Trump to sign executive order banning transgender troops – report
Donald Trump is expected to sign three executive orders on Monday that would reshape the military, including banning transgender service members from serving in the US armed forces, CNN reports.
The orders will also include gutting the military’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and reinstating service members with backpay who were discharged for refusing to get vaccinated from Covid-19, two White House officials told the outlet.
Key events
Staff at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have been ordered to immediately stop engaging with the World Health Organization (WHO).
An email sent from the CDC’s deputy director for global health states: “Effective immediately all CDC staff engaging with WHO through technical working groups, coordinating centers, advisory boards, cooperative agreements or other means – in person or virtual – must cease their activity and await further guidance,” according to multiple outlets.
The move affects critical work on influenza surveillance and disease outbreaks across the globe.
Donald Trump announced last week that the US will exit the WHO, citing what he described as a mishandling of the Covid-19 and other international health crises.
WHO projects across the world are seen as a vital backup for health crises, with the agency taking the lead in combating diseases, particularly in poorer countries and conflict zones. It has coordinated international responses to mpox, Ebola and polio.
Inspector general fired by Trump warns terminations are a ‘threat to democracy’
One of the inspector generals who was fired by Donald Trump has warned that the president’s terminations amount to a “threat to democracy”.
Trump fired the inspectors general from more than a dozen federal agencies on Friday night, eliminating a critical oversight component and clearing the way for him to replace them with loyalists.
Hannibal “Mike” Ware, the former inspector general (IG) for the Small Business Administration, told MSNBC on Monday:
We’re looking at what amounts to a threat to democracy, a threat to independent oversight and a threat to transparency in government.
Ware, who was appointed by Trump during his first term, said the reason given for his firing was “changing priorities of the administration”.
“The reason that is alarming is because IGs are not a part of any administration,” he said.
IGs oversee how the priorities of the administration is being conducted to make sure that there is transparency in government, and to make sure that there’s no fraud waste and abuse, and how taxpayer funds are being expended.
Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has ordered the deployment of 400 soldiers and some helicopters to the border, his office said.
In a statement, Abbott’s office said the 400 additional soldiers, as well as C-130 and Chinook helicopters, will join thousands of Texas national guard soldiers already deployed on the border to collaborate with US border patrol agents on the border.
“Texas has a partner in the White House we can work with to secure the Texas-Mexico border,” the governor said.
To support that mission, today, I deployed the Texas tactical border force, comprised of hundreds of troops, to work side-by-side with US Border Patrol agents to stop illegal immigrants from entering our country and to enforce immigration laws.
Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, plans to visit Washington DC next week for a meeting at the White House with Donald Trump, Axios reports, citing Israeli and US sources.
Michael Sainato
Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” (Doge) has been accused by a leading labor union of an “absolutely illegal” breach of federal regulations after posting a vague request for job applications.
The Trump administration’s much-vaunted but ill-defined program to reshape the federal government announced it was recruiting “full-time, salaried positions” for software engineers, information security engineers and “other technology professionals” on its official website.
Government vacancy announcements are typically required to include key information around pay, security requirements, qualifications, and the number of available roles, according to the office of personnel management.
The Doge page does not contain such details. It includes a brief paragraph explaining that it is looking to hire “world-class talent to work long hours identifying/eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse”, and a form to submit personal details. A checkbox indicates the roles are based in Washington DC, and available only to US citizens.
The page was promoted by Musk on X, the social network he owns, and swiftly drew criticism from a prominent union leader.
“This is an application to apply for a corrupt organization to do corrupt things,” said Steve Lenkart, executive director of the National Federation of Federal Employees, which represents about 110,000 federal workers.
“This is definitely against federal law if they’re using it as a way to actually give someone a job or deny someone a job. It’s absolutely illegal.”
A transgender woman serving in a federal prison has filed a lawsuit against Donald Trump over a plan to move her to a men’s prison, after Trump’s executive order directing the government to recognize only two sexes.
The lawsuit, filed on Sunday in Boston federal court, is among the first court challenges related to the executive order, which directs the federal government to only recognize two, biologically distinct sexes, male and female; house transgender women in men’s prisons; and cease funding any gender-affirming medical care for inmates.
Trump’s executive order discriminated based on sex in violation of the plaintiff’s due process rights under the constitution’s fifth amendment by requiring prison officials to treat incarcerated people differently depending on their sex, according to the lawsuit, Reuters reports.
The plaintiff’s impending transfer to a men’s prison would also violate the eighth amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, and depriving the plaintiff of medically necessary healthcare would violate a federal law known as the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, according to the lawsuit.
The inmate’s lawyers argued that if she were transferred to a men’s facility, she would be at an “extremely high risk of harassment, abuse, violence, and sexual assault”.
Mexico has received more than 4,000 migrants deported from the US in the first week of the Trump administration, the country’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, said.
The “large majority” of them are Mexicans but some are non-Mexican deportees, she said on Monday.
Sheinbaum told reporters that there has not yet been a “substantial” increase in deportation flights since Trump took office last week.
Marina Dunbar
A decision by the US education department to end their investigations into book bans in the country has sparked backlash from advocacy and civil liberties groups.
The education department’s Office for Civil Rights announced on Friday that it had dismissed 11 complaints related to book bans and it will no longer employ a “book ban coordinator” to investigate local school districts and parents.
There has been a flurry of attempts to ban or remove books from school libraries and classrooms across the US in recent years, with the vast majority of attempts targeting books that are written by or about people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, according to the free speech organizations that track book-banning efforts.
PEN America, a non-profit aimed at protecting free expression, has tracked more than 10,000 public school book bans in the 2023-2024 school year.
Judge lifts ban barring ex-Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes from Washington DC
Fran Lawther
A judge has dropped restrictions that barred the former leader of the far-right Oath Keepers group, Stewart Rhodes, from entering Washington DC and the US Capitol.
The US district court judge Amit Mehta wrote in an order on Friday that Rhodes, along with seven other January 6 defendants, would need to first obtain permission from the court before setting foot in the US capital. The order led to a request from the acting US attorney for the District of Columbia, Ed Martin, to reverse the ban.
On Monday, the judge released a new order explaining why he had added a location restriction to Rhodes’ terms of release: at the time Rhodes was sentenced, location restrictions were not yet added to supervision orders as special conditions for a prisoner’s release. This has since changed, the ruling said. After consulting the Probation Office and being told the location restrictions were appropriate, Mehta issued his ban on Friday.
However, Mehta went on to say that he would vacate his order from Friday “because it would be improper for the court post-commutation to modify the original sentences”.
He added: “The court acknowledges that its conditions of supervision will not be enforced.
“Accordingly, the US Department of Justice’s motion is granted in part and denied in part. The court will not ‘dismiss’ the non-custodial portion of defendants’ sentences, but defendants are no longer bound by the judicially imposed conditions of supervised release.”
The day so far
Here’s a recap of the latest developments:
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Donald Trump is expected to sign three executive orders on Monday that would reshape the military, including banning transgender service members from serving in the US armed forces. The orders will also include gutting the military’s diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and reinstating service members with backpay who were discharged for refusing to get vaccinated from Covid-19, defense secretary Pete Hegseth said on his first full day of work at the Pentagon.
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Trump is also expected to sign an executive order on Monday that would begin the process of creating a “next-generation” missile defense shield for the US. Hegseth said Trump would also sign an executive order to put in place the Iron Dome for the US, referring to the Israel’s short-range air defense system.
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Trump issued an executive order on Sunday directing federal government to override California’s water management practices if they are found to be ineffective. Trump has falsely claimed that California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, and other officials refused to provide water from the northern part of the state to fight the fires. His order directs federal agencies to “immediately take actions to override existing activities that unduly burden efforts to maximize water deliveries”.
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The US and Colombia pulled back from the brink of a trade war on Sunday after the White House said the Colombians had agreed to accept military aircraft carrying deported migrants. Trump had threatened tariffs and sanctions on Colombia to punish it for earlier refusing to accept military flights carrying deportees amid his sweeping immigration crackdown, but a White House statement late on Sunday said Colombia had agreed to accept the migrants and Washington would not impose its threatened penalties.
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A series of immigration raids were conducted in cities over the weekend in what the “border czar”, Tom Homan, claimed was only “the beginning stages” of Trump’s promised threat to deport millions of people from the country. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) said it had made 956 arrests on Sunday, bringing the total since Trump took office to 2,681 arrests.
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Senate Democrats signed on to a resolution condemning Donald Trump’s decision to pardon January 6 defendants who assaulted police officers. The one-line resolution indicates that “the Senate disapproves of any pardons for individuals who were found guilty of assaulting Capitol police officers.”
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The Senate is expected to vote on the confirmation of the billionaire hedge fund manager, Scott Bessent, as treasury secretary. On Saturday, the Senate voted 67-23 to advance Bessent’s nomination. A final vote is scheduled to take place this evening at 5.30pm ET.
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Republicans in the Florida legislature delivered a significant snub to Governor Ron DeSantis by abruptly halting his proposals for a crackdown on immigration in the state. The governor’s goals included making it a state crime for undocumented migrants to enter Florida; pressuring local authorities to join in a deportation purge, and punishing those who do not; and appointing a dedicated state “immigration officer” to liaise with the Trump administration under his personal authority.
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JD Vance defended some of Trump’s controversial cabinet nominations in advance of further confirmation hearings this week. Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation, Vance said Hegseth is a “disrupter” and described Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, as being of “impeccable character, impeccable record of service, and she also is a person who I think is going to bring some trust back to the intelligence services”.
Robert Tait
Donald Trump has ordered an investigation into whether there should be a radical shake-up of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) after saying he supported its abolition.
In a new executive order, the returning president appointed a review council to examine the workings of the agency, which he accused of political bias and of denying aid to his supporters.
“Despite obligating nearly $30bn in disaster aid each of the past three years, Fema has managed to leave vulnerable Americans without the resources or support they need when they need it most,” the order stated, adding: “There are serious concerns of political bias in Fema.”
The order also accused the agency of going beyond its remit by spending more than $1bn “to welcome illegal aliens”, although it did not provide evidence.
The review council will consist of “no more than 20 members” and will included the new secretaries of defense and homeland security, Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noem, respectively.
Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Monday that would begin the process of creating a “next-generation” missile defense shield for the US, CNN reports.
The order would call for the creation of an “iron dome” for the US, referring to Israel’s missile-shield system designed to intercept short-range launches.
The outlet reports that:
The executive order directs implementation of a next generation missile-defense shield for the United States against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other next-generation aerial attacks.
Trump has previously promised to build an “impenetrable dome” over the US to “protect our people”.
We reported earlier that nearly all Senate Democrats signed on to a resolution condemning Donald Trump’s decision to pardon January 6 defendants who assaulted police officers.
John Fetterman, the Democratic senator for Pennsylvania, has now signed the resolution, Politico reports.
Fetterman was not on an initial version of the resolution circulated this morning, but a spokesperson confirmed to the outlet that he supports the effort.
Florida Republicans rebuke DeSantis over immigration
Richard Luscombe
Republicans in the Florida legislature delivered a significant snub to Governor Ron DeSantis on Monday by abruptly halting his proposals for a crackdown on immigration in the state.
DeSantis had summoned lawmakers to a “special legislative session” in Tallahassee on Monday morning aimed at aligning state laws to the hardline measures coming out of the White House.
The governor’s goals included making it a state crime for undocumented migrants to enter Florida; pressuring local authorities to join in a deportation purge, and punishing those who do not; and appointing a dedicated state “immigration officer” to liaise with the Trump administration under his personal authority.
The special session had Trump’s blessing, with the president posting to Truth Social this month he hoped more governors would follow DeSantis’s lead.
But in an action on Monday morning that local media outlets called variously a kneecapping of DeSantis, and an extension of a civil war between the governor and legislature over who has control of Florida’s immigration policies, Republican lawmakers in both the state House and Senate immediately “gaveled” out the sessions as soon as they had begun – to press ahead with their own proposals.
According to NBC News, their act “effectively killed all the legislation already filed by DeSantis’s allies… [and] puts the governor in a tricky position”.
For example, under the lawmakers’ bill, there would still be a state immigration officer, the agriculture commissioner Wilton Simpson, a possible DeSantis successor, but he would report to the legislature, and not to the governor.
As the NBC report explains it, assuming the bill passes, DeSantis must either sign a measure that “kneecaps” his authority over immigration enforcement in Florida, or veto a bill including many hardline immigration actions supported by the Trump administration.
“Sometimes leadership isn’t about being out in front of an issue. It’s about following the leader you trust. I trust President Trump,” saidthe Florida Senate president, Ben Albritton, according to the Miami Herald.
