Trump returns to Philadelphia to attend NCAA wrestling championships with Musk: Live updates
Trump used his social media platform to demand Maine Governor Janet Mills apologize for disputing his transgender athlete executive order
President Donald Trump is expected to attend the NCAA men’s wrestling championship in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on Saturday evening – his first return to the state since he won it in the presidential election.
“We’re going to the big fight. The reason I’m going is in Philadelphia. They have the NCAA, world, wrestling for college. And I’ve always supported the wrestlers,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House on Friday evening.
Trump’s right-hand man, Elon Musk, is reportedly going to attend alongside the president.
It is the second time in three years the president will attend the NCAA wrestling championships and the latest sports-related trip Trump has embarked on since he took office. Trump attended the Super Bowl in New Orleans and the Daytona 500 in Florida.
Trump is a fan of attending public sporting events and has often used them to bolster his political persona.
Before attending the fight in Pennslyvania, the president flew to New Jersey to spend time at his golf club in Bedminster. The president has used most of his weekends to play golf at his club in Mar-a-Lago
The start of Trump's dismantling of Department of Education took place in a mock classroom
Richard Hall writes:
Donald Trump gathered school children in a mock classroom scene at the White House on Thursday afternoon to witness the signing of an executive order aimed at dismantling the Department of Education.
As the children watched from their small desks, each with their own replica executive orders to sign along with Trump, the president began his remarks with an update on the horrors of Ukraine’s war.
“Hopefully we can save thousands of people a week from dying. That's what it's all about. They're dying… so unnecessarily,” he said grimly, forgetting his young audience.
It’s not uncommon for teachers to veer off-topic in the later days of the week, but the president was quick to return to the matter at hand.
Read on...
Trump created a mock classroom in the White House to dismantle the Dept of Education
Judge refuses to pause ruling forcing Trump admin to reinstate purged federal workers
A U.S. appeals court has refused to pause a judge's ruling requiring President Donald Trump's administration to reinstate 25,000 workers across 18 federal agencies who lost their jobs as part of Trump's purge of the federal workforce.
A panel from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, stated there was no reason to delay the decision, as the judge in Baltimore, Maryland, is expected to decide next week whether to extend it further in a lawsuit filed by 19 Democrat-led states and Washington, D.C.
On March 17, the Trump administration indicated in court filings that the agencies were working to reinstate the terminated employees while temporarily placing them on paid leave. Friday's decision will remain in effect pending the outcome of the administration's appeal.
The 18 agencies involved in the case include the Department of Veterans Affairs, Department of Agriculture, Department of Energy, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Treasury Department.
Typically, probationary employees have less than one or two years of service in their current roles, though some are long-time federal employees.
Most agencies have reported that they fired several hundred probationary workers, while others terminated significantly more. The Treasury Department dismissed about 7,600 individuals, the Department of Agriculture approximately 5,700, and the Department of Health and Human Services more than 3,200, according to court filings.
On March 13, U.S. District Judge James Bredar in Baltimore, Maryland, stated that the agencies should have followed procedures for conducting mass layoffs and ordered the reinstatement of the workers pending further litigation.
On the same day, a judge in San Francisco separately ordered that probationary workers at six agencies be reinstated, but based on different legal grounds. This case involves five of the agencies subject to Bredar's ruling and the U.S. Department of Defense.
The Trump administration has appealed that decision and requested a San Francisco-based appeals court to pause it pending the outcome of the case.
The judges' rulings did not prohibit agencies from terminating probationary workers entirely but raised concerns about the way the layoffs were conducted.
With reporting from Reuters
Grilled on CNN over Musk campaign donation rumors GOP lawmaker gave two-word response
New York Congressman Mike Lawler issued a two-word response after being grilled live on CNN about rumors that Elon Musk donated to his re-election campaigns.
The Republican lawmaker sparred with former New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman, a Democrat, as they discussed reports that the world’s richest man was set for a secret Pentagon briefing about the U.S. military’s top-secret war plans for China on Newsnight.
James Liddell has the story.
Republican’s two-word response during CNN grilling over ‘Musk campaign donations’
Trump fires almost entire Homeland Security civil rights division, report says
In a move gutting a government office responsible for conducting oversight of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, the Trump administration fired nearly the entire civil rights branch of the Department of Homeland Security on Friday, The New York Times reports.
The more than 100 staff members were informed they would be placed on leave for 60 days to find another job within the administration or risk being fired in May, according to five current and former government officials. The president also shut down the ombudsman for Citizenship and Immigration Services, another office responsible for overseeing the administration’s legal immigration policies.
This is Trump’s latest effort to eliminate civil rights divisions and oversight mechanisms in government agencies. However, the closure of the Homeland Security Department’s Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties stands out, especially considering the lack of transparency regarding the administration’s immigration crackdown.
The president is committed in his second term to ensuring that his administration consists of loyalists who will not attempt to obstruct his agenda.
Report reveals Trump story about ‘surrounded’ Ukraine troops contradicted by his own intelligence
Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin have both insisted that Ukraine’s forces in Kursk are surrounded by Russian troops and are in imminent danger, but U.S. intelligence reports have contradicted those claims.
A trio of U.S. and European officials familiar with intelligence details of the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine told Reuters that the situation on the ground does not reflect the comments made by Trump and Putin.
One of the U.S. officials also said that the White House was briefed on the actual situation in Ukraine, so it’a unclear why Trump has and continues to claim that Ukrainian troops in Russia's Kursk region are surrounded.
Graig Graziosi reports.
Trump’s story about ‘surrounded’ Ukraine troops contradicted by his own intelligence
Lutnick says seniors who complain about missing social security checks are likely fraudsters
Donald Trump’s commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, who never seems far from a TV camera, made a solid play for possibly the worst piece of political messaging of the year to date.
Talking about weeding out Social Security fraud, Lutnick said that if the government stopped sending out checks for a month, people like his mother-in-law wouldn’t call to complain.
He went on to say that if you are the sort of person who calls to complain — you know, the type who depends on a Social Security check to buy food or pay your electricity bill because their son-in-law isn’t a billionaire — then that’s an indicator that you are possibly a fraudster.
Watch the moment below:
ICYMI: Judge blocks Elon Musk’s DOGE team from fraud ‘fishing expedition’ at Social Security
A federal judge has temporarily blocked Elon Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency from their “fishing expedition” in search of a “fraud epidemic” based on “little more than suspicion” inside the Social Security Administration.
A temporary restraining order from District Judge Ellen Lipton Hollander prevents the world’s wealthiest man and his team of 10 at Social Security — which Musk has baselessly labeled a “Ponzi scheme” and accused of handing out tens of billions of dollars in retirement benefits to dead people — from “unfettered” access to personal information for millions of Americans.
Alex Woodward reports.
Judge blocks Elon Musk’s DOGE team from fraud ‘fishing expedition’ at Social Security
Musk claimed his AI chatbot Grok would be ‘truth-seeking.’ It disagrees with him on many of Trump’s key policies, report reveals
Elon Musk has claimed that his AI chatbot Grok would be “truth-seeking,” yet it often contradicts the billionaire’s positions.
When he launched the new version of Grok last month, Musk said it would be “maximally truth-seeking … even if that truth is sometimes at odds with what is politically correct.”
Instead, Grok has notably challenged Musk’s version of the truth on several topics, such as diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), and immigration, The Washington Post reported. Grok last week declared that Democrats are better for the economy than Republicans.
Gustaf Kilander reports.
Musk claimed his AI chatbot Grok would be ‘truth-seeking.’ It doesn’t back him up
What you missed in today's Oval Office Q&A
While President Donald Trump gathered the media in the Oval Office to announce that Boeing had won the contract to build the Air Force’s next generation of fighter jet, he also took questions about a variety of current events.
Here are some highlights:
Musk reprises controversial election tactic — offering cash
An Elon Musk-backed group is offering voters in Wisconsin $100 to sign a petition opposing “activist judges” just two weeks ahead of a state Supreme Court election.
Musk’s Super PAC made a similar offer to swing state voters during last year’s election campaign. The political action committee, America PAC, revealed the petition in a Thursday night post on X. It says that each voter in the state who signs the petition will receive $100 in addition to another $100 for every signer they refer.
Gustaf Kilander reports.
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