Trump acts to remove chair of Federal Election Commission
Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission, revealed on Thursday that Donald Trump has sent her a letter telling her that she had been removed from the commission.
Weintraub, a Democrat appointed to the bipartisan commission by George W Bush, posted an image of the letter, which was dated 31 January.
“Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC,” Weintraub wrote on Bluesky. “There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn’t it. I’ve been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing anytime soon.”
Key events
Trump administration sued by government workers over USAid slashing
The largest US government worker union and an association of foreign service workers sued the Trump administration on Thursday in an effort to reverse its aggressive dismantling of theUS Agency for International Development (USAid).
The lawsuit, filed in Washington DC federal court by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, seeks an order blocking what it says are “unconstitutional and illegal actions” that have created a “global humanitarian crisis.”
Project 2025 architect Russell Vought confirmed as White House budget director
The Senate has confirmed Russell Vought as White House budget director, putting an official who has planned the zealous expansion of Trump’s power into one of the most influential positions in the federal government.
Vought has already played an influential role in Trump’s effort to remake the federal government as one of the architects of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term.
Vought was confirmed on a party-line vote of 53-47. With the Senate chamber full, Democrats repeatedly tried to speak as they cast their “no” votes to give their reasons for voting against Vought, but they were gaveled down by Sen. Ashley Moody, a Florida Republican who was presiding over the chamber. She cited Senate rules that ban debate during votes.
Trump acts to remove chair of Federal Election Commission
Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission, revealed on Thursday that Donald Trump has sent her a letter telling her that she had been removed from the commission.
Weintraub, a Democrat appointed to the bipartisan commission by George W Bush, posted an image of the letter, which was dated 31 January.
“Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC,” Weintraub wrote on Bluesky. “There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn’t it. I’ve been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing anytime soon.”
Musk and Trump plan to fire more than 97% of USAid staff, according to reports from Reuters and the New York Times.
The Times reports:
The Trump administration will reduce the number of workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development from more than 10,000 to about 290 positions, three people with knowledge of the plans said on Thursday.
The small remaining staff includes employees who specialize in health and humanitarian assistance, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to publicly discuss the cuts.
Four sources familiar with the plan told Reuters “only 294 staff at the agency would be allowed to keep their jobs, including only 12 in the Africa bureau and eight in the Asia bureau”.
Atul Gawande, who led global health programs at USAid, shared a screenshot from an internal email on the planned cuts and wrote that secretary of state, Marco Rubio claims that USAid’s “lifesaving assistance for health and humanitarian needs will continue. But his team just communicated that the entire agency will be imminently reduced from 14,000 to 294 people. Just 12 in Africa”.
“We already see the shutdown’s cost,” Gawande added in a thread on Twitter/X. “Kids with drug-resistant TB, turned away from clinics, are not just dying – they’re spreading the disease. People around the world w HIV, denied their medicine, will soon start transmitting virus. The damage is global”.
Gawande wrote that one veteran foreign service officer told him: “Our government is attacking us. This is worse than any dictatorship where I’ve worked”.
Lois Beckett
A memorial service today for three people who died in the Eaton Canyon wildfire in Los Angeles was marked by simmering anger at Donald Trump’s choice not to visit Altadena, a town with a historic Black community that was devastated by the fire.
Two weeks ago, Trump toured damaged areas of the Pacific Palisades, a much wealthier area of Los Angeles, and spoke to affected residents there, but did not come east to visit victims in Pasadena or Altadena, where 17 people were killed.
Speaking to a full room at Pasadena’s First African Methodist Episcopal church, Rev Al Sharpton, the veteran civil rights activist, criticized Trump for his suggestions this week that the US take over Gaza, while not having met with the victims of the wildfires in Altadena, which razed entire blocks, including an estimated half of Altadena’s Black households.
“You’re the president of the United States. You ain’t the president of Gaza!” Sharpton said. “You got a whole community burned down that needs to be investigated. What happened? What started it and why did it expand, and why did some folk get noticed seven hours before other folks got notice? I’ve got stuff for you to do! You want to be the president, then act like the president.”
“Now you want to take Gaza. Why don’t you take here?” Sharpton also said. “Want to take something? Take Altadena. Make it the Riviera of California.”
Earlier, civil rights attorney Ben Crump had referenced Trump’s choice sarcastically.
“We were confused as to why he didn’t come to Altadena, one of the hard-hit affected areas,” Crump said. “We don’t know his reasons why he didn’t come to Altadena – ”
“You know why!” someone in the audience called out.
Rev Larry Campbell of Pasadena’s First AME Episcopal church said that 54 families in the church’s congregation had their homes destroyed in the fire, while more suffered serious damage. Family members of Erliene Kennedy, Rodney Nickerson and Evelyn McClendon spoke at the service.
“The people in this town deserve as much respect and regard and attention and accountability as anybody anywhere,” Sharpton said. “We stand with those in the Palisades and the Hollywood Hills, but let everybody stand with us, too.”
Trump signs executive order imposing US sanctions on the ICC
Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC), the White House has confirmed.
The text of the order, posted on the White House website, accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel” and abused its power by issuing “baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant”.
According to the order:
The United States will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions, some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the United States of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our Nation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.
Our colleagues on the Middle East live blog are tracking reaction to the order.
Bondi disbands FBI ‘foreign influence task force’ as Musk boosts Russia-linked hoax smearing USAid and Ben Stiller
Attorney general Pam Bondi dissolved an FBI taskforce aimed at combatting foreign influence operations on Wednesday, the same day that a hoax news report linked to Russia was shared by Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, and his son, Donald Trump Jr.
“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion,” Bondi wrote in a memo to all Justice department employees after she was sworn in on Wednesday, “the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded.”
The FBI website explains that former director Christopher Wray established the taskforce in 2017 to combat “covert actions by foreign governments to influence US political sentiment or public discourse”.
“The goal of these foreign influence operations directed against the United States is to spread disinformation, sow discord, and, ultimately, undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values,” according to the FBI.
And as Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh of BBC Verify report, Elon Musk shared a viral video with more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X that falsely claims the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) paid more than $40m to Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller to get them to visit Ukraine.
The video, which carries the branding of the NBCUniversal outlet E! News, and follows the style of its celebrity reports, never appeared on any of that outlet’s social media accounts.
The hoax, Robinson reports, “is extremely similar in style” to a Russian influence operation BBC Verify previously exposed that use fictional social media news reports to impersonate media outlets and push anti-Ukraine narratives.
One of the named stars, Stiller, made an effort to combat the disinformation running rampant on Musk’s social-media platform by writing in a post there: “These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false”.
Despite Stiller’s effort to halt the spread of the hoax news report, it was also shared by Donald Trump Jr and Sidney Powell, known for her leading role in spreading wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
As the video began to be debunked, with community notes added to some, but not all of the posts sharing it on X, the Kremlin-funded Russian broadcaster X used the opportunity to engage in a bit of trolling.
RT shared the viral video, but with a caption that read, in part: “No, USAID didn’t pay Angelina Jolie $20m to visit Zelensky. We would gloat about it but source is this single dubious viral video. Enough real scandals without fake news”.
Doge staffer installed at treasury resigns after Wall Street Journal uncovers racist posts.
Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer who obtained access to a treasury department payments system as part of his work for Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” initiative, reportedly resigned on Thursday after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about a deleted social media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.
According to the Journal, recent posts on an account that once used the handle @marko_elez called for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and supported a “eugenic immigration policy” just before Trump returned to office and empowered Musk to take a sledgehammer to federal agencies.
‘You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,’ the account wrote on X in September, according to a Wall Street Journal review of archived posts. ‘Normalize Indian hate,’ the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool”, the account holder posted in July.
A lawyer for the government confirmed in federal court on Wednesday that Elez, who had previously worked for Musk at SpaceX, Starlink and X, had access to US treasury payment systems that contain the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.
Sources told Wired earlier this week, that Elez had been granted the ability “not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.”
Summary of the day so far
Here’s what has been in the news this afternoon:
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A “DEI watch list” targeting federal employees who work in health equity-related positions spurred fear for the workers’ safety and jobs. Most of the workers included on the list are Black.
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A budget dispute among congressional Republicans could slow their efforts to enact Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump was scheduled to meet with Republican lawmakers on Thursday as they craft a spending bill that could avert a government shutdown in March.
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For the second time in two days, a judge moved Thursday to block Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The Seattle judge said Trump viewed the rule of law simply as an “impediment to his policy goals.”
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A judge also temporarily limited Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury’s payment system. The order allows for two of Musk’s associates to access the system – but on a read-only basis.
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Even after a judge delayed a buyout offer for federal employees, Musk’s self-styled Department of Government Accountability (DOGE), continued to pressure workers to quit. Agencies under Musk’s unofficial purview threatened workers with layoffs and implied their jobs could be replaced with artificial intelligence.
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DOGE reportedly accessed sensitive data from the Department of Education and used artificial intelligence to analyze it. The data reportedly included personal and financial information.
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The Trump administration has dropped efforts to sanction oligarchs close to Putin. The Joe Biden administration had implemented sanctions on Russian oligarchs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After Donald Trump issued an executive order to ban diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, dozens of workers have been fired from their positions in the civil service.
In an attempt to aid in the purge, a Heritage Foundation-linked group published a list of employees who work in health equity, most of whom are Black, and asked Trump to fire them.
The “DEI watch list,” created by the rightwing nonprofit American Accountability Foundation, included the photos and work history of the employees it targeted – causing the workers to fear for their safety.
Trump halts effort to sanction oligarchs close to the Kremlin
Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin, Reuters reports.
A memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, issued on Wednesday during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.
“This policy requires a fundamental change in mindset and approach,” Bondi wrote in the directive, adding that resources now devoted to enforcing sanctions and seizing the assets of oligarchs will be redirected to countering cartels.
The effort, launched during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, was designed to strain the finances of wealthy associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and punish those facilitating sanctions and export control violations.
