Live Updates
The latest on Trump’s presidency as he vows new tariffs on steel and aluminum imports
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Hear Trump explain his upcoming move on tariffs
01:07 – Source: CNN
• New tariffs loom: President Donald Trump said he would announce a 25% tariff today on steel and aluminum imports. Trump also said he planned to announce massive new reciprocal tariffs this week, which could match other countries’ tariffs on US goods dollar-for-dollar. These moves comes as the president is expected to sign another round of executive orders this afternoon.
• Federal overhaul: Trump is pressing ahead with his agenda to shrink and reshape the federal government as a judge hears arguments this afternoon on a challenge to the “buyouts” for federal workers. Next under scrutiny is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, where the watchdog agency’s Washington, DC, headquarters is set to close.
• Trump doubles down on Gaza plans: The president repeated his desire for the US to redevelop Gaza, saying he viewed the war-ravaged enclave as a “big real estate site.” He again suggested other Middle Eastern countries would house displaced Palestinians, but regional leaders have rejected his plans.
• Key votes for Cabinet picks: The Senate will consider Tulsi’s Gabbard nomination for intelligence chief today and take a procedural vote to set up a final confirmation vote as early as tomorrow. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is also expected to face key votes this week. Track the status of Trump’s Cabinet picks.
Russell Vought, acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, explicitly ordered employees on Monday to stop working altogether.
“Please do not perform any work tasks,” Vought wrote to CFPB staff in an email obtained by CNN.
Vought instructed employees that if there are “any urgent matters,” they must get approval in writing from the bureau’s chief legal officer before performing “any work task.”
“Otherwise, employees should stand down from performing any work task,” Vought wrote.
The language goes further than Vought’s order Saturday night, when he told CFPB staff to stop doing a wide variety of activities, including “all supervision and examination activity.”
Now, CFPB staff is being told not to do anything at all.
The messages in recent days have alarmed consumer advocates, who fear there is now no federal regulator protecting Americans from big banks, payday lenders and other financial institutions.
Vought reiterated on Monday the CFPB’s headquarters are closed today and that employees should not come to the office.
It’s a busy day in Washington, DC, today, with President Donald Trump expected to announce a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports on Monday, followed by more tariffs later in the week.
The president is also scheduled to sign more executive orders today at 1 p.m. ET.
Here’s what else is going on:
- Vice President JD Vance is in Paris for the AI Action Summit. This marks his first international trip as vice president. Vance will also attend the Munich Security Conference in Germany later this week.
- Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth will also embark on his first overseas trip as the head of the Pentagon this week. He will visit Germany, Belgium, and Poland for meetings with Allied leaders.
- At 2 p.m. ET, a federal judge will hold a motion hearing in a lawsuit challenging the so-called “Fork in the Road” plan put forward by Elon Musk and his allies. A federal judge paused last week’s deadline for federal employees to accept the Trump administration’s deferred resignation offer while legal proceedings continue. An email sent Thursday evening notified employees of the court order and extended deadline to Monday.
- At 3 p.m. ET, the Senate will resume its consideration of Tulsi Gabbard’s nomination as Director of National Intelligence. Later in the evening, they are expected to take a procedural vote to set up a final confirmation vote as early as Tuesday evening.
- A federal judge in Washington, DC, will hear a motion from a nonprofit physician group at 3 p.m. ET, seeking a temporary restraining order in their lawsuit against the Office of Personnel Management, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health & Human Services over the removal of health data and other information from public government websites.
This post has been updated with more details on Trump’s schedule Monday.
The vast and opaque power of Elon Musk is only growing as he seeks new targets for his federal government shredding machine.
The head of President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency is closing in on his latest victim — an independent government agency set up to shield Americans from the Wall Street excesses that caused the Great Recession.
Employees of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau were told Sunday that the watchdog’s Washington, DC, headquarters will be closed this week and they should work remotely, a day after Trump’s budget chief, Russell Vought, took over as acting director and told staff to stop fighting financial abuse.
“CFPB RIP,” Musk wrote on X on Friday.
The agency, which has long been in GOP sights, seems to be following a similar path to doom as the US Agency for International Development, which has saved millions of lives around the world and promoted democracy for decades, but that Musk has eviscerated.
The role of Musk, with his unelected power, is unprecedented. The richest man in the world is firing or suspending government workers, destroying US soft global power, and accessing data and private information about potentially millions of Americans — all with zero accountability.
Multiple courts have now stepped in to temporarily halt Trump and Musk’s plans. But everything is trending toward one of the most significant showdowns over the scope of presidential power in modern history, which is destined for a Supreme Court whose conservative majority has an expansive view of executive authority.
The soaring price of eggs has alarmed consumers and the agriculture industry, and practically everyone in Washington is pointing fingers in various directions to direct blame.
It’s hard to lay America’s egg crisis at the feet of any one politician. But agricultural experts say politicians in Washington and around the country can do more to help curtail the highly pathogenic avian influenza, or avian flu, responsible for the deaths of more than 40 million egg-laying birds last year.
Because of short supply, egg prices rose 14% from November to December alone, and they are projected to rise another 20% this year, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Many politicians have used rising egg prices to turn the opposing party into a punching bag. For example, some Democrats in Congress were quick to criticize President Donald Trump’s chaotic agenda by noting that his actions to dismantle various aspects of the federal government will do nothing to lower the price of eggs.
Trump also campaigned on the promise to lower grocery prices for Americans. “When I win, I will immediately bring down prices, starting day one,” he said on the campaign trail.
Last week, pushing back, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said egg prices have continued to surge because “the Biden administration and the Department of Agriculture directed the mass killing of more than 100 million chickens, which has led to a lack of chicken supply in this country, therefore lack of egg supply, which is leading to the shortage.”
That’s not exactly correct. Yes, the highly contagious virus is to blame for the deaths of 130 million birds during the Biden administration since 2022, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation. But that is because the USDA requires the culling of entire flocks to stop the spread if the virus is detected. It happened during the Biden administration and is happening right now under the Trump administration.
Read more about how the highly contagious virus can be managed and what it might mean for egg production here.
Like an object floating upward yet still underwater, the bare, vague bones of a peace plan for Ukraine are taking shape. Despite a relative silence in policy announcements on this war from an otherwise vocal Trump administration, the next two weeks may see significant route markers planted in public. Whether they gain any traction with the Kremlin remains unclear.
Last week, US President Donald Trump officially appointed 80-year-old retired Gen. Keith Kellogg as his envoy to Ukraine and Russia. Almost Kellogg’s first act was to announce he would discuss their vision for peace in Ukraine with allies at the Munich Security Conference, on February 14-16. He is then expected, four days later, to visit Kyiv, for his first, long-anticipated trip there, according to Ukrainian state media.
Kellogg’s every utterance is parsed by an anxious Kyiv. He hit back at suggestions that the Munich conference would see the outline of a peace plan revealed publicly, telling Newsmax: “The person who will present the peace plan is the president of the United States, not Keith Kellogg.” Trump will have the potential big reveal, it seems, after Kellogg consults with allies in Germany.
Trump has tried to kickstart the process, it seems in recent days, telling The New York Post Saturday he had spoken to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin about ending the war, but providing no details. The Kremlin declined to confirm that call, but spokesman Dmitri Peskov told CNN: “There could be something I don’t know.”
You might expect a complex, diplomatic symphony to strike up to try an end the largest war in Europe since the 1940s. Instead, in public at least, a scrappy version of online karaoke has the players involved struggling to hold together the same tune.
A federal court on Sunday blocked the Trump administration from sending three Venezuelan immigrants held in New Mexico to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba as part of the president’s immigration crackdown.
In a legal filing, lawyers for the men said the detainees “fit the profile of those the administration has prioritized for detention in Guantanamo, i.e. Venezuelan men detained in the El Paso area with (false) charges of connections with the Tren de Aragua gang.”
It asked a US District Court in New Mexico for a temporary restraining order blocking their transfer, adding that “the mere uncertainty the government has created surrounding the availability of legal process and counsel access is sufficient to authorize the modest injunction.”
During a brief hearing, Judge Kenneth J. Gonzales granted the temporary order, which was opposed by the government, said Jessica Vosburgh, an attorney for the three men.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he planned to announce a 25% tariff on all steel and aluminum imports into the United States on Monday.
“Aluminum, too,” he said.
Trump said he planned to hold a separate news conference Tuesday or Wednesday to announce massive new reciprocal tariffs, which could match other countries’ levies on US goods dollar-for-dollar.
“Very simply, it’s if they charge us, we charge them,” Trump said.
He did not provide many details about how expansive the new tariffs would be or when they may go into effect. It’s not clear whether the new steel and aluminum tariffs will be on top of the levies already in place on exports from countries like China. Last week, Trump imposed a 10% tariff on all Chinese goods imported to the United States on top of all existing tariffs already in place on the country. The president has also paused 25% across-the-board tariffs on Mexican and Canadian imports until March 1.
While the United States is not the manufacturing-focused economy it once was, it still consumes tens of millions of tons of steel a year.
Trump in 2018, during his previous administration, also put in place 25% tariffs on steel and 10% tariffs on aluminum, although the following year he lifted them on Mexico and Canada.
CNN’s Aileen Graef contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump said Sunday that he has instructed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to halt production of pennies, citing the high cost of producing one cent.
Some context: CNN has reported the US Mint in 2023 said it circulated around 4.1 billion pennies. In fiscal year 2024, the US Mint said in its annual report that the US penny costs about 3.7 cents to produce and distribute, up more than 20% from the previous year. The rising cost of metals, including zinc and copper, is part of the reason it’s getting more expensive to make the coin.
Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency emphasized the cost of manufacturing pennies in a post on X last month. People have advocated for eliminating the penny for years, as pennies are rarely spent as change.
Experts also say eliminating the penny could benefit businesses by saving time for store clerks and cashiers. Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives at the National Association of Convenience Stores, said about 52 million in-person cash transactions occur at convenience stores every day.
“If we save every one of these customers 2 seconds, that’s 104 million seconds or 1,203 days,” Lenard previously said to CNN.
CNN’s Ramishah Maruf contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump doubled down on his plans for the US to redevelop Gaza, telling reporters Sunday that he viewed the war-torn region as a “big real estate site.”
“I think that it’s a big mistake to allow people — the Palestinians, or the people living in Gaza — to go back yet another time, and we don’t want Hamas going back. And think of it as a big real estate site, and the United States is going to own it and we’ll slowly — very slowly, we’re in no rush — develop it,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One as he traveled to the Super Bowl.
Trump, a former real estate magnate, described Gaza as a “demolition site” that would be “leveled out” and “fixed up.”
He again suggested that other Middle Eastern countries would house displaced Palestinians in “beautiful sites.”
Some context: Ninety percent of Gaza residents have been displaced, and many have been forced to move repeatedly amid Israel’s war against Hamas, according to the United Nations.
Regional leaders have rejected Trump’s plans, which break with decades of US foreign policy. Those plans are expected to be a key topic of discussion when the president hosts the king of Jordan at the White House this week.
But Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, suggested earlier Sunday that the president was offering an initial salvo to bring other players in the region to the table to find a solution.
“Come to the table with your plan if you don’t like his plan,” Waltz said during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” suggesting the White House has received “all kinds of outreach” since Trump’s comments last week.