On Tuesday, on his first full day in office, President Donald Trump continued his sweeping actions, including ordering the closure of all executive branch diversity, equity and inclusion offices and ordering that all employees working in these offices are placed on leave.
Additionally, Trump revoked Secret Service protection given to former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton, who previously served as his national security adviser during his first term. He also announced private sector investments of up to $500 million to build artificial intelligence infrastructure.
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Senator Sanders defends Gabbard, Trump’s choice to lead the DNI
Sen. Bernie Sanders defended Tulsi Gabbard, President Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, in an interview on CNN on Tuesday evening.
Some lawmakers have called Gabbard, a former Hawaii congresswoman, a likely “Russian asset,” and expressed concerns about Gabbard’s trip to Syria in 2017, where she met with former Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Gabbard, who was a Democrat while serving in Congress from 2013 to 2021, supported Sanders during his 2016 presidential campaign.
Sanders said Gabbard “took a lot of pressure” for endorsing him over Hillary Clinton.
He said he was not worried about his visit with Assad.
“The idea that you shouldn’t sit down with your adversaries, whether it’s Iran, China, North Korea, Syria or whatever,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a valid criticism.”
He then praised Trump for his own meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in 2018.
“Donald Trump did the right thing. Every once in a while he does,” he said.
He said he has not yet decided how he will vote for Gabbard in the upcoming Senate confirmation hearing.
—Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
Trump Orders End to FAA Diverse Hiring Practices
President Donald Trump signed a document On Tuesday evening, it ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to stop using diversity, equity and inclusion hiring authorities. He particularly pointed the finger at the authorities responsible for recruiting people with disabilities.
“Under the previous administration…the FAA betrayed its mission by prioritizing dangerous discrimination over excellence,” the president argued. He further denounced the recruitment of “individuals with serious disabilities,” rebuking efforts to recruit people with disabilities.
The country’s aviation watchdog has used fast-track disability recruitment authorities for at least a decade, including during the first Trump administration. Such programs allowed hiring managers to bypass the competitive recruiting process to appoint professionally qualified candidates with disabilities.
In the document, Trump argued for pro-diversity hiring practices “[penalize] hard-working Americans who want to serve in the FAA but can’t because they don’t have the required disability or skin color.
However, the agency is facing a serious shortage of air traffic controllerswho must meet strict medical requirements which the authorities responsible for recruiting disabled people could not circumvent.
The move is one of several executive actions focused on the federal workforce enacted since Trump took office Monday afternoon. His other actions addressed DEI recruiting more broadly, freezing hiring at most executive branch agencies and ordering a return to in-person work for many federal employees, among other directives.
–Davis Winkie
Trump Executive Order Rolls Back Civil Rights Hiring Protections
President Donald Trump revoked a 1965 civil rights executive order Tuesday, rolling back authorities long used to prevent employment discrimination by federal contractors, subcontractors and grant recipients. He also ordered agencies to plan possible civil rights investigations against private sector entities that promote diverse hiring.
In his own decreeTrump attacked these policies as “dangerous, demeaning and immoral race- and gender-based preferences under the guise of so-called “diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Trump’s order flips the script, arguing that affirmative action provisions are unlawfully discriminatory. Federal agencies must now “enforce our longstanding civil rights laws and combat illegal private sector DEI preferences, mandates, policies, programs, and activities.”
—Davis Winkie
What is President Trump’s agenda today?
Trump will sit down for an interview today with Fox News’ Sean Hannity for the first interview from the Oval Office, according to Politico. The interview will air at 9 p.m.
The president is also expected to meet with a group of “centrist Republicans” at the White House, the outlet also reported.
The White House has not yet released a public schedule for the president. The city’s press pool (the rotation of the small group of journalists who follow the president) was asked to report at 9 a.m.
Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
Justice Department career officials reshuffled to advance Donald Trump’s immigration agenda
Justice Department officials were quickly reassigned following President Donald Trump’s inauguration on Monday to help align the department with the new administration’s priorities – particularly on immigration, said at USA TODAY a ministry official close to the matter.
In a speech to supporters Monday, Trump described immigration as his “number one issue.”
The rapid actions taken at the Justice Department, which were in place Tuesday, show that the administration is moving to implement its immigration agenda at the department level.
-Aysha Bagchi
Trump pardons Silk Road founder
The president announced his decision on Truth Social.
-Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy
Trump announces private sector investment in AI
Trump said the joint venture, called Stargate, would build data centers and create more than 100,000 jobs in the United States. ChatGPT creator OpenAI, Softbank and Oracle, along with other Stargate backers, have committed $100 billion for immediate deployment, with the remainder expected over the next four years.
And CEOs Masayoshi Son of SoftBank and Sam Altman of OpenAI CEO as well as Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison joined Trump at the White House for the launch.
-Swapna Venugopal Ramaswamy