Trump acts to remove chair of Federal Election Commission
Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission, revealed on Thursday that Donald Trump has sent her a letter telling her that she had been removed from the commission.
Weintraub, a Democrat appointed to the bipartisan commission by George W Bush, posted an image of the letter, which was dated 31 January.
“Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC,” Weintraub wrote on Bluesky. “There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn’t it. I’ve been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing anytime soon.”
Key events
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United States Federal Election Commission commissioner and chair Ellen Weintraub said on Thursday she received a letter from Donald Trump that purports to fire her but added that the action was illegal.
In a post on X, Weintraub attached the January 31 letter signed by Trump which said: “You are hereby removed as a member of the Federal Election Commission, effective immediately.”
Since taking office last month, Trump, a Republican, has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants and top officials at agencies in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.
“There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners – this isn’t it,” Weintraub, a Democrat, said in her post.
“I’ve been lucky to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing any time soon,” she added.
The FEC has more than 300 employees, with six commissioners at the top. The FEC’s vice-chair, James Trainor, is a Republican.
Weintraub has served as a commissioner on the FEC since 2002, according to the FEC website. It says she has “served as a consistent voice for meaningful campaign-finance law enforcement and robust disclosure”.
FEC commissioners are appointed by the president and confirmed by the Senate.
In case you missed it: Donald Trump has signed an executive order that authorises aggressive economic sanctions against the international criminal court (ICC), accusing the body of “illegitimate and baseless actions” targeting the US and Israel.
The order grants the US president broad powers to impose asset freezes and travel bans against ICC staff and their family members if the US determines that they are involved in efforts to investigate or prosecute citizens of the US and certain allies.
The hostile action against the ICC comes in response to the court’s decision in November to issue arrest warrants for Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza.
Summary
Here are the key developments from the last few hours:
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The largest US government worker union and an association of foreign service workers sued the Trump administration on Thursday in an effort to reverse its aggressive dismantling of theUS Agency for International Development (USAid).
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Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC), the White House has confirmed. The text of the order, posted on the White House website, accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel” and abused its power by issuing “baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant”.
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The Senate has confirmed Russell Vought as White House budget director, putting an official who has planned the zealous expansion of Trump’s power into one of the most influential positions in the federal government.
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Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission, revealed on Thursday that Donald Trump has sent her a letter telling her that she had been removed from the commission. Weintraub, a Democrat appointed to the bipartisan commission by George W Bush, posted an image of the letter, which was dated 31 January.
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Attorney general Pam Bondi dissolved an FBI taskforce aimed at combatting foreign influence operations on Wednesday, the same day that a hoax news report linked to Russia was shared by Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, and his son, Donald Trump Jr.
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A “DEI watch list” targeting federal employees who work in health equity-related positions spurred fear for the workers’ safety and jobs. Most of the workers included on the list are Black.
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A budget dispute among congressional Republicans could slow their efforts to enact Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump was scheduled to meet with Republican lawmakers on Thursday as they craft a spending bill that could avert a government shutdown in March.
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For the second time in two days, a judge moved Thursday to block Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The Seattle judge said Trump viewed the rule of law simply as an “impediment to his policy goals.”
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A judge also temporarily limited Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury’s payment system. The order allows for two of Musk’s associates to access the system – but on a read-only basis.
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Even after a judge delayed a buyout offer for federal employees, Musk’s self-styled Department of Government Accountability (DOGE), continued to pressure workers to quit. Agencies under Musk’s unofficial purview threatened workers with layoffs and implied their jobs could be replaced with artificial intelligence.
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DOGE reportedly accessed sensitive data from the Department of Education and used artificial intelligence to analyze it. The data reportedly included personal and financial information.
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The Trump administration has dropped efforts to sanction oligarchs close to Putin. The Joe Biden administration had implemented sanctions on Russian oligarchs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
House and Senate GOP leaders have been desperately looking to Trump for direction on how to proceed on their budget bill, but so far the president has been noncommittal about the details – only pushing Congress for results. Trump’s message to them Thursday was: Get it done, according to the AP.
The standoff is creating frustration for Republicans as precious time is slipping and they fail to make progress on what has been their top priority with their party in control in Washington. At the same time, congressional phone lines are being swamped with callers protesting Trump’s cost-cutting efforts led by billionaire Elon Musk against federal programs, services and operations.
House Republicans planned to meet into the night at the Capitol to wrap up agreement on a package they could announce before lawmakers leave town Friday.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters the president and lawmakers were discussing “tax priorities of the Trump administration,” including Trump’s promises to end federal taxation of tips, Social Security benefits and overtime pay. Renewing tax cuts Trump enacted in 2017 also was on the agenda, she said.
“The president is committed to working with Congress to get this done,” Leavitt said.
Trump hosted an unusually long meeting with House Republicans at the White House on Thursday, the AP reports, turning over prime workspace for them to hammer out differences over the size, scope and details of their multitrillion-dollar plan to cut taxes, regulations and government spending.
Trump set the tone at the start of the nearly five-hour session, lawmakers said, then left them alone for a meeting that ran so long that Speaker Mike Johnson missed his own one-on-one at the US Capitol with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who instead met with Democratic leaders and other lawmakers as the speaker’s office scrambled to reschedule.
“Very positive developments today,” Johnson said once he returned to the Capitol. “We’re really grateful to the president for leaning in and doing what he does best, and that is put a steady hand at the wheel and get everybody working.”
Trump’s foreign aid freeze and the shutdown of USAid have also crippled global efforts to relieve hunger, leaving about 500,000 metric tons of food worth $340m in limbo, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit alleges that dissolving USAID, which was established as an independent agency in a 1998 law passed by Congress, is beyond Trump’s authority under the constitution and violates his duty to faithfully execute the nation’s laws.
It seeks a temporary and eventually permanent order from the court restoring USAid’s funding, reopening its offices and blocking further orders to dissolve it.
The largest US government workers’ union and an association of foreign service workers sued the Trump administration on Thursday in an effort to reverse its aggressive dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, Reuters reports.
The lawsuit, filed in Washington DC. federal court by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, seeks an order blocking what it says are “unconstitutional and illegal actions” that have created a “global humanitarian crisis.”
Those actions include President Donald Trump’s order on 20 January, the day he was inaugurated, pausing all U.S. foreign aid. That was followed by orders from the state department halting USAID projects around the world, agency computer systems going offline and staff abruptly laid off or placed on leave.
The lawsuit names Trump and the State and Treasury Departments as defendants. The White House and the departments did not immediately respond to requests from Reuters for comment.
The gutting of the agency has largely been overseen by businessman Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and a close Trump ally spearheading the president’s effort to shrink the federal bureaucracy. On Monday, Musk wrote on X, the social media platform he owns, that he and his employees “spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.”
“Not a single one of defendants’ actions to dismantle USAid were taken pursuant to congressional authorization,” the lawsuit said. “And pursuant to federal statute, Congress is the only entity that may lawfully dismantle the agency.”
The agency’s website now states that as of midnight on Friday “all USAid direct hire personnel will be placed on administrative leave globally, with the exception of designated personnel responsible for mission-critical functions, core leadership and specially designated programs.”
The Trump administration plans to keep fewer than 300 employees, out of more than 10,000, sources told Reuters earlier on Thursday.
“The agency’s collapse has had disastrous humanitarian consequences,” Thursday’s lawsuit said, including shutting down efforts to fight malaria and HIV. “Already, 300 babies that would not have had HIV, now do. Thousands of girls and women will die from pregnancy and childbirth.”
Trump administration sued by government workers over USAid slashing
The largest US government worker union and an association of foreign service workers sued the Trump administration on Thursday in an effort to reverse its aggressive dismantling of theUS Agency for International Development (USAid).
The lawsuit, filed in Washington DC federal court by the American Federation of Government Employees and the American Foreign Service Association, seeks an order blocking what it says are “unconstitutional and illegal actions” that have created a “global humanitarian crisis.”
Project 2025 architect Russell Vought confirmed as White House budget director
The Senate has confirmed Russell Vought as White House budget director, putting an official who has planned the zealous expansion of Trump’s power into one of the most influential positions in the federal government.
Vought has already played an influential role in Trump’s effort to remake the federal government as one of the architects of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for Trump’s second term.
Vought was confirmed on a party-line vote of 53-47. With the Senate chamber full, Democrats repeatedly tried to speak as they cast their “no” votes to give their reasons for voting against Vought, but they were gaveled down by Sen. Ashley Moody, a Florida Republican who was presiding over the chamber. She cited Senate rules that ban debate during votes.
Trump acts to remove chair of Federal Election Commission
Ellen Weintraub, the chair of the Federal Election Commission, revealed on Thursday that Donald Trump has sent her a letter telling her that she had been removed from the commission.
Weintraub, a Democrat appointed to the bipartisan commission by George W Bush, posted an image of the letter, which was dated 31 January.
“Received a letter from POTUS today purporting to remove me as Commissioner and Chair of the FEC,” Weintraub wrote on Bluesky. “There’s a legal way to replace FEC commissioners-this isn’t it. I’ve been so fortunate to serve the American people and stir up some good trouble along the way. That’s not changing anytime soon.”
Musk and Trump plan to fire more than 97% of USAid staff, according to reports from Reuters and the New York Times.
The Times reports:
The Trump administration will reduce the number of workers at the U.S. Agency for International Development from more than 10,000 to about 290 positions, three people with knowledge of the plans said on Thursday.
The small remaining staff includes employees who specialize in health and humanitarian assistance, the people said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to publicly discuss the cuts.
Four sources familiar with the plan told Reuters “only 294 staff at the agency would be allowed to keep their jobs, including only 12 in the Africa bureau and eight in the Asia bureau”.
Atul Gawande, who led global health programs at USAid, shared a screenshot from an internal email on the planned cuts and wrote that secretary of state, Marco Rubio claims that USAid’s “lifesaving assistance for health and humanitarian needs will continue. But his team just communicated that the entire agency will be imminently reduced from 14,000 to 294 people. Just 12 in Africa”.
“We already see the shutdown’s cost,” Gawande added in a thread on Twitter/X. “Kids with drug-resistant TB, turned away from clinics, are not just dying – they’re spreading the disease. People around the world w HIV, denied their medicine, will soon start transmitting virus. The damage is global”.
Gawande wrote that one veteran foreign service officer told him: “Our government is attacking us. This is worse than any dictatorship where I’ve worked”.
Lois Beckett
A memorial service today for three people who died in the Eaton Canyon wildfire in Los Angeles was marked by simmering anger at Donald Trump’s choice not to visit Altadena, a town with a historic Black community that was devastated by the fire.
Two weeks ago, Trump toured damaged areas of the Pacific Palisades, a much wealthier area of Los Angeles, and spoke to affected residents there, but did not come east to visit victims in Pasadena or Altadena, where 17 people were killed.
Speaking to a full room at Pasadena’s First African Methodist Episcopal church, Rev Al Sharpton, the veteran civil rights activist, criticized Trump for his suggestions this week that the US take over Gaza, while not having met with the victims of the wildfires in Altadena, which razed entire blocks, including an estimated half of Altadena’s Black households.
“You’re the president of the United States. You ain’t the president of Gaza!” Sharpton said. “You got a whole community burned down that needs to be investigated. What happened? What started it and why did it expand, and why did some folk get noticed seven hours before other folks got notice? I’ve got stuff for you to do! You want to be the president, then act like the president.”
“Now you want to take Gaza. Why don’t you take here?” Sharpton also said. “Want to take something? Take Altadena. Make it the Riviera of California.”
Earlier, civil rights attorney Ben Crump had referenced Trump’s choice sarcastically.
“We were confused as to why he didn’t come to Altadena, one of the hard-hit affected areas,” Crump said. “We don’t know his reasons why he didn’t come to Altadena – ”
“You know why!” someone in the audience called out.
Rev Larry Campbell of Pasadena’s First AME Episcopal church said that 54 families in the church’s congregation had their homes destroyed in the fire, while more suffered serious damage. Family members of Erliene Kennedy, Rodney Nickerson and Evelyn McClendon spoke at the service.
“The people in this town deserve as much respect and regard and attention and accountability as anybody anywhere,” Sharpton said. “We stand with those in the Palisades and the Hollywood Hills, but let everybody stand with us, too.”
Trump signs executive order imposing US sanctions on the ICC
Donald Trump has signed an executive order sanctioning the international criminal court (ICC), the White House has confirmed.
The text of the order, posted on the White House website, accuses the ICC of having “engaged in illegitimate and baseless actions targeting America and our close ally Israel” and abused its power by issuing “baseless arrest warrants targeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Former Minister of Defense Yoav Gallant”.
According to the order:
The United States will impose tangible and significant consequences on those responsible for the ICC’s transgressions, some of which may include the blocking of property and assets, as well as the suspension of entry into the United States of ICC officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members, as their entry into our Nation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.
Our colleagues on the Middle East live blog are tracking reaction to the order.
Bondi disbands FBI ‘foreign influence task force’ as Musk boosts Russia-linked hoax smearing USAid and Ben Stiller
Attorney general Pam Bondi dissolved an FBI taskforce aimed at combatting foreign influence operations on Wednesday, the same day that a hoax news report linked to Russia was shared by Donald Trump’s ally, Elon Musk, and his son, Donald Trump Jr.
“To free resources to address more pressing priorities, and end risks of further weaponization and abuses of prosecutorial discretion,” Bondi wrote in a memo to all Justice department employees after she was sworn in on Wednesday, “the Foreign Influence Task Force shall be disbanded.”
The FBI website explains that former director Christopher Wray established the taskforce in 2017 to combat “covert actions by foreign governments to influence US political sentiment or public discourse”.
“The goal of these foreign influence operations directed against the United States is to spread disinformation, sow discord, and, ultimately, undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and values,” according to the FBI.
And as Olga Robinson and Shayan Sardarizadeh of BBC Verify report, Elon Musk shared a viral video with more than 200 million followers on his social media platform X that falsely claims the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) paid more than $40m to Angelina Jolie, Sean Penn, Jean-Claude Van Damme, Orlando Bloom and Ben Stiller to get them to visit Ukraine.
The video, which carries the branding of the NBCUniversal outlet E! News, and follows the style of its celebrity reports, never appeared on any of that outlet’s social media accounts.
The hoax, Robinson reports, “is extremely similar in style” to a Russian influence operation BBC Verify previously exposed that use fictional social media news reports to impersonate media outlets and push anti-Ukraine narratives.
One of the named stars, Stiller, made an effort to combat the disinformation running rampant on Musk’s social-media platform by writing in a post there: “These are lies coming from Russian media. I completely self-funded my humanitarian trip to Ukraine. There was no funding from USAID and certainly no payment of any kind. 100 percent false”.
Despite Stiller’s effort to halt the spread of the hoax news report, it was also shared by Donald Trump Jr and Sidney Powell, known for her leading role in spreading wild conspiracy theories about the 2020 election.
As the video began to be debunked, with community notes added to some, but not all of the posts sharing it on X, the Kremlin-funded Russian broadcaster X used the opportunity to engage in a bit of trolling.
RT shared the viral video, but with a caption that read, in part: “No, USAID didn’t pay Angelina Jolie $20m to visit Zelensky. We would gloat about it but source is this single dubious viral video. Enough real scandals without fake news”.
Doge staffer installed at treasury resigns after Wall Street Journal uncovers racist posts.
Marko Elez, a 25-year-old engineer who obtained access to a treasury department payments system as part of his work for Elon Musk’s “department of government efficiency” initiative, reportedly resigned on Thursday after The Wall Street Journal asked the White House about a deleted social media account that advocated for racism and eugenics.
According to the Journal, recent posts on an account that once used the handle @marko_elez called for the repeal of the Civil Rights Act and supported a “eugenic immigration policy” just before Trump returned to office and empowered Musk to take a sledgehammer to federal agencies.
‘You could not pay me to marry outside of my ethnicity,’ the account wrote on X in September, according to a Wall Street Journal review of archived posts. ‘Normalize Indian hate,’ the account wrote the same month, in reference to a post noting the prevalence of people from India in Silicon Valley.
“Just for the record, I was racist before it was cool”, the account holder posted in July.
A lawyer for the government confirmed in federal court on Wednesday that Elez, who had previously worked for Musk at SpaceX, Starlink and X, had access to US treasury payment systems that contain the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans.
Sources told Wired earlier this week, that Elez had been granted the ability “not just to read but to write code on two of the most sensitive systems in the US government: the Payment Automation Manager and Secure Payment System at the Bureau of the Fiscal Service (BFS). Housed on a secure mainframe, these systems control, on a granular level, government payments that in their totality amount to more than a fifth of the US economy.”
Summary of the day so far
Here’s what has been in the news this afternoon:
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A “DEI watch list” targeting federal employees who work in health equity-related positions spurred fear for the workers’ safety and jobs. Most of the workers included on the list are Black.
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A budget dispute among congressional Republicans could slow their efforts to enact Donald Trump’s legislative agenda. Trump was scheduled to meet with Republican lawmakers on Thursday as they craft a spending bill that could avert a government shutdown in March.
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For the second time in two days, a judge moved Thursday to block Trump’s executive order ending birthright citizenship. The Seattle judge said Trump viewed the rule of law simply as an “impediment to his policy goals.”
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A judge also temporarily limited Elon Musk’s access to the Treasury’s payment system. The order allows for two of Musk’s associates to access the system – but on a read-only basis.
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Even after a judge delayed a buyout offer for federal employees, Musk’s self-styled Department of Government Accountability (DOGE), continued to pressure workers to quit. Agencies under Musk’s unofficial purview threatened workers with layoffs and implied their jobs could be replaced with artificial intelligence.
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DOGE reportedly accessed sensitive data from the Department of Education and used artificial intelligence to analyze it. The data reportedly included personal and financial information.
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The Trump administration has dropped efforts to sanction oligarchs close to Putin. The Joe Biden administration had implemented sanctions on Russian oligarchs in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
After Donald Trump issued an executive order to ban diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, dozens of workers have been fired from their positions in the civil service.
In an attempt to aid in the purge, a Heritage Foundation-linked group published a list of employees who work in health equity, most of whom are Black, and asked Trump to fire them.
The “DEI watch list,” created by the rightwing nonprofit American Accountability Foundation, included the photos and work history of the employees it targeted – causing the workers to fear for their safety.
Trump halts effort to sanction oligarchs close to the Kremlin
Donald Trump is disbanding an effort started after Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine to enforce sanctions and target oligarchs close to the Kremlin, Reuters reports.
A memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, issued on Wednesday during a wave of orders on her first day in office but not previously reported, said the effort, known as Task Force KleptoCapture, will end as part of a shift in focus and funding to combating drug cartels and international gangs.
“This policy requires a fundamental change in mindset and approach,” Bondi wrote in the directive, adding that resources now devoted to enforcing sanctions and seizing the assets of oligarchs will be redirected to countering cartels.
The effort, launched during Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration, was designed to strain the finances of wealthy associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin and punish those facilitating sanctions and export control violations.
