Trump says Musk to target defense, education after USAID cuts; DOGE staffer returning despite racist posts: Live updates – UK Times

President Donald Trump said Friday that he would sign an executive order “ending the ridiculous Biden push for paper straws, which don’t work.”

“BACK TO PLASTIC!” he posted on his social media platform Truth Social.

Last summer, the Biden administration announced an initiative to reduce single-use plastics in federal operations.

Julia Musto has the story.

President Donald Trump on Friday said he’s letting the Elon Musk-helmed Department of Government Efficiency dig into the budgets of the Pentagon and the federal Department of Education to find wasteful spending in need of cutting.

Trump told reporters at a joint press conference alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba that the billionaire’s cost-cutting initiative, which has rampaged through multiple federal agencies, would be taking a look at the $842 billion defense department ledger along with the 4,000-person Department of Education, which Trump has said he would like to eliminate from the executive branch.

Andrew Feinberg reports from Washington, D.C.

“We reaffirm our continued and unwavering support for the independence, impartiality and integrity of the ICC,” a group of almost 80 countries said in a joint statement.

After the United States went to the Supreme Court in the legal fight against Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth, a case that is now in the hands of the justices after December’s oral arguments, the Trump administration wrote to the court to say that its position is reversed. Trump’s Justice Department is now telling the court that it does not believe the state’s ban violates equal protections. But the administration is not asking to dismiss the appeal, and a decision is expected within the coming weeks and months.

The court’s ruling will have national impact, and could defy Trump’s executive order.

After the Justice Department earlier today agreed not to publish the names of FBI agents involved in January 6 cases, Donald Trump said he plans to “quickly and very surgically” purge many of them from the bureau.

“Some of them were corrupt, no doubt about that,” he said. “Those people are gone, or they will be gone.”

President Donald Trump on Friday continued to push his plan for the United States to take control of the Gaza Strip and threatened a host of new tariffs against American allies to be rolled out at a press conference next week.

Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office during a bilateral meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, Trump said he’d be announcing the trade actions — which amount to a unilateral tax increase on Americans — as part of his program for ensuring what he has called “reciprocal” trade with American allies.

Andrew Feinberg reports from the White House.