Law firm targeted by Trump agrees to provide $40m in pro bono work, says president – as it happened

We have come to the end of another long day of chronicling the Trump restoration, but will return on Friday to keep at it. Here are some of the day’s developments: Donald Trump has signed an executive order to greatly reduce the size of the federal Department of Education. Elon Musk, who is definitely not the co-president, is reportedly visiting the Pentagon on Friday to get a briefing on the US military’s plans for fighting a war with China. Trump said that he is rescinding an executive order targeting a Democratic-leaning law firm after the firm agreed to provide $40m in free legal services in support of his administration’s aims. A federal judge blocked Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” from accessing social security records and ordered them to delete any previously obtained information. Judge James Boasberg, a former law school housemate of Brett Kavanaugh, said the Trump administration “evaded” his order in the case of Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador. Trump administration lawyers have embraced the view that the Alien Enemies Act, which Trump invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang, permits immigration agents to enter homes without a warrant. The justice department has brought charges against three unnamed individuals for using or planning to use molotov cocktails to attack Tesla automobiles and dealerships. Immigration agents arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national with a valid visa doing research at Georgetown University, and are trying to deport him for alleged support of Hamas. A judge later temporarily barred DHS from deporting him. Tim Walz, who Kamala Harris picked as her running mate, sees an ominous future for the country under Trump, but also opportunities for Democrats to regain their popular support. Trump pushed the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, something presidents typically do not do. Yesterday, the central bank held rates steady while forecasting weaker economic growth. The New York Times reports that Elon Musk is going to the Pentagon on Friday for a briefing on the US military’s plans for how it might fight a war with China. The unnamed officials did not say why Musk needs to know about such plans, but the Times notes that they are not usually widely shared, even within the government. Pentagon war plans, known in military jargon as O-plans or operational plans, are among the military’s most closely guarded secrets. If a foreign country was to learn how the United States planned to fight a war against them, it could reinforce its defenses and address its weaknesses, making the plans far less likely to succeed. The top-secret briefing for the China war plan has about 20 to 30 slides that lay out how the United States would fight such a conflict. It covers the plan beginning with the indications and warning of a threat from China to various options on what Chinese targets to hit, over what time period, that would be presented to Mr. Trump for decisions, according to officials with knowledge of the plan. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to the Times that Musk will be meeting the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, at the US military’s headquarters, but said he is “just visiting”. The briefing reinforces Musk’s clear conflicts of interest, as a government contractor with paid billions of dollars in contracts from the Pentagon and US spy agencies who is also heavily invested in China. As Vox has explained, China is very important to Musk’s Tesla business. The symbiotic relationship between Tesla and China almost can’t be overstated. In 2019, the company opened its Shanghai “gigafactory” with hundreds of millions of dollars in loans from Chinese banks. It was the company’s first factory outside the US, as well as the first wholly foreign-owned car company in China, where automakers typically enter into joint ventures with Chinese companies. It is now Tesla’s largest factory, producing half of the company’s cars globally last year. Musk has praised workers at his Chinese factory for “burning the 3 am oil…whereas in America people are trying to avoid going to work at all.” The remark came at a time when the factory was literally having workers sleep in the factory due to Covid restrictions. According to federal prosecutors who indicted Trump for illegally taking classified documents and showing them to people after his first term, Trump himself has been somewhat cavalier about the US’s war plans. The indictment described an incident in which Trump showed the ghostwriter of his former chief of staff’s memoir a copy of the Pentagon’s plan for war with Iran during a meeting near the swimming pool of his golf club in New Jersey. Donald Trump announced on Thursday that a Democratic-leaning law firm he targeted for retribution in an executive order last week, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, has agreed to provide $40m in free legal services to support his administration’s goals. In return, Trump said he has agreed to rescind the executive order. Trump’s social media post announcing the agreement lays out the terms of the agreement and then includes two statements, one from the White House and a second from Paul, Weiss’s chairperson, Brad Karp, who met privately with Trump. The pro-bono work is described in general terms as including, “assisting our Nation’s veterans, fairness in the Justice System, the President’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, and other mutually agreed projects”. The terms of the agreement are anodyne, as in the statement from Karp, who is quoted as saying: “We are gratified that the President has agreed to withdraw the Executive Order concerning Paul, Weiss. We look forward to an engaged and constructive relationship with the President and his Administration.” It is not clear if Karp was aware of the claim, made by the White House, that during his meeting with Trump, “Mr Karp acknowledged the wrongdoing of former Paul, Weiss partner, Mark Pomerantz.” Pomerantz is a former federal prosecutor who left retirement in 2021 to work for Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance on an investigation of then former president Trump’s finances. According to Trump’s executive order, Pomerantz went to work for the Manhattan DA “solely to manufacture a prosecution against me and … according to his co-workers, unethically led witnesses in ways designed to implicate me”. In Trump’s telling, “after being unable to convince even Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg that a fraud case was feasible, Pomerantz engaged in a media campaign to gin up support for this unwarranted prosecution.” Pomerantz told a very different story, both in his leaked 2022 resignation letter, and in his 2023 book, People vs. Donald Trump. In the letter, addressed to Alvin Bragg, who had taken over as Manhattan DA from Vance, Pomerantz wrote: As you know from our recent conversations and presentations, I believe that Donald Trump is guilty of numerous felony violations of the Penal Law in connection with the preparation and use of his annual Statements of Financial Condition. His financial statements were false, and he has a long history of fabricating information relating to his personal finances and lying about his assets to banks, the national media, counterparties, and many others, including the American people. The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes — he did. In late 2021, then-District Attorney Cyrus Vance directed a thorough review of the facts and law relating to Mr. Trump’s financial statements. Mr. Vance had been intimately involved in our investigation, attending grand jury presentations, sitting in on certain witness interviews, and receiving regular reports about the progress of the investigation. He concluded that the facts warranted prosecution, and he directed the team to present evidence to a grand jury and to seek an indictment of Mr. Trump and other defendants as soon as reasonably possible. This work was underway when you took office as District Attorney. You have devoted significant time and energy to understanding the evidence we have accumulated with respect to the Trump financial statements, as well as the applicable law. You have reached the decision not to go forward with the grand jury presentation and not to seek criminal charges at the present time. The investigation has been suspended indefinitely. Of course, that is your decision to make. I do not question your authority to make it, and I accept that you have made it sincerely. However, a decision made in good faith may nevertheless be wrong. I believe that your decision not to prosecute Donald Trump now, and on the existing record, is misguided and completely contrary to the public interest. I therefore cannot continue in my current position. After Bragg decided to indict Trump on different charges, Pomerantz made the case in an interview with 60 Minutes in 2023 that Trump should also have faced criminal charges for financial fraud. A US district judge has barred the Trump’s administration from deporting an Indian academic who teaches at Georgetown University after the Department of Homeland Security accused him of having ties to Hamas and detained him. On Thursday, US district judge Patricia Giles in Alexandria, Virginia, ordered federal officials not to deport Badar Khan Suri, a postdoctoral fellow at the university, “unless and until the Court issues a contrary order”. Giles’s order comes after Suri, whose wife is of Palestinian heritage, filed an emergency court request to prevent deportation. Read more from my colleague Victoria Bekiempis: As our colleagues Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel report, US immigration officials appear to be relying on tattoos as evidence that several of the 238 Venezuelans deported from the United States to El Salvador last week, under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. But lawyers for some of the men, and their family members, say that their tattoos are unrelated to any gang. One of the deportees is an asylum-seeker named Jerce Reyes Barrios, 36, a former professional soccer player and a fan of Real Madrid, the Spanish giants whose name attests to their loyalty to the Spanish king, and whose club logo includes a crown. Reyes’s tattoos include one of a crown sitting atop a soccer ball with a rosary and the word “Dios” (God). In a sworn declaration filed in federal court on Wednesday, his lawyer, Linette Tobin, said the Department of Homeland Security had alleged this tattoo was proof of gang membership. “In reality, he chose this tattoo because it is similar to the logo for his favourite soccer team, Real Madrid,” Tobin wrote. Tobin rejected the idea that her client was a gang member and said he had fled Venezuela in early 2024 after being detained at an anti-government demonstration by security forces. Reyes was subsequently “taken to a clandestine building where he was tortured” with electric shocks and suffocation. As Dropsite News reported, his uncle, Jair Barrios, wrote on Facebook on Tuesday that the family was “surprised to see him in the videos being released on social media of those deported to El Salvador” and contacted his lawyer in California. The post includes old photographs of Reyes playing in goal, and holding a trophy, and an image that appears to show him in one the highly produced videos of the deportees in a maximum-security prison in El Salvador posted on social media by the Trump administration. Reyes’s uncle also said that his nephew had made an appointment to present himself at the US border in September and was immediately detained and placed under investigation for “suspicious tattoos” possibly indicating gang membership. The family said that Reyes, who has no criminal record, mostly has tattoos expressing his love of soccer and his family. According to Tobin’s affidavit, which is an exhibit being reviewed by Judge James Boasberg, who is trying to determine if the Trump administration defied his order to not deport the men, Reyes is supposed to have a hearing on his asylum claim on 17 April. Before being transferred to Texas and flown to El Salvador last week, he was in federal custody at the Otay Mesa detention center since he presented himself at the border in September. A federal judge blocked Elon Musk’s so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) from accessing social security records containing personally identifiable information on Thursday, and ordered them to “disgorge and delete” any previously obtained information that was not anonymized. Judge Ellen Hollander granted a temporary restraining order that prevents Social Security Administration (SSA) workers from allowing Doge to have access to such records and called the activities of Musk’s team a “fishing expedition”. Musk’s raid on the social security database has so far produced no concrete evidence of fraud, but has provided the basis for a series of wildly false claims based on misunderstandings of the data that the billionaire, and the president he works for, have used to mislead the American people. The White House has published the full text of the executive order signed by the president at the White House ceremony this afternoon, and it seems to far exceed the scope described beforehand by his press secretary. Rather than just reduce the size the department, the order directs the education secretary, Linda McMahon, to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education”. The order makes no mention of the department, which can only be eliminated by an act of Congress, continuing to ensure that federal civil rights laws will be enforced, or that protections for disabled students are maintained. Instead, the text directs the secretary to ensure that schools receiving federal funds “terminate illegal discrimination obscured under the label ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’”, which the president and his supporters seem to see as a form of anti-white racism. The order also bans funding for any schools that support transgender students, referring to such support as “programs promoting gender ideology”. The Financial Times reports that Britain, France, Germany and the Nordic nations are in talks to develop a plan to defend the continent without the United States if Donald Trump withdraws from Nato. According to the FT: Europe’s biggest military powers are drawing up plans to take on greater responsibilities for the continent’s defence from the US, including a pitch to the Trump administration for a managed transfer over the next five to 10 years. The discussions are an attempt to avoid the chaos of a unilateral US withdrawal from Nato, a fear sparked by President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to weaken or walk away from the transatlantic alliance that has protected Europe for almost eight decades. Trump’s former national security advisor, John Bolton, told Germany’s Deutsche Welle this month that the president has a “simple-minded” understanding of Nato, and came “within an inch” of withdrawing from the alliance in 2018. Like everyone else, Democratic lawmakers were prepared for the president’s long-trailed order to destroy the federal Department of Education, and they immediately denounced it. Representative Yvette D Clarke, of Brooklyn, wrote on Bluesky: No matter what excuse the president gives, we know the real reason he’s tearing apart the Department of Education is to steal money from public schools and funnel it into private ones that don’t care about teaching your kids – only indoctrinating them into the cult of Trump. Representative Frank Pallone, of New Jersey, wrote on X: Trump’s plan to eliminate the Department of Education means mass teacher layoffs, overcrowded classrooms, and less support for students. It’ll price millions out of college and increase local property taxes. Trump’s billionaire Education Secretary doesn’t care about public education, but the American people do. This must be reversed. Senator Chris Murphy, of Connecticut, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, said in a statement: Trump’s attempt to close the Department of Education has nothing to do with helping our kids learn better or empowering teachers. It’s about making it easier to sell our public schools off to the highest bidder. The billionaire class is rooting for the destruction of public education because they see your local elementary school as their next target to run for profit. Our kids will pay the price. Senator Elizabeth Warren, of Massachusetts, a former teacher, said in a Bluesky video that everyone involved in education had to “fight back”. Donald Trump has signed an executive order to greatly reduce the size of the federal department of education. In remarks beforehand to a White House event filled with schoolchildren and Republican governors, attorneys general and lawmakers, Trump claimed, falsely, that there was widespread, bipartisan support for “eliminating the federal Department of Education once and for all”. His press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, told reporters earlier on Thursday that the executive order would not eliminate but greatly reduce “the scale and the size of this department”. Closing the department, which was created by Congress in 1979, would require a law passed by the House and Senate. Nevertheless, Trump welcomed the Republican governors of Texas, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Idaho, Louisiana, Nebraska, and a co-founder of the far-right group Mom’s for Liberty, before declaring that his administration “will take all lawful steps to shut down … the department”. Trump insisted that removing the federal role in education would “return” responsibility to the states, but questions remain over who will take over certain critical functions, like enforcing civil rights laws that prohibit discrimination against ethnic and racial minorities, and making sure that federal laws ensuring access to disabled students are followed. In a recent appearance on Fox, the education secretary, Linda McMahon, mentioned the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act by its acronym, Idea, before admitting that she did not know what it stood for. James Boasberg, the federal judge handling a complaint that the Trump administration sent Venezuelan asylum seekers to a prison in El Salvador who were wrongly accused of being members of a street gang, said in a new order that “the Government again evaded its obligations” to comply with his demand for information on why the planes did not return to the United States as he had ordered. Boasberg gave the administration until 10am on Friday to “submit a sworn declaration” as to whether or not the government intends to invoke a state-secrets privilege or give detailed evidence that the migrants were not deported in defiance of his original order. The judge called the government’s submission of a lower-level immigration officer’s vague statement that state secrets might be invoked ahead of a Thursday deadline he’d set “woefully insufficient”. Donald Trump will soon sign his executive order laying out a plan to dismantle the Department of Education in a ceremony at the White House. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt earlier today said the order will result in a “much smaller” department, which will nonetheless continue handling student loans and some crucial programs. But it is unclear how effective Trump’s order will be. The education department was created by an act of Congress and abolishing it requires their consent. Here’s more about what we expect Trump to do: The Trump administration faced a deadline of 12pm ET today to provide a federal judge with information he requested to determine whether three planes of suspected Venezuelan gang members were deported in defiance of his order, or claim a national security exception to not reveal the details. Noon has come and gone, and the docket in the case shows no new filing from the government. But Fox News, citing sources familiar with the situation, reports that justice department attorneys made some kind of submission in person today to James Boasberg, the federal judge handling the case. It remains unclear if it arrived by his deadline. Here’s more about the case of the Venezuelans, in which the Trump administration is asserting it can deport migrants without due process if they are covered by the Alien Enemies Act: The non-partisan Campaign Legal Center said the commerce secretary Howard Lutnick violated ethics rules when he encouraged Americans to buy Tesla stock in an interview yesterday. “Secretary Lutnick’s actions violate the ethics rules that were enacted to hold public officials accountable to the American people. His statement is part of a pattern of behavior showing that Trump’s indifference to ethics is trickling down to his most senior officials,” said Kedric Payne, the center’s vice-president and senior director for ethics. “The American people deserve a government that prioritizes public good. Most people will conclude that promoting a stock is not tied to any public good and ethics laws agree. The office of government ethics and commerce ethics officials should hold Lutnick accountable and reassure the public that their officials will face consequences if they use their public office to enrich themselves or their allies.” Lutnick’s plea has not had much effect, at least not yet. Tesla’s share price is down about 0.9% in today’s trading, and more than 38% this year so far: Politico reports that the American Civil Liberties Union has asked a federal judge to order Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national holding a US visa who was arrested by immigration authorities earlier this week and accused of supporting Hamas, returned to Virginia. That’s the state where Suri was arrested, but he is currently being held in immigration detention in Louisiana, as is Mahmoud Khalil, who the Trump administration is also trying to deport on similar allegations of support for Hamas. Yesterday, a federal judge ordered that Khalil’s case be heard in court in New Jersey instead of Louisiana, where the courts may be more conservative. Here’s the latest on Khalil’s case: The defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, has released a new video outlining $580m in contracts he has cancelled with the help of Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency”. Among the cuts is a human resources system program that’s overdue and overbudget, as well as a decarbonization effort for navy ships that he said was part of the “Obama-Biden green agenda”. As usual, Hegseth took a swing at diversity efforts left over from previous administrations, saying he was cancelling a $9m grant for “equitable AI and machine learning models”. “I need lethal machine learning models, not equitable machine learning models,” the secretary quipped. If the Trump administration directs immigration agents to ignore the constitution’s fourth amendment and conduct warrantless searches of homes, it could undermine one of the tools immigrants have to protect themselves from arrest. So-called Know Your Rights trainings, such as this one from the American Civil Liberties Union, encourage immigrants and people who may be targeted by immigration authorities to understand how the law protects them when police encounter them on the street, or come to their homes. One of these trainings’ major pieces of advice is for people not to open the door to their residence for law enforcement officers if they do not have a warrant for their address. But if the Trump administration tells their agents they no longer need a warrant if they are searching for migrants covered by the Alien Enemies Act, that technique may no longer work. Trump administration lawyers have embraced the view that the Alien Enemies Act, which Donald Trump invoked to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang, permits immigration agents to enter homes without a warrant, the New York Times reports. The fourth amendment to the constitution typically requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant before entering a home, and applies to immigration authorities looking to detain people suspected of being in the country illegally. As part of his plan to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrations, Trump invoked the act last week, and the homeland security department quickly sent three planeloads of suspected members of the gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador, where they were jailed. However, many family members of the deported men say their relatives were not in the gang, and a federal judge is currently weighing whether the deportations violated a court order. Here’s more from the Times about what the Trump administration’s reading of the law could mean: It remains unclear whether the administration will apply the law in this way, but experts say such an interpretation would infringe on basic civil liberties and raise the potential for misuse. Warrantless entries have some precedent in America’s wartime history, but invoking the law in peacetime to pursue undocumented immigrants in such a way would be an entirely new application, they added. “It undermines fundamental protections that are recognized in the Fourth Amendment, and in the due process clause,” said Christopher Slobogin, a law professor at Vanderbilt University. Last week, Mr. Trump quietly signed a proclamation invoking the law, known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. It grants him the authority to remove from the United States foreign citizens he has designated as “alien enemies” in the cases of war or an invasion. His order took aim at Venezuelan citizens 14 or older who belong to the Tren de Aragua gang, and who are not naturalized or lawful permanent residents. “All such alien enemies, wherever found within any territory subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, are subject to summary apprehension,” the proclamation said. Senior lawyers at the Justice Department view that language, combined with the historical use of the law, to mean that the government does not need a warrant to enter a home or premises to search for people believed to be members of that gang, according to two officials familiar with the new policy. A department spokesman declined to comment. Here’s more from the Guardian’s Dara Kerr and Nick Robins-Early about the attack on the Tesla dealership in Salem, Oregon, part of a larger backlash against the electric car manufacturer for Elon Musk’s collaboration with Donald Trump: In the early morning hours of Donald Trump’s inauguration day, a person wearing a long black cloak and face mask wheeled a cart down an Oregon sidewalk. He was headed toward a Tesla showroom in Salem, and his cart appeared to be loaded with molotov cocktails, according to court documents. One by one, he took out the handmade explosives, lit them on fire and lobbed them at the glass-walled dealership. By the time Salem police arrived, the showroom window was shattered, a fire was burning on the sidewalk out front, a nearby Tesla sedan was ablaze and the alleged vandal had fled. The whole scene was caught by security footage, according to an affidavit from a special agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). The showroom’s general manager estimated $500,000 in damages, with seven vehicles struck and one completely destroyed. The vandalism incident is one of dozens to hit Tesla dealerships, cars and the electric vehicle maker’s charging stations across the country since Trump took office. Many bear explicit messages protesting against Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and a senior adviser to the president. Musk is the head of the unofficial so-called “department of government efficiency” (Doge) and has made it his prerogative to overhaul the federal government – ordering the firing of tens of thousands of employees, slashing agency budgets and eliminating entire departments. His hardline approach, which takes aim at institutions including the National Weather Service, the Department of Education and the Social Security Administration, has elicited backlash and criticism nationwide. The justice department has brought charges against three unnamed individuals for using or planning to use molotov cocktails to attack Tesla automobiles and dealerships. The attacks occurred in Salem, Oregon; Charleston, South Carolina; and Loveland, Colorado, and came as the electric car company led by Elon Musk faces a public backlash for his embrace of Donald Trump, and efforts to dismantle parts of the US government. “The days of committing crimes without consequence have ended,” said attorney general Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “Let this be a warning: if you join this wave of domestic terrorism against Tesla properties, the Department of Justice will put you behind bars.” The charges were not specified, but Bondi said the defendants face a minimum of five years in prison and a maximum of 20 years. Here are the details shared by the justice department of the attacks: One defendant, also armed with a suppressed AR-15 rifle, was arrested after throwing approximately eight Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership located in Salem, Oregon. Another was arrested in Loveland, Colorado, after attempting to light Teslas on fire with molotov cocktails. The defendant was later found in possession of materials used to produce additional incendiary weapons. In Charleston, South Carolina, a third defendant wrote profane messages against Donald Trump around Tesla charging stations before lighting the charging stations on fire with molotov cocktails. Tell us: how has your work been affected by Trump’s policies? We want to hear from federal workers and others whose area of work has been impacted by the Trump administration’s policies. You can tell us how your job has been affected by Trump’s policies by filling in the form below: The Republican Alabama representative Mike Rogers, chair of the House armed services committee, and the Republican Mississippi senator Roger Wicker, chair of the Senate armed services committee, have released a joint statement on reports of changes of the US combatant command structure across the defense department. Together, the lawmakers said: US combatant commands are the tip of the American warfighting spear. Therefore, we are very concerned about reports that claim DoD is considering unilateral changes on major strategic issues, including significant reductions to US forces stationed abroad, absent coordination with the White House and Congress. We support president Trump’s efforts to ensure our allies and partners increase their contributions to strengthen our alliance structure, and we support continuing America’s leadership abroad. As such, we will not accept significant changes to our warfighting structure that are made without a rigorous interagency process, coordination with combatant commanders and the Joint Staff, and collaboration with Congress. Such moves risk undermining American deterrence around the globe and detracting from our negotiating positions with America’s adversaries.” A Minnesota state lawmaker who is accused of trying to buy sex from an underage girl resigned from the state senate on Thursday before his colleagues were set to vote to expel him. Justin Eichorn, a Republican, was charged with a felony in federal court Wednesday for attempted coercion and enticement of a minor after responding to online sex ads and trying to arrange a meetup with a 17-year-old. Eichorn, 40, was arrested on Tuesday. The charges include details about Eichorn’s alleged conduct. A similar state charge filed on Wednesday was dropped in favor of the federal charge. Police in Bloomington, Minnesota, carried out a sex sting operation, placing ads, including photos, posing as a young woman on two websites known for human trafficking, according to an affidavit from FBI special agent Matthew Vogel. The ad claimed the woman was 18 and said: “cum $pend time with me.” For the full story, click here: Donald Trump is gearing up to at 4pm ET sign an executive order to begin the closure of the Department of Education. The agency was created by Congress, and can’t be done away with without its approval, but White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the order will result in the department becoming “much smaller”. Meanwhile, we expect further court filings in the legal battle over the suspected Venezuelan gang members deported to El Salvador. The judge handling the case set a noon deadline, which has now passed, for the government to offer details of their deportations, or invoke a national security exemption. We’ll let you know if anything new about this case is made public. Here’s what else has happened today so far: Immigration agents arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national with a valid visa doing research at Georgetown University, and are trying to deport him for alleged support of Hamas. Tim Walz, who Kamala Harris picked as her running mate, sees an ominous future for the country under Trump, but also opportunities for Democrats to regain their popular support. Trump pushed the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates, something presidents typically do not do. Yesterday, the central bank held rates steady while forecasting weaker economic growth. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt told reporters that the Department of Education will be dramatically downsized by the executive order Donald Trump will sign today, but continue administering student loans and Pell grants, as well as enforcing some civil rights laws. Abolishing the department, as Trump and his conservative allies say they want to do, will require an act of Congress. Its unclear if the president will push for that, or if there are the votes to make it happen. “The Department of Education will be much smaller than it is today,” Leavitt said. “When it comes to student loans and Pell grants, those will still be run out of the Department of Education. But we don’t need to be spending more than $3tn over the course of a few decades on a department that’s clearly failing in its initial intention to educate our students.” She added that “any critical functions of the department … will remain”, such as enforcing laws against discrimination and providing funding for low-income students and special education. After underperforming in the November elections, leading Democrats are looking for ways to regain the support of crucial voting groups across the country, including Tim Walz, who ran alongside Kamala Harris and is now touring Republican-held House districts. In an interview with CNN, the Minnesota governor shared some of his worries of what Donald Trump may do over the next four years: ‘It’s going to get very dark,’ Walz said, running through speculation that ranged from Trump soon ordering the arrest of a political opponent to trying to anoint a son as his successor in the White House. While the administration denies it defied a judge’s order halting deportation flights to El Salvador over the weekend, the episode is proof to Walz that judges are set to be ignored and impeached going forward. Tuesday’s statement from supreme court Chief Justice John Roberts rebuking the president’s rhetoric on impeaching judges, without naming Trump, tells Walz that Roberts is also ‘scared of where things are going’. ‘I’m a pretty low-key, middle of the road guy on this stuff. And I’m telling you, this is real,’ Walz said. ‘My one skill set is to see over the horizon a little bit of what’s coming, and this is what’s coming.’ He also recounted how he quickly realized on election night that he would not be the next vice-president: Walz knew they lost early on election night. Sitting around a table in a suite at the Mayflower Hotel that he had walked into thinking he’d be leaving as the vice-president-elect, he could feel the mood shift among his staff as soon as the Virginia results started coming in soft for Harris. They wanted to fly back that night. Gwen Walz, the governor’s wife, told CNN that one of the things that sticks with her is that the Harris-Walz logo was already off the charter plane by the time they got to the airport. These days, Walz said that thinking they were going to win ‘feels like an unforgivable sin’. ‘I’m a little bit jaded now, knowing how tough this is because of that,’ he said, then hearing the noise of the crowd waiting inside, said: ‘We’ll see how these folks are.’ But Walz sees opportunities for Democrats to regain some of their mojo, if they clinch victory in special elections in the months to come: If Democrats win in Wisconsin and then in the Virginia governor’s race in November, Walz claimed, Trump’s power will begin to erode as Republicans distance themselves. How that will happen when Trump is barely into a four-year term and already exerting executive power in unprecedented ways, and how Democrats keep their spirits up when even their chance at getting more power in the midterms is 18 months away, Walz is not sure. ‘I don’t think there’s any limit to where he goes. The limit will be what the American public will put up with and when they push back,’ Walz said. ‘This has happened everywhere when these authoritarians have come in. One day it looks like they’re absolutely infallible and in total power, and the next day they and their entire families are gone.’ Not much new from Donald Trump at the Digital Asset Summit, where he delivered what appeared to be a pre-recorded address touting his policies towards cryptocurrencies. “It’s an honor to speak with you about how the United States is going to dominate crypto and the next generation of financial technologies,” he began, before taking a swipe at the Joe Biden’s cautious approach towards the assets: I signed an order creating the brand new strategic bitcoin reserve and the US digital asset stockpile, which will allow the federal government to maximize the value of its holdings instead of foolishly selling them for a fraction of their long term value, which is exactly what Biden did. He got a fraction of their value. We expect to hear more from Trump at 4pm, when he is scheduled to sign his executive order to close the Department of Education. No sign yet of Donald Trump at the crypto conference. Meanwhile, the Guardian’s Dan Milmo and Ashifa Kassam report that Tesla’s investors are growing worried that Elon Musk is spending too much of his time gutting the US government and not enough time navigating the challenges facing the electric vehicle manufacturer: Tesla and Elon Musk are embroiled in a “brand tornado crisis moment” and the electric carmaker’s chief executive needs to cut back on his work for Donald Trump to stem the damage, one of the company’s biggest supporters has said. The warning came as Tesla announced a recall of 46,000 Cybertrucks in the US on Thursday to fix an exterior panel that could detach while driving. It came as protesters announced on Wednesday they were planning what they described as their biggest day of action yet against the EV maker, with 500 demonstrations expected at Tesla showrooms around the world on 29 March. It also emerged that the Vancouver International Auto Show has removed Tesla from its event hours, citing security concerns. Tesla shares have lost a third of their value over the past month because of a number of investor concerns including the impact on sales from Musk’s high-profile involvement with the Trump administration, including gutting the public sector through his “department of government efficiency” (Doge). A White House spokesperson just announced that Donald Trump will speak at the cryptocurrency focused Digital Asset Summit, in just a few minutes. Since taking office, Trump has embraced the cryptocurrency industry, which spent big to help his campaign. Here’s more on that: USA Today has details of the executive order Donald Trump will sign at 4pm ET to dismantle the Department of Education, including that the president envisions states taking a greater role in determining their own policies around schooling. The order will direct education secretary Linda McMahon to take “all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education and return education authority to the States”, while ensuring “uninterrupted delivery of services, programs, and benefits on which Americans rely”. However, Trump can’t order the department dismantled unilaterally, as it was created by an act of Congress and requires their approval. It’s unclear if the GOP has the votes for that. Here’s more on what we can expect from the president later today, from USA Today: Although Trump has reduced the agency’s workforce dramatically in recent weeks, the agency still exists and continues to oversee vital federal funding programs for schools. Harrison Fields, White House principal deputy press secretary, said in a statement to USA TODAY the order “will empower parents, states, and communities to take control and improve outcomes for all students.” He said recent test scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam “reveal a national crisis ‒ our children are falling behind.” A final copy of the order was not available Wednesday, but it is expected to closely resemble a draft that USA TODAY and other media outlets reported earlier this month was prepared for Trump. The order takes aim at “regulations and paperwork” required by the Department of Education, arguing federal guidance in the form of “Dear Colleague” letters from the department “redirect resources toward complying with ideological initiatives, which diverts staff time and attention away from schools’ primary role of teaching,” according to the White House summary. Federal funding for students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, Title I funding for low-income schools and federal student loan payments will remain unchanged under the order while McMahon works on a plan to “bring these funds closer to states, localities, and more importantly, students,” a White House official said. Under the order, education programs or activities that receive “any remaining Department of Education funds” will not be allowed to advance diversity, equity and inclusion or gender ideology, according to the White House summary. Donald Trump says his campaign to cut down government will save money, but Department of Education staffers who spoke to the Guardian’s Michael Sainato said dismantling the agency – as the president is set to order today – may instead cost taxpayers money: The education secretary, Linda McMahon, presented sweeping reductions at the US Department of Education as an efficiency drive, hailing firings and funding cuts as a “significant step toward restoring the greatness” of the country’s schools system. Staff inside the department disagree. The Trump administration has axed many research programs which have yet to be completed, according to workers, putting years of work – on which the federal government spent tens of millions of dollars – to waste. Nearly 50% of staff at the US Department of Education was fired last week, with more than 1,300 employees given termination notices and nearly 600 workers taking voluntary resignation offers. Offices covering research, data and statistics were decimated. A Department of Education employee who survived the cuts likened the experience to a funeral. “People were crying, breaking down at the human toll,” they told the Guardian. “These people are not bureaucratic bloat: they’re vital to helping improve educational outcomes for our nation’s children, and to ensuring states comply with the law. It’s death by a thousand cuts.” The Trump administration insists that the Venezuelans deported to El Salvador over the weekend are gang members, but a relative of one of the deportees told the Guardian’s Tom Phillips and Clavel Rangel that is not the case: Donald Trump’s White House has described the Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador as “heinous monsters” and terrorists who “rape, maim and murder for sport”. But relatives of Francisco Javier García Casique, a 24-year-old from the city of Maracay, say he was a hairdresser, not a crook. “He has never been in prison, he is innocent, and he has always supported us with his work as a barber,” his younger brother, Sebastián García Casique, said from their family home in Venezuela. Less than a week ago, the García brothers were preparing to be reunited, with Francisco telling relatives he expected to be deported from a US immigration detention facility to his South American homeland after being arrested by immigration officials on 2 March. The flight was scheduled for last Friday. A family gathering was planned in Maracay. On Sunday those plans were shattered when El Salvador’s authoritarian president, Nayib Bukele, published a cinematographic propaganda video on social media showing scores of Venezuelan prisoners being frog-marched off planes and into custody in his country’s “terrorism confinement centre”. “It’s him,” a shell-shocked Sebastián told their mother after spotting his sibling among those shackled men. Meanwhile, we expect further updates today in the case of the suspected Venezuelan gang members flown by US immigration authorities to El Salvador over the weekend, possibly in violation of a judge’s order. The judge overseeing the case, James Boasberg, has given the government until 12pm ET to either provide specific details of the planes’ itineraries and passengers, or invoke a national security exception to sharing the information. Boasberg has come under personal attack by the White House as he weighs the case, with Donald Trump suggesting he be impeached, and his press secretary Karoline Leavitt yesterday calling him a “Democrat activist”. Immigration agents earlier this week arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national with a valid visa doing research at Georgetown University, and accused him of having ties to Hamas, Politico reports. Suri now faces deportation, in a case similar to the arrest earlier this month of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian activist and leader of protests on Columbia University’s campus. Khalil’s arrest prompted fears that the Trump administration will attempt to illegally deport foreigners in the country simply for speech they disapprove of, which appear to have been realized with Suri’s detention. Here’s more on Suri’s case, from Politico: Masked agents arrested Badar Khan Suri, an Indian national and postdoctoral fellow, outside his home in the Rosslyn neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia, on Monday night, his lawyer said in a lawsuit fighting for his immediate release. The agents identified themselves as being with the Department of Homeland Security and told him the government had revoked his visa, the lawsuit says. According to Suri’s petition for release, he was put in deportation proceedings under the same rarely used provision of immigration law that the government has invoked to try to deport Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate student and green card holder who led pro-Palestinian protests on campus. That provision gives the secretary of State the power to deport noncitizens if the secretary determines that their continued presence in the U.S. would threaten foreign policy. Suri has no criminal record and has not been charged with a crime, his petition says. His detention and petition have not been previously reported. Suri’s lawyer, Hassan Ahmad, argued in his petition that Suri is being punished because of the Palestinian heritage of his wife — who is a U.S. citizen — and because the government suspects that he and his wife oppose U.S. foreign policy toward Israel. … Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin confirmed that Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a determination on Saturday that Suri’s visa should be canceled for foreign policy reasons. “Suri was a foreign exchange student at Georgetown University actively spreading Hamas propaganda and promoting antisemitism on social media,” McLaughlin wrote on X. “Suri has close connections to a known or suspected terrorist, who is a senior advisor to Hamas.” Another, perhaps more worrying sign, of the Trump administration’s approach to economic policy was revealed yesterday, when commerce secretary Howard Lutnick recommended in a Fox News interview that people buy Tesla stock. That’s the electric car company led by Elon Musk, who is busy right now cutting down the US government at the behest of Lutnick’s boss, Donald Trump. Talk about a conflict of interest. Here’s what the secretary said: I think if you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla. It’s unbelievable that this guy’s stock is this cheap. It’ll never be this cheap again. When people understand the things he’s building, the robots he’s building, the technology he’s building, people are going to be dreaming of today, and … thinking gosh, I should have bought Elon Musk’s stock. US presidents typically do not comment on the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decisions. But, of course, Donald Trump is no typical US president, and late last night, he weighed in on the central bank’s decision yesterday to hold rates steady, saying they should have been cut: The Fed would be MUCH better off CUTTING RATES as U.S.Tariffs start to transition (ease!) their way into the economy. Do the right thing. April 2nd is Liberation Day in America!!! That date next month is when Trump’s plan for reciprocal tariffs, in which the US will impose levies on goods equal to whatever other countries put on American imports, goes into effect. It threatens to be a major disruptor to international trade, and one of the reasons why, in addition to keeping rates steady, the Fed cut its growth forecast for the US economy yesterday. Here’s more: The White House says Donald Trump will participate in an “education event” and sign an executive order at 4pm ET. While they did not provide more details, this may be the announcement of his plan to shut down the Department of Education. Big tech giants Apple, Meta, Google, Amazon and Elon Musk’s X have lodged a formal complaint urging the Trump administration to target “coercive and discriminatory” Australian media laws. The members of the Computer & Communications Industry Association (CCIA) responded to a request by the Office of the United States Trade Representative for “comments to assist in reviewing and identifying unfair trade practices and initiating all necessary actions to investigate harm from non-reciprocal trade arrangements”. The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) is responsible for developing and coordinating U.S. international trade and direct investment policy, as well as overseeing negotiations with other countries. In comments written to the trade chief on 11 March, the trade policy manager of the CCIA Amir Nasr highlighted Australia’s News Media Bargaining Incentive as one of the “key examples” of discriminatory taxation of digital products and services. Following a French scientist being denied entry to the US after immigration officers searched his phone and found messages in which he had expressed criticism of the Trump administration, we’re interested in finding out more about any issues that people have experienced at the US border. Other reports at the US border include a German national, who is a permanent US resident and was detained by US border officials. A Canadian citizen was also detained by US border authorities for almost two weeks over an incomplete visa. Whether you, or someone you know has, experienced delays or were detained we’d like to hear from you. Did it happen during the current or previous administrations? What was your experience and how was it resolved? We’re also interested in hearing from anyone who is considering changing their plans to visit the US. If you are thinking of cancelling your trip, why? On the latest episode of This Is Gavin Newsom, the California governor interviewed his Minnesota counterpart, the 2024 Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Walz. “Thanks for having me,” Walz said, flashing a cheeky smile. “I’m kinda wondering where I fall on this list of guests.” Walz was not only the first Democrat to make an appearance on Newsom’s splashy new podcast, but also the first participant who had not cast doubt on the 2020 presidential election results or expressed sympathy for the mob that stormed the capitol on January 6. Newsom has billed his podcast, launched at the beginning of March, as a platform for “honest discussions” with those who “agree AND disagree with us”. Many Democrats share his desire to expand their reach and influence across platforms – but his critics recoil at the approach. Newsom doesn’t seem to conduct the interviews as a blue-state leader raring to defend progressive values – or even as a governor whose response to one of the costliest and most destructive natural disasters in recent memory was undermined by a relentless rightwing campaign of rumors and lies. Instead, he seems to take on the role of an anthropologist conducting fieldwork on the forces fueling Maga fervor – and Democrats’ descent into the political wilderness. It’s a potentially high-stakes gambit for the term-limited governor widely believed to have national ambitions. “You’re taking a risk, doing a podcast, doing something to try to fill a void that’s out there and hopefully using it as a platform to try and articulate our values to a broader audience,” Walz told Newsom. “But we’ve not figured this out yet.” Since launching the podcast earlier this month, Newsom has taped a trio of friendly chats with rightwing figures reviled by the left: Steve Bannon, an architect of Donald Trump’s political rise; Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative youth group Turning Point USA and a Maga-world darling; and Michael Savage, a longtime conservative talk-radio host whose Trumpian rhetoric preceded the president’s rise. (According to the Wall Street Journal, Newsom sought help from his ex-wife and Trumpworld insider Kimberly Guilfoyle to connect with Kirk and Bannon.) The Trump administration is now using popular anti-hunger programs, including food assistance and school lunch, as part of its attack against immigrants in the US – a move many say will prevent large numbers of families, especially children, from getting the food benefits they’re eligible for. In a recent memo, agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins told senior staff at the USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS): “It is essential to use all available legal authority to end any incentives in FNS benefit programs that encourage illegal immigration.” In the accompanying press release, Rollins said, “The days in which taxpayer dollars are used to subsidize illegal immigration are over.” While Rollins’s directive does not change people’s access, researchers, advocates and service providers say it’s spreading misinformation about undocumented immigrants and could create a chilling effect among immigrant and mixed-status families – a trend seen during the first Trump administration. The Trump administration’s unprecedented pressure campaign on American higher education – which is forcing major universities to bow to its demands or risk investigations and the loss of millions of dollars in federal money – is so far facing little pushback from the schools affected. That campaign escalated earlier this month, when the US government cancelled $400m in federal contracts and grants to Columbia University. In a subsequent letter, representatives of three federal agencies said they would reconsider that freeze only if Columbia agreed to conditions including more aggressively disciplining students who engage in pro-Palestinian disruptions, planning “comprehensive” reform of the school’s admissions policies, and placing one of school’s area studies departments under “academic receivership” – meaning under the control of an outside chair. Other colleges and universities across the US have been watching to see how Columbia reacts to the letter, which is widely viewed as a test case for academic freedom. In an interview with the Chronicle of Higher Education, Lee Bollinger, Columbia’s former president, described the situation as “an authoritarian takeover”. Yet ahead of a Thursday deadline for compliance, the Wall Street Journal has reported that Columbia appears to be poised to yield to the Trump administration’s demands. The government’s confrontation with Columbia, which critics describe as ideological blackmail and possibly illegal, is only one of a number of shots that the administration has fired in recent days across the bow of American elite higher education – and so far, opposition has been surprisingly minimal, as colleges and universities weigh whether to surrender, negotiate or fight back. The Trump administration is working on a plan to create what conservatives have long demanded: a militarized buffer zone along the southern border in New Mexico that would be occupied by active-duty US troops, empowered to detain migrants who cross into the United States unlawfully, the Washington Post reports. According to the Post, recent internal discussions have centered on deploying troops to a section of the border in New Mexico that would be turned into a kind of military installation, which would give the soldiers a legal right to detain migrants who “trespass” on the elongated base. Unauthorized migrants would then be held until they can be turned over to immigration officers. The planning appears to focus on creating a vast military installation as a way around the Posse Comitatus Act, a federal law that bars soldiers from participating in most civilian law enforcement missions. Calls to militarize the southern border are not new, but so far they have existed more in the realm of political rhetoric than reality. Hello and welcome to the US politics live blog. I’m Tom Ambrose and I will be bringing you all the latest news over the next couple of hours. We start with news that president Donald Trump will sign a long-anticipated executive order on Thursday that aims to shut down the Department of Education, acting on a key campaign pledge, according to a White House summary seen by Reuters. Even before it was signed, the order was being challenged by a group of Democratic state attorneys general, who filed a lawsuit seeking to block Trump from dismantling the department and halt the layoffs of nearly half of its staff announced last week. The NAACP, a leading civil rights group, also blasted the expected order as unconstitutional. “This is a dark day for the millions of American children who depend on federal funding for a quality education, including those in poor and rural communities with parents who voted for Trump,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement. Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk have attempted to shut down government programs and institutions such as the US Agency for International Development without congressional approval, but abolishing the Department of Education would be Trump’s first bid to shut down a cabinet-level agency. Trump cannot shutter the agency without congressional legislation, which could prove difficult. Trump’s Republicans hold a 53-47 majority in the Senate, but major legislation, such as a bill eliminating a cabinet-level agency, would need 60 votes and thus the support of seven Democrats to pass. Senate Democrats have given no sign they would support abolishing the education department. In other news: Speaking from the podium of the White House briefing room, Donald Trump’s press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, accused federal judges of ruling against the president for partisan reasons. The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration is working on a plan to create a buffer zone along the southern border in New Mexico that would be occupied by active-duty US troops, empowered to detain migrants who cross into the United States unlawfully. A federal judge on Wednesday denied a request for a restraining order to block Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” from taking over of the US Institute for Peace, after the institute accused Musk’s team of occupying the building by force. Republican senator Lisa Murkowski said she was “disturbed” by the way federal workers have been treated but would not be “cowed” by the threat of a well-funded primary challenger backed by Musk’s fortune. A North Dakota jury found Greenpeace liable for hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to an energy company over protests against a pipeline being constructed in the state. Greenpeace said they will appeal the order for them to pay more than $660m in damages. Officials at the US Federal Reserve cut their US economic growth forecasts and raised their projections for price growth as they kept interest rates on hold.