstated following Duckworth’s intervention.

The VA has said that no crisis line responders were laid off. The letter calls this “a cynical cover-up for the Trump administration’s error.”

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Gavin Newsom said so in the inaugural episode of his new podcast, “This is Gavin Newsom,” while speaking with conservative activist Charlie Kirk, whose influential Turning Point USA organization helped Trump increase support among young voters.

“It’s deeply unfair,” the potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate said. “I totally agree with you. … I revere sports. So, the issue of fairness is completely legit.”

Even among Democrats, 7 in 10 oppose allowing transgender female athletes to participate in women’s sports, according to a January New York Times/Ipsos poll.

“We woke up profoundly sickened and frustrated by these remarks,” two LGBTQ advocates in the California legislature said. Playing with teams that match your gender wasn’t a problem “until Donald Trump began obsessing about it.”

▶ Read more on Newsom’s declaration about trans athletes

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The Ukrainian leader didn’t give details about what kind of cooperation has restarted, and said the two countries hoped to have “a meaningful meeting” next week.

In his speech Thursday to a meeting of European Council members, Zelenskyy said Ukraine “is not only ready to take the necessary steps for peace, but we are also proposing what those steps are.”

Russia can demonstrate that it’s serious about peace, he said, by ceasing attacks on Ukraine’s energy and civilian infrastructure as well as halting military operations in the Black Sea, and it could also release prisoners of war.

Still, he said “any truce and any form of trust building measures can only be a prologue to a full and fair settlement, to a comprehensive agreement on security guarantees and an end to the war.”

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Todd Blanche is now the second in command at the Justice Department.

Just months ago, Blanche was defending Trump against criminal charges brought by the people he’ll now oversee. He was confirmed Wednesday by the Republican-led Senate.

Blanche enters the department amid upheaval from firings, resignations and forced transfers of career officials as the Trump administration purges the agency of employees seen as disloyal to the president’s agenda.

Thursday’s release of funds for humanitarian emergencies worldwide comes as the international body and nonprofits continue to grapple with the growing impact of the U.S. foreign aid freeze.

“For countries battered by conflict, climate change and economic turmoil, brutal funding cuts don’t mean that humanitarian needs disappear,” Tom Fletcher, the U.N.'s humanitarian chief, said in a statement. “Today’s emergency fund allocation channels resources swiftly to where they’re needed most.”

Humanitarian funding levels, which were dwindling well before President Trump’s decision earlier this year to cut off foreign aid, are now projected to hit a record low this year, according to the U.N.

The latest batch of funding will go toward supporting countries in Asia, Latin America and Africa, such as Sudan, where a civil war has resulted in a massive displacement of the population, hunger and most recently a cholera outbreak that’s left more than 90 dead, according to the international medical aid group, Doctors Without Borders.

Attorneys say they’ve filed several appeals before an independent board against multiple federal agencies and are planning more than a dozen additional appeals on behalf of thousands of probationary federal workers fired by the Trump administration.

Christopher Bonk, a partner at Gilbert Employment Law, confirmed the appeals Thursday.

Multiple lawsuits have previously been filed in federal court over the mass terminations. But the latest legal challenges have gone to a federal board responsible for protecting government employees from political reprisals or retaliation for whistleblowing.

The goal of the appeals? To get the workers reinstated with back pay.

▶ Read more about the appeals on behalf of the fired workers

Trump special envoy Steve Witkoff confirms that senior administration officials are arranging to hold talks next week with senior Ukrainian officials.

The anticipated talks, which he said would either take place in Riyadh or Jeddah, come after last week’s disastrous Oval Office meeting between Trump and Zelenskyy led to the White House announcing it was pausing military aid and intelligence sharing with Ukraine.

Zelenskyy has called the heated words during his recent White House visit “regrettable” and said he’s ready to sign a critical minerals agreement with the U.S. that Trump has been seeking.

“We’ll see if he follows through,” Witkoff told reporters, when asked if the agreement could be signed during the upcoming talks.

Zelenskyy told European leaders in Brussels on Thursday that teams from the U.S. and Ukraine had resumed their work and hoped to have “a meaningful meeting” next week.

The cuts to teacher training grants are putting a strain on rural school systems, which have relied on the money to help address teacher shortages.

In an overhaul at an agency Trump has described as being infiltrated by “radicals, zealots and Marxists,” the Education Department last month cut $600 million in grants to the training programs, which it characterized as supporting divisive ideologies. Trump has said he wants to close the department, and new Education Secretary Linda McMahon has laid out how it could be dismantled.

Federal money makes up a significant portion of budgets in some rural districts, which rely more on grants and philanthropy because of their limited tax base, said Sharon Contreras, CEO of the Innovation Project, a collaboration among North Carolina school districts. A grant to that group supported teacher recruitment and retention, providing scholarships for teachers pursuing master’s degrees if they agreed to return to the area and serve as principals for three years.

▶ Read more about the administration’s cuts to teacher training grants

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Speaking about the sanctions on Russia at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday, Bessent also said the U.S. “will not hesitate to go all in should it provide leverage in peace negotiations.”

Over the course of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Biden administration imposed thousands of sanctions on Russian firms, people, ships and imposed a price cap on Russian oil, among other actions.

In New York, Bessent called Biden’s sanctions on Russian energy “egregiously weak” and “stemming from worries about upward pressure on U.S. energy prices.”

“Per President Trump’s guidance, sanctions will be used explicitly and aggressively for immediate maximum impact. They will be carefully monitored to ensure that they are achieving specific objectives,” Bessent said.

She said later that she told the president Mexico was making great strides in fulfilling his security demands.

“I told him we’re getting results,” Sheinbaum said. But the U.S. imposed the tariffs, so she asked Trump “how are we going to continue cooperating, collaborating with something that hurts the people of Mexico?”

“I need to continue working together and cooperating with you all, but we need to work as equals,” she said she told Trump.

She added that “practically all of the trade” between the U.S. and Mexico will be exempt from tariffs until April 2.

She said the two countries will continue to work together on migration and security, and to cut back on fentanyl trafficking to the U.S.

She added that Trump said he would crack down on the flow of American weapons trafficked into Mexico, which has fueled cartel warfare in the Latin American country, though Trump hasn’t elaborated on what his government has done to address the weapons trafficking.

Four arts groups filed federal lawsuits against the NEA on Thursday, seeking a preliminary injunction or temporary restraining order before March 24, when the next round of grant applications are due.

President Trump’s executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government” calls for denying federal money to any programs that “promote gender ideology.”

The American Civil Liberties Union argues on behalf of the Rhode Island Latino Arts, National Queer Theater, The Theater Offensive and Theater Communications Groups that the NEA’s new certification requirement and funding prohibition violates the First Amendment, the Administrative Procedure Act and the Fifth Amendment.

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Kash Patel says the bureau will work to “zero out” the population of Americans detained or held hostage in foreign countries.

He spoke Thursday during a flag-raising at the State Department honoring hostages and their families.

Americans are being held in multiple countries including Russia and Venezuela. The Trump administration is also working to secure the release of Americans still held by Hamas.

Adam Boehler is President Donald Trump’s nominee to be special envoy for hostage affairs, leading direct talks with the militant group.

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Michael Faulkender, nominated to serve as Deputy Treasury Secretary, said during his confirmation hearing that he doesn’t think mass layoffs at the agency will change how the IRS handles this year’s returns.

“I am not anticipating a change in our ability to engage in collections at the IRS this tax season,” Faulkender told the Senate Finance Committee.

The IRS laid off more than 7,000 probationary employees in February, and more recently the IRS is drafting plans to cut its workforce by as much as half through a mix of layoffs, attrition and incentivized buyouts, according to two people familiar with the situation.

▶ Read more about cuts at the IRS

Claudia Sheinbaum responded positively to Trump’s announcement that he would postpone 25% tariffs on most goods imported from Mexico until April 2nd after a call between the two leaders earlier in the morning.

Sheinbaum posted on X that they “had an excellent and respectful call in which we agreed that our work and collaboration have yielded unprecedented results.”

The Mexican government has cracked down on cartels, sent troops to the U.S. border and delivered 29 top cartel bosses long chased by American authorities to the Trump administration in a span of weeks.

Greenlanders are devoted to ritual and tradition, and fiercely defend the homeland Trump has threatened to seize.

They “always have faith, no matter what,” the Rev. John Johansen said after a service where some American visitors wore pins that read: “I didn’t vote for him.”

“Of course they worry about Trump because they can lose their independence, their freedom. They don’t want to be American; they don’t want to be Danes. They only wish for their own independence,” Johansen said.

Most Greenlanders are Lutheran, 300 years after a Danish missionary brought the faith to the remote island.