Latest news on President Donald Trump: Feb. 5, 2025

California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said he had a productive meeting with Trump to discuss federal aid needed to help Los Angeles-area fire victims recover from the recent blazes.

Newsom, a Democrat, also met with members of Congress earlier in the day to try to secure support for disaster aid.

“I look forward to more productive meetings, and I look forward to the spirit that defined the meetings of this day — that’s a spirit of collaboration and cooperation,” he said in a video posted on X.

During Newsom’s meeting with Trump, he thanked the president for his administration’s help so far, including debris removal efforts by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the governor’s office said.

The federal office that enforces civil rights at schools across the U.S. has been ordered to prioritize complaints of antisemitism above all else as it molds to Trump’s agenda, raising fears that other rights violations will go unpunished.

Trump’s new leader of the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights told staff this week they will be expected to aggressively pursue complaints involving antisemitism and hew closely to Trump’s wishes, according to sources who were on the call with Craig Trainor, acting assistant secretary for civil rights.

The sources spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals.

Already there are signs of a hard turn on civil rights enforcement, including new actions focused squarely on anti-Jewish bias and transgender issues.

▶ Read more about the enforcement of civil rights in schools during Trump’s administration

Senate Democrats vow to stay up all night to protest Trump’s nomination of Russ Vought as White House budget director.

Vought is a chief architect of Project 2025 and influential in the Musk team’s DOGE cuts slashing across the federal government.

All 47 Democrats say they will vote against Vought. But as the minority party in the Senate, that’s not enough to stop his confirmation. Instead, Senate Democrats are marching through the full 30 hours of debate before a final vote.

Vought is expected to be confirmed as director of the Office of Management and Budget in a Senate vote Thursday.

Texas Republican Gov. Gregg Abbott says he discussed securing the border with Trump and has identified 4,000 cells in his state that federal authorities could use as immigration lockups.

Abbott said Texas also has military bases that could house soldiers used in immigration crackdown efforts.

He said his state is seeking $11 billion in federal reimbursement costs over the past four years. That’s because Abbott ordered Texas to build sections of wall along the U.S.-Mexico border after the Biden administration halted construction.

Abbott said 20 miles (32 kilometers) of border wall would be completed “in the coming days.”

Trump’s meeting with California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrapped up at the White House on Wednesday evening, but the governor and president did not speak to reporters afterward.

The White House also did not provide any details about their conversation.

Newsom was on Capitol Hill earlier, meeting with House lawmakers from California including Rep. Judy Chu who represents the badly burned Altadena area.

The governor also met with California’s two Democratic Senators, Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, in what Padilla’s office said was a productive meeting about the latest response to the fires. They were joined by Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Padilla reiterated his commitment to working with his colleagues to fully fund federal disaster relief without partisan strings attached, his office said.

Several hundred people rallied outside the Idaho Statehouse in Boise, holding signs with slogans like “STOP the COUP” and “Why is Elon in Charge?”

Emily Stoker, who lives in the nearby city of Meridian, carried a large sign emblazoned with the word “FASCIST” beneath a portrait of President Trump. “I don’t understand why people are supporting this,” she said, gesturing to the sign.

“I’m horrified at the direction our country is going, that it’s moving backwards. It’s moving more toward hate, moving towards empowering the wealthy and disenfranchising the poor and the minorities,” Stoker said. “We stand for truth and goodness and equality.”

House and Senate Democrats are demanding Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent provide answers about DOGE’s ability to access sensitive Treasury Department information on American citizens.

Senate Democrats want Bessent to meet with them, according to a letter from Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and five other senators. They say Treasury’s answers so far have been “inadequate.”

House Democrats on the powerful Ways & Means Committee led by Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., wrote in a separate letter, “It is both unclear and unsettling why DOGE would be privy to this sensitive payment system and confidential taxpayer information.”

Trump reverted back to his real estate developer mode before signing his executive order on women’s sports when he declared that he would offer to build a ballroom for the White House.

“This room is packed,” Trump said, before diverting from the issue of sports to say that he had offered to build a ballroom for the White House several times under the Biden administration “and I never heard back.”

Trump suggested he would build a ballroom like one at his Mar-a-Lago resort and said he was “very good about building ballrooms.”

He said such a room would cost $100 million and said, “So I’m going to try and make the offer to myself, you know, because we could use a bigger room.”

It was not immediately clear if he intended to follow through on the offer and the details of such a construction project.

A federal judge seems likely to order that allies of Elon Musk should not have further access to Treasury Department payment systems beyond two new Musk-aligned special government employees who already have access.

U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly is weighing a lawsuit from federal workers’ unions trying to prevent Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing federal payment systems, which the plaintiffs call a massive privacy invasion.

A Justice Department attorney says no one outside of the Treasury Department has gotten access to the records, other than new special government employee Marko Elez, who reports to Tom Krause.

Kollar-Kotelly is expected to sign an order late Wednesday as she considers the unions’ push for broader restrictions on access to the system that handles trillions of dollars’ worth of federal payments.

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered outside the Arizona State Capitol in Phoenix, waving signs in opposition of Trump and Musk while chanting, “Stop the coup,” “Deport Elon” and “No hate, no fear, immigrants are welcome here!”

Karolyn Switzer, 82, of Payson, Arizona, said she and a friend drove 90 minutes to attend because she was “thoroughly disgusted” with the way Trump and Musk have been running the country.

She said she was especially concerned by the potential for the removal or reduction of services and benefits to many federal programs.

Hundreds of protesters gathered outside of the California Capitol building in Sacramento to oppose the Trump administration’s actions and rhetoric.

Rallygoers yelled chants and held signs that decried Trump as a threat to democracy, diversity, immigrants and LGBTQ+ Americans.

“Hey, hey! Ho, ho! His tyranny has got to go,” protesters chanted at one point. One person held a sign that read: “Mexicans aren’t going anywhere.” Many waved American flags.

The demonstration comes days after the state Legislature, which is dominated by Democrats, approved bills that Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to sign to help protect the state’s progressive policies from challenges by the White House.

Over 2,000 protesters bundled up and braved wind chills at around 5 degrees F (-15 C) on the steps of the Minnesota Capitol in St. Paul, including several hundred who marched from a nearby college.

The crowd far exceeded the 200 people originally estimated by organizers before word spread on social media.

Annastacia Belladonna-Carrera, executive director of Common Cause Minnesota, told the protesters through a megaphone that they need to hold power accountable.

“We, the people, are the ultimate power in our democracy,” Belladonna-Carrera said.

Those protesting expressed their anger not just at Trump but also Elon Musk and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Some signs read “Impeach Trump,” “Impeach President Musk and the Other One,” and “Nobody Elected Elon.”

The United States is the world’s largest source of foreign assistance by far, although several European countries allocate a much bigger share of their budgets.

While aid to Africa dwarfs the roughly $2 billion that Latin America receives annually, the Western Hemisphere has long been a spending priority of both Democratic and Republican administrations.

USAID has been critical in protecting the Amazon rainforest, fighting cocaine in South America, response to HIV, girls’ education and free school lunches in Africa and funding in Ukraine to help during the war, along with countless other efforts.

▶ Read more about the global impact of USAID

Trump has met with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, calling him “a great friend” and saying “he’s really done a great job at the border.”

The two met behind closed doors. But Abbott joined many elected officials to watch the president sign a subsequent executive order designed to prevent people assigned male at birth from participating in women’s or girls’ sports.

Abbott has been an outspoken proponent of hardline immigration policies.

During the Biden administration, Texas sent thousands of migrants detained along its border with Mexico to northern cities like New York.

Trump said his administration will deny visas to any transgender female athletes trying to compete at the 2028 Olympic games in Los Angeles.

The president said he’s directing his Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to deny entry to people he described as men “fraudulently” attempting to compete in the games as female athletes.

He said he’s also directing Secretary of State Marco Rubio to notify the governing body of the Olympic Games of the U.S. position on transgender athletes.

Trump is holding a ceremony to sign an executive order to ban transgender female athletes from competing in women or girls’ sporting events.

“From now on women’s sports will be only for women,” Trump said before the signing.

Trump was talking before taking pen to paper Wednesday as members of Congress and women, including some women athletes, looked on in the East Room of the White House.

Billionaire Elon Musk’s federal cost-cutting initiative, DOGE, is taking a look at the systems and technology at the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

The agency spends more than $1 trillion providing health insurance for roughly half the country.

Two agency officials are working with DOGE, CMS spokeswoman Catherine Howden said in a statement.

“We are taking a thoughtful approach to see where there may be opportunities for more effective and efficient use of resources in line with meeting the goals of President Trump,” Howden said.

A USAID contractor posted in an often violent region of the Middle East said the shutdown of the agency had placed the contractor and the contractor’s family in greater danger, cut off from some ways to reach the U.S. government for help if needed.

The contractor woke up one morning earlier this week blocked from access to government email and other systems, and an emergency “panic button” app was wiped off the contractor’s smartphone. Other USAID staff globally reported the same problem, although emergency comms were being restored to some on a spotty basis.

“You really do feel cut off from a lifeline,” the contract staffer said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of a Trump administration ban forbidding USAID workers from speaking to people outside their agency.

▶ Read more on the impact of the USAID shutdown

An email encouraging federal workers to accept financial incentives to quit is reminding them that buyouts or furloughs could come next.

“The majority of federal agencies are likely to be downsized through restructurings, realignments, and reductions in force,” said an email that was distributed by the Office of Personnel Management on Wednesday and viewed by The Associated Press.

The deadline to apply for the deferred resignation program, which includes pay until Sept. 30, is 11:59 p.m. ET on Thursday.

Democrats have warned workers not to take the offer, saying it wasn’t properly authorized.

The email said there would be fewer civil service protections for employees who remain.

“Employees will be subject to enhanced standards of suitability and conduct as we move forward,” said the email.

Rubio said the Trump administration will now “work from the bottom up” to determine which U.S. aid and development missions abroad should resume.

“This is not about ending foreign aid. It is about structuring it in a way that furthers the national interest of the United States,” he said in Guatemala City.

In Washington, Democratic lawmakers and hundreds of others rallied outside the Capitol to protest the fast-moving shutdown of an independent government agency.

“This is illegal and this is a coup,” California Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs cried.

“We are witnessing in real time the most corrupt bargain in American history,” Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen shouted.

“Lock him up!” members of the crowd chanted.

▶ Read more on outrage and anxiety over USAID

The nurses who care for military veterans are in such short supply that staffing shortages are considered severe at most Veterans Administration hospitals.

Encouraging the 100,000 VA nurses to quit now will worsen a crisis that’s already affecting the care of more than 9 million enrolled veterans.

Federal employees face a Thursday deadline if they want to accept buyouts and resign with pay through Sept. 30.

Mary-Jean Burke, a leader of the American Federation of Government Employees, says the more they learn from the Office of Personnel Management, the more it seems “too good to be true.” The union is discouraging its members from taking the offer.

Read more about the Veterans Administration nurses

A judge has awarded a historic Black church in Washington control over the Proud Boys trademark after the far-right group defaulted on a $2.8 million judgment.

The ruling in D.C. Superior Court grants rights to the trademark of the group’s name to the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church. It bars Proud Boys members from selling related merchandise without the church’s consent, and allows the church to try to seize any money made from selling the group’s merchandise.

The church filed the lawsuit to try to recoup damages from vandalism done by group members after a Trump rally in December 2020.
Black Lives Matter banners were torn down and burned, and there were violent clashes between opposing protesters that night.

Enrique Tarrio, then the leader of the Proud Boys, confessed to participating in the burnings and was sentenced to more than five months in jail on those and other charges. Tarrio was later sentenced to 22 years in federal prison for orchestrating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot. Trump granted him clemency on his first day back as president.

▶ Read more about the ruling

Democratic lawmakers invited themselves into House Speaker Mike Johnson’s office to meet with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent over DOGE’s access to a highly private federal payment system

Democratic Reps. Judy Chu of California and Gwen Moore of Wisconsin serve on the powerful House Ways & Means Committee. They said they were going to the speaker’s suite to demand answers. It was unclear if the speaker or the Treasury secretary were there.

Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee questioned the White House Wednesday about President Donald Trump’s decision to grant billionaire Elon Musk and his staff access to classified information and the personal data of millions of Americans.

Writing to White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, the lawmakers said national security and Americans’ personal privacy must be protected from security lapses as Musk and his staff look to overhaul the federal workforce.

The teams in Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency now have access to the internal information of dozens of agencies, including medical and financial data belonging to millions of Americans, and classified material about foreign intelligence or the identity of undercover operatives.

In their letter, the senators asked how department staff were vetted and what safeguards are in place to prevent the misuse of information.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham called Trump’s proposal for U.S. takeover of Gaza as “problematic.”

“The idea of Americans going in on the ground in Gaza is a non starter for every senator,” the South Carolina lawmaker told reporters Wednesday. “So I would suggest we go back to what we’ve been trying to do which is destroy Hamas and find a way for the Arab world to take over Gaza and the West Bank, in a fashion that would lead to a Palestinian state that Israel can live with.”

Callers are getting busy signals and voicemail inboxes too full to leave comments at many U.S. Senate offices. There’s a deluge of people trying to voice their opinions on Trump’s Cabinet picks, executive orders and moves to dismantle various federal programs.

The problem was confirmed in a memo distributed to Senate staff obtained by The Associated Press.

Constituents want to reach their representatives as Trump and his ally Musk work to dismantle much of the federal government, shuttering agencies, temporarily freezing funding and pushing workers to resign.

One popular social media post urges opponents to call their lawmakers six times a day, every day — two calls to each of their senators and two to their House members. “You should NOT be bothering with online petitions or emailing,” it said.

▶ Read more on efforts of constituents to reach Congress

The Environmental Protection Agency will resume payments for major programs including Superfund site cleanup, clean drinking water infrastructure and habitat restoration, according to a Tuesday memo obtained by The Associated Press and first reported by E&E News.

The internal memo from Gregg Treml, acting Chief Financial Officer, complies with a recent court order temporarily freezing the Trump administration’s broad pause on federal financial assistance.

Funding will continue to flow “while ongoing litigation proceeds or until otherwise directed by a court,” the memo said

McConnell’s office says he’s using a wheelchair in the Capitol as precaution.

The office sent a statement after the former GOP leader, who suffered from childhood polio, stumbled on a small series of steps exiting the Senate.

“The lingering effects of polio in his left leg will not disrupt his regular schedule of work,” said David Popp.

Saeed Abu Elaish’s wife, two of his daughters and two dozen others from his extended family were killed by Israeli airstrikes over the past 15 months. His house in northern Gaza was destroyed. He and surviving family now live in a tent set up in the rubble of his home.

But he says he will not be driven out, despite Trump’s call for transferring all Palestinians from Gaza so the U.S. could take over the devastated territory and rebuild it for others.

“We categorically reject and will resist any plans to deport and transfer us from our land,” he said from the Jabaliya refugee camp.

▶ Read more reactions from Palestinians to Trump’s comments on Gaza

The Republican former leader fell slightly on a few steps while exiting the Senate chamber after late-morning votes.

Mitchell was immediately scooped up by colleagues, Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., and Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., and they headed into a private GOP lunch.

Daines said McConnell seemed just fine. “He walked on his own power to lunch,” he said.

McConnell of Kentucky experienced a more serious fall two years ago and has since had a few other stumbles and setbacks while back at the Capitol. He ended his run as the longest serving Senate leader at the end of the last congressional session.

A movement to protest the early actions of President Donald Trump’s administration took off Wednesday, as thousands of demonstrators gathered outside a federal courthouse in Philadelphia and at state capitols in Michigan, Texas, Wisconsin and Indiana.

Protesters waved signs decrying Trump; billionaire Elon Musk, the leader of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency; and Project 2025, a hard-right playbook for American government and society.

“Democracy is not a spectator sport! Do something,” said one demonstrator’s sign in Philadelphia.

A movement is organizing the protests online under the hashtags #buildtheresistance and #50501, which stands for 50 protests, 50 states, one day. Social media calls for action included such messages as “reject fascism” and “defend our democracy.”

▶ Read more about the anti-Trump protests

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has contradicted Trump’s suggestions that the residents of the Gaza Strip could be permanently relocated elsewhere.

“The president has made it clear that they need to be temporarily relocated out of Gaza,” Levitt said during her briefing with reporters. “It’s a demolition site.”

That contradicted Trump, who suggested Tuesday night that Palestinians should leave the Gaza Strip for good: “If we can get a beautiful area to resettle people, permanently, in nice homes where they can be happy and not be shot and not be killed and not be knifed to death like what’s happening in Gaza.”

The U.S. secretary of state said President Donald Trump’s proposal to take “ownership” of Gaza and redevelop the area into “the Riviera of the Middle East” was a “generous” offer.

“It was not meant as a hostile move,” Rubio said. “It was meant as a, I think, a very generous move.”

He said the Gaza Strip’s current state is “akin to a natural disaster” and people can’t live there because there are unexploded munitions, debris and rubble. “In the interim, obviously people are going to have to live somewhere while you’re rebuilding it,” he said.

Leavitt said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “was indeed” aware of Trump’s proposal for the U.S. to take “ownership” of Gaza before he publicly announced it.

Leavitt said during a briefing with reporters that she was not present to witness Netanyahu’s reaction. But she said “this is something the president has been socializing and thinking about for quite some time.”

Karoline Leavitt said 461 people in the country illegally who have been arrested since Trump took office were released back into the U.S. rather than being deported.

Leavitt said that, as of Wednesday morning, more than 8,000 migrants have been arrested since Jan. 20. The people released from immigration custody amount to about 6% of them.

Leavitt said they were released for health reasons, because individuals weren’t likely to be deported quickly, or because of a lack of capacity in immigration detention facilities.

Trump campaigned on ending “catch and release,” accusing the Biden administration of releasing migrants too easily. Trump also has signed an executive order mandating “removing promptly all aliens.”

Feroot CEO Ivan Tsarynny says “It’s mindboggling that we are unknowingly allowing China to survey Americans and we’re doing nothing about it.”

Former Homeland Security and National Security Agency official Stewart Baker says DeepSeek “raises all of the TikTok concerns plus you’re talking about information that is highly likely to be of more national security and personal significance than anything people do on TikTok.”

Congress voted to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest or face a nationwide ban, but then the app received a 75-day reprieve from President Donald Trump to work out a sale.

Read more about DeepSeek’s code:

The chatbot offered by the new Chinese AI company DeepSeek appears to be more closely tied to the Chinese state than previously known. Cybersecurity experts say using it may be more risky than watching videos on TikTok.

The web login page of DeepSeek’s chatbot contains some heavily obfuscated computer script. According to the cybersecurity research firm Feroot Security, deciphering it reveals computer infrastructure connections to China Mobile, a state-owned telecom that’s banned in the United States because it feeds information to the Chinese military.

Read more about DeepSeek’s code:

Rubio said the original intention was to keep the U.S. Agency for International Development running pending a review of whether and how money was being spent in alignment of U.S. foreign policy under President Trump.

But he said the Trump administration received no cooperation, and employees were acting in “contravention” and “insubordination.”

“It is not the direction I wanted it. It’s not the way we wanted to do it initially, but it is the way we will have to do it now,” Rubio said, referring to the sudden order late Tuesday to pull almost all USAID workers overseas off the job and out of the field.

▶ Read more on Rubio’s comments in Central America

Guatemala’s president said Wednesday after meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that his country will accept migrants from other countries being deported from the United States.

Under the “safe third country” agreement announced by President Bernardo Arevalo, the deportees would then be returned to their home countries at U.S. expense.

Immigration, a Trump administration priority, has been the major focus of Rubio’s first foreign trip as America’s top diplomat, a five-country tour of Central America.

In El Salvador, he announced a similar but broader agreement, which included an offer to accept American citizens jailed in the U.S. for violent crimes.

A group that played a key role in Donald Trump’s voter outreach to the Arab American community alongside his allies is rebranding itself after the president said that the U.S. would “take over” the Gaza Strip.

Bishara Bahbah, chairman of the group formerly known as Arab Americans for Trump, said during a phone interview with The Associated Press on Wednesday that the group would now be called Arab Americans for Peace.

The name change came after Trump held a Tuesday press conference alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House and proposed the U.S. take “ownership” in redeveloping the area into “the Riviera of the Middle East.”

FBI agents “who simply followed orders and carried out their duties in an ethical manner” while investigating the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol are not at risk of being fired, a top Justice Department official said in a memo to the bureau workforce obtained by The Associated Press on Wednesday.

But the memo from acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove also provides no reassurances for any agents found to have “acted with corrupt or partisan intent.”

Thousands of FBI employees who participated in investigations related to the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol have been asked to complete in-depth questionnaires about their involvement in the inquiries as the Trump administration Justice Department weighed disciplinary actions.

▶ Read more about the FBI agents memo

Republicans blocked Democratic efforts Wednesday to subpoena Musk to appear before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform during a hearing on “Rightsizing Government.”

Musk is leading Trump’s “government efficiency” effort. He’s positioned personnel in key federal agencies where they have sought to close the U.S. Agency for International Development and gain access to sensitive payment systems at the Treasury Department.

“Who is this unelected billionaire that he can attempt to dismantle federal agencies, fire people, transfer them, offer them early retirement and have sweeping changes to agencies without any congressional review, oversight or concurrence?” said Rep. Gerry Connolly, the panel’s ranking Democrat.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, R-N.C., then moved to table the motion, and Republicans quashed it with a 20-19 vote.