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IRS to lay off 7,000 workers beginning today – report
We reported earlier that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is expected to fire thousands of its employees starting today.
About 7,000 IRS workers in Washington and around the country will be laid off beginning Thursday, Associated Press reports, citing a source.
The layoffs affect probationary employees with roughly one year or less of service at the agency and largely include workers in compliance departments, the news agency reports.
The reported layoffs come in the middle of tax filing season and it is unclear how they may affect tax collection services this year.
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Ewan Murray
Donald Trump’s involvement in professional golf’s peace talks have ramped up further, with Tiger Woods among those due to be afforded an audience with the US president at the White House this afternoon.
Woods is expected to join the PGA Tour commissioner, Jay Monahan, fellow board member Adam Scott and representatives of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund in a meeting hosted by Trump amid increasing hopes the fractured sport can unite over the coming months.
Trump holds a significant role not only because of his love for golf but because of influence he can exert on the US Department of Justice, which under Joe Biden’s presidency was seen as a potential stumbling block to the PGA Tour and Saudis forming alliance.
The meeting is slated to begin at 12pm ET today.
Luke Harding
The US envoy Keith Kellogg has cancelled his press conference following a meeting with Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.
Kellogg would not be taking questions from the press, Ukrainian officials said, and would only appear for a photocall and protocol handshake.
The cancellation means we will not hear from either of the two leaders after today’s Ukraine-US talks in Kyiv, at least for now, as they were meant to hold a joint press conference.
Kellogg’s three-day trip to Kyiv came as Donald Trump accused Zelenskyy of being a “dictator” and blamed him for his country’s war with Russia. Zelenskyy had suggested on Wednesday Trump was living in a Russian “disinformation bubble”.
One senior Ukrainian source described Zelenskyy as engaged and “highly motivated”. He said it was unclear if Kellogg would take up the president’s invitation to visit the frontline together. Kellogg is due to leave Kyiv on Friday evening.
IRS to lay off 7,000 workers beginning today – report
We reported earlier that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is expected to fire thousands of its employees starting today.
About 7,000 IRS workers in Washington and around the country will be laid off beginning Thursday, Associated Press reports, citing a source.
The layoffs affect probationary employees with roughly one year or less of service at the agency and largely include workers in compliance departments, the news agency reports.
The reported layoffs come in the middle of tax filing season and it is unclear how they may affect tax collection services this year.
David Smith
Liz Truss, the former British prime minister, told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that her country was “failing” and needed a Donald Trump-style “Maga” movement to save it.
Truss was speaking at the rightwing conference at the National Harbor in Maryland on Wednesday, alongside rightwing populists from around the world planning deeper ties and cooperation.
“We now have a major problem in Britain that judges are making decisions that should be made by politicians,” the ex-prime minister said, claiming that the judiciary is “no longer accountable” because of reforms by her predecessor Tony Blair, who gave power to an “unelected bureaucracy”. She continued:
There’s no doubt in my mind that until those changes are reversed, we do not have a functioning country. The British state is now failing, is not working. The decisions are not being made by politicians.
Truss, who was prime minister for only 49 days and lost her seat in last year’s general election, has become an increasingly marginal figure in British politics but found safe harbour at CPAC, a once mainstream conservative gathering that has embraced Trump’s brand of nativist-populism.
JD Vance is set to kick off this year’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) with a speech to begin shortly. We’ll follow it live and bring you the key moments of his speech.
Other speakers scheduled to speak at the conference include attorney general Pam Bondi, House speaker Mike Johnson, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, and Reform UK leader Nigel Farage.
Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at CPAC on Saturday.
Donald Trump signed another round of executive orders onboard Air Force One last night, among them one aimed at ending federal benefits for people in the country illegally.
The order seeks to end “all taxpayer-funded benefits for illegal aliens”, according to the White House, although it was not clear which benefits will be targeted.
People in the country illegally generally do not qualify except for emergency medical care. Children are entitled to a free K-12 public education regardless of immigration status under a 1982 supreme court ruling.
The order is the latest in a blizzard of moves by Trump to crack down on immigration. Trump signed 10 executive orders on immigration on his first day in office. They included ending automatic citizenship for people born in the US and asylum at the southern border.
As we reported earlier, the birthright citizenship order has been temporarily halted in court.
Appeals court denies Trump’s plea to reinstate birthright citizenship ban
Jessica Glenza
A federal appeals court in San Francisco denied the Trump administration’s request to reinstate a ban on birthright citizenship.
Donald Trump signed an executive order on his first day in office that ordered an end to birthright citizenship for children for whom neither parent is a US citizen or legal permanent resident.
Birthright citizenship is guaranteed by the 14th amendment to the constitution. Civil rights groups argue an end to birthright citizenship would create a “permanent underclass” of stateless people denied basic protections.
The appeals court denied the administration’s request for an emergency appeal, saying that the justice department has not made a strong case that it would succeed on merits. A concurring opinion written by a Trump-appointed judge said the administration had not convinced her it was an emergency.
The appeals court’s decision leaves in place an injunction issued by a federal court in Washington state, and sets up a battle at the US supreme court.
Pete Hegseth orders Pentagon to prepare for major budget cuts
Defense secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered senior leaders at the Pentagon and throughout the US military to develop plans for cutting 8% from the defense budget in each of the next five years, according to a reports on Wednesday.
The memo, dated Tuesday, orders a number of branches within the military and the Pentagon to turn in budget-cutting proposals by next Monday.
“President Trump’s charge to DoD is clear: achieve peace through strength,” Hegseth wrote in the memo obtained by the Washington Post.
The time for preparation is over – we must act urgently to revive the warrior ethos, rebuild our military, and re-establish deterrence. Our budget will resource the fighting force we need, cease unnecessary defense spending, reject excessive bureaucracy, and drive actionable reform including progress on the audit.
The memo listed some 17 exceptions that the Trump administration wants exempted, among them operations at the southern US border, modernization of nuclear weapons and missile defense and acquisition of one-way attack drones and other munitions.
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) workers slated for termination received emails on Wednesday afternoon instructing them to report to the office and bring with them their government-issued equipment.
“Under an executive order, IRS has been directed to terminate probationary employees who were not deemed critical to filing season,” according to an email seen by multiple outlets.
“We don’t have many details that we are permitted to share, but this is all tied to compliance with the executive order.”
The reported layoffs come in the middle of tax filing season and follow years of effort by the Biden administration to beef up the agency’s workforce, modernize its technology and improve customer service using tens of billions from the Inflation Reduct Act – money that Republicans have aimed to cut.
IRS to reportedly fire thousands of workers
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is expected to fire thousands of its probationary employees as early as today, according to reports on Wednesday.
About 6,000 IRS employees are reportedly slated for termination, with further reductions in the size of the agency expected as part of the Trump administration’s push to downsize the federal work force.
The terminations will reportedly target relatively recent hires who do not enjoy as much job protection. They are described as largely auditors and support workers involved in compliance work, CNN reports.
The move would come during peak tax-filing season in the US.
If confirmed in a Senate vote this afternoon, Kash Patel would take over an FBI gripped by turmoil while facing allegations that he played a key role in a purge of the bureau’s agents while his nomination was pending.
Dick Durbin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, claimed last week that he had “highly credible information” that Patel had given orders to sack senior personnel when he had no power to do so as a private citizen.
Durbin called the alleged misconduct “absolutely beyond the pale” and demanded an immediate investigation. “Although Mr Patel is President Trump’s nominee to be FBI Director, he is still a private citizen with no role in government,” Durbin wrote in a letter to the justice department inspector general, Michael Horowitz.
It is unacceptable for a nominee with no current role in government, much less at the FBI, to personally direct unjustified and potentially illegal adverse employment actions against senior career FBI leadership and other dedicated, nonpartisan law enforcement officers.
Senate to vote on confirmation of Kash Patel as FBI director
The Senate is set to vote this afternoon on whether to confirm Kash Patel, Donald Trump’s controversial nominee as FBI director.
Patel, a longtime Trump adviser who served in his first term, is expected to be confirmed unless more than three Republican senators vote against him, which is seen as unlikely. He cleared the Senate judiciary committee last week by a 12-10, party-line vote.
During his confirmation hearing last month, Patel faced questions about previous provocative public remarks attacking the FBI and his ability to resist political pressure from the White House.
Critics have said Patel, one of Trump’s most loyal lieutenants, would weaponise the FBI against the president’s political opponents if he becomes the agency’s director.
Joseph Gedeon
Trump’s first month in office could be described as whiplash-inducing – and his flurry of executive actions have drawn criticism from several quarters.
But how do Trump voters view the whirlwind start to his second term?
My colleague Joseph Gedeon spoke to some Trump voters in Georgia to find out. Here’s what one of them, construction worker Jeff Clay, told him:
“He’s coming at everything just a whirlwind. You don’t know what he’s going do next. I mean, he’s basically covered about everything he said he was going to do, or he’s trying, and I’m sure there’s more that could be done. He needs to drain the swamp up there at the Capitol.”
Maya Yang
Donald Trump is receiving widespread backlash after he likened himself to a “king” on social media following his administration’s decision to rescind New York City’s congestion pricing program.
On Wednesday, following a letter issued by his transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, to the New York governor, Kathy Hochul, that ended the transportation department’s agreement with New York over a new congestion pricing program for Manhattan, Trump wrote on Truth Social:
“CONGESTION PRICING IS DEAD. Manhattan, and all of New York, is SAVED. LONG LIVE THE KING!”
The White House then proceeded to share Trump’s quote on social media, accompanied with a computer-generated image of Trump grinning on a fake Time magazine cover while donning a golden crown, behind him the skyline of New York City.
In response to Trump’s comments, Hochul issued a statement, saying: “We are a nation of laws, not ruled by a king.” She added: “Public transit is the lifeblood of New York City and critical to our economic future – as a New Yorker, like president Trump, knows very well.”
Court rejects DoJ appeal against block of Trump's executive order ending birthright citizenship
Good morning US politics readers. Today marks a full month since Donald Trump’s inauguration – and in that month the 47th president and his administration have fundamentally reshaped the federal government and driven a truck through international relations.
Trump is sure to celebrate at this year’s CPAC, which is held at the National Harbor in Maryland. As my colleagues David Smith writes, the conference will be a vivid demonstration of how his “Make America great again” (Maga) movement has gone from the margins to the mainstream.
The vice-president, JD Vance, is expected to address the conference at 10am ET. We’ll follow it live and bring you the key moments of his speech.
Trump’s move to end birthright citizenship may be headed to the supreme court after an appeals court declined to grant a justice department request that would have lifted a lower court’s order blocking the president’s executive order.
The US 9th circuit court of appeals decision means the case may be headed to the nation’s highest court, one month after Trump signed the executive order.
Here’s what else is happening today:
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After Trump escalated his rift with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Wednesday, Ukraine’s president is trying to move the difficult conversation with the US forward ahead of today’s meeting with Trump envoy Keith Kellogg. In his regular video update on Wednesday night, he said it was “crucial that this discussion and our overall cooperation with the US remains constructive”. We’re covering the latest developments in our Europe live blog:
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Trump’s nominee for FBI director, Kash Patel, is set to be confirmed today around 1.45pm.
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At 1pm, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will brief reporters.
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At 3pm, Trump is expected to address a White House reception for Black history month.
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At 7.20pm Trump speaks at a reception for Republican members of the National Governors Association.
