What to know today
- President Donald Trump signed an executive order barring transgender athletes from participating in women's and girls' sports. He also said he would direct the government to deny visas for transgender women athletes trying to enter the United States for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.
- The president met with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and California Gov. Gavin Newsom as they pursue border security and wildfire recovery measures in their respective states.
- Trump's comments that the United States would take "long-term" ownership of the Gaza Strip have sparked international outcry and invited strong reactions at home
- Meanwhile, Trump and Elon Musk's efforts to scale back federal agencies continue at the U.S. Agency for International Development, the CIA and elsewhere.
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Australian lawmaker legally changes name to 'Aussie Trump'
An independent state lawmaker in Australia has legally changed his name to "Aussie Trump" in an apparent protest against the country's governing center-left Labor Party.
The lawmaker formerly known as Ben Dawkins said on X that he was protesting "the tyranny and systematic corruption of the Labor government," which has a parliamentary majority in his state, Western Australia.
In a separate post, he shared a photo showing legal confirmation of his new name, which also now appears on the state's parliamentary website.
Aussie Trump, who frequently quotes Donald Trump in his speeches and social media posts, was expelled from the Labor Party in 2023 over allegations that he had repeatedly violated family violence restraining orders. He pleaded guilty to 35 of 42 charges later that year.
Education Department staff warned that Trump buyout offers could be canceled at any time
Top officials at the Department of Education told staff today that if they accept the Trump administration’s deferred resignation package, the education secretary may later cancel it and employees would not have any recourse, potentially leaving them without promised pay.
The Office of Personnel Management sent notices last week to federal employees that if they resign by Thursday, they could continue receiving pay and benefits until the end of September. The Trump administration is hoping to get as many as 10% of the workforce to quit as part of a plan to shrink the federal bureaucracy.
But three Education Department officials told NBC News that Rachel Oglesby, the department’s new chief of staff, and Jacqueline Clay, chief human capital officer, described significant caveats to the so-called Fork in the Road offer in an all-staff meeting held over Zoom today. The officials did not want to be named for fear of retaliation.
Former USAID administrator Samantha Power defends the agency
Former USAID Administrator Samantha Power tonight emphasized the importance of the agency's work in promoting the U.S. interests abroad.
Power, who earlier signed onto a letter from a bipartisan group of former administrators defending the agency, said in an interview on MSNBC that "the wreckage in the world" is keeping USAID employees up at night as the Trump administration targets the agency, effectively grinding much of its work to a halt.
She highlighted how the agency does "really important democracy work," among other priorities. Power said that USAID advances America's interests, noting that lots of misinformation about the agency's work is circulating.
“It also matters for U.S. security, and I think there’s just not a fundamental appreciation of that. It matters in the strategic competition with the PRC, with China,” she said. “There’s not an appreciation of that.”
Education Department calls for review of grants connected to DEI
A new directive from the Education Department to its employees calls for a sweeping review of its extensive grant program to potentially block aid to those connected with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
A memo obtained by NBC News titled “eliminating discrimination and fraud in department grant awards,” which was sent late this evening and signed by acting Secretary Denise Carter, calls for an internal review of all new grant awards and those that have not yet been awarded to specific people or entities.
“Such review shall be limited to ensuring that Department grants do not fund discriminatory practices — including in the form of DEI — that are either contrary to law or to the Department’s policy objectives, as well as to ensure that all grants are free from fraud, abuse and duplications,” the memo reads. “Grants deemed inconsistent with these priorities, shall, where permitted by applicable law, be terminated.”
The Education Department divvies up billions of dollars in grants every year. It was unclear how it defined DEI initiatives, given that the memo named departments across the board, leaving little off-limits.
“All indicators are that they are going after the entire education system,” an Education Department official familiar with the memo said.
The directive asked for a potential pause into “discriminatory” grants going to a wide variety of departments, including those covering elementary and secondary education, postsecondary education, special education and rehabilitative services, as well as the Office of English Language Acquisition, which handles English-as-a-Second Language learners.
A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Senate Democrats are doing overnight Senate floor speeches in protest of Russell Vought's nomination to lead OMB
Senate Democrats plan to speak all night against Russell Vought’s nomination to be director of the Office of Management and Budget.
The overnight round of speeches won’t affect the final vote on Vought, as he’s expected to be confirmed along party lines once the 30 hours of debate ends at 7 p.m. tomorrow. Vought’s nomination was advanced today along party lines.
In previous nominations, Democrats have allowed the Senate to close overnight to give Capitol staff members and Capitol Police a break before they reconvene in the morning while allowing that time to still chip away at the 30 hours of debate.
But Democrats are holding these overnight speeches as a form of protest against Vought’s nomination, in particular his comments about how he would like to handle government spending and federal workers.
The Senate could, hypothetically, vote earlier than 7 p.m. tomorrow, but that would require an agreement among all 100 senators.
National Security Agency employees offered 'buyouts'
In addition to the CIA, employees of the National Security Agency have been offered the buyouts formally known as “deferred resignation,” according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter.
NSA staff members received an email last night offering a voluntary early retirement option, followed by a town hall today with the director of the agency, which employs about 33,000 people.
The source also said that according to a memo this week from the Office of Personnel Management, the NSA’s chief information officer is set to be replaced by a political appointee. NBC News has reported that the Trump administration was taking steps to turn certain tech positions into political appointee posts that allow for hiring and firing at will.
Trump’s pick to lead the National Counterterrorism Center has called Jan. 6 rioters ‘political prisoners’
Trump’s pick to oversee U.S. intelligence on terrorism threats is a retired Green Beret who has called Jan. 6 rioters “political prisoners” and has had ties to a man police say was a member of the far-right group known as the Proud Boys.
The selection of Joe Kent as director of the National Counterterrorism Center is part of a wider effort by the administration to place trusted loyalists and partisan activists in senior government positions in intelligence, law enforcement and diplomacy. Trump and his supporters have said the intelligence community sought to undermine him in the past and needs a radical overhaul.
The National Counterterrorism Center oversees U.S. government intelligence on terrorist threats and retains a database of all known and suspected terrorists. Kent served in Army Special Forces, undertaking 11 combat deployments during a 20-year career, and later worked at the CIA. He lost his wife, a Navy cryptologist, in a terrorist bombing in Syria in 2019.
Republican senator appears to swipe at DOGE
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, appeared to take a swipe at the Department of Government Efficiency, which Musk is using to push for a massive overhaul in the federal workforce and agencies.
"Efficiency in government should be a goal for every administration, agency, and federal employee," Murkowski said on X. "But how we achieve it also matters."
"By circumventing proper channels and procedures, and creating the potential to compromise the sensitive data of Americans, we create a tremendous amount of unnecessary anxiety. That is wrong. Good governance is based on trust, not fear," she said.
Murkowski is one of the few Republican senators who have been open to opposing aspects of Trump's agenda. She voted against Pete Hegseth's confirmation as defense secretary and has signaled openness to opposing other nominees.
Trump the real estate developer eyes Gaza as his next project
Donald Trump the president was once Donald Trump the real estate mogul, and in his new term the two roles are starting to blur.
First he targeted Greenland, Canada and the Panama Canal. Now he is eyeing Gaza as America’s next great acquisition.
'An issue of life and death': USAID workers, supporters issue a warning to Congress at protests
The mood at today's rally at the Capitol in support of the U.S. Agency for International Development was one of shock, fear and fury at lawmakers for not doing more to push back against the dismantling of USAID.
Mary Kate Adgie, a State Department contractor who said she was laid off last week as a result of Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s stop-work order, told NBC News she was working on projects under the Global Fragility Act — a law co-sponsored by then-Sen. Rubio and signed by Trump during his first administration that “aims to revitalize how the United States invests in stabilization around the world, recognizing that conflict prevention is immensely cheaper than conflict resolution.”
“The 180, I would say, is, it’s shocking,” she told NBC News.
Adgie — who said the way the stop-work order was “jarring” — has been frustrated by what she says has been misinformation around “wasteful” foreign spending.
Recently, she had been working on a USAID project in Papua New Guinea “to invest in civic education, community violence, gender-based violence reduction, opportunities to advance equity,” she said.
“I think that’s important conversation for the strategic competition interest of the United States," she said. "And now we’ve completely pulled out, and our implementing partners and local community members are left wondering what’s going to happen after we had been laying the groundwork and the foundation."
She expressed frustration that an estimated 8,000 people in the field are now unemployed.
“I’ll be OK. I have community. I have resources. I have savings,” Adgie said. “I think it’s really just heartbreaking to know that there are millions of people around the world depending on this, particularly local implementing partners. They will not survive a 90-day pause for foreign assistance review. People will not get the services that they need, and as a result, the U.S. is going to be less prosperous, less secure and less safe.”
A woman who works for a USAID implementing partner who declined to be named on the record is frustrated by how the shuttering of USAID to reduce government spending has happened in an unnecessarily expensive manner that wastes taxpayer dollars.
“The waste to taxpayer dollars just happening because of the chaos — no one’s against a realignment and a review of what’s happening. That would be no problem, but the way, the chaotic way they’re doing it is such an immense waste to U.S. taxpayer dollars that when we eventually know what that number is, it’ll be infuriating," she said. "And you should be infuriated as taxpayer that this is happening, and it’s going to happen again, not just at USAID but at Department of Education, etc.”
Scott Paul, Oxfam America’s director of peace and security, called it a “seismic event for the humanitarian system” worldwide.
“This is not sustainable,” he said. “This is an issue of life and death for people around the world. There is no humanitarian assistance in the world that is untouched by what has happened in the last two weeks for USAID.
“In the space of two weeks, the world’s richest person has deprived the poorest people in the world, struggling through the worst times of their lives, the very help they need to get that,” he added.
Jerry Parks, who works for a USAID implementing partner on monitoring and evaluation of global health programs, stressed the level of oversight and accountability he encounters in his work.
“There’s all sorts of analysis done,” he said. “And if a project isn’t working, we recalibrate it so the money is very much accounted for. The idea that this is sort of corrupt waste being thrown into the ether is just nonsense.”
“I can’t emphasize how devastating this is,” Parks said.
Without his organization’s work, he’s worried that HIV cases in places like Kenya and Uganda will climb, putting people in “serious danger."
“We have made humongous improvements in combating AIDS," he said. "It’s the greatest achievement of public health history, and all that is being undone.”
Parks said he believes it's possible to care for people both in America and abroad.
"There’s so much kindness in this country," he said. "And I think that if people realized what good the U.S. did in the world for how little money, I find it very hard to believe that there would be so much opposition.”
Democratic lawmakers — faced with heckling from rallygoers calling on them to "do your job" — expressed hope that the courts would intervene and that their Republican colleagues would act.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., called the shuttering of USAID "downright illegal."
"It’s pretty clear that presidents are not kings," he told the crowd. "They don’t get to decide to cherry-pick the law. This is not, like, à la carte. The law is the law, and President Trump needs to obey all parts of that law."
Rep. Madeleine Dean, D-Pa., asked where Republicans are when "lives are now at stake."
"Lives are now being lost as a result of this unlawful taking, this grotesque cruelty of the Trump administration," she said. "What is going on is corrupt, it is cruel, it is chaotic, it is lawless, it is unconstitutional, and that’s the point."
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., who said she plans to introduce legislation to push back against Musk's "illegal takeover of USAID," appealed to the crowd's expertise.
"It is a power grab meant to silence critics, and let’s be clear: While USAID might be first, it is not going to be the last, but joke’s on them, because who knows better how to work in an authoritarian country than all of you?" Jacobs said.
